The Falling Victim

• Burke Seeley, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2019

It was 5 minutes before midnight in the small town of Bucksnort, the Rayford twins were still having rematches in Monopoly, “Hey! That’s cheating, you can’t do that!” said Marcus, “Well, I just did, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” replied Michaelis, “I can’t believe you two are still awake, get to bed now or I will not be allowing you to watch the football tomorrow”, “Just wait mum we need a few more minutes to finish the game”, (grandfather clock chimes for midnight), Michaelis looks at the clock. “Hey, did you just notice that as soon as the clock hit midnight both the hands moved back to 9:37 last morning?”, Marcus stares in astonishment, “What the!”, “That was the time that we both went to the building site on top of the cemetery”, “You’re right. Do you reckon we should go to the cemetery tonight for a joke?”, “Yeah ok, but we should hurry back in case mum notices we’re gone”. “Tomorrow we should investigate on the clock to see if something is wrong with it, that was an absolute fluke that the hands moved back to 9:37 last morning”. The twins leave the house and walk the street that leads to the cemetery. The boys see that they are building a new supermarket on top of the cemetery from the signs. “I wonder if they have uncovered all the graves yet and moved them to a different cemetery”. Said Marcus. They both walk through the rows and columns of the graves to find lots of mounds of dirt and coffins lying around in a mess. Suddenly a white figure appears and glides towards them. “Dagnabbit! A real ghost!” cries Michaelis. The ghost appears as a man with a knife sunk into his chest and says to them “Come follow me and I will show you the treasures that were brought into my grave with me”, “Ok sure” says Michaelis, “No don’t, let’s go home, I don’t trust him”, says Marcus. Michaelis ignores him and follows the ghost to his grave. Marcus hesitates and them follows. They arrive at the grave and admire all the jewels and precious stones that are in it, “Wow, I have never seen so much gold before!”, “Hahahahaha, and I have never seen so many fools before!”, with that the ghost pushed Marcus into the grave and the ghost disappeared. Michaelis stares into the grave to see his brother unconscious. He yells at him to wake up and to come home but he doesn’t awake. “Oh well, I will come back in the morning and get the workers from the building site to pick him up”, That night when Michaelis is asleep he awakens to hear the front door open, then his bedroom door opens, he sees it is Marcus, “Oh I’m so cold, so cold”, Marcus says, “Come on, it can’t be that cold, you have your jumper on”, suddenly Marcus’s voice changes to the ghosts voice that he heard at the cemetery that night, “I’m so cold, so cold”, “Wait a minute, who are you, you freak?”, Marcus lunges at Michaelis, Marcus’s face flashes skeleton and then black. “AAAHHHHH!” screams Michaelis, then Marcus disappears. The next day Michaelis returns to the cemetery and finds that Marcus is still lying unconscious in the grave. Michaelis shouts at him to get up and he awakes and reaches for Michaelis’s hand to pull him out. “HAHAHAHA, you fools don’t understand that when you fall in there, you never ever come out! HAHAHAHAHA”, laughs the ghost, with that he pushes Michaelis and Marcus both back in….