What Scared Kevin?
by Roderick T. Long
[written around 12, or 1976-ish, in Idaho Falls.]
The cold wind whistled over the Scottish moors foreboding a cold winter in the coming months. Kevin looked at the old, stone hut which was strictly “offlimits” to him, and the one that everyone said was haunted.
“Why, if you don’t believe it’s haunted,” Kevin had asked his parents, “do you make it off limits to me?” His parents had given the kind of answer that you really can’t remember, but it doesn’t matter because they didn’t mean anything anyway.
A Scotch mist, what Americans would call “a light rain,” had come up, and Kevin had still not decided whether to enter the hut. Suddenly, the rain broke into a cloudburst, and Kevin rushed into the hut, drenched with water.
He could hear the water dripping on the roof, and he felt cold. He remembered the stories of men who had entered the hut and had been later found dead.
Suddenly he heard a noise! He whirled around. What he saw chilled his blood cold! He turned to run, but as he ran by the wall with the hooks on it, a hand grabbed his jacket and twisted it around his neck. The harder he pulled, the more it twisted. He fell down to the floor, unconscious.
Kevin’s body was found, weeks later. Part of his jacket was caught on a hook, and the other half twisted around the boy’s neck. The police explained that something must have startled him, making him run so that his jacket caught on the hook. But one thing the police could not explain was: What scared Kevin? What?
Back to Juvenilia and Other Offenses