The+Horror+Story+Awards+2011

**The 2011 Horror Story Awards!**
Enter now for your chance to find out what your story is best at! Ends November 30th.

Okay, so I lied in the contest information. All of the entries are so good, I can't just publish one and say it's the best! But you will still get feedback and your story will be published here (below) __and__ in the November/December Oracle 2011.

Entered: // Annika H. // // Elizabeth P. (maybe) // // Maggie Morey //
 * Harriet S. (maybe) **
 * Olivia M. **
 * Anthony D. **

(Those in bold have already passed in their stories.)

** HORROR STORY CONTEST 2011 ** **Blood on the Wagon Wheels** By Olivia M. It had happened a long time ago, too long for anybody to remember the story of Adelaide. Adelaide didn't do anything wrong, in fact none of this was her fault. It all happened on a rainy day in July. Adelaide ran swiftly down the dirt path towards home, stopping for nothing, not even waiting for her dog to catch up. Benny, was her dogs name. He didn't bark much. Nothing much to bark about on the prairie. Nobody ever visited. Adelaide crossed the stream, and ran quickly through the grass, leaping over rocks and mud. She tripped and fell into the road. Benny didn't bark. She couldn't get up. But, still, Benny didn't bark. Adelaide didn't know what she tipped over. She strained her neck to look behind her, but nothing was there. It was almost as if she was glued to the ground, she couldn't get up. She didn't feel pain. In fact, her body felt stiff, and almost numb. She heard something off in the distance. A rattling sound, a wagon. Adelaide struggled to get up, but she just couldn't. Benny still didn't bark. The wagon was closer. Adelaide shrieked for her life, but Benny stood there, staring at her. She tried dragging herself to safety, but it was too late. She was run over, and blood streamed from her body. Benny quietly dragged her body to the river, where he tied a rock to her dress, and let her drown. Benny went back to the demolished wagon. Nobody had been in it. Now, Benny barked, howling at the sunset. Benny never went home. When Adelaide's parents claimed she had been killed, nobody listened. Nobody ever found out about the murder, and nobody knows who did it. Legend has it that Adelaide's body still lies at the bottom of the river, never found, and never to be found.

**Barbie’s Purple Lipstick**  By Anthony D.   (Helped at the ending by V and K)   So, this 15-year-old girl finds a Barbie in the back of her closet, so she doesn’t like it, and pulls the head off and throws it into the trash. So that night, she hears this creak on the stairs and she hears a really high, squeaky voice say,

“Sally! I’m gonna get your sister! Heeheehee!”

So, after [she heard] that horrifying voice, she walks into her sister’s room, and she finds her sister dead, with a ring of purple lipstick around her neck. So, yeah,. . . [her sister’s] kind of dead with a ring of purple lipstick around her neck. Anywho, outside the door, she hears,

“Sally! I’m gonna get your mommy! Heeheehee!”

So she goes to her parents room and she looks at her mom’s neck, and there was a purple ring of lipstick and her mother was dead.

So, freaked out by this and slightly worried, she goes back to her bedroom, makes sure nothing’s there, closes the door, and puts as much junk as she can find in front of her door, and outside she hears,

“Sally! I’m gonna get your daddy!”

So she kind of like moves all the stuff away and goes and runs out the door to her dad, and, again, he is dead with a ring of purple lipstick around his neck.

Anywho, really freaked out and really scared, she runs to her room, closes the door, and puts a ton of stuff in front of it. So she finally goes to bed to try and get some sleep for school tomorrow morning, then she hears next to hear ear,

“Sally! I’m gonna get YOU!”

And she was never heard from again…

But then she wakes up and she never throws something plastic into the trash again, and instead recycles for the rest of her life. And no one really died! It was just a nightmare… although, when she woke up in the morning, she WAS wearing purple lipstick…

Untitled By Harriet S.

The lush, uncut grass of our front yard swirled around my feet as I cut off the path leading from the front door to the street. Looking back, I saw my brother wave lazily from the living room window, playing on his iPad.  I closed my car door and the little grey SUV rolled forward. My mom’s hand drummed against the steering wheel of her car while my dad just read a book in the passenger’s seat.  “Do you have your phone and its charger, just in case?” my mom leaned back and asked, but kept her eyes on the road.  “Yes, I do,” I replied, slightly annoyed at how they expected me to forget every little thing.  For the next half hour, we drove out of town and through woods, cornfields, and public gardens. The summer sun beat down on the slowly-moving river we passed over, and on the dead grey squirrel we saw in the middle of the road.  At the end of the car trip, my mom pulled out up around a circular drive, and I hopped out with my backpack. As she rolled down the window, my dad set down his book and they both called out.  “Want me to come in with you?” my mom asked, and I said, for the millionth time that morning, that I was fourteen already.  “Have fun, pumpkin!” my dad called, waving with a smile on his face. I waved back, seeing that he, too, was becoming tired of my mom’s pestering.  They drove off, and I turned my back to the road leading up to the gigantic building. It was a performing arts center, supposedly, but wasn’t it too big for that?  Inside, I joined a long line of other kids and signed my name on one of the many sheets of lined paper they had at the ready. There were children as young as eight, and as old as fifteen waiting with me. Some of the boys pushed each other and joked, while others waited patiently for their turn. After the little girl in front of me stepped away from the makeshift desk, I stooped and signed my name. Claire Bennett.  “Hi, Claire, I’m Ms. Troy, it looks like I’ll be your house counselor. Third room on your left, straight down that hall,” Ms. Troy, one of the three people—two woman, one man—said with a smile, pointing my way down a tall hallway to my left.  I walked down it, looking left and right. Some of the doors were open, and other campers ran in and out of them, playing and exploring. We all had two weeks to be here.  Finding my room, I let myself in. There was one other girl already unloading her bag into one of the dressers. She looked up as I entered, and put on a huge grin. Recognizing her from last year, I ran forward, and we tackled each other in a hug.  “Hello, again!” I said, “I haven’t seen you…well, in a year!”  “I know, it’s great that you came again,” said Maria, her thick, brown, curly and slightly fuzzy pony tail bobbed as she nodded enthusiastically. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> We walked down the grand hall to the lobby and joined a group of campers crowded excitedly around Ms. Troy. As we approached, the young woman waved us over to her with a beaming smile. “Time to begin!” she said, “We’ll warm up with improvisation tomorrow, but now we’ll go for a swim! Sound good?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and started walking, beckoning to the two dozen children. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> She led us to the back of the lobby and down a staircase. The footsteps of forty eight feet echoed about the fading brown walls, and after we’d descended four flights Ms. Troy held another heavy door open to let us flood out. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Down the carpeted way we went, then sped through a door on our left, again held open by our counselor. We were in a large, closed-feeling room with a steaming fifty-foot long swimming pool in the center. The long wall to my left was made of glass, facing down onto a pitch-black harbor. It was nighttime. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;">We were all led in a group to a room on the side, where those of us who had been here before were given our swim suits, marked with our names. Those who had not been here before were sized and given bathing suits of their own. After ten minutes, everybody had run to claim a pool chair. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Maria and I changed and put our stuff down on a chair, and then I left her sitting on the chair while I dove into the water. It was pleasantly warm, and full of cannonball splashes. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Even in the massive pool, with Ms. Troy sitting rigidly in the lifeguard’s chair watching the excited commotion, there was little room to move around. I ducked underwater and avoided being kicked by legs. A few of the older boys started to push each other around, forcing each other’s heads underneath the surface. I gave them a wide berth, and found in dismay that they were guarding the diving board. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> After a while, a few people got out, mostly the younger ones tired of the unbridled chaos. They curled up on their chairs and watched everyone else swim and plow their way through the laughter-filled crowd. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Just as I was floating on my back, for the second I could get enough room, bright blue lights began flashing all about the room. Sirens wailed. Immediately, what had been chaos was now an extreme state of it. I sunk under the water to push back my hair, trying to remain calm, and got kicked in the stomach by the flailing foot of a ten-year-old boy. I hoisted Max out of the water—he’d been here last year, like me and Maria. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Out of the water, Ms. Troy blew her whistle, shouting to reach other the panicked cries of two dozen kids. She herded us towards the bathrooms, and shoved the first ten in, closing the door on them. No one else would fit. A handful were acting nonchalant, trying with varying degrees of success to appear calm. The very air out beyond the glass wall seemed to vibrate. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> The sirens kept wailing, the lights blinking, and Ms. Troy had completely lost control. The youngest of the children were being trampled, and I helped Max to his feet. His right knee was scraped from the rough cement floor. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> And then, they stopped. Everything stopped. Everybody ceased to scream, to fight each other for space in the mess of people. My heart beat so loudly in my chest, and I tried to hear for something—anything unusual—about the racket caused by the panting of twenty four kids. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> “Well then!” Ms. Troy exclaimed, using her key to unlock the bathroom door. Its human contents spilled out, and Maria ran over to me in relief. “Time to move on to the harbor lesson, kids!” she shoved us out of her way as she stalked out of the pool room and led us down the hallway. Maria and I had changed, along with some others, but a good number remained dripping wet, in only a towel. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> The counselor led us all out onto a balcony that stretched the length of the building. Outside, we breathed in the warm, moist night air, glad to be out. Down below, a man was bobbing along on a loose dock, and he caught the eyes of every one of us. He tried to shift the large, circular dock over to a boat, which he intended to step onto. The man stood up straight, and once he’d gotten close enough, took a step forwards. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> At the last moment, the dock moved away and he plunged into the oily black water. Without a splash, he sunk to the bottom like a weight. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Ms. Troy bared her teeth at us in a grin. “Oh well, let’s try somewhere else, shall we?” she continued walking about the balcony and we had no choice but to follow. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Away from the deathly harbor, we slowly walked down a long case of creaking wood stairs. Maria walked behind me, holding Max’s shaking hand. I stepped took another step down, and my foot dropped right through, the board snapping like a twig. Maria reached out and caught my arm, keeping me from falling to the blank sheet of cement over sixty feet below. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> On the ground again, we found ourselves just about to walk into a lineup of shops. The group of us froze just behind Ms. Troy, who kept walking between the two rows. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> “Come on, kids, you’ll each find a card in each store at the desk waiting for you to use. Get whatever you like, and meet me right here in half an hour.” Unsure, we walked around her, past her, and down the outside corridor of stores. I took up the back with Maria. I had no idea where Max was now. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> I glanced back at the young woman, our house counselor. She widened her eyes and smiled, raising her left hand in a sort of wave. I peeled my eyes from her and shuddered, my spine tingling. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Deciding we had to do something, Maria and I dove off into a costume shop. It was almost completely dark, and there was a short man standing at a linoleum counter to our right. As we entered, taking extremely small steps forward, he turned his tiny head towards us and gazed at us with beady eyes. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> “It’s just a costume…” I told myself, looking away from the bloodshot stare. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> The two of us walked idly through the racks, fabric brushing against our legs. Swallowing, I forced myself to flip through the costumes. After a while, Maria and I had picked out two matching, plain blue dresses, for sheer need of something to concentrate on. We used the cards waiting for us at the counter. In the line, I saw cards with everyone else’s names on them, waiting. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Without thanking the man, who stared intently at our backs as we left, we fled. Outside, the moon had risen, bathing the dirt path in a silver light. A scream caught in my throat. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> We were alone. There wasn’t a single other person in sight, and Ms. Troy had gone. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Maria and I stood close together, fighting down waves of fear, fighting the urge to run. But there was nowhere to run, and we both knew it. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> “Claire, something’s wrong. It wasn’t like this last year,” Maria said, her voice shaking, almost entirely distorting her words. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> “I know…where is everyone?” <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> “I—I don’t know!” <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> We inched forward, making our way back to the stairs, the only way we knew to get back to our room. Every step we took was done with excruciating slowness as tested each stair, fearing we would plummet straight down and be flattened on the sheet underneath. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> At the top, we gulped, pressing out backs against the foggy glass wall of the swimming pool room. Making our way along, we made it about half way before a crack started on the balcony against the wall. Jumping off of it on springy legs, we crouched there, our chests heaving. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Then, taking one more step towards the door, Maria fell off of the balcony and hit the water. I screamed as her face froze. Then, just like the man before her, she sunk to the bottom without even trying to swim. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> I screamed. Running along the balcony, I skidded to a halt by the door. A tiny hand had cleared a circle in the fog, and waved to me through the opening. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> “Max!” I exclaimed, leaping forwards and yanking open the door, holding out my arms to hug him tight. But Max didn’t run out and jump into my arms like he had done countless time before. He just stood there, waving at me, a perfect smile on his round face. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Then I looked up. Behind him was everyone else. Everyone. Maria stood right behind Max, and Ms. Troy next to her. The other boys and girls merely stood there, expressions locked in a completely blank stare. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> “No…” I breathed, unable to move, to cry, or even speak. I was rooted to the spot, pinned between the blackness of the harbor and the crowd of people I’d known. Utter fear coursed through my body, making me immobile. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;"> Ms. Troy’s whisper hissed through the air around me, seeming to bounce off every fiber in my shaking body. For a brief second, her eyes pulsed with red, then returned to their normal color. But the vacant stare remained. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif;">“Hello, Claire. Welcome back to camp.”

Story awesomeness
WINNER: GAHHHHHH It has to be Harriet, sorry Liv. Second Place: Olivia Third Place: Anthony DL.

Timing
WINNER: OLIVA M!!!! Second Place: Anthony DL. Third Place: Harriet S.