Amanda Carney

Congrats! Awesome story! 🙂

jenna

Thanks, team! All the entries were deliciously creepy. I can’t wait to read October’s !

Gina

ocotber story:

The gray, gloomy fog hung in the air and made it hard for me to see what was in front of me in the quiet pumpkin patch. I turned around to ask my friends a question but they were no longer behind me, it was like the ground had swallowed them. I yelled out their names, but no one answered back. When I turned around I saw a pumpkin in front of my feet with the words “You’re Next” carved into its orange skin and the outline of a shadowy figure walking towards me.

Alice

Pumpkin

“Jake, Jake, wait up,” said Mark.

“I can’t slow down, I’ll drop the pumpkin.” Jake held a giant fairytale style pumpkin with arms stretched low and hands cradled beneath it.

Mark, an average looking brown haired teen of average height ran to catch up, “Why are we going this way? I hate this way.”

“It’s the fastest. This pumpkin is heavy.” Jake was a full head taller than Mark and looked like he spent each night on a medieval torture rack stretching his long proportions longer.

“It’s beyond creepy and goes by that grave yard.”

“ ‘Fraid of ghosts?” said Jake and stopped momentarily. He hefted the pumpkin to give slight relief to his aching shoulders.

“Why are we going to geeky Angie’s party anyway?” Mark asked. “She’s a geek, y’know.”

Jake replied with a grunt as he tried to peer through the blackness in front of him knowing that the graveyard was close. Angie’s house was barely a block past it. He pictured Angie who went from average girl to willowy model over the summer. Jake liked her and wished Mark hadn’t followed him.

They stopped talking and dared not breathe loudly as they passed from the last bit of street light and entered a hundred feet of total darkness. This hundred foot section included the ancient graveyard left untended and unused by the town. The moon was half full, but the heavy clouds, threatened rain, didn’t let one sparkle of light through.

Jack stepped one foot in front of the other and kept his breath steady. Every fiber in him wanted to run. Mark walked closely beside Jake; he didn’t want to fall behind nor get ahead.

Swoosh. A strong breeze pushed the boys.

“Owl,” said Mark.

“Large,” replied Jake.

A small orange flame appeared in the black before them. They walked toward it reluctantly. With each step drawing them closer, they saw the single light illuminate a woman dressed in an elaborate witches costume. The boys stopped.

Swoosh, another woman appeared next to the first, and she lit a candle. Swoosh, and there was a third woman with a third lit candle.

“A bit slow, girls,” said the first woman.

“That’s a nice pumpkin,” said the second.

“Two young men?” asked the third.

“You two boys, follow us,” said the first as she turned. The other witches followed the first.

Jake and Mark looked toward each other but couldn’t see the other’s face. They turned back to the light of three candles and followed.

“The owls?” asked Jake not believing what his senses told him.

“I think so,” replied Mark knowing it was their minds associating gust of winds with the sudden appearance of the women.”They’re taking us to the party, right?”

The three women stopped, stooped, and used their candles to light a fire beneath a cauldron large enough to fit all three of the black clad women inside. The boys, with the aid of the fire light, looked around them and saw old gray gravestones.

“Is this part of…” Mark started to say.

“Silence,” said the first and snapped her fingers. Mark felt a force hit his chest. He fell back and tumbled over a gravestone hitting his head on another.

The third women rushed to his unmoving body. “He’s passed out,” she said.

“I don’t want him. He isn’t in love,” said the first. Staring into Jake’s soul, she commanded, “Place the pumpkin in the cauldron.”

“It’s for Angie,” said Jake looking up from the fire. He had been mesmerized by how well it started and at the rate it grew. He listened to the liquid within the cauldron started to boil.

“Put it in, now,” repeated the first.

The second pushed him toward the cauldron. Jake obeyed and placed it in knowing that this must be an elaborate joke.

“I’ve never had pumpkin soup,” he said thinking how fun the retelling of this story would be.

“Pumpkin stew is best with young meat,” the third said as she pinched Jake’s arm.

The second pulled out an ax hidden within the folds of her skirt. The heavy clouds parted and moonlight glinted off of the ax’s blade.

Joe Tatman

Mr. Jenkins’ pumpkin patch

The leaves of the corn plants whispered in the cool darkness of the late fall evening. The melodic psithurism was lulling me into a state of serenity that I rarely experienced anymore.

I imagined telling my tormentors that I enjoyed listening to the psithurism. I could hear big John responding, ‘Yeah, I took a piss in the izzurizm this morning, Hyaw hyaw hyaw!’ He would laugh in that donkey like braying way of his. And his groupies would dutifully laugh along, marveling at his wit.

Big John and crew have made my life a living hell for the entire four years of High School. Name calling, physical and emotional abuse from the moment I stepped through the door until the final bell. I don’t know why they chose me to torment. Because I was quiet I guess. And I was skinny. And I wore glasses. I was a perfect trifecta for people like Big John. I hated every miserable moment of high school. It should have been a time of fun and making friends, going out for the football or basketball team and going to the prom. What should have been one of the best times of my life was instead a time of utter heartbreak.

So, when Big John stopped me in the hallway one Friday afternoon and said, ‘Hey buddy, how’s it going? My friends and I are going up to old man Jenkins’ farm tomorrow tonight, to the pumpkin patch. We’re going to nick some pumpkins for Halloween. Do you want to come along?’ I knew I was to be the butt of some kind of prank or practical joke. So instead of taking the inevitable beating, I simply said that I would go. “Ok, great.” He said. “Meet us there at 7:00 PM. I need you to sit in the cornfield at the bottom of the hill. If you see anyone coming, just whistle. Got it?”

I told him that I did indeed have it.

I knew the story. Twenty years ago, Mr. Jenkins, who had owned the farm, was working his pumpkin patch on the night before Halloween. There was a freak accident of some kind and he slipped on his tractor and was decapitated when he fell off. Word is that his head rolled down the hill and came to rest in the cornfield.

Now, it’s said that on Halloween Mr. Jenkins comes back to chop the heads off of anyone who happens to be in the pumpkin patch. Of course over the years there have been stories of many people who have had just that fate befall them. My guess was that I was to wait in the cornfield and then they would start screaming. They would roll pumpkins down the hill and I, thinking they were heads, would run away in terror.

Indeed.

The next evening, I made sure I was at the designated place at the designated time. “Are you ready down there partner?” Big John yelled down. I yelled back up that I was in fact, ready.

Last night I stopped by here just as the sun was going below the horizon. I asked Mr. Jenkins for a favor. I asked him if he could help me out with Big John and company.

As I sit on the ground in the cornfield with my knees drawn up to my chin and listening to the breeze whispering through the corn, I wondered if Mr. Jenkins had heard me. I wondered if he was even around.

Would it be pumpkins or heads rolling down the hill?

Eventually I heard a thrashing sound, something rolling down the hill. It stopped a few feet away. It was too dark to see what it was. There was a second, a third and then a fourth. I stood, pulled the little flashlight out of my pocket and aimed it at the ground. Big John’s head looked back at me, sans body. There was an expression of utter terror frozen on his face. There were three heads next to his, all with identical grimaces of fear. I smiled and looked up the hill.

“Thank you, Mr. Jenkins.”