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01 Nov 2020
7 Min Read
Tricia J. (Guest Contributor), Ng Sweet Ting (Guest Contributor), Medheeni P. (Guest Contributor), Sumanjeet Kaur (Guest Contributor)
Ghoulish tales and spooky trails, this Halloween night, are you ready for some chilling thrills?
If so, delight yourself in these frightful reads specially written by secondary school students from Harvest Academy, SMK St Mary, and SMK Convent Bukit Nanas for the Taylor’s Writing Apprenticeship Programme!
Disclaimer! Proceed with caution. Read at your own risk.
by Tricia J. from Harvest Academy
It’s that wretched time of the year again. I’m sitting by my open window, watching the passing trick-or-treaters. A sharp breeze slips in and I tug my sweater a little tighter around myself, wishing it was December already. Until then, I have to deal with the cold, wet weather, not to mention the non-stop ringing of the doorbell. As if just to spite me, three little kids dressed as ghosts stopped right outside my fence and ran up to the porch, tramping loudly all the way to the bell, which they pushed repeatedly.
I sigh dramatically, hoping it would discourage them, but one of the kids peers into my window and waves enthusiastically. I open the door and force a smile at three children draped in plain white sheets. They stare at me soundlessly from behind crude eye cut-outs.
A bit taken aback by their silence, I pick out three lollipops from my bowl and drop them into their paper bags. One of the ghosts, the littlest one, looks down forlornly at his bag, where the lollipop sits alone. The other two kids don’t have any other candy besides mine either, which confuses me, since the street is packed with houses giving out ample treats.
The three little spectres continue to look at me silently, eyes begging. I grudgingly reach into my bag of candy and divide the remaining sweets between them. As they run back down the pavement wordlessly, it almost looks as if they’re floating.
Throughout the rest of the evening, my empty candy bowl is met with mini temper tantrums from trick-or-treaters who have to leave empty-handed. At the end of the night, when I switch on my television, the first thing I see is a heartfelt story detailing the disappearance of three little kids, who had gone missing 10 years ago on Halloween’s eve and were presumed dead. I sit up in my seat and wonder if my silent visitors were more than they seemed.
by Ng Sweet Ting from SMK Convent Bukit Nanas
Screams made the walls tremble, numerous pairs of blazing eyes lit the room and the ashen faces of these figures took every ounce of energy from me. Fear was written all over my mind and I froze...
Between Pakistan and Nepal lies India, the city of spice and gold, shabby slumps, and lively markets. The people, immune to the blazing sun, sang a beautiful tune in their language.
The sun shone on Mangalore, a small district in India known for its advanced medical arena. Tucked in a corner, Abby Shetti University Hospital had headlines screaming ’free and quality treatment’. Millions flocked the place even as night fell, illuminating the place in darkness. Unknown to many, the basement became a home to those haunting figures.
Monday blues yelled but the wind whistled a melodious tune as I glanced out of the window of the hospital. Sir Rachsid, my brother's implantology professor had just finished showcasing his latest full mouth implant expertise to both me and my brother.
Rushing off to attend to his dental cases, my brother had left with a simple instruction, "Go to the basement and find Mum and Dad. They should be near the blood bank." My eyebrows crinkled at his perfunctory answer but yes, I was to meet my parents there for some tests.
I scuttled down so fast down the hospital stairs, the breeze whipped past my face and ruffled my hair. Having a dose of lung-killing exercise, I finally reached the bottom of the flight of stairs but was met with an eerie quietness that sent shivers down my spine.
Usually, hospital basements are either bustling with medical assistants or cleaners. Here, only one cleaner could be seen whirring past me. I continued walking, despite feeling iffy, as I reached a fork in my path where the only available signboard in front of me had directions which were Greek to me as they were written in Tamil and Malayalam.
Clueless and frightened, I plucked up my courage and decided to turn right. As I continued walking, the lights began to dim creepily, it felt like I was dreaming. “Mum? Dad?” I called out only to be met with silence. My heart paced in relief when I saw a bright light illuminating the doors to a room.
After some contemplation, I sighed while busting the doors open. "Oh, this must be where they keep the blood bags. “Mum and Dad should be near," I thought.
Odd, the air suddenly seemed chilly. I turned around and my eyes widened with surprise as naked corpses suddenly appeared. My heart rate ramped up but before my feet could dash out, a lady with a disjointed limb and foot had already slammed the doors shut, locking it tight. I was stricken with fear, the world seemed to turn upside down, my mind raced, and my body froze.
"No, no, I’m dreaming... I’m dreaming..." I tried convincing myself this was nothing but an illusion but it was not.
The figures surrounding me had crimson eyes that hungered for me. Glances lunging at me from every corner. I tried screaming but my voice stayed inside my cords, my muscles complied to them.
The last words I remembered before my body collapsed was, "This is payback for the times those doctors utilised our dead bodies for science yet never respected us when alive... Including your brother."
by Medheeni P. from SMK Convent Bukit Nanas
I opened my eyes clueless to where I was. I found myself in a dark room, only the moonlight that shone through the shattered window provided me light. I cautiously got up on my feet, scanned the room, and noticed a blood trail. I followed the crimson red trail, only to stop at the sight of a corpse of a man on the floor, surrounded in a pool of blood. His chest has been stabbed."What’s going on?" I asked myself.
Puzzled in my thoughts, the door to the room opened wide and a maid walked in with a tea tray. She looked at me confused but when she saw the dead man on the floor, she screamed, "Murder! Murder! I'm calling the cops!" as she ran out of the room, leaving the now broken tea set behind her. Afraid, I quickly escaped the scene through the broken window and ran as fast as my legs could carry me.
When my legs started giving way, I looked around and began to notice a small cabin. I could tell that it was abandoned. Curious, I walked up to the porch and kicked the wooden door open.
I knew my body was needing some proper rest and wouldn't be able to bring me out of this horrible place any quicker. Hence, I decided to lodge here until the coast was clear.
As I was wandering through the land of my thoughts, the sounds of branches breaking and the rustling of the bushes shot through my ears. Had someone found me? I looked out the window to see a four-legged creature with a silky brown coat and beautifully shaped antlers walked up from behind the trees, its cold glare penetrating me. "Oh dear, it's just a deer," I sighed in relief. Though, something about it didn't seem right. I brushed off my paranoia and fell deep into slumber.
Spending days here, I noticed that the exact same deer lingering around the cabin, giving me the same glare that sent shivers down my spine. One day, as I was chopping down wood for the fireplace, the deer finally approached me. I thought it was going to stare at me as always but instead, it grinned and started talking.
"Alex... remember me? It's your old buddy, Joshua," it growled while shaking its antlers aggressively.
Joshua? My eyes looked at the creature confused, my mind went blank, and my eyebrows crinkled. Then, its real identity slowly resurfaced in my mind.
No... it can't be. It can't be him.
I froze in fear and my body began to tremble.
Joshua was my dorm mate and best friend back in college. But it all ended when I reported him to the dean after finding out that he had been taking marijuana in our dorm.
I remembered that day when the police came knocking on our dorm door, demanding to see Joshua.
The police handcuffed him first before unveiling the whole truth to him. His blazing cold glare before he was taken away was embedded in my mind forever.
I thought they would just detain him for a while and then release him. Soon, I was told that Joshua was dropped out of college and sent to prison. He passed away a few weeks after due to malnutrition and his ashes were scattered in the forest.
"You betrayed me, Alex. So, I decided to frame you for murder so you can feel what it’s like behind bars." The creature paused and stood up on both his hind legs. "But… I think it's better to take matters into my own hands." The creature transformed into a bigger and stronger version of itself and pushed me down to the ground.
"Goodbye, old friend." His icy blue eyes stared right at me before I breathed my last breath.
A few days later..
"Officer, we found the guy we've been looking for, Alex Smith"
"Oh, good."
"But... he's dead."
"Have any clues on how he died?"
"Not much, officer. The body was surrounded in a pool of blood, his skin was pale, and there were hoof tracks next to it."
by Sumanjeet Kaur from SMK St Mary
I panted heavily, wishing the pain would fade away. It has been 124 days and counting since I was locked in this room. The pale-yellow walls stared back at me as I winced whenever my body moved. It felt like countless knives were stabbing my lower abdomen repeatedly. The pain seared from my stomach towards the underside of my left shoulder blade. Sweat rolled off my temples toward my cheeks and I groaned in pain. Taking in a deep breath, I squeezed my eyes shut begging for any supernatural being to stop this torture.
But I knew my efforts were unavailing.
My eyes rolled into its sockets and I was met with darkness. Even in the dark, it felt like my head was spinning and I urged to throw up. I choked for air when I felt my throat being squeezed tightly. My hands desperately tried to free the force exerted on my neck, but it was like touching dark magic. The kind of magic where you are manipulated to fall into the abyss and never escape. No matter how much I tried, it didn’t stop. Just when my will to fight for life died down and giving up was my only option, I was released.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I filled my lungs with air. My body appreciated the freedom, but my mind knew better. It wasn’t freedom, it was prolonging death to have me tortured. Every scream, every wail fed their dark soul as they continued their sick hobby to torture even worse than before.
Usually, it’s the hallucination of losing my loved ones. Today, it was suffocating me to the brink of death but stopping it just before I could lay in peace.
When my laboured breathing settled down, I finally experienced a moment of tranquillity. My mind flashed back to the time when I was walking down the street with my AirPods blasting out Trust Fund Baby as I lip-synched it. The breezy wind caressed my skin. The faint smell of damp air and nature lifted the corners of my mouth into a secret smile.
Down the road, there was a beautiful large mansion left unoccupied for over a decade after Mr. Henderson died. The grieving family couldn’t bear living there so they left the country immediately after the funeral. I remember spending my childhood days at the Hendersons with the rest of the neighbourhood kids. They had a granddaughter named Millie who’d always host tea parties.
Nostalgia hit me greatly and an unexplainable compulsion to take a look at the mansion pushed me to open the rusty gates. It creaked open and, as I stepped in, my AirPods stopped working. It was silent except for the crows but a sudden fear crept under my skin. I turned around to get out, but my body wouldn’t move. Panic enveloped my body and I gasped when I realised the trap I foolishly fell into.
This mansion was haunted.
Just then, I screamed and screamed for help only to be met with a grinning face that stared at me from the darkness.
-THE END-
We hope you had a thrilling time reading these short stories written by secondary school students. Have a Spooky Halloween ahead!
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