The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Halloween at Blood Manor
by Sheri White 

Every small town has its haunted house. In Springhaven, it’s Blood Manor, known as Broad Manor before the family was murdered in their sleep.

The killer was never found.

Kids and teens were always approaching the house, looking in the dirty cracked windows, hoping to see something gruesome, but the murders happened in the upstairs bedrooms. Still, that didn’t stop them from boasting to their timid friends that they saw blood on the floor, or a ghost floating in the living room.

What the kids didn’t know was that the house itself was alive. And while it had slept for several years after the murders, satiated, it was now waking up.

No killer had been found because there was no killer. No human killer, anyway. The police reported that the victims had been butchered in their beds. As if a wild animal had attacked them and chewed on their flesh, barely leaving anything but blood behind for identification.

They were chewed up because the house ate them. The floors and ceilings of the rooms met each other like teeth chewing bubble gum until the bodies were pulp in the sheets.

Now that Halloween was only a few days away, the house began to prepare. Trick or treaters would be attracted to the spookiness of the house, and the house would be happy to let in those foolish enough to take a dare and go inside.

The house isn’t just hungry, it’s ravenous. And now, it finally gets to feed.

.

Fiction © Copyright Sheri White
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Author Sheri White:

Don’t Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Featuring stories from R.L. Stine and Madeleine Roux, this middle grade horror anthology, curated by New York Times bestselling author and master of macabre Jonathan Maberry, is a chilling tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Flesh-hungry ogres? Brains full of spiders? Haunted houses you can’t escape? This collection of 35 terrifying stories from the Horror Writers Association has it all, including ghastly illustrations from Iris Compiet that will absolutely chill readers to the bone.

So turn off your lamps, click on your flashlights, and prepare—if you dare—to be utterly spooked!

The complete list of writers: Linda D. Addison, Courtney Alameda, Jonathan Auxier, Gary A. Braunbeck, Z Brewer, Aric Cushing, John Dixon, Tananarive Due, Jamie Ford, Kami Garcia, Christopher Golden, Tonya Hurley, Catherine Jordan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Alethea Kontis, N.R. Lambert, Laurent Linn, Amy Lukavics, Barry Lyga, D.J. MacHale, Josh Malerman, James A. Moore, Michael Northrop, Micol Ostow, Joanna Parypinksi, Brendan Reichs, Madeleine Roux, R.L. Stine, Margaret Stohl, Gaby Triana, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rosario Urrea, Kim Ventrella, Sheri White, T.J. Wooldridge, Brenna Yovanoff

Available on Amazon!