Welcome to the 9th annual #SpookyShowcase, a Halloween artist and author showcase. A full schedule of submissions can be found here so you don’t miss a single entry for THESE DEADLY CURSES. Now, on to today’s submission!

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Twin Curses by Sandra Proudman

The little brats I was babysitting sang, “Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back…”

They weren’t avoiding the cracks on the sidewalk but stepping straight on them and I imagined their poor mom, Jess, aching and grabbing at her back every single time their terrible little feet landed. I lounged underneath the family’s willow tree, lemonade on the rim of my chair’s arm, sunglasses on my face, bikini on my body, watching the eight-year-olds with trepidation.

As far as summer jobs went, this one wasn’t so bad. It paid better than any babysitting gig I’d ever had. And the family had the largest heated pool in the neighborhood. The biggest thing was that the twins gave me the creeps sometimes. They reminded me of the twin girls in that freaky movie where the writer goes haywire and tries to kill his family.

They even wore the same clothes a lot of the time.

The minute I let my guard down and started texting my friend, Angie, they start pulling each other’s hair for whatever reason. I rushed out of my chair, spilling the lemonade in the process.

“Shit,” I said, ignoring the drink since it went into the grass anyway, and rushed to pull the sisters apart.

I took them each by an arm. Although I was sixteen, twice their age, I wasn’t that much taller than them, which only meant I had to be that much meaner to get them to listen to me.

“Don’t touch me,” one of them said. Coraline was her name. She was the one with a look that could slice through you. Dark hair, dark eyes the color of charcoal. I didn’t doubt that if she had the ability to shoot lasers out of her eyes, they would have been focused in on my heart.

“Seriously, what is your problem?” the other added in. She was quieter, this one except when she was following her sister’s lead. The freckles across her nose fire red like her hair. Her name always escaped me. Alice? Allison? One of those A names.

Part of me was ready to let go. But I was the one babysitting them, and therefore in charge, so I grabbed one earlobe from each girl and dragged them toward the house.

“You two need to behave,” I scolded.

The moment we were inside, they shook me off.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” the quiet one said. The fact she spoke a full sentence made it all the creepier.

“You don’t know what we’re capable of,” the other added in.

“While your parents are away, I’m the boss,” I said, standing my ground.

They both turned to each other, grinned. The gesture made me take a step back, rethink where I was.

They weren’t the only ones who gave me the creeps. Their house did too. It was a giant historic Victorian-style house. Its hallways always a bit too dark. Shadows always looming about. It felt almost alive.

“You’re wrong,” Coraline said.

“You have to be taught a lesson,” the quiet one added.

A lesson?

“We put a curse on you,” Coraline said. “Should you not have a change of heart and speak our names in apology three days from now your final minute will be spent right here in front of us.”

Her twin giggled. “Oh, that’s a good one. Doesn’t even make much sense.”

“Oh, I know,” Coraline said.

In that moment, their mom, Jess came walking in. And I shit you not, she came in hobbling and clutching her back.

“You okay?” I asked. I didn’t mention her daughters had just cursed me, but instead rushed to put on some clothes over my bathing suit and get my stuff ready to jet.

“Just getting old. Whole body hurts sometimes.”

The quiet twin seemed to be holding a smirk back. Part of me wanted to tell Jess exactly what her daughters had been up to while she was gone. But then Jess pulled out a wad of cash and handed it to me. I instantly knew she’d paid me extra like deep down she knew her daughter’s made people want to run away. I took the money, said thanks, and left as fast as possible.

I missed my bus, which very rarely happened, and ended up walking home. Luckily, it wasn’t nighttime.

I was texting Angie again, telling her all about the babysitting house from

Hell, when there was a growl behind me.

I turned back and there was a giant dog, off leash, snarling my way. I was the only one out on the street.

The dog barked and it wasn’t one of those yips like chihuahuas make. This was a deep, gutural sound that turned my hands sweaty.

It advanced. I dropped my phone in a panic, trying to catch it as it fell, but only causing it to ricochet toward the giant dog who crushed the phone further underneath a giant paw.

I ran.

It gave chase.

If I hadn’t been only two blocks away from home, it might have caught up. Luckily mom never kept the door locked so I bounded inside, closing the door on the dog’s face.

It growled, scratched at the door, practically splintering a hole in it.

When I was sure that I was fine, I backed away.

A knock came a few second later, as if the dog had never existed at all.

I looked through the keyhole. It was Angie. I’d forgotten I’d told her she could come over to hang out. I unlocked the door, my palms still sweaty. So totally gross.

“Did you see the dog?” I asked her.

She quirked an eyebrow at me. “What are you talking about?”

I shook my head. “Nevermind.” I took her arm and dragged her in, shutting the door quickly behind her.

“So the twins creep you out again?” she asked when I didn’t say much of anything else as I looked out the windows.

“They put a curse on me,” I told her.

She looked at me skeptically. “There’s no such thing as curses. Please tell me you don’t think those two have any real power.”

If I thought about it, Angie had a point. Why would they be able to curse me? It would mean not only that they were witches, but that they knew enough of what they were doing to make it happen. That couldn’t be the case considering they were eight.

“I guess not,” I said.

Angie, set her back down and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“You can’t smoke those in here,” I said. “My mom will kill me.”

She didn’t put them back in her purse. “Your mom barely knows you exist.” The truth of it hurt. I couldn’t argue with her.

She headed toward the backyard. Even though it was fenced off, I was still afraid that the dog would be there, snarling after me.

I shook it off and followed Angie out back, grabbing two soda cans on the way.

My backyard was giant. A wide pool was situated in the middle of it, complete with a waterslide. I wish I could say that I was my parents’ pride and joy, but that pool was. They’d saved up to purchase it and considering it was the only pool on our block, were mightily proud of its existence. I couldn’t say they felt the same about me.

Angie took a spot in the middle of our grassy area, which I didn’t think was a great idea, fires and all, but didn’t want to argue with her. Mostly because there was no arguing with Angie, there was only her turning your comments around and making you look stupid.

She offered me a cigarette. She always did and I always said no. She shrugged and lit hers and took a giant whiff and blew the smoke in my direction.

“We’re going to be seniors next year,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied, picking off grass petals and breaking them apart to kill time. I kept thinking about the dog. The twins. And their curse.

How in the world was I supposed to go back there tomorrow?

Angie laid back, kept smoking, which I didn’t like but knew better than to complain about it.

I wasn’t sure how she could stare up at the sky without sunglasses. The sky was so bright and blue and massive. It always made me feel small just thinking about it.

I kept looking at the grass. So I didn’t see the moment it happened.

“Shit,” Angie said, sitting up fast and rubbing at her face. It was funny because a bird literally took a shit on her face, which I thought maybe she deserved a little bit.

It was not funny because she dropped her cigarette. And maybe it shouldn’t have caught that fast, but suddenly, things were in flames.

Angie was in flames.

“Angie roll!” I said. But the more she rolled the more the grass caught fire. The more Angie stayed aflame. As if it was having the opposite effect.

Angie screamed. The fire was now catching onto her skin. And maybe skin shouldn’t be able to char like that, but it started to smell, and I started to cry. And I was trying to figure out how to help but all I kept thinking about was the twins, their curse, their words, their bad misfortune.

It finally occurred to me.

“The pool!” I yelled to Angie. And something must have snapped in her brain quickly enough because she ran straight to the pool, managed to get the hitch on the gate unlocked fast enough, and jumped in the deep end.

Smoke rose from the water as it doused the flames.

I stood nullified for a moment.

Outside of the fence, I swear, I could hear the dog waiting for me. Snarling.

I got into the pool when Angie wasn’t standing up. She was face down and had been that way for way too long. I turned her around, hands shaking but careful.

She let out a scream that caused me to release her back into the water. Thankfully, firefighters appeared out of nowhere. They helped me out of the water, then helped Angie.

“What happened?” one of them asked.

I couldn’t reply, though. All I kept thinking about was the twins, their warning, their curse.

And they said it wouldn’t stop until I said their names. But what was the quiet one’s name? Something with an A.

A dog barked, pulling my attention back to the moment. My house burned in the background, though firefighters tried to put the fire out.

Mom came home then, her face pallid as she took on the scene in front of her. “My house,” she said. She didn’t even search for me in the chaos. She took one step closer, then another, until she was practically running into the house.

To grab, what? I’m not entirely sure. We weren’t rich. The biggest thing of value was the land the house is built on. But still she acted as if I were in there, burning away with her clothing.

Then it happened. This time I watch it all happen in slow motion. She stepped on a crack. Right there, and all of a sudden she was grabbing at her back, and all of a sudden she was falling face down, and all of a sudden the fire appeared out of nowhere, and as if there were a line of gasoline leading right up to my mom, she was all of a sudden engulfed in flames.

The firefighters moved toward her.

I moved away. Terrified. Alarmed. Needing to escape.

But I couldn’t escape the curse. Not until I gave those little brats what they were looking for. But maybe I didn’t have to deal with them at all. I just needed to speak to their mother. Get her to get them to reverse their curse.

I left my mother and Angie and my house and the firefighters calling me. I ran past the dog, who watched me go, but didn’t give chase, as if it only would if I wasn’t going back to the twins.

When I got to the house, I was sweating. Or maybe the liquid falling down my face were tears. I don’t know. Probably both.

The house was full of light one moment, and then as if something snuffed out all of the lights inside at the same time, it went dark. How could that happen? I’d been inside of the house, as far as I know there was no universal light switch.

Still, I was more scared of not going in at this point. I needed to face the twins.

I knocked on the door, a cold sweaty mess.

The door creaked open, though no one appeared at the doorway. It was pitch black inside. I looked back once, took a deep breath, and entered.

I expected the door to shut behind me once I was in, but it stayed open.

“Hello? Jess?” I called out.

“Hi! I’m in here! The damn lights went out.”

I followed the voice. My heart settling back into my chest. It made sense and was less scary than to think ghosts turned them all off at the same time. Or that the house was alive and acting that way.

I found Jess downstairs in the garage, which was lit up with camping lanterns galore. You could see everything.

I smiled. “Oh my God, thank God.”

“That’s a lot of Gods for one sentence,” Jess said. “Did you forget something?”

“No, I’m here because—” I froze. Was I really going to tell Jess that I thought her daughters cursed me? I had to. “Before I left today, your daughters said they cursed me.”

Her eyes went wide. She looked to the door behind me, up the stairs.

“And ever since then things have been going horribly wrong.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, let’s get to the bottom of this.” She cupped her hands at her mouth. “Girls!”

They appeared out of nowhere. Right behind me. I jolted, faced them. They both smirked.

“Yes mother?” The one without a name said.

“Explain.”

“We warned her,” she said.

“But she didn’t listen,” the other added in.

“I see, well it’s time to undo what you’ve done.”

“We can’t,” they both said. “Unless she says both our names.”

Jess turns to me expectantly.

I took a step back. She wasn’t going to help me.

“You have to break your own curse,” she explained.

“But…”

Again, she gave me nothing. I didn’t know what to do or what to say.

I turned to look at the twins. The truth was I had no idea what the A name was.

Astred? Amber?

I clenched my hands into fists and turned around and headed toward the door.

Only when I tried the doorknob, it didn’t turn.

I turned to face them and now all three of them had smirks.

“What happens to me if I don’t know?”

“We told you before,” Coraline replied. “And you don’t get multiple tries.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted after standing there for a couple of minutes. And hated myself for never caring about the brat long enough to learn her name.

The next thing I know Jess was right beside me and the basement went dark and all I heard was, “Well, there goes another one.”

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