Scary Story

This is what happened to me the Halloween night of 1900.

I used to live in an old very big house next to an abrupt and sheer cliff. I got married at the age of 17 and my husband who was a 50-year-old retired major general had recently dead of a heart attack. We hadn’t got children so I was living alone in a big and cavernous house, with cold and stormy weather and the brave sea breaking in the depths of the cliff. My housekeeper and maidservant were the only two persons who I could speak to.

The Halloween night of 1900, I was reading The raven by Edgar Allan Poe in the library upstairs. Unexpectedly my housekeeper got in to get my permission to go sleeping. I accepted lazily nodding my head. She closed the door and after that I remembered I had to check the gate was locked outside. So I got out, crossed the garden and checked the gate was locked. After that, I got into the house and went upstairs to the library in order to continue reading. I sat next to the fireplace because it was a really cold and wet night. I didn’t remember when but I fell asleep while I was reading.

Suddenly a thunder crashed and I got up alarmed. It was night yet and I saw a letter in my lap. When I opened it I realized it was written with blood and it said I had to get outside in the backyard and wait next to the tomb of my dead husband. I knew I shouldn’t do that but I went downstairs and outside in the garden. I waited a few minutes next to the tomb of my husband and suddenly I saw a shadow behind a tree. It was my housekeeper with the head of the maidservant on her hand.

I realized the blood which was written the letter was the maidservant’s one. The housekeeper wanted to kill me, too and I started to run as fast as I could. But I ran in the wrong direction, I was going directly to
the cliff and there was no loophole so I decided to jump over the cliff before the mad housekeeper killed me.

This is what happened to me the Halloween night of 1900 and if you are listening to this story you should be scared because you are hearing the voice of a dead woman.


Neus Aixendri Almendros


* Conte premiat en el II Concurs de contes breus 2011, organitzat per la biblioteca i els departaments de Català, Castellà i Llengües estrangeres de l'Institut Cristòfol Despuig.