Short Scary Stories

Scream City

Recently, a group of friends invited me to go with them to one of those haunted attractions that pop up when it gets close to Halloween. I wasn’t too keen on the idea. I love scary stories and movies and the like, but the apprehension that comes from knowing something is about to jump out and scare you, not to mention how close the actors get to you, is almost more than I can handle. But since I love Halloween and hadn’t got much of a chance to celebrate it, I tagged along.

The place was called Scream City, so named because it had a loose city theme. It had all the typical haunted house fare, complete with a long line. We managed to pass the time by telling scary stories as the occasional worker dressed as a zombie or insane clown rattled the chain-link fence surrounding the queue and screamed. As we approached the entrance, a man dressed as a witch doctor led us and a few others through the door, where he explained the rules. No running, no touching the actors, if you have a heart condition we are not responsible, and so on. As he wrapped up his spiel, he pressed a button and the steel double doors behind him swung open. We walked past him and into a living room while the doors creaked shut behind us.

The room we stood in looked like a cheap motel room. As the rest of the group filed in I took a look around. Stained, blue carpet covered the floor and in the middle of the room stood a recliner, facing a television that blared silent static back. In the recliner was a seemingly long dead man, his gaunt face partially obscured by stringy black hair. An overturned bowl of chips sat in his lap, and one skeletal hand clutched a TV remote. As we crossed the room and walked through the door on the opposite side, the emaciated figure in the chair sat bolt upright and screamed at us, the sound drowning out as we fled into the next room and the door slammed behind us.

We stood in a hospital, beds lining either side of the narrow pathway that led to the next door. A window on the left wall betrayed the “city” setting with its view of a grassy field. There were four beds on either side, one of them covered in blood and gore. The last bed on the right contained a human-shaped lump beneath its covers, and a chorus of screams erupted behind me as the actor tore the covers off, revealing his mangled face. He laughed maniacally as our group filed into the next room.

This room led us past a church altar, a large, upside down cross hanging behind it. On either side of the altar, stained glass windows let a small amount of multicolored light to seep into the room. In front of the altar stood a woman in a wedding dress. Her dress was torn and frayed, and red stains marred the otherwise pure white garment. She was sobbing, and clutching the hands of the lifeless, skeletal corpse in a tuxedo that stood across from her. As we approached the open door on the other side of the room, the bride let go of the dummy’s hands, and it fell to the floor unrealistically. She turned to us, revealing her pallid, tear-stained face and began screaming wildly.

We passed through the open door into what looked like a factory floor. Our footsteps on the hard concrete floor echoed through the nearly empty room as we approached the only furnishing: a conveyor belt that ran from one wall to the other. At the far end was a large, somewhat phony-looking circular saw blade. A dummy was bound and laying on the belt on the opposite end, slowly approaching the blade. A speaker somewhere within the dummy created distorted screams. A man dressed in safety gear laughed maniacally as he pushed down a lever beside the blade, causing the conveyor belt to speed up slightly. No one in our group so much as jumped when we passed the plastic blade and entered the next room.

We strolled through a graveyard, iron fences on either side of the path separating us from plastic tombstones and zombified actors who groaned and shuffled, one of them approaching the fence to reach for a girl towards the front of the line. At the end of the path stood two open doors. Between the fences was a figure in a black cloak, his face invisible under the jet black hood. He clutched a large, prop scythe in one hand. The door to his left revealed what appeared to be a long hallway. The door on his right opened only into pitch blackness. He pointed to the left as member of our group approached him, obediently entering the hallway. This pattern repeated until I approached, bringing up the rear. He quickly moved his hand and pointed towards the dark doorway. Normally I would be hesitant to continue by myself, but considering how unimpressed I had been up to this point, I smiled and strolled into the inky darkness.