Spooky Story!

By Hannah, Grade 8

Rain trickled down the gutters and made small plinking noise into the puddles, invisible on the black sidewalks in the middle of the night. Mr. Philips was a businessman, the proprietor of The New England Technology Installment Center, all work and no play. But even to someone as cold and as hard as him, with the ignorance of his new tuxedo now drenched of course, the sound was mindlessly pleasing.

The slurp and squeak of his oxfords against the flooded sidewalks followed him through the drizzle and all the way home. It was a normal night for Mr. Philips, except for the nightmare that had slipped his mind, because he so forced his brain to forget what had happened and to blame the scene on the night fog, and the tiredness from the day. He couldn’t wait to get home to have dinner with Mrs. Philips, she was a prodigy in the kitchen. Steak, potato, green beans, flakey homemade buttered biscuits, and to wash it all down with a cold glass of milk sounded like just about heaven to him right now.

Mr. Philips had crossed over a couple intersections, two blocks from the office to wear his green Nissan 200SX sit parked. He clicked the button to unlock his car, and the car lights blinked to signal the device had worked and was now unlocked.

Splish splish splish splish

Mr. Philips turned around, wondering what in god's name had made that noise. Glancing around the scene, and finding nothing, he assumed it had just been an animal.

What a strangely heavy and fast animal though. The back of his brain pleaded to him, but he pushed that thought out of his head, it scared him too much to think about what it could be if this wasn’t just a squirrel or raccoon.

Mr. Philips shook his head and opened the car door, but something stopped him. Even through the plinking of the rain, and the muffled sound of traffic only a couple blocks away, he heard the whisper clearly,

“Andrew.”

Andrew Edgar Philips felt his body go numb. He had never told any of his clients his first name, and the voice sounded too different to be one of his co-workers. The voice sounded raspy and high pitched, like someone had taken a cheese grater to the throat of a child. But what horrified Andrew the most, was that the voice sounded playful.

He was hardly able to keep the stutter in, “H-hello?”

Clearing his voice and becoming more confident, but not any less terrified,

“Who’s there?! I work at NETIC, I’m a very powerful man! I won’t hesitate to call someone!”

He waited. Silence. And then, the cackling.

It started out quiet, like a chuckle. Then louder, a giggle. Even louder, a laugh. Extremely loud to the point where Andrew would had covered his ears, if he had not been frozen in fear, came the cackle.

HEE - haah

HEE -haah

HEE - haah. The sickly cackling went on like this for only a couple seconds, but was horrifying enough to last a lifetime for Andrew. With each breath the laughs grew more twisted and disgusting sounding. Andrew could see a jerking shadow of an unknown figure on the brick wall next to him.

Abruptly, the laughs stopped. They cut off into the silence, and Andrew still did not know what was making those terrifying noises. Then, starting again, came the breathing.

Heavy, heaving came from behind him, but Andrew did not dare to look, he closed his eyes shut tight and prayed for it to be over soon. After a few moments, the breathing began to slow, and came out harder, as if whatever was making the noise was panicking.

Splish splish splish splish

And then the thing was gone. Leaving Mr. Philips alone in the rain once again.

Mr. Philips practically jumped into the car, not bothering to put his seat belt on. He started the ignition and drove home. Once he was far into traffic, but never far enough away from his now retired parking space. He closed his eyes, and let a single tear fall from his left eye. Here come the waterworks, he thought.

After sobbing the fear out of him, he made a plan.

Mr. Philips would go home, eat dinner with his wife and never tell her about the events that happened. He would forget about what happened tonight, that it was just the sounds of the rain and cars and he was hallucinating from his drierieness. Last, he would never park in that place again, nor would he ever set foot. He would now park where everybody else parks, in the garage next to the doctors office (though it was always crowded, he would find a way).

And Mr. Philips did just that.