Writing Contest Entries

Halloween Undead Realm

His magic had never been strong, so the easiest time to cast a necromancy portal spell was on all Hallow's eve. Sitting in a graveyard near midnight, he closed his eyes and let the feel of the dead envelop him. There was a cold, eerie wind blowing through the tombstones that seemed to carry small whispers that he couldn't make out. He wasn't sure why he was doing this, maybe he wanted to explore Hades, or maybe he just wanted to see his mother again.

Opening his eyes, he looked at the book in front of him. He acquired the powerful spellbook from a mysterious cloaked trader passing through the village a few years ago, and had kept it hidden ever since.

"Εγώ, απόψε, ανοίξτε τις πύλες στους νεκρούς," he read off the withering pages, and the wind in the graveyard picked up, the whispers becoming louder. "Κάλεσα την πόρτα." The wind started swirling around him, picking up leaves and throwing them into the tornado. The pages were flapping in the wind, so he had to hold them down.

"και ανοίξτε τις πύλες στους χαντε!" The whispers of the wind rose to a howl and ripped the book out of his hands. In front of him, a crack opened in the ground, and ghostly skeletal hands clawed their way out. Soon, there was a mass of non-corporeal skeletons surrounding him, grabbing him, dragging him down through the crack and to the realm they came from. He went along, excited that his spell had worked. As he made his way down the dark and jagged steps, a chill ran up his spine, like something in him was trying to get out of this place. He looked up, only to see the crack that had allowed him down was closing.

"Let me go!" He yelled, trying to break free from the skeleton's grasp for every bone hand that he fought off his body, another five appeared, dragging further and further down. This was a mistake. This was all a mistake. He would have come down here, in the end, one way or another, but this was too soon. Seized with an innate fear as the doorway was barely open wide enough to fit his body anymore, he screamed and tried to run back up the stairs and out of Hades. The cold, eerie whispering he had heard in the graveyard was now pressingly, terrifyingly loud, and he was drowning in it.

"One of usss..." one of the skeletons by him whispered.

"One of usss..."

"No!" He shouted, "I'm not like you! Not yet!" He struggled towards the gate, but it was no more than a peephole, and then, gone.

"One of us..."

"Join us!"

"The faceless..."

"Serve Hades for eternity!" A skeleton lunged out in front of him.

"I won't!" He yelled, "I won't..." he curled up into a ball to protect himself.

"There is nowhere else now, boy..."

"Come serve the almighty lord Hades, Thanatos."