The Omniscrolls

The ground broke beneath me, pulling me in as I clung to the ledge. “Help! Someone help!” I screamed as something grabbed my feet and started to pull me in. “Take my hand,” said a voice from above. I looked up to find a stranger in ragged clothes crouched before me with his arm stretched out. I grabbed his hand and he pulled me out as the ground closed beneath me. “Thank you for saving my life, sir,” I said. “You’re welcome, miss. But you must keep away from this place,” he replied.  “Why…? Who are you exactly?” “Ramzdon is no place for the living. As its gatekeeper, it’s my duty to make sure mortals keep away.” “ You are the gatekeeper?” “Yes, although I’m relatively new.” “Then you must know how a soul can be freed from it.” The man’s eyes widened as he realised who I was. “You’re the survivor… I’m sorry, but there’s no way to bring your parents back. Just leave this place, please.” “I'm sorry, but I can’t accept that.” The man’s gaze was suddenly as piercing as the warning he t...

I had just moved into a new house by the sea after switching jobs. The rustling of the leaves and the lapping of the waves surrounding me were comforting beyond words, and the serene scenery beyond my doorstep brought time to a halt each moment it drew my gaze. However, although I enjoyed this tranquility at first, I soon came to witness the disquietude that lingered in the heart of an old homeless man nearby. I first saw him while walking home from work. He was clutching his sunglasses with one hand and wailing his other arm into the air, cursing at someone or something that was seemingly out to get him. “No, stay back, you demons!” he’d say. “Go away! Begone! Haven’t you taken enough from me?” he’d continue. The man repeated those words every day for three days in a row. Many onlookers avoided him without a word, while a few others often recorded him with amusement in their eyes. I felt my stomach curl seeing his struggles. He looked like he needed professional help. When I attempted...

I woke up to an odd text on my phone: “Don’t trust anyone, everything’s a lie.” It was from an unknown number, so I assumed it was a prank and got ready for school. When I went downstairs, however, my phone blinked again. “Don’t eat anything they give you.” I swiped the message and headed straight to the dining room. I found it odd that my younger brother, Alex, was already at the table; he was always ten minutes late. “Maybe everything is a lie,” I joked in my head. However, it was not long before I began to notice certain differences in the way my family went about with their routines. Dad was never one to allow phones at the table, but he was laughing with my brother over a prank video. And then there was Mom: although she didn’t act any different than other days, I saw her in the kitchen, writing something down on a piece of paper while on the phone with someone. Mom was left-handed, but she was writing with her right hand. I wondered if those prank texts actually bore some truth....

Our town’s annual wax art competition was just two weeks away and I was getting excited. This was going to be my first time taking part in it, so I was daunted at the same time since the competition was dominated by Logan Marvin. Logan had won the competition three years in a row, starting with the first one he took part in. My friend Corbin and I both hated him. He bullied us for years in school since he was older than us. As Logan was always so smug about being the “unbeatable champion” on his socials, the same as he was back in school, if either of us could snatch that title and erase that obnoxious smile he always wore, it would have been a delight. When Corbin and I were signing up for the competition, Logan made a snide remark about us never being able to reach his level of skill. He soon came to regret those words. I was awarded first place at the end of the competition, while Logan named the runner-up and Corbin came in third. The look on Logan’s face when it was announced was ...

Trigger Warning: Bullying/Gore Growing up a socially awkward child, I was often bullied both by my siblings and by other children at my school. When I reached my teens, I had no shred of self-esteem left. Teachers never cared, and my parents were always telling me to “grow up” and “stop being so sensitive”. They often called me a drama queen and an attention-seeker. I couldn’t rely on anyone, anywhere. I ran away from home when I was sixteen but was caught by the cops that same night and brought back to my parents. I tried explaining to the police that I couldn’t take it anymore in that cursed neighbourhood, but they brushed off my words as teenage angst. The moment the cops left, my parents beat me senseless for what I did. I hated them—I wished they’d die. But it was not just them: I was beginning to despise the entire town. I wish I could erase them all. After that day, I made it a point to loiter at different shops and the town library to escape my siblings and bullies after schoo...

I had just moved to another town and rented a new house. Many neighbours advised against it, some saying it was haunted by a vengeful spirit, and others saying it was a gateway to hell. I shrugged off their comments, not giving them much thought. This was the best I could do at the time. Haunted or not, it was all I could afford while keeping my new job. The summer heat was torturous; I had no energy left after unloading my belongings that afternoon. All I could do was lie down on my mattress and pass out for the rest of the day. Before I knew it, I was waking up in the middle of the night to a sharp chill that bit into my bones. Shivering, I grabbed my phone to find the weather saying it was the usual summer temperature. What’s going on? Is this…? I wished mom had been around longer. I would’ve honed my skills as a witch if she were still with us. I used one of the few spells I learned when I was young and repelled the freezing air around me by creating a shield. I turned on the light...

I had just stepped into the Castle Hotel when, suddenly, I felt a strange presence surrounding me. The lobby was nearly empty; save for a little girl who couldn’t have been more than ten years old sitting on a sofa, the only other person in the room was the receptionist, but I still couldn’t brush off the feeling that something was crawling around the corners. The receptionist himself was a young boy who looked barely eighteen. My mind suddenly returned to the tales I had heard about the castle before it was recently turned into a hotel. Even though the events were over two centuries into the past, the gruesome history of this place was still known by many: a nobleman kills his daughter, and his son then wreaks vengeance upon his abusive father and neglectful mother. However, the fear that grew in the back of my mind slowly disappeared as I conversed with the receptionist. He was a polite young man, explaining everything I needed to know in great detail. It was already midnight, so I d...

It had been three years since we last went on a vacation. At the end of the year, I took my husband, Josh, and our two daughters, Helen and Carina, to the Canary Islands. According to the weather forecast, it was going to be sunny and warm for a week. The night we reached the house we had rented, Helen and Carina woke Josh and me up with excited yelling around 1:00 a.m. “What’s going on? Why are you two up?” I asked. “Mom, it’s snowing outside, and there are huge snowmen!” Helena said. Josh and I held their hands and walked over to the front. The air was much colder than it was when we had arrived that evening, and to Josh and my surprise, when we came upon the living room windows, we found the outside world blanketed by snow. It was most likely ankle deep. While the snow was just unexpected, what was bizarre and eerie were the snowmen that towered around the vicinity. Each of them was of humanoid form and were well over eight feet tall. How could anyone have made them so quickly? The ...

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Growing up, my parents often pushed me to follow their footsteps and become a doctor. My elder brother was fine with it, but that’s not what I wanted. Even if I did, I didn’t have the talent for it. Science was the bane of my existence; I couldn’t retain any information no matter how hard I tried. I would have preferred a career in either art or writing, but no, they always dismissed those ideas. By the time I reached my final school year, things were looking bleak: I was constantly hearing complaints from my parents about how bad my Science grades were that it even affected the grades of the subjects I was good at. One night, I overheard my parents talking about me in the living room. I got out of bed to grab some water, but they made me wish I had never woken up at all. “Simone, just what are we to do with Sherry? At the rate she’s going, she won’t even be able to become a nurse.” “I don’t know, Clyde. Maybe we’ll have to get her to redo this year’s work.” Hearing those words was dev...