Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #256 – Haunted House Gone Wrong

“…that horrible sound again, a rumbling growl and a high pitched scream…”

…that horrible sound again, a rumbling growl and a high pitched scream…

(Male) I was back in high school, only this was a very small school, maybe a couple hundred students, maybe a couple dozen rooms in the building. The students – maybe just the seniors – had set up the whole school as a haunted house attraction. For some reason, we had to work in the dark mostly. One of the seniors, a girl though I don’t think that matters, was in charge of the whole thing and was bossing everyone around. We all were a little scared of her. I had three people on my team and we were supposed to rig up some work lights. But one of my team members just sat around texting all the time and the other two had their faces glued to a computer screen. They were trying to “recompile the kernel” of some operating system or something. Something totally unrelated to the haunted house project.

All of a sudden there was horrible groaning scream in the hallway. We knew it was time. Everyone ran out from all the rooms where they’d been working. We ran through the darkened hallways. Ahead of me, two girls talked about a demon they had made for the haunted house out of paper mache and plush fabric. It sounded more like a teddy bear than a monster. We all met on the front lawn and formed a prayer circle (!) But while everyone was looking down, a group of teachers tried to sneak back into the building. We ran around to catch them but we were too slow. The teachers acted like they were drunk, laughing and carrying on.

One by one or in pairs they tried to go into the school. There was that horrible sound again, a rumbling growl and a high pitched scream. One of the teachers ran out of the building with his pant legs on fire. He was still laughing like it was the funniest thing. Then something came into view, a huge creature, easily ten feet tall and forty feet long. It walked on all fours. The monster was what was making the sound. I opened its mouth and a bolt of lightning shot out and hit one of the teachers who burst into flames. The teacher kept laughing and just dropped and rolled on the grass til the fire went out. I couldn’t tell whether the monster was something that we had made or whether it was something else, something dangerous. But it was crawling out of the front door of the school right at me and I couldn’t get away fast enough.