Sheriff Conley met the boys at the door. They were all clearly upset about something, trying to tell him several things all at once. He could hardly make out anything any of them were saying, but he recognized the boys from the high school and the football games he worked on Friday nights. They were all decent kids, who came from good families, but they were still teens. Who knows what they could have gotten themselves into?
He tried to calm them down by patting their shoulders, urging them one by one to slow down, but he was having no effect. Finally his deputy had come out to help, and he and Sheriff Conley nudged the boys in through the front door. Before the stiff hinge on it would allow it to shut the deputy shot back through the door, jogging over to the Jeep and shutting off the ignition. He grabbed the keys and hit the light switch so the vehicle wouldn’t die, and he made sure the doors were shut.
It was that time of night when the lights of the cozy houses and apartments start getting shut off, but the inside lights of some buildings linger on. Maybe that was why there was still a glow bleeding down on the front stoop of the Harris County Police Department, but all too often there is more than one reason for things. This time there was another reason for the eerily colored glow, one which did not even match the color of the lights coming from inside the building. This light was angry and evil. That was it’s color, and it had a face just as angry and evil as that, maybe more so. Behind that face there was nothing. If emptiness can really be a thing, if it was ever meant to be anything or be allowed to have a name, it would surely be called Pumpkinface.
T.S. Hurt
About the Author
T.S. Hurt has been telling lies since childhood. His favorite genre to read is horror/suspense, and this might either be the cause of why his path has led him into such dark places he explores in his writing or quite possibly, it is because he has never been able to escape the tethers of his childhood and truly enjoys the thrill of misleading his readers, urging them to come along on the journey with him.
Follow along with his twitter journey here: https://twitter.com/TS17293197
Neumack Woods
N.M. Brown
The kids in my town play like other kids, we look like other kids and we sound like other kids. However, the children of our town are NOT like other kids. Other kids…other towns...don’t have Neumack Woods.
It’s heavily rumored that Neumack Woods is haunted ground. Legend states that if a child under the age of fourteen travels into the woods after 8pm, they’ll very distinctly hear a baby crying. I don’t know why it’s 8pm, maybe because the sun’s been long gone by then? I also don’t know why the age has to be under fourteen, but I can take a guess. I’m assuming that it’s because kids under that age still have most of their childlike innocence. They say that children are more sensitive to the supernatural than adults, so that’s gotta have something to do with it.
My friend Ricky Doyle lives down the block and over aways from Neumack, and I’m staying at his house tonight. We’ve been talking about going out there for months, but just now had gotten the courage to set our plan into motion. We’re going to sneak out at 8:15 and go check it out. Ricky and I are both eleven years old, since his birthday last week, so that checks out too. We shouldn’t have any problem hearing the baby. It was all figured out, a perfect plan. We’d eat dinner, pretend to go to bed, sneak out, hear the baby and be back in bed before anyone even knew we were gone.
This was our chance to bring some credit to the story. No one we had known had ACTUALLY gone to the woods. It was always a friend of a friend, or a cousin’s girlfriend’s neighbor who supposedly went and experienced it. Not much went on in our town, and there wasn’t much to do. I’ve always been mischievous, constantly seeking out adventures, and Ricky needs a friend so it works out for the both of us. His interest in all things creepy and spooky isn’t as enthusiastic as mine is, and I think he mainly goes along with my plans because he’s just happy to have someone to hang out with.
School dragged on forever, and finally it was time to meet Ricky for the buses. My mom wrote a note saying I could ride his bus home with him! Ricky’s already at the bus loop by the time that I get there.
“Aidan, hey! Did you give your note to the front office to ride home with me?” I take a piece of paper out of my pocket and wave it around, like a flag of victory. “I got the bus pass right here!” I told him triumphantly. “What’s your mom making for dinner?” I asked him. He told me we were having spaghetti, my favorite!
We ate quickly that night without a word, not that there was much chance for one. We were shoveling in huge bites super
