Remains

by Cull, Andrew;

  Now, it held her hand, its small decayed fingers wrapped around Lucy’s. Its grip was terribly cold, wet, the flesh loose on its bones. Its wrist had disappeared completely where its arm had decomposed and bloated. The skin on its forearm had sloughed off, revealing the blackened, putrefying muscle beneath. Further up the arm the body had been—

  Lucy stirred. Her eyes flickered open. She squinted into the darkness above her.

  She was alone. But, no—she’d felt something—someone had been in the room with her!

  “Alex?” Lucy rolled on to her side. The pain brought her to a dead stop. It exploded behind her eyes, making her cry out. Her skull felt vice tight, too full, full of blood? She could taste it in her mouth.

  The night came back to her in a sickening wave, his Ouija board message, the black thing that tore out of the darkness at her. She raised an unsteady hand up towards her head. That was when she saw the plaster dust.

  Her fingers were covered in it. Plaster dust and blood. Where the child had been holding her hand, her fingers were bleeding. Lucy ran her other hand over the tiny cuts on her fingers. She winced, blood streaking through the white dust.

  “Alex?” she called quietly. The house remained silent and still.

  Lucy turned onto her front. Her movement made the pain surge horribly, the pressure in her head ratcheting up until it felt like it would burst. She planted her hands on the stripped boards and slowly managed to haul herself up onto all fours. All the time she could hear herself whimp­ering, but the voice sounded distant, disconnected from her, as if she was listening to the suffering of someone else in the room with her.

  She crawled across the floor to the wall by the bedroom door. There, leaning into the wall for support, she managed to pull herself to her feet. The pain made her eyes blur with tears. She couldn’t give up now. She mustn’t! She’d felt Alex, felt him holding her hand. Her Alex! Finally, after everything she’d endured, she was close, so close to seeing him again. But she was freezing, as cold as the house that had swallowed her. It had finally gotten its wish, she thought. She had become one with it.

  It was you, wasn’t it, Alex?

  Please don’t hide anymore.

  Swaying away from the door frame, Lucy pulled herself out of Todd Lowe’s room. She stumbled and fell into the wall on the other side of the hallway. Her head was pounding, each beat of her heart was a scream locked tight in her skull. She thought of the black mass that had torn from the night and attacked her. Was it waiting along the corridor for her? Was that what she’d pulled from death with her desperate pleas? Resting her head on the wall, she felt warm blood flowing over her face. As she dragged herself along the wall, she streaked the cream paint red.

  “Mommy’s here!” Her words were slurred. The world slipped in and out of focus. The wall ended, and Lucy found herself leaning on the bannister for support, sliding along it towards the top of the stairs. When the bannister ran out there was nothing left to hold her up. She stood, swaying over the staircase that dropped away in front of her, tottering on the edge of the top step.

  And then she lost her balance.

  Lucy swung her arms, pinwheeling wildly, trying frantically to stop herself falling forward. She rocked back, staggered, and managed to propel herself backwards across the landing. Out of control, she spun and slammed into the side of the wardrobe.

  She sank to her knees, leaning into the cold wood. She gripped the sides of the hulking box, afraid that if she let go the world would throw her off again.

  Lucy knelt against the wardrobe for a long time before she felt strong enough to try and pick herself up. She reached up to the wall beside her. She felt the letters before she saw them.

  The plaster behind the wardrobe had been cut into—deep channels, gouging out another message. Lucy turned towards the words.

  At the same moment, something began hammering on the inside of the wardrobe.

  33

  The wardrobe shook, a flurry of blows pummelling the wood, as if something were trying to beat its way out, fighting to get to Lucy. She reeled away, landing awkwardly on her back, elbows slamming into the stripped boards first, her whole body jarring as it followed.

  Another peal of blows erupted. Lucy screamed and wriggled away from the sound. She crawled backwards across the landing until the bannisters cut off her retreat.

  There she lay, wide-eyed, cornered, waiting for whatever lurked inside the closet to begin thrashing at its sides again.

  No more blows came.

  Lucy took a grip on the bannisters. She used them to pull herself around, to try to look beyond the ajar wardrobe door. Was it waiting for her, a cadaver coiled into the thick darkness, waiting for her to round the door before tearing into her?

  A bit at a time she shifted closer, straining to see past the heavy door. From the angle she was viewing it, she couldn’t ignore how much the wardrobe resembled an oversized coffin. Neither could she ignore how that coffin loomed over her, as if it were sizing her up.

  As close as she dared to get, Lucy couldn’t see clearly around the door. Her face felt numb now, the metallic tang of blood filled her mouth, a bitter reminder of how far she’d come.

  Lucy edged along the side of the wardrobe until she was kneeling in the same place she’d been when the knocking began. She raised her hands up to its frame. She stopped, her trembling hands just short of the cold wooden box. She was certain that, as soon as she touched it, the hammering would begin again.

  Gently, she placed her hands on the wood.

  No sound came from the wardrobe. With one hand underneath it and another gripping the back of its frame, Lucy strained to pull the wardrobe away from the wall. The pain in her head surged. She screamed out, but she couldn’t stop, she wouldn’t stop. The wardrobe felt as if it were full of bricks.

  A fresh stream of blood traced a path down Lucy’s face. It felt as if the skin on her forehead was tearing, the mouth opening, peeling apart as she strained to drag the dead weight away from the wall. The cuts on her fingers were bleeding again. Her grip was slick with sweat and blood.

  The wardrobe scraped loudly on the floorboards. Inch by inch, Lucy hauled it, ever closer to exposing the message. Blood from her fingers smeared the varnish.

  And then the wardrobe slipped out of her hands. The sudden release sent Lucy spinning away, she lost her footing and plopped down onto the hallway floor. There, sitting in the hulking shadow of the wardrobe, she read the two word message cut into the wall.

  34

  ALL WAYS ME

  The words were large, jagged, torn with force into the wall.

  “What are you trying to say? What does this mean?” Lucy demanded.

  She pulled herself to her feet, grabbing the bannister to steady herself. She’d been through the whole house looking for messages, but she hadn’t thought to look behind the furniture the Lowes had abandoned. She hadn’t thought to pull the pictures from the walls, to tear into the plaster, to carve and cut and rip into it. There were carpets in some of the rooms. There might be messages underneath them! Keeping a tight grip on the bannister, Lucy began to make her way down the stairs.

  Each step seemed further away than the last, the drop between them growing larger all the time. The world blurred in and out of focus, her legs could barely hold her up.

  She was halfway down the staircase when she heard the noise. It cut through the hallway like a scream: the squeal of wood scoring the floor above her. Lucy whipped around.

  The huge shape lumbered into view, grinding loudly on the floor as it moved. It took a moment for Lucy to realize what she was looking at. The wardrobe was being shoved, little by little, towards the top stair.

  Lucy stepped fast down the stairs, faster with each scrape from above. She stumbled, jumped down the stairs. Still, she was nowhere near the bottom when the wardrobe reached the top step and, with on
e final shove, rocked forward and plummeted over the edge.

  35

  The wardrobe toppled forward, its door swinging wide as it dropped hard onto the staircase. In her panic, Lucy lost her footing and her grip on the bannister. She slipped onto her back and slid down the stairs, the huge mass of the wardrobe hammering after her.

  Lucy hit the bottom step moments before the wardrobe. For a split second she saw the massive dark form of the cabinet speeding towards her…and then everything went black.

  Lucy’s scream was lost in the massive noise of the wardrobe slamming into the wall at the bottom of the staircase, driving into it with such force its sides shattered. The top of the wardrobe embedded itself deep into the plaster.

  36

  Matt grabbed the Camaro’s keys from the hall table and headed for the garage. The corridor was freezing. He’d set the heating to run all night, but still the cold had found its way inside. His skin pulled tight against the frigid air. The hallway bulb had blown not long after he’d moved in and he hadn’t gotten around to changing it. Now he wished he had.

  He couldn’t get Lucy’s words out of his head. Pacing along the corridor, following the wall through the dark, he felt that, at any moment, the shadows might rush at him, tear into view as one of the grotesque apparitions Lucy had described. He walked faster. Or maybe he would find it, slithering across the tiles, waiting to catch at his ankles, white skin at first, then wet, torn flesh and shattered bone.

  They use their bones to cut their flesh.

  Matt snatched at the handle to the garage door. Before he’d opened it halfway, his other hand was already searching the wall inside for the light switch. He found it and flicked it on. The fluorescent tube flickered, the same darkness he’d hurried through snatching in between each blink.

  Matt shut the door on the hallway. Maybe the door had shifted in the cold, the hinges tightened, but it was harder to close than usual, like closing a door against a strong wind, like something pushed against it from the other side. The darkness swelled against the rippled glass panels in the hallway door.

  At the back of the garage was the jerry can Matt had taken to 1428 Montgomery. He should have burned the black house to ashes when he’d had the chance. He grabbed the can and headed around to the Camaro’s trunk.

  Matt stopped, turning fast to look at the glass panel at the bottom of the hallway door. Had something moved just beyond the glass? He’d caught it on the edge of his peripheral vision—something more than the dark pressing against the pane. He studied the glass, waiting. The corridor beyond seemed still. That did not put his mind at rest.

  Matt put the can into the trunk. He had to get Lucy out of that house, put an end to this. He’d trusted Doctor Bachman to help her but he’d done nothing. He slammed the trunk, angry with himself. The noise echoed through the still space, setting the garage door rattling as if someone were beating on it, trying to get in. As Matt climbed into the Camaro he looked back to the rippled glass pane.

  He stopped, garage remote in hand, the memory of the night Alex’s cries had led him to 1428 Montgomery holding him still. He’d tried to blame his grief, tried to convince himself it had been some kind of hallucination brought on by the insatiable pain of losing Alex. He’d returned to the house, kept watch, but had found only silence beyond its mottled panes. Now he was sure there had been something more, something in the darkness that had lured him there. Had it wanted him to break in, to find it among the shadows and dust? Had it been waiting for Lucy? Drawing her to it the way it had drawn him, with the promise of seeing their son again? Matt’s hands were shaking, fear uncoiling within him. He closed his hand around the remote. The door jerked upwards and the night seized its chance to sweep in. Snow swirled under the garage door—the freezing air outside was thick with it. The low, grey winter sky that had been threatening snow for days had finally delivered on its promise.

  Matt turned the key in the Camaro’s ignition. Its roar made him start. Its headlights blasted into the night, alive with snow spinning through their beams. Matt edged it out of the garage. All around the Camaro, the night shifted and changed shape. Squalls threw themselves against the car like furious ghosts. The heavy fall had already begun to lay. Matt’s tires skidded as he pulled onto the drive. The roads would be treacherous, but he had no choice. He had to get Lucy out of 1428 Montgomery before it was too late.

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  Matt could barely feel the wheel. He’d turned the heating up full, hot air blasted from the vents on the dashboard, his face felt flushed and raw, but still he couldn’t rid himself of the biting cold that had lingered at his back ever since he had gotten into the Camaro. Snow crowded the windshield. As quickly as the blades of his wipers could cast it aside, it swarmed out of the night again. Matt knew he was driving too fast. He had to get to Lucy.

  38

  Lucy lay on the landing at the bottom of the stairs. The massive shape of the wardrobe loomed over her. For the second time that night she thought how much it resembled a coffin.

  It was a fluke she hadn’t been crushed. The wardrobe had slammed into the wall at the bottom of the staircase with such force it had wedged itself between the wall and the bottom step. It hung a few inches above her.

  The sides of the wardrobe shifted and groaned, the last breaths of a dying animal. She could hear the wood splintering under its own weight.

  Behind Lucy’s head, the plaster in the wall crumbled and the huge mass of the closet jolted closer to her. She screamed, her cry echoing into the stale blackness that filled the wardrobe. In the fall, the door had swung wide. Now she was face to face with the darkness she’d tried to look into upstairs. It was stagnant, pitch, she could almost feel it pressing against her. Inside the wardrobe, something moved.

  Lucy caught her breath and held it. She tried to stifle her terrified whimpering, as if somehow her silence might hide her. Something she couldn’t see shifted inside the dark space, sliding, moving towards her.

  She panicked. She squirmed back, trying to pull away, to wriggle out from under the wardrobe. The instant she shifted, the pain exploded in her ankle. The remains of the smashed wardrobe door had pinned her leg to the ground. Each time she tried to pull away, the door bit deeper into her flesh. Each time she tried to pull away the pain was a white-hot shock that made her cry out.

  Something fell against the inside of the wardrobe. Right on the edge of the darkness now.

  Lucy grabbed a hold of the wardrobe door. She tried to shake it, to force it off her leg. Behind her she could hear the plaster in the wall cracking with each shake. At any moment the wardrobe might break free of the wall, all of its weight collapsing onto her. The door would rip through her ankle, splintered wood severing her foot before the weight of the wardrobe crushed her.

  Lucy stopped. Something was watching from the darkness suspended above her.

  Suddenly a bone, stripped of flesh, jagged and sharpened, tore out of the black. It slammed into the landing, driven into the boards by Lucy’s head. Lucy screamed. She ripped at her trapped leg. With every jerk the door knifed deeper into her ankle, splintered wood gouging into the flesh. The bone slithered back inside the wardrobe.

  Desperate to free herself, Lucy twisted her body, driving her shoulder into the landing, reaching across herself until she was able to grip the side of the wardrobe with both hands. She pulled with all her strength.

  The wardrobe door cracked loudly, its jagged edge peeling back the skin from her ankle. Her screams filled the hallway.

  The splintered wood jammed on Lucy’s ankle bone. She tried to twist her foot, to wriggle free. It was like sliding her ankle across a razor blade. The pain blurred the world around her. The stinking darkness above began to spill out of the wardrobe, as if it were reaching out to smother her. She was blacking out from the pain. If she didn’t get free soon, she’d pass out.

  Her fingers wer
e slippery with sweat and blood. She dug them into the edge of the wardrobe and hauled. The wardrobe groaned, the door grinding on her ankle bone. The harder she pulled, the tighter it gripped her.

  “Alex! Help me! Please!”

  With a sickening crack, bones snapping, Lucy tore her leg free. She dragged herself out from underneath the wardrobe and slid down the last steps onto the hallway floor. She lay on the cold floor, whimpering and broken, blood from her useless foot streaking a trail behind her. She tried to pull herself up, but the pain threw her screaming to her knees.

  Lucy heard the bone slam into the landing behind her. She twisted back to see a black shape spill from the wardrobe, a terrible mass of limbs birthed from its dark wooden womb.

  Lucy grabbed at the hallway floor, hand over hand she dragged herself away from the thing. She could hear it advancing, tumbling down the stairs and onto the floor behind her.

  She was moving too slow! She slapped her hands down to the boards and hauled herself as fast as she could towards the first door that came out of the night at her.

  She dragged herself through the living room door and slammed it shut.

  39

  Lucy sat against the living room door, bracing against it as best she could from her crumpled position on the floor. What was that thing? What was that thing? She’d only caught a glimpse of it—black limbs unfurling in the darkness, but she knew it had come for her. She knew she had to get out of the house. Now!

  The night had closed like a fist around her. It was thick with the sound of her blood rushing in her ears, with the blasting of her ragged breathing. How could she tell where it was if she couldn’t hear it over her own panic?