Home Sweet Home by William Lucio

Home Sweet Home 

By William Lucio

            It was a revolting site, the house around the corner. Either choked with fear or disturbed by the bloodcurdling screams heard at night, no family had ever stayed put for very long. The two-story, 18^th century house, was extremely decrepit. Moss had climbed its way up the walls from the lawn below. The house had an interesting enigma to it and no one understood its morbidness.

            The house’s grotesque and hellish form intrigued my friends and I, so we decided to clown around and enter this known-to-be-haunted home. Within minutes we wished we had never entered the wooden doors, which let off ghastly creaks the wider they opened. Immediately we were overcome with terror. From the potions we found in the basement, to the skeletons hung in the bedrooms, complete with skulls and all, we decided this house was no longer an object of our fascinations. Unfortunately for us, once the doors to the front of the house were closed, they had remained so and we could no longer escape.

            We had only been trapped inside this ghoulish place for an hour, and my friends were already dead. I was the sole survivor, and I was scared out of my mind. Tony had been possessed by a strange and demanding entity that forced him to pull open a kitchen drawer and stab himself with a rusted knife. He bled out on the floor. Janet found herself locked in a closet and after a violent spell of screaming and pounding, we were finally able to pull the door open only to find her head had been twisted all the way around. An invisible force dragged Kyle into the fireplace across the hall and I watched him burn alive as the fire lit itself into a screaming roar of flames and embers. The revolting smell of his roasting flesh still lingered in my nostrils as I realized I was the only one left.

            Then, the tone of the grandfather clock echoed through the hallways and fluttered into my ears. When I turned toward the sound, I saw a darkened figure, black as night. It pointed at me and chills ran up my spine. It was then when the memories of the past hour flashed through my mind. Nothing was killing my friends. There were no evil spirits murdering them one by one. It was me. I was the one possessed by the dark being in front of me. I stabbed Tony with the knife and watched him bleed to death. I pulled Janet into the closet and twisted her neck around. It was me who dragged Kyle to the fireplace and torched his body. I was now one with this evil monster. The dead should never cross over to the living realm, but when they do, they’re here to stay. Now I haunt this house and wait for new arrivals to dare entry, and when they do, I kill them and add their souls to my collection.

William Lucio's story won second place!