The Curse of the Berinstein Manor by Forest Ostrander (scary books to read .TXT) 📕

“Mom, dad, what are you doing now?” I asked knowing full well an image could not speak. I ripped out the sketching and tapped it up over the little memorial stand I had made for my parents, it held two white candles and a picture of the three of us smiling out at the camera holding hands, it was the only image I was able to get my hands on as the others were just too painful to look at. Lighting the candles I kneeled in front of the portrait.

“I wish you guys were here with me, I hate the idea that I can’t see you anymore but in pictures. Why did you guys have to die and I had to live? Did you guys purposely want me to stay behind? I hate being the only one here who survived and having my grandma look at me every day knowing that her son and his wife will no longer be returning to her. I have to deal every day being that reminder, I honestly don’t know how she can stand such a thing. If only you were here as well than everything could be back on track once more, I wouldn’t have had to leave my friends and grandma wouldn’t have to be reminded every day of the car crash.” I laid my chin on my arms and looked both my mother and father in the eyes, I could just imagine them by my side once more, both laughing and smiling like they were doing in the picture before me, it was taken the day before the accident for a family photo album that mom was making for grandma and the family.

“How is this any way at all fair?” I asked the picture, I wanted answers but I knew I was not going to get them. I had lived for a reason but what was that reason? Why did my parents die and I stay? Was it them who prevented me from going with them? Did they purposely push me back? I was more confused than ever before on the matter so I decided that it was best for me to just get some sleep, I’ll read the book in the morning.

                “Mom, dad, could we go back there again sometime soon?” I asked from the back seat. We were just leaving the fair and I already wanted to head back there. Mom laughed and looked back at me.

“Forest, if you really want to go back there than we will but not tomorrow ok? Give us time to get more money around and we can all once more go back,” she said smiling at me and I found myself smiling back.

“That’s right pumpkin, you have to find other things to entertain yourself until then,” my dad said looking at me through the mirror.

“All right mom, dad, I guess I can wait a bit longer,” I said turning my head to look out the window, I was a little tired from all the running around, it had been a long day indeed but it was a fun one at that.

“How about some ice cream?” My dad asked me and I beamed.

“Oh yes! Can we please?” I asked instantly awake, both my parents laughed again and my dad pulled into the nearest ice cream shop. A few minutes later we were both back on the road, my mom with her cookies and cream and my dad with his bubblegum and me with cookie dough. Just as I was about to take a huge bite of my ice cream I was slammed into the opposite side of the car, the impact made me drop my ice cream on the floor as I clung to the seat belt that was cutting into my side and screaming, the car was spinning in circles like the tea cup ride mom and I went on at least a dozen times and each spin sent me slamming into the door once more. Finally when the car came to a stop I could barely move, one of my legs was pinned under my father’s seat while the other one obviously was broken, my arm was also broken from me using it as a brace to prevent my head from slamming against the window, the only thing preventing me from being thrown out of the car was the seat belt which hurt.

“Mom? Dad?” I asked looking at my parents. My father was leaning on the steering wheel, the weight of his head making the horn scream, my mother was leaning on the shattered window of the car and I felt a warm feeling leaking down my pinned leg. Looking down I noticed blood pouring out of a cut on my calf, I also had a cut across my forehead above my eye making one eye see red due to the blood.

“Mommy? Daddy?” I asked now scared wondering why they weren’t answering me, I was scared and wanted nothing more than to hear my parent’s voices.

“MOMMY! DADDY!” I screamed trying to wake them up since I couldn’t move, I knew the seat belt had cut into my side but at that moment I didn’t care, I wanted my parents to wake up, I was screaming and begging for them to open their eyes to let me know that they were ok, even a light movement of the finger would satisfy me but I got nothing. I was becoming dizzy due to blood loss and wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and sleep but knew I had to do something. Using my good hand I pulled my phone out of my pocket only to find it had been broken during the crash and I cried, life was not being fare to me. I could see people running to the car but a lot of them where holding back and I wondered why until I heard the hissing and instantly from watching the mock crashes at school I knew we had popped the gas tank and gas was pouring out of the car at the same time the engine was smoking.

“HELP! HELP ME!” I screamed banging on the window frantically begging the people who were looking in horrified and too afraid to approach the car.

“PLEASE!” I screamed again, the front of the car took and I knew if it hit the gas tank this car was going to explode with me in it. Is this how I’m going to die? I thought to myself. I gave up trying to break the window, not because I wanted to but because the smoke was overpowering and I was succumbing to blood loss from the cut on my head and leg. I could hear faint sirens in the distance before everything went black.

                I woke up in the middle of the night completely frightened by the dream; I had been having that dream ever since the accident and it always tormented me time after time. I didn’t want to keep relieving my parent’s deaths but it was like I had no choice. Deciding that the best matter to hopefully get back to sleep I decided to read up on the manor and hoped that in doing so I would have a much different dream than the one I kept on having. Climbing out of bed, I sat at my desk and flipped on my light, placing the book in front of me I brushed the dust off of it and opened it up to the chapter contents, finding the page I wanted I read:

                                                                The Berinstein Manor

The Berinstein Manor is an old house built by the late George Berinstein. Once considered a sorcerer by the people of his village, they resented the rich nobleman and shunned him from all activities regarding the town’s people. Angered by their betrayal he shut out the village and resorted to his dark magic insisting on taking revenge on the lowly citizens. Scouring through his book that he had gotten from his late father, he chose one particular passage that appeased him, The Curse of The Cat was a spell that he had read over and over again when he was a child and wondered if such a curse was possible to manifest. Reading the requirements needed to complete such a curse George went about obtaining the materials. Once George had regained all of the materials he went about creating the curse, listening to his father’s warning about magic backfiring if done wrong he was extra careful to read the spell right and measure the ingredients to the exact portion that was required.

When George had the curse manifested, he cast it about his land and his house making sure everything was completely covered, he even went out of the way to consider part of the sidewalk passing by his house so that any who passed by would be drawn in by the spell and lured into the house itself. Once inside the house the people were led up to a specific room, this room contained all the sacrificial remains of the cats used to require such a spell but was to also provide the body needed once the spell was finished and the soul removed from the living body. Once the person(s) was trapped in the room their soul was ripped out of them and placed in a cat body, once the transformation was completed the room caught on fire, burning whatever remains of the previous body there was so the soul could not try to return to its previous dwellings. Once the body was completely destroyed, the soul that is trapped in the cats body is doomed to remain on the property for the rest of its existence, the only way to break such a spell was for the soul’s true love to reveal their true feelings to them thus setting the soul free once more, though once freed there was no returning for the soul. Those who have been freed from their entrapment in the cat’s body, they were released from their holdings on the land and left the Earth for a better place, never to return again.

When the towns people learned of such curse it was already too late, most of the population has fallen to the curse and those who have not refused to even go near the manor for fear that they too will be possessed and forced to live the life of a cat, never to roam the world again as a human or even allowed to leave the property. Those who were brave enough managed to lure George out of his house and trap him in a jail cell far from his spell casting and spell books. Guards were placed outside of George’s jail cell and window to prevent any escape until the sorcerer’s execution. When the fateful day came for the sorcerer to be executed his last words to the public were as followed: “You think you have won but you haven’t.  My spell will claim every one of you rather it is now or