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I post on Monday with an occasional random blog thrown in for good measure. I do my best to answer all comments via email and visit around on the days I post.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

WEP Halloween Challenge


This month's challenge from 
Write, Edit, Publish is about 
Youthful Frights vs Adult Fears

It's Halloween, time to scare
 family and friends. 
Do you remember the monster under the bed? When I was a child, I knew it was a man-eating lion. He'd disappear when someone walked into the room, but stick an arm or leg over the edge and he'd snap them off.
What about the creepy house just down the street, the one you passed by every day on the way to school? Did you imagine someone watching you from the broken window?
Remember the cornfield that went on for miles and miles. Did you ever run through it and get lost among the dying stalks? Remember the panic that set in and the laughter of your cousin, when you finally emerged with the stain of tears on your face certain that something had been hunting you.
Or maybe it was more benign, a graveyard that looked serene during the day, but at night unexplained lights would move among the gravestones and give you the chills or worse.
Tell us about the horror that stalked you in the night. Write about it for this month's challenge and turn those childhood fears in a scare-fest like no other.

Here's my contribution, a deleted scene from a novel of mine. Both the novel and the scene are based loosely on fact.

***

The Mysterious Moving Grave

Tombeau ouvert



"Once there was this really mean man," said my best friend Gordie. "He was so mean nothing grew on his farm."

"He was married," I continued, "and had three kids. He drank a lot and blamed them for his not being able to grow anything."

"One night he got really drunk and went into a terrible rage. That's when he did it." Gordie paused for effect.

"Did what?" asked the thin, pale tourist boy who looked like an albino salamander. His equally pale sister pretended not to listen by looking at her nails.

"That's when he killed his wife and kids," he answered.

"With a machete," I added.

"Hacked all four of 'em to bits." Gordie waved his arm like he was slicing something up. "Scattered their body parts all over his land. He thought it would make things grow."

"Gross!" The girl covered her mouth with a hand and turned green as a genip.

"It gets better," I said. "He was caught and tried and they hung him right here at Gallows Point, which is where they hung all the criminals and pirates back then. Even though he was a bad man his brother wanted to bury him all proper, so he built him a small concrete tomb."

Gordie, looking thoughtful said, "The problem is he's restless. He keeps getting out of his grave and wandering around Gallows Point with that machete, hunting for the people who hanged him. People have heard him scraping his machete along the walls of the cottages, particularly the one you're staying in. And, because he keeps climbing in and out of his grave, it keeps moving. Sometimes it's up near the road, sometimes closer to the genip tree."

I saw the boy swallow. And the girl's eyes went wide.

"Wanna go see it?" I asked.

***


What scared you as a kid? Got a scary story to share in the comments? Are you going to visit other WEP participants?

33 comments:

  1. My brother told me a nightmare of his once where monster hands burst through my bed where we were both resting, and grabbed us. Totally freaky. You better bet I had a hard time sleeping for many, many years.

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    1. Mine was rats under the bed. As long as I was tightly tucked in and my hands and feet NEVER dangled over the edge of the bed they wouldn't chew off my fingers and toes.

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  2. I love the idea of him moving his grave, certainly a creepy thought!

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  3. Ah, scaring the tourists. Good times! :p

    I had this thing about the space between my bed and the wall. Always had to stuff blankets and stuffed animals down there to keep the monsters from grabbing me.

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    1. It was the favored pass time for me and my friends...

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  4. WHOA. Loosely based on fact. Geez, I love your writing, Bish. I hope you know that. Your scene kept me going until that very last sentence. Fabulous job. Reading the words, a machete, always makes me quiver. :-)

    And you know my story. *wink*

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    1. Yes, very loosely. You actually read this many years ago when you critiqued the novel it was in. This particular scene has been eliminated. :)

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  5. Yikes!!!
    I'm a scaredy cat and get frightened easily! So lots scared me as a child!

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    1. I wasn't scared of much as a kid except rats under my bed and spiders...

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  6. This sounds like a real murder-in-the-dark scenario where the kids sit around and tell a story together. Genius. It made it so authentic. Then the ending...'Wanna go see it?' Now that shut them up a little. Based on fact makes it even scarier.

    Being an Australian, I guess my biggest fear was getting bitten by a snake, especially when we lived in the country and often jumped over the odd one as we made our way home from school. Scary days!

    Bish, thanks for your entry for the WEP challenge. Great fun!

    Denise :-)

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    1. I seen pictures and videos of the BIG spiders that reside there. That probably would have terrified me as a kid. Snakes... snakes don't bother me too much. Most of them around here are harmless and the poisonous ones don't tend to hang out where I do.

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  7. Too creepy, a moving grave, a hangman's tree, and no I don't want to see. Let's go to the beach and find some seashells. Oh my gosh, how horrid this would be. I'm one of those people who don't want to know what happened next door, or who died how or where. Don't feed my imagination – I can do that just fine on my own! LOL

    And I do! Loved it! I don't mind reading this kind of story because I know it's imagination, even though you said it was based on the truth, I'll just skip over that and move on, thank you.!
    Thank you for participating in the WEP Halloween Challenge, this was a great addition the many wonderful stories!

    Happy Halloween!

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    1. Thanks, Yolanda! It's been fun reading the various contributions!

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  8. Why would the grave move around? Is it based on a local legend? Creepy guy.

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  9. Dare ya not to be chicken, lol. And yes, I want to go see :) I like the idea of the moving grave.

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  10. Wonderful story! And the picture is so fitting and eloquent.

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  11. Hello,

    Here from the WEP. Great story and loved the image, very apt. Moving graves are good to scare the tourist kids with - 'particularly the one at where you're staying at' :-) Liked both Gordie and the narrator's character, sound like robust spirited loveable kids, loved the descriptions too - green as a genip, albino salamander. Thanks for the creepy fun.

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    1. Thanks, Nilanjana! Scaring tourist kids was always fun when I was a kid...

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  12. Now I wanna go see it! The convincing spirited narrators made this a great fun to read!

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  13. A way to scare kid
    with stores of fright
    tho I was cut by a ghost
    in the middle of the night
    She thought she saw me
    through the blinding headlight
    out on east forty before
    the driver took flight
    my twin brothers face
    was burned into her sight

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  14. A moving grave, how scary. As a kid I would have been freaked out and listening for that machete.
    Nancy

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  15. Me! Me! I'll go. I'm being very brave because there's not a chance in the world that I'll ever do it. Great tale, Bish.

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  16. As a child, I was scared of dark closets, cemeteries, and dreaming about falling. I was suspicious of adults I didn't know. . .however as I got older I made up scary stories to tell my younger brother and sister and cousin. Then I'd have to put up with their being scared of their own shadow. I never had killing in my stories, just bones, creepy sounds and unseen voices. . .

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  17. That was petty good. I remember with a certain darkness Gallows Bay on STX.

    As a child I was afraid of Frankenstein in the basement. During the winter months when the heat would come on and the wood framing in the house would expand and contract with the temperature changes I would lay in bed and listen to the heavy feet of Frankenstein come up the stairs from the basement. I lay awake for hours trembling in my bed. Funny though he never made it to the first floor.

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  18. Nasty. And just the type of tale my elder brothers delighted in telling their gullible and wimpy sister. Noooooooooo!
    And it was a wolf which waited outside my bedroom door. I had (and occasionally have) recurring nightmares about him for years. The dream is black and white, except for the wolf's glossy red tongue...

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  19. Scary story. It sounds as though the narrators were enjoying frightening the younger children. Graves are a bit spooky, especially if they've moved!

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  20. Well, in order to find out what scared me as a kid, you'll just have to check out my WEP entry! :D

    Shameless plug aside, that was a fun story. Local legends are always interesting, especially when they're being told by an animated storyteller. Gordie's slicing actions really sold that tale. :)

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  21. Chilling. Thank you .... I think. I'll be glad when Halloween os over, LOL.

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  22. Good story. I liked it. Keep up the writing!

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Your Random Thoughts are most welcome!