A sketch for gibsonscratch from my weekly sketch streams! I also wrote a little short story for this piece!


Star and Pommy stared down the gates to the decrepit schoolyard on the outskirts of town. Late on a fall evening with the dead trees swaying in the wind gave the surrounding area a sense of unease. The two skunks pressed on inside, flashlights flickering to life as the ambience of the outside world was deafened within the seemingly ancient building. A dare was a dare and each of them had dared each other to go explore the supposedly haunted school. Despite a firm non-belief in the supernatural the skunks couldn't shake the feeling something was off about this place. Stepping over destroyed sections of floor and furniture wrecked by past vandals they made their way deeper into the property. Based on the sizes of desks they surmised the older classes were held towards the front of the school where they had entered. The daycare section, supposedly the most haunted part of the building, was at the opposite end. Wind howled through the broken windows in varying classrooms, creaking open doors and slamming closed others. With only their flashlights it was safe to say both skunks were unnerved at best when they reached the double doors to the daycare center. Graffiti adorned the walls leading up to the entryway, each squiggle of spray paint or marker getting closer and closer to the ground as it neared the end. At the other end of the building you could make out words and symbols but at this end- gibberish squiggles. One would be hard pressed to call it vandalism. It truly looked like a gang of toddlers had attacked the walls with paint.
The skunks garnered the courage to go deeper and opened the doors to... A nearly pristine daycare center. Aside from a hearty layer of dust and a myriad of cobwebs, this room looked as if it could have been abandoned yesterday. A chill ran up each of their spines when the double doors slammed behind them accompanied by an otherworldly laugh. They stared at each other, each coming to the horrifying understanding the noise wasn't from either of them playing a bad prank. They tried the doors but they were locked from the other side. Try as they might, the panic stricken skunks could not get the door to budge. Before they could fathom the thought of someone or something else in the building with them they began to hear soft lullaby music coming from an adjacent room. Shining a flashlight, one of them caught a glimpse of something moving through a doorway. Lingering on the lit entryway revealed the room in question was the nursery, abandoned cribs sitting neatly row by row. This was getting far too scary for either of them.
As they tried to find a way out they were suddenly met with a ghostly apparition of a pair of blueish floating hands rising from the center of the room. Not just one pair either... but many many pairs of hands. Enough hands to easily restrain the two skunks, lifting them up into the air. Struggling as they might, the hand's grip was tight. They were held by their waists, wrists and ankles, held firmly aloft in the center of the room. The lullaby music seemed to get louder while more hands joined the duo, rising up from the floorboards to tend to the two newest additions to the daycare. Wayward hands began floating up and down in a circle above them, each one making different gestures to dance in time with the music. The two skunks were scared but couldn't look away from the hypnotizing ghostly mobile above them. The hands began to glow a luminescent blue as the pair began to feel an energy in the air around and more importantly, within them. The ghost hands slowly began sapping them of their age, each year melting off of them and adding to the spirits' power. The lullaby got louder. The hands danced quicker. Their bodies regressed back to teens then children then toddlers. In minutes the two had entire decades stripped from them. As they approached 4...maybe 3 years of age their clothes began changing. Underwear poofing out into extremely thick padding, shirts elongating and turning to onesies. Their flashlights morphed into matching pacifiers that became clipped to their new attire as the ghost hands helped snap the buttons. The pacifiers were pushed into their mouths as their eyelids began to grow heavy. At this point the two had tuckered themselves out trying to escape the hands and naptime was fast approaching. All around them the blue glow of the spirits grew brighter, changing the room before their eyes. Dull paint was bright and colorful again, boxes of toys adorned the new playmats on the floor. Warm lights turned on above them, casting the daycare in a much softer hue. Seemingly even the outside world changed as well, daylight streaming in through the windows between the yellow leaves of the trees beyond. In the room with the lullabies the cribs were adorned with the softest pillows and friendliest plushies. Name placards adorned the cribs, a ghostly hand writing down "Star" and "Pommy" on two of them respectively.