Ghost

by Illustratus

  The brick wall was gone. She shook her head. This couldn’t be happening. She pinched herself to make sure it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t.

  She reached for the light switch. It was dead. She grabbed the flashlight, still lying on the kitchen table from when her dad put it there.

  Dad! The thought hit her. Should she warn him she was going down there? Another insistent round of barks filtered up from the basement. She didn’t have time to waste. Kellogg was in trouble. She clicked on the beam of her flashlight—it barely helped to pierce the darkness below.

  She made her way down the twisting staircase. It creaked with neglect as she pushed onward. The smell at the bottom was the first thing to hit her. Ten times worse than the gusts that had floated up in her dreams. Most basements are musty and dank, but this place had something else. Something dead.

  She stooped to walk through the cramped space. Navigating with the flashlight proved futile, its dim beam barely able to make out rough shapes along the floor. What those shapes were was anyone’s guess. At one point, her foot grazed something that felt almost—soft. She shined her light at it. She felt crazy for thinking it, but from what she could make out in the darkness, the shape looked a bit human. Spindly limbs, wildly matted hair, and the smell . . . the smell was even worse here.

  She stepped away from the indistinct form with a shudder. She couldn’t help but think back to what her dad had said, how this place had once been someone’s room. The thought was too much. She had to get out.

  Suddenly, she heard Kellogg’s bark, but this time, it was not coming from the basement at all. It was coming from the top of the stairs. She looked back across the basement to the steps; light from the kitchen seeped down to the bottom. She could see her dog’s shadow cast against it.

  “Kellogg!” She ran back to the stairs. She got to the bottom and looked up. Kellogg was staring down at her, worried and whimpering. She had one long, last look at him before . . . SLAM. The door swung shut.

  “No!” She ran up the stairs, but she already knew what she would find at the top. Bricks, mortar—a wall. She was trapped.

  “Help! HELP!”

  She could hear her dog barking like mad from the other side of the door. The sound of his frantic scratching carried through both the door and the brick wall to her. Finally, she heard her dad walk into the kitchen.

  “Kellogg! What are you doing?! Look at what you’ve done to this door. Out! Right this instant!”

  “No! Dad! Help! I’m trapped!”

  There was a pause from the other side of the door. Finally, she heard her dad once more. “I said out!”

  He couldn’t hear her.

  As Ellie listened to her dad’s footsteps recede through the kitchen, she sat down on the top step of the dark basement. There was no way out.

  As this thought finally hit her, she heard a creak from the bottom of the stairs.

  She turned the ever-dimming flashlight. Staring up at her, with its matted hair, spindly limbs, and torn clothing, was the shape from the floor. Ellie stared in fright for a moment, before the thing smiled sickly. Its cracked and hideous lips exposed a mouth of decaying teeth.

  It was the last thing she saw as the flashlight finally gave out, plunging her into darkness. The ragged voice floated up to her from the bottom of the stairs, one more time.

  “ALL KIDS BELONG DOWNSTAIRS.”

  Written by Jesse Reffsin

  Illustrated by Jeff Turley

  Widow in Black

  The children surrounded the spider on the splintered platform of the old wooden play structure. It was a game they often played, rooting spiders out of hiding and chasing them through the playground. These types of spiders were common in the crevices of the weathered wood—big but not dangerous. Most spiders aren’t—dangerous, that is—but they can get quite large all the same.

  This spider was scrambling back and forth inside the circle of children. Each time it seemed it would get away, a child would bring its foot down with a loud THUMP, driving the spider back toward the middle. Finally the leader of the group, a particularly ugly boy, brought his boot down on the spider. CRUNCH. The children laughed as he wiped guts onto the edge of the play structure, then kicked what was left of the spider’s body onto the mulch below. The children went off in search of another, so wrapped up in their fun that they failed to notice . . .

  . . . the old widow on the edge of the playground. Her heavy clothes were out of place for the hot summer day, especially her sweater—a lumpy cocoon of black wool. In fact her clothes hung so heavy, dark, and loose that they had the effect of making the old woman seem almost formless, merely a dark shape. She hunched over a shopping cart bundled with old clothes, shuffling her feet as she followed the sidewalk that circled the playground. Her eyes were fixed on the children.

  THUMP!

  The children had chased another spider out of hiding, this one larger than the last. They giggled as they watched it dart across the wood, its panic evident in its swift movements.

  “You’re being cruel, you know.” The children turned at the sound of the widow’s voice, taking their first notice of her. The spider seized the opportunity to skitter away, finding refuge in a new section of the wooden play structure.

  “Great. You let it get away!” the ugly boy yelled at the widow. She just nodded, satisfied, and continued pushing her cart along the sidewalk. The boy rolled his eyes as he turned back to the group. “Creepy old lady,” he said, dismissively. The children murmured their agreement, turning to search for another spider.

  None of the children looked at the widow long enough to spot the thread trailing from her sweater. It had snagged on a tree branch, but she didn’t seem to notice, quietly pushing her cart along the sidewalk as she continued to circle the children.

  It didn’t take long for the children to find a new spider, but this one they didn’t scare out of hiding right away. It was feeding—something the children rarely got to see, but which interested them to no end.

  They watched as a fly, trapped in the spider’s web, frantically thrashed against the silk that held it prisoner. It was no use, of course. The web would not break; it was made of a material far stronger than the fly. The only thing the fly did accomplish was to alert the spider to its presence, its struggles vibrating along the strands of web. The spider clambered to its captive as the children watched, transfixed.

  As the fly gave a last fruitless effort to free itself, the hungry predator unsheathed a gigantic pair of fangs and plunged them deep into its prey’s exoskeleton. The fly writhed in pain as venom pumped into its body. The toxins worked fast, using the fly’s circulatory system against it. When the spider withdrew its meaty fangs the poison had already begun its work, paralyzing the fly.

  While the children watched the morbid scene with glee, the widow continued to shuffle around the playground. Had there been any bystanders, they might have alerted the old woman to her fast-unraveling sweater. They also might have noticed that, with so much thread lost, the sweater was giving way to a hint of slick, jet-black skin underneath.

  Meanwhile, the ugly boy watched with fascination as the spider wrapped the fly in a sticky sack of webbing, using its many legs to rotate its prey in silk spun from its abdomen. The fly lay immobile, helpless to fight against its inevitable end.

  The tiny insect could see the children through the light layer of webbing over its eyes. Of course, to the fly they were nothing more than gigantic figures against the fast-disappearing sky. If it could recognize them as creatures at all, the fly would have been disheartened by the grins stretched across their faces and the apparent joy they were drawing from its last moments alive. They could easily have saved the fly, but the thought never even entered their minds.

  As she went on walking the perimeter, thread from the widow’s sweater now surrounded the playground many times over. The sweater itself was almost gone, and the widow looked increasingly more disquieting. Her skin shone in the sun, as if covered in gloss. Short
, thick hairs standing straight out of her back bristled in the wind. Gigantic masses protruded from her side, eight in all, black as the rest of her once-concealed body and folded around her tightly.

  With the fly now fully imprisoned and paralyzed, the spider had one last step to prepare its meal. It plunged its fangs into the fly once more. Though unable to react, the fly could still feel the fiery pain as the fangs pumped digestive fluid into its body. The last thing the fly felt was its innards slowly dissolving into a soupy mess. The spider could now drink its meal directly from the fly’s body, enough sustenance for perhaps a week.

  CRUNCH!

  The ugly boy lifted his boot. He had gotten both the spider and the fly in one swift motion. “Two for one.” He grinned as he wiped guts off the sole of his shoe. The spider’s web clung to his shoe as well, its sticky residue still doing its job. The boy didn’t bother removing it.

  The sun now hung low in the sky. The children had spent longer than they thought watching the fly’s struggles. Their parents would be worried if they didn’t get home soon. The group said its goodbyes and descended from the play structure, heading their separate directions across the playground.

  The widow was nowhere to be seen; only her empty cart was left on the sidewalk. Wherever she had gone, the bulky mass she had been carrying had gone with her.

  As the children left the mulch and headed for the sidewalk that surrounded the playground, they did not see the intricate network of thread the widow had left behind. As with any web, you couldn’t see it until it was too late.

  One by one the children ran into the thin threads that encircled them. At first, the webbing seemed a mere nuisance. They pulled at it, expecting it to come off. But grabbing at the thread only succeeded in further sticking them to the residue that coated the long thin strands. As the children pulled, twisted, and turned in the webbing the realization slowly set in. They were stuck.

  It hadn’t yet dawned on the children to look for the source of the webbing; they were still too frightened to do anything but struggle and call for help. If they had been searching, they might have looked into the trees above them.

  There they would have found the black widow, now fully exposing her true form. Although hidden in the branches of the large trees overhead, she was gigantic. Ten feet long, she skittered and danced from branch to branch surveying her catch. Her pitch-black skin glinted in the setting sun.

  As night fell on the playground, the widow positioned herself over her first prey. Of course the leader of this unruly gang of children would go first. She unsheathed her dripping fangs in preparation. Cruelty always found revenge, the widow mused as she emerged to a chorus of screams.

  Written by Jesse Reffsin

  Illustrated by Chris Sasaki

  Green Eyes

  Teddy McNally was the new kid in school,

  lonely and desperate for friends.

  To get them he’d do whatever it took,

  concerned not with means, but with ends.

  One day in the halls, he heard a group talking,

  some looking dreadful with fright.

  They spoke of a set of ghostly green eyes

  that came out in the graveyard at night.

  Seeing his chance to seem brave and make friends

  Teddy said he would seek out the eyes.

  He asked for directions and received them in turn,

  though the group thought his choice was unwise.

  They told him to trek deep into the woods,

  to find an old church made of stone.

  Past the church was a wall and beyond that the graves,

  set together yet each quite alone.

  The moon must be absent to see the dead eyes

  for the night must be colored pitch-black.

  They’ll come out at three, but make sure that you hide,

  for if seen, you’ll never come back.

  With instructions in mind Teddy left that same night

  for the crumbling church and its walls.

  With no moon in the sky, he’d spot those green eyes,

  then he’d be the talk of the halls.

  The graveyard itself was a thing from the past,

  each plot was a hundred years old.

  The bodies they kept had been trapped there for years,

  under dirt that lay heavy and cold.

  As Teddy walked on past the graves that dark night,

  he felt his own fear start to grow.

  Though he tried to avoid it, his mind turned to thoughts

  of the bodies that rotted below.

  But he brushed off his fears and crouched by a grave.

  The headstone had long since worn flat.

  He was there for those eyes, those deathly green eyes,

  so he kept his mind focused on that.

  He waited in hiding till the hour was struck

  and the church bell rang out three times.

  Then he peeked from his stone and scanned the old place,

  but the eyes had not come with the chimes.

  And that’s when it hit him—he felt he was watched.

  He turned, wary of what he would find.

  He peered through the dark with dread in his heart,

  for the haunting green eyes were behind.

  They were gruesome indeed as they bobbed there in place,

  their stare hollow and cold as the night.

  And then they lurched forward to where Teddy sat,

  immobile with fear from the sight.

  But as they moved toward him a body appeared,

  its form filling in ’round the eyes.

  A ghostly pale girl dressed in dirty white lace

  now walked over to Teddy’s surprise.

  For the last hundred years I’ve been nothing but eyes.

  Her voice stooped to oddly deep tones.

  I come out in the night to guard the old dead,

  and my only friends are their bones.

  But this night you have come to look for my eyes,

  and they have found you instead.

  Her smile was sick as she said her next words:

  Now it’s you who guards the dead.

  As the words left her lips, the girl faded away,

  and so Teddy’s body did, too.

  The one thing remaining as he floated in place

  were his eyes, not green, but blue.

  And from that night forth he wandered the graves,

  trapped by the old graveyard walls.

  The friends he had found were the bones in the ground,

  but at least blue eyes were the talk of the halls.

  Written by Blaise Hemingway

  Illustrated by Jeff Turley

  Epilogue

  His stories now told, Old Man Blackwood leaned back into his chair and folded his arms over his chest, the hook on his prosthetic arm squeaking as it clasped open and closed.

  Both Thomas and Skeeter stared back at him, their faces pale. They felt as if they’d had more than their share of the paranormal that night.

  But as creepy as it all had been, surely the boys would be heroes when they returned to their cabins, rich with ghost stories from Old Man Blackwood himself. Thomas was certain that even the teenagers who worked in the mess hall would be impressed with his and Skeeter’s daring.

  “Thank you for telling us those stories, Mr. Blackwood,” said Skeeter uneasily as he stood. “I guess we’ll be off now.”

  “Wait,” blurted Thomas. The boy thought back, counting the stories on his fingers. “It’s only been twelve. He said there were thirteen true ghost stories, and he’s only told us twelve.”

  “You see that, Skeeter? Thomas always pays attention,” said Blackwood. “He catches that detail every time. You could learn something from him.”

  Thomas pushed away from the table. “I never said—we never told you our names.”

  Old Man Blackwood laughed, mucus crackling in his lungs as if about to erupt into a coughing fit. “Of course
you did. You told me your names the first time you came to my cabin.”

  Thomas felt Skeeter tugging at his shirtsleeve, trying to pull him out of his seat. “Come on, Thomas. I wanna get out of here.”

  But Thomas refused to stand, grabbing hold of the table and locking eyes with Blackwood, who scratched his chin nonchalantly. “Sure,” said Blackwood. “Run back to the camp. I’ll just see you two back here tomorrow.”

  “Tell us the thirteenth ghost story,” said Thomas insistently. “I wanna hear it.”

  “Stop talking that way to Old Man Blackwood,” Skeeter whispered angrily. “You wanna end up being one of the skins on his walls!?!”

  “You know, I always got a kick out of you kids calling me Old Man Blackwood back then.” Blackwood smiled a little at a memory. “I was only thirty-five. I suppose that seems pretty old for a couple of twelve-year-olds.”

  “Tell us the thirteenth story!” Thomas repeated, this time more insistently.

  “Come on, Thomas.” Blackwood leaned forward to spit tobacco juice into his cup. “You already know the thirteenth story.”

  Thomas stared back into the chalky eyes of Old Man Blackwood as a memory slowly came to his mind like the first drops of a rainstorm. “That’s it,” said Blackwood, “you’ve got it.”

  Thomas spoke, slowly and methodically. “There were once two boys who snuck out of their bunks at midnight. They were hoping to hear a ghost story from the winter groundskeeper who lived on the outskirts of their camp.”