May's Workshop Stories

Revenge from the Great Beyond

Requirements: Write a 'halloweeninsh' story,1-2k words long, inspired by the picture. Use this line: 'No one ever wanted to believe him' anywhere in your story.

The moment deep slumber claims me as its own, I can see them. They are everywhere.

I don't care that the doctors say that they are just a figment of my imagination. I know that they are real. What I don't know is what they are, and it creeps me out.

My best guess is that they are ghosts, as I only see them once a year on the night of Halloween, at that exact time when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. That is the night they rise, the night they roam the earth and take their revenge.

At first, I didn't think anything of it. Just a bad dream caused by my overactive imagination and my love for Halloween, but last year everything changed.

Everything started with one innocent-enough idea, a sleepover in a supposedly haunted house. Well, maybe it wasn't as innocent as I believed it to be at the time.

My friends Mark, Jake, and I decided to spend the night in the old Johnson's house as everyone claimed there were more ghosts in that house than there were people in our town.

We didn't believe that. Why would we? Even me, with my weird dreams, expected it to be just a fun night out.

"Are you ready for the spookiest night of your lives?" Mark asked, putting a flashlight under his chin as if we were still five years old and scared of the dark.

"I am more than ready," I said, trying to sound far more confident than I felt. "I am also ready to see you cry like a little baby and run to your mommy."

Of course Mark responded by shoving me, and then we got into a wrestling match as usual. Maybe that was why we didn't immediately notice how eerie the house was.

Jake, however, did notice.

When Mark finally gave up trying to best me in our friendly wrestling match, we saw him standing there like a statue staring into nothingness.

"Dude, what's up with you?" I asked, slapping Jake on the back like I always did.

"There is something here with us," he said, his eyes bulging out of his head, clearly visible even in the dim light of our flashlights.

"Stop goofing around. We all know that those ghost stories are pure nonsense," I said, although my voice wasn't as strong as I willed it to be.

"I can see it. I can see them," Jake said, not making any sense.

"Everything is so dark and illuminated with the creepy blue light," he added.

Looking around, all I could see was old furniture covered in layers of dust. Still, Jake's words scared me. Not because I believed that he was seeing something otherworldly, but because I thought that he had gone nuts. That this was the one stunt that broke him.

After all, I always knew that there would be a day when Mark and I went too far, and we just broke Jake. He wasn't as adventurous as us, and it made sense that something we insisted on doing would be too much for him.

"There are huge cracks in the ground. They are coming out of them," Jake said, moving his eyes quickly from side to side as if following some quick movements invisible to us. "They are so bright and beautiful, but their intentions aren't pure. Oh, my God, they want us to pay. They want me to pay."

"Jake, snap out of it! You are talking nonsense!" I yelled at him shaking him as if I could shake off those crazy visions.

Only after I said that did I remember my nightmares. Jake was describing my nightmares in such vivid details.

The problem was that I had never told anyone about them. I was too ashamed to admit that I had been waking up with nightmares every Halloween since I could remember. Only they were always one and the same nightmare. Spectral people, coming out of the ground and spreading everywhere.

"How do you know about those? I never told anyone," I said, thinking that he was trying to prank me, that he heard about my nightmares and wanted to make fun of me.

"No one ever wanted to believe him, but he saw them. That's why he killed himself," Jake said, his voice shaking in pure horror.

"I thought we agreed never to talk about Josh. He was sick, and that's why he killed himself, that's all. There was nothing we could have done to save him," Mark said with teary eyes.

"He didn't kill himself. They made him do it. It was all because of Marina. We should have never left her alone by the pool. We should have never gotten so carried away with our video games," Jake said, his voice going up and down as tears streamed down his face. "We should have known something was wrong and saved her from drowning. Now she wants us both to pay, with our lives."

As he said that, Jake fell to the ground, shaking violently. Mark and I tried to help him, but we had no idea what to do. Maybe there was nothing that could have been done at all. Whatever the case might be, he soon stopped breathing, and no matter how many times we tried to give him CPR, we failed.

My best friend was dead, just like that.

His death left us with even more questions than before, but one thing was for sure. The dead weren't Casper-like friendly ghosts. They were more like vengeful angels wanting those responsible for their deaths to suffer, even die.

The questions remain. Why was he the only one of us who could see them? Why can I only see them in my dreams?

It could be a warning for the horrible fate coming my way, or it could be something else.

I don't remember ever having wronged someone who has died. Yet, every Halloween night, I see them in my dreams. I see them coming out, and now I do so with the foreknowledge that they are on the hunt.

What if the next prey they set their eyes on is me?

Two of my friends are dead. People have started dying for the most ridiculous reasons, in weirdest accidents, suffering from the strangest diseases, and I can't help but wonder. Why here? Why now?

Has this town in the middle of nowhere really been so sinful that its dead found a way to break through the ground and seek revenge? Or is this something that has been happening around the world?

Either way, Halloween night has turned from a fun holiday into a horrible nightmare. People have started barricading their doors and not going out on that one deadly night, but nothing helps. Some of them still end up dead because there is no escaping the deceased.

They are everywhere. All around us.

And on that one night when they get free, they will get their revenge. Nothing and no one will stop them.

That I know for sure.

All I can do is pray that we have no more horrible sins left in us and that the hole will close up again with some of us left alive.