Short Scary Ghost Stories
This is one of those short scary ghost stories that makes you want to think things like this can't really happen. That it's all just in your imagination. Writers use their imaginations everyday, and that's where the things they make up are supposed to stay, but reality isn't fiction and this is one of the short scary ghost stories that turns out to be too real.
Just My Imagination
Deadlines can be a real source of inspiration for some writers. Trying to get a final draft done and pushing it down to the wire releases enough adrenaline into the bloodstream to fire all your neurons at one time. David wrote his best when his blood was pumping and his mind was so deep inside the story he didn't hear or see anything else around him.
When Suzanne came into the basement he never heard her. He was hunched over his keyboard barely seeing the words appear on the computer screen. He concentrated on the scene playing out in sharp detail in his mind.
"Going to be much longer?" she bent and whispered it in his ear knowing the reaction she'd get – and loving it.
David jumped in his seat his fingers jamming against the keyboard. A string of garbled nonsense instantly appeared on the screen.
"Look what you made me do?" He pointed to the offending sentence and tried not to sigh with relief. She'd scared the crap out of him, again. One day he'd surprise her and drop dead from a heart attack.
She laughed, scaring David was a favourite pastime. "What would your fans think, the great David Seymore scared out of his wits by a girl?"
"They'd think I really get into my stories and they'd love it."
"Egomaniac". Suzanne kissed him on the neck, "You coming to bed?"
"Not till this is done. If I break another deadline, I'm going to be sliced and diced instead of my characters."
"All right. I'm turning in, though." She walked halfway across the room. "You know, we really should move you back upstairs. This basement is more like a dungeon than an office."
"I like it down here, it's quiet."
"At least put in more lights."
"It's perfect the way it is. I've written some of my best stuff since I moved down here. It gets me in the mood." He tapped away at the keys never hearing Suzanne go up the stairs.
The house grew still as the hours passed. David glanced at the clock, three a.m., what did his fans call it? Dead Time? That would be perfect timing then because he was at the part where someone got dead – either his heroine or the villain. He was pretty sure which way he would swing on this one.
The problem was this was a tough scene to get right. He wanted gore, well, his fans wanted gore. It was a fine line though between gore that made your spine tingle and gore that just gushed blood and guts all over the page.
He stretched, working the kinks out of his shoulders.
Sometimes his writing got stale in these hairy spots, it just seemed like he was doing the same thing over and over. To get through it he had decided, two novels back, to write with real crime villains as his inspiration.
He didn't write the actual crimes into his stories. He just leeched the atmosphere from them. It was a mind game he played with himself and it worked.
Yet this story bothered him for some reason he couldn't place. The villain, in real life, was a serial killer, an especially brutal one. It had excited him to read about him at first. A character had sprung up in his mind almost immediately and he'd jumped on it. Now he just wanted to get done and forget about him.
He decided then, his heroine would win. In his real life the killer had been caught and executed. In this new life that David had granted him the very victim he hoped to mutilate would get the upper hand and decapitate him in a final bloody encounter.
David set his scene. The villain had chased the heroine down a dark alley and was creeping up on her from the opposite side. David wove his words as the scene rolled out.
He tensed over the keyboard as he tried to keep up with the scene playing out in his mind. He didn't notice a sound in the house, was unaware of the wind playing against the small casement window, the soft hum of the air conditioner in the other room. Every cell he owned was honed in on his internal movie player.
It was why he liked it down in the basement, he was cocooned away from real life. Down here it was all his world, the world he built.
He got to the part where his heroine swung her axe and struck the head from the villain's shoulders. It bounced once against the wall...
A noise sounded behind him and he jumped up from his chair. "Suzanne, you're killing me. Just let me get this last bit and I'm outa here."
He couldn't lose the thread, not now. He sat back down and continued to type though his heart hammered. It was all coming together so real he could almost feel it brushing against his skin.
The villain's head sailed through the air in slow motion and landed on the pavement...
Another sound went off behind David, like pumpkin guts splatting against the floor - or a severed head landing on its bloodied stump.
That woman was going to seriously kill him.
David froze over the keyboard as a random thought pushed through his brain. He listened for another sound.
Suzanne should be giggling, she loved to scare him but couldn't keep quiet after she pulled her prank and this time her timing was brilliant.
To actually be able to time each noise with him typing the words was...uncanny.
To get the sound to match was... fairly impossible.
David was barely breathing as full realization came to him. "How did you know Suzanne? How could you know?" he whispered.
Suzanne never read his stories, she detested them. Out of respect he didn’t discuss his stories with her, at all.
"Coincidence. Lucky guess." He got up from the computer and slowly turned to face the stairs.
No one was behind him.
"Suzanne?" He heard the clock ticking, heard the blood pumping through his heart as if every sense in him had been opened wide. "Suzanne? You really scared me that time, good one."
He took a step toward the staircase listening hard. Terror gripped at his throat. It was Suzanne playing tricks on him, it couldn't be anything else. He was letting his stories get to him.
But the sound had been so real.
"Ok Suzanne I’ll play." He raced ahead and took the stairs two at a time. He didn't hear any footsteps running ahead of him or any tell tale giggling. He ran harder not daring to admit it could be anything but Suzanne playing with him.
He made his way to their bedroom and took a deep breath before looking in the doorway. Suzanne was sound asleep, one hand tucked under her chin.
His pulse hammered in his throat.
David moved across the hall and peeked at their son, he was sprawled across the bed, sleeping.
"Imagination, just my imagination running away with me." He hummed to himself, the tune suddenly stuck in his head. Too many late nights and the air conditioner was acting up, that's why it was so hot in the house, why he was dripping with sweat. They'd find a huge puddle under it in the morning. He'd tell Suzanne how spooked he'd gotten and she'd be hysterical with laughter.
David went back to their bedroom and undressed, the deadline could wait until morning. As he snuggled up tight against Suzanne he decided maybe it was a good time to move out of the basement and back into the study. Climbing up and down the stairs was a bother after all.
There are two theories concerning poltergeists . One simply calls any noise made by a ghost poltergeist activity. The other holds that sometimes the mind can be so charged up with emotion that it can project what it is thinking into reality. On occasions objects have been known to move with no apparent cause.
If the mind can cause that kind of phenomenon can it reach even further and deeper? Can it reach down into the realm of death and awaken a dead killer and execute him again? Or was the sound of a severed head hitting the floor at the exact time David typed it just coincidence?
Maybe it's best if you don't think about it too hard.
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