The Smiling Man

This is a short piece I wrote for #NYCMidnight 's 500 word short story competition this September. The prompts were that I had to write in the horror genre, using the word 'tripwire' and the action of a 'knock at the door'. Fortunately for me, I have always loved a good ghost story. On reading the prompts, I felt all my childhood awe, wonder and terror come flooding back as my imagination filled with supernatural possibilities. Even better, I had recently listened to a particularly hair-raising edition of a favourite podcast of mine, #Folkways, all about the folklore and traditions of Britain and Ireland. I owe my inspiration to them, and in particular to a tale told by #BethanBriggsMiller.

With some luck, hard work and dedication to this craft of imagination and dream weaving, my story has been selected within the top 10 worldwide in my group! This means I can advance to the next stage in the competition and write another 500 word story. I'm over the moon! This hasn't come without hard work, though, and I should be clear: this is maybe the seventh short story I have submitted to a competition since I have started taking my writing more seriously in the past two years. Recognition, however slight, has taken time and dedication.

I don't understand my own fascination with the supernatural, exactly, but this type of story-telling gives me an acute sense that there is far more to this world than what can be explained by reason and science. There are forces acting upon us which we have not yet even begun to comprehend; a scary story is a way of being reminded of this fact of existence. What we can't understand is terrifying to us.

With that in mind, please enjoy this little tale in time for Halloween!

~

The Smiling Man

The house in which I grew up was not normal. From the outside it looked like a quaint little relic from a bygone era, converted from an old Victorian mill. My parents had dreams of a country idyl where my sister and I could run free in the surrounding glades and woodlands while they sat in the cosy living room by the fire reading or gathering wood for the winter. But the house had a long memory. Things had happened there which had trapped some energy, some ancient magick buried by industry and technology, now confined to old folk tales. But nevertheless present.

I was 12 when strange things started happening. One day I was playing by the river with my wee sister when she nearly drowned. She was jumping across a trail of large stones when she slipped and fell, as if pulled, face first into the currents. As I approached to yank her out, a high-pitched tinnitus started ringing in my ears and everything slowed down. I caught a flash of a woman in a red balayeuse dress watching from the woods of the far shore. I never told anyone about her, but the memory is still fresh. I saw her again, years later from the bathroom window, in the same spot. This time her hair was grey, but she still wore the red dress, looking up at me through the window, pointing.

When I was 14, I became aware of just what she was pointing at: another, darker presence which lived in my bedroom. For a time, it was just a feeling; the tinnitus, a dragging at the pit of my stomach; hackles raised. Then there came the erratic knocking on my door at night. The first time I saw Him make a full appearance I was racked with fever. I saw His face. I was reaching across to my bedside table when I felt hair from above brushing my arm. I looked up directly and His pale, thin features looked back; tight skin pulling at the edges of a rictus grin. Wide eyes boring directly into mine. Never have I screamed like that, my memory one of unrestrained primal fear. My parents burst into the bedroom, and He was gone.

One day, I decided to end it. I set up a string tripwire across my bedroom doorway, lit candles, assembled a Ouija board. And I called forth The Smiling Man. I told Him to leave and never return. I will forever lament that night. When I assumed nothing was happening, I went down to dinner. It was only much later I returned to find the tripwire snapped, the candles blown out and the glass from the board smashed across the room. Then came the sound of my sister shrieking. I ran to her, sick to my stomach, hairs on end. She was standing in the doorway of my parents’ bedroom, aghast at their lifeless corpses, throats slit from ear to ear. I had set Him free.

~