The Edina Horror: My First Publication

My Junior year in high school, the school newspaper put out a call among the staff for a short, not-particularly-scary, Edina-specific horror story for the October issue. I got this down during a particularly slow Biology class. It was accepted by the next period, since my only competition was something about a specific math teacher eating specific students in graphic detail (which was probably some kind of catharsis). Even though this story is somewhat tainted in my memory since I later expanded it into a full-length, absolutely awful novel, I'm still proud of it. It was the first fiction I ever got published, and it got me into the Iowa Young Writers' Studio.

“Any ideas on clubs or people we could feature this issue?”

“Are there any left we haven’t already done?”

“What about that new cultist group that popped up this year?”

“What?” I asked. I had been slumped over in my chair, half asleep while Zephyrus* brainstormed concepts for articles. The word cultists snapped me right awake.

“The Brotherhood of Infinite Hellfire, yeah, weren’t they at the activities fair? A bunch of guys in black robes, murmuring in some arcane language?”

“That would be pretty interesting. Anyone willing to do the article?”

I raised my hand out of some impulse to see if this was some bizarre joke that I wasn’t conscious enough to interpret. But the Editor-in-Chief said, “Okay, John Osler’s down for the cultist article. Next order of business, do we want to publish ‘Top Five Tastiest Water Fountains at EHS’ or ‘Looking Back: Ten Coldest Days of Last Winter’?”

The next day I went down to room 317 to interview the cult leaders. The door was a copy of every flimsy, wooden door at Edina High School, except it didn’t have a window in the top right corner. I reached for the metal handle but it dissolved in my hands, as did the door, melting away like snow in sped-up footage of the first day of spring. In seconds there was no door and no doorway, just gaping dark hole in the side of the dirty white wall. Beyond the hole was a cave, lined with rows of spiked stalactites. The cavern was dimly lit by torches in the wall, despite the fluorescent lighting from the hallway which should have flooded out the darkness. And in the center of it all was a figure, his face masked by a dark hood.

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

He led me down the cavern, which spiraled down deeper and deeper until it was as if we were just walking the same loop on endless repeat. I tried to ask him my pre-written questions from my spiral notebook, but it was a difficult task, both because the torchlight made it hard to read and because the mysterious figure rarely answered with more than one sentence.

“What would you say the purpose of your club is?”

“To raise The Ancient One.”

“Who is your advisor?”

“Some call him The Doombringer, The Shadow King, He Who Consumes Worlds. I call him Locklear**.”

“When do you meet?”

“Only on the midnight of the winter solstice and Collaborative Wednesdays***.”

“Where do you usually meet?”

“Right here,” he said, motioning to the room we’d just come to.

A fire pit burnt in the center of the room, illuminating the other dehumanizing activity in devilish flame. Teens in tattered Spanish Club or YSY or Robotics t-shirts threw issues of Zephyrus, old yearbooks, and set pieces Fiddler on the Roof into the flame, building it higher and higher. They moaned and shrieked as robed figures whipped them, maybe to encourage faster work but probably out of pure cruelty. Other robbed figures read from ancient texts, proclaiming demonic rituals in ancient tongues.

“What is all this?” I asked, my eyes wide with terror.

“We must capture members of inferior clubs. We must burn the fruits of their labor..”

“But why?”

He laughed deeply yet hollowly. “To raise the school spirit, of course!”

Then the fire began to rumble. The inferno shook back and forth more intensely, writhing, growing, as if the fire was something alive, something trying to break free. Robed figures and student slaves alike ran for their lives. In a flash of light the flame burst across the entire cavern. I closed my eyes, yet the fire burnt so bright that it leaked through my eyelids. I could tell when it changed colors from red and yellow to green and white.

When the flame subsided I stood up, somehow still alive even after my notebook had been reduced to ashes. I looked and saw a monstrosity hovering above the carnage, a being of milky white wings, green flesh, and a long tail ending in a razor-sharp stinger. It was The Edina Hornet, no longer a cartoonish logo but a real thing, staring at me with dark, inhuman, intelligent eyes.

“Behold!” cried the robed figure who had led me to this nightmare, “The true entity of our great school! The embodiment of all we are! The Edina Horror!”

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* The Edina High School newspaper.

** The Edina High School Principal.

*** Edina High School’s ill-fated experiment with giving students control of their own time.