14 Disturbing Short Horror Stories.
OOC: Holy moly, I’m in quite the mood tonight it seems! If only I felt this motivated to work on orders rather than, say, my spontaneous musings.
Well, my dears, you know what to do. Sit back, relax with your favourite hot beverage, and let this caffeinated Barista chill you all once again. Please enjoy. ☕
“Shh. Shh.” The crackle of the baby monitor slowly pulls him from the thick fog of sleep, blinking as he glances at the alarm clock. It shows the time as 1:20 a.m., and he feels his wife shifting on his right. He realizes that it’s not his wife in the nursery, comforting their 3-month-old son.
When he asks his son why he keeps seating the table for three people, him, his mother, and himself, he smiles and replies, “Mommy is always with us, daddy.” He smiles and nods, but it’s forced as a chill dances up his spine.
“What are you doing?” he asks, watching his daughter as she sits on the staircase landing. She pries her eyes away from some point on the second floor, giggling as she replies, “Nothing, daddy~. I’m just talking!” “Talking? To who?” She looks at him, clearly confused as she tilts her head. “...To mommy.” His wife has been dead for a year...
“Wake up. Honey, you have to wake up!” Groggily, he’s wrenched from the land of dreams at his spouse’s voice. He shifts instinctively, brushing an arm over where his wife is lying in bed. Then he remembers that she was murdered by an intruder three years ago.
“I can’t sleep,” her voice hisses into his ear, her icy breath fanning the nape of his neck as she speaks softly. “It’s cold, and I can’t sleep.” He wakes up, trembling, his skin breaking out into a cold sweat. In the dim moonlight, he can make out that his hands are clutching the dress she is buried in.
“Daddy, can you check for monsters under my bed?” He smiles and complies for his son’s amusement---only to see him, another him, looking back at him. The small boy is clearly frightened, shivering as he whispers, “Daddy, there’s someone in my bed.”
“Remember when I was the daddy, and you were the child?” His child says to him one day, his tiny fingers gripping a crayon as he doddles in his colouring book. He replies that he doesn’t, and he watches as the bright light fades in his son’s eyes. He whispers in a hollow voice, “It’s going to be a lot more painful this time.”
“Repeat after me. There’s no such thing as monsters.” “T-There’s no such thing as monsters.” The child’s voice is shaky, quivering as she speaks, clutching a stuffed bear to her chest. “I-I’m not scared of the dark. Because you’ll protect me, mommy!” “I will, sweetie. I’ll always protect you and daddy.” The ghostly apparition of the little girl’s mother smiles, reaching forward to cup her child’s cheek in a cold, see-through palm.
On the anniversary of his wife’s untimely passing, he always finds himself reading the last text messages she sent him, and listening to her final message. The ache increases ten-fold thanks to her whispering, “I love you” and he feels himself smiling, despite the tears trailing down his cheeks. One day, he hears her voice crackling through the speakers, relaying a different message. “It’s time to move on, darling.”
This is wrong. That’s what he tells himself as the headlights glare over the gate of the cemetery, the tires crunching over gravel as it slows to a stop. You know it’s wrong! That’s what his mind hisses to him as he pries open the driver-side door, pausing to reach into the back seat where the shovel is. I know it’s wrong, and I don’t care! If I can’t be with them in life, then I’ll be with them in death. He’s comfortable with the fact that in a few days, the authorities won’t find two bodies in the nearby lake, but three.
Every morning at 6 a.m., and every evening at 6 p.m., he got a text from his wife. She always tells him that she loves him and their child, how she misses them both, and that she hopes that they’re safe and happy. He isn’t sure which unsettles him more. The fact that his phone is always turned off at both respective times, or the knowledge that his deceased wife is messaging him.
The shrill ringing of his cellphone wrestles him from a deep slumber. He blinks, still groggy, and rolls over. His eyes fix on the digital clock, the numbers glowing red in the darkness. It’s 3 a.m., and so, he fumbles for his phone, finally bringing it up in front of his tired eyes. He stares in silent shock, reading the sender of the message. It’s his wife. “I’m waiting for you. Can you pick me up?” It’s what she always asked him when she was alive...
I’m going insane. A single thought manages to wrestle for control of his mind, a contrast to his eyes as they’re threatening to pop out of his sockets. There’s an overwhelming stench of rot dominating his nostrils as he breathes in, and the sensation of icy fingers wrapped around his throat doesn’t go away. As he looks up into the pale face, the lifeless eyes of his dearly departed wife, as she keeps her cold, dirt-caked hands coiled around his neck, threatening to rob him of his life, he can only wheeze out, “Forgive me, my love.”
He makes it a force of habit to make sure his daughter gets a good night’s rest by warming up milk for her, and reading her bedtime stories. He always tells her that he loves her, but he always wakes up in the same padded room, greeted by the same nurse who reminds him so much of her. There’s a hollow look in her eyes as she smiles and tells him, “You were dreaming again.”