Zac Clouse, Short story

Its Finna be Lit

Halloween night, 1972, in Boston Massachusetts was one if the stories you only see in movies. It was 51° on a clear night with a full moon glistening all over the streets. Haunted houses echoing with screams heard miles away, candy filling the streets and kids running around with costumes on.

5:30 pm the sirens go off signaling the beginning of trick or treating until 11 pm, all the kids run out of their houses meeting up with their friends and parents getting together to take pictures. Kids run off to start getting candy and parents follow behind. Edward wearing his Captain America costume and a couple friends decide to split up and go their own direction; parents unaware of their so doing. They go up to all the houses with the lights on a ring the doorbells. “Trick or Treat” says Edward, “wow that is a really cool costume, you really look like Captain America” says the middle aged woman who hands him 2 kit-kats. They walk down the driveway and continue going to all the houses with lights on.

Back with the other group they originally started out with, some of the other kids start to wonder where Edward and a couple other friends went off to. Billy one of the kids that was with Edward in the begging went up to the Jennifer ( Edwards mom), “Hey Mrs.Stein have you seen Edward and James?”. Mrs.Stein looks around for Edward and James and begins yelling their names in hope they would hear her and come back to the group. 15 minutes on constantly calling for them she begins to get worried. She calls Edward but his phone is at home and she can’t get ahold of him. Mrs. Stein hurries home and gets her keys and hops in her car to go around the neighborhood searching for her son.

Meanwhile, Edward and his friends keep going, collecting candy and having laughs with each other. They have an idea now that getting candy was losing the fun and their bags were starting to get full. “Hey guys you wanna play a game” says Edward. Everyone says sure why not, “let’s play hide-n-seek and the last person to be found gets a handful of everybody’s candy” says Edward. The group says sure and they come up with the plan. “Okay let’s go up to this park when it gets a little bit darker”. They continue up the road and they make it to the park.

7:28 pm they arrive. “Okay guys I’m going to be the person who seeks I will give you guys 10 minutes to hide and then I’m coming to look” Edward preaches. 10 minutes go by and Edward screams, “10 minutes is up I’m coming”. The park is a heavily wooded area with a big pond in the middle so he starts to make his way around the edge of the pond. Frogs croaking on the shore is echoing through the area, cicadas stirring on the trees. Edward makes his way around the pond and starts into the wooded area. He finds a dirt pathway leading into the woods, he still hasn’t found anyone. As he continues down the pathway he notices a shiny lantern, walking toward it he begins to see a little shed that its hooked onto. He stands for a minute and begins to ponder if he would try and open the door, with hesitation he grabs the handle and twists it just enough to nudge it open a little bit. He opens the door and his head begins to race when he finds a item that should not have been there.

It’s been 30 minutes and Edwards mom is frantically calling their names. She calls the other parents to come help look but they have no luck. She calls the police saying “my kid and a couple of his friends went missing and we can’t find them”, panicking to the operator on the phone. 15 minutes later a cop car arrives at her house and pulls in the driveway, the cop gets out of the car and approaches Mrs. Stein as she’s holding back tears. “Please help us they have been gone for almost a hour and 30 minutes now” the officer lets her into the passenger seat of his cop car and they begin searching for the kids. Using the loud speaker she’s yelling his name but nothing has resulted from it.

Edward twists the handle of the door and nudges it open only to find something extremely nerve racking. A shotgun and a 8 inch blade was sitting on a drawer as if somebody just left them there for him to find them. He takes a step in and looks around the shed, he finds a map of the park he is currently in and a red circle with a x in the middle of it. Below the circle it says “you are here” almost like it was meant to be found by someone. As he continues looking around he can faintly bear leaves and sticks crackling and his heart begins to race. He hurries up and runs out of the shed and he yells “James this ain’t funny come out of hiding and help me find the others”. Nothing. Silence. His heart is racing as there was no response. He hurries his way back the way he thought was where he came from but he cannot find the pond.

Fifteen minutes later he’s still walking in the woods clueless as to where his friends are hiding. Leaves wrinkling under his feet he thinks he hears something else and stops right in his tracks “James” he yells, nothing, he begins to walk straight ahead. And all of the sudden a figure starts to rapidly approach him and he begins to scream and runs the other direction. After a second he hears laughing, “did I scare you Edward” as he’s hysterically laughing Edward hits him as pity. “Why would you do that that isn’t funny”. “Why were you following me in the woods?, “ I wasn’t I was hiding in this tree the whole time” says James. Edwards heart drops, “I found a shed and it had a gun and a knife in it James, and I heard somebody walking”.

James begins to get spooked and he says “we need to find the others and get out of here as soon as we can”. They begin yelling their other friends names but no luck. As they walked down the pathway they hear noises that are not normal. They stop and they hear heavy breathing and they begin to get scared. Standing there quietly the wind picks up, the leaves blowing causing it to be almost impossible to hear. It calms down and a loud scream was heard in the distance and they discuss if they should go towards the sound to hear if it was one of their friends and they agree to do so.

As they get closer they hear another scream, they begin to start running to the sound. The screaming stops. They go to where they heard the screaming and they were scared beyond straight of what they came across. One of their friends was on the ground and they run up to him shouting his name. He does not respond, as they kneel down by him they realize a liquid on the ground and they scream in fear. It was blood. Matt’s foot was caught in a bear trap and was closed still. Edward and James reach down at the trap attempting to pull it off they begin to pull it and out of nowhere Matt lets out a piercing shriek as they pull it off. They get the trap off of his leg and they pick him up and put them on their backs. Edward and James attempt to make their way back to the pond and after 10 minutes of walking they find it. A sigh of relief but they still need urgent help they set Matt on the ground gently as he lets out another shriek of pain.

Edward completely forgot about the others as James reminded him that 2 more were still in the woods. Edward suggests James stays with Matt to make sure he’s okay. As Edward hurries back into the woods shouting for their names he gets restless, sprinting he hears something he did wished he wouldn’t hear again. Screaming in the nearby distance. He runs to the noise and he finds his friend. Horrified by what he sees Edward let’s out a scream. John has his hands nailed to a tree and is unable to move. Blood streaks running down the tree, Edward doesn’t know what to do. He begins looking around for something to pry the nails from John's hands. He remembers that in the shed he found a little bit ago had a pair of pliers on the desk. He goes up to John and says “ok there was a shed back this way I’m going to go get a pair of pliers I’ll be back right away I promise”.

Running back towards the way where he seen the shed through branches and leaves he eventually finds it. He sees the pliers and grabs them as fast as he could. There was a note under them. It read “there’s still one more missing”. His heart drops. He leaves the shed and runs back to where John is. He prepares John for what he’s going to do. Nervously he begins to wrap the pliers around the nail, he starts to pull the nail out and John lets out a vicious scream. He gets the nail out of his right hand and moves over to the left, repeating the process and John screaming once again he gets it out. John now free from the tree falls to the ground. Speedily Edward picks him up and puts his arm around him and begins to take him towards the pond where James and Matt are still waiting. They make it and sets James on the ground.

With one more friend missing Edward begins to walk back in the woods but he glances at the pond and he gets a clump in his throat. He sees a body floating on top of the water. He yells for James and they both run over to the pond and start swimming towards the body. The reach it and they see that it is Jacob and they both grab him and attempt to swim him back towards the shore. When they make it to the shore they start to attempt to get Jacob to breathe performing cpr after 2 minutes of doing so he spits up water and starts coughing. Relieved Edward runs back over to the others and does not know what to do now. He begins to panic, nervously, as he knows Matt and John have lost a lot of blood.

After 5 minutes they hear a car driving in the distance. Edward begins to run towards it and eventually they meet up. The car stopping, the door opens, it’s his mom. She runs at him and picks him up and gives him a huge hug but Edward stops her and tells her what has happened to his friends. They get in the car and speed over to them. But they were not alone. There was a figure in the distance approaching slowly and Edward and his mom hurry to try and get Matt and John into the police car. The officer gets out of the car with his gun in his hand a begins to yell at the person walking towards them to stop moving or he will be shot. The person stops and stands there for a couple seconds, and he reached into his coat and pull out a item. Edward looking over there realizes that it is a knife and starts yelling”he’s got a knife!!”. As he pulls out the knife he begins running towards them, the officer screaming to stop, he doesn’t. After a couple seconds the officer lets off 4 shots from his gun and the person falls to the ground. Everyone in the car the officer calls for an ambulance and backup. Approaching the person on the ground laying face down, with his gun still out he kicks the knife out of the way so he couldn’t grab it.

8 minutes later the backup and ambulance arrive. They rush Matt and John to the hospital and take the person into custody. As they’re sitting in the hospital Edwards mom was asked to step into the hallway, “Mrs.Stein we have found the identity of the person who did all of this, it was a convicted serial killer who escaped from prison last week and went missing”. Hearing the new she begins crying knowing that her son could’ve died tonight along with those other kids and gets reliving news that the serial killer dies from his wounds from the officer and makes her way back into the hospital room. Matt and John recovers fully and nobody had any fatal injuries.