We've been gone for six months. We never claimed we would be on a schedule with this. lol But, we had picked our new prompt and I have the first story in response to it!! I am very excited about it. I like the way it turned out, and I think it feels like "Are You Afraid of the Dark?", which would be the second story I wrote that feels that way. Can you tell it influence me as a child? haha. I loved it so much. Anyway, I am going to share the prompt and then my story, We would love to hear your comments; it really helps us and gives us a boost, especially if you really enjoyed the story. And if you can share this, that would be amazing, as well. That can also really help spread the word. Thank you again, and happy belated new year!!
We’d heard the stories of the statues. Everyone had, growing
up. Not everyone believed them, but those that did were adamant about the truth
of them. My friends were never so convinced. I had one experience that planted
a seed of doubt in me; one that grew steadily during this event. We thought the
stories sounded a bit like those moving statues in Doctor Who. Of
course, nothing remotely similar could exist in the real world, right? Looking
back, I’m almost embarrassed to admit the arrogance of what we did. I wondered now
if things could have been different if we took the legends more seriously. If
we had only known the truth…
***
It was a normal spring day, like any other in our little
town. And as most teenagers growing up in a small town, we were bored out of
our minds. Never a good thing. In times like this we could always be assured
one of us would come up with some hairbrained idea, and the others would of
course follow along. What else would we do? Say no? Of course not. First off,
we were bored and wanted something to do. Second off, none of us wanted to come
as a chicken. So we took every idea, every dare ever set to us. At least, until
the events of this ordeal played out. Then everything changed.
Colin flicked the little paper football he made across the
table at Kelly, and missed. “Shit,” he swore loudly.
“Language,” Ernie joked with a smirk.
Colin said something far more foul.
“You’re just mad ‘cause you’re losing,” Ernie said.
Colin groaned. “No, I’m mad ‘cause I’m bored. This place is
so boring!” He yelled out the last word. Kelly and I rolled our eyes. He was
always saying that. We all felt that way, but Colin was undoubtedly the most
vocal, and loud, about it. It honestly got on all our nerves. But he was one of
us. He was also the one who came up with the most, and often most out there,
games and dares and adventures for us. And today was no different.
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Well, this can’t be good,” Kelly groaned.
“Hey, shut up,” Colin said, a frown in place. “It’s a good
one, trust me.”
“Trust you, sure,” I said. “Remember what happened last time
we did that?” I looked to Kelly, and then to Ernie, and they both snickered.
“Hard to forget,” Ernie muttered.
“Yeah,” Kelly agreed. “Ending up in your neighbor’s backyard
covered in garbage is not something that will leave my mind for a while.”
Colin groaned, almost growled, this time. “Come on, just listen
to me, would you?”
I held my hands up, and after sharing a glance, Kelly and
Ernie mirrored the motion. “Alright.” I held out my hand in an invitation.
“Continue.”
His smile looked devious, and I was more doubtful than
before, which said a lot. “Okay.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, like he
was about to whisper a dark secret to us all. Turns out, that was not far off.
“You all know the stories of the statues, right?” His grin widened, and I felt
a shiver start to take hold. That seed of doubt taking hold. This was not good.
“Of course we do,” Kelly said.
“Yeah, everyone does,” Ernie agreed with a shrug.
They all looked at me. “Yeah, I know about them,” I said, trying
to keep my voice light, casual, detached even. “What about it?”
“Let’s find out if the stories are true.”
My heart dropped just a little. His smile looked almost
manic now.
“How exactly do you propose we do that?” Kelly scoffed.
“We go to the source.” We were silent, and Colin kept going.
“Most of the stories say the one around here is seen next to the graveyard, in
that old man’s garden.”
“Oh, great, a graveyard,” Ernie groaned.
“Yes, a graveyard. It’s not my fault that’s where it is.”
“And what exactly are we going to do when we get there?” I
asked.
“We’ve got an old Ouija board in the top of our closet at
home. We’ll go get that, take it to the graveyard near that old guy’s garden,
and then we’ll use it.”
We were all silent, and silent just a little too long,
especially for Colin’s taste. He scoffed. “Oh come on, are you scared?”
“No.”
“Of course not.”
I shook my head as Kelly and Ernie answered simultaneously.
Then Kelly spoke up again. “So, what? You think the stories of statues moving
are because of ghosts? You think they’re being possessed by spirits?”
“I don’t know, why not? Couldn’t hurt to find out, right?”
He winked.
I thought that it very possibly could hurt to find out, but
I wasn’t about to say anything. I knew there would be no stopping him, not when
he had his mind set on something. (October 21, 2024)
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Kelly asked.
Colin shook his head. “Nah, but it’s something to do. It’ll
be fun. Hey, maybe we will see something! Wouldn’t that be cool?”
I couldn’t quite make up my mind on that one. Once, when I
was little, I was walking by that old man’s house and there was a statue in the
garden. When I walked back that way with my mom, I was so certain it had moved.
I knew it was not in the same place, but when I told my mom, she wouldn’t believe
me. She said I was just imagining things. I think she did it to comfort me, but
it still irritated me. Over the years, though, I grew more sure that she was
right; I hadn’t seen anything strange. But doing this? There was a still a niggling feeling of uncertainty
I couldn’t shake.
***
Before I knew how I even got there, we were up in Tina’s
room, Colin’s sister. He stood on tiptoes and reached up into the shelf above
the rows of clothes in her closet to grab the Ouija board, which nearly fell on
his head when his siter burst in and scared the shit out of us. He caught it just
in time, held it to his chest, and fled her room laughing right as she slammed
the door. She didn’t ask for the board back. Part of me almost wished she did.
Then, once again, we were following him. Out the front door,
to his car. In the backseat I went, next to Ernie, and we were on our way.
Suddenly, we pulled up to the cemetery next to the old man’s house. There was
that damn statue. Car doors slammed around me as everyone got out, and I shook
myself out of my thoughts and joined them. Colin was in the front, of course,
Ouija board in hand, ready to go. Ass.
Through the gates we went. Colin stopped underneath them and
whistled. “Spooooky,” he said, drawing out the word and laughing as he headed farther
into the grounds of the cemetery. Kelly caught my eye, and we rolled our eyes
as we followed.
“Here,” Colin said, stopping by a headstone a little ways
into the graveyard. “We’ll set up here. We can see into that old man’s garden.
It’s perfect.”
“Sure,” I mumbled. ‘Whatever.”
“Scared?”
I didn’t bother answering him. He was my friend, but he was
a jerk. I was pretty sure he was my friend, anyway.
Kelly laid out an old beach towel she grabbed on the way out
of Colin’s house. “What?” she asked as Colin raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me for
not wanting to get dirt on my ass.”
“Such a girl,” he grumbled
“Oh, you noticed?” she snapped before sitting cross legged
on the towel. We all joined her, even Colin, despite his attitude.
He set up the Ouija board.
“Alright,” he muttered. “And this…thing.”
“The pointer?” Ernie suggested.
“I think it’s called a Planchette” I said.
“How the fuck do you know that?” colin asked.
Ernie and Kelly stared at me, too. “What? It’s not that
weird, guys, lay off.”
“Alright,” Colin said. “The planchette. Know it all.”
Again, I ignored him. It was often the best way with Colin.
Colin took
out the Ouija board, and set it up between the four of us. A slip of paper fell
out by Ernie’s feet.
“What’s
that?” I asked.
Ernie picked
it up. “Instructions.”
“Ouija
boards come with instructions?”
“What do
they say?” Kelly asked, curiosity tinging her voice.
“Who cares?”
Colin said. He snatched the paper from Ernie’s hand and stuffed it in the back
pocket of his jeans. “It’s a Ouija board, what is there to instruct us on? Put
your hand on the planchette, and let ‘er rip.” He set the planchette on the
board and looked between us again. “Come on.”
We all
leaned forward over the board, and placed our hands on the planchette. For a
moment, no one moved or spoke.
“I feel like
an idiot,” Ernie spoke up finally. “What are we supposed to do?”
“We ask it
questions, duh,” Colin said.
“I still
feel dumb,” Ernie grumbled.
“Ask it
something,” Kelly said.
“Alright.”
Colin paused for only a second. “Is anyone here with us right now?”
We waited.
Nothing happened.
Then, the
planchette started to move. I wasn’t moving it, I just held on and moved with
it. It fell onto the word Yes.
“Yes?” Colin
repeated. “Who is here with us?”
The
planchette was moving again. Ernie and Kelly looked skeptical but now with a
hint of fear. Was this one of us, or wasn’t it? We watched as the board spelled
out a word.
T-h-e-b-o-o-g-e-y-m-a-n.
The
Boogeyman.
Ernie
grabbed the planchette and hurled it at Colin’s head as he burst out laughing.
“You asshole!” he yelled.
“Oh, come
on, man, that was funny!” Colin said. “You really believed that.”
“I did not,”
Ernie said as Colin placed the planchette back on the board. I heard a rustling
sound behind me, and froze for just a moment before looking over my shoulder.
For just a split second, I caught a shadow out of the corner of my eye. But
that could have been anything.
“Shit!”
I whipped
back around to Ernie, Kelly, and even Colin with their hands up in the air,
feet pulled toward them and away from the Ouija board.
“What?” I
asked.
“That…that
thing moved, man,” Ernie said.
Colin shook
his head again, but it was different this time. He shook it like he was trying
to shake sense back into himself. “No, no,” he said. “That…that can’t be
right.”
“You saw
it!” Kelly yelled.
“I don’t…I…”
he rounded on me. “What did you see, Cash?”
“I didn’t
see anything,” I said. “I was looking behind me. I…I thought I heard
something.”
“You what?”
Kelly demanded.
“I thought I
heard something. Over by the house.” Even Colin looked terrified now, his eyes
wide, and his jaw shut tight.
“And?” he
asked. “What happened when you turned to look? Did you see anything?”
“I mean, I…I
thought I saw something.”
Silence.
“But I
barely saw it. It was just a shadow. Out of the corner of my eye. It was
probably nothing.”
“Yeah. Yeah,”
Colin said. “Cash is right, we’re just freaking ourselves out over nothing.
Come on, guys, let’s not wimp out. There’s nothing going on here.”
He leaned
back over the board and looked at us all expectantly. “Come on,” he repeated.
Ernie leaned
in first, then Kelly, I hesitated just a second longer and then I leaned in,
too. We started again with the questions, but this time, not a thing happened.
We tried for five minutes before Colin gave up and sat back. He didn’t try to
prank us again, though, which was unusual for him. He must have still been
scared.
Ernie,
Kelly, and I leaned away, too. I leaned against the heels of my hands on the
blanket. I kept thinking I heard something near that old house, but nothing was
ever there. I couldn’t help but to check the statue, too, and it was still in
the same place. At least…I think it was. Part of me was sure it had moved just
a tiny bit, just a few inches, but how could I really be sure about that? I was
imagining things; I had to be. The atmosphere was playing tricks with my mind.
And no one else seemed to hear anything.
“See?” he
said. “There’s nothing going on here.”
That time,
we all saw it.
The
planchette flew across the board straight to the word Yes.
Colin cursed
and jumped up. Kelly shrieked. Ernie nearly fell over. And I was frozen in
terror.
“Did you see
that? You all saw that, right?” Colin asked frantically, then looked around the
graveyard. His breaths were coming out ragged, and at that moment, I hear
another noise behind us.
My jaw
clenched, too afraid to look behind me.
“Okay,”
Ernie said. “What the hell is going on here, man? This can’t be real. That
can’t be real, right?”
“You just
saw it,” Kelly said. “We didn’t do that. None of us were touching it.”
“No, no,
no,” Ernie said.
“Then who
did it?” Kelly demanded. Colin sat back down slowly.
He shook his
head. “I don’t know.” When Colin wasn’t being his usual snarky, cocky self you
knew it was bad.
“Do we…do we
keep doing it?” Ernie asked.
I froze. A
shiver crawled up my neck, like cold fingers marking a trail one by one.
Something
was rustling the leaves behind me, in that old man’s garden. But this time, the
others heard it, too.
“What was
that?” Kelly said. We were standing in a sort of circle formation. My back was
to the house, Kelly and Ernie on either side of me, and Colin was in front of
me. He was the only one facing the house head on.
“Did you see
something?” Ernie asked, urgency edging his voice now.
“I don’t…I
don’t know.” He blew out a breath. “That statue…was it always there?”
“Don’t.
Don’t fuck with us, man. This is not the time,” Ernie said.
“I’m not
fucking with you, man. I swear.” Colin looked between all of us. “You all heard
it, too. I know you did.”
“You’re the
only one facing that garden! You could totally be screwing with us; one of your
jokes!”
“I’m not!”
Colin yelled, and at that moment the planchette moved again.
We all
cursed and jumped farther away. “Do you think I’m fucking with you now?” Colin
demanded of Ernie, who fell silent and shook his head. Kelly looked at me and I
shook my head just a little, saying I don’t know.
“What now?”
Kelly asked, almost in a whisper.
We all
hesitated, and then Colin said, in a sober voice, “Let’s sit back down.”
“Sit back
down?” Kelly said, her voice breaking on the last word. “Are you crazy?”
“No, I think
we should finish this. What do you think, Cash?”
I blinked,
surprised he was asking me.
“Well?” he
said. “Should we go or should we finish this? Let’s see what the hell is going
on. I need to know.”
“I don’t
need to know,” Ernie said as Kelly shook her head.
“Then you
can leave,” Colin said as he sat down. “Cash?”
Ernie and
Kelly stared at me, a second passed, and then I sat down cross legged across
from Colin.
“Cash?”
Kelly whispered.
“I want to
know more,” I said.
Kelly
narrowed her eyes at me, and then sat down. After a moment, Ernie sighed and
sat with us, too.
“Okay,”
Colin said. “Let’s keep going. Put your hands back on the planchette.”
The
planchette was now on the letter S. I put my hands on it, and Colin looked to
Kelly and then Ernie, raising an eyebrow. Kelly put her hands with ours first,
and then Ernie followed.
For a
moment, nothing happened. Just as I glanced up, I felt the planchette move
under my fingers and my eyes shot back down to look at it.
S-t-a-t-u-e
Statue.
We all
froze.
“How do we
know one of us isn’t doing it?” Ernie asked.
“Haven’t we
been through this?” Colin said.
“It doesn’t
mean you might not be doing it now!”
“Ernie-”
Colin yelled, but never finished, because the planchette was moving again,
faster this time.
S-t-a-t-u-e
S-t-a-t-u-e
Spelling it
out over and over again.
Then it
moved faster, and faster across the board, the same letters repeated. Ernie
yanked his hands away.
“What are
you doing?” Kelly said.
His eyes
were darting back and forth, frantic but trying to hide it. “Showing you it’s
not me doing this shit.”
“Well, it’s
not me, either,” Colin said.
“Or me,”
Kelly said.
“Or me,” I
added quietly.
“Take your
hands off,” Ernie said.
“What?”
“Take your
hands off it,” he repeated. “Then we’ll definitely know it’s not one of us.”
Something
flared within me, like little alarms ringing. Something inside me felt like
this wasn’t a good idea, but I wasn’t entirely sure why.
That’s when
I heard another rustling sound behind me, near the old house. I wanted to look,
but honestly, I was terrified to. The planchette stopped moving. I glanced to
my side and when I looked back, everyone else had taken their hands off.
“Come on,
man,” Colin said. “You, too.”
You
shouldn’t, a voice
in my head said, but my friends were staring at me, and so, I lifted my hands
from the planchette.
And it
started moving again all on its own.
S-t-a-t-u-e
Again.
S-t-a-t-u-e
"What
the hell is this?" Ernie said.
"Did
you hear that?" Kelly said, her head whipping around to look behind her,
in the wrong direction. I knew the sound was coming from behind me. She looked
from side to side. I gulped, torn between not wanting to turn around and see,
and being too terrified and too curious not to turn around.
"Yeah,
I heard it," Colin said. Now looking from side to side as well. When he
couldn't seem to find the source of the noise, he looked back down at the board
with the planchette still going.
“Who are
you?" he asked it." What do you want?"
The
planchette stopped abruptly, halfway between the letter T and the letter A. And
for a moment it did not move. Then slowly, very slowly, it started to move once
again.
“S-o-u-l,”
we all read it in unison as we watched it happen.
“Soul,” I
said. Was that thing about the statues being souls trapped actually true?
“It’s moving
again,” Kelly said. We all looked down and started spelling out the word.
“S-o-u-l.
Soul.”
Again, it
moved.
“T-r-a-p-p-e-d-s-o-u-l.”
“Trapped
soul,” Ernie said.
We all
looked up at Colin.
“No, no
way,” he said.
“Trapped
souls,” Kelly said. “The statues…All the legends. Is that really why? They’re
souls trapped in these statues?”
“That’s
fucking nuts,” Colin said, a frantic edge to his voice.
“Yeah?” I
said. “You thought the same thing about that planchette actually moving a few
minutes ago. Now look at it.”
Colin’s
breath fogged out around him as he exhaled, and my brows furrowed together. It
hadn’t been that cold when we got here. When did that happen?
Crack.
My widened
eyes were mirrored in everyone else’s faces as we heard the sound; it sounded
like the snap of a twig.
“What was
that?” Kelly whispered.
“Sounded
like a twig snapping,” Ernie said. He was whispering, too.
Colin was
looking down at the Ouija board with a determined look on his face. “Where are
you?” he asked again, his voice firm.
We waited,
now all of our breath fogging as we breathed out. I shivered, and Kelly drew
her coat tighter around her.
“There it
goes,” Ernie said.
It was going
fast. We didn’t start reading it until it was in the middle.
R-d-e-n-g-a-r-d-e-n-g-a-r-d-e-n
We finally
caught up to it as its pace slowed down.
“G-a-r-d-e-n.”
“Garden?”
Kelly asked, and a chill skittered down my spine. That was where I thought I’d
been hearing the noises this whole time. My body felt frozen, too scared to
turn around or move at all. I thought about that phrase Fight or flight.
I thought it was wrong. It should have been Fight,
flight, or freeze because I was
freezing up.
“Shit!”
Colin yelled, and I looked down just as the planchette flew across the grass,
landing by a headstone some six feet away.
“What the-”
“Did you see
that?”
“See what?”
I couldn’t
keep track of who was saying what. It was devolving into chaos. Finally, I
turned around when I heard another sound, another snap, another crunch of
leaves. I couldn’t stand there with my back to the garden anymore. I could
swear that my blood turned to ice in my veins. The statue that I know I saw
when we walked in had moved. It was at the side of the house, and its arms were
in a different position. It was staring at me, at us. I knew it couldn’t be,
but it was.
“Oh my God!”
They’d seen
it, too.
“It moved!
It moved!”
“Shit! That
planchette thing moved again, too.”
“The
statue…it moved…it wasn’t there.”
“Colin! What
are you doing?”
“The
planchette.”
“Leave it,
man!”
“But-shit!”
The statue
moved again; its hand moved.
Colin
abandoned the planchette.
“Come on!”
Kelly yelled, grabbing my hand and pulling me along. Colin scooped up the
board, and we shot out of there as fast as we could.
It was only
days after that we found out we were supposed to close the session with Goodbye.
And a few
days after that that we all swore we saw one of those statues in our backyards.
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