A short fictional horror story about the grisly murders in a now haunted mansion.
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Ravendale used to be an unknown small town until a murder-suicide happened in the town’s oldest mansion at the heart of the city. The mansion became known as The Holloway Place. It had been abandoned since the late 1960s after the tragedy. No one dared to buy it because of the slew of legends and horror that spread like wildfire throughout the town. It was still believed that the oldest daughter’s ghost still roamed the halls and would murder anyone who stepped foot in the mansion.
In 1964, Annette and Martin Holloway moved into the first and only mansion that occupied Ravendale, Pennsylvania with their two daughters, Emily and Jean. The family kept to themselves for the most part, causing the majority of the townspeople to label them as odd. They didn’t socialize with anyone other than their direct family and their employees. The family relationships weren’t that of a normal family. Annette and Martin weren’t the traditional couple either. They never showed affection towards one another. Annette played the role of a stay-at-home mother while Martin was a philosophy professor at a Christian college in Philadelphia. The lack of affection trailed down to their kids, not giving them the love and nurturing that most parents expressed. The Holloway family looked happy and loving in the frame, but underneath their smiles, they were simply just hollow shells.
Elisa Holloway was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia when she was six years old, just after they moved to Ravendale. As any case of the disorder, there were both good days and bad days for the child, but neither Annette or Martin knew how to handle her and her disease. They didn’t pay attention to it like parents should and they distanced themselves from their eldest as much as they could.
When Jean was two, she was diagnosed with a speech disorder because she was mute. The girl never talked - even before diagnosis. She came up with her own way of communicating with the employees and her parents. Annette and Martin paid more attention to Jean because they knew that she wasn’t capable of doing anything harmful to them. Annette would take the time to come her hair and play dolls with her even. She never did that for Elisa.
It was in the early morning hours on October 30th when things changed for every single member of the Holloway family. It was all due to Elisa.
It was about one in the morning, everyone in the family was sound asleep in their rooms except for young Elisa. The voices inside of her head that she referred to as her friends were keeping her awake, whispering all of these awful things in her ears. She tossed and turned, trying to get the raspy voices to stop. After an hour, the girl had had enough. Elisa rose from her bed and went down to the grand kitchen.
“Go, go, go! Do it!” one of the voices, Oscar, commanded.
Elisa was staring at the knife block when her hand reached up and slowly took the butcher knife out of its slot. Before anything, she admired the shiny blade as if she had never seen something like it before. After she was finished, a maniacal smirk formed on the little girl’s face as she turned around and slowly went back upstairs - but this time, to her sister’s room.
Elisa’s steps were silent as she stepped into the moonlit room. Jean was snuggled into her comforter, softly snoring. Elisa stopped when she reached the side of her younger sister’s bed and looked at the small sleeping girl, the butcher knife tightly grasped in her right hand. It was then that Elisa’s demons took over her mind and the older girl roughly grabbed Jean’s shoulder, flipping her onto her back.
Jean’s eyes snapped open as Elisa climbed over the top of her. Elisa held Jean down with her left hand as her right hand rose, the moonlight glinting off of the knife’s blade. A look of horror formed on Jean’s face as she looked up at her sister, realizing what she was about to do. That was when the mute girl let out a loud, ear piercing scream.
Elisa covered Jean’s mouth and brought the knife down quickly, searing into Jean’s abdomen. “Time to go to Hell, sissy.”
The demons inside of Elisa’s diseased mind forced her to continuously stab her younger sister, Jean falling weaker and weaker with every incision. When Jean finally fell limp and her eyes closed, Elisa evilly smiled to herself, admiring her work. The walls were splattered with streaks of Jean’s blood. The fixtures and stuffed toys around her soiled forever.
Elisa heard footsteps and her head snapped away from her deceased younger sister. It was her parents moving about, no thanks to Jean’s scream. Elisa walked out of the room and began to ascend up the stairs towards Annette and Martin’s room. She wasn’t about to let them escape from her.
Martin exited the bedroom, looking at Elisa with a terrified expression. “Elisa, what’s going on? Why are you covered in blood?”
“There’s a bad man, daddy,” Elisa told him with a monotone voice.
“A bad man? Is he gone?” Martin asked as Elisa approached closer. He opened his arms to take his daughter into a hug, but was rudely surprised when a knife pierced into his gut. He stumbled back from his daughter, looking at her with a look of disbelief and horror.
She stabbed him directly in the stomach, causing him to fall onto his back as he gasped and choked for air. “He’s gone now, daddy.”
Annette couldn’t help the sob that left her as she had watched her first born look at her husband lying dead on the floor. Elisa looked towards the crying woman, the knife dropping from her hands. Annette backed herself against the wall on her bed, not sure what to do. She knew that Elisa was being influenced by her schizophrenia and didn’t have any control over what she was doing to her family.
“Elisa, darling, please. Listen to me: this isn’t you. You’re being controlled by the Devil,” Annette choked out, but Elisa wasn’t listening. Her daughter went over to the glowing fireplace, grabbing the poker that was hanging against the stone mantel. “Elisa, you wouldn’t kill your family! Don’t let these demons get the bes-”
Before Annette could finish her final plea, the fireplace poker was piercing through her stomach - the same place that Martin was stabbed. Annette grasped her wound, looking up at her demon-infested daughter with tear filled eyes as she choked on her blood.
“Have fun with sissy and daddy in Hell,” Elisa muttered with a maniacal smile on her face.
She turned around and slowly walked towards the fireplace, looking at the tall hot flames inside of it. Elisa turned back to look at her mother, the woman fighting for her life as she lie on the bed. Elisa turned again and walked into the fire, making certain that the last thing her mother saw was her sacrificing herself to her demons.
