Halloween

By Clay A.

10^th Grade

            The small town of Scythe was a pleasant place (despite its name) and so are its neighboring cities. Scythe had a population of 475 people, has many stores, and a school where all the local kids attended school kindergarten all the way up to twelfth grade. It was a very big school with two gymnasiums, six bathrooms and fifteen classrooms. The school was located right next to the graveyard, which everyone thought was kind of creepy.  No one was ever given permission to go into the graveyard, not even the residents.

            The graveyard has been there since the town was built, but no one knows who first built this town and who gave it its name.  There have been suspicions of how the town got its name but they don’t know the truth.  The name can be traced back to the graveyard, because that’s how everyone buried in the graveyard died, but getting chopped into pieces with a scythe and left to rot.  Like I said Scythe is a nice town, except for one night a year.  I’m talking about Halloween.  The dead in the graveyard rise from six feet under and seek revenge to whoever slaughtered them.  They believe the killer is still in Scythe.  They choose Halloween because everybody is at the Halloween party at the school so it will be like shooting fish in a barrel.

            All the kids rushed out of the school like a hurricane blowing a door open and couldn’t wait for later that night, the only night their parents will allow them to get a sugar rush and bounce off the walls. This night was Halloween.  They ran home and got their little bags ready, put on their store-bought masks and costumes waiting anxiously for darkness to fall and go to the school for the party and then to go door to door begging for candy.

            The school was throwing a party for the kids. At the party they could play games and get little prizes that so lame that the kids don’t want them anyway, but they have fun.  They could also have supper there and the parents can go socialize.  All were oblivious to want was going to happen on this fateful night.

            As the party was going on and everyone was in the school, fog started to surround the town and there was an eerie feeling that gave you the chills.  Tonight was the night the graveyard came alive.  The ground started shaking and moans from suffered souls began to appear.  They all rose and gathered in a circle as if they had practiced it and the ring leader began to speak to five hundred plus zombies.  He chanted, “Tonight we get our revenge, tonight we take what is ours, and tonight, the town of Scythe will mourn in a deep sorrow!” “Grab chainsaws, axes, bats whatever, but make this revenge sweet and long lasting.” “Everyone is in the school, so that is where we attack.”

            These zombies had a horrible smell of rotting flesh which did not smell good down wind.  They had a greenish tone to their skin, or what was left of it, and their faces were disgusting, eyeballs bulging out of their sockets and everything else distorted. They had old clothes that still had blood stains on them, their blood from when they got slaughtered ten years ago.  Let’s just say these guys are not pretty and they have a lot of anger built up inside of the,

            They formed three groups, one for the gymnasium where the party was being held, one for the lunch room where the parents were eating supper, and one to stand outside unless any kids tried to escape.  The zombies, wielding chain saws and axes, took charge and busted through the doors, but as stealthy as possible they wanted to have some fun and catch everyone in the school for the best results.

            One group of zombies snuck into the power supply room and cut the power.  Everyone thought it was cool though because they thought it was part of the party with Halloween and all.  The zombies in the power supply room also shut and locked all the doors so people (or things) can get in, but not out. The zombie’s plan was working.

            The two groups of zombies inside the school walked slowly to the gym and to the lunch room, which was right next to one another.  With the lights out no one could see, except the zombies.  Some people were started to worry, but they didn’t think much of it.  But then the head zombie took his ax, held it high above his rotten head and swung with full force on the first victim.  Blood gushed everywhere from the person’s neck, with the severed head on the floor.  The head zombie yelled and the zombies charged like soldiers in the Civil War and began the bloodiest massacre this town has ever seen.  Every one screamed and tried to fight back, but it was useless with the weapons that the zombies had.  Little kids were crying and screaming, but the yelling didn’t last very long.  Blood and guts were splattered on the gym floor which had just been waxed and polished a couple of days ago, and now painted with human bodies and blood.  The white walls had bloody hand prints on them, some of little children only the age of five.  This was the same for the lunch room.  There was blood everywhere, bodies strewn on the floor, dozens and dozens, almost reaching three hundred.  No one escaped this horrible scene, only the zombies with a little snicker, and an evil grin.  The zombies also got to eat supper which made them happy, for they haven’t eaten in ten years.  They didn’t eat the food, no; they ate something fresher, something warmer than the hot dogs the school served that night.  They also burned the school just because they felt like it.

            After the bloody battle, the zombies weren’t satisfied with what they had done.  They grabbed their axes and chain saws and began to terrorize the rest of the town that was sleeping soundly in their beds.  Shrieks penetrated the night like a bullet being shot from a gun.  Then there was silence.  The chain saws stopped buzzing and the axes were no longer being swung.  You could hear a pin drop. The zombies thought they had killed the person who killed all of them before, but they didn’t.  That person is rotting in jail somewhere else.  Not knowing this, they crawled back into their eternal sleep from which they had arose from in the graveyard.  It was as if they never came to life in the first place.  The dirt was back in place and the tombstones were nice and neat.

            The next day the sun was out and the birds were splashing in the bird baths and singing only to never be heard again by the people of Scythe.  The squirrels were chewing on nuts and the rabbits were eating grass.  Dogs and cats were whimpering and whining in their kennels only to never be attended to.  All seemed normal in this town, except everyone was dead.  The population was now zero.  The school was burned, stores broken into, and houses destroyed. 

            The neighboring cities such as Happyville, this day was as normal as any other day.  The traffic was flowing, school buses arriving at school to unload the kids, and adults going to work just like every other day.  Some of the kids from Happyville went to school in Scythe, since the towns are only fifteen miles apart.  As one family was driving to the school, they noticed that scythe was rather quiet that morning.  They wondered if they even had school, but as they pulled up to where the school used to be, they realized they wouldn’t have school for a long time.  They squealed their tires and called for help because they had no idea of what went down last night.  The cops didn’t believe that the school burnt down because the fire department is always on call especially on holidays and would have responded to anything, but little did they know that the fire station has also burned down.  The cops finally believed them and said that they had better call the swat team and the secret service.

            When the swat teams and secret service arrived, they couldn’t believe their eyes.  They had never seen such destruction, such devastation and they couldn’t believe that all of this happened in just one night.  They wanted to find some eye witnesses of what happened, but all the houses were empty and no one was around.  This freaked them out.  There wasn’t a trace of anybody, just the wildlife that inhabited the town, which weren’t very many animals.  The Secret Service got out the blood hounds and searched for a single breath of life but ended up with nothing.

            Scythe became a story on the national news channels all over the world, and it was all over the local news channels too.  Many reporters came and searched for a story but all they left with was a story of how a whole town disappeared in one night, and not knowing the truth behind all this.  They searched and searched for answers but came up disappointed.

            As the years went on the little town of Scythe was torn down and was rebuilt under the approval of the President himself.  They were going to bury this old and mysterious town but they thought it could be a good thing to rebuild it, just the way it was before, and turn it into a historical center.  They rebuilt the school with the same number of gyms and classrooms, and they rebuilt all the stores just like they had been.  They rebuilt the houses and people began to move in again.  The town was just getting back on its feet.  The town started to become almost as nice as it was before, but little did they know that the zombies come back to life every ten years causing havoc on the people in the town, on Halloween night because they can’t find the people who killed them many years ago.