Spoopy Writing Challenge - Day 2

Welcome back, ghouls and ghosts, it’s day 2 of my spooky October writing challenge!

I had some exciting news yesterday – but I can’t give details about that story acceptance yet, so you’ll just have to suffer in anticipation.

However, if you haven’t already, you can grab a pre-order of AHH! That's What I Call Horror: An Anthology of '90s Horror, which features my blockbuster horror story, “Return to Gray Springs: Blockbuster Blues”!

Besides writing a 90s horror story, I also contributed some of the interior art for each story, as well as designed the paperback page break. If you get a special edition signed copy, you also get merch! So don’t wait! 

Now onto the story. This prompt was given to me by Rebecca Cuthbert:

Person’s parent or grandparent passes away. They have to clean out the house. There’s a partial bottle of whiskey. The person decides to have a drink. But the bottle of booze is haunted and now the person is possessed by their grandparent.

So for my second story of my seven day spooky challenge, I bring you…

Granny Mae, The Witch Bitch

My grandmother’s house was a ramshackle affair, single storey, peeling paint, broken shutters, overgrown yard that probably drove her neighbours crazy. No wonder the neighbourhood kids called her a witch. And they didn’t even know her. 

‘Cause I did and I knew she was worse.

My wrists still ached with phantom memory pains of her smacking them if I spoke too loudly, if I reached for an extra cookie (never freshly baked in that house), or if I left the chores too long. Yet my dad always made me visit, every other weekend, no matter how much I cried.

I took a key from my pocket, walking over the cracked front walk, and unlocked the door. I was still seething. Even after her death, Granny Mae was punishing me. 

Her will demanded my subservience. I was the only granddaughter and “cleaning was a woman’s job” stated her will, nothing would be paid out to the living relatives until the house was clean. 

Dad was convinced Granny Mae was rich and so, here I was, on a bright autumn Saturday morning, to clean that bitch’s house. 

The door opened, revealing the living room. 

It was just like I remembered, the last time I was there over thirteen years ago. No TV, no couch (Granny Mae didn’t like or even want visitors, besides me), just a buckling armchair, a stool (God, I hated that thing), and books. Books overflowing shelves, in waist high piles on the floor, and bottles. Bottles of wine and whiskey and scotch, all empty of alcohol – though some had been filled with sand and stones, bird bones and beads. 

I sighed. This was going to take a while. 

Beyond the living room was the kitchen, all the counter space taken up by empty boxes and more empty bottles. The dining room didn’t have any furniture besides a folded cot – where I slept every weekend for years as a kid, surrounded by books. I continued on, feeling tired already just looking at all the shit I needed to box up or throw out. 

A hall off the kitchen led to the back of the house, to the lone bedroom and bathroom. The bathroom was the single uncluttered room in the house, the white tiles were practically blindingly clean. The bedroom was as choked with books as the rest of the house, but had extras. Twigs had been tied together in strange configurations and hung on the walls, alongside dried herbs and flowers. Garlic bulbs hung on ropes in front of the window, like a weird hippie curtain. The bed was neatly made, as if waiting for Granny Mae to come back and find rest. 

But she wouldn’t be coming back and I couldn’t find any piece of me to feel bad about it.

She’d been found a few blocks from here, three weeks ago in the early morning, stabbed. A mugging gone wrong – though, knowing Granny Mae, maybe it’d been one of the many people she’d pissed off.

I dropped the garbage bags I’d been carrying on the bed. May as well start here and get rid of her clothes first. I turned to the dresser and stopped. 

The top of her dresser was clear and clean, besides for a single bottle of half finished whiskey. Cuthbert’s Finest, 20 year. It sat, catching the light and casting amber hues across the wall. I smiled a bit. Granny Mae would hate it if I had some, so I picked it up, uncorked it, and took a swig.

It was as I swallowed that I saw the salt circle on the dresser that had surrounded the bottle. I looked down at the bottle and saw that a strange symbol – like an ankh with an eye above it – had been scratched at the base of the neck. 

The whiskey hit my belly, my nerves buzzed, and the hair on my arms rose. I could smell Granny Mae’s deodorant, I felt a breath on the side of my neck, and then I fell.

Except I wasn’t falling, I sank behind in my own mind. My control, my self, my being shrunk and shrunk and shrunk until I was an observer in my own head, looking out my eyes, but detached. 

In this way, I watched my hands put the bottle back on the dresser and sweep away the salt circle. 

Granny Mae. I can’t explain how I knew. But I knew. As if in a dream when knowledge is available to the dreamer and it is just true, in the same way I knew that Granny Mae had taken over. 

She turned and took us to her closet, throwing open the door, and shoving aside the hanging shirts. Kneeling, she pressed a hand to a small section of the wall. Something clicked, then a corner of the wall swung open, revealing a deep compartment. 

If I could gasp, or scream, or question, I would have. But I was a silent passenger in my own body as Granny Mae pulled out a sawed off shotgun, a box of shells, and three grenades. 

Last, she pulled out a weathered leather journal. 

Granny Mae stuffed the weapons into a black backpack, which she pulled on. The journal she carried to the bed and placed it on the neatly made covers. She tapped the cover twice. 

Then we left, through the rooms and back out the front door, down the walk to the road. 

Down the street, Granny Mae walked us both, taking us to her death site. I recognized it. Dad had driven me and my brothers by it and pointed it out. 

“This is why you try and make nice with people, kids. So you don’t end up like Granny Mae,” he’d said.

Now, I never liked Granny Mae either, but even to me it’d sounded cold. She’d only been dead for a day at that point, her blood still a rusty stain on the sidewalk. 

And today, the stain was just a ghost of a mark. Granny Mae didn’t even look down at it as we walked over, going straight up the front walk to a massive McMansion, surrounded by carefully tended bushes and flowerbeds. 

Without any hesitation, she knocked on the door. This can’t be real, I thought. I’m dreaming. The whiskey was drugged. But I wasn’t and it hadn’t been. I knew this to be true.

The front door opened. A man stood in front of me and I recognized him. The mayor. His face was plastered everywhere, up for re-election. 

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking me up and down, his hungry gaze making my skin crawl.

“Oh um, hi!” Granny Mae chirped, twirling a length of my hair around my index finger. “I’m doing, like, a school report and was hoping I could interview you?”

Is this how she thinks college students sound? Like valley girls? I was embarrassed for both of us. And terrified. Scared of what Granny Mae was planning, considering what she’d packed. 

The mayor smiled – Johnny Borne was his name – and licked his lips. “Sure, honey. Why don’t you come in?”

Granny Mae gave a little girl giggle and I became convinced that death had made her insane, that I was insane. We followed Mayor Borne inside his McMansion, the front room was all decadent marble and sculptures. 

“So, what’s your report about, honey?” Borne asked. 

“Aren’t you going to bring me somewhere more comfortable?” replied Granny Mae and if she wasn’t already dead, I would have promised to murder her. 

The Mayor grinned and led us deeper into the house, to a back office – walnut, leatherbound books, and plush chairs galore – gesturing us inside. Ceiling high windows looked out onto a perfectly manicured backyard and pool. 

Granny Mae set her backpack down on a chair and leaned against it, cocking a hip. “Drink?”

Borne ate my body up in a glance and I wished I had the ability to vomit. What is with old dudes being so gross? Then he went over to a side table, where a decanter set sat. Granny Mae didn’t waste any time. She’d always been someone to get straight to the point. 

Pulling the shotgun out, she levelled it at Borne’s back. He turned back, glasses in each hand, and froze.

“What the hell?” he snapped. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Finishing what I started, Johnny,” Granny Mae spat and for a brief moment my voice sounded exactly like hers. 

Borne went pale. “No, it’s impossible!”

“Let’s not worry about what is and isn’t impossible, kid.” Granny Mae smirked. “Open the door.”

“Go fuck yourself, Mae.”

Granny Mae sighed. The same sigh she used every time before smacking my wrist, or yelling at me, and that’s when I knew Johnny Borne would be regretting his words. 

The shotgun went off, I’d never shot a gun before and I was shocked at its power, at the recoil. Borne went down, his left knee a crimson ruin. Granny Mae strode to him, grabbed his left wrist as he wailed, and dragged him over to a bookcase. Grabbing his collar, she yanked him up, and shoved him against the shelves, then she pressed the barrels of the gun against his neck.

Borne was crying, his chest hitching with tears. “Please don’t kill me, Mae! I swear, it wasn’t my idea! It was hers! I swear!”

“Open the door, kid, or I’ll paint your fancy fake books with your blood.”

The mayor nodded and reached for a crystal skull set between two copies of Dante’s Inferno. He slipped the index and middle fingers of his right hand in either socket, which lit up, revealing fingerprint scanners. These scanned, beeped, flashed green. Granny Mae stepped back as the bookcase slid back and to the right, revealing a descending stone staircase. 

“Please, Mae.” The mayor had fallen to the floor without his support. “It was her, not me! Her!”

She looked down at him. Smiled. I felt bad for him then. Granny Mae’s smiles were the worst. “Yeah, I know it, kid. You ain’t smart enough. However, you did stab me and for that – ” The next shotgun blast took his head, silencing his tears. 

Down the stairs we went. Down and down and down. The air grew chilly, damp. Lights set in green-glass sconces guided us. Finally, at the bottom of the stairs was a small room that contained only a massive golden door. 

Granny Mae reached into her bag and took out the grenades. Holy shit, what is happening? This is nuts! Then she slowly, carefully, quietly, opened the door. 

Inside was a huge sunken chamber, the middle of which contained a clear pool of green water that reflected the torchlight in golden flickers. Around its border were eggs, huge iridescent eggs waiting to hatch.

A woman stood in the middle of the pool, embracing a giant snake. The snake was massive, coiling around her limbs, and rather than a snake’s visage, it had a somewhat human-like face, albeit deformed and grotesque. Fangs stuck out from its lips and its eyes glittered black in the flickering light, showing a malevolent intelligence.

“Hey hun, am I interrupting something?” Granny Mae used the same tone she’d used on me when she’d catch me on my phone, rather than cleaning. 

The woman turned, arms still wrapped around her lover. “Who — oh.” 

She smirked. “Mae. Didn’t expect to see you back here.”

Behind my back, Granny Mae’s grip tightened on the grenades. “I’ll be fair, Lisbeth. When I came here last, I never expected this and, for sure, it caught me by surprise. You play the helpless victim quite well.”

Lisbeth shrugged, snapped her fingers. The eggs around the pool began to shiver, the life inside of them roiled, readying to wake. “Let’s be real, Mae, you are – were old. Old-fashioned. So you assumed my husband was to blame. You deserved what you got.”

I mean she isn't wrong about you, Granny. Granny Mae sighed. Whether at the woman’s statement or mine, I didn’t know. 

“Either way, I can’t leave you and your spawn here to eat up the town. I do still have family,” she replied. 

“Cute. Protecting a family that hates you.” Lisbeth stroked the flank of her lover, who hissed. “Whose body is that anyways? I’d hate to kill her without knowing her name.”

“Grenade,” replied Granny Mae.

“What?” Lisbeth frowned.

The grenades bounced along the stone floor, one came to rest near a shivering egg, two skittered to the corners of the rooms, and she let one drop right by my feet. Granny Mae didn’t wait, turning and sprinting up the stairs. My heart thundered in my chest, my lungs heaved as we raced towards the exit. 

The woman screamed, her hate and anger chasing us. Granny Mae glanced back once, just as the grenades exploded, shaking the whole building. The snake man was just behind us, his face snarled up with rage, his fangs bared and dripping poison. Then a block of concrete fell from the ceiling, crushing him to the stairs. The staircase crumbled, one or two of the grenades must have destroyed some vital support section or beam, because now Granny Mae was racing against the destruction. 

Despite how much my body ached, how my lungs burned, she never stopped. She fought through the pain and stress, throwing us through the open door way as the stairs completely gave way and the passage was filled with debris. 

Even then, she didn’t stop. She carried us out onto the backyard, over the fence, through the back streets, and back to her home. Only then, inside and safe from witnesses, did she allow my body to collapse to the floor. 

We rested there for a while, then she pushed us up again. Took us back to her bedroom. 

“Damn but it feels good to be young again,” she said to herself, or me, I don’t know. 

She picked up the bottle of Cuthbert’s Finest. “One more for the road.”

And with a gulp, she was gone, and I fell back into myself, into my aching body, my burning lungs, and I fell to the floor, dropping the whiskey. Crying.

#

It took a week to get Granny Mae’s house in order. I let the relatives pick over and take what they wanted (which wasn’t anything, I’m pretty sure they were just hoping to find jewelry or treasures), but I kept the journal secret. The journal Granny Mae had placed on her bed and tapped, to make sure I’d look at it. 

A journal that outlined who she had been, what she had done, and all the things she’d killed that went bump in the night. 

Oh and it turned out she did have a shit ton of money. And it all went to me. 

I can’t say I grew to love Granny Mae. She was still a bitch. 

But I guess I could understand her just a little.

And with what she showed me in her journal, I learned to be a lot more wary of the shadows of the world.

I hope you enjoyed this little tale! And make sure to come back tomorrow for the next!

x PLM