Congratulations!...
Martha frowned a bit then took her lenses on the reading table and put them on to read the email properly. It was the same message;
Congratulations Jordan Freeman, you have been selected as the winner for the Tell a Tale storytelling entry, Winter edition tagged 'Haunted'. Your entry story will be published on our website come All Hallows' Eve tomorrow….
"Jordan?"
Martha pushed the swivel chair she had been sitting on backward and trodded barefoot to her 12-year-old son's room. He was curled up like a fetus, a soft snore escaping his nostrils and rhyming with the slow rise and fall of his chest. A smile touched her lips as she went to sit beside him, tracing her fingers on his well-defined cheekbone before leaning down to plant a kiss on his forehead.
Michael Freeman, her husband, would be so proud.
Source
She walked back to her room to go through the story her boy had written. Jordan had started writing when he was 6. He wrote the Christmas story the kids played out in their church the year before and attempted a short story for television the year before that.
As she sat to read, she couldn't imagine what Jordan had come up with this time, every story was more vivid than the last, more enchanting. She perused through the website then saw; HAUNTED - JORDAN FREEMAN.
"Witches. Taylor wrinkled her nose when she caught sight of them assembling together to plan their entrance into the human realm for Halloween…." Martha sucked in her breath and decided like she always did that she would need a towel beside her just in case she broke down in tears like she always did whenever she was reading one of his stories.
She was going to pick up a can of soda too when she heard her phone ring.
"Hey baby" Michael Freeman's rich baritone called out from the other end. A natural smile came to Martha's lips.
"Hi commander" She returned to her swivel chair so she could swing it around as she loved to whenever she spoke with Michael.
"How are y'all doing? Where's Jordan?"
"Sleeping. He just won a writing competition by the way…" Martha heard Michael whoop over the phone and giggled. Nothing else warmed her heart like the way her husband adored her son. They spoke well into the night, until Martha was groggy from lack of sleep then bid each other farewell. She was going to turn off the laptop and head to bed immediately when a sentence caught her eye.
"With the witches approaching at midnight on All Hallows' Eve, the entire city suffered a blackout…." She chewed the insides of her cheek and then decided to read a little longer, Jordan would be so pleased if he knew she stayed up all night reading his story.
It was ten minutes to midnight already so she grabbed a bottle of cold water from the fridge and returned to her laptop. She would read for ten minutes. She went back to the beginning.
"...Taylor wrinkled her nose when she caught sight of them assembling together to plan their entrance into the human realm for Halloween. The magic necklace her grandmother had given her chimed softly on her neck to ward off every form of evil. She leaned closer to take in their ugly forms then hurried back to tell her colleagues.
"They're really witches! I'm sure the gnomes too are planning to come. We have to stop them before midnight!"
They hurried down the hill where they had been hiding behind to peek at the witches then ran as fast as they could back to the city. They were almost at the city gate when the clock struck midnight and the entire city suffered a blackout…"
Martha rubbed the tears that seeped out of her eyes. This time not from her emotions but from fatigue. As she turned the laptop off, the clock struck midnight.
She rose to stagger to her room when the lights suddenly went off.
"That's weird" she muttered and groped around for her phone. When she turned the flashlight on, she thought she saw a masked face smiling at her from across the room. She screamed and dropped her phone just as the lights came back on.
There was nothing.
She picked up her phone to check for damages then hurried over to her room and locked the door. She shook her head, she must be really exhausted and had started seeing things. She decided to go into the shower before hopping into bed.
A gurgling sound that sounded like low, rumbled laughter came from the shower as she turned it on. Martha nearly slipped in fright. When she looked, it was just the normal gurgling sound every shower made and it was running normally.
She managed a chuckle at herself, ran a quick shower, then headed over to sleep.
All Hallows' Eve was just like Christmas in Martha's family. Her two sisters came over to her house with their kids' clothes in the scariest costumes they could find or make so they could spend the day together eating chocolate and playing spooky games.
It was 7 a.m. when her immediate younger sister, Frieda called to say she was leaving her house already. It would take 4 hours to get to Martha from her home.
"Hi Mom, check out my costume" There was a twinkle in Jordan's big, blue eyes.
She mouthed the words "cool" and then returned to the conversation with Frieda.
By noon, Martha's kids and their children were running around the house all clothed in traditional Halloween outfits.
Brenda, Frieda's first child, wrinkled her nose when she saw Jordan's costume.
"I thought only girls acted as witches" She leaned closer to take in the details of the hand-down costume his mother had made.
"Well, I am a warlock" he pushed his chest forward with a proud smile on his lips. She smirked then lifted a small necklace hanging on her neck to him.
"Well, luckily for me, I have a little something here to ward off every form of evil". Then she called out to her other cousins "Isabel, Ariel, come and see, Jordan is a witch…"
"Warlock!" He called out, running after her.
Martha didn't know if she was seeing things or if they were innocently acting out Jordan's story which she had read almost all through the night. Maybe she just didn't get enough sleep. She rubbed her eyes tiredly and headed over to get a glass of milk.
She felt a hand touch her shoulder and as she turned to look, it was the witch as described in Jordan's story, with her large eyes that seemed to bulge out of their sockets and her fang-like teeth staring right into her eyes. She screamed and threw the glass.
"Hey, are you okay?" Frieda grabbed her and rubbed her hair. Martha didn't know she was trembling until Frieda told her so.
"I'm sorry, I think…I'm seeing things."
Frieda led her gently away from the pieces of glass scattered around and took her to the bedroom.
"Did you even get any sleep? You look terrible!" She laid a hand on Martha's forehead. "And you're burning up"
"I don't know…I read Jordan's story last night and I saw several scary things and I'm seeing them play out here again…"
"I think it's your mind playing games with you because you're exhausted. Try getting some sleep, Sara, and I will see to the kids".
Martha allowed Frieda to cover her up but she felt like she was suffocating.
The witch was shoveling huge amounts of dirt into her face making it impossible for her to breathe. She wrestled tirelessly until she finally fell, into the unending abyss of sleep.