Haunting and Scares Collection

by Rosemary Cullen

  Bria though she heard Dan and Toby’s footsteps on the main stairway. The stairs up were bathed in sunlight that poured down from the windows on the floor above. The set next to it, down to the basement were dark. The darkness was deep and heavy. It was more than a lack of daylight, it was the absence of light, as if all the brightness of the world was being sucked down onto that dark basement.

  Bria turned again to the door and tried the next key and then the next. She threw the keys to the floor in frustration and grabbed hold of the large handle. She pulled and tugged and screamed and cried. The door held firm.

  Bria slumped down with her back against the door. Tears streamed down her face.

  “It’s the wrong damn key,” she wailed. She looked down at the key and in the morning sunlight streaming through the large keyhole she saw the writing in relief of the barrel of the largest key. It read, Basement.

  Bria looked at the other keys. She held them at an angle to the light coming through the keyhole. One read, Laboratory. Another read, basement exit.

  Bria looked again to the dark stairway down. If there was a basement exit she would use it.

  “How big can a stupid basement be?” she said, wiping the snot and tears from her face. She stood and walked bravely towards the stairway that led down into the basement.

  Chapter 12

  The stairs plunged down at a worrying angle. The daylight followed Bria right down the basement floor. A short corridor lay before her and a locked door. Bria felt around for the key hole and found it. She cut her finger on the rusty plate around the hole. Bria felt for a key and tried it. The lock wouldn’t turn. Bria tried another and then with the third attempt the key turned and the door swung open.

  The door opened up to an empty room and at the far end stood another double door. It was illuminated by a dim light that crept around the edges and between the doors. Bria saw the key hole by the dim light filtering in from the other side. Bria guessed the light must be coming from the exit, daylight streaming in through a door, maybe something like a hatch to a storm shelter. She stepped forward. The door had a sign on it. Laboratory. Bria selected the key and opened the door.

  Inside the lab was aglow with a strange green light. The walls were coated in a green slime that seemed to glow with its own strange light. It gave Bria enough light to see the laboratory.

  In the center of the Lab was a gurney with straps all along it to secure a patient to it. On one side of the lab was a sink with a dripping tap. Bria ran to it and turned it. Water spluttered out. She cupped a hand underneath it and held some of the water. She sniffed at it.

  She was thirsty and this water smelled clean. It looked clean. She wasn’t sure she should trust water that had been sitting in rusty old piped for god knows how long. She dropped the water to the sink and wiped her hand dry on her jeans.

  A howl came up behind her that seemed to end in a laugh. She spun around but there was nothing.

  “Just a damn wind howling through this cursed place,” she said. Across the other side of the room on a small shelf was what looked like an old film projector. It was like the kind her mother once had, the one she used to show Bria old black and white silent films of her family, grandparents and great grandparents at garden parties or lost and forgotten thanksgiving dinners.

  The switch was right where Bria remembered it to be. She flicked it on. Light burst out from the projector and dazzled Bria. The film wheels spun into action but there was no film on the machine so the projector gave only light and a whirring clicking sound that reminded Bria of bored days watching films of people she’d never known listening to her mother’s boring stories and watching her wringing a handkerchief and holding back the tears.

  The flickering light threw shadows up the walls. One stepped away from the wall, a dark shadow hanging in space. The shadow took a solid shape and pressed in closer to Bria.

  Bria stumbled and staggered backwards. She bumped into the gurney. The shadow lifted her and dropped her to the gurney. The straps wound themselves around her wrists and ankles. The pulled tight. Bria yelled out in pain and fear. The drop to the gurney knocked the wind out of her lungs. The shadow came closer, its dark featureless face coming close to Bria’s.

  A hole in the face of the shadow opened. It sucked in air and blew out a stench. Bria flinched and squirmed. She struggled to back away from the shadow. A whimper became a sob and a shout and a terrible troubled wailing and screaming.

  Words came out of the hole in the shadows face and straight to Bria’s ears.

  “You are a troubled little thing,” the shadow said. Afraid to be alone. Afraid to be in company. Fear is your constant companion. You fear confinement. You fear the wide open world. You live in fear.” The shadow came closer still. “I can feel the fear in you. I can feel it emanating from your quivering body.”

  Bria pulled at the straps holding her ankles and wrists. She twisted her body. She turned her head away from the dark shadow face and the stench.

  “Let me go.” Bria managed to find words, holding back the screaming for a moment so she could speak. “Let me go. Help! Help me!”

  “No one can help you.”

  “Please, let me go. I don’t want to stay here.”

  “I won’t keep you long,” the shadow said. “The fear is strong in you now. It will subside in time. We must use it now.”

  The walls began to close in. The ceiling began to creep closer. Closer.

  “Help.” Bria turned towards the open laboratory door and shouted again. “Dan. Please. Help me.”

  “Yes. You are desperate. Good. Feel the fear feed the desperation and the desperation feed the fear.”

  The shadow floated across the shrinking lab to a series of cupboards. Bria watched in fear as a door opened. Inside lay a small crate with crystals all standing upright. All were emitting a pale glow. All jiggling about, clinking and jangling against one another.

  One sat there unmoving. The shadow hand lifted the inert crystal. “The last crystal. I only need one more soul and I will have finished my work. You will fill the final crystal. Your soul will be scared out of your body and I will catch it and hold it and I will finally know what is beyond. I will know all.”

  Bria looked nervously left and then right as the walls pressed in. The green glow that coated the walls reached out from the shimmering green glow in long sticky fingers. They reached out for Bria’s face. She turned away. The ceiling came close. Bria pressed herself back into the gurney. She screamed at the ceiling and the green slime fingers that closed in.

  “Yes, the fear will overwhelm you. You will walk towards the light but I have prepared a home for your soul. Here in my hands is your soul’s final resting place. I will keep it here. You will be forever alone. These others will be with you, forever alone. And then I will have what I need to learn what we all need to know. What is there to come?”

  With terrifying suddenness all was black. Bria was held by ankles and wrists in darkness that surrounded her. A think darkness that surrounded her and coated her and held her.

  “You will be mine now, little girl.”

  Bria relaxed. She knew she was more than a girl. But in many ways she knew she was simply a girl. She was a frightened child. She was a confident adult. She was a lost little girl. She was mature enough to know how much she had learned about herself, and how much left there was to learn.

  “I know what is real,” she said.

  The blackness vanished and Bria was falling, falling backwards over the gurney as she stumbled backwards.

  The cold hard floor came flying up to meet the tumbling Bria. She brought her hands up the stop her fall but too late. She landed head first on the floor.

  The ringing in her ears and the sparkling lights that danced before her eyes subsided as the queasy feeling in her belly grew. She lay there, frightened and nauseas. Across the other side of the laboratory she saw the small cupboards that the doctor had taken the crystals from. They were closed. There was a small keyhole i
n the door. Bria felt in her pocket for the large bunch of keys. One key she had seen was small. It might be a fit. Bria crawled across the floor towards the cupboard.

  Bria selected the small key and slid it into the lock. It fitted easily as if it were a new and well-oiled lock. The lock turned with a gentle click. The door opened easily.

  Inside was a small crate containing crystals. They seemed to glow under the strange green light coming from the laboratory walls. Bria slid out the crate.

  The crystals began to vibrate and they tinkled lightly as the knocked against one and another. Bria noticed one did not glow. It did not vibrate. It sat.

  Bria took hold of one of the crystals with her finger and thumb and carefully lifted it upwards. Then a face appeared before hers, emerging from the green dark gloom of the lab. A face of an old woman. Distressed and confused. It looked at Bria with surprise and then clenched its eyes shut tight and screamed, its mouth open so wide it almost split the wrinkled face.

  Bria scurried back away from the face but it came forward. It came towards her, the rest of the apparition emerging from the gloom, shoulders and then the rest of its body dressed in a tattered hospital gown.

  Bria struck out at the face with her hand containing the crystal. She slashed and stabbed as if it were a knife. The face screamed and wailed and twisted this way and that. Bria screamed back at the face that sat just inches from hers. Bria scurried backwards away, hurrying, desperate to flee from the terrifying apparition. She came up against the wall of the lab until in desperation she flung the crystal she was holding at the face. The crystal sailed through the face and distorted it as if disturbing a cloud of smoke. The crystal flew against the far wall and there it smashed.

  The crystal flew apart with a flash of brilliant white light. It was stark and cold yet soft and gentle on the eye. The old woman’s face turned away from Bria and looked into that light and began to drift forward slowly.

  Bria watched as the old woman drifted forwards. A feeling of great contentment came over Bria. The apparition reached out to the light and moaned and sang with a joyous music that seemed impossible to create. And just as the apparition joined the light the doctor was standing over Bria, a large syringe in his hand.

  “What are you doing,” he yelled at Bria. The cold overwhelmed her and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. The large syringe tip dripped black ooze that fell between Bria’s legs.

  “You let her escape,” the doctor said. “I had her. I only needed one more now I need another. I will use you and then I will find my last.”

  The doctor brought the syringe forward and pressed it close to Bria’s neck.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Bria said to herself. “Don’t be afraid of the dark.”

  “Ahh, it is darkness that you most fear. I thought it was being alone that frightened you. I thought it was company that frightened you. Darkness it shall be.” And with that the green light vanished from the walls.

  Bria screamed into the darkness. Her knife was in her hand and she slashed out in wide arcs trying to ward off the doctor and his syringe of black ooze.

  Bria’s hand struck something and pain shot up her arm. The knife flew from her grip and scuttled across the floor. She listened for its position and then she heard it come up against the crate of crystals. She looked to the noise and saw a brief sparkle of light from all the crystals. She scurried over towards them.

  The clattering of the crate told Bria she had stumbled upon it. She grabbed a crystal and threw it hard across the lab. The crystal shattered in an explosion of brilliant light.

  The doctor advanced out of the dark corners of the lab and rushed in on Bria. He yelled and bellowed his displeasure at her.

  “You will fix this. I will torment you so you fill all my crystals. I will terrorise you to death and hold you there for a millennia if that’s what it will take to finish my work.”

  A young woman crawled along the floor and came alongside Bria. Her arms reached out along the floor, black needle marks ran up each arm and black line pulsed and oozed there. The young woman turned to Bria. Her mouth opened, flailing loose at the jaw. The young woman’s eyes turned black and then a light grew from deep within. She turned towards the bright light where the crystal had exploded and began to drag herself towards it.

  Bria grabbed the crate of crystals and began stuffing them into her pockets.

  The doctor was standing in the lab. He was stamping down on the crawling young woman but his feet were carrying on through her the crash in the cold floor. He roared with outrage at each wasted stamp. His turned to Bria with dark and murderous eyes.

  I will hold you in the dark. I will surround you with emptiness. It will crowd in on you and leave you lost in a void.”

  Bria felt each word hit her in the chest like a thumping fist, each word harder than the last. She scurried backwards towards the way out of the lab. She went past the doors as the young woman crawled into the light. The light shrank around her with a melodious sound that Bria would never be able to recreate nor ever be able to forget. As the light vanished Bria kicked the laboratory door shut.

  And Bria was left in darkness. There was only one way to go. Back the way she had come and up the stairs to the entrance hall.

  All around her Bria heard whispers. Cold and sharp whispers that froze and cut her. She scurried along the floor, feeling her way along the wall to the stairway she new to be up ahead.

  “Only I can release my patients.” Dixon’s face appeared in the darkness before Bria. The sudden appearance of the doctor’s manic features terrified Bria. She leapt away from the angry face floating before her in the darkness. A Crystal fell from her pocket and exploded in a soft explosion of brilliant white light. A young man who was practically a living skeleton walked out of the darkness towards the light.

  His thin arms and legs sticking out of his hospital gown like little more than sticks of pale white flesh. His gaunt face turned to Bria. His mouth in a thin face opened and a sorrowful wailing came. His eyes were large and round in his a skinny face. He turned those sad eyes to the light. Bria watched in disbelief as the young man’s feet lifted off the floor as the whole thin frame of the young man drifted towards the light that enveloped him. And as the final flash surrounded him Bria turned to look for the stairway up to the hall and there just before her was a small brown pipe. She grabbed the pipe off the floor.

  “Dan,” Bria shouted. “Help.”

  Dixon was all around Bria drifting in black wisps to stroke and grate on every part of her tired body.

  “Feeling lonely?” the words shook her head and the walls vibrated and pulsed with them as if they were a speaker that amplified the sound. And Dixon shouted and the walls shook even more. “All alone in the world. All alone in the dark. No one knows where you are. You are all mine now.”

  Bria closed her eyes to the darkness and the vibrating. She breathed deeply but it only made matters worse. Her head spun and her stomach turned. Using the wall to steady herself she climbed to her feet and staggered along towards the stairs.

  “Dan.” She called again. “Help me.”

  “No one wants to help you. You don’t even want to help yourself.”

  “Leave me alone,” Bria yelled into the dark.

  “I can’t do that. You’ve lost half my collection. I need you to help me start again. Maybe Dan can join you.”

  “No.” Bria ran forward into the darkness. She grabbed a crystal and threw it forward. It exploded in a sparkling shower of soft crystal shards. Bria saw the stairs. She ran towards them and climbed them leaving an angry doctor Dixon and a shuffling moaning sound as a freed soul entered the light.

  The top of the stairs and Bria found herself in the entrance hall. The door was wide open. The dark evening and lashing rain lay just a few feet and a few strides away.

  Doctor Dixon appeared next to the doorway. He stood and offered the exit to Bria. “Do you think you can leave? Why don’t you try? The whole world is just a few steps away
.”

  Bria readied herself for a dash to the open door. And as her muscles tensed ready for her to begin her run Dixon eased the door closed a fraction.

  “Go on,” he mocked Bria and closed the door another fraction. Then he whispered in his harsh grating tone that shook the floor and scraped the walls. “Run, Bria. Run.”

  Bria screamed with an overwhelming feeling of frustration. Dixon was toying with her. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crystal. She threw it across the entrance hall at Dixon. The crystal shattered in mid aim and flung shards of light out in all directions.

  A figure appeared behind Bria and she felt its breath on her neck. She screamed at the sudden feeling of the damp and cold breath. And then a wispy cloud in the shape of a fat woman moved around Bria and headed towards the light.

  Dixons face seemed to grow larger and angrier as he fixed his eyes on Bria. “You will take their place. You will be the one to replace them all. All their torment will be yours. You will experience the fear of them all.”

  Bria reached into her pocket for another crystal and was about to throw when she realized it was the pipe. She couldn’t leave Dan and Toby alone here with this malicious and hateful Doctor.

  Dixon opened the door a fraction and smiled with jagged black teeth. “Run. You want to leave.” His mouth smiled but the eyes were fierce and angry.

  Bria turned and ran back to the stairway along the hall and began running up, calling as she went.

  “Dan. Dan. Toby. Where are you?”

  Bria came out of the stair way on the floor where she’d found Dan asleep. She looked desperately this way and that for anything that she recognised. She looked along one corridor and felt it had a familiar look to it, but then every corridor in the place looked the same.

  Somewhere in the darkness she heard a bark. One sharp and cold bark.

  “Toby.” Bria shouted and ran along the corridor towards the noise.