“Can we hear the ghost story?” the children sat in a circle around the oldest.
“A ghost story? What makes you think I know a ghost story?”
“Anna, don’t tease. It’s dark enough and the little ones need to remember,” Orson said with a small frown.
Anna smiled at Orson. “You’re right. It’s a good time to tell it tonight.” Anna got out her flashlight. “Once there was this very pretty lady, whose name was Susie. Susie lived with her six children. There were all those children but the daddies were gone.”
“The daddies?”
“That’s right my little one. Each child had a different daddy. The oldest was Anna, and her daddy was Antonio who starved. Then there was Orson, whose daddy was Oliver. Oliver died in a fire. Next was Christopher, whose daddy Christian drowned one day. Then was Wendy. Her daddy Wyatt was electrocuted. The fifth child was Jeremy. Jebidiah, his daddy burned to death. The youngest was little Sarah. Her daddy was Sammy, and he starved too.”
“Why were they all dead?”
“Susie was crazy. She wanted them to stay with her forever and so she killed each one after she had his baby. Then each of them had to stay near their urns in her house forever more.”
Then late one night, all the ghosts came out at once.
“We must do something about Susie,” said the ghost of Antonio. “She has gotten away with this for far too long.”
Several of the other ghosts agreed.
“But,” said the ghost of Sam. “What will become of our little ones? Susie doesn’t care for them. She has always locked her current lover with them so that person tends the children.” He was still sad that he’d never had a chance to cuddle his baby before he died.
“Surely it would be better to stop Susie from adding more to her collection? Even if that does put our little ones at risk,” replied Wyatt.
“Revenge, damn it,” cackled Jebidiah. “I want revenge for what she’s done.”
“How?” asked Ollie. “We can’t do what she did. We can’t set things on fire, or drown her, or electrocute her.”
“Do we have a choice?” asked Christian.
“We’ll just have to frighten her to death,” replied Jeb with a smirk.
"I suppose that's the only option we have," said Ollie. "While we can, we can keep her from eating, from sleeping and frighten her every chance we get."
“Will it work? She’s rather used to us.”
“At the very least, we can be sure that no man stays the night. Keep at least one from falling into her clutches.”
And after that, the beautiful Susie could find no peace in her home at night. There was always a ghost nearby. They haunted the plumbing. They haunted the bed. They haunted the kitchen.
Susie tried to pretend that all was fine. But her few male friends never visited her home twice, and it wasn’t long before the entire town knew that Susie’s house was haunted by an angry ghost. Only Susie and her children knew that there wasn’t one angry ghost but many.
The ghosts had little effect on Susie at first. But they had all of eternity on their side, so they persisted with their haunting. And some weeks later, they found they were having an effect. For Susie took longer and longer to recover from each fright. She slowly lost weight and she rarely slept, she stopped caring about her appearance. “Go away!” she would scream at a ghost.
“You said you wanted me to stay forever. I can’t leave you now.”
“I changed my mind. Be free. All of you be free,” cried Susie.
“Only your death can set us free. Die now, Susie. Let us all rest.”
“You want me to die?”
Jeb frightened Susie from behind. “Of course we want you to die. Did you expect any different when you killed us?”
After that day, Susie lost her will to live. The ghosts were haunting the house in twos and threes, she was never allowed a quiet moment alone at night. One night, it was too much and one of the ghosts frightened Susie to death.
—
“And then what happened Anna?”
“Well, the oldest child had to decide if she was going to keep her brothers and sisters together or let them be adopted by new families. It would have been easy to let her siblings be adopted but Anna decided she wanted every last one of them to stay.”
“Hurray Anna.”
“And I eventually found a way to bury all our daddies properly here. They rest forever in a circle around the grave of our mother Susie so they can keep an eye on our mother’s ghost.”
“I don’t think ghosts are scary.”
“Well, they are our daddies. They still love us. And now they only come out when we’re here wanting to talk to them.” So each of Susie’s children spent some time talking to their ghostly daddy on the night of the dead.
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Note, it needs about 6 to 10 more pics and I'll probably update it someday with them. However, it is a Halloween tale and so either post now or next year.
