Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27159479-20151104133655

As I trudged through the deep snow, the cold dug into my bones. It was midnight and I could see the outline of the old house against the black and moonless sky. There were no lights, and an eerie darkness gripped the place. When I stepped onto the porch, fear, trepidation, and death hung in the air. I pounded on the door. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. “Sarah. Are you there?” No answer. “Sarah?”

I had to find Sarah so I decided to go inside. I reached for the door handle fearing it would be locked but at the same time hoping it was. The handle turned easily and the door creaked open, the sound reminded me of someone sneaking around on an old wood floor. I stepped inside and the floor made the same noise as he door. “Sarah, are you here?” the only answer I got was the squeaking of a mouse in the dead silence.

All the time the stories I recently heard about the house flashed through my mind. The house had belonged to Sarah’s family for many years. It used to be a happy place until that one year during the holiday season on the night before Christmas. It was a night a lot like tonight. That year everything changed, or so the story goes.

Some stories say that he was just a burglar dressed as Santa Clause, while others say it was an evil holiday spirit, but they all tell how he killed the family living there and then disappeared. After that, every tenth year on that night around midnight anybody in the house died too.



If the stories are true I don’t know why the family would keep moving back into the house. It was like the house called to them, like a moth to flame. The same was true for Sarah and her family. They moved here about five years ago determined to restore their family’s old house that no one had lived in for over a hundred years. As soon as I saw Sarah I fell in love and soon we were good friends. We were both thirteen at the time.

When I first heard the stories about Sarah’s house this year I thought they were just an old myth. As it got closer to winter I started thinking about the stories and started to worry. So I decided to do some research. What I found frightened the hell out of me! According to my research the first accident happened exactly 340 years ago. If this was true and the stories were true then it would happen again this year. When I told Sarah what I had found out she told me to stop being childish and to stop believing in ghost stories.

Determined to keep Sarah out of the house on Christmas Eve I talked her parents and my parents into letting her stay over for the night and have Christmas breakfast with us in the morning. 11:30 was the time I was supposed to pick her up and I left a little early just in case. But fate pulled an evil trick on me! I was thirty minutes away from Sarah’s house when a buck ran out in front of me. I hit the brakes but the ice caused me to lose control and I slid into the ditch. The accident caused me to hit my head on the steering wheel and I was knocked unconscious.

When I came through it was already 11:30 and I still had half an hour to go to get to Sarah’s. I ran the whole way, slipping and almost falling the whole way. So that brings me back to the entry way to Sarah’s house. When I didn’t get an answer I tried to turn on the lights, but it was unsuccessful the power was out. All of a sudden I heard a noise outside the window, a low jingle.



I moved closer to the window to see if I could see what was out there, but I couldn’t see anything. Jingle. This time it was on the other side of the house and I got a quick glimpse of something red. Jingle. Now it was by the door! Jingle. Jingle. Jingle. Now it was in the house and behind me! But how could it have gotten in? I ran toward the door! Jingle. Jingle. Jingle. It was following me! I was almost to the door then all of a sudden there was a blinding light!

The lights came back on! What I saw both relieved me and pissed me off! At the door was Sarah in a big red coat with a bell. Her brother was at one side of the house with a bell, her mother at the other, and her father behind me! They told me everything, it was all a prank that their family has been playing for years, they knew the stories and used them to their advantage. Anyone that they pranked had been asked to keep it a secret so they could trick others and so far nobody has leaked their secret. What a fucked up sense of humor!  