October 1, 2020.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #1:

The heavy wooden door opens for you, as if drawn by an invisible hand. The darkness behind it is complete, the interior of the crypt concealed by its ink-like shroud, and you cannot help the feeling that you are about to fall in and tumble forever in that total blackness.

Still, you must enter, and so you do, attempting to banish the dark with your torch, which drips strands of firey pitch into the black. However, the darkness impossibly overwhelms your flame and swallows its light. The flame falters, then suffocates, and disappears.

You are left standing in the still and dark of the crypt. When you turn to flee, you find the door closed, unyielding, shut firmly against your palms as you pound against it, fruitlessly.

Panic reaches up into you, palpating your heart and mind with its skeletal fingers, and you begin to lose command of your senses. The madness of this place is about to overtake you.

Then- just as you let out your first hopeless wail, a second flame alights in the room, somewhere to your left. You turn to face it, disoriented, frightened.

This time, not a torch but a fireplace, the flame pale and terrible, yet what light it gives manages to illuminate the crypt. Not a crypt, you now realize; perhaps a study, a library. The stones on the wall are recessed to allow for the bookshelves, overflowing with weathered volumes and yellowing stacks of papers, which reach to the ceiling and spill onto the floor, where they leach unknown substances and stains from the earth below.

In a high-backed armchair in front of the fireplace, there sits a fat man, his sunken eyes staring levelly at you. He wears his beard short, his hair black, his skin sallow. There's a flabby haggardness to him, some sickly cadaverous bloat that suggests disease, whether of the body or of the mind. His eyeglasses have slid down his nose, and he pushes them up with a bloodless knuckle before addressing you.

"Welcome, traveler, to Year Six of Spooktober Stories. My name is Jon Phillips, and I will be your caretaker for the next thirty-one days of terror. No, no, do not try to escape, for there is none, not in this place. But do not fear. The ghouls you encounter here are simply stories, dreamed by a sleep starved fantasist, and cannot hurt you. There is enough real terror outside of these walls.

"So take a seat, traveler, against the wall, yes, there, and let me read to you, a tale or two. Perhaps, when this is all over, you will awake and find it has all been a dream... or more likely... a nightmare..."