One By One

One by One is a story submitted by XxWiltedGraceXx, who is a user on this Website. It’s about a boy who takes a picture in a haunted house.

One by One

One by one, my family was killed. One by one by one. I know I must be next. It was a curse. And it’s all my fault.

I went into a house that was said to be haunted. I wanted to take some pictures. I was a little disappointed when I saw nothing out of the ordinary, yet I still had an uneasy feeling. I decided to take a picture to show my friends that I had actually been brave enough to venture inside the haunted house. I shouldn’t have done that.

I got home late that evening. For some reason something felt different.

“Nicki, dinner’s ready” my mom called from the kitchen.

I told her I was going up to my room and would be down after I put away my things. I went up to my room, took out my camera and started browsing through the pictures I had taken. There was nothing interesting in the pictures, but I decided to keep them and threw the camera on my bed.

I went downstairs and met my parents, my older sister and my younger brother at the kitchen table. I thought I saw a shadowy shape lurking under the kitchen cabinets. It resembled something human.

Why didn’t I pay more attention?

After dinner, I went up to my room to relax. When I got there, the camera was sitting on my desk. A little freaked out, I tried to believe that I probably forgot and put it there myself. I was just about to brush it off when I saw something strange. Something had showed up in the photos on the camera. There was an image of a family of five. A mom, and dad, two teenagers, and a little boy. They were all a blur, like they were barely there. I was starting to get scared. there was something wrong with the picture. Before I could figure it out I was called down to do the dishes.

The next morning, I awoke to the smell of breakfast cooking. It smelled delicious. I heard my mom call out that breakfast was ready. I went to check what she was cooking, when I stopped dead in my tracks coming across a horrible sight.

My mom was in the corner sprawled on the floor. She was lying in a pool of blood. Her head was missing.

I fell to my knees then and there, not wanting to believe my eyes. I smelled something burning in the kitchen. Hesitantly I got up to to check and saw smoke coming from the oven. I was too scared to open it.

My dad came running into the house saying he thought there was a fire. He hadn’t seen my mom’s body. He quickly opened the oven and screamed. Inside, I saw my mom’s burned head. She was missing her eyes. I passed out.

I awoke on the couch with a cold towel on my head. The cops were asking questions. I personally didn’t think that it would do any good. It went on for almost an hour when my sister got tired of it.

“You’re not doing your jobs. Our mom, his wife just died and you’re asking pointless questions? go get the monster who did this!” and with that she stomped out of the house.

After a few more minutes of questioning I went up to my room. The camera was now back on my bed. There was something different about it. The mother in the picture appeared different. I was scared when I realized she was missing her head.

Nighttime came fast. Dad decided to sleep with a shotgun and he had our little brother sleep in his room with him. My sister had locked herself in her bedroom. I could hear her sobbing time to time. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know what was going on but I had the strangest feeling that something bad was going to happen. But I managed to fall asleep.

I awoke to the sound of a gunshot. It sounded like it came from my parents’ room. I quickly jumped to my feet, ignoring how tired I was. At first, I thought I was hearing things, but my sister barged into my room telling me she heard it too. We rushed to our parents room. When we got there my sister started screaming.

There was blood spattered on all of the walls and our little brother lay dead in the bed. He had been shot in the face. But where was our dad? The bathroom door slowly opened and then we saw him. He was hanging from the hook on the ceiling. He had tied the bed sheets around his neck.

My sister ran out of the room sobbing. I started to run after her but something caught my attention. Our family photo. Our parents and our little brother had disappeared from it. I felt dizzy. I almost blacked out when I heard something.

I head a voice say something that sounded like “One by one by one…”

I ran to my room to look at the photos on my camera. The father in the picture had changed. His head was hanging at an odd angle, as if his neck had been broken. There was bruising around his neck as if he had been hung. The little boy in the picture had a hole where his face should have been.

The lights suddenly flickered and turned off. I heard my sister scream. Then, I heard a voice, a ghostly, inhuman voice. It sounded like it came from the depths of hell. It was saying “One by one by one…”

I took the camera and ran out of my bedroom. I stopped at the foot of the stairs. There was a trail of blood leading into the bathroom. I followed the bloody trail, with my heart in my throat.

My sister was lying face-down in the bathtub. She had been drowned. I looked at the camera and saw that the daughter in the picture looked different. Her face was tinged with blue and her tongue was hanging out.

I called the police and they said they were on their way. Was there a murderer in the house or was it haunted? I didn’t know which, so I ran to my room and locked the door. I was afraid. Afraid of who or what did this and afraid of what might happen.

My door suddenly started to vibrate. Then it slowly creaked open. There seemed to be a something peering through the crack in the doorway. The door opened wider and I saw that it was the body of a woman.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move. The woman began to crawl towards me. It was dark but as she got closer I could see a slit mark on her neck just under the chin, and empty eye sockets. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to scream but no sound came out.

She opened her mouth and screamed, “One by one by one…”

(Sorry that it’s so long. I’m no pro at writing scary stories.)