Halloween Ghost Story Contest -- 2006
High School Winners

First Place

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Our first place High School winner is Jeannette Leopold, a student attending Avon High School in Avon, CT.

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The Devil's Messenger

by
Jeannette Leopold

Wind tore across the flat plains of the Asmodian Desert, racing itself down to the lowest point: the cove that stood rocklike at the bottom. It picked up speed as it ran, flying as it moved, twisting the sand into a tornado, then another, and they chased each other down to the cove, whirling and screeching and moaning and yelling until the sun dimmed in horror. The sky heard the storm, and matched it in feeling, becoming vibrant blue, then almost instantly black, and thunderclouds shone brightly against it, clashing, changing with it as lightning bolts hung on threads.

The wind hit the cove, and a whistling pierced the air. It was high pitched, augmented by the shrieking of the wind, as if it were shrieking itself. From out of the cove stepped a figure, dark, and hooded in black; it walked in an odd manner, lifting each foot up carefully before setting it down, and its head was bent, hood pulled over its face. It stopped when it reached a hole in the ground, and it stood before the hole, and reached its hands to the sky, lifting its head to reveal slit eyes, and skin that looked scaly in the blue light of the night. It screamed, and its voice was a thousand men screeching in pain, and the lightning plastered a moving picture in the sky of flames licking bodies, and those flames and its screams seemed to be synchronized; the picture continued to move, morphing into one writhing mass before becoming lightning once more. The creature ceased to howl, and turned its head to look back towards the cove, extending one hand, and as it brought the hand back towards its body, a second creature emerged.

The man being dragged from the cave was naked, his body so ashen that he appeared to be albino. He was leaning forwards, his toes bent inwards and scraping the sand; his body was limp, and he was blown side to side as he was yanked by the devil, until he reached the hole, and he fell to his knees not only out of fear but out of exhaustion; he slumped, hanging his head in fatigue.

"Look up, Corvusss. Look into my eyesss." Lucifer's voice grated against the captive's ears, and the man winced in pain. He obeyed, lifting his head to look dully into his captor's eyes; his own were gaunt and hollow, as were his cheeks; his body was a configuration of bones, many of them cracked, molded together with skin stretched too tightly over them. His mouth hung slightly open, and a string of saliva hung on the outside corner of his lips.

"Tonight, Corvusss. Go to the city, and spread word. I am here. They are mine." He extended a hand from the long black sleeves of his robe, and placed it around the captive's neck, just under his chin. Slowly, in a measured motion, he pulled the man up, tightening his grip around his larynx until the captive dangled a foot over the ground. He squeezed the man's throat, and the man gasped, and that one gasp was like one one thousandth of the sound that the devil made when he screamed, and Corvus clutched at his throat, until Lucifer, in one swift motion, flung him away. He landed near the cave, but the devil did not see this, as he had turned the moment his hand had left the captive, slipped into the hole, and was gone. The hole filled with sand, and soon there was no sign that either man had been there. All the while, lightning struck the ground, thunder rolled in the air, and shrieks and howls filled the space with sound.

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The city was called Ormazed, and it was desperately cold on this night, its last of innocence. Corvus roamed the streets, saying nothing. His mind had much been wiped clean by the devil, and yet as he walked, memories flashed before his eyes. A woman, a nice woman, talking to him, there. A few steps on, wasn't that the hydrant they used to put out that fire? The buildings he passed were apartments: shabby ones, for this was a poor area of an impoverished city. When he reached the thirteenth building, he slunk inside, and started climbing the stairs.

Hadn't he met a man, a finely dressed man, on these stairs?

On the sixth floor, in the sixth room, a small girl sat against a cold wall, her knees pulled into her chest, arms wrapped tight around them. She was alone in her apartment, a girl of six, and her pale blonde hair faded into the cracked, whitewashed wall behind her. She sat that way for hours, hearing creaks that she was sure were kidnappers or murderers, wishing that her ma was there. She should have been used to it by now-her ma not being there, that is. She often went out for whole nights, coming back drunk or worse. God, it was cold. There were blankets across the room, and she glanced at them longingly, but ma had told her not to move, so she wouldn't. She shivered, hugging her knees tighter, and hung her head, eyes blinking rapidly. There was a needle on the floor, and she scrunched even further back against the wall, afraid to touch it. She was uncomfortable, but it was getting late, and she was tired, so tired...

She was lying in an open field, one hand on her stomach, the other against her throat. The sun felt warm on her face, and the grass was soft, almost as a bed. A squirrel was running in circles around her, and she sat up, smiling at it. It appeared to smile back, but then the sky grew dark, and the air cold; the green grass curdled around her, hugging her, strangling her. The squirrel opened its mouth, and out of it came a grating noise. It sounded like a rotting door, creaking back and forth on old hinges. She asked the squirrel what it was doing, and suddenly it started to foam at the mouth, and its eyes began to roll. She tried to back away, and suddenly she was fully engulfed in flames, shrieking; she was being prodded with something, but she didn't know what it was; she looked- a pitchfork? She looked up, and her last vision in life was of a finely dressed, gaunt man, and ...her ma? "Ma?" she tried to whisper, but before she could get the word out, searing pain shot through her body. And suddenly she could no longer see, and her eyes felt as though they had red hot pokers being slammed into them; her ears were filled with the creaking noise, which suddenly turned into the sound of a thousand men screaming, and she was being lifted forcefully up by her arm, dragged across the floor, her legs thudding painfully against it; now she was being dragged down something, presumably stairs, though her eyes hurt too much for her to think of anything besides the pain. She could feel something dripping from them, and she tried to bring a hand up to feel them, but she was moving too fast, and she couldn't. The hand on her arm was tight, too tight, and she screamed, trying to drown out the shrieking in her ears, but she couldn't manage to, and suddenly she felt the chill of the outdoors on her skin. The cold filled the sockets of her eyes, hitting the backs of them, and she screamed louder still, beyond hysterical.

An alarm sounded throughout the city, calling its occupants to its center. They came, running, despite the cold, for the alarm sounded only in the most dire of circumstances. They crowded around a man and a girl; the man was white, with a gaunt face, and the girl was blind, and unconscious. Corvus's head had been bent, but he looked up as the people approached. One man, upon seeing the two of them, started to rush forward, crying, "Mandy!" Corvus mechanically lifted an arm, and the man fell backwards, smashing his head against the pavement. For a full minute after that, everyone stared at the body, then backed up, slowly, as Corvus opened his mouth, and closed it, sometimes whispering words, sometimes looking as though he were listening to words himself. Just as the crowd started to look angry, however, he spoke, and from his mouth came the words of the devil, for he was the devil's messenger, and in those words were the screams of a thousand men, for the devil revels in the screams of those rotting in His hell.

"Listen, ye people of Ormazed. Lucifer has arrived, and just as He takes the soul of this girl, so shall He take your souls." Corvus placed one hand on the girl's forehead, another on her shoulder, and in one swift motion, snapped her neck. And then he fell to the ground, a knife sprouting from his chest, blood welling in a pool around it. A thing cloaked all in black appeared from out of the crowd, and it came to stand over the girl. It pulled the knife from Corvus's chest, and slit her throat. He dipped his hand in the still warm blood it released, and threw it over the people of the city. "As this blood touches you, so shall you become mine. You are mine, Ormazed. I am your god." There was silence, as intelligent eyes became blank stares, as tanned skin morphed into white, as souls were ripped from bodies.

"You are mine, Ormazed," the devil repeated. "Bow before me." And as one, the citizens of Ormazed knelt.

Lucifer smiled, a horrible, sickening smile, and as he did so, the sky opened, and a torrential rain fell; he extended an arm from his cloak, and pointed towards a man. "Today, Cayad," he said, staring down at the quivering man. "You will go to the village, and tell them that I have come. Do this, and your soul will be spared."

And Cayad obeyed, as the people groveled, Corvus died, and the soul of the girl screamed in agony. As it would continue to do, for all eternity.

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