draw the blinds,

check under your bed

hide your gold

and hold your breath

feel the ghost

in your chest

check your pulse

you're scared to death

TILL DAWN

(an original horror fic)

ya can lock up all your doors...

***

Everyone in Renvale knows of Morrow House—and the horrors committed within it.

They know of how on the 27th of May, 1947, Harold Morrow snapped and murdered his wife and three kids in cold blood and was then thrown into an asylum when he plead guilty at the trial, that he claimed he was actually demonically possessed when he killed his entire family even after he pled guilty to committing the murders. They know of how twenty years after the Morrow murders, four high school girls were brutally murdered in the house and the murderer never found but heavily rumoured to be Harold Morrow, breaking out of the asylum like Michael Myers did eleven years before Halloween was released and then recaptured, quietly covered up and locked away like Mad Harold Morrow. They know that teens had been dared to spend the night in the house on graduation night and never succeeded—and never attempted again after the murders in '67 for twenty years.

And they know despite no one believing Harold Morrow's insane claims, that Morrow House is said to be haunted.

For best friends Emmy Torres, Quinn Thompson, Ben Montgomery and Sasha Richmond, they know the rumours too, had grown up hearing them be whispered about in hushed conversation among adults and in grandiose summer camp and high school tales to scare younger kids and freshmen—Watch out, get too close to Morrow House, spend a night in it, and all the ghosts and demons haunting it and even Mad Harold Morrow himself will kill you just like he did to the Morrows and those four girls. And they know the rumours of Morrow House being haunted are just that—rumours. There are no such thing as ghosts or demons, nothing scary about the house other than the horrifying murders that had happened in it twenty years apart and Harold Morrow going insane and it being abandoned and left to the elements and time for decades. That was stuff for horror movies—and no matter how much they joked about it, their lives weren't a horror movie.

Until on graduation night of May 27th, 1987, at the bonfire meant to celebrate it, one of their classmates dares the four friends to do the dare that hasn't been done since 1967:

Spend the night of graduation in Morrow House until dawn.

So, of course, Emmy, Quinn, Ben and Sasha accept the dare and go into the Morrow House with two goals—stay the whole night, and prove the haunting's not real with a camcorder. Because it isn't, ghosts aren't real, much less demons who can possess people and make them murder their family. They're not real.

But you know what they say in horror movies—the skeptics are always proven wrong when the first person dies.

And this is the case when, four hours after they enter, Sasha disappears and the haunting begins.

Now, Emmy, Ben and Quinn have to survive the night without being killed by the demonic monsters hunting them that Emmy is able to mysteriously sense, as they try to figure out what is going on and learn what really happened on those nights in 1947 and 1967.

But can they truly survive till dawn?

***

... but there's a phantom in your foyer

Cast

Jenna Ortega as Emelia "Emmy" Torres

The final girl

17. Scorpio. Asexual biromantic

Sadie Sink as Quinn Thompson

The skeptic

17. Leo. Pansexual

Caleb McLaughlin as Benjamin "Ben" Montgomery

The nerdy basketball jock

18. Taurus. Bisexual

Olivia Scott Welch as Sasha Richmond

The cheerleader best friend

17. Virgo. Straight

Warnings:

This fic contains descriptions or mentions of: Horror themes, blood and gore, death, violence, supernatural and paranormal events, demonic possession, underage drinking, swearing and murder. This fic has been rated mature

Dedications

To harringtonssss, stilestastic, starryeyedturtle and skainatbilda—my faves who I'd spend a night in a haunted house with <3 And to all the final girls everywhere—you rule and are awesome  🫶

Author's Notes

Hello and welcome!!!

So, some backstory—I was never a horror girl growing up. When something even remotely scary came on the screen I would be covering my eyes or in the next room and I steered clear of all horror books—I actually had a kinda embarrassing childhood fear of the Goosebumps book series (the covers were terrifying to little kid me, for some reason) But, as a teenager, I started my love for horror with Halloween, which is my fave holiday after Christmas and Easter—which, for an Aussie girl, is really weird XD— and with watching Coraline (my comfort movie <3), Corpse Bride, Nightmare Before Christmas, Ghostbusters, The Mummy (1999), Gravity Falls and Owl House, before I moved into the big guns when I watched Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Stranger Things and loved them—especially Stranger Things, as you can all probably tell (it's become my comfort show now <3). They started my love for horror that was cemented when I watched Jennifer's Body, Alien and Halloween and read House Of Hollow and Dracula for the first time last year and loved them. So, this is my attempt at horror and my love letter for this genre—especially my fave trope in all horror, final girls (gonna be watching Scream and Fear Street for the first time this Halloween with their iconic final girls, so there may be a Fear Street fic...)

Anyway... I'm very excited to write Till Dawn for this spooky season! It's my personal Halloween project and kinda like my baby now and I'm so very excited and nervous to share it with you all, so I hope you all like it! 

This fic is also inspired by Stranger Things, as you can probably tell, the song Paranoia by Neoni which is also the theme song of this fic (as you could probably tell by the lyrics used) and the 80s period in terms of music and fashion (much less for society...), so expect lots of 80s songs in the soundtrack! And along with final girls, this fic will contain my other fave trope in horror—found footage that was kickstarted when I read Rules For Vanishing earlier this year, which is a book I HIGHLY recommend (hopefully I can write it well!)

I hope you all enjoy this and take a trip into Morrow House—and see if you can survive the night >:)

GhostWriterGirl out!

Disclaimer

This is my original work, and I own full credit over it, the plot and characters. Plagiarisers will be tossed into the depths of the Upside Down and torn apart by Demogorgons :)