BookTober - Spooky Stories

Last Wednesday we hosted a spooky story writing event for Booktober. Sweets and spooky music were abundant while our writers worked on their best spooky story. The writers collectively picked the prompts and worked away. You can read snippets of two of these stories below and, if you think you can make the best ending, send it in to us! 

Promps: 

Place: Maynooth and Longford 

Main Character: 17-year-old Pumpkin 

Antagonist: Simpson 

Short Story 1 by Terri Malone 

It was a weirdly warm October night when Pumpkin left her college accommodation to clear her head. Pumpkin chose to walk along the Maynooth Canal, her favourite walk. She loved meeting the kind fishermen during the day, as they always had the best stories.  

Her mind wandered to OJ, the fisherman who had told her the Legend of Limbo. No – not the party game.  

A girl had been missing for months only to emerge from a lake in Longford. She had been pronounced dead – parts of her decaying body found around different college campuses, but never Maynooth, the one she attended.  

When she returned, she reported living in an upside-down world – her limbo.  

Suddenly a chill spilled down Pumpkin’s spine. Broken from her thoughts, Pumpkin becomes well aware of her surroundings, and it had become way too dark. This wasn’t her normal route.  

… think you can finish the story? Send us your ending to literary@mulife.ie 

Short Story 2 – Nightmares In The Mist by Kyle Murphy 

Mrs. Harrington didn’t want to believe what the Gardaí told her about her “little Pumpkin”. 

The picture frame of her little boy cradled in her arms in the hospital ward shattered on the stone floor. 

That evening Stephen and Tomi went out trick or treating around Maynooth. After, they snuck onto the field of the university’s south campus. They scoffed down as many sweets as their small bellies would allow. If they came home with pillowcases stuffed with Lidl-branded sweets, their parents would seize their stashes. Their parents wouldn’t allow their kids to rot their teeth and rack up three years’ worth of dentist appointments in one night. 

The campus was empty, or so they thought. The shedding tree branches stabbed into the night sky and the air was sickly crisp while the two young boys giggled and munched on that night’s score. Their sweets tasted that bit better when they weren’t supposed to have them, like a joke you weren’t supposed to laugh at. In the not so far distance, the mist started to shape around the figure of a creeping man. 

“You boys should know better than to be out this late.” The old man said, and offered them a lift home. The two boys froze.  

The two boys had heard all the rumours about the man in the van. The old man who “offered” kids a ride home from school, only for those kids to never be seen again. If the stories whispered around the school corridors were only rumours, why did the principal Mrs McCarthy implement a strict school collection policy at the school gates? Maybe if she had implemented this policy sooner John Moran’s seat wouldn’t be empty. Maybe his parents would still be together too, even if just to keep their other son happy. 

To the two boys, none of this was real. Not when their teacher explained John’s absence to them at an assembly, not when their parents disapproved of their plan to go out trick or treating, however it became all too real when the mist shaped around a knife drawn tightly in the old man’s hand.  

The two boys were sitting ducks waiting for the inevitable. The old man saw them as his next prey. Their skulls would go nicely with the others, even the skulls of the uglier kids that didn’t make the cut on the local news. Tomi refused to wait any longer and got up. 

Tomi mustered up the strength of fifteen men on a rugby team and tackled the old man. The old man stumbled back and fell.  A winded breath escaped him. The old man searched for his knife. His hands scrambled on the ground around him to find his knife but to no avail. The knife was in Tomi’s chest yet neither of them noticed in the struggle. Tomi choked the old man until his fingers went numb. Soon Tomi couldn’t feel any other part of his body either. He collapsed onto the grass with the knife still inside him.  

The man, regaining his consciousness, tried to get up. Stephen stood up finally and walked towards what was now the corpse of his friend. The thought made him shiver more than the cold air ever could. Stephen dug the knife out of Tomi’s chest and lashed out his fear into the old man. The slashes became more and more violent as they grew from fear to revenge. Stephen carved out the old man’s insides until they became outsides. His intestines spilled out onto the brown grass like a steaming pile of red gummy worms.  

… think you can finish the story? Send us your ending to literary@mulife.ie