HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

IT’S MY FAVOURITE HOLIDAY, BECAUSE EACH OF US CAN BE WHATEVER WE WANT THIS DAY AND HAVE FUN ANY WAY WE LIKE!

 

WHAT HALLOWEEN PARTY GOES WITHOUT A SCARY STOTRY!?

Here is a horror story which is simple for reading & understanding, and also easy to retell to scare your friends!

John Charrington’s Wedding No one ever thought that May Forster would marry John Charrington, but he thought differently, and when John Charrington wanted something, he usually got it. He asked her to marry him before he went to university. She laughed and refused him. He asked her again when he came home. Again she laughed and again she refused. He asked her a third time and she laughed at him more than ever. John was not the only man who wanted to marry her. She was the most beautiful girl in our village and we were all in love with her. So none of us was pleased when John suddenly invited us to his wedding. ‘Your wedding?’ ‘You don’t mean it?’ ‘Who’s the lucky lady? When is it?’ John Charrington waited a moment before he replied. ‘Miss Forster and I will be married in September,’ he said calmly. ‘No, no, she’s refused you again,’ said someone. ‘She always refuses you, John, remember?’ Everyone laughed. ‘No, I can see it’s true,’ I said, looking at his face. ‘How did you do it, John?’ ‘The best luck in the world,’ he said. ‘And I never stopped asking her.’ And that was all he would say. The strange thing was that May Forster seemed to be in love with him, too. Perhaps she had been in love with him all the time? Oh, I’ll never understand women. We were all asked to the wedding, and I was going to be best man. Everyone was talking about it and everyone asked the question, ‘Does she really love him?’ At first, in the early days of summer, I asked that question myself, but after one evening in August, I never asked it again. I was going home past the church. Our church is on a hill and the grass around it is very thick and soft, so I made no sound as I walked. It was there that I saw them. May was sitting on a low gravestone with her face turned towards the evening sun, and the look on her face ended for ever any question about her love for John Charrington. She looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her. John was lying at her feet, and it was his voice that broke the silence of the golden August evening. ‘My dear, my dear, I know that I would come back from the dead if you wanted me!’ I understood now, and continued quickly on my way. The wedding was planned for early in September. Two days before that I had to go up to London on business. As I was standing in the station, waiting for the train, I saw John Charrington and May Forster. They were walking up and down, looking into each other’s eyes. Of course, I didn’t speak to them, and when the train came in, I got on and found myself a seat. If John was travelling alone, hoped he would come and talk to me. And he did. ‘Hello there,’ he said, as he came into my carriage. ‘That’s lucky. The journey won’t be boring now.’ ‘Where are you going?’ I asked. ‘To see old Branbridge, my uncle,’ he answered, as he turned to say a last goodbye to May through the window. ‘Oh, I wish you wouldn’t go, John,’ she said in a low, serious voice. ‘I feel sure something will happen.’ ‘Do you think I’ll let anything happen to me, when the day after tomorrow is our wedding day?’ ‘Don’t go,’ she asked him again. He took her hand in his. ‘I must, May. The old man’s been very good to me, and now he’s dying. I must go and see him, but I’ll come home in good time for the wedding.’ ‘You’re sure?’ she said as the train began to move. ‘Nothing will keep me away,’ he replied. When he could no longer see her, he sat down and explained that his uncle was dying at home in Peasmarsh and had asked for him. He felt that he had to go. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he said, ‘or, if not, the day after. That’s plenty of time.’ ‘And suppose Mr Branbridge dies?’ ‘Alive or dead I’ll be married on Thursday!’ John said, opening his newspaper. John left the train at Peasmarsh station and I watched him walk away. I went on to London where I spent the night. When I arrived home the next afternoon, my sister said: ‘Where’s John Charrington?’ ‘Isn’t he back?’ I asked. I was sure he would be at home. ‘No, Geoffrey. He has not returned, and, what is more, he won’t. There’ll be no wedding tomorrow.’ My sister always thinks badly of other people, which makes me very angry. ‘Don’t be stupid! Of course there’ll be a wedding,’ I said. But I was not so sure when late that night John Charrington had still not returned. The next morning the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. There was a note for me from John and when I went up to the Forsters’ house, I found he had written to May too. ‘Mr Branbridge asked him to stay another night,’ she said. ‘John’s so kind, he couldn’t refuse, but I wish he hadn’t stayed.’ ‘Well, he’s asked me to meet him at the station at three o’clock, and come straight on to the church,’ I said. I was at the station at half-past two. I was a little angry with John. It didn’t seem right to arrive at the church straight from the train to marry that beautiful girl. But when the three o’clock train came in and went out again without leaving any passengers, I was more than angry. There was no other train for thirty-five minutes. ‘If we really hurry,’ I thought, ‘we should just get to the church in time. But what a stupid man to miss that first train!’ That thirty-five minutes seemed like a year as I waited. I grew more and more angry with John Charrington. The train was late, of course – and John Charrington wasn’t on it. I jumped into the carriage which was waiting outside the station. ‘Drive to the church!’ I said. I was now more worried than angry. Where could he be? Was he ill? But he was never ill. Perhaps he’d had an accident. Yes, that was it. Something terrible had happened, I was sure of it. And I was going to have to tell his bride . . . It was five to four when I reached the church. I jumped from the carriage and ran past the crowd of villagers waiting outside the church. I saw our gardener up at the front, by the door. ‘Are they all still waiting, Tom?’ I asked. ‘Waiting, sir? No, no, the wedding’s nearly finished.’ ‘Finished! Then Mr Charrington has come?’ ‘Yes, sir. He was here on time, all right. But, sir,’ Tom looked around him, then spoke quietly in my ear, ‘I’ve never seen Mr Charrington like this before. I think he’s been drinking. His clothes were all dirty, and his face was as white as a sheet. People are saying all kinds of things, sir, but I think it’s the drink. He looked like a ghost, and he went straight in without a word to any of us.’ The villagers were talking in whispers, and getting ready to throw their handfuls of rice over the newly married pair. Then they appeared at the church door – John Charrington and his bride. Tom was right. John Charrington was not himself. His coat was dirty, his hair untidy, and his face was deathly pale. But no paler than the face of his wife, which was as white as her wedding dress and the flowers in her hand. As they left the church, the bell-ringers began to pull. And then came – not the happy music of wedding bells – but the long, slow, deep sound of the death bell. Horror filled every heart in the crowd. How could the bellringers make so terrible a mistake? But the ringers themselves ran in fear from the church, and refused to go back in. The bride’s hands were shaking, and there were grey shadows around her mouth. Her husband held her arm and walked with her through the crowd of villagers, waiting with their handfuls of rice. But the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding bells never rang. In a silence deeper than the silence of death, John Charrington and his bride got into their carriage, closed the door, and drove away. At once people began to talk, full of surprise and anger and horror at what they had seen. I drove back to the house with Mr Forster, May’s father. ‘Why did I let my daughter marry him?’ old Forster said. ‘To come to the wedding like that! I’d like to hit him in the face for doing that!’ He put his head out of the carriage window. ‘Drive as fast as you can!’ he shouted. The driver obeyed. We passed the wedding carriage without looking at it, and reached home before it. We stood at the door, in the burning afternoon sun, and a minute later the wedding carriage arrived. When it stopped in front of the steps, Mr Forster and I ran down. ‘Good Heavens, the carriage is empty! But—’ I pulled the door open at once, and this is what I saw . . . There was no John Charrington, and all we could see of May, his wife, was something white, lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat. ‘I came straight here,’ the driver said, as May’s father lifted her out, ‘and no one got out of the carriage.’ We carried her into the house in her wedding dress – and then I saw her face. How can I ever forget it? White, white, and in her eyes more fear and horror than I have ever seen on any living face. And her hair, her beautiful golden hair, was as white as snow. As we stood there, her father and I, unable to move or speak, a boy came up to the house with a message. I took it from him and opened it. Mr Charrington was thrown from his horse on his way to the station at half past one. He was killed immediately. And he was married to May Forster at the church at half past three, with half the village watching. ‘Alive or dead, I’ll be married on Thursday!’ What had happened in that carriage on the way home? No one knows – no one will ever know. Before a week was over, they laid May Charrington beside her husband, under the soft green grass by the little church where they used to meet as lovers. And that was the way John Charrington was married.