Ghosts: a viral horror sensation (The Cursed Manuscripts), page 1
Ghosts
Cursed Manuscripts
Book 6
Iain Rob Wright
Ulcerated Press
Contents
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Quotes
The Start…
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
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Plea From the Author
Also by Iain Rob Wright
About Iain Rob Wright
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Quotes
“Social Media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
- Mike Tyson
“I am scared of ghosts. I know they don’t exist, but I still am.”
- Mimi Chakraborty
“Friends don’t let friends make TikTok’s alone.”
- Anonymous
The Start…
“Oh my God, your hair is on fleek, girl!”
Stef flicked her bleached blonde locks over her shoulder and struck a hip-jutting pose. “I know, right? It’s like a whole thing. I’m so fuckable right now.”
Hannah cackled. “I would so turn gay for you.”
“Control yourself, babes!”
Hannah apologised and went over to the vanity table opposite Stef’s double bed. She still wondered if her bestie had discovered the wet patch she and Dan Salter left last Saturday night during the house party, but she hadn’t said anything. Hannah had been so drunk she had nearly let him stick it in her butt. Fortunately, her backside cherry remained intact – a gift for her future rich husband. One day, all of her hanging around outside Villa Park would bag her a footballer for sure. If not, then she would go on Love Island and make a fortune for herself as one half of a power couple.
“You got your phone set up?” Stef asked as she pouted in front of the full-length mirror beside her bedroom door. “We gotta get on this, girl, before it goes stale.”
“I know, I know. I’m just setting up the camera.” Hannah’s iPhone had a retractable tripod glued to the case, so she splayed the plastic legs and tilted the phone, ensuring its multiple lenses pointed at the centre of the room. Then she selected the Clip Switch app and set a twenty-second timer. “Okay, we’re counting down. Let’s get in position.”
Stef pranced away from the mirror and joined Hannah on the fluffy pink floor rug running parallel to her bed. Both of them were barefoot, their French manicures only a day old. Hannah wore tight jeans and a shimmery green blouse, but Stef was going all out with a slinky blue dress that made her boobs look amazing. Hannah might have worn something similar if she had any of her own to speak of.
I’m so jel. Every bloke goes straight for her just because her figure is better than mine. Lucky bitch.
There’s still time, Hannah’s mum always said, you’ve only just turned sixteen. But it was getting harder and harder to believe.
The Clip Switch app beeped the beginning of a countdown.
Hannah and Stef stood in front of the camera. Stef grabbed a piece of A4 paper they’d stained with used tea bags to make it look old – just like something Jesus would’ve read from during one of his talks. On it, they’d written the words from a video they’d watched online. A video that was rapidly being imitated and duetted by anyone who was anyone.
With almost two million followers, Hannah and Stef had a duty to jump on new trends as soon as possible. They were leaders, not followers. Influencers, not sheep. Stef&HanStuff was earning them almost five hundred quid a week into the shared bank account Stef’s mum had helped them set up, and the channel was still growing. Soon they would be richer than their parents. Stef already planned to move out – to get away from her embarrassing wino of a mum and have boys over to her own place whenever she wanted – but Hannah got along well with her parents. She didn’t want to leave home. Instead, she would buy a massive house for them all to live in. One with a swimming pool and a Jacuzzi.
Her iPhone gave a long beep and started recording via the app.
Hannah tossed back her curly brown hair and struck a pose.
Stef jumped right into character, flipping a sideways V-sign at the camera and pouting her glossy pink lips. “Hey my sexy friends, how ya doing? It’s Stef here.”
“And Han here.”
“And we’re about to… summon the dead.”
Hannah had been smiling, but now she put her hands against her cheeks and silently screamed. The new trend was supposed to have a spooky vibe, although some influencers went completely overboard with Halloween decorations and fake blood. Stef and Hannah didn’t need to go that far, mainly because they had Stef’s big boobs and two pairs of pretty feet. It was messed up how many more views they got on videos where they were barefoot. Most of their followers were probably gross old men.
But as long as the money keeps coming in, where’s the harm?
Stef usually wore glasses, but never on camera, so she had to squint for a moment to get her eyes adjusted to the words on the page. Then she started to read them out loud.
“Con nomi segreti e porte nascoste, riporta i miei perduti e falli conoscere. Revia soul nocto. Revia soul nocto. Revia soul nocto. Amen.”
Hannah let out a bloodcurdling scream, clutching at her throat. She choked and gagged, thrashed and panicked.
Stef’s expression fell. The sheet of stained paper fell from her hand and floated to the fluffy pink rug. “H-Hannah? What’s wrong with you? Stop it!” She grabbed her friend by the arms and yelled in her face. “The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!”
They both erupted in laughter.
The story surrounding the incantation was that it could summon the dead. The words were ancient, put on the Internet by an evil witch. If you said them out loud, an angry spirit would appear behind you and slit your throat.
It was a load of rubbish, of course, but it was a laugh.
Stef doubled o
Hannah beamed into her iPhone’s triple lenses while Stef continued laughing hysterically. “Don’t forget to tag us in your own videos and share our channel. This is Han.” She looked to her left, waiting for Stef to do her sign-off. “This is Han!”
Stef remained doubled over, still cackling away. Or maybe not cackling at all. In fact, was she…?
“Stef, are you okay?”
Stef grunted and waved a hand at Hannah in a panic. Not knowing what to do, Hannah just stood there as Stef collapsed to her knees and started raking her fake nails down the outside of her throat, which was now bulging in a totally minging way. It looked like she’d swallowed an apple. Two apples!
Stef turned her head to look at Hannah.
Shitting hell!
Her eyes were bulging in their sockets. She tried to speak, but her throat was all blocked up. Drool spilled from her mouth, and instead of words, something disgusting fell from her lips.
Beetles.
A fuck-tonne of beetles.
“Stef, gross!”
The fat, shiny bugs streamed from Stef’s mouth in a violent black eruption that covered the fluffy pink rug completely. Oily brown stains spread out on the carpet, making everything glisten.
Hannah backed off, colliding with the full-length mirror by the door and cracking the glass with her butt. Her legs became stiff, and she knew if she tried to use them, she would topple over.
She was having a panic attack.
The bugs continued piling on top of each other on the rug, clumping together and forming a writhing black mass that grew and grew and grew.
Stef moaned, her eyes bulging more and more and more…
…until they popped right out of her skull and dangled on her cheeks. More bugs spilled out of the sticky red sockets. Her body collapsed onto its side, creatures spilling from every orifice.
Hannah screamed so loudly that her voice echoed inside her own skull like an alarm bell. She vomited inside her mouth and it dribbled down her chin. The only thing she’d eaten was a rice cracker that morning, but she tasted it again right now.
The bugs clumped together, rising, rising… forming shapes… creating limbs.
Arms and legs.
Slowly, a human shape emerged from the writhing, chitinous mass and took a step towards Hannah. She cowered in front of the cracked mirror, unable to move anything except her trembling arms, which she threw out in front of herself pathetically as a shield. Her left hand was bleeding from the broken glass, glistening red blood dripping from her fingertips.
She tried again to scream, but the air had already escaped her lungs. All she could do was glance at her still-recording iPhone and wonder how many of her followers were watching this. Two million people, and not one who could help her.
What is happening? What did we do?
Hannah spoke her last words as the creature slithered towards her in a frantic mumble. “W-we didn’t know it was real. We didn’t know!”
Chapter One
Shane punched his olive-green Toyota Land Cruiser’s scuffed-up steering wheel and sounded the horn three times. Evie immediately appeared on the front doorstep of her house, while her mother Sarah – Shane’s sister – stood behind her, glaring down the driveway. Sarah’s shoulder-length brown hair was tied up in a messy bun, and she had on her nurse’s scrubs, clearly ready to go to work. Shane waved a hand apologetically but avoided catching her eye.
Evie shouldered her backpack and hurried towards the car, yanking open the passenger door and letting in the cold February air. “You’re late again, Uncle Shane.”
“Get in and close the door,” he said, grabbing an empty crisp packet from the passenger seat and tossing it into the back. “The heaters are on the blink.”
Evie tutted. She slid into the worn leather passenger seat and slammed the door closed, then immediately shuddered, her gold-painted fingernails retreating into the sleeves of her maroon school blazer. “Shit, you weren’t kidding. It’s fucking freezing in here.”
“Hey, watch your language. Does your mum know you talk like that?”
She drilled him with a stare, her large green eyes identical to her mum and Shane’s – the family emeralds. “What do you think?”
Shane chuckled. He was no fan of authority, so how could he judge? “Okay, buckle up.”
“You’re late again,” she said for the second time.
“I know, I know. I’ll talk to your teacher.”
“Don’t you dare. I’m not twelve. I’ll just have to take the flak for it. Again.”
He struggled to put the Land Cruiser in gear but eventually managed to pull away. Sarah still stood on the doorstep, so he beeped his horn again to annoy her. He hadn’t intended to be late.
Shit happens. Not my fault society likes to place so many restrictions on itself. Time is a human construct, and entirely meaningless if you stop adhering to it.
Evie was pulling a face and looking into the back of the car, which Shane liked to use as a portable skip.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.
“Will you please get a new car. It’s so embarrassing when my friends see me in this. How is this piece of shit still running?”
“It’s a warrior. There’s nothing this car can’t handle. I bought her from new and she’s taken care of me ever since.”
“Bought her new when?”
He shrugged. “Two-thousand-eight, I think.”
She shook her head and pulled her iPhone out of her blazer pocket, muttering to herself as she unlocked it.
“How’s your mum?” Shane asked, not wanting to lose her attention this early into the journey.
“Huh? Oh, she’s good.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Nope.”
“Great! Well, I’m good, too, if you wanted to know.”
Without looking at him, she said, “You don’t look it. You look like crap.”
“Jeez, Evie. What side of the bed did you get out of this morning?” He pulled down the visor mirror and gave himself a quick once-over. His wavy brown hair was an odd shape due to how he’d slept, and it was long overdue a cut. His face was, admittedly, a little flush. “Okay, maybe I could use a comb and some aspirin, but you don’t always have to be so brutally honest.”
Evie pulled her gaze away from her phone and turned to him. Unlike her mother, her hair was copper-coloured. Shane had been banned from calling her ‘ginge’ after making her cry at her sixth birthday party. “You made me promise when I was a kid,” she said, “that I would always tell you the truth. It was our little pact, remember?”
He remembered it well. When Evie had turned twelve – she was fifteen now – he had caught her smoking in an underpass near her house. Instead of going ballistic and telling her mum, he had made her a promise, that he would always be on her side so long as she was honest with him. That was his duty as a cool uncle, right? To be the keeper of secrets and a steadfast ally. The person Evie could turn to with a drug problem or unwanted pregnancy.
To pick up after my flailing sister whenever she fails at being a single parent.
“I’ve had a few late nights,” Shane admitted with a shrug. “Not much to do after work other than drink, eat, and masturbate.”
