by Shaun Allan
Still, apprehension wrapped its wiry arms about my chest and squeezed.
I moved forward.
I sensed rather than saw movement out of the corner of my eye and snapped my head round. I swore at myself when I saw it was simply the swirl of the mist as it rose up the hillside. Well, that ruined the image of a painting. Perhaps I should have thought it strange that only now had the mist decided to stir, but I didn’t. I had continued walking while my attention was on the swirling fog and, when I turned back, I realised I was now at the gap, having stepped over the decaying fence post without noticing.
The house was before me, in all of its unnatural glory. I was, frankly, disappointed. What faced me now was a shack compared to the epic manor my newly found imagination had created in my mind. I certainly couldn’t see Herman Munster answering this door! In fact, if the front door were opened, it would probably fall off its rusty old hinges! Yet still trepidation tapped me on the shoulder.
A dishevelled and scruffy looking attempt at a garden was surrounded by an equally bedraggled low wooden fence, the sort with four inch tapered posts rammed into the ground with thin wooden slats nailed against them. Most of the slats were broken and lay lazily in the long grass. Those that were still more or less in one piece seemed to hang onto the stakes precariously. The posts themselves were in much the same state of rot as the one I had carelessly stepped over. They were leaning unsteadily at all angles as if they simply couldn’t be bothered, or didn’t have the energy to stand upright. Some were missing, although I could only see the one at the cove entrance, giving the fence the look of some beggar’s mouth – gaps in teeth that were almost lost themselves. A gate, fashioned in much the same way as the fence, allowed entrance into the grounds. It creaked quietly as I opened it. A green scum coated my fingers where they had been in contact with the gate and I hastily wiped them in my handkerchief.
The garden reminded me of my own hair when I had just woken up. The term ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’ came to mind. Coarse grass, the same length as the field I had just traipsed through but with a more sickly appearance, covered the area from the fence to the house. A narrow paved path ran to the front door in much the same condition as everything else – it was cracked and uneven. I paused half way along it to take a proper look at the building. House was too grand a word for this abode. Cottage would just about come close, though it was barely beyond a hovel. It had two floors, with a number of small windows, the glass of which was amazingly still intact (if dirty). The roof was thatch and had seen better centuries, let alone days. It seemed to have been rendered with a dash of pebbles sometime in the distant past and patchy remnants still stuck to the walls. The door looked about ready to collapse. It was scratched and peeled and cracked, scarred by time and the elements. I could see the rust of the hinges from where I stood. The handle was missing and I could see no evidence of a lock.
I could also see no evidence of habitation. I walked up to one of the front windows and peered inside. The window was reasonably large with no curtains or blinds to obscure my view inside. The day, though cloudy, was still fairly bright, yet despite this the interior of the room was gloomy and dark. I shielded my eyes as I looked in but it had no effect. The room was a mass of shadow, almost as if it was hiding from me. I shook my head and moved to the other side of the door. This window was slightly smaller than the first, which I thought odd – I always figured houses with a door in the centre should be made symmetrical, but I always had to put a cup down at right angles to the surface, so I couldn’t really talk. Again, the contents of the room within were withheld from my view. I could vaguely make out shapes, and didn’t think there was any furniture to speak of, but I really couldn’t be sure.
I stepped away and walked around the side of the building. Only one small window adorned this wall, high up near the eves. Now that was where the killer would be hiding, twitching the nets. As with the other windows, there were no nets, but a shiver still raked down my spine. When I reached the back of the house I stopped. The mist from the Moors, thick and glutinous, rolled down right down to the back door, shrouding the entire rear of the building. I couldn’t see the door or any windows and could hardly make out the structure itself. Mist shouldn’t be like this, I thought. Mist is vaporous and insubstantial, not this viscous gloop. I didn’t like it, but had a few choice words with myself to calm my nerves. It was a house! Nothing more! It was a bit of fog, nothing more! Get a GRIP!
I turned abruptly and walked, as confidently as I could, back to the front. I needed to do something positive here. I needed to get a hold of myself and do my job. The house didn’t particularly look that scary. It was simply an old, haggard looking building and I needed to find out something about it. Anything.
I would have to go inside.
I looked at the front door. It was still cracked and peeling, but now it appeared to be sneering at me. “Come on,” it was laughing. “Enter if you dare.” Cue Vincent Price cackle. I laughed back at it. “I dare,” I said out loud. The words sounded flat and completely unconvincing, but they served to bolster me just a touch. I practically marched up to the mocking door and purposefully pushed it open. It creaked, naturally. The obligatory sigh whispered past me as the musty air from within met the fresh air from outside. Amazingly, I didn’t associate it with anything ghostly. I was quite proud of myself. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me (before it could mysteriously close by itself).
I was in a small hallway, with rickety stairs leading up to a short landing. It was gloomy, but at least the house seemed to have come out of hiding – I could see easily. The floor was bare, unvarnished boards and the walls were covered in a faded brown paper that was heavily water stained, the blemishes creating more of a pattern than had already existed. There was a closed door to my right, near the bottom of the stairs, which resembled the front door in condition, and another similar one at the far end of the hallway ahead of me. I knew there was a room to my left (the first one I’d peeked into), but no doorway allowed entry from here. There wasn’t much of a dank smell, which I would have expected, but there was a faintly fusty odour. The whole hall, and this probably went for the rest of the house, gave the impression of being rusty, almost like the hinges of the front door. It had a corroded feel to it as if, at any time, it might simply collapse in on itself. I was reminded of the final scenes of Poltergeist, where the house imploded in a supernatural ball of light.
I stepped forward. I thought I’d try the rear of the house from the inside, figuring there’d be a kitchen back there. The first place I ever looked for anything important, even if I was sure I hadn’t put it there, was the junk drawer in my kitchen. Eight times out of ten it would mysteriously find its way there. Perhaps any owner of this house had the same methods. It was somewhere to start anyway. It was clear, from the state of the hallway that no one lived here currently.
I was about halfway towards the door, my footsteps on the wood echoing lifelessly in the numb air, when I heard a loud crack. It sounded like a cross between a gunshot and something familiar that I couldn’t quite place. I looked around but could see nothing. Then I looked down at the floor. A line, roughly oval and with me in the centre, had appeared in the wooden floorboards as they suddenly splintered apart. I realised why the sound had been familiar. It was exactly the same as I had heard so many years earlier standing beneath the weeping willow as the bough had broken and I’d found myself in the midst of its tears.
Before I could move to the stairway or back out to the front door, the flooring gave way beneath me and I fell into the darkness below.
I blinked.
For a moment, I didn’t quite understand where I was. I should have been lying broken in the damp cellar of this rotting house, but I wasn’t. I was standing on the edge of the hole. Perhaps I’d managed to jump at the last moment. Survival instincts and reflexes can be uncommonly powerful when needed and it wasn’t, I supposed, beyond the realms of possibility that I had leaped out of harm�
��s way and not realised it. I could think of no other explanation and it took a few long minutes for my heart to calm and my breathing to steady. I noticed that it had turned colder in the hallway and I could see my breath as I exhaled. I rubbed my hands together briskly even though I didn’t really feel that cold. The floorboards were creaking quietly as I stood, slightly swaying, and I knew I needed to move away from the hole – I might not be so lucky if the same were to happen again. I hadn’t realised I suffered from any form of vertigo, but I couldn’t bring myself to look down into the opening. I didn’t feel safe.
I slowly moved along the corridor toward the door at the end, keeping my back against the wall. Maybe I should have gone back out of the front door, but insanity had dragged me thus far, so I figured I’d stay along for the ride. A draught must have been coming up from the cellar because, as I neared the door, I noticed I could no longer see my exhalations. I reached the door and opened it. There was a slight rasp as the hinges protested after so many years of disuse, but I no longer had any misgivings about my exploration. I’d have thought I’d be hastily making my getaway before the rest of the building crashed down about my ears, but my narrow escape seemed to have steadied my nerves. I could have been wandering around my own home.
I’d been right in my guess. A small kitchen welcomed me after the concerns of the hallway. It was long and not very wide and had a low window next to the back door. There were no appliances, such as a cooker or refrigerator, simply a large sink and a plain wooden table with a couple of plain wooden chairs pushed neatly under. A faded picture hung limply on one wall, perhaps a flower or something similar (I could make out some sort of stem with what looked like a head but that was all – maybe petals but I couldn’t be sure). The window looked, at first glance, to be whitewashed and obscured but a closer inspection showed that not to be the case. The fog that had prevented my investigating the back of the house (ok, so it was my own nerves, but I wasn’t going to start splitting hairs) hugged the window. There was no gap or interruption in the mist; it seemed to touch the window over its entire surface. It still appeared as unnaturally thick as before, and moved not in the swirl I’d have expected but with more of a kind of shiver as if it was trying to keep still but was being agitated by something I couldn’t see.
On the table was a rectangular wooden chopping board and a carving knife. I picked the knife up, testing its dull edge. It looked worn but as if it was blunt with time rather than use. I returned it to its place on the chopping board and looked around again.
The kitchen had three doors. One was the exit to the left of the window, which I contemplated trying next. There was the entrance to the hallway and a third on my right. I couldn’t understand this. It meant the room on the left didn’t actually have access into it, while the one on the right had two. I shook my head and decided to see what was so special about the right hand one that needed two ways in – or, I suddenly though, a way in and a way out… Of course a room with no doorway was even stranger, but I’d look into that later. I forgot about the window and its blanket of mist and entered the room.
It looked moderately large, but that was mostly due to the lack of furnishings. The floor was bare, lacking even the most threadbare of carpets. No pictures adorned the walls, or even wallpaper for that matter. The room was little more than a shell – empty and barren - but it had a pervading sensation of obscurity. It was like a shadow at the edge of my vision that I couldn’t quite focus on. It certainly wasn’t as dark as it had seemed from outside, but the impression of a lingering dusk hung on my eyes. I walked to the window and looked out. The wind had picked up again and a spattering of drizzle sprayed the glass. I could see the grass being whipped about and, uninviting as it looked, I had a sudden urge to be out there, walking back to my car and my home and my dog.
I turned back to the room. Its complete lack of décor gave it an eerie feeling, bleakness almost. I shivered and walked back to the kitchen, not wanting to chance the floor of the hallway again. As the first floor was out of bounds to me as well now, and the other room was sealed off for whatever reason, my only option appeared to be outside. The fog had not abated and still twitched curiously against the window. I might not be able to see where I was going, but I could feel my way round to the side of the house. If the land began to rise, I knew I’d have to turn around immediately and return to the house, or run a risk of ending up lost on the Moors. Echoes of The Hound Of The Baskervilles ran fleetingly through my mind and I paused with my hand on the door handle.
I shook my head and again had to laugh at myself. Apart from the near accident in the hallway, not a single thing had happened to me in this obviously deserted building. Perhaps outside was precisely where I needed to be. I pushed the handle down and pulled the door open.
A fetid stench of absolute decay assaulted me as tendrils of mist reached in like skeletal arms. I was very nearly sick and had to cover my nose and mouth with my hands to prevent me from retching. My eyes were streaming and I stared wildly as a feral growl, low and guttural, crawled out of the fog.
At first I could see nothing, then a dozen or more pairs of crimson eyes, like slashes in the mist, came rushing towards me. I fell back and kicked the door shut, then scrambled to my feet to make sure it was closed properly. I was knocked back as body after body hurled itself against the other side. I had no idea how such a dilapidated door could possibly hold such a force, but hold it did. I backed away slowly, my body shaking uncontrollably. My mind raced. What were they? I’d been walking out there for an age! I could have been attacked at any time! How could I get away from here without them coming after me? What were they???
I’d had the impression of some great lupine shape, but all that I could see in my mind were those brilliant red eyes saturating me with their stare. I was still backing away when, suddenly, I was surrounded by sound. It was so abrupt and… complete, I felt almost bathed in noise. Voices whispered my name. I heard cries and growls, soft singing and raucous laughter. It was all entwined in a constant stream that filled my head. I looked around me. And I screamed.
My body was half way through the wall. My left leg was already through, with my torso and head following. I staggered back, a terrible cascade of vibrant colour blinding me.
I fell to the floor and the clamour stopped. The reek from outside had failed to turn my stomach completely, but this latest episode finished the job. I’d had a simple breakfast, early this morning, of toast and black coffee. What was left of it was now pooling on the floor in front of me. It had been one simple clench of my stomach and the sensation was gone. I coughed twice and pushed myself weakly to my feet. I looked at the wall, noticing the house was once again silent. I shook my head.
It must have been an illusion of some kind.
Yeah, that was all. Trickery.
I went to the wall and, very tentatively, reached out to it. It felt solid – slightly rough with a dusty texture. I pushed at it and then slammed the palms of my hands against its hard surface. It wouldn’t give, yet there must be some way through! I rubbed my hands over the entire wall, searching for some dip or hidden catch that might indicate a concealed exit. There was none. Becoming more frantic, I continued my search across the rest of the room, turning my attention to the bare floor and cracked ceiling when the walls proved fruitless.
There was nothing. The only way out seemed to be the window. Unfortunately, it didn’t open and I had nothing to throw at it (except myself) to smash the glass. I was not quite at the stage where I could hurl myself through a window, but I knew I was getting close.
Besides, night was falling. I didn’t realise I had been in here that long, but it was definitely growing dark outside. In the deepening dusk, I sat in the middle of the floor and hung my head in my hands.
What were those creatures outside? Wolves? Did wolves have eyes like that? Was there any way possibly that I could outrun them all the way to my car?
I didn’t think so.
And how did I get in this
room? It looked, and felt, like I walked through the wall! How was that possible? What was all that noise? All that colour?
My head spun. I felt like a whirlpool was inside my mind sucking me down. I looked over at the window staring at my reflection. Whatever had happened when I’d entered this room must have affected my sight because I looked slightly blurred in the glass. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. I still appeared to be out of focus. I looked at the rest of the room. It was clear and well defined – almost overly so, as if the corners were sharper and the surfaces were somehow more intense.
But my reflection was indistinct. Fuzzy.
A thought tried to creep into the back of my mind, but I pushed it away without letting it form completely. It was quite ludicrous. But it wouldn’t settle. It was determined to be heard. I stared at the wall in front of me, separating this room and the hallway.
What if…?
I breathed deeply, telling myself that I was being immensely foolish, but I knew I was not. I stood up slowly and looked over to the wall I’d come through originally. There was no door. I could pretend that it was an illusion if I wanted. I knew it wasn’t. I could lie to myself and say I’d been tricked somehow. I knew I hadn’t.
I faced forward again and closed my eyes. I drew a deep breath once more. My nose whistled off-key as I let it out. Keeping my eyes shut tight, I lifted my arms into a typical ‘zombie’ pose and walked forward.
I hoped I would hit the wall. I wanted my hands to make contact on the bare plaster. If they had, I could possibly have made a break for it through the window, risking cuts and a mauling by those weird wolves to run back to my car. Tomorrow I would tell the Company that they could tear down this place and build their new development. If my hands touched the something solid, I’d even offer to drive the first bulldozer.
They didn’t. I tried to tell myself I just hadn’t reached it yet, but then I heard my name whispered. Before I knew it I was wrapped in sound again, a cacophony of noise that was simultaneously a jumble of sound and totally distinct strands. I opened my eyes to a vivid cascade of images that seemed to deafen me more than the noise itself. I staggered forward to the bottom step of the stairs and the assault ceased abruptly. I was leaning heavily on the banister, my breath heavy, when I saw the hole in the floor. I’d forgotten about that. I supposed I should look down into it, now my fears had been confirmed. I was shaking, though not as much as I would have thought I’d be. A section of flooring was still attached to the bottom of the stairs and I stepped carefully onto it. I looked down.