Южная Готика: студенты Литинститута попробовали силы в жанре хоррор

В октябре 2024 студенты второго курса групп Ирины Всеволодовны Соколовой и Ярославы Юрьевны Муратовой, погрузившись в мрачную атмосферу американской Южной Готики, решили попробовать собственные силы в жанре хоррор. Организовали конкурс на лучшее окончание рассказа ужасов на английском языке. Участникам было предложено несколько начальных строк, а дальше им предстояло проявить собственную фантазию и остроумие. Все авторы прекрасно справились с задачей. Наиболее занимательные варианты мы предлагаем вашему вниманию.

Beginning [Начало рассказа (студенты должны придумать продолжение)]

A father went to say good night to his son, as it was routine since he knew his son would have trouble sleeping if he didn’t. It was a sort of silent tradition between them, one he never forgot to attend.

The room was dimly lit by the lamp, but the father could clearly see there was something unusual about the kid tonight. He looked the same, just with a huge grin that drew from ear to ear.

“You okay, buddy?” he asked. The son nodded, still grinning, before saying, “Daddy, check for monsters under my bed.” The father chuckled and got on his knees to take a look. There, under the bed, was his son. His real son. Pale, trembling, and scared to death. He whispered, “Daddy, there’s someone on my bed.”

Story № 1. Екатерина Шлюкова

...

A horrible giggle came from above and the boy hid further under the bed, staring at his father in fear. The father jerked in shock, and fell on the floor. The "thing" on his son's bed was spinning its head, while its arms and legs began to stretch out, and the hysterical laughter grew louder. It jumped off the bed and rushed at the man at great speed, while the latter was trying to crawl away.

The son was crying loudly under the bed, and the father screamed in horror, leaning his back against the door. The monster's ugly mouth opened and a second before the irrevocable, the man woke up with a scream.

His wife woke up with him and took his hand.

"What's wrong, darling?" She asked sleepily.

"Just a nightmare", He answered.

"Do I need to check for monsters under the bed to calm you down?" She joked.

" It would be nice",  He answered tiredly, but his wife was already laughing and lying back down.

He also lay down when he noticed his son in the doorway.

"What's wrong, buddy?"

"Dad, I had a nightmare too... " His voice was very stressful.

The father started to get up again when his wife asked where he was going.

"Our son had a nightmare".

The woman turned to look at him and frowned.

"We don't have a son. And no children at all, in case you forgot."

The man looked through the doorway again, but there was no one there.

"Are you okay?" His wife asked.

But he continued to stare into the darkness. He thought he saw a creepy grin there.

Story № 2. Татьяна Шабалина
A Doppelganger.

...

Martin (that was the father's name) closed his eyes and got up from his knees. A slight tremor swept over his body. This kind of situation was not explained at the training courses for young fathers, his personal psychologist didn`t warn him, nobody talked about it at school or at the university. Therefore, he was sure of one thing: what wasn`t in the rules and axioms of life, cannot occur in real life. Martin tried to convince himself that there was no one under the bed. Just couldn't be.

- Buddy, you should get some sleep. And your father should too, - he said, stroking his son on the head. At the same time, the lamp began to blink hysterically, responding with convulsions to his every word.

- Are you sure that there is no one under the bed? –  Something sitting on the cot was smiling ominously.

- Yes, I am. Good night, Mike, - Martin kissed his son on the top of his head and hurried out of the room.

At night, it seemed to him that some voices were coming from his son's room. There were some scratching and moaning sounds penetrating through the pale green wall (the psychologist convinced him that green color had a calming effect on the nervous system and helped to fall asleep).

- Stacy, do you hear that? – Martin was trying to wake up his wife, who was lying next to him, - Stacy?

The woman stretched with displeasure and looked at her husband with her Lemurian eyes.

- Honey, you are tired. Please get some sleep.

Martin couldn't sleep. Not a single sound came through all night. Was something creepy happening behind the serene-looking wall? The man was so scared that he couldn't deal with the situation. He preferred to convince himself that he had just imagined it all. Only in the morning the sounds stopped, and the man plunged into the arms of Morpheus.

He realized it was a dream only when he woke up. Everything happened with amazing plausibility, and even supernatural seemed to be normal and natural for this place. Martin was walking through a long corridor made up entirely of mirrors. But he wasn't the one who looked at him from the mirror. It was someone who looked a lot like him. It seemed that his appearance, voice, gait were mysteriously stolen and accurately copied, but there was something insane, hyperbolized, unnatural in these actions. The man gathered his strength and looked directly into the eyes of one of his multiple reflections. The reflection grinned and screamed shrilly: "Daddy, will you save me?" And immediately hundreds of other copies of him shouted:

Daddy will you save me Daddy will you save me Daddy will you save me Daddy will you save me Daddy will you save me?

Martin jumped out of his bed in panic, but the voice did not die down.

- Daddy, will you save me? –  Mike, his son, was standing near the bed. Or it was something very similar to him.

- I will save you from… what? – the father asked and exhaled blissfully, realizing that it was just a bad dream. Just like what happened last evening in the nursery. That`s right. It was just a dream.

- I was under my bed last evening. But you didn`t save me, - said the boy and pouted his plump lips. Only his real son could do that. Martin breathed a sigh of relief and hugged him.

- Daddy will always be with you. Everything will be fine.

-  Daddy will always be with me? Do you promise? – The child's eyes lit up with a neon green light. He put on his crazy smile and clapped his hands.

- Daddy will always be with me Daddy will always be with me Daddy will always be with me!

The whole room seemed to be in the epicenter of an earthquake. Reality has turned into a viscous jelly. Martin fell off the bed and hit his head painfully.

The next day everything seemed unreal and insane. Martin could find his child in two places at the same time. "One version" of his son could say one thing, and the other invariably contradicted the first. He thought he was going crazy and had absolutely no idea what to do. The man felt like a lost child.  But the most frightening was that Stacy didn't notice anything strange and continued to live her normal life. She kissed the top of her son's head, not noticing his neon green eyes. Its distorted grimace seemed sweet to her. Martin would have given a lot to be as serene as she was.

- Daddy, why did you stop coming into my room and saying good night? – It asked one evening at dinner.

- Dad… is not feeling well. But I will necessarily go in your room today.

It clapped its hands and began to sing:

Daddy will be with me, Daddy will wish me a good night!

Even before Martin opened the nursery door, he had felt that something was wrong. The room smelled of a rotting body. The man slowly went inside like he was a wooden soldier.

The sounds of a music box could be heard in the room, which were distorted and sounded like in a horror movie. And the ballerina from the box seemed to be stained with someone's blood. The nursery was empty.

- Mike? –  Martin heard the sound of his own voice. But it wasn't his voice, - Mike?

Nobody answered him. The stuffiness in the room squeezed his chest, so the man went to the window to open it. Suddenly he tripped over something.

It was his son's rotting leg sticking out from under the bed.

- It turns out, that the child's corpse was lying under the bed for two weeks, and you didn't even notice your son's absence ? – The elderly cop looked skeptically at Stacy's bulging eyes. She was sobbing convulsively while giving evidence.

Cops clearly didn't believe her. «No, ma'am, you're not crazy, but can you understand...», «Ma'am, when was the last time you went to a psychologist?»

Cops left, when they were convinced  in the woman's complete insanity. The house was suspiciously empty and quiet. Stacy, distraught with loss, walked around the house screaming. «Mike, where are you?» «Mike, I know you're here, where are you hiding, my naughty boy?" But nobody answered her.

It was at three a.m. when she realized she was insanely tired. She completely forgot that Martin was also in the house. Why cops didn`t interrogate him?

With a heavy feeling in her heart, she entered their bedroom.

The room was dimly lit by the lamp, but she could clearly see there was something unusual about her husband tonight. He looked the same, just with a huge grin that drew from ear to ear.

“You okay, honey?” she asked. Martin nodded, still grinning, before saying, “Darling, check for monsters under our bed.” Staсy chuckled nervously and got on her knees to take a look. There, under the bed, was her husband. Her real husband. Pale, trembling, and scared to death. He whispered, “Darling, there’s someone on our bed.”

Story № 3. Мария Хлопушина

...

The man stared at his son's pale face for another second. Confusion in his soul mixed with horror. He began to get up slowly, deafened by the beating of his own heart. He looked up at the bed with painful slowness. There was no one on the crumpled sheets. The man took two large steps back, staring at the empty bed in confusion. He felt his hair stand on end in horror as a thin child's hand came out from under the bed, groping like a predatory around the floor.

Suddenly, the closet doors slammed behind him. The father turned around at the sound, almost losing consciousness from fear. There was nothing behind him except for the tightly locked closet. Before he could come to his senses, the man turned back to the bed again because of the heartbreaking scream. He saw his son helplessly grabbing the edges of the bed, someone's pale hands pulling him into the mattress. The boy was diving into the sheets as if he was drowning in quicksand. The man rushed to help, but his son had already been completely pulled in.

The father frantically groped around the bed, dug his nails into the mattress like an animal, tore the sheet but his son and the creature that had pulled him in had disappeared. In a few moments, the man realized that he wasn't tearing sheets and a mattress, but soft white fabric on the wall. It was as if the man had woken up. The children's room with the gutted bed was gone. In its place there was a room with bright light and white soft walls and floor. The man was standing on his knees in a hospital robe, he dug in with his nails to the fabric of the wall. 

Story № 4. Нина Кувшинова

Good Night

...

Suddenly something touched the father’s shoulder. He turned around and saw his son's «twin» smiling. The fake son asked "Who are you talking to?» and the father instantly rushed to the shelf where they kept an icon, a crucifix and a vessel with holy water. He grabbed the vessel and splashed its contents towards the bed. The holy water fell on both kids, and to the father's surprise the skin of the two boys began to burn and blister. One of them, whose smile grew even wider, began to laugh maliciously, and the one who had crawled out from under the bed began to cry. Their voices merged into an ominous jangle.

 The boys began to approach «their» father slowly: one crawling, and the other creeping… The father exclaimed: "What the hell is this?" He took the crucifix and pointed it at his «sons». They were thrown towards the bed by God’s power, but this time the smiling kid rolled under the bed, and the crying one fell onto a soft blanket and a cozy pillow.

 The father wanted to run after the mother, but she was already entering the room. The mother hugged the crying boy, tried to calm him down and asked what happened. The child complained that his father had refused to check for monsters under the bed and said that at his age it was shameful to be afraid of such nonsense. The mother cast a reproachful glance at the father and said that she would check everything herself. "Don't! There is...", the father only managed to say before she quickly bent down and made sure that there was nothing under the bed. "Don't worry, there are no monsters under your bed," the mother said to her son, after that she added "Good night," silently left the room and headed to the kitchen.

The father followed her. He tried to talk to her, but she ignored him. Eventually, he got angry and raised his voice "I don't like the way you’re treating me!"  The mother started yelling back "You don't like the way I’m treating you! Look at yourself, who have you become? You came back so late, drunk... and snapped at your son!”, "There's something wrong with our son!», «Congratulations! You finally woke him up!»

All this time the smiling boy was standing nearby silently, he was giggling. «Darling, why aren't you in bed?» asked the mother. "I want to play! let's play with our guests!" said the kid, laughing. Straight after these words, a doorbell rang. The smiling boy ran up to the mother, took her hand and led her to the door. The father followed them, but kept at a certain distance just in case.

 The mother turned the key, hesitantly. “You should have looked through the peephole first…” the father grumbled disapprovingly, but despite his advice the door was quickly unlocked and opened. Behind the opened door they saw a clown and the crying boy. He said "Mom, I got lost, but this very kind clown took me home». The mother couldn't believe her eyes – there were two absolutely identical children in front of her. She was scared out of her wits.

 At this time the clown approached the father, and said, "We’re all floating down here. You’ll float too," and began to dance. Then someone grabbed the father's hand! He started screaming and struggling…

 The next moment, the father realized that he was lying on a couch. A movie about Pennywise  was on TV, and his son was crying by his side. The father turned off the TV and tried to calm his son down. “Don’t worry, it’s a stupid movie, there are no evil clowns…” The kid stopped crying and said resentfully, “I’m not afraid of these stupid clowns, they’re not scary at all!” “Then what’s upset you so much?” the father asked in bewilderment. The son replied, “You forgot to say good night to me!”.