Halloween Week - Drabble Wednesday: Infernal Ghosts

Welcome to the Halloween Week Edition of Drabble Wednesday. Today I bring you spectres, spooks and phantoms from the deepest, darkest bowels of the underworld...

Twilight Whispers

The clouds hung the sky in muted grey, settling low to meld with the horizon. The gloom of dusk stole the last burnished rays of sunset and crept up to meet the clouds. The air spread a leaden cast, a hint of dampness clinging to a vigorous wind.

From the old burial ground, with its sunken earth and broken gravestones, came a scratching, rasping, slithering sound. A noise of crawlers and claws, of burrowing and hiss. Dirt bulged and ground erupted, in a spray of grime and worms.

And momentary silence.

To be broken by skittering whispers.

Death is coming...

~*~

Autumn in the Country

The cold howl of the not-yet-winter wind as it blew through the bare branched trees. The smell of leaf rot and smoke, of apple cider. Sweet memories of my uncle’s home, the grand Marbury Estate.

We visited him every autumn, my parents and I, each weekend until the last week in October. I so enjoyed the visits, I never questioned the reasons.

Until it was too late.

Why didn’t I ask? Why didn’t I wonder?

They might be alive if I had.

Oh, what that thing did to them...

What it made me do...

I don’t want to kill again.

~*~

Mislaid

Another teenager has gone missing.

The third one in eight months. Plus two more from last year.

I hear the murmurs from the townsfolk as they pass, the scared voices wondering what happened to the boy and the others. Some say they were kidnapped, some say crazy Old Man Potter killed them, others think they simply ran off. Teenagers do that, you know.

Of course, they’re all wrong. They never left. All the town’s missing are so close.

You see, each missing teen trespassed in the abandoned Pritchard house.

My house.

So I tucked them away.

Even ghosts need company.

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved

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