Think you have what it takes?

Want to get some practice?

Just need an excuse to put pen to paper?

Then enter the Secret Attic Short Story Competition!

Each month you can submit an entry that will be passed onto our judges who will pick the best and award a winner. During some months the subject matter will be a 'free for all', where you can write anything you like, other months will have a specific theme.

Previous Competition Winners

February 2005 David Willshaw

April 2005 Christine Sutton

May 2005 George L Darley

July 2005 Robyn O'Hara

August 2005 Richard Adamski

September 2005 Hannah Southgate

October 2005 Heather Parker

December 2005 Feathers by Bob Lakin

January 2006 The Bony Ghosts of Courveaux Manse by RD Larson

Of course, she was scared, it was Christmas Eve for goodness sake and the first time she’d ever seen Geraldine without her headlamp. What was she thinking? To wander around down here in the catacombs without light? Crazy old woman. The very idea!
“ Geraldine, what are you doing down here without a headlamp? You could fall over one of the relatives?” Hebe slammed down the roll of muslin on the table.
“ Dear, my eyes are growing accustom to the dark after more than seventy years poking about under the manse. I wonder if during the Civil War our family members developed night sight.” The woman placed baskets of fresh fruit around on the tables. The candles she had brought earlier stood in holders around the cavernous room.
“ Maybe. Maybe not.” Hebe unrolled the bleached muslin across the long tables.
“ A Christmas Feast for the relatives has been prepared for more than two hundred and fifty years,” stated Geraldine. “By living members of the Couvreaux family. The Manse was built before the Revolution; in which as you know we did not take part. Great, great aunt Charity coupled with King George. She never said a cross word about him.”
“ Probably a rumor, anyway.” Hebe looked at her watch. “It’s 10:30.”
“ Oh blast, my plum pudding is still boiling. Under cooked last year. Your Uncle Carlton expressed such annoyance.”
“ So what? He never eats more than a taste!” She started toward the elevator. Old and creaky, it terrified her. They didn’t dare have someone to come to look at it. That someone would not be able to keep their mouths shut about the skeletons sitting around in their favorite chairs.
“ They all eat like lumberjacks, except him.”
The older woman stepped into the elevator. Hebe paused a split-second then followed. Her heart flung itself around like a decapitated chicken. The pulleys whirred into action. The cage rose up. The door slid open into what once was the butler’s pantry.
“ Why do we always have to have goose? People won’t touch goose, if they’re the least bit health conscious. Goose is a fatty meat. ”
“ Hebe, the old dead ones always have had goose because when they were living, they had goose. Imagine the caterwauling that would go up if we took them one of your broiled-to-the-death chicken breasts?” Geraldine began to pile up the old China and the even older glassware on to the teacart’s bottom rack.
Hebe dished up the mashed potatoes and the sliced yam with peaches and brown sugar. She filled a huge bowl of green beans with ham hocks and pecans.
“ Do you think that this artisan bread will get by them?” Hebe sliced the hot loaf into chunks. She pushed her dark red hair back from her creamy temples. “How did you manage after Mama died and I was too young to help you?”
“ I just did. We Courveaux love a traditional Christmas. Since beginning, we had the family Christmas dinner. I could not fail to feed the old dead ones on the only day in the whole year when they wake up enough to eat. Think if you never got to have a feast?” Geraldine said mockingly. “But then you’re always on a diet aren’t you?”
“ Stop. I won’t complain again.” Hebe gave her great-aunt a hug. Going to the pot with the plumb pudding, Hebe lifted the round steel bowl out of the boiling water with oven mitts. “By the time they’re ready for dessert the pudding will be cool enough to eat. Never heard of skeletons with a burned a lip.”
Geraldine snickered, pointing at Hebe. “You had best get some batteries or else your own headlamp won’t work.”
Hebe finished the preparations, except for the plumb pudding. .
“ I’ve got the damask napkins -- they’re so thin after 60 Christmases. We did use them that one time your boyfriend came to dinner.”
“ Hugh wasn’t my boyfriend.” Hebe blinked back a hint of tears. “You did use the damask napkins that night and the white candles . . .”
“ Quick, they’re going to be waking up. Let’s get down there.” Geraldine pushed a white curl away. “Your Hugh never came back. Why? Do you ever see him?”
“ Yes, I see him. He works in the same building in Charlotte that I do. Same work. Remember?”
“ I remember,” grunted Geraldine, with a strange glint in her eye as they pushed the cart into the elevator.
“ What sane person would understand about dead relatives that wake up on Christmas?” Hebe pushed the button hard, forgetting about the risky old elevator. “I had to give him his freedom. Hugh couldn’t be tied down to this big old house. It’s bad enough that I am!”
As she spoke those fateful words, the gears ground loudly and their decent began.
“ We’re going to have to get this repaired,” Geraldine said as the cage bounced a little.
“ No, I don’t think we --” Before Hebe could finish her words the elevator dropped. She screamed.
Geraldine clung to the cart as the down speed of the elevator accelerated.
“ We’ll be killed!”
“ At least we’ll be with family,” retorted Geraldine as the cage halted in a jerk. With an assist from Hebe, she kept the teacart upright.
Hebe gasped for breath as Geraldine opened the door. They hung suspended three feet above the floor. In the catacombs’ main room, the ghostly tables glowed.
“ What are we going to do?” She winced at the pain in her side. Broken heart?
“ Well, if you had not scared off that young man, Hugh, we’d be increasing the family by now,” Geraldine spoke sharply, peering under opening. “I’ll go out and you push the cart out to me.”
Hebe was so angry she forgot about her pain and panic. “SCARED OFF? I did not. I just started saying no. Besides, he didn’t even know that a Hebe was a flower.”
She stood glaring at Geraldine, her face a grotesque caricature under the lamp on her head.
“ Do something about it before this family dies out.”
“ They are already all dead except for you and me.” She tossed her head making the light sweep the cage in an eerie twist. “No, I’ll jump out. You push the cart out.”
Hebe jumped off as the elevator cage swung.
“ Is that you Geraldine? Did you girls bring the dinner?” It was Uncle Carlton, awake from the dead early. Not even eleven yet, Hebe thought. He’s anxious to see Geraldine.
He rose from his chair with his bones clanking together like an ivory wind chime. Hebe grabbed the teacart and gave it a mighty pull hard.
Uncle Carleton’s bony hands caught the edge and he righted it carefully. “A little care, girl eh? Geraldine, honey, you in there?”
“ I’m here. Hello, you old stick-and-bones,” called his wife from the elevator floor. Gallantly, even chivalrously, he held his skeleton hand out to help her down. She lightly landed at his feet. A Mrs. Bird with her ghost husband.
“ Time to eat! Let’s eat.” The other relatives were coming awake and beginning to talk. As if they had anything new to discuss, Hebe thought to herself not for the first time.
She spread the muslin on the tables, cutting at the edges and then took the bolt of fabric to other tables. Uncle Carleton pushed the cart to the nearest long table and lifted the goose on its platter into the center.
Hebe ran around, lighting the candles and chatting breathlessly with old dead family members. She noticed that great-great-great grandfather Ezra wasn’t there. In her whole lifetime, he had never missed the Christmas feast ever. Had he had stumbled and fallen?
The women spent nearly an hour, serving the old bones all the platters of food. Hebe still looked to see where the food went, but just like all the other times, it just disappeared behind the talking teeth. She stopped near Uncle Carleton who was chatting up on Geraldine.
“ Uncle, I can’t find Great Grandfather Ezra. Where could he be?”
The old specter put a hand to his ear. “What’s that you say?”
“ Where’s Great Grandfather Ezra?”
“ Oh, he’s gone on, we need the room for newcomers. He volunteered. I would have volunteered but I’m waiting for Geraldine.”
“ Newcomers?”
“ Pudding? Be a good girl and go get Auntie Geraldine’s plumb pudding.”
Shaking her head, Hebe walked to the elevator. She crawled up on the floor that swung above the rock floor of the catacombs. Standing, she wondered where Ezra had really gone. Then she pushed the UP button, expecting to shut the door and go up into the house.
Nothing happened.
She pushed again. Still nothing. She called to Geraldine, “The elevator won’t rise. What should I do?”
“ What should she do?” Cousin Beth in her chair called out to the others. “Never mind, bring the plumb pudding.”
“ Do what?” Another dear departed chimed in.
Uncle Carleton barked, “I think the girl’s already eaten the plumb pudding.”
At that, they all started shouting at her. Geraldine rushed over and Hebe helped her up. She pressed the UP button and then the DOWN button. Still nothing.
Getting cranky now, the dead relatives shouted, “Pudding! We want our pudding now. We want our Christmas pudding.”
“ Is that too much to ask?” cried Uncle Carleton, gnashing his teeth angrily.
“ Hebe, what should we do?”
“ I don’t know. Are there stairs?”
“ I never looked. I only came down for the Christmas feast. Are you crazy? They’re dead.”
“ Dead and mad, I’d say.”
The relatives stood in little groups of bony skeletons, each carping and complaining.
“ Good Lord, Hebe! What will they do to us? If we don’t get them the pudding?”
“ Kill us?” Hebe’s eyes below her lamp filled with tears. “I don’t want to die yet.”
“ Of course not.” Geraldine sat down suddenly on the floor. “After centuries of Christmas feasts, I have failed the family.”
“ Don’t cry, Auntie, you’ll sound just like them.” Hebe bent to hug the elderly woman.
“ We won’t put up with this! No pudding? Who says?” The relatives started walking slowly toward them. Hebe shrank against Geraldine in fear. They huddled together marching bones.
“ Hullo, down there? Hello-o--o? Shall I pull you up? Hebe?” A voice shouted down from the manse.
“ Hugh? Is that you?” Hebe jumped to her feet. “Hello?”
“ Yes, shall I pull you up?”
“ Yes! Please hurry.”
The cable began to whirr as Hebe pictured Hugh turning the crank. Wouldn’t it been rusted by now? Up they went slowly.
“ Carleton, I’ll be back with the pudding. And the sauce,” Geraldine screeched into the receding cavern below.
“ Be quick about it. Times almost up.” Carleton’s ghostly voice wavered up the shaft.
As they reached the butler’s pantry, Hebe pushed open the door. Geraldine pushed her aside and ran for the plumb pudding.
“ Hugh! How come you’re here, tonight of all nights?”
“ Let’s just say I know about your quirky relatives,” said Hugh.
“ They’ll have to make do with Whipped Cream in a spray can. I can’t wait to make hard sauce.” Geraldine said. “Hugh, pull me up when I call out. It’s not my turn down there. Not yet.”
Geraldine stepped in the elevator with the plumb pudding plate in one hand and a blue and white can of whipped cream in the other.
“ I need to plan a wedding first,” she said as Hugh again turned the crank and she sunk away down to old dead relatives.