AUNT AGGIE (2025 Edit)

Benjamin Charlton murdered his aunt only to discover that she was a powerful witch

Agnetha Chambers stood at the top of the narrow staircase, staring down at her own feet. She wrinkled up her nose, squinting in a bid to force her near blind eyes to focus. At the bottom of the stairs, her nephew Benjamin Charlton stood in complete silence, waiting, wondering when she would start down the stairs toward him. Fall, damn you, fall! he thought, trying his best to will the old woman to her death. It was rumoured that the Charltons had been accused of practising witchcraft at the Salem witch hunts of the 1690s, but try as he might, Benjamin couldn’t propel the old woman forward by force of will alone.

At last, however, she started forward ....

But almost immediately she stopped again and stood on the second-top step, staring down the staircase, seemingly straight toward her nephew.

She can’t possibly see me from this distance! thought Benjamin. He was terrified in case the old woman knew that he was standing there. The old bag is as blind as a bat!

Yet, for a moment it seemed as though old Aggie Chambers could indeed see her nephew standing in the shadows, on the lower landing, plotting her death.

Walk, damn you, walk! thought Benjamin. He almost gasped out loud from shock, as his aunt called out, “Is that you, Benjamin?” As though she could somehow read her nephew’s thoughts.

After a moment, the old woman started forward again. But she had only gone a step or two when she let out a shriek and fell headlong down the stairs.

Benjamin watched in delight as the plump old woman landed headfirst halfway down the stairs, then rolled like a beach ball down the red-carpeted stairs, head and legs smashing again and again into the solid railing on either side of the stairs. Until finally she came to rest almost at his very feet.

Now that’s what I call the red-carpet treatment! thought Benjamin as he stood looking down at the broken body of his aunt. He bent down to make certain that she was dead -- although the right angle that her neck formed, allowing her head to rest against her own shoulder, left little doubt about the matter.

She’s dead all right! he thought, before starting when his aunt suddenly opened her eyes wide and whispered, “Benjamin?”

But she can’t possibly still be alive! Her neck is broken! he thought. He backed away from the “corpse”, close to panic.

For nearly five minutes Benjamin stood half a dozen paces away from his aunt, staring down at her in horror, waiting in dread for some other sign that she might have somehow survived the headlong fall down the staircase.

She has to be dead! he tried to reassure himself. After all, she hit her head a dozen or more times while rolling down the stairs. Any one of those blows was hard enough to crack her thick skull! But what if she wasn’t dead, he wondered. What if she had somehow survived and knew that it was Benjamin who had tied the trip-wire? She’ll cut me off without a cent! he thought. Benjamin Charlton was Agnetha Chambers’ last surviving relative, but he thought, The old goat might just be spiteful enough to will everything to the local cats’ home, if she knows I tried to kill her!

As much as he was afraid to approach her, Benjamin realised that he had to find out if she was somehow still alive. Perhaps if I pretend to have just come home and found her, he thought. Even if the old battle-axe suspects, she won’t be certain!

“Oh my God, Aunt Aggie!” cried Benjamin, trying to sound as though he had just found her at the bottom of the stairs. But as soon as he said it, he realised that he had spoken too soon: he should have waited until he was between the old woman and the stairs, so that it would seem as though he had just come down from his room on the second floor. The old witch must be so shaken up by her fall that she’s probably too disorientated to even notice, he thought. I hope!

Hurrying around to the other side of the prone form, he said, “My God, Auntie, are you all right?” He bent down to touch the figure. But just before his fingers could make contact with her arm, Aunt Aggie rolled over onto her back.

Jumping back in shock, Benjamin almost fell on top of his aunt, whom he could see, to his relief, was definitely dead. Clutching his heart, he said, “You always were a teasing old bitch! Even in death!”

When his heartbeat had finally returned to something like normal, he turned and headed up the stairs. He found the nylon string halfway up the staircase, having been dragged away from the wall by the weight of Aunt Aggie. Three steps down from the top of the stairs, he found one of the two brads he had used to tack the twine at ankle height. But to his dismay, there was no sign of the second brad.

“It’s only a tiny tack,” he thought aloud. “Even if someone did find it, and saw the tiny holes in the wood near the top of the railings, they’d never put two and two together and figure out that I murdered the old goat.”

Yet, just to be on the safe side, Benjamin went up to the attic to get a container of putty, a small paint brush, and a can of off-white paint.


“No one will ever notice the difference,” he said with pride, after he had filled in the two tiny holes, then carefully painted them over to more-or-less match the rest of the wooden railing.

Out of the corner of one eye, he caught a glimpse of movement at the bottom of the stairs and turned round quickly, thinking that he was being watched.

“Who’s there?” he demanded, trying without success to keep the quiver out of his voice. He started slowly down the staircase, still carrying the can of paint and paintbrush.

Halfway down the stairs, Benjamin found the missing brad.

“Jesus!” he shouted as he stood on the tack, which went through the sole of his Nike and into the tender flesh at the bottom of his foot. Staggering, he started to fall down the stairs and had to clutch desperately at the banister with both hands, whimpering from terror as he almost crashed down the staircase like his aunt.

In his bid to save himself, he dropped the small can of paint, which hit the stairs with a thud, sending a thick spray of paint up to coat him from head to toe -- his red cashmere sweater and black slacks, both near new, were ruined. Then, clinging onto the railing for dear life, still unsteady on his feet, he could only watch on in frustration as the can of paint fell over onto its side and began to roll down the staircase, leaving a thick, off-white line down the lush, red carpet.

On the verge of screaming aloud from infuriation, he sat on the stairs to remove the tack from his Nike. He winced from pain as the brad pulled out of his flesh and thought, I’d better go up to the bathroom to get some Dettol to put on it ... Then see what I can find to remove that damned paint!

Standing again, he started to turn to head back up the stairs when something caught his eye again. For almost a minute, he stood staring down toward the corpse of Aunt Aggie before realising what was wrong.

“The old goat has moved!” he said.

Aunt Aggie had been lying on her back parallel to the bottom step -- he was certain of that. But now she lay on her left side, pointing toward the staircase, her head upon the bottom step, as though using it for a pillow.

“The old goat has moved!” he repeated. Then he thought, I must have moved her myself, when I checked to see if she was dead! But try as he might, he could not recall having touched his aunt’s corpse. “But dead bodies don’t move of their own accord,” he said aloud, in a vain bid to reassure himself.

He stood halfway down the steps, staring toward Aunt Aggie for a few minutes, before finally he managed to summon up enough courage to walk down the stairs to pick up the spilt can of paint.


Half an hour later, Benjamin had changed, showered, soaked his sweater and slacks in turpentine and had changed into a pair of faded blue jeans and a patched cardigan. No point risking damage to any more good clothing, he thought as he returned to the staircase to try the turpentine on the paint stain on the red carpet.

He scrubbed at the ugly paint stain for nearly an hour before giving up, undecided whether he had made things better or worse. He had removed most of the paint, but the remainder had diluted and spread out across a much larger portion of the carpet than before, so that the lush red carpet now had a large, pinkish smudge in the centre, running halfway up the staircase.

“That’ll have to do,” he said, with a sigh. “There are no Hercule Poirots or Sherlock Holmeses in real life, so I doubt if anyone will ever link the stain with the old battle-axe’s death, let alone use it to prove I murdered her.”

Kneeling to scrub at the carpet, he straightened up and found himself looking at Aunt Aggie again. “What do you think, you old ...?” he began, stopping in mid sentence to stare in horror. “She’s moved again!” he finally said.

Now the old woman’s corpse was up to the second-bottom step. She now lay on her belly, one arm outstretched above her head as though pleading for help. Or trying to pull herself up the stairs! thought Benjamin in terror. Her green eyes were open and seemed to almost shine as she glared with hatred toward her murderer.

Benjamin waited, crouching on the stairs for two or three minutes, half expecting to see her start after him. But finally his heart stopped pounding in his ears, and he thought, Maybe the old bat wasn’t quite dead before and she started up the stairs before finally dying? Watching her baleful, glaring eyes, he thought, And of course her eyes would be open, staring, if she died when awake. It’s only in the movies that people always shut their eyes after dying.

Having reassured himself, at last, Benjamin walked back up the staircase, put away the turpentine and rags, then headed for Aunt Aggie’s bedroom to ransack it. Of course, he knew that he was the only beneficiary in her will -- she had shown her copy to him --, so eventually he would inherit everything. But in the meantime, he hoped to find some ready cash to pay off some of his more pressing debts.

“It might be a cliché about old bags keeping their money under their mattresses,” he said to himself, “but it’s also true with a lot of old battle-axes who have more money than sense.”

He stripped the bedclothes off the bed, then turned over the mattress. “Nothing,” he said in dismay.

He started feeling his way about the mattress in case Aunt Aggie had padded the mattress with money. Finally, however, he was forced to concede that if there was any money hidden in the room, it was not inside the mattress.

“Then where the ...?” he said, looking about the large room.

The only other furniture in the room was a small dressing table, a single-door cupboard, and three floor-to-ceiling height bookcases, which completely covered three walls of the bedroom.

As he started to look through the underclothes in the dressing table, Benjamin thought, Christ, I knew the old battle-axe was a book-freak, but this is ridiculous! There must be thousands of damn books here. I knew she was a bit strange, but she must have been completely loony to waste a fortune buying all of these books!

He moved across to start looking through the musty old dresses in the cupboard and thought, I hope it won’t cause any trouble with the will if she was crazy? Aloud be said:

“No, not when I’m her only living relative. Perhaps if there were others to contest the will, there might ....” He stopped in mid sentence and said, “My God, I hope the crazy old goat didn’t hide all her money in the books!”

He ran across to one of the giant bookcases and frantically began pulling books from the shelves. He shook each book vigorously in the hope of dislodging any hidden bank notes, then threw it onto the floor and went on to the next book.

For more than an hour, he searched through the books without discovering a single note.

Finally despairing, he said, “Even if the old witch did hide her money here, it could take me days to look through all these books!”

Trying desperately to calm down enough to reason out his next move, Benjamin started to put the books back onto the shelves, thinking, I can’t let the cops see this mess; they’d soon put two and two together. That Terri Scott is too damned smart for my own good.

He reached for a thick, leather-bound tome, mouldy with age, and read, “Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer) by Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger.”

“Looks like the old bat really was a witch,” he said. He laughed aloud at his joke. Picking up a book titled The Witches of Salem, he opened it at random and read:

Most of the people who were executed as witches at Salem, in the 1690s, were the victims of paranoia, or else were feeble-minded old crones who deluded themselves into believing in their own “Powers”. However, there were a few genuine witches in Salem. The most notorious being Rebecca Farris, Beverly Goodwin, Christina Corey, and Agnetha Chambers ....

Benjamin almost dropped the book as he read his aunt’s name. But he quickly recovered his composure and thought, So what if the names are the same? It was probably a distant relative of the old hag? There’s no way it could be the same old bat ... No one lives for more than four hundred years! Aloud he said, “And if the Charltons can have witches in their family, why can’t the Chambers also?”

Returning to the book, he read, The Chambers in particular were reputed to be witches. Some people even claimed that all the Chambers women since time immemorial have been witches who used their powers to wither their neighbours’ crops and help their own husbands’ crops to flourish ....

“Conjure Wife all over again!” said Benjamin, remembering Fritz Leiber’s classic novel about witches who use their powers to further their husbands’ careers.

Returning the book to the shelf, he picked up a handful of books from the floor and began returning them to the bookcases. He had almost finished restocking the books when he found himself looking at a volume titled, Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks! He started to open the book, but stopped as he heard a thumping, shuffling sound outside in the hallway.

Going out into the corridor to investigate the sound, he stopped at the top of the staircase and called out, “Who’s there?”

“Benjamin? Oh, Benjamin?” called out a soft, crooning voice from halfway down the stairs.

Looking down, he was horrified to see that Aunt Aggie’s corpse was now halfway up the stairs. But even more frightening, the corpse had half risen up from the stairs; her legs, which had obviously been shattered in the fall down the staircase, lay uselessly against the red carpet, while her arms supported her head and chest, holding her upper body away from the carpet.

“All right, who’s down there?” demanded Benjamin. He decided that since a corpse cannot move of its own volition, there must be someone hiding in the house, moving Aunt Aggie’s corpse every time that he went away for a while.

He started slowly down the stairs toward his aunt, but as he approached, she lifted her head to glare up balefully at him with her lifeless eyes. “Benjamin? Oh, Benjamin?” repeated Aunt Aggie. She started to claw her way up the staircase, arm over arm, dragging her useless, broken legs behind her.

Benjamin stood frozen to the spot, whimpering from terror as the dead thing that had been his aunt slowly clawed her way up the stairs toward him. She was only a couple of steps away when he recovered his senses and started backing up the stairs.

Forced to drag itself by its arms only, the corpse of Aunt Aggie was very slow, and Benjamin could easily outrun it. But if he was trapped on the second level, eventually he would be cornered. Looking past his dead aunt, he wondered if he could avoid her withered, claw-like hands long enough to jump over her and run -- Roll! he thought in terror -- down the stairs to escape this hellish house. He started to advance toward her, but sensing his intention, Aunt Aggie reared up like a snake and began clawing furiously at the air with her talon-like fingers.

Whimpering from fear, Benjamin almost fell forward into the clutching hands. Deliberately overbalancing himself though, he managed to avoid the talons by falling over hard onto his backside. Then as the dead thing slowly dragged itself up the stairs toward him, he began furiously backing up the stairs, using his hands and feet to propel himself up the stairs in a sitting position.

After a few minutes, Benjamin was far enough from his pursuer to calm down enough to crawl to his feet to run up to the top of the staircase. He only wished that this were one of those houses that have the staircase enclosed in a small inbuilt tunnel with a door at each end, so that he could stop Aunt Aggie from reaching the upper level. But since it wasn’t, his only hope was to flee to the nearest room.

He had already slammed the door shut behind him and turned the key in the lock before realising that he had fled into his aunt’s bedroom. Oh well, he thought, any port in a storm!

He wondered how long he could keep his pursuer out.

“I’ll have to go out eventually,” he said aloud. Then he thought, The old witch can just starve me out! She might not need food now, but I still do!

Then, to his horror, the key began to turn in the lock of the bedroom door.

Shrieking his terror, he clutched the key desperately and tried to prevent it from turning. “I’m stronger than she is!” he said, close to panic. “Damn it, I have to be stronger than she is!” And for a few minutes it seemed as though he might be able to keep the door locked.

Then there was a loud snapping sound, and the long metal stalk of the key came away in his hands, and the head of the key quickly turned in the lock. The brass knob turned, and the door swung open.

Benjamin jumped back quickly to avoid being struck by the wildly swinging door, and promptly fell over the small pile of books which still lay on the bedroom floor. Grabbing one of the books for support, he hurriedly climbed back to his feet, picking the book up without even being aware he was doing so.

“Benjamin? Oh, Benjamin?” called out the corpse of Aunt Aggie again, as it dragged itself into the room.

“Get away from me! Get away from me!” shrieked Benjamin. He slowly backed up toward the bedroom window.

Looking down at the large flower garden below the window, he wondered if it would be safe to jump down onto them. It’s only the second level, he thought, and if I lower myself by the hands first, I’ll only have two or three metres to drop.

Behind him, Aunt Aggie began to chuckle as Benjamin unlatched the window and tried to pull it up. As the window fought him, instinctively he put the small book into a pocket of his trousers so that he could use both hands. But for some reason, the window refused to budge -- to the pleasure of his pursuer, who began to cackle from delight.

Heaving with all of his might and with mounting desperation, he still couldn’t raise the window even a millimetre and shrieked, “Open, damn it, open!” as his aunt crawled closer. I know the bloody window opens! he thought. He had seen the window open from the outside many times, although he had never been in the bedroom till today.

Forcing himself to calm down, Benjamin began to check the wooden frame of the window and discovered a small lock holding the window securely in place.

As his aunt cackled louder, he looked back and saw that she was only a metre or so behind him. He started to plead for mercy, then stopped as a new hope suddenly appeared. The door! he thought. He saw that it was still open behind his pursuer. On the staircase, he had been unable to pass Aunt Aggie to reach the door, due to the narrowness of the stairs, but in the bedroom, he had plenty of space to move and could easily run around her to make for the open door.

But even as the thought occurred to him, the door slammed shut and he heard the broken head of the key turn by itself in the lock. Aunt Aggie cackled again, then said, “There’s no escape for you back there, Benjamin!”

Turning back toward the window, Benjamin began to tug at it furiously, in a vain hope of breaking the lock.

As the solid lock held, Aunt Aggie cackled riotously, thinking that she had her murderer within her grasp. But standing back a pace, until he was almost within his aunt’s grasp, Benjamin ran forward again and dived headfirst through the glass pane.

For the first time since the chase had begun, Agnetha Chambers seemed disconcerted by this unexpected turn of events. She crawled across to the window and pulled herself up until she could peer down into the yard below.

In her lifetime, she would have been furious to see the state of her prize-winning flowerbed after her nephew had finished tumbling about, crushing the delicate blooms beneath him. But in death, she was interested only in whether or not he would be able to rise to his feet again.


Finally, Benjamin finished rolling around and clawed his way back to his feet, only to shriek and fall to the ground again, clutching at his right ankle.

“Now you know how it feels, Benjamin!” shrieked Aunt Aggie, remembering the agony of her fatal fall down the staircase.

Hearing the shriek from above him, Benjamin looked up and saw his pursuer glaring down at him. Then as he watched, she turned and crawled away from the window.

She’s coming down after me! he thought. He began to hobble his way toward the small, wooden garage beside the two-storey house.

Seeing the weather-worn state of the double wooden doors, which were wedged closed by a tall ridge of compacted mud, he almost despaired of being able to open the doors. But despite the agony of his twisted right ankle, he managed to slowly pull the doors open wide enough to drive the small Morris Minor out onto the narrow dirt track winding along the side of the house. He was grateful that he had been able to convince his aunt to let him have a set of keys to her car. But he was even more grateful that it was not the large Cadillac, which he had tried to talk the old woman into purchasing; since he could never have opened the door wide enough to drive it out.

I’m home free now! he thought. He grimaced when his right ankle screamed out its protest as he drove the small car at a slow pace, unable to apply enough pressure on the accelerator to take the car above first gear.

When he approached the front of the house, he panicked at seeing Aunt Aggie crawling out through the front door and planted his right foot hard on the accelerator, stalling the small car and screaming in agony as bolts of pain rocketed through his twisted ankle. As the car stalled to a halt, common sense told him he should wait until he could start the car again. But seeing his dead aunt crawling across the lawn toward the car, he panicked and abandoned the car to hobble down the dirt track, heading toward Glen Hartwell, nearly three kilometres away.

Cursing the old woman for living so far off the beaten track, nowhere near any regular bus or train routes, Benjamin hobbled toward town, continually looking back over his left shoulder, afraid that his pursuer might be overtaking him. But seeing that even with one bad ankle he could easily outpace his dead aunt, who had to pull herself along the dirt road by her hands, he began to calm down a bit.

I’ll soon be into town, then I’ll be home free! he thought. And sure enough, by concentrating upon keeping his weight mainly upon his good left foot, he managed to keep well ahead of his pursuer and was surprised by how soon he found himself on the outskirts of Glen Hartwell.


Hobbling down Boothy Street, the main street of the Glen, he thought, Now I’m safe; the old witch can’t follow me through the crowded streets in broad daylight!

But to his astonishment, although people stopped to glance at his hobbling gait, no one seemed to even see the dead thing as it crawled along the bitumen footpath behind him. Although one old man staggered against the crawling form and peered down in surprise for a moment, and looked aghast as though he had caught a glance of something unspeakably foul.

His right ankle throbbing horribly, Benjamin knew he couldn’t go much further. He stopped for a second to catch his breath and saw that he was outside the locked doors of the notorious Purple Sin Discotheque.

Now where have I heard that name before? he wondered as he started to hobble away again. Then as he rounded the corner into Lawson Street, he recalled that he had often heard his aunt bemoaning the fact that the disco was directly behind her church and during late-night mass, they were sometimes drowned out by the music of Madonna or Kanye West.

Although not the expert on witchcraft that his aunt had apparently been, Benjamin knew enough about the occult to know that ghosts and demons are not supposed to be able to set foot on hallowed ground.

Glen Hartwell has five places of worship: A Jewish synagogue in Dien Avenue, a Muslim mosque in William Jantz Way, a Hindu mandir (temple) at Henry Street, a Baptist temple in Biblical Road, and St. Margaret’s Cathedral in Blackland Street. It was this latter to which Agnetha Chambers had attended.

I’m almost there! thought Benjamin as he turned right from Lawson Street into Blackland Street. He could see the spire of St. Margaret’s two lots down from the intersection.

Almost collapsing from exhaustion, he stumbled into the church and sat at a pew half a dozen rows from the doorway. Gasping to recover his breath, he realised that he still had the book Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks! in his trouser pocket.

Whimpering as he twisted his injured ankle, he squirmed on the wooden pew, until he had taken the book out of his pocket -- more so that he could sit in comfort than from any intention to read the book. But the book fell open of its own accord as soon as he had it in his hands, and he read, Whenever a witch is killed by anyone except a priest or a legal executioner, unless her corpse is beheaded, then burnt, she can temporarily reanimate herself, to avenge her killing. As long as she knew at the time of her death who it was that had killed her ....

“But how could she have known that it was me?” said Benjamin aloud. He remembered the long stare that she had seemed to give him from the top of the staircase before falling and thought, But she was blind as a bat! She couldn’t possibly have seen me from that distance. Looking down again, he read on:

The “glamour” which allows her to return from the dead is only temporary. She will “die” again soon after destroying her murderer. In the meantime, her ghoul -- Benjamin shuddered at the mere thought of what the strangely chosen word implied -- will be invisible to all but her intended victim ....

Hearing a noise at the front of the church, he looked up startled, half expecting to see his dead aunt. Instead, he saw a grey-haired old man vacating the confession booth. Although Benjamin had not been a practising Catholic since his teens, he put down the book and hobbled across to enter the confessional.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Benjamin began. Then to the horror of the priest, he began to relate how he had murdered Aunt Aggie for her money.


Oh no! thought Father Francis. As a good Catholic and law-abiding citizen, he had always been torn between his two loyalties -- to country and to church -- over the theoretical question of whether or not a priest should break the trust of the confessional, if the sin involved were murder, rape, or some other major crime. But for forty years as a priest, until now, he had never had to face the reality of the dilemma.

Then Benjamin Charlton began to tell of Aunt Aggie’s involvement in witchcraft, and how she had conjured herself back to life to avenge herself, and the priest thought, My God, a killer and a raving lunatic! Although his faith taught him to believe in miracles, Father Francis could not bring himself to believe in demonic magic in the 2020s.

“Please, my son ...” began Fr. Francis, hoping to stop the lunatic’s ravings.


Realising that the priest was trying to shut him up, Benjamin hurried on with his tale, quickly taking it up to the point where he had entered the confessional.

His tale related, Benjamin waited for some word of absolution, or at the very least incredulity from the priest. Instead, he was greeted with only silence. He tried to recall how quickly the priests had granted absolution in his teens, but realised that his childhood “sins” had been trivial compared to what he had confessed today. Perhaps he has to think up a suitable penance? thought Benjamin. How about one billion Hail Marys? he joked, vainly trying to make light of his situation.

Hearing a strange chewing sound in the priests’ box, he leant forward in a bid to peer through the thin screen and thought, A gum-chewing priest? But the noise sounded more like a dog chewing a bone.

“Father?” he asked. “Are you still there?”

He touched the screen with his hands and immediately pulled away again in revulsion as his fingers encountered a sticky substance. Although the light was dim in the booth, by holding his fingers up close to his eyes, he could only just see that it was blood which coated his fingers!

“Father, are you all right?” called out Benjamin. He thought, My God, I hope that by telling him about that old bitch I didn’t cause him to have a heart-attack or a brain haemorrhage or something?

Running out of the booth, wincing as his bad ankle almost gave way under him, Benjamin pulled wide the curtain of the priests’ box.

He stared into the booth and saw Aunt Aggie sitting on the floor near the mangled corpse of Fr. Francis. Blood, bones, and entrails were strewn around the booth, coating the walls and Aunt Aggie alike.

In her hands, Aunt Aggie held a long thigh bone, which she was gnawing upon eagerly, reminding Benjamin of the words of the book of spells, “Her ghoul will be invisible to all but her intended victim!”

Seeing her nephew, she stopped gnawing the bone and started to drag herself toward him, cooing, “Benjamin! Oh, Benjamin!” as she crawled.

Terrified, he turned to flee from the booth, but found he was unable to move; his feet felt leaden, as though weighed down by an invisible force.

“Benjamin! Oh, Benjamin!” cooed Aunt Aggie in a soft voice.

Benjamin Charlton was terrified to find himself slowly walking toward her. Unable to stop himself, Benjamin bent over toward the ghoul as she raised the thigh bone above her head. Expecting her to use the thigh bone as a club to bash in his brains, Benjamin began to whimper from terror.

Instead, she handed the bone to him, still crooning, “Benjamin! Oh, Benjamin!” her dead eyes holding him fixed in her gaze.

Unable to resist her command, Benjamin sat down upon the floor beside Aunt Aggie and the dead priest and began to gnaw upon the thigh bone, eagerly crunching and swallowing large chunks of bone.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia