The Call
Short Story : The Call.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ( Horror Story)
By Prabir Rai Chaudhuri . All Copyright Reserved 2018
I spent my entire childhood in a rural area, near Encarnación de Diaz, Jalisco. I remember that we used to play near a forest reserve protected by the government. We really liked that place, not only for its extensive foliage, but because sometimes we saw the military in their transports. We liked to get together with a group of friends. At that time we were just teenagers, in total we got together between seven and nine kids.
Every afternoon after school, we would go to that area, sometimes just to tell stories, other times we would play hide and seek, and most of the time, we would just let time pass.
One time, we were bored, so we decided to go further into the forest than where we usually sat. I didn't like to go too far into the woods, because my mother made it clear that I had to get back before it got dark, and if I didn't, she would punish me by forbidding me to go out, sometimes for weeks at a time. Even so, when you're a child, because of peer pressure, you often decide to take risks.
I didn't know the way, in fact, the older boy was guiding us.
Following a path, we arrived at an open area. I had never been there before, there were no trees and the grass was all burnt, and there were several abandoned vehicles all over the place, among which we saw a fairly old bus.Horror stories
Several of the boys found a way to open the truck doors and went in immediately. I preferred to stay outside. I was very scared at the time, especially of spiders and other animals that might live inside the vehicle. The boys who went in didn't take long to come out, so they began to pressure the other boys and me to go in and look inside the truck, according to them they had found something interesting.
We pushed our way in. We didn't see anything inside except for lots of dead rats and other animals.
We were about to leave to complain to the other kids that there was nothing inside, when we heard the door being closed. The kids outside were the older ones and they often acted stupidly, playing pranks on us.
We preferred not to insist on being let out, hoping that they would get angry at holding the doors and take advantage of the opportunity to leave.
There was no need to wait that long, as the boys outside suddenly let out a scream and ran out. We took the opportunity to push the bus doors outwards, but my damn friends left them stuck.
We thought the boys' screams were fake, but after looking through some grates in the windows, we saw them running back down the road. We immediately looked for another place where we could get out of the bus, we saw the roof, the back, but those old models seemed to not even have the air hatch in the roof, and apparently no emergency exit.
After realizing that the only way out was the way we came in, we headed back to the door and started knocking hard. Immediately after three attempts in a row, the doors opened and we all fell out on top of each other.
Until that moment we believed that the screams and the departure of the rest of the boys was part of their stupid joke, however, very soon we would discover that what forced them to flee was not part of that, but something dark and so mysterious, that to this day I can't find any explanation for it.
We started looking for the rest of the boys. We thought they would be hiding further ahead, among the trees or inside a car, but we didn't see them anywhere.
Suddenly one of the boys told us to look in the direction of the bus.
We all turned around, we weren't far enough away to see it.
Above us was what looked like a person moving in an unnatural way. We couldn't see his face very well because of the distance, but we did notice that his back was hunched in an exaggerated way. One of the boys shouted that it was a witch. I'm not sure it really was one. Until that moment, I had never seen one and I only knew about them thanks to the stories my grandmother told me. Panic took over us and we ran away.
We didn't stop until one of the boys couldn't go on any longer, then we looked back and, noticing that no one was following us, we walked slower. Soon we met the other boys, they were by the road. We complained to them for leaving us behind, and two of them told us that they saw a strange creature walking between the cars.
We returned home, intrigued by what we saw on top of the abandoned bus. I didn't even notice that the sun was almost setting on the horizon.
I arrived when it was dark, my mother received me very angry and after a good scolding, she punished me for fifteen days by not letting me go out with my friends.
By the time I saw the boys again, they were all telling the same story. They said that after that day at the car cemetery , every time they approached the areas closest to the mountains, they would hear a voice calling them from among the trees. According to them, the tone of that voice was so sinister that they didn't dare look out to see who the person speaking to them was.
The same story spread throughout the town, even the adults who work in the fields said they heard a call among the trees, and that they had seen a hunchbacked woman among the crops or climbing the trees in a supernatural way.
Panic spread and I was dying to tell my mother that the time she punished me, I saw the same hunchbacked witch on top of an abandoned truck, but I knew perfectly well that if I told her that, I would risk being scolded again.
I remember that for a time all children were forbidden to be on the street after six in the evening, because by this time all adults believed that the witch would already be lurking near homes, trying to steal children.
My house was not far from the forest area, in fact the patio looked directly onto an area full of trees. Sometimes my mother would ask me to pick up the sheets from the clotheslines. Almost always when I had to do this task, I did it in the afternoon and prayed to finish before it got dark.
Unfortunately, my mother had gone to visit a neighbor who was sick, my father was working on a job outside the village and would not be home for another week. I was left alone in the house. As usual, I was put in charge of removing the clothes from the clotheslines.
Because I was playing, I let the day fade away and didn't remember to do so until the sky was almost completely dark.
If it hadn't started to rain, I wouldn't have remembered to take the sheets away. I immediately started taking off my clothes and ran into the house. I turned around three times and was about to turn a fourth when a strong wind blew the patio door shut.
There was no other way I could get into the house, the windows were closed, as was the front door.
I took shelter from the rain under the awning at the entrance to the courtyard. I dropped my clothes, after all, they were already soaked, just like me.
At that point I began to see something shining between the trees, they didn't look like firefly lights, they looked larger.
Soon, I began to hear a distant whistling sound coming closer, just as the lights were. I was expecting the worst.
From one second to the next, the lights stopped shining between the trees, then I heard a voice, it was talking to me between the trees, it was not a creepy voice, but quite the opposite, it seemed like that of a young woman, she promised me that if I approached her, she would help me open the patio door. For nothing in the world would I fall into her trap, I shouted rudely that I would not approach her and that it was better for her to stay away from my house.
The lamp in the patio illuminated the entire area perfectly. I kept an eye on the trees. I felt that if I turned my back, the witch would charge at me.
The voice from the trees changed tone, now it sounded shrill and threatening. It said it would come for me. I panicked, I didn't know where to run. Then the same hunchbacked woman came out of the trees, she stayed behind the fence that delimited the patio, she stood there outside with her horrible face sticking out between the bars.
I couldn't believe my eyes, that creature was indescribable and it writhed violently, it was as if it wanted to tear the bars off the grating.
The only thing I could think of was to cry out of fear, I wouldn't even go near it.
Suddenly the door to the patio opened. My mother came out and as soon as she saw the creature, she told me to go in.
We both went in, my mother locked the door with a padlock.
This time she didn't scold me for not putting the clothes away on time, she was just as scared as I was.
The next morning, we found burn marks on the bars, exactly where the witch was.
Several days passed before the stories about the witch's appearance stopped.
I don't know what drove the witch away in the end, but she disappeared just as she appeared.
I no longer live there today, I moved to Tlaquepaque more than ten years ago. I have visited my parents from time to time, but according to what I have been told, the witch has not returned.
Copyright © 2018 Prabir Rai Chaudhuri
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