Today I want to end this year's blog-a-thon with a nod to the future of horror with a creepy story by my 11-year-old daughter, Sam. She wrote this story for school using a picture of an open window with a blowing curtain and an empty bed next to it as a prompt. She was going to add a lot more “blood and guts” but decided that she liked the story the way it was. For the record she got a 98% on the story with the only points being taken off for the ending being “too abrupt.” But as she said, “I wanted it that way.”
But before we get to the story, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for following me all month. The horror blog is going to take a nap for at least 2 weeks, but you can always follow me every day on RA for All.
Take it away Sam....
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The Third Floor Bedroom
by Samantha
“Well if I’m talking to you, what do you think?” snorted Lucy.
“Just checking,” said Amy.
She climbed down the wooden ladder to the floor and looked at Lucy, who was playing with her favorite doll, Dolly. Lucy glanced up at her, then went back to playing with her doll. “Don’t you want to get dressed and have breakfast?” said Amy, “It is the first day of summer vacation, after all.”
“It is?!?!?” screamed the clueless child, a little too loudly. She jumped out of bed and ran downstairs as fast as a speeding bullet.
“Here we go,” Amy muttered to herself.
After Amy had gotten dressed, she went downstairs. Lucy had already finished breakfast and was sitting, impatiently, at the table. “There you are!” said Susan Lindholm, “I thought your sister was going to explode from waiting for so long. I have something to tell you guys.”
Amy sat down next to Lucy at the kitchen table, her eyes on her mom. “Do you remember your Great-Grandmother Cindy, the one who lives in the mansion?” The sisters nodded their heads. “Well... her husband has just passed away, so the whole family will be taking a month long vacation to her house to support her.” They groaned. “Now don’t be like that! Your father will take you fishing. It will be lots of fun! We are leaving tomorrow at noon, so pack your bags by that time.”
Amy was boiling mad inside, but she didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings. “Sounds like fun!” she said feebly. Amy’s summer was ruined!
The next day the whole family piled into the car and hit the road for the three hour drive. Amy was bored. Between her sister complaining she had to go to the bathroom, and the seemingly endless highway, Amy had nothing to do. But eventually, the movement of the car lulled her frustrated body into a deep sleep.
“Amy dear, we’re here, we’re here!” her dad’s reassuring voice whispered to her. She sat up groggily, and looked around. An incredibly frail looking woman was hugging her exasperated sister on the front porch of a HUGE house. It had turrets on either side, and was AT LEAST four stories tall. There was a man on the porch too, along with her mother and father, who had just left the car. Amy climbed out of the SUV and grabbed her bag from the trunk. Maybe, just maybe, she might’ve been wrong about this place.
After an overly long greeting from her great-grandma that consisted of the usual (“My you're getting big, I haven’t seen you in ages, Make yourself at home”), Amy went inside with Lucy and went upstairs to choose her bedroom. They looked in all the rooms, but they didn’t like any of them. The bedrooms all looked the same, with peeling wallpaper, rusty radiators, and beds with pillows that appeared to be made of bricks. Then on the third floor, a room caught their eye. It was small, but humble with an open window and lace curtains that were waving around in the warm summer breeze. But the highlight of the room was the king-sized canopy bed. They had made their decision.
Amy and Lucy left their bags on the bed and walked downstairs to let their Great-Grandma know where they were sleeping. Expecting her to not care, they got a surprising reaction. “I’m sorry my dears, you can sleep in any other room, but that one. Don’t ask, just follow your elder’s advice,” she said with a wink. The sisters left the room, disappointed.
The man they had seen earlier was a butler, and he helped them carry their things to the room across the hall. This room had a clunky looking bed, but also had a bookcase filled with many interesting books, which Amy found intriguing. After they put their clothes away, the girls started discussing a plan.
That night, after a disgusting dinner of leftover takeout Chinese food that their mom had made them eat so as “not be rude”, the sisters lay in bed, exhausted. Amy and Lucy lay there awake until midnight, which was when their parents lights turned off, signaling that they were asleep. They were ready to bring their plan into action.
“The coast is clear,” whispered Amy.
“Got it”, said Lucy.
They climbed out of bed and, walking on their tiptoes, across the hall into the other room. They made it all the way to the canopy bed, but hesitated, both thinking the same thing.
“Why do you think Grandma didn’t want us to sleep in this bed?” said Amy
“Eh, probably just some made up ghost story that got her frightened of it,” said Lucy. They climbed into bed and fell asleep, the unusually cold wind for the middle of June howling through the still open window.
At precisely 3:13 am, they were punished for disobeying their Great-Grandmother Cindy. The wind blew in and picked them up out of the bed and flung them out the open window. As she fell, Amy screamed “I’m Sorry!!!!!” but her voice abruptly stopped without the mysterious force caring at all.
The next morning, their mother was getting worried about them. It was 12:00 pm and Amy and Lucy STILL hadn’t come out of their room. Becoming more and more stressed out, Susan Lindholm walked up the steps to where she thought the sisters had slept. She opened the door, and they were nowhere in sight. Searching all over for her daughters, she went to the room across the hall, thinking they may have snuck in. Before she opened the door, Susan got ready to scream at them, but they weren’t in there either! She went over to close the window, when she saw the two deep holes shaped like humans in the red clay dirt on the ground below. One was of a taller child, and one was of someone younger. Susan screamed and ran downstairs. She was mortified!
When Susan got down to the kitchen, where Great-Grandma Cindy was cooking breakfast, she shrieked “Amy and Lucy fell out of the window of the third floor bedroom and died!” Susan then dropped unconscious on the floor. The Great-Grandmother then said, as if Susan could hear her, “If they disobeyed me its their own fault. But they WERE such good daughters. Its a shame, it really is. And to think it all started when somebody left the window open.”
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