Clown Graveyard And Its Just One Grave

Read this r/nosleep recently called The Arkansas Experiment by Jared Robberts. I think there’s something so uniquely charming about r/nosleep stories and I thought this one was pretty good.

THIS ONE IS REALLY GOOD

Boys, Don't Play in Bunkers

“Boys, don’t play in the woods! If you get mauled, you could die out there.”

That was the warning parents in our town told kids like me and my friend Beckett.

Technically, we obeyed them.

About a mile into the woods near our street was an abandoned bomb shelter. In the middle of the clearing was a slanted door jutting out of the ground, with two outward swinging metal panels that could be deadlocked from inside.

The furnished bunker had been stocked by some insane doomsday prepper in the 90s before they deserted it. Beckett and I discovered it unattended ages ago, making it the perfect safe, secret weekend hangout for two 10 year olds.

In the fall of my 5th grade school year, my parents announced that we were moving.

For old time’s sake, Beckett and I decided to chill one last time in the bunker. Saddened, I said goodbye to the piles of canned food, bottled water, flush toilet and electric generator.

“Pity you won’t get to try all this stuff” Beckett sighed. “Someone could survive for like 3 months with all the things down here”.

“Maybe” I laughed doubtfully.

Afterwards, I bid goodbye to him, shut the bunker door and went home. My family moved across state the next day.

I didn’t think about Beckett much after then. I’d made new friends and assumed he did too, which I imagined was why he never wrote.

In the winter of my 5th grade school year, that bunker suddenly re-enters my mind.

While opening a stationery cupboard in my classroom, the door jams. I can’t open it until I notice a chair blocking it from the outside. That’s when an insidious thought invades my head.

Could the same thing have happened to Beckett on that night? Could he be missing and alive in the bunker? I remember those words: “Someone could survive for 3 months down here”. Which means…

Immediately, I race from the school in panic, whizzing past confused students and teachers. Paranoid, I board a bus straight back to my hometown.

Reaching that sloped door on the forest floor, my worst fears are confirmed. A heavy boulder is perched on top, obscuring it. It must’ve rolled down the hill and pinned the door shut after I left. Adrenaline screeching, I throw myself at the boulder and heave it off.

Nothing could have prepared me for the unfathomable sight I see when I pry open the bulkheads. The boy I’d said goodbye to in the bunker is no more. In his place is a yellowed, emaciated, incoherent, balding, bearded…man.

While I went to college and became an elementary teacher, Beckett was trapped in that hole, screaming every night, completely alone.

If my mind ever recovers enough for me to teach 5th grade again, I’ll have a lesson for my schoolchildren.

Boys, don’t play in bunkers. If you get trapped, you could survive down there…

…for 20 years.

2 really good mystery thrillers about mother/daughter relationships that I really enjoyed. Happy Mother’s Day :>

Sort of reminds me a bit of We Came to Welcome You by Vincent Tirado and The September House by Carissa Orlando.

The walls are bleeding

My most recent short horror story.

Word count: 724

Trigger warning: Blood (who would have guessed)

It was just half an hour when it happened.

I had come to the decision that my house was in need of a rather intense cleanup.

Starting with the living room, I took out all the junk and other stuff and then started cleaning.

I glanced at the wallpaper, pained by how ugly it truly is without any of my stuff cluttering around it. This wallpaper had belonged to the previous owners, it hasn't been too long ago since I had moved in and I hadn't really taken the time to change it.

So what's a better time than now?

I walked towards one of the walls that was facing away from the windows, took a chair to stand on and placed my fingers over the paper's exterior.

It was a strange sensation, is this really paper? I thought to myself.

I hesitated.

Lowering my hands again and just stared for a moment.

Then other thoughts started to convince me to continue: This must be some kind of fancy wallpaper I don't know about. Fancy, but ugly, that explains the texture. I should remove it.

No, it needs to be removed!

Again I raised my hands and started by putting my fingers in between the wall and the wall at a place where it was already slightly loose.

Suddenly I noticed that I was touching something wet and sticky. Something of which I was certain that it couldn't be glue.

I swiftly retrieved my hand only to find the tips of my fingers to be soaked crimson red.

There's no doubt about it...

It's blood.

I immediately got down from the chair and ran towards the phone.

I need to call the police! Was the only thought running through my head.

Dialling the number, it luckily didn't take long for someone to pick up. I told them about the situation and that it was making me fear for my safety. I was told to wait by the door and open it for them.

A little later the doorbell finally rang, I felt a bit underwhelmed when I saw that they had sent just a single officer to check in on me.

Had they thought me mad?

"Good morning sir, Please show me what you found." He greeted me.

I took the man into my living room and showed him the spot.

"Good God..." He murmured.

He reached for his walkie-talkie and pressed a button.

"This is officer Green... Send to the bleeding house alert. I'm in need of backup. Over."

Some white noise left the small object, but nothing audible.

"This is officer Green. Does anyone copy. Over." He seemed to be slightly panicking.

Drip...

Drip...

I heard something coming down from upstairs and it didn't sound very good.

"Sir, I got to check something real quick." I said to the officer, though I don't believe he heard me at all. He seemed to be caught up in the buzzing of his communication device.

I ran up the stairs.

The dripping seemed to come from the bathroom.

Opening the door I found something horrifying.

Instead of water, blood was dripping out of the faucet.

Slowly filling up the tub with the dark coloured liquid.

I tried closing the faucet, but it only got worse.

Blood started pouring out.

I left again quickly, closing the door thoroughly behind me, trying to forget about what I had just seen and proceeded to my bedroom.

This wasn't in any way better.

I felt cold when I stepped into a lukewarm puddle of the sticky substance.

It was coming down from the walls, dripping, colouring and messing with all the furniture in it.

Entering the small hallway again, the walls had taken a colour of dark red as well.

Careful not to slip, I made my way back downstairs again.

"Sir, have you reached your colleagues yet?" I frantically ask the officer standing facing the wall quietly.

Something is wrong though.

Something about him seems so much different than how he was before.

The air around him...

In his hands he's holding a big piece of wallpaper and he's covered in blood.

Without looking my way, he starts talking.

"Perhaps this is its way of cleansing itself."

His voice sounds different too.

"What the hell do you mean?!"

"Usually when a wound is bleeding, it is in a way cleaning itself. The bigger the wound, the less chance of infection. The dirt will be washed away by the blood itself."

I feel anger and panic boiling up in my body: "Are you trying to say that I'm the cause of this?!"

For a moment there's silence, but then he shrugs.

"Nah, I wouldn't know that."

After finally leaving my cheating husband and taking our kids with me, I found a shack in the snow to rest in.

As I fail to repair it and we freeze over for the hundredth time, it dawns on me that I’m trapped in a mobile game ad.

The second half of the second sentence really slaps ya in the face

He went to open his drawer shortly after waking up at 3 AM. When he opened it, however, there was a huge, menacing tarantula that jumped out at him. As he went to bed, terrified, he forgot that his closet was open, the skeleton of the 34 year old man he killed in 1999 was seemingly invisible in the cover of the dangling clothes. It seemed as if it were always looking at him, menacingly, he felt shivers go up his spine when he saw the fear in the man’s eyes flash before his as he was recounting that night in November 1999.

Genuinely didn’t know what to expect

Waste Not, Warrant Not

Knock knock.

I slightly open the door to my family’s house, enough to see a kind-looking woman with bunned hair and a notepad.

“Hi” she greets me warmly. “My name is Joan. I’m here from Child Protective Services. Are you Tara Lambert?”

“Y-yeah” I awkwardly answer, slouching in my pajamas as she observes our rundown home’s exterior.

“Is your mother—Tammy—here? I need to speak to her.”

“Yeah, sh-she’s here but…she sorta c-can’t come to the door easily.”

“Can I come inside then?”

Shyly, I unlatch the security latch and pull the door wide open. The social worker’s professional expression slips momentarily as she registers the state inside our hovel.

Everywhere around me in the hallway, living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms, is a mountain of junk items. Old boxes, food containers, crumpled magazines, broken appliances, dirty clothing—you name it, piled up on every surface.

“Who’s here, Tara?” Mama snaps, her morbidly obese frame stirring in her chair as we sift over to her.

“Hi Tammy. I’m from CPS. I have a warrant from the Department of Social Services to conduct an investigation of your family’s living conditions.”

“Get outta mah house now! Ain’t nothing to assess, mah daughter’s happy!”

“Ma’am, I can already see this environment is entirely unsuitable for raising a teenager,” states Joan. “It’s not hygienic.”

“You deaf? I said you needa get out now or-”

Before she can finish speaking, a gurgling screech reverberates through the waist-high trash around us.

Immediately, Joan is violently pulled into the heap.

“Oh God!” Joan shrieks. “Help! Something’s got my leg!”

She continues screaming, to no avail, as second and third tentacles emerge from the sea of clutter and latch onto her. With a sickening rip, Joan is torn limb from limb. Only once they’ve consumed her body do the brown tentacles retreat, like an octopus returning to a trench.

While my mama weeps for Joan, my face barely registers the carnage.

“You’re welcome” I tell Mama, tossing my phone across the garbage. “That anonymous tip I left with CPS brought a case worker to the house immediately. Talk about fast food.”

A look of horrified realisation spreads throughout Mama’s rounded face.

“You…you shouldn’t ave done that. She was a good person…you didn’t needa feed her to it.”

“The monster was born out of your hoarding, Mama” I hiss. “The sheer filth in here literally created it. If I don’t keep luring people here for it to eat, it’s gonna eat the fattest, most useless thing it can find—you.”

I shoot my mother a withering glare and she blanches, shameful.

“I just…don’t want you killin’ people, Tara.”

Leaving, I glance at the bloodied remains of the social worker on the trash mound, her notebook an addition to the junk.

“Well, Mama—someone has to clean up your mess.”

Terror

Disclaimer: This story is completely fictional. It's a semi-horror story but doesn't contain any violent or graphic content. I was inspired by a Let's Player who played a horror game where someone was buried alive.

Terror: extreme fear.

His eyes open, and all he sees is black. A horrible headache is gradually becoming noticeable. He asks himself, "Where am I?" right away. The air is thick, and his surroundings are damp. He moves his hands carefully in an attempt to sense his surroundings. Immediately he realizes how narrow the space he’s in is.

His fingertips touch a wall, the contact sending a shiver down his spine. It was a strange sensation. He presses his palm flat against the surface. “Wood… that feels like wood,” he thinks. Just where exactly is he right now?

He tries to remember what happened before he woke up in this strange place…

He was in the city in the late evening, had just grabbed a coffee from Starbucks, and was heading to the park. When he went into the park, he noticed it was strangely empty. He lives in a big city, so even around 9 the park was very crowded with various people. He went to sit on a bench near the center, but then he noticed something strange. There were eyes in the bushes. He wanted to stand up and leave as he got a bad feeling about this, but suddenly he heard a loud thud behind him, and then everything was black. That’s the last thing he could remember. 

He shifts and moves again, trying to turn, but to no avail. Eventually he recognizes the shape of the space he’s in. It resembles a casket. A casket. Immediately he tries to push open the lid, but something very heavy is covering it.

As realization dawns on him, he starts to panic. Is he really underground right now? This has to be a bad dream. How did he even get here? Was he falsely declared dead? What happened after that loud thud?

Suddenly he starts screaming. He screams his lungs out, calling for help. Minutes pass, and eventually his voice is hoarse. No one heard him; he’s 1.8 meters underground. There’s no way anyone could hear him when he’s buried that deeply. 

Everything feels so surreal. Of course he heard of the scenario of being buried alive, but that was in movies, video games, or history books informing about stories like that centuries ago. He read about how there used to be bells attached to coffins because the people back then often mistook the living for the dead, and a falsely buried person could just ring the bell to signal they’re alive.

When he first read about this, he thought it was stupid and unnecessary, but oh, how he wished for one of those safety coffins with bells right now. He could just pull a string and ring a bell, and someone would get him out of here, but no. He’s completely sealed with no hopes of being dug out. He’s stuck and will either die of oxygen shortage, starvation, or dehydration.

Mentally he has already given up. There was nothing he could do. As he lies there, he notices he’s lying on something uncomfortable. The realization that he’s wearing the exact same clothes he wore before waking up dawns on him. As he reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, he realizes what he’s lying on. A lighter. Whoever buried him didn’t empty his pockets. 

Something feels strange about it. Why would he be buried with all that stuff? He reaches into his jacket and sees that he even still has his cigarettes. Then he reaches into the other pocket he has on his jacket. Jackpot! His phone. Maybe he could call for help? Text someone to tell them where he is right now?

He hurries and unlocks his phone. With incredible speed he opens his calls and clicks on the first contact that shows up - in this case, his mother. He looks at his phone screen, watching as the phone tries to call his mother. It drives him crazy to see the word “connect…” repeat over and over again, just for the phone to automatically hang up after 30 seconds because it didn’t find a connection. He should’ve expected that. There’s no way he can reach anyone on the surface like this. 

Right now, however, he was desperate, and while his rational mind was telling him it wouldn’t work, he still tried to text everyone he possibly could. Even if he expected it, it was still disappointing to see that an error occurred on every single message.

With nothing else left to do, he turns on the flashlight of his phone to inspect the casket he’s lying inside. It’s nothing special, just dark wood. But then he sees something. On his left side something small was carved into the wood.

“Keep Still” 

How strange… But beneath that, something else is written. 

“Not Alone”

A shiver runs down his spine. Is this some kind of joke? A mistake? Someone carved that into a casket, and that someone knew that the person that’ll be inside this casket will be alive. Nothing makes sense. Not alone? He’s not alone? And why should he keep still? Is this other person not allowed to hear him?

Everything about this feels like a dream—no, it feels like a terrible nightmare. A terrible nightmare he’ll hopefully wake up from now. He pinches himself, but he’s still in the casket. 

Hours pass of this terrible silence where he can only hear his heartbeat and own breathing. But that tiring silence eventually gets interrupted by shifting. He can hear shifting around his casket. Like something is digging around him. He shuts his eyes tightly and tries to focus on the noise. Is it a mole? But as the noise comes closer, he realizes it’s way too big to just be a mole. 

The closer it comes, the bigger it sounds. He can also hear its breathing. For some reason it sounds hungry. Very hungry. Scarily hungry. He starts to get nervous. Is that what “Not Alone” meant? Is that the thing that disrupts his solitude in this narrow and thick-aired grave? 

His thoughts are interrupted by something bumping against the casket. The next thing he can hear is intense sniffing. He starts holding his breath and stops moving completely. Whatever that thing is, he knew it definitely isn’t friendly.

The louder the sniffing gets, the more scared he gets. From nervousness to fear. From fear to terror. Terror.

He’s terrified. Terrified of whatever this hungry beast was that’s breathing so harshly and sniffing the casket. He can hear it digging around him, the force of its body causing his surroundings to vibrate. Suddenly it stops moving.

Is it… listening? 

He’s been quiet this entire time, so the risk of it hearing the poor man was low, but he’s still so utterly terrified. What if his heartbeat is too loud? He can’t hold his breath for much longer; he’ll have to take a breath soon.

At this point he’s practically shaking. He tries so hard to hold still, but it wasn’t possible. The terror he felt just got so much more intense. What if his shaking is going to make the creature know about his presence? 

The next few seconds felt like torture, but to his luck, the creature dug itself away from him. As it’s far enough away, he takes a deep breath and starts panting a little. It’s gone… whatever that was is now gone. 

There was still only one problem present - he’s still buried underground. As he tries to think of a solution to distract himself from whatever that thing was, he can suddenly hear digging again, but not from around him. It’s from above. It also sounds different - like three main motions repeating themselves over and over. Something being stuck into the earth, a part of the earth being lifted up, and then the sound of it being thrown away and landing on the surface.

This is the sound of humans digging. With a shovel. Someone was digging him out. Finally, he can get out of here! Soon he can feel the casket being lifted up and placed somewhere. He was smiling. It’s over now! This nightmare of being buried alive is over!

The casket door is being opened, and immediately he sits up and tries to get out, but something stops him. The people around him, the ones that dug him out, look surprised, shocked, and one even disappointed. His smile immediately falters as one of them opens their mouth to speak.

“You survived it?”

Here’s neat story by PriorityHuge7544 on reddit titled Promises Kept.

I managed to buy a whole heap of vintage horror paperbacks a few days ago to add to my collection!

I'm so excited to own The Fungus!