The Walls of Madness (A Horror Suspense Novella)

by Saunders, Craig

  He walked up the stairs on unsteady feet. His right foot pained him and his shoulder swung loose in the socket. With the hand that held the knife he steadied himself on the wall while he climbed.

  The broken bonds still lay on the bed. He ignored them, because he was free of those. They didn’t matter anymore, but the man was still pulling the strings.

  Maybe it was him, next door, working on Eileen.

  He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself while the old familiar terror of the night rose.

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again and looked at the wall.

  He looked at the hole, where they’d bitten through the plank he’d nailed down. Stared long and hard and thought about how to do it. Thought himself small.

  Knelt before the hole and pushed his head at it. Pushed a little harder.

  Something cracked and it felt to him like he’d just crushed the Hatheth that rode his mind. Then his head was in the wall. Just his head. His shoulders were stuck.

  He remembered reading about a cat, and how if a cat could get its head through a hole its body could follow. He didn’t know if it was true. Didn’t know if it worked for men and women but then he had to try, didn’t he?

  It was full dark in the wall and he couldn’t see anything at all. Suddenly he knew time was tight, because he could hear the scrabbling in the walls, and they were coming, coming for him.

  Maybe the low beasts weren’t the root of the problem, but they could still break through to the other side.

  He had to be quick, before they told Marlin where he was.

  It was pitch black in the wall and of course the low beasts were real. He could almost feel the Yik sucking at his maimed foot, lapping up his blood and sucking his marrow.

  A cry came from his lips, but in the dark it was swallowed whole.

  The Hatheth were only in his mind, but Marlin wasn’t. Marlin was real, and Marlin could do things to him that the Hatheth and Krama and Yik could not. Marlin could push him into the wall. Keep him there, in the other realm, the realm on the other side of walls, where the circle made of daisies, the fairy ring, couldn’t hold him.

  The hole squeezed down on Bill’s neck, but he pushed, his feet behind him ruffing the carpet in his bedroom, his foot crying out, his shoulder grating…but then his shoulders were through and he was in the wall, because once his shoulders pushed through the hole crumbled to nothing and he was out, into Eileen’s beautiful house.

  *

  XXIII.

  Bill stepped into Eileen’s house and touched her things, like he was keeping a grip on reality. It wasn’t an obsessive thing, but a comfort to touch something so solid, things with a history and weight and solidity.

  His mind hurt, and he knew that even though he’d left his demons with Dr. Richards he hadn’t had any medication for some time. Perhaps for days. He had no idea how long had passed, how many nightfalls had been and gone. He knew he’d be in trouble if he didn’t get his meds, and soon.

  So he touched things as he walked. Eileen’s bed, her wardrode, her walls. The wall he’d stepped through, crawled and pushed and pulled through, was solid again. Good solid brick. No holes in it. No holes at all.

  He’d never been in Eileen’s bedroom. Why would he have ever stepped in here? There was a valance over the bed, floral, and a painting of a flower on the wall behind him. The wardrobe was good solid wood. Maybe Georgian, Edwardian, something like that. The cottages had been built in 1906, and though Bill didn’t really know when Edwardian or Georgian was, he figured the wardrobe could well be as old as the house. Maybe even came with the first owner.

  A book was open on the bedside cabinet, pages down, so she knew which page to start at when she picked the book up again.

  All natural. All as it should be.

  He touched the nightstand, wardrobe, chest of drawers. Touched the walls, safe, here, touched the bed. Touched everything in the room.

  But no blood. Not a drop.

  And, something jarring, something he didn’t understand.

  There were speakers set into the corners of the ceiling. Like a surround sound system.

  Cold, now, chilly, with no shirt, he stepped onto the stairs, carefully, taking as much weight as he could on his left leg.

  *

  XXIV.

  Downstairs, cold, but not thinking of the cold, hungry, but not thinking of food.

  Bill hit the bottom floor and walked over cold tiles, somehow soothing on his maimed foot. Unconsciously he fingered the seven on his right arm, not thinking about how his foot hurt, or his shoulder grated every time he took a step and his arm swung loose in the socket.

  On the kitchen table was a laptop. An Apple, or Mac, or whatever they were called. It was plugged into a speaker.

  There was no screen saver. Just a moving box on the screen.

  He leaned closer. The box said ‘click me’, but when he tried to catch it with the mouse it moved away, so he never got any closer to clicking it.

  He hit return instead, and found it was a screensaver, after all, but a stupid joke one.

  There was a program open on the laptop. It had sound files on it. He clicked the first and Eileen’s scream filled the whole house, making him jump.

  Now goosebumps rode his back and his spine tingled. Fear, now. Fear, like when the low beasts came for him, because Marlin was fucking with him now. Marlin was angry, because he’d been through the wall, because there was no hole in the wall this side.

  But there were walls. He had to get out. Into the fields, where there were no walls.

  Had to get out.

  But what if Eileen’s house was walled in, too?

  Where was the wide man?

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, and looked down. He’d put the knife he’d brought with him on the kitchen table. He picked it up again, angry at himself for going unarmed, even if only for a minute.

  He hurried to Eileen’s front door and tried the handle.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to no one in particular, because the door opened.

  *

  XXV.

  He stepped through into another nightmare. Tears came running down his face because nothing was real and he was insane. Insane and broken and flat out fucked.

  He found himself not in Eileen’s front garden, with her hanging baskets, with the road out the front, or the fields, or anything like that.

  He was in the community hospital. Dr. Richards sat in front of him, her legs crossed.

  Her knees were level and her calves ran parallel to each other. She had on a red dress with white flowers, and a bow on her breast.

  Bill realised he could think breast, now. Because he wasn’t on his pills. Because he was straight and his mind was firing, firing on all cylinders like a fucking race car, and he could feel the fat of his own breasts, and his gut hanging over his trousers, but he could feel he was in a room with a beautiful woman, too.

  ‘Would you like to sit down, William?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, smiling. ‘Nice to see you. You look…beautiful,’ he said, feeling slightly foolish, but meaning it, nonetheless.

  ‘Thank you. What a nice thing to say. You can smoke if you want. If it would make you feel more comfortable.’

  ‘I didn’t bring my cigarettes,’ he said.

  ‘You can have one of mine,’ she said, and passed her his packets. They were menthol, but he didn’t mind. He was just happy to smoke. She leaned forward and lit his cigarette for him. He looked down her dress, at her cleavage. She caught him looking, but she smiled, and everything was alright.

  *

  Part Three

  We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity; and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

  H.P. Lovecraft

  The Call of Cthulhu

  XXVI.

  ‘Do you ever get angry?’ she said, as she lit her own cigarette.

  Bill thought about it and smoked for a while. There was nowhere
to tap his ash.

  ‘Eileen was being tortured, and I think…yes…I’m angry. I was angry, then, but I don’t think it was real. But then…’

  He waved his mutilated foot at her. ‘If it’s not real, what the fuck happened to my toes? I need something, Doctor, because I can’t see what’s really real and what’s pearly peels.’

  ‘Are you aware you’re talking in rhyme at this time?’ she asked.

  ‘Are you aware there’s a Krama licking your cunt?’

  ‘Hunting my cunt?’

  ‘No, licking. They lick.’

  ‘You’re being rude, William. You’re never rude. Not you. Never rude…nor crude.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not…’ he said.

  She switched her smile back on and stood, leaning over the chair, looking at him over her shoulder. She hitched up her skirt and showed him where the Krama was wriggling. But it wasn’t erotic. It was horrible and sickening.

  She was smiling still, though, so he played along, because he didn’t want her to stop smiling. Not in this nightmare that never ended.

  For he was sure it was still the same nightmare, and if the Krama were here, the other low beasts were, too, and they were his minions. His legion. His goblins, he thought, gobble-gobble, as he looked right in the Krama’s eye, giggled, then stopped. What if she really could read his mind?

  ‘We had this conversation before, and your mind is dredging it up. You remembered we talked about seven?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember…I remember you asking if I got angry…’

  He looked down at the knife clutched in his good fist. Shrugged. Apologetic.

  ‘Seven makes you angry, Bill. And yet…you have it carved into both arms…’

  ‘Seven’s the good number,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘And the bad, too. Remember? Remember?’

  And the thing of it was, he did. Seven to bed, Seven to rise, and an insane father, raising him like father like son but in that dark old house, so dark he couldn’t run, and the shadows grew long and roundabout his feet while all the while the Krama swirled and swarmed around his meat, licking and biting, the Yik inviting...

  So inviting.

  He remembered the fear. And yes. The anger. The anger when he’d finally been left alone, at his father, for going away, and at himself, too. Yes, he was angry at himself, and that was because he’d driven his father away. That was when he started cutting, but it was with the seven on his chest that he’d gone into hospital for the first time.

  *

  XXVII.

  At first the police brought him to a cell, after he’d tried to erase the evidence he’d written about Marlin on the school papers. But they looked into it, and didn’t have to look far. They found his writing on the walls in his rented apartment, took statements from his colleagues and his two remaining friends.

  Bill sat on an uncomfortable bench, the only furniture in the cell.

  He’d noted the pink door on the way through. He noted a coffee machine, and he had such a thirst on him but wanted to go to the toilet at the same time. He was terrified, not of the policemen, who were rough but really real. Solid and firm so he wasn’t afraid that they could break down the walls in his cell.

  The Marlin could, though.

  He wished he had a pen, or some chalk, or even a burnt match to write with. To stop him.

  But he couldn’t because the Marlin, the man, was already in there with him.

  He sat next to Bill on the bench.

  ‘You’ve been a bad boy, William. Bad. I had plans for you. I told you, didn’t I? I was your friend.’

  ‘We can still be friends,’ said Bill, and hated himself for the pleading in his voice, that sick child, wanting, needing love.

  Marlin shook that long head of his, perched atop his impossibly thin neck.

  ‘No, William. No longer. No more.’

  ‘Don’t…don’t…please…’

  He begged, because he knew. The Krama slurped and licked and covered with slime. The Yik, hideous, like millipedes, they crawled up his nose and his arse and into his cock, sometimes.

  But the Hatheth, they burrowed. Under his skin and into his brain.

  Marlin called them and they came. They scuttled up his arms and his legs and burrowed into him, through his clothes.

  Bill screamed and scratched until he bled.

  That was how the police found him. Screaming and covered in scratches and blood.

  The assessment didn’t last long, when the psychiatrist finally came. Shortly after, the hospital.

  *

  XXVIII.

  ‘Goodbye, Dr. Richards,’ said Bill, as she got on her knees and pulled her dress down, showing him her breasts. The Hatheth were in her and pushed against the skin of her breasts from the inside. Her skin rippled and he felt sick rather than excited.

  He pushed her away from him, because he was free of them for a time…his nightmares had jumped to her, and for a while he could think. He could remember. Remember the old hospital, where his new life began and the old Bill Hunter, the Bill Hunter that was, died and was reborn like a crippled phoenix from the ashes.

  The corridor was wide and long in the community hospital. The entrance and exit both was at the end. He knew he could not pass through the entrance and exit to the outside from the clinic. Dr. Richards barred his way, holding him back like she’d always done, with pills and with fucking talk therapy.

  Dr. Richard’s grasped out at him, clutching desperately and managing to dig her nails through his trousers right into his left nut. He pushed her again, hard enough that when she fell she yanked him and a few seconds later that sickly feeling in the pit of his stomach started, like he’d been kicked between the legs really hard.

  He couldn’t do anything about the pain. The pain was constant. His foot, his cuts, his scratches and breaks.

  He put one mangled foot in front of the other and set out along the wide path to freedom. Toward the other side of madness.

  *

  XXIX.

  Bill scratched at the Hatheth crawling under his skin and tried the number pad again. He was sure it would be some permutation of 7. He tried 1906, 2608, both of which added to 16, and 1 and 6 made seven. He tried this for three hours, and the staff in the mental hospital allowed him to do it, because there was no way he could ever get out. The combination was impossible to guess and it didn’t matter how long he tried at it if it kept him docile.

  A big fat bear of a man watched him try, then eventually grunted and walked away.

  A woman came up to him.

  ‘Have you got a cigarette, please?’ her voice almost begged, but he was engrossed in his task.

  She went away, and he only stopped when dinner came out, because he was ravenous all the time.

  A man slapped him in the face when he was eating, and he hit him back with the edge of the tray, cutting the man’s forehead.

  He was a broad man and could easily have broke Bill in two, could have crushed him between his arms if he wanted to.

  But the broad man just cried. While he cried Bill took the man’s food and ate that, too.

  The meal was shepherd’s pie, or cottage pie. Bill couldn’t taste the difference in the meat, but it tasted just fine with a little salt and pepper. Everything tasted fine with salt and pepper. He tried salt and pepper on the trifle that came for pudding, but he didn’t like it.

  He still ate it, though.

  The broad man bled and none of the staff had noticed. He tried to take Bill’s trifle and Bill hit him again, even though he didn’t like the trifle.

  Mark, one of the nurses, held Bill down, and Lynn, another, injected him with something that made him sleep, and he slept for a long time. Every night they gave him different pills. For the first month or so he watched television in the common room until early in the morning, but then his mind couldn’t take it anymore and he slept and ate and put some weight on that he’d lost during his breakdown.

  He realised he w
as getting fat, and took to walking the length of the hall. He walked the long walk along linoleum floors, some kind of heavy duty thing. He wore his own clothes and his own shoes. In that first month he caught a veruca in the shower and he walked with a slight limp because it was uncomfortable.

  Everyday Bill walked that long walk, past the crazies and nurses alike. People said hello to him and he said hello back. Sometimes people ignored him, or didn’t even realise he was there, and he didn’t say hello to them.

  He thought maybe people could read his mind, and tried to be polite to everyone. He didn’t hit anyone else with a tray.

  Bill tried the number on the key pad every day. It became an obsession. Trying permutations of seven in some kind of simplistic numerological battle with an inanimate keypad that didn’t give a shit how desperate Bill was to escape, escape from the Marlin.

  But the thing was, the Marlin didn’t come. He didn’t see the Yik or the Hatheth or the Krama. He saw doctors and took pills and watched soap operas on the television in the common room.

  He became friendly, after a fashion, with a young nurse named David. Or Richard. As he walked the halls in the community hospital and thought back to the mental hospital he couldn’t remember the young nurses name. But it didn’t matter.

  The young nurse’s face had been deformed. He had a great tumour, or growth, on his face. But he had good eyes. Like something beautiful on an elephant, a grotesquery with a sweet heart.

  The nurse and Bill spoke often in those early days. Bill wouldn’t speak of Marlin, because he wasn’t there and he couldn’t break into the hospital and it was refuge for him.

  They spoke long and Bill thought all the while of the code to the door to freedom.