“Well Em, you want to come grab a bite to eat with us? I’m sure you’ll be fine to close up shop for twenty minutes, seeing that it’s a slow day.” I asked her casually while stuffing the clothes into our shopping bags. She was more than happy to come along and we went to a café that I had been fond of since high school in our area. However, the café had a surprise in wait for me this time. Em took one look at the waiter and sprinted up to him and practically smothered him as she hugged him.
“Danny!” she yelled and drew the attention of every customer in the café.
“Hey Em, shouldn’t you be watching the store?” It was Dan, I had no idea he had been working here at the time; it made sense to me, though. I had been so busy or too exhausted to drop by in quite a while.
“Since when did you start working here, Dan?” I asked him as Em continued to smother him with affection. He pulled on his collar to air out his shirt as beads of sweat dripped down his neck.
“Ha-ha, I suppose it’s time I came clean. Em’s my girlfriend, she has been for over two years and I started working here since I found out Em was pregnant.”
Our heads shot around as if they were on a swivel to Em. She couldn’t help but burst into laughter.
“Huh?” Angel gasped softly while eyeing Em’s stomach.
“That was a year ago, there’s no way I’d look like this if I was pregnant still.”
She then went to bring their child out of a high chair next to the counter. The three of them came together, Em, who was beautiful with long brown hair, Dan, who usually came off as wild and irresponsible; he had blue eyes and light blonde spiky hair. Then there was their child, a little girl named Chloe, resting in their arms with a warm smile on her small face.
“What? You’re a dad? Dan, what the hell? We’ve known each other since high school! Why didn’t you tell me you were going through this?” I yelled at in utter disbelief.
“You didn’t ask,” he replied causally.
“Wait, two years? You were dating her in high-school too?”
“Yeah, we started a few months before graduation.”
“Dan!” I then proceeded to shake him by the shoulders while he laughed like a moron. I then asked if anyone else knew about all this and he told me that only Mr Smith did. The whole thing felt like some dream until we sat down for coffee. The aroma of blended cocoa beans reassured me I wasn’t inside my own head.
“So, Angel, it’s nice to finally get a chance to sit down and actually meet you. I’ve been busy at the office lately, so I haven’t had a chance to come say hi when you were there.”
“Yeah you too,” she replied distracted as she gawked at baby Chloe as she touched Angel’s face, curious of her red eyes. She then stared at me with butterflies in her stomach as she gave off a kind of bubbly radiance. Em chuckled to herself as she watched us.
“What?” I asked her as my heart began to pound; I already knew what she was implying though.
“I know that look, Wade, I wouldn’t rush things, you two,” Dan said trying not to also burst into laughter. She brought her gaze back to the baby and went on as if nothing happened. We finished our coffee and we left the budding family to the rest of their day. As we were walking out, Angel asked me what I wanted to do for the rest of the day. Without really thinking I suggested to go to the pool to cool off. She was excited at the idea; I think it was just another thing she hadn’t experienced in a really long time. I kept wondering just how long she had been in that house. I remember I almost regretted bringing her to the pool. She wore one of the bikinis Em picked out for her and what can I say. She had the attention of everyone we passed as she walked around with an umbrella overhead. I just wore some shorts that I was wearing underneath my jeans for moments like these. It wasn’t too bright out, so I didn’t have to worry about her skin burning. We stayed by the edge of pool, just treading water. Even though the sun wasn’t too harsh, it really showed how pale Angel was as the sunlight reflected off the water back onto her. All in all, it was pretty relaxing as we both rested against the wall of the pool.
“You think we’ll ever be like Em and Dan?” she asked me softly.
“I don’t know. I guess I wouldn’t mind if we were though,” her face went red and she hid half of it under water, trying to hide how flustered she really was.
“Thanks for today…it was fun,” she mumbled slightly after bringing her face out of the water.
She then pressed herself against me and brought her face close to mine with her eyes closed, expecting me to kiss her and I did. I felt the weight of her in my arms and my mind was dragged away from its thoughts to experience the moment. There was something about her that made it feel like a whole new experience every time we shared in them together. When we opened our eyes, we saw teenagers and kids staring at us. She laughed as she moved her hair behind her neck; we stayed in the water for a while longer and then got out. As she was drying her hair, her wound opened back up and we were there for next hour trying to stop it from bleeding so we could leave without looking suspicious…well, more suspicious.
We came home to a locked door and Celia was sitting on the step beneath it, waiting impatiently.
“What’s wrong, Celia?”
“Dad must have gone out, I’m sick of waiting out here. He knew I’d be home around now,” she complained while fanning herself with her wallet and eating a lollipop.
“Where’d you go today?” Angel asked and sat down with her.
“I saw some friends, why?” She folded her arms expecting an actual answer.
“No reason, I was just curious,” she replied innocently.
“Whatever, Wade, do that thing you always do already; I just want to go to my room.”
“Alright but whoever these friends were, they have you pissed off more than you usually are.”
By that ‘thing’ she meant my ability to run, climb and generally go places where other people couldn’t. If there was any legitimate reason why my dad thought I was a delinquent, this would be the closest thing to it. I grabbed the top of our front gate and hoisted myself up and walked the length of it until I came to the gutters. I shimmied across them while hanging from them to get to the open window leading into Celia’s room on the left side of the house. I swung back and forwards to gain momentum before I flung myself through it. I landed on her bed that was unmade and the sheets were piled up at the end of the bed. I went through the house and unlocked the front door. Angel clapped happily while Celia bitterly passed me by.
“You had better not have touched my stuff!” she yelled from down the hallway.
“I didn’t know you could do things like that.”
“Well yeah, I haven’t needed to for quite some time, except when I needed to run from you in the house.”
She looked down and I could tell she was feeling guilty. “Oh sorry…I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said trying not to panic. “You didn’t do anything wrong; let’s go up to our room.” She shook her head and pretty much ignored what I said.
An hour later Dad arrived home with food which was unusual since we cooked most of our meals all the time. It wasn’t take-out though, it appeared as if he had prepared it himself and brought it home with him. We could all see how happy with it he was, and he was excited to get it served out on the table. I threw some plates down and we all sat ourselves down at the left side of the table.
“Isn’t this table kind of big for just the four of us?” Angel asked as she stared across it. It reached one end of the room to the other.
“I guess it is pretty big now that I think about it.” It had never really seemed out of place for me since it had always been in our house. The meal he brought home was a beef stew; it was amazing and just its aroma alone overwhelmed our senses, the taste of it was even better.
“Hey dad, where’d you make this?” Celia asked, she had already caught on.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll tell you later. Just eat up before it goes cold,” he replied while serving himself a
second helping. I was halfway through my bowl when I received a phone call. It was Johnson; he told me he had been investigating the supposedly haunted house and made some discoveries he needed to show me. So, I headed out after I finished my bowl.
“Angel, I need you to stay here, I’ll be back in a few hours,” I left without telling her where I was going but I knew it was best not to get her involved since she was already sensitive enough on the matter. I was met out the front of my house by Johnson; by the look in his eyes I could see he had some new concerns. We walked to the house together and when we arrived there, we prepared ourselves for whatever might be inside.
“Follow me, stay close. This place is dangerous. Angel may be more of a victim than a suspect when we first made our impressions of her.” He put me on edge, but it was for the sake of caution. He gave an extensive tour of the house. We also retraced my footsteps from that night from when I was alone. We first went to the lounge room with the ruined furniture, to me it looked like just that but to Johnson it posed a mystery.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed this house has quite a strange layout to it for how large it is,” he stated confidently.
“Actually, now that you mention it. Yeah, the basement is right past these doors and the bathroom upstairs is barely large enough for two people; it doesn’t make sense considering this house is built like a mansion.”
“My guess is the rooms have been repurposed. Come along, there’s still much to examine; I ask that you be silent for the rest of our time here.”
I found that to be a bit of a strange request, but I nodded anyway. His explanations from then on were precise and on point. We went upstairs to the attic after he showed me around the basement. The smell of decay was already wretched before he opened the stairs leading inside. He handed me a rag to cover my face with and inside were corpses of humans, bovines and other unrecognisable creatures. Flies swarmed on them and maggots squirmed along the ground. I felt sick as my eyes watered from the stench. The bodies hung from rusted chains connected to the ceiling and moonlight shined down on both us and them through holes in the roof.
What the hell is this? This is so messed up! I screamed inside my head as I felt like I was in the house of a serial killer. He pulled a key from his pocket and explained that he had found it inside one of these corpses. The thought of him reaching around in their insides sent shivers down my spine.
“These bodies aren’t just victims of some psychopath, they’re food…Angel wasn’t the only thing living here.”
“The hell are you talking about? Why do you think Angel was here in the first place then?” I broke my silence; it was impossible not to.
“Because this is her home. The name Natsuki, when I first heard it, didn’t ring any major bells inside my head but it did sound somewhat familiar to me. I did my research and it came back to me.”
“How could anyone live here? This place is creepy enough, but the bodies are overkill,” I responded confused and frustrated as the foul stench continued to seep past the rag I held over my face.
“The Natsuki’s, particularly the ones that moved here to Fellbroke city, were wealthy but many say they attained their unique vibe in it through some dark practices.”
“What kind of dark practices?” I asked trying not to become any more annoyed by the current situation. “Murder, cannibalism and the creation of sick, twisted monstrous beast,” he said it so bluntly it felt like I must have been hallucinating but the stench around us refused to let my mind slip that way.
“Then what about Angel? What do you think of her and her involvement in all this?”
His eyes darted to the floor and then back towards me after he took a deep breath, “I’m not entirely sure.”
We both became silent and we went back to the first floor to a room that I missed on my initial visit to the house. The room had scribbles on the walls from what I guess would be a child’s handy work. They were images of animals and monstrous creatures with excessive limbs. Johnson hushed me as he unlocked the door and the moment he did, he grabbed me and dragged us behind a couch. We peered over it to see a monster devouring a policeman, his body twitched as chunks of flesh were torn from it by the creature’s massive jaws. The creature was covered in bullet holes; it had only one arm, but it was almost as large as the creature itself. Its feet thumped against the floorboards as it leant back to swallow an entire leg of its prey. Its eyes were a soulless black and it breathed wheezily as it continued to shake around the flesh in its mouth. We snuck past it while it fed and we entered another room. I looked to Johnson and he kept on with a serious gaze. However, where we entered was no better, a room filled with cages. All of them sturdy, stained with blood with more horrible creatures inside. They clawed outside of the gaps in their cages in an effort to reach us, starving with insatiable hunger. In the centre of all the large cages was a smaller one with a broken lock. Inside was littered with long black strands of dead hair clotted in blood.
“That ain’t right…that’s just fucked up,” I cried knowing it was Angel’s cage.
“Wade, we don’t know for certain—”
“No, that’s her hair. She didn’t follow me home, she was escaping hers,” I cut him off before he could say otherwise.
“Come along, there’s still more rooms to investigate; we should know the full story before moving on.”
“I-I’ve had enough of this story. Let’s burn it to the ground.”
“I thought you would have wanted to see this through…” he said softly in a guilty tone. “I want to put this fucked up place behind us. Not only for the both of us but for Angel as well.”
Suddenly, the groans and howls of the caged beasts all around us went silent and we turned to the door as did the monsters. At the door was the one-armed giant beast, it faced us with drool leaking from its massive jaws. Roar!!! It charged straight for us.
“Move!” I yelled as I barrel rolled out of the way while Johnson just stepped to the side. The monster smashed into the cages and released a few of the creatures that weren’t crushed by the impact from the charge. The small creatures instead attacked the giant beast, gnawing at its shoulder and its legs. With a grasp of its giant hand, it pummelled them to pulp as well as splattering them against the walls as it threw them against them. We ran for it as fast as we could until only after a minute, we saw its shadow being projected not far behind us and heard the thundering sound of its feet smashing the ground as it ran after us.
“We have to get out of here!” Johnson yelled as he sprinted. “No, we can’t have this thing follow us home! I meant what I said about scorching this place!”
“Alright, follow me! There’s gas canisters in the kitchen.” We formulated a plan and made a dash for it. We slammed the door behind us and with all his strength, Johnson held the monster at bay behind it. I opened the canisters and threw one of them into the ventilation shafts, hoping that it would spread the gas throughout the house. The door flew open and Johnson was hurled back against the kitchen bench. The beast smashed me against the ground and roared in my face; its breath alone almost had me hurling.
A wooden chair then exploded against the back of the monster’s head and Johnson stepped up his game as it faced him. It went to slash him, but he dodged the strike then ripped it in the ribs, not once but several times, every punch with more force than the last. The beast leapt at him, but he hurled the other gas canister at it and then rolled behind the counter. The monster chomped the canister in half and continued to rampage in the trashed kitchen.
All the gas began to smother us and it became hard to breathe but Johnson pushed on and threw me over his shoulder and sprinted out of the room. Without looking back, he pegged a piece of steel against the other canister that was lodged in the vents and the two colliding metals sparked and the ember it created turned the room into an explosive inferno. The blast sent us flying across the room, but Johnson got us up and we ran for our lives as the house burned down around us. The monster smashed through a
wall in front of us and blocked the exit. Its flesh was in cinders, but it tried to kill us regardless.
“This thing doesn’t know when to give up!”
“Don’t stop moving; I’ll handle this!” We ran full pelt towards the creature, I slid beneath its legs as it slammed its massive claw down on Johnson, but he dodged to the side and I kicked the monster in the back setting it off balance and it stumbled back into the flames.
“Nice work!” he yelled but we began to panic when we saw the front doors were blocked off by a fallen ceiling beam and rubble. “Damn it! Quick, make for the attic!”
The stairs crumbled behind us as we dashed up towards the attic. Sweat dripped down our faces as the flames burned hotter and the smoke began to rise. We smashed through the attic window and fell hard against the grass-covered yard below despite rolling. We ran to the front of the house and that’s when our bodies collapsed against the pavement. We watched the house burn and I laughed while trying to catch my breath. To this day, it was one of the most intense things I’ve ever pulled off and I was proud of my achievement. Johnson lied there happy to be alive.
“Why the hell are you an office worker man? You’re incredible, it’s like you can do just about anything,” I praised him, knowing if he hadn’t had been with me, I’d be dead.
“It’s so I don’t get caught in situations like these…I just want to be like everyone else and live a normal, simple life.”
We laid there for a few minutes until the echo of sirens grew louder and louder as they headed towards us. We snapped back to reality, coming to the realisation we just had committed arson. We stumbled back to our houses that night covered in soot, bruises and blood. I managed to sneak past Dad and clean myself up along with a fresh change of clothes but there was no hiding my exhaustion from Angel when I got back to my room. I fell back against my bed and she laid down next to me, staring into my eyes.
“Where have you been? How was it so important you just get up and leave?” I didn’t dare lie; she could see straight through me.
The Red to My Grey Page 4