An Extra Scary Short Story to Read in the Dark

At long last, the Spooky Sunday is upon us! Don your costumes, stab your pumpkins, and stash your candy somewhere the ghouls won’t find it. There is mischief in the air!

I cannot stress enough how much I love Halloween. The manic excitement buzzing in the chilly autumn night air gives me life. It’s practically a Christmas prologue.

So, this year I’ve decided, in true Jack Skellington fashion, to deliver a gift to all of you! Please enjoy this spooky little short story I wrote back in 2016. If you loved Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, this story is for you.

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Photo by Jack B on Unsplash

Splash

River was home alone the night the storm flooded the basement. She’d been keeping to the living room, watching cartoons for as long as the power lasted, and once the soothing hum of the fridge died away into a chilly silence, she made up stories about the shadowy knick knacks on the coffee table. The plastic apple had just begun to pine for the dead remote when the wind outside whirled with particular force. From somewhere deep in the house, River heard a shatter.

She shivered in the cold darkness that surrounded her like a massive beast’s closed mouth. Power outages were common here. The darkness that swept through the house alongside every big storm used to scare her, but now she was ten and she knew there were no monsters lurking under the couch waiting to grab her and drag her under. River was old enough to know the difference between make-believe monsters and real dangers. Dangers like burglars, breaking into empty houses and stealing anything they could find.

What if that shatter was someone breaking into the house? What would they do if they found her here? Kidnap her? Sell her off to scarier people who made kids work as slaves in workshops and basements? Or maybe they’d kill her, so no one could tell the police they were here.

Thunder rolled, loud as an avalanche. River yelped and clutched the side of the couch. She huddled there until her arms stopped shaking and her rapid breaths evened back out. In all that time, the only sound around her was the splashing of rain.

I’m being stupid, she decided. If there were a burglar, I’d hear them moving things around. Something must have just fallen over.

There, that felt better. It was silly to think something bad would happen just because it was dark. River let go of the couch and stood up, looking around in the gloom. Up on the wall hung their house phone. She wasn’t sure if it would still work without power, but she could try to call her mom for help. Except her mom would think she was being a big baby, too, and her older brother Justin would make fun of her for weeks for being a big wimp.

That would be so embarrassing. No, River couldn’t live through that kind of torment. She was going to have to investigate the shattering sound on her own.

Justin’s baseball bats were in the hall closet. She grabbed one as she walked past and held it close to her chest. The wind howled high pitch songs outside, pushing streams of rain against the house while River searched for the source of the shatter. It wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen, and all their bedrooms were just as they’d left them. The bathroom was clear, too. That only left one place.

The basement.

River hesitated in front of the door. It swung inward, practically inviting her to fall down the thinly carpeted steps and rattle her head against the cold concrete below. The storm sounded louder down there, and she heard water sloshing against something unseen in the darkness. River chomped down on her lower lip and sucked in a deep, deep breath, drawing up all her bravery and determination. Then she reached out and grabbed the banister, tightening her other fist around the baseball bat. She left the door at the top of the steps open behind her, just in case.

The splashing became louder as she went down, and near the bottom she could make out the individual patters of rain falling into another pool of water. The wind whistled outside and inside, pushing air around the basement and raising goosebumps along her arms. River shivered and slowed down for a moment, but the weight of her bat reminded her not to be a chicken. So, she pressed on.

She stepped off the bottom stair and straight into an ankle deep puddle. River flinched back and made a face at the freezing feeling of her soaked sock clinging to her foot. She knelt to pull it off and squinted through the darkness at the basement floor, which was slowly turning into a pond as far as she could tell. How could a little rain manage to flood the large space this quickly? And, more importantly, how on earth was she going to stop it from spreading? The basement was mostly used for storage, but if the water kept rising and rising, it would seep all the way upstairs and ruin everything. Plus, River hadn’t started her swimming lessons yet. If the whole house filled up like a great big aquarium, she would sink down and be trapped in the basement forever. She had to act fast, while the water was still low.

With bare feet she stepped back into the cold water and tried not to shiver. The water pushed and pulled at her ankles just like a real lake. It was hard to tell if it was concrete or beach sand under her feet. It was hard to tell much of anything, really, as she slowly paced through the water. It was very dark in the house and even darker in the basement, because the only light she had came from the open door at the top of the stairs and the tiny windows at the very upper edges of the basement walls. The door’s light was very quickly lost. River held out her brother’s baseball bat like a blind man’s cane and tried to keep from bumping into things as she moved toward the sound of the splashing.

She passed the washer and dryer with a loud clatter of metal on metal that echoed like the strike of a drum. On this side of the basement, the water was deeper, lapping up at the backs of her knees and freezing her skin. The water sounds were louder here, too. The pouring rain made noises like a bathtub filling up, with loud gurgling splashes and stray drips as some drops of water went too far or fell too soon. But beyond this sound was something else, a louder, splashier noise like a little waterfall deeper in the basement.

River waded in further, trying to keep the water off her dress. One of those narrow windows drew near and offered a pale sliver of light to guide her. She was getting close to the end of the basement, now. The wind rushed by again, this time swirling past her shoulder to throw hair in her face, and when she turned in surprise she got a face full of rain.

She sputtered. That little window was open and letting in all this water. River turned away from the leak to wipe her face and drag her wet hair out of her eyes. The stands curled and stuck to her face as she stepped out of the stream and squinted up at the window. She didn’t think these ones could open. Then her big toe nudged up against something in the dirt — it was definitely a sandy ground now, she decided — and she traced the edges of the shape until she determined it was a big shard of glass. Somehow, the window had broken.

There was a single splash from the way she came. She turned around very quickly, making her own splish-splashes, and looked around the darkness for a source. It had been a big sound, too big to be a stray raindrop. This was the heavy splash of an animal diving in the water. A frightening weight settled in the bottom of her stomach, saying, “Back away, back away!” River lifted up the baseball bat and, still facing the sound, followed her gut.

The waterfall noise grew louder as she inched away from the mystery splash, making it impossible to listen for the animal that must have slipped in through the window. River tried not to imagine sea monsters and krakens — those weren’t real. And they certainly wouldn’t be washed into her basement by a thunderstorm. It was probably an opossum or the neighbor’s cat, right? And it just hadn’t growled or meowed because… it was scared.

She felt scared. When she first grabbed Justin’s bat, she’d thought she was being brave. But now she was standing in the darkness of the flooded basement, with waters rising up toward her waist, and she was just cold and alone. Or, almost alone. She strained her ears to listen for the splash of the animal over the waterfall.

Something huge and cold tapped against her back.

River screamed and tripped forward into the water with a great big splash. The baseball bat slipped out of her hands and disappeared in the dark waves. She scrambled for it, pulling up handfuls of beach sand and pebbles, turning around to check if it had fallen behind her. But it was gone. Now there was nothing to protect her from the huge beast. River gulped in a big breath and peeked up at it.

It was shiny and tall. In the tiny light of the broken window, her eyes slowly started to make out the giant cylinder shape, and she remembered her mother explaining once it was a water heater. Just a huge metal thing that sat in the corner of the basement and rattled whenever someone took a shower. River stared at it, and then started to cry. Her arms and legs still shook with fear, but now she felt stupid for being so afraid of something so normal, and miserable from being soaked through with only her head above the water, since she’d fallen on her butt. She was cold and it was dark and she didn’t care if Justin made fun of her anymore, she just wanted the power to come back on and her family to come back home.

Hiccuping, she realized the waves were stronger here, and there was something strange about the water heater’s shape. The right side of it was moving. River squinted and began to see that it was water, pouring out — the roaring waterfall sounds were coming from the jagged, gaping hole in the side. The big crumpled mess of metal didn’t look like it’d just popped open. It looked like parts were missing. Like something had taken a big bite out of the side.

Something thin and silky brushed over her leg. River screamed and jerked back, splashing down under the water as she slipped. She gasped a mouthful of water and forced herself up, coughing and spluttering uncontrollably the moment she broke the surface. The thing glided around her ankle, like a tentacle wrapping around its next victim. River screamed again and ripped herself away.

She tried to run, but the water was still rising, tickling the bottom of her ribs now, and she had to fight against it to carve a path for herself to get back to the stairs before this thing made a waterfall out of her, too. The sand beneath her toes slid her feet away from her as she rushed, pushing her back into the water again and again. She felt the silky thing trace her side and brush past her arm, circling around slowly. River screamed and cried and tried to swim, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know how, and all she could do was splash her way toward the stairs, wherever they were.

The water rose up to her shoulders. It pushed and pulled at her little body, and then her feet slipped again in the sand, and she started to fall, started to drown, until a firm arm caught her. She gasped and reached out, hands searching for her mother; she must have come home and found River here and saved her. But River’s hands didn’t find the soft fabric of her mother’s jacket or her smooth skin. They slid along something silky and wet, slipping further until she felt strange, round ridges on the underside that shivered and sucked at her skin. A tentacle, curling tighter and tighter, dragging her down.

River screamed, until one final great big splash drowned out the sound. Everything went dark and silent.