Horror Story Lenny Levine
T
he unearthly moaning was coming from the basement. The sound was barely human and, maybe, she realized with a shudder, not human at all! She’d never been allowed in the basement. Her mother had told her there were things in this world that children should never see. But now her mother was dead. Now she was alone. Fifteen-year-old Natalie Jennings, her legs folded beneath her on the couch, stared at the screen on her laptop and frowned. She read the words again, then, with a sigh of disgust, highlighted the whole thing, deleted it and started over. It was coming from the attic! Her mother had warned her never to go up there, but what could she do? A voice was crying for help, a voice she hadn’t heard since she was a child. She had to climb up that ladder, even though it was insane. Even though the person that voice belonged to had been dead for over ten years. Another sigh, another highlight, another deletion. The sun was setting. She knew if she didn’t find her way out of these woods pretty soon, she’d die. The temperature was dropping; it would be near zero by nighttime. Her frosty breath caught in her throat as she heard twigs snap. The awful crunching and growling sounds were getting closer. The thing somehow knew she was nearby. It was all
she could do not to scream. “Natalie!” She gasped, jolted back to the moment. Her mother had, once again, snuck up on her. It was uncanny. Natalie shut the laptop, but she knew it was too late. “Trying to write a horror story, are we?” How long had she been standing there? Natalie cursed herself for thinking she could do this out here in the living room. Angela Jennings was an imposing woman of nearly five-foot-ten, and she loomed over the couch as Natalie blinked up at her. Her mother always seemed to be looming. “I’d rather catch you watching porn,” Angela said with an upward twitch of her lip. “Horror stories are cheap. Any no-talent hack can write a horror story.” Natalie knew it wasn’t just any no-talent hack her mother was talking about; it was her father. More than five years had passed since the divorce, but her parents’ hatred of each other had, if anything, intensified. Writing wasn’t their only battlefield, but it was a major one for her mother, since she was a best-selling au-
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