Artwork: Third place winner, art challenge, Wadadli Pen 2011.
Fiction: Second place winner, 12 and under category, Wadadli Pen 2011.
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| The Scary Night by Freya Platts-Costeloe |
Zuri and Joshua were very scared. Suddenly the rain came down and they had to take shelter in the nearest old house. It was dark inside and they thought they could hear things running around. Then, they heard a weird voice asking "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?" followed by a boom of thunder and a bright flash of lightning.
Zuri and Joshua jumped and held each other.
"Who are you?" Joshua, who is always the braver one, asked in a frightened voice.
The voice replied, "I am your worst nightmare…..I am the Willkie’s Jumbie and no one comes into my house and escapes."
Zuri got his voice and said, "But it is raining and we only want to shelter."
"I don’t care!" said the Jumbie, which started to sing "Two likkle boy fuh de jumbie jamboree, no one come in my house and get away."
Joshua pleaded in a frightened voice. "Please don’t keep us here."
The Jumbie laughed. "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha you should not come into my house."
Joshua and Zuri were more scared now.
"Please don’t keep us here," Joshua begged again but the jumbie only laughed and started to sing again, "Two likkle boy fuh de jumbie jamboree."
Just then the rain, the thunder and the lightning stopped and the moon came out. The jumbie got quiet. Zuri whispered to Joshua, "Let’s get out of here."
"But how?" asked Joshua. Then Zuri remembered Grandma telling them that when you are running away from a Jumbie you should throw salt over your shoulder because the Jumbie would stop to count the grains. But they had no salt, then he also remembered that if you leave your shoes in a Jumbie’s way it would try to put them on to follow you and this would take all night because Jumbies don’t have any feet.
"Take off your shoes quietly and leave them," Zuri told Joshua.
"Why?" asked Joshua.
"Never mind, just take them off and don’t make no noise," whispered Zuri. They took their shoes off and moved quietly towards the door.
Just then, the Jumbie started singing again. "Two likkle boy fuh de jumbie jamboree."
That’s when Zuri and Joshua grabbed at their bikes but the bikes fell making a loud racket causing the Jumbie to shout, "Hey! Where are you going?"
"We are going home," said Joshua.
"You can’t leave," said the Jumbie.
"But that’s what we are doing now," said Zuri as they picked their bikes up and jumped on.
The Jumbie shouted "Stop! Stop!" and rushed towards the door but as soon as it saw the shoes it stopped and whispered, "Oh, shoes! And so pretty" and immediately tried putting them on.
Meanwhile Zuri and Joshua were riding as fast as they could to reach home but they could still hear the Jumbie back at the house screaming and struggling trying to put the shoes on.
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Zuri Holder is a 10 year old grade 5 student at The Sunnyside Tutorial School. He enjoys playing cricket, football, the computer game Cricket Captain, the board games Snakes and Ladders and Sorry. He also enjoys reading, especially Caribbean stories and the Adventures of TinTin. Zuri is a member of his school’s pan side and a drummer with The Antigua Dance Academy.
Freya Platts-Costeloe is eight years old and from Antigua. She is a third grader at Island Academy and a triplet. She is very passionate about drawing and painting in all mediums and on any surface from stones found on the beach to leaves found in the rain forests.
Copyright of the winning Wadadli Youth Pen Prize stories and/or art work featured on this site belongs to the creators of the individual works. Anansesem's editors played no part in the Wadadli Pen judging process. Anansesem's editors have not edited or adjusted the stories or artwork in any way.
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