Storytime Tapestry E-zine

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Halloween Contest

October 31, 2007

Today’s Announcement

Happy birthday Louis Berry - nellberry07@comcast.net

Halloween contest   

Some points to clarify.  There will be two contests running simultaneously.  We will have a Halloween Contest for the best writer for Halloween stories and one for the best poet for Halloween poems.

Contest closes for submissions on November 5.  That means I will not accept anymore submissions after that, but I will continue to run the stories as long as they were sent in to me before that date until they there are no more stories or poems left in the queue.

There will be the main e-zine and the special treat issue will be replaced with a place for an additional contest entry.  This additional entry is by no means to be treated as if it is the publisher’s choice.  I am simply replacing the special treat feature with this one to be able to get more entries out at a time. You, the voter will decide who is the best writer and who is the best poet.

Each day I will run stories and poems, and I will have a running list of what has been published to date at the bottom of the main e-zine.  These, I repeat, are published to date.  Do not write to me and tell me that your story or poem does not appear in this list.  It won’t until I have actually published it.  However if you are not sure if I received your entry at all you can always email me to enquiry about that.

The link to the archives will be posted with the published entries.  Your job is to read the submissions and if you have missed any or you would like to reread any, by all means go back to the archives, they will all be there according to the day they were published.

Voting takes place after the last entry is published;  details to follow.

Halloween Stories

~**~**~

 Pandora’s Box

 Janice Marler

A thunderous noise erupted behind our house.  It was an earsplitting noise as if something large had fallen over.  I equated it to a large fuel container that houses oil to heat the house, but this house was totally electric with AC.  My husband and I went to find the source of the noise.  We checked the perimeter of the house but were unable to locate anything that could have created the pandemonium.

Our house sat back from the road approximately two-hundred feet.  There were no houses close enough to our house to create such a bedlam.  We were perplexed.  My husband was scratching his head pondering over the happening.  This was the beginning of a series of unexplainable events.

Augusta, Georgia rarely sees heavy snows.  What snow they do get, doesn’t amount to much and soon melts.  Up north, where it snows heavily, snow doesn’t begin melting until spring.  When it does melt, it falls off of the roofs with a distinct kind of noise.  It looks like mush.  This was October and there wasn’t any snow in Augusta, yet, we heard sounds of snow falling from the top of the house, and when it landed on the ground, it landed with a thud.  Again, we went looking for the source of the unusual phenomenon.  Something was definitely trying to get our attention.

A week or so later my daughter bought stamps at a local convenient-store.

When she came home, she laid them on the kitchen table, where we were all drinking ice-tea and chitchatting.  Ms. Harris, me, my husband, Ronnie, his ten year old son, and Patty never left the kitchen.  Pat did get up to get her another glass of tea, but she didn’t leave the room.  When she came back to the table her stamps were missing.  She was hostile and accused us of taking her stamps.  We assured her we hadn’t.  “Go look in your room.  Perhaps you put them in there.” “No.  I laid them right here.”   She was adamant that one of us was playing a trick on her.   The first person she accused was her step-brother.  “I didn’t take your ‘ol stamps!”  “That’s enough out of the both of you.  Pat look in your room.”  When she returned she had a strange look on her face.   “Did you find your stamps?” “Yes.  They were in my trash can.”  We knew no one had left the table and all of us were dumbfounded. 

My husband and I went to bed.  “How do you suppose her stamps got into her waste can?”  “I have no clue.” 

Pat had been corresponding with a young marine she had met in Maryland while visiting her sister.  He was older than she was and I didn’t like the idea of her getting involved with someone his age.  She was only seventeen. 

He had some leave time and wanted to come to Georgia to visit Pat.  I was against it but I knew if I fought her too hard, and if I protested, she might do something foolish.  Ms. Harris, behind my back, had told Pat she could leave and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it.  This seemingly petite, grandmotherly, woman was not what she portrayed herself to be.  She had a dark side.  It wouldn’t be long before it manifested itself.  When I found out what she had done, I climbed down her throat about it.  She didn’t have much to say after that. 

She decided to take a vacation; she had relatives in another state.  Every day  my stepson would retrieve the mail from the mailbox that sat near the front of our driveway.  Ms. Harris had been subscribing to magazines that related to Satanism, cults, and magazines about casting spells.  Her daughter-in-law told me she put hexes on people and would perform rituals using candles and such.  Ms. Harris apparently had no idea what she had done.  She had opened up a Pandora’s Box calling forth all kinds of demons.

We were watching television in her room.  It was the only television in the house.  My husband just about to doze off, but was awake enough when the light by the bed came on by itself.  “Did you see that?” “Yes! Let’s get out of here!”  We went back to our bedroom and shut the door.  The children were already asleep and had no idea what had just happened.

I contacted our minister and asked him if he knew anything about lamps.  I told him what had happened.  He didn’t believe in ghosts.  Although I’m not Catholic, I called a priest.  He told me he couldn’t do an exorcism because he had to have permission from higher up, but he did come to the house and blessed it.  He sprinkled holy water in every room.

Pat and Ronnie had no idea what holy water was and wanted to know what the priest was doing.  I tried to explain it to them the best way I knew how.

He told me that the story of the Exorcist was a true story.  He also told us that the house we lived in had been built on ground where the Civil War had been fought.  Fort Gordon is located in Augusta.  He, too, believed in apparitions.  I’m thankful that someone believed me.

We noticed cold spots in their rooms.  One side would be cold and the other warm.  The stations, on Pat’s radio, were constantly being changed.  She thought Ronnie had done it.  At night, after they had gone to bed, we would check to see if they were alright.  When my husband went into his son’s bedroom the volume on his radio would escalate, when he got to the door, leading to the hallway, the volume would return to normal.  The same thing happened in Pat’s bedroom.  My husband came to the kitchen to get me.  He wanted me to hear it so he wouldn’t think he was crazy.  It was mind-boggling. 

The young man did come from Maryland to visit us.  I don’t think the ghost, or whatever it was, didn’t like the young man.  He soon discovered that the house was indeed haunted.  While he was there, doors began slamming shut, (remember when I said the house was all electric and we used the AC), there were no windows opened allowing wind in the house.  Upon examination, we found no doors shut.  We were sitting around the kitchen table when another door slammed.  I had been cleaning the bathroom and sat a can of cleaner on the edge of the bathtub.  The vibration caused the cleaner to fall into the tub.    The bathroom door was wide open.

It would turn my iron off, turn the thermostat on high, off of AC, turn the burners on the stove on, lock me out of the house, ring doorbells, and a maraud of other effects. 

The young couldn’t wait to get back to Maryland.  I left in or around February.  It was too much for me. 

Do I believe in ghosts?  Yes indeed I do.

Janice Marler

poetrybyjan@nc.rr.com

~**~**~

BULLET HOLE VIEW

By David Wainland

As far as Bronx apartment houses go, it was not much of an edifice. The u-shaped front was red brick and grey concrete. Years of coal dust and exhaust fumes discolored the stone and rusty iron fire escapes unraveled their way from roof to street. A courtyard with worn cement steps led to double doors opening to a modest entrance hall and two flights of stairs. The steps, one to the right and the other to the left, traveled up six flights, every second landing opening to a floor with three apartments. There was no elevator and from within our apartment you could hear neighbors coming and going all day and night. The trained ear was able to discern one resident from the next by the sound of their voices and footfalls. 

Two flights of octagon-tiled stairs and one small landing separated the entrance hall from apartment 2 B, our home. That six-foot-by-six-foot banister surrounded landing held a dirty, frosted window of double thick glass with fine chicken wire laminated between the sheets to prevent shattering.  The window overlooked the back of our building. Beyond a dull glow of sunlight, you could not see through the glass and they kept that window forever shut.

At some point in time, long before my memories began, something had penetrated the glass, left a round hole the thickness of an adult thumb and surrounding it with a spider web of cracks. I always believed a bullet caused it.

Through this small opening, I had a limited view of our back lot. Like most Bronx blocks, buildings surrounded the entirety and there was a vacant center connecting the rear yards. It was normally a field of fenced areas and open windows that traded long lines of drying clothes weaving from building to building, neighbor to neighbor.

In the middle of ours was an anomaly, a wood framed house probably dating from the early twenties or perhaps before. The front ended attached to a one-story brick vegetable market on 176^th street, the road that intersected the southern end of our portion of Walton Avenue. The rest of the paint faded gray house jutting into the center of our backyard world. Whoever the owner was, apparently had abandoned it years before. Wood boards crisscrossed most of the windows and the only door I could see was on a porch one rotting wood flight above the grass surround. One window remained uncovered and through the layers of grime and dust, I occasionally saw shadows moving about.

            It became the haunted house of my dreams and the catalyst of my imagination. I never passed that window without peering through the hole and searching for the ghost I knew inhabited that dreary building. The person, in my mind, that was either the victim of the bullet that had pierced our hall window or the perpetrator of the dastardly deed.

            One Halloween, I was almost twelve, my gang of friends, Michael, Butch, Little Ira and I, decided it was time to scale the wire wall surrounding my haunted house. We dared each other’s bravery and with a false sense of bravado, we crossed the weeded lot and climbed the wooden stairs to the entrance.

            The old planking came away with little effort and with my heart beating wildly; I followed the other three through the entrance.

            To our great disappointment the first room, the foyer, was empty. Silky threads and layers of encrusted filth greeted us. Broken glass doors separated the hall from a main room that in its time might have been the parlor. They squeaked loudly as we pushed through. The opening gave a rush to the air and billowing dust reached my nose. I sneezed violently and found myself retching at the heavy smells of mildew coming from the rotting carpets and curtains. Not to mention the odors created by decades of creatures that had invaded that wretched place.

            My friends were determined to search out the rest of the house, but I had reached my limit. I decided, and told them, not as bravely as I planned, that I intended to guard the door and keep an eye out for their safety. They snickered and moved away; leaving me contemplating my cowardliness and searching for a path of withdrawal should it be necessary.

As they moved through the building, they banged walls, slammed doors and did everything they could do to frighten me more. Their derisive laughter almost caused me to follow, but fear held me back.

Suddenly a beam of light penetrated the foreboding dark and I heard one of my friends scream, “Run!”

I cracked, burst through the door onto the porch, down the stairs and flattened myself against a wall hoping to disappear into the shadows.

I heard a great commotion, then the pounding of feet and moments later, somebody stepped out of the door. My shoulders dug deeper into the wall and I gazed fearfully up at the unearthly apparition I expected to see. Instead, it was a balding middle-aged man in a white apron holding a flashlight in one hand. He seemed to look directly down at me and then stepped back into the house. I almost had time to run and then he did a double take, reemerged and pointed an angry finger at me.

“Don’t you move,” he said.

There was no chance of that. I couldn’t if I wanted to.

Later, before he returned me to my mother, I found out that he was the proprietor of the vegetable stand in the front. I told them that I was alone, hoping my friends would have time to get away.

He led me from his store up the two flights of stairs to my apartment and as we passed the landing, I heard hammers at work.

“Yeah,” he said, “We’re boarding the place up again, real tight this time. I’m tired of you kids breaking in and ruining the fruit and stuff we store there.”

I thought of my friends cowering somewhere in the haunted house afraid to come out and terrified of being locked away. The idea of them being alone in the dark, trapped in the house forever further panicked me and when my mom came to the door, I crumbled and gave my friends away.

It took a long time for my gang to forget and forgive, but like all things, it eventually passed. What did not go away is the occasional dream I have, locked in that old house, an evil beam of light searching for me from room to room and my friends screaming for my help.

I can’t move.

David Wainland

David@ davidwainland.com

Halloween Poetry Corner

~**~**~

Witches Three

Conrad S. Cardinal

Witches three with pointed hats,

make a brew of this and thats.

Bats, spiders, snakes and frogs,

they use to make the brew.

As they stir they chant a verse

that chills me through and through.

Calling ghosts and goblins to their

midnight dance.

If you're caught out at that time,

you don't stand a chance.

I suggest you lock the door and

shut the windows tight.

Be very quiet, do not move, keep

watch through out the night.

Hopefully they'll pass you by as

they fly around.

Remember friend, if you're wise,

you won't make a sound.

Conrad

cconseth@aol.com

~**~**~

Readers Feedback

Published Stories and Poems to date; only works that have been published already will appear here.

If you would like to review some the entries before voting please go to this link:  http://archives.zinester.com/98907

Story Contest

Name:                          Title:                                                                Date:

Tanja Cilia                    Present Tension – The Novel                            Oct 30

Violet Apted                 Whatever Happened to Grandma?                    Oct 30

Bill Walker                   The Devil’s Night                                              Oct 30

John Pagan                   Fury In The Garden                                          Oct 31

Janice Marler                Pandora’s Box                                                 Oct 31

David Wainland            Bullet Hole View                                              Oct 31

Poetry Contest

Name:                          Title:                                                                 Date:

Cynthia Groopman       October Happenings                                         Oct 30

Conrad S. Cardinal       Three Witches                                                  Oct 31