Superbly Scary Short Stories To Tell With The Lights On

People Bowling

The town was small.

Pleasantly so for the retired widows that lived there, waking at dawn and turning in for the night while the sun was yet to set.

Comfortingly so for the Mothers that allowed their children to walk to and from school each day while they did the washing, bought the groceries and socialized at the small, private tennis club on the other end of the small stretch of town.

And horribly agonizing for the kids. The little ones of course didn't mind, because they didn't know any different. But the older ones were hungry, their taste buds watering for a taste of the world behind that rusting draw bridge that separated them from the rest of the world.

Named after its founder Heck ville, or as the adolescents referred to it, Hell ville, was one of those towns where outsiders didn't really want to go and insiders didn't really want to leave. There was one grocery store named after the owner, which sold locally made copies of the fancy name brand products one could buy in more populated stores.

The place always reeked of the meat thrown away at the end of each day in the dumpster round back of the store. The roads of Heck ville were either dirt, or pock marked so heavily by pot holes that driving on them was borderline insanity, since the closest repair shop was over two hundred miles away, along with the nearest hospital and chain grocery store.

The houses were small and quaint for the most part, except for the massive manors that lined that thick brown lake that had more leaches then fish lurking in its waters.

It was in one of these gargantuan monstrosities of a house that Henry Speck lived. The house in question was three stories tall, made entirely of brick, and nearly completely choked by the serpent like ropes of ivy which clung to its walls.

The grass was far too long, the windows on the first floor smashed, the jagged holes patched with pieces of blue duct tape. The large tree out front with the small, wooden swing hanging from one of its thick braches was draped with toilet paper. Egg shells littered the lawn, the repulsive, spats of the runny substance inside staining the driveway, and the bits of the house not covered with vines. The mailbox was secured to its post with more duct tape, the little red flag long gone after being removed multiple times, and the ancient gray van in the driveway was in such blatant disrepair, it looked more like scrap metal then anything drivable.

All in all it looked like the sort of eerie hovel that neighborhood kids would gossip about, boasting to have seen the shadow of the witch who lived inside. It didn't look like the house of a boy and his mother, but that's what it was, and no one questioned it, until the night it happened.

It was the thirtieth of October, devil's night, as the punks who smoked during lunch and liked to slit the throat of Mr. Hamilton's pigs annually on this night, referred to it. The day was surprisingly warm for late October, almost uncomfortably so, making the long classes the teenagers of Heck ville high were forced to attend, downright hellish.

It was the last period of the day, history, and Mr. Dowell was rambling on about the ancient Greeks, a topic he arguably loved more than his wife and children. Lacy Hemmings and Jonah Johnson were sucking face in the corner. Davey Tusk was stealing sips from a flask hidden under his desk. Caroline Green was biting her cuticles, and Henry Speck was trying his very best not to strangle the boy, repeatedly jabbing him in the back of the neck with his pen.

After about the fiftieth time of feeling the sharp prick to the stop where his hairline ended, Henry whirled around, his hands curling into fists as he faced his oppressor, Casper Milton.

Casper was one of those people that everyone just sort of found themselves liking against their will. He was a tall boy, muscularly built, with golden hair, ocean blue eyes and a smile that could charm the pants of the preacher's daughter in a second, something he'd done a handful of times.