Hi and thanks for stopping by. I LOVE October AND Halloween! I also love scary stories. Here’s a (cheesy) story I wrote a few years ago when my kids and I were writing Halloween stories one night. Enjoy!
The Curse
There are those that think I’m crazy. The day after it happened, it was all over town that he committed suicide. Only two people, three if you count Danny, really know what happened. I promised his dad I would never tell a living soul. Being of Cherokee descent, he is very superstitious and believes that telling others what truly happened is an invitation to the evil that occurred. And no parent wants what happened to Danny, happen to them or their children. But I think his name should be cleared.
He wasn’t crazy or even depressed after the accident. That was the story you may hear, and the reason they say he took his own life. But I’m telling you right now, it’s not the truth! If you would like to know what really happened that cold Autumn night, then listen very carefully. But know this, if it is true what Danny’s dad says, and we are just opening the door to an evil awaiting the invite, you must know, It’s not Danny who is coming, but an evil he had no control over. Danny would never hurt a living soul; especially himself.
Danny and I have been friends since Kindergarten. He stopped me from stomping on a spider on the playground. He pointed out that her eggs were carefully nestled in the farthest corner of her web and if I killed her, the babies would die for sure. He said ever since his dad read him Charlotte’s Web, he couldn’t even think of killing any living creature.
“What if their mom is just out looking for food for her kids?”
Danny’s mom died when he was just a baby, so I think he empathized with anyone or anything who didn’t have a mom.
Anyway, like I said, we’ve been friends since Kindergarten. Neither one of us has sisters or brothers, so we were kind of like brothers. His dad and he did a lot of camping and invited me to go one Summer. After loading up the truck, we were on our way. The trip took us almost eight hours, but when we got there, it was like we entered a different world. The quiet was deafening. You know, the kind of quiet that is so quiet you hear things you’re not used to hearing; birds walking over sticks, fish coming to the surface of the pond, or the ringing in your ears that is usually drowned out by all the other noises around you.
We were miles away from everyone and everything. The nearest main road was almost ten miles away. It amazed me his dad even knew where to go to find this little log cabin nestled in the middle of what felt like a magical forest. The road that led to the cabin was an unpaved, dirt road that wasn’t really a road at all, but more like a path that was naturally beaten down by the occasional car that would come through.
After we arrived, Danny’s dad told us to gather some wood. I gathered the kindling, while Danny gathered the logs. Once we made our piles, Danny’s dad pointed out a huge stump with an axe stuck right in the middle of it, handle in the air. Danny instinctively knew what to do. He scooped up as many of the bigger logs as he could and carried them over to the stump, throwing them down. He then pulled the axe out of the stump with less effort than I had thought it would take. Standing a log up on the big stump, he lifted the axe over his head, and came down hard, splitting the log in half. With every log, he did the same thing until he got to the last one.
The last log was the largest, making one think that with such a large diameter, it would remain the steadiest of them all. But three times Danny raised his axe, and all three times at the last moment, the log fell over. I could tell he was becoming somewhat frustrated. With a last effort to split the log, Danny held onto it with his left hand. Raising his right hand, he came down fast and hard. I waited for him to pull his hand away, thinking at the last minute he would. But just as the axe came down, I saw a look of surprise and horror come across his face. He completely missed the log and separated his hand from his arm with just one swing. With his hand still holding onto the log, the log fell over onto the ground. Danny collapsed next to the log, but not before he let out a scream that penetrated the log cabin his dad was in.
His dad came running out and saw Danny on the ground, with me holding his arm in the air and blood squirting everywhere. Without having to ask what happened, he wrapped a bandanna handkerchief around the stump, scooped up Danny’s lifeless body, and piled him into the front of his truck between the two of us.
The drive to the hospital seemed to take an eternity, but once there the doctors worked feverishly to stop the bleeding. I overheard the doctor telling Danny’s dad that if he were to bring his hand back packed in ice, he could possibly reattach it. Here’s where the story gets weird. When we went back to the campsite, the log Danny had attempted to split was still laying there covered in blood, but the hand was nowhere to be found. After searching tirelessly for it, we resolved to the fact that it must have been carried off by some critters.
Well, Danny survived, but was now dealing the loss of a hand. He seemed more freaked out by the fact that he cut his own hand off than he did with having to now live without it. He said he didn’t remember it hurting all that much, just that he remembered the feeling of the axe chopping through his wrist bone.
Several months had passed, and as he was recovering from the injury, I would find reasons to stay overnight at his house. He wouldn’t ever admit to it, but I know it helped him to talk about the accident. We would often stay up for hours at night just talking about what happened. The night he died, I was sleeping over.
It was about three o’clock in the morning and I woke up to Danny calling my name.
“Do you hear that?” He asked.
I listened, and all I heard was scratching, like a critter going through garbage.
Danny stood up and walked over to his window. As he drew back the curtain, he strained to look outside to see what was making the noise. Then, as if someone had pushed him back, he fell into a desk opposite the window. He was staring at the window with disbelief, slowly making his way back towards it.
“Danny? What was it?” I asked, still not wanting to get out of bed to look for myself.
Without answering, he approached the window then slowly opened it. He was blocking my view, but at the last minute I saw a hand with its index finger pointing at Danny then rolling up into a beckoning motion.
“It came back. I can be normal again.” He said as he opened the window.
In an unearthly speed, Danny’s hand lunged at him, wrapping its long white fingers around his neck. Danny gasped for air, yelling, “Why! Get off, get off!”
Just as Danny took his last breath, his dad entered the room, grabbed the hand from Danny’s neck and pried the fingers from his throat. He threw the hand out the window and cradled Danny’s lifeless body in his arms. That night, he made me promise to never tell a living soul what happened. He told the police his son hanged himself. That was the story the papers told. And that was the story everyone within an ears shot of the story was told.
But, now you know the truth. Chances are, if what Danny’s dad says is true, and by me telling this story, I’ve invited an evil to come looking for me, well I guess only time will tell. If I’m still alive, you can look me up. But, if the evil did truly find me, my name will only be found in the obituaries, and it will be up to you whether anyone else knows the truth of what really happened to Danny that night. But the question is, will you be brave enough to tell the story too?
If you have any scary stories you’ve written, send them over and I’d be happy to post them on my site! Please be sure to send stories that are kid appropriate.
Til Next week….find something that scares you then write about it!
E.V. Jones