Editor’s note: Thanks to all who submitted scary stories to this year’s contest—especially the many young writers from Clarke Middle School! View all of the scary artwork submissions here. Below, enjoy our three favorite story entries along with several honorable mentions:
First Place
And I Fewl Fine
By Lucy K. Ralston
“911, what’s your emergency?”
The operator’s familiar intonation should be a comfort—a constant in a world inverted, a stark truth within an impossible reality.
“H-hewwo?”
Oh god, no—
My own voice emerges so twisted, so altered, that any hope of normalcy is smothered beneath my abrupt lisp.
“911 is not a joke, ma’am,” the operator snaps.
I fumble with the phone, cool plastic sliding as I try to hang up. My hand is—is—!
Soft. Not romance novel soft. It’s squishy. Almost…Damp?
There is no time to lose. I struggle into my sweatshirt and jeans. They stick and cling and sag around me. My body is yielding and porous. Condensation, not sweat, beads upon my pale flesh.
I scramble at the doorknob. Desperation builds in my throat, but my eyes do not water. They do not seem capable of it. I do not bother trying to lock it behind me. In the dark void of my car’s window, I see a stranger reflected. Too pale. Too uniform. Too…Square.
I cannot open the car door. I do not have hands anymore. They crumbled against the doorknob and melded into nothing.
I start to walk. It is more of a slog. My feet leave damp marks behind me. Spongy. Soggy. Soft.
The latest Flagpole lies abandoned on the sidewalk. It is wet, almost dripping, despite the crisp fall day. The familiar comics page bleeds and runs together. I read it earlier and shook my head. I read it earlier, while I could still shake my head. The rhythmic words echo in the back of my mind.
Tofu Baby’s feeling sad
Because she’s small and lonely.
“I woke up fwom concewning dweams,
now I’m a monstwous vewmin!”
I stagger. I fall. I should skin my knee. The sidewalk should skin my knee. My knee has no skin. There is a small chunk of my body left on the ground. It looks like—
There are downsides to living on King Avenue, but I’ve never been more grateful. Walking distance to the hospital. When my legs stop being legs, I don’t have to hop far.
The automatic doors to the emergency room slide open. I have already struggled three heavy hops inside before it dawns on me that the waiting room is empty. There’s only me. Only the wet slap of my body—more cube than human—heaving itself across the floor.
I throw myself, gasping, up to the front counter. Everything about me sinks and wobbles, no longer human. The woman behind the counter sits in a rolling office chair, with her back to the empty room.
“Pwease,” I gasp out, high-pitched. “Hewp me.”
The woman turns slowly towards me. She is smiling. It is such a kind smile. She has such a kind smile.
“Aw!” She says. “Look! One finally made it.”
She’s holding something in her lap. A cat? No. It is…
It is small and square and pale. Its mouth is a void cut straight into its face. It stares at me, fixedly, with dark, liquid eyes.
It does not speak.
The woman with the kind smile slides her hand over what must be its head, smoothing its natural condensation across the porous surface.
“Tofu baby’s feeling glad,” her voice is low and pacing, like a chant. “She didn’t know she’d missed her.”
“Pwease,” I repeat. She smiles at me. She holds out a hand. I am almost small enough to fit in her palm.
As if called by the woman’s chant, a voice rises from the pale cube in her lap. The words are almost a song, high as a violin and sweet as a button. She is like me. I am like her.
“Just when I fewt awl awone,” Tofu Baby smiles and bounces, “I got a baby sistew!”
Second Place
Doing the Skink and Toad
By John Gaither
One day I went over to see my friends Andrew and Sophie. They were into Nature and herbs and stuff. They had a new terrarium, a plastic box with a lid to keep the cat out. Inside was a big toad and a glossy striped skink, as thick as your finger.
We’d smoke and watch television, especially Gunsmoke, the old 30-minute black-and-white western from the 1950s. It had something for everybody— the death-dealing Marshal Dillon, the earnest but goofy sidekick Chester and the beautiful prostitute Miss Kitty. They were going to do Halloween and the Wild Rumpus as Chester and Miss Kitty.
Andrew was more excited than usual. He said he had a video that proved something or other.
“Just like each of us has a bioelectric field, like the chi from tai chi, so does all life on the planet. We’re a part of that, people and animals and everything. When it changes, we change.
“Take a look at this video,” he said. “We did it a couple of days ago.”
There was Andrew on the floor, scooting around on all fours, chasing the cockroaches from the cat food bowl. There was a close-up of him slurping up a couple of big ones.
I thought he was crazy. “What were you doing?”
“I was in the skink body, and the skink was in mine. See?”
The video showed the skink with a marker in its mouth, writing “HELLO” on a notepad.
“That was me. We switched bodies. We changed the flow of the global chi, made a little loop that switched us back and forth.”
He pulled out a glass jar with brown powder in it.
“This isn’t a drug, it’s a catalyst for the global chi.
“The local bioenergy field is unstable because so many plants and animals are gone. That’s why we can do this kind of transfer. People carry other animals and plants and viruses all over the world. That’s like stirring the pot—it messes up the local energy flow.
“Nature has to stretch to fill in the gaps. That’s why in Athens we’ve got fire ants, armadillos, Joro spiders and COVID. In a couple of years, it’ll be Burmese pythons.”
He put a little brown powder on a brass tray and held a match under it until it started to bubble and smoke. “Now, you look at the cat. It only lasts a few seconds. This is a microdose. Keep looking at the cat.”
“We’re going to do the skink and toad,” Sophie said. They were holding hands. She smiled. “It’s stronger if you’re linked together.”
I inhaled the smoke.
There was a flash, and I was inside the cat, looking at three humans sitting on the sofa. I had wide-angle vision, and I could smell everything in the room. I could feel my furry belly against the floor.
The skink and toad were moving in the terrarium. I knew what I had to do. I jumped up and pushed it off the table. The lid popped off, and they tumbled out. I caught the skink and bit through its neck. There was a scream behind me. I could taste its skink blood. I got in a few more crunches, but there was another flash and I was back on the sofa in my own body. It had only been a few seconds.
Sophie was dead at my feet, her face frozen in a mask of horror, like someone being eaten alive.
Andrew was squatting with his hands on the floor. When I stood up, he hopped over to a dark corner behind the sofa.
The toad was a few inches from Sophie, staring at her empty eyes.
I never saw the cat again.
I went outside. Hot vomit surged through my clenched teeth. They had been linked together, and her death had broken the flow.
I felt bad about what happened, but I couldn’t help myself.
You can’t tame what was meant to be wild. Nature had taken over.
I buried the powder in the yard. I told the police that I’d found them like that. No sense in making things more complicated.
Andrew went to an institution, or at least his body did.
I took the toad home with me. I built a ramp up to a footstool so he can hop up and watch television. He likes it when he sees Miss Kitty.
Third Place
Invasive Species
By Ben Credle
It was stifling out here in the forest, and it stunk like compost. He looked back up toward Bear Hollow Zoo, where he’d parked his Jeep, and thought about leaving.
“Thank y’all so much for coming out to help this morning,” the girl said. “It’s so important that we not let these invasive species get a foothold down here, because they threaten the local species.” She had shortish blonde hair, and her voice rose at the end of sentences, making them sound like questions.
She’d been cuter last night. More makeup. But he had been drunker, too. Annie? Amy. It was Amy. When she’d told him she volunteered at Memorial Park, he’d nodded as if interested, while he struggled to maintain eye contact and ignore her cleavage. She’d made it sound like it would be an intimate time in the forest for the two of them. Not eight people standing on a trail, sweat running down their buttcracks. And 9 a.m. hadn’t sounded so impossibly early.
“My name is Allie, and this is one of the invaders we’re on the lookout for today.” She held aloft an actual mason jar. These southern girls were almost too hokey to believe. But they were cute. And gullible, just like all his brothers had told him.
The group leaned closer to her, and he angled for a better view down her tank top. He recoiled when he registered movement in the jar, inches from his face. Inside was a mass of writhing spiders, using their long amber-striped legs to crawl over each other. Their yellow and gray bodies were as big as his thumb, and the sight almost made him gag. This was unadulterated nightmare fuel.
“These are Joro spiders, and they come from east Asia,” she continued. “The way you’ll find them is by their big erratic webs. They’re not pretty concentric circles like in Charlotte’s Web. These are 3D and irregular and the thread is yellowish, and really strong.”
An older woman, who looked way too alert for this time of the morning, asked what they should do when they found one.
“The best way to kill them is to get you a stick, and poke it into the web above the spider. Then wind it up like cotton candy and pull it down on the ground and step on the spider. I hope y’all didn’t wear nice shoes.” He had. They were his favorite loafers, and they cost a hundred and twenty dollars. But if this got him alone time with Amy, it would be worth it. Allie. “Ok, let’s spread out.”
He stuck close to Allie as the group left the trail and fanned out into the dank woods, serenaded by cicadas.
“There’s one,” she pointed. She reached up with her stick and flung a spider down. He dutifully stepped on it, getting brownish-red spider goo on the side of his shoe. A hundred and twenty dollars, he thought.
“There’s probably more down there.” She pointed to a large depression where an enormous oak tree was uprooted. It lay there, roots reaching up above his head, and trailing down into the shadows ten feet below them. He scanned around for the others. They were alone at last. No one would be able to see them down there. Or hear them.
She put her hand on the small of his back and urged him ahead as they scrambled down the sandy red slope, dislodged pebbles bouncing ahead of them.
“What part of New Jersey did you say you’re from?” she asked.
The part where girls like you know better than to be alone in the woods with guys like me, he thought. “Newark,” he said.
There was definitely something in the shadows under the roots. When he shined his phone flashlight on it, something skittered back. He bent low and craned his neck to see better. God! It was a spider the size of a dog. A big dog.
He jerked back and started scrabbling backwards up the crumbling embankment, but his feet couldn’t find grip, the smooth leather soles skidding out from under him. He felt her hand on his shoulder, and he reached for it. She shoved him forward. The spider lunged to meet him, and its shiny mandibles closed on his ankle like hedge clippers, while the long hairy legs tore at his face.
“That’s what I thought you said,” she replied. “We can’t be letting invasive species get a foothold down here.”
Honorable Mention
1862
By Erin Lovett
The following is based on true events
John shot awake when the screaming began, as it did every night—a volume of Milton’s Paradise Lost falling from his lap with a flutter of pages in the dark. The firelight had been reduced to a pulsing ember as he slept, so that John could barely make out the shape of his son as his screams filled the room.
“William, a dream,” he cried out. He shook the boy’s shoulders. “Just a dream.”
“Get it off!” William shrieked. He raised his right arm, thrusting it at his father. Repulsed fear contorted his face in the dark, his brow wet as fever wrung him out.
He was bleeding again, the cloth bandages soaked dark. What little had remained of his right hand, those dangling bits of bone and bright pink tendons, had been expertly removed, yet in his dreams William still saw it hanging there, dragging along the muddy ground as he crawled off the battlefield.
As John unwrapped his son’s bandages and cleaned the blunt appendage, something woke deep within him, shuddering and clutching at his organs for purchase. John knew its name, felt as if it were being etched into his very bones: Vengeance.
When the boy finally drifted off, John crossed the room to where the bible-thin pages of Milton lay open on the floor. Stooping to pick it up, his heart thudded wildly as the words on the page came into focus: The war in Heaven, Satan mowing down angels as a scythe cuts wheat. Chained thunderbolts and hail of iron globes’ against God’s angels toppled thousands of them. In that instant, the plot was conceived: He would create a new weapon so powerful only Satan himself could have conjured it. Life-destroying projectiles to raze anything in their path, leaving fields of bodies cleaved in half, heads parted from necks, limbs pulled apart as easily as wool is tugged into yarn. Hunched at his table, John wrote frantically through the night, and in the morning he rushed to the brick-walled foundry, splaying his papers before them.
The foundry men mopped sweat from their brows as they leaned over the papers, frowning at the rudimentary drawings and chicken-scratch calculations. Is he mad? John had a mathematical mind, but even so, he saw the strange looks the men exchanged.
Still, fear was as good as currency in Athens as Union soldiers gained footing in nearby Tennessee. The weapon would be cast. As he slept that night, John dreamed of angels falling to their knees before him, begging for a merciful end. When he woke again to his son’s blood-curdling screams, he couldn’t help but smile.
***
Mr. Gilleland,
Unfortunately our testing of your weapon was unsatisfactory and we are returning it to your possession. The Confederate Arsonal thanks you deeply for your commitment and the heroic service of your son.
John read the letter again, his hands trembling. It couldn’t be so. Yet there it was, his monstrous creation being wheeled back into the foundry where it was forged, as hulking and useless as an impotent bull.
“No!” he cried, discarding the letter. “We test it again. We test it ourselves.”
He lunged, pulling the chains from the men’s hands, his eyes wide, frenzied. The men could only watch as he lashed himself at the iron monstrosity. Only when they saw him fumbling for a match did they finally tackle him to the ground. Later, they could not explain the sensation they all shared in that moment—that the man they watched was not John at all, but something unspeakably fearsome, an evil they could not bring themselves to name.
***
The walking tour rounded the well-manicured corner of City Hall, their feet sore, eyes drifting towards their phone screens. A chipper tour guide hopped a small set of stairs and slapped the iron barrel playfully.
“And here we have the world’s only double-barrelled cannon!” she said. “The cannon, of course, was a complete failure. They say it killed as many as three bystanders and a cow in its test firing. It still points north to this day.”
A loud “boo” came from somewhere near the back of the group, followed by laughter. They moved on, but one boy lingered, his hand reaching out for the glossy black barrels, a strange feeling of familiarity grasping at the deepest core of his being. A darkness, a knowing.
“We’re leaving you!” his mother called out. “Come on, John.”
Honorable Mention
Athens’ Scariest Places
By Adam Rainville
Bethany sulked across the parking lot. She wanted to have a Halloween party, but her parents had said, “No;” they already had plans for the evening. When she told her best friend, Rachel seemed let down. She didn’t even come to school today.
Bethany got in her car and found a book on the passenger seat.
She read the title, Athens Scariest Places, and flipped through its pages when her phone vibrated.
A text from her dad.
“Go to 297 Cemetery Street.”
A scavenger hunt?
Her parents must have felt bad. She was still disappointed, but the thought of them planning this for her was really sweet.
Across from the stadium, Bethany found Oconee Hill Cemetery. She pulled over when her phone buzzed. Another text from her father.
“Page 8.”
Oh, I get it…
She read, “Within Oconee Hill Cemetery are hundreds of horrifying stories and specters. One is the ghastly carriage driver. It’s said the driver was forced off a nearby bridge and died. You can still hear him heading to a fateful destination, to which he will never arrive.”
How corny.
Still, her father finding this scary made her giggle.
Her phone alerted her to another text, this time from her mother, directing her to a South Milledge address.
Bethany hoped she had something more frightful planned.
Fraternity Row.
Bethany pulled in across from the house—large and white with two porches and ornate black iron railings. Letters above a door declared it a sorority house.
Her pocket buzzed again.
“Page 14.”
She started the chapter about haunted Greek houses.
“This beautiful house hides a dark past. Anna Hamilton once lived next door. One night, she witnessed her fiancé murdered on its front porch. It’s rumored he was buried beneath the steps. Shortly after, Anna went crazy. Her spirit forever looks for him.”
Spooky. Not bad, mom.
Bethany had forgotten all about the party.
A familiar hum. A message from her brother, Caleb, who was in town for fall break.
“Go to 137 Hoyt Street.”
So, this is a family ordeal. Interesting.
She found Hoyt Street. However, there was nothing at 137. She pulled into the Athens Community Council on Aging next door.
137 was vacant and overgrown.
Her pocket vibrated.
“Page 36.”
“T.K. Harty owned a popular bar in the ‘70s. He and the owner of the bar next door started a feud that escalated until one day, T.K. was found slumped over his desk while making a phone call, a hitman’s bullet in his head. He still haunts the location of his former watering hole, searching for ghostly patrons to show a good time.”
Wow, Caleb, that’s grim.
Another buzz, this time from Rachel. She told Bethany to go to an address on Oglethorpe Avenue.
You too? Alright, Normaltown. Let’s see what you’ve got.
Bethany passed the yellow brick two-story and turned into a hideous new housing development. She spied the house in her rearview.
How can something look so kept-up and run-down at the same time.
The familiar tone.
“Page 38.”
“Nicknamed ‘Murder House’ by locals, this was the sight of a double homicide in the late ‘80s. The owners were found stabbed to death, their bodies rolled up in a rug. The house remained uninhabited, that night frozen in time until relatively recently.”
Bethany trembled as her phone went off, this time an unlisted number.
“Go to…” and she read her own address.
A smile crossed her face.
Mom and dad had plans. Her brother home from school. Rachel absent from class.
They threw me a party!
She made her way home.
Her house was decorated with bats, skeletons, orange and purple lights, jack o’lanterns.
The garage was open, but her dad’s car was gone. She ran past a cheesy headstone, a mound of earth piled in front for extra effect and up the porch steps.
Inside, she found no friends, heard no music, saw no party.
Something was missing.
She called out, but no one answered. On the coffee table were four familiar phones arranged in a circle. One was covered in blood and broken, as if suddenly dropped. In the center, a note.
“Last page.”
Bethany shook as she pulled the book out and flipped to the back.
Her brain screamed, Wait, where’s the…
She read a handwritten entry.
“A local high school student returned home to find her parents, brother and best friend had all been…”
Wait, where’s the rug?
Where’s the rug?
“WHERE’S THE RUG!”
“…and her mind broke.”
Honorable Mention
My Circle
By Wylly Jordan
Athens, I will tell you this: When it comes to me, at least, you are the safest place in the world.
Watkinsville, Winder, also very safe, but I’m not perfect. Lexington. It concerns me to get too close, makes me edgy for months. Probably unnecessarily, I get that, but when I draw my circle on the map, anywhere too close concerns me. And yes, I use maps, and I’m sure that’s a little paranoid, but the thought of having an algorithm talk me through how to get where I’m going, well, that concerns me more. I mean, if I heard there was a spot in Jackson County that had the best ice cream, I’d be totally comfortable punching that into Google Maps, but that’s not where I’m going. I turn off my phone and take the battery out. I don’t trust the GPS.
In The Bluff, the girls jump right in the car to help, because in the end, they’d take what you give and do what they do to get what you’re getting, but if you’re ready to share and cut out the middleman, they’ll just hop in to get where they were going, anyway. Or where they thought they were going. Wiry arms, sores in the crooks, worked with a guy once called them “stringy legs.” Usually a little tremor, you have to get close to see it, hard to describe. Like anticipation, but with this strange assertiveness, drives me crazy. I mean, I’m careful, don’t get me wrong, but man. The city blots out the stars, but the moon, how can something so bright be lifeless? I don’t believe it.
Not here, though. Go 10 miles east or north outside of Athens-Clarke County, and it’s like going back in time, the light from stars long gone so bright they almost hurt, lying in a field where I don’t belong but no one cares. And late-night pizza, and dancing, and shishito peppers at The National, a burger at The Grill, everyone lost in their own heads like they matter when I’m the only one who does. You’re all starlight to me.
But no worries. I’m not a fool. I don’t cruise Milledge during rush, I don’t go to Toppers. I don’t walk campus. I go to the Manhattan, Little Kings, that back corner of The Roadhouse if it’s not a game day or a weekend. I miss the Georgia Bar. I almost like that rooftop bar at The Georgia Theater, but not quite, I’m not sure why, I mean, it’s fine; you remember when you drank draft beer at The Georgia Theater at your own risk because they never cleaned the lines? Everything’s clean now. I don’t get how better can be worse, but I guess different’s just different. Hell, I don’t know, it’s probably for the best, “cleansed by fire,” if you will, look at all the fresh, young saplings (uh, nope). I mean, now it’s expensive, but everything in Athens is now. Except Little Italy.
Me in my standard downtown face, jeans and a T-shirt, hip but not too hip, hoodie if it’s chilly. I’ll talk politics if bothered, that idiot with the armory, can you believe how crazy [fill in the blank] is. What happened to civility?
I’m part of the wallpaper here, a framed photo of no one. A recognizable shadow, yes, I saw him here Friday, we talked about the mayoral race, but when did that shadow leave? When do shadows ever leave? I think he went to Ciné, to see something or another, per usual. I think.
The question never comes up, though, surprisingly never, almost disappointingly so, but if it did, the bartender would say yes, he was here, he had a PBR and we talked about the local race for blah blah blah, as covered in depth by Athens’ Colorbearer (thank you, by the way; I just pretend to think the same, which is, ironically, less pretending or thinking). Can you believe they’re tearing down so and so to build this and that? The nerve. Are there no standards?
Later, where there’s no last call, I ask for a little help. She pauses at the door. She ain’t about all that. I almost let it go, but she gets in the car. The moon is so bright.
But Athens, bless your strange, unusual blood, I’m full for now. Goodnight.
Honorable Mention
Orange You Glad You’re Red and Back
By Cannon Wilson
Oct. 30, 2021…Fans in prison orange and television meth blue swarmed the Swamp to act as belligerent as all reptiles stuffed in garbage cans do. One ran over and said some incantation to our friend Que.
“Before the sun rises you’ll still bark, be fat and bite, but everybody who used to love you will now think more of their Miller Lite. Ashba, trashba, boink, kink, kawl—this dog’s got it too good, see how you like being a man—pye-yawl,” said an orange overall-ed barefoot bumpkin, snapping his finger and thumb to scatter some dust from a baggie over the finest dog in the land.
“Hey! What in the Vince Dooley are you doing, creep? Beat it on back to whatever carwash you sleep behind.”
On the bus back to civilization, things couldn’t be more copacetic. Que was breathing hard, but that’s kinda his thing. Kirby’s visor shaded a smeary smile smirked across his sleepy face. Everything in Dogdom was gator gravy with visions of silver britches streaking past the five the four the three…
The two things that start Que’s every day are a blast of AC piped through his tempur-pawdic mattress made to look like bags of ice heaped upon each other inside a big, red dog bowl bed, and KISS’s “Lick It Up.” The speakers at Sanford play faint at first, crescendoing in a fury of stereophonic splendor as the G at midfield spirals down into The Dawg Den. Perhaps, the spookiest part of this story is that tuition dollars tote the tab to finance our furry friend’s fineries. He’s a special boy, though. I, personally, have written numerous letters to various athletic directors over the years to procure The Jack of Jowls a tailor-made alligator skin bomber jacket to wear to the big cocktail party, but to no avail.
Anyway, on All Hallows Eve, Que didn’t top the stairs at midfield. Some fortified fiend in his T-shirt did. This guy Winnie the Pooh’d (shirt, but no pants) his way over to the handlers who usually love to wipe the sleep and slobber from his crevices. Today they retched and ran from Que—who was still Que; only, he looked more like me, or you after a few too many brews. He barked and spun and yipped; when no one was impressed, he dipped.
Down East Campus all the way up to East Broad, he stopped at the Porterhouse for a pat and some USDA Prime. He scratched at the door before R · U · N · M · O · F · D (dogs don’t spell that great) again came into his mind. He turned up North Jackson at the sight of the marquee; the girls at Toppers had never not (dogs don’t care about double negatives either) met him with their real smiles. He forgot Halloween landed on a Sunday this year (dogs, funny enough, are halfway decent at dates). There was no point in trying Dawg Gone Good or any place on the khaki line. He fell over, letting out a little whine.
“Where are your pants, sir?”
That was the last thing he heard before he was cuffed, stuffed in Bulldog joggers, and crammed in a cruiser for the short ride to the substation on College Ave. Everybody booked for drunk in public pointed and laughed when they when the fuzz walked him in with tear slides streaming down his dirty face. He curled up on a concrete bench that felt colder than any bag of ice, drifting, finally, off to sleep after he only barked when asked if he wanted to make his one call.
Scary stuff, huh? Our friend Que treated just about how people mistreat me, or you. But don’t you worry about poor ol’ Que; Florida fans have hearts too. That guy who cast the curse saw the whole thing in a spellbound puddle behind the carwash where he looks for loose change.
“Ashba, trashba, boink, kink, kawl—that good boy’s had enough, let him be able to lick his butt again—pye-yawl.”
No one really knew what happened but me. Well, the carwash crasher and me. He only did what he done because of that finger I flung. Once I found him he reversed the curse. After I apologized, of course. Now, we’re good friends. We watch games and laugh—no matter who wins. And ole Que’s just glad he’s the Georgia Bulldog again.
Honorable Mention
Shag Carpet, Working Garbage Disposal, Paranormal Activity, 3/5 Stars
By Alex Anteau
If you see a faded sign at the side of the road that says “15 miles to the Love Shack,” please, for the love of God, run the other way. The Love Shack, and I cannot stress this enough, is decidedly not where it’s at. I just wish someone had told me that before I signed my lease.
My first mistake was letting my roommate pick the place. My second was getting on board without taking a look at it first. My third was not asking him why he kept calling it the “Love Shack” because unfortunately, after we moved in, I didn’t need to ask.
I finally took stock of the building as I pulled into the gravel driveway on move-in day. The house was an off shade of key lime pie in dire need of refurbishing, designed in a style best described as “Mellow Mushroom chic.” That’s about the time I began wondering what I’d gotten myself into.
I’d started unloading the car as my roommate came running towards me like a bat out of hell.
“Hey, what gives?” I nearly dropped a box full of IKEA dinner plates directly onto my left big toe.
“Love Shack’s haunted.” He said in a dull voice as he fished a tennis racket out of the back of his trunk.
“What are you planning on doing with that?” I asked, shifting my gaze between him and the open front door.
“Love Shack’s haunted,” he said again, slamming the trunk shut and starting back towards the house, knuckles white as the head on a pint of beer.
I followed him, half waddling beneath the weight of the flatware, dreading whatever ugly discovery we were about to make. I swear, if I ended up having to write the first draft of my thesis while a poltergeist practiced the didgeridoo in the attic, I think I might’ve walked out then and there. With a grunt, I set the box down in the foyer and slipped off my sandals, eyes glued to the flanneled silhouette of my roommate stalking through the living room with a tennis racket.
“I don’t see anything, Jerr.” I said, but that was wishful thinking more than anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed twinkling bits of glitter scattered across the shag carpet, probably from the previous tenants. I could already feel them sticking to the bottoms of my socks. I swore under my breath. They hadn’t even bothered shampooing the carpets. The honest to God shag carpets. It took everything in me to tamp down my disgust.
“Shhhhhhhhhhh.” He hissed, pausing at the threshold to the dining room. I couldn’t figure it out—what did he think a tennis racket was going to do? Divide and conquer a demon into ectoplasmic noodles? No, that was ridiculous. There’s no such thing as demons, and if there
were, they wouldn’t be hanging out in a three star shack with a rusted tin roof on the outer edge of the Loop.
There was more to it, though. I wasn’t sure if Jeremy’s vibe was contagious or I was already thinking about all the maintenance requests I’d need to put in, but I wasn’t feeling great about our new digs. We hadn’t turned the AC on yet, but entering the house was like setting foot into a walk-in freezer. My skin crawled the way it would if someone was whispering “moist” over and over again in my ear.
“Do you hear that?” Jeremy choked out and I wish I didn’t. There was a sharp crinkling sound, followed by a ravenous crunching.
“It’s not so bad,” I tried telling myself. Maybe it was a possum or a rat or something. I thought about needing to call pest control to kill a bunch of baby rats and realized that was a million times worse. The temperature kept dropping. I could see my breath and I couldn’t take it anymore and I plowed through the dining room door.
My jaw dropped like the countdown ball on New Years Eve, as I watched a ghost tear into the half-eaten bag of Takis I’d left on the kitchen table.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Jeremy, but he looked as if he were about to wet himself, so I yanked the tennis racket out of his hands as the spirit turned to face us.
“Can you get the blue ones next time? I really like the blue ones.”
And that’s how we met our undead roommate, Chaz.
Honorable Mention
The Joros
By Penny Noah
I mean, they scared me right off the bat. Bodies big as half your thumb and painted like a clown’s nightmare. And those yellow and black ratcheted steampunk legs! The whole arachnid contraption is as big as your eyeball.
OK, maybe you think they’re beautiful. Maybe you think their webs glow in slanted sunlight like lost Aztec gold. I admit, I was glad to learn they eat stinkbugs. But day by day I saw more and more of them. They were in the trees and in the bushes and on the buildings and on the houses. Every time I walked Prince Harry, the World’s Cutest Pomeranian, I carried a stick to push aside their webs.
The university entomologists said, “Don’t bother trying to kill them. We swim in a sea of spiders and we’re going to get wet.” Well, dearie, you can just screw that. I smushed them every chance I got and kept my eyes on low tree limbs on our walks.
Now that I live alone, not counting Harry, there’s no one to climb a stepladder and brush them off the eaves of my little house, which the spiders have festooned with webs. I could see one outside every window but at least the front door was still clear. I resigned myself to their presence. Just another Southern pest, like fire ants or roaches.
Then they grew bigger. I’m not imagining this. I swear the ones outside the windows were now longer than my thumb. Though my thumb, of course, has never had legs, thank God. I decided to whack the ones I could reach. I could do that much without a ladder. I went for the garden rake and found it leaning against the garage, covered with thick webbing. I grabbed a stick to free it but the stupid thing broke. All I accomplished was opening a hole in the web. And inside it, perched at its center, sat the biggest Joro I’d seen. I swear she was looking at me with all her eyes. I stepped back and stumbled, ending up on the ground with my head near the web. The Joro trembled and advanced. Maybe I screamed, I don’t know, but I lickety-split rose and hurried back inside, where I quickly drew the curtains.
With a pounding heart I rushed into the kitchen and opened the pantry—some chamomile tea would be just the thing to calm my nerves. But a lone bag of Earl Gray was all I had. Well, a shopping trip would get me out of the house and calm me down. Even Harry was nervous, trotting from window to window, growling low in his little throat. I dressed to go out and checked the larder again, noting that I needed several things.
I paused at the front door, purse and leash in hand. For heaven’s sake, I shouldn’t be afraid to leave my own house! As I gathered my courage, I could hear them clambering around outside, making small clicking noises.
Why were they outside every window? Were they everywhere, and the windows were just where I could see them? Were they attracted to the reflections in the glass? Did the light draw them?
But the door was still waiting for me. So were the spiders. So was freedom.
I threw it open. The spiders had covered it with thick webbing. I could see their gray shadows scuttling across the gauzy gold. I slammed the door and ran back to the kitchen pantry. I was crazy with fear. How much food did I have? How long could I last without going outside?
At that moment I heard a crash and a yelp from the front room. I grabbed a flyswatter—what else was there?—and rushed down the hall. Believe me when I tell you that I didn’t leap into that room. I inched my head around the doorframe, my heart pounding.
The curtain gently swayed before the window. I edged inside. I could see glass on the floor, and as the curtains parted in the breeze I saw something darker on the window sill. Could it be blood? Closer still, I could see something white tufted on the broken pane. Prince Harry, the World’s Cutest Pomeranian, was gone.
Now I knew why the spiders were building webs by the windows. It wasn’t chance, and they weren’t attracted to the light. It had nothing to do with reflections.
They were there to look in. They were there to keep watch on their larder.
Honorable Mention
Unchecked
By Jeffrey J. Kilpatrick
“How many others?”
“Three.”
Andre Robinson knelt down and toed the lifeless body with his boot.
“How close?”
“Cook’s Trail. Twenty yards in.”
“Same as the others?”
“Yeah. Completely drained. No bones, blood, nothing. It’s like some wannabe taxidermist is trying to get in the necessary practice hours for their license.”
Robinson nodded. He lifted the corpse up with a nearby stick. The animal slid down both sides of it like a Dalì painting.
“We’re up to 13, now, sir. Squirrels, birds, a copperhead, a few opossums, and Kat radioed in further up the trail saying there was a damn coyote too. It’s got to be a bug, right? Something in the water, the North Oconee?”
“I don’t know any virus that does this,” shrugged Robinson. “We’ll send samples over to UGA and see what they say.”
“And the nature center? All those kids running around and the people on the trails?”
“It stays open for now. Masks are still mandatory and hand sanitizer is everywhere you look. We found a way to deal with COVID, we can ride this out too. ”
Robinson stood and adjusted his hat. While the range of animals affected was curious, it was the size progression of species that really worried him. Squirrels and birds turned up frequently enough, but coyotes did not. Not like this.
“Grab some of the interns, Nakil, and get them to help you bag these up. I’ll head over to Kat.”
Ten minutes later, Robinson made his way down Cook’s Trail, near the water. The brush was thicker than usual—not that he could do much about it. Since the Joro spiders had moved in, they had been unable to clear it as they should. As supervisor, his official stance was to let them be and wait for guidance on implementing any mitigation measures. As Andre Robinson, all he needed to mitigate the situation was a pair of pliers and half an hour.
Kat was further up the trail, hands on her knees, studying something on the ground.
“Coyote?” Robinson called out. As if in response to his question, his foot landed on what felt like a saturated bath mat folded in two. Under his foot was the withered carcass of an animal—perverted in how pristine its condition was. No trauma. No bite marks, or scratches, just the skin and fur of a completely intact coyote. He stepped off and kneeled down. The body wasn’t untouched. There was a smudge of pus and ooze near the neck. Robinson peeled back the coyote to reveal a smushed Joro spider. Nothing was left but a glop of custard with legs. He lifted the skin higher. A second spider scampered out, straight across the trail. Robinson slammed his boot down, driving it into the dirt. Regulations be damned.
“Kat, did you see that?” he called out. He lifted the carcass up and another spider scurried into the brush.
“Kat?”
Kat didn’t respond. Robinson looked up in time to see her body twitch and crumple to the ground. Her body wretched, pulling her knees in tight to her chest and then shooting them back, locked out tight.
Robinson dropped the coyote and scrambled to her side. It was a grotesque scene. Kat’s face was contorted in pain and confusion. The confusion came from the mass of Joro spiders undulating over the upper half of her body. The pain came from what they were doing to her.
She was being wrapped in a series of webs, a golden streaked cocoon growing thicker by the second. The spiders worked quickly, moving in and out of the webbing, adding layer upon layer. Robinson knocked a handful of them off, only to see the gap filled by more. He swiped at them again. They shifted and his hand stuck in the web. A strong web that held his hand in place long enough for several spiders to scamper up his arm, inside the sleeve, and over the collar. Robinson ripped his hand free, but too late. They were swarming all over his boots, his legs, his back.
Robinson collapsed, the strength in his legs and back stripped away by the venom now coursing through his veins. His mouth flooded with spiders. They weren’t just subduing him, they were plundering him. They would infest him, clean him out like the coyote. As his consciousness dissolved, consumed in a flurry of black and gold, two final words rattled around in Robinson’s mind…invasive species.
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