Dark Places

by Shaun Allan

  My body, broken and bleeding, lay on the splintered remains of the hallway floorboards. My arms and legs were bents at odd angles, looking like a child’s action figure that had been tossed casually aside. My head was facing the wrong way. I laughed coarsely, thinking I finally had eyes in the back of my head. Three stakes, wooden shards from the flooring, pierced my torso at various places. Blood had soaked my shirt and was forming a puddle around me, outlining my figure like the chalk from a police film.

  I waited for the horror to strike. I waited for the realisation that I was dead to reduce me to a quivering mess. It didn’t. I waited for a dazzling white light to appear, a bright tunnel, perhaps, to stretch out to infinity. Neither materialised. Instead, I felt an odd detachment. I stared down at my ruined body, and felt completely indifferent, as if it really was a casually thrown children’s toy.

  It was light again when I next moved. Time, it seemed, had a somewhat different meaning to those dearly departed. Daylight streamed in around the loose frame of the front door, making the hallway seem almost welcoming. Yeah, I thought. Come in, make yourself at home. You don’t mind plummeting to your death do you? Good, good. Let me take your coat. Whether this was said mentally or out loud I didn’t know. Not that it mattered, really. I was dead. It was pretty much the same either way.

  Saying that felt weird: “I’m dead.” It was like saying “I’m Shaun.” I imagined meeting someone at a party or somewhere similar. “Hi, I’m a ghost,” I’d say. “Oh, hello,” they’d reply. “I’m a doctor.”

  I diverted my attention from the corpse in the cellar to the hole itself. It was large and fairly regular, almost artificially so. For a moment I wondered if it had been deliberately cut, a deadly reprisal for any trespassers, but I saw how the exposed ends of the floorboards were splintered and split. They were rotten and simply couldn’t take my weight. I smiled to myself, which was bizarre under the circumstances. I realised I was the other side of the pit from the door-less room, yet I had walked (eyes closed) straight across it to the stairs. Perhaps this ghost business had its uses. Well, I thought. I may as well have a little practise.

  I glanced, automatically, at my watch. I laughed, then, to see that I actually still had one. Not only that, but it still worked! The second hand was sweeping round as usual and the date had moved on to tomorrow (or rather today). I thought that was ever so slightly amazing. I looked down at my left wrist to see what state my ‘real’ watch was in but a bloody sleeve covered it. I checked my watch again. I wasn’t aware of watches having souls (or whatever my present form might be), but there it was. I pressed the illumination button and the dial sprang into luminescent blue ‘life’. I shook my head in wonder.

  Having a watch, real or otherwise, on my wrist did, sort of, indicate that an idea I had might be true. To try to prove it, I stepped backward. Looking down, I noticed that I couldn’t see my feet. Midway along my shins, my legs stopped and a step began. I could hear vague echoes of voices, a drastically diminished version of the onslaught from the wall. I lifted my foot and placed it on the step, pushing myself up so both feet were on the stairs. I touched my hand to the wall and felt the slightly rough contours. I could run my finger along a faint crack. Taking a deep breath, I pushed. My hand sank into the plaster to the wrist, and somewhere inside my head I heard my name whispered over and over. I could feel nothing in my hand to show it was encased in brick. Without pulling it back, I lowered my arm to my side. It slid through the wall without resistance.

  Stepping onto the floor, I sat at the edge of the hole, dangling my legs in the cellar. I could feel my heart thumping at I stood again and, without pausing, walked forwards. I could feel the floor beneath my feet. I could hear my shoes scraping on wood that wasn’t there – that was now impaling my battered carcass under me. I looked down and fancied I could even see the floorboards in their original state but insubstantial, almost a ghost of a ghost. I walked back to the stairs. It was then I realised I’d been holding my breath and let it out explosively.

  I could lift a carving knife and feel its weight. I could open a door or walk through it as if it wasn’t there. Walls could be as insubstantial as air or as solid as, well, a wall. I could, effectively, float above a hole and feel like I was standing on a floor. Ol’ Patrick Swayze shouldn’t have tried so hard in ‘Ghost’.

  I was dead. A phantom. Spectre, wraith, shade, whatever. I found I didn’t mind. It had been a painless death, for which I was grateful (and surprised – from the state I was in below, I’d have thought it should have been excruciating). I wasn’t sure what I should do now. Was this it for me? Was I destined to wander the Earth as a spirit? Could I think of any more melodramatic clichés? Perhaps this was death. Maybe, if I returned home, I’d meet other ghosts, maybe even everyone who had ever lived! I lived alone (apart from Tilly – who’d look after him?) and had no family to speak of so I wasn’t really going to be missed. I was getting bored with my job anyway, so that was no great loss.

  Thinking of work reminded me why I had originally come here. I’d forgone any thoughts of finding evidence of ownership, but figured I may as well look around again. I hadn’t been to the first floor yet. I wondered if there would be a bed in one of the rooms, doubting it if the rest of the house was anything to go by. I wasn’t tired, but if there was, I wondered if I could actually sleep. I climbed the stairs.

  At the top was a small square landing, more a longer top step than anything else. It was perhaps two foot square and simply formed a gap between the two rooms that occupied the top floor. Doors, typically worn and beaten, led to either side and I had a shiver of déjà vu as I mentally flipped a coin to choose a bedroom. Tails. I stepped right, not bothering to open the door. A chorus of voices rippled through me as my body and the wood mingled, and then I was through. Of course the floors and walls were bare, making the room almost identical to the two downstairs. A large window to the front allowed views of the fields I’d hiked through. I could just make out the road I’d left my car on far in the distance. A much smaller window was set in the sidewall – the “killer’s window” I’d seen from the outside. The rear wall was plain. I returned to the landing and entered the next room. Again my body echoed with sound. This second room was a mirror image of the first. The windows to the front and side were identical, and once more the rear wall was windowless.

  I looked out of the side window. I could see the curve of the inlet and the fog that embraced it so closely - the fog that was as still as if it were a solid mass, and hid so many horrors.

  I gasped. The wolves! I’d forgotten about the wolves! How did I forget them? How could I leave here with them prowling around outside?

  Oh, I thought, running my hand through my hair. I’m a ghost. Even if they could sense me in some innate animal fashion, or knew I was there, they couldn’t exactly tear me limb from limb – I didn’t have any now! I returned to the stairs, the voices seeming a touch more insistent as I passed through the door. I walked down the stairs and along the hallway, across the hole in the phantom floor as if it was still present and into the kitchen. I stood at the window and stared into the fog. It trembled and convulsed as if alive – I could almost hear it scraping across the glass as it moved.

  Suddenly, hovering at roughly head height, was a pair of red eyes. They looked like someone had cut the mist and blood was seeping out in a slash of colour. I stepped back involuntarily then remembered that whatever was out there couldn’t hurt me. I moved back and returned the gaze. My face was inches from the glass, my hands leaning on the edge of the sink. I was trying to see the body of the wolf, thinking it so strange that I could only see the eyes then, in true Cheshire Cat style, a maw opened beneath them. Teeth longer and sharper than any mere wolf’s leered at me and a snarl reverberated through the glass, making it shake in its frame. Then the mouth was gone and, a second later, the eyes disappeared too. A shape moved in the fog and then it resumed its incessant churning. I was shaking. Even with the knowledge that the creature (it
couldn’t be a wolf, but I didn’t know what it was) could do nothing to a ghost, I was unsettled. It had looked directly at me, and it had threatened me.

  I was breathing heavily. My heart was pounding and I was trembling. It took an effort to settle my nerves.

  This was no good, I scolded myself. I was dead! I couldn’t die twice! They could threaten me and even try to attack me, but I wasn’t really here! Their teeth would just bite through me. I had a mental image of a wolf-like beast uselessly snapping at my body while I looked on and laughed. I liked that picture. That would get them back for trying (and succeeding) to scare me! I walked to the back door and pulled it open, smiling.

  The smile froze on my lips as what seemed like hundreds of shapes lunged at the open doorway – at me. I fell backwards and kicked the door shut. It bounced open again, hitting one of the creatures.

  And I was face to terrible face with terror.

  The eyes seemed torn into a skull that looked like it may once have been human, but now was contorted out of shape – stretched to give it a snout. The ears were sharp and flat against the head and a lank mass of hair clung along the centre. Double rows of sharp incisors snapped as the maw opened and closed hungrily and fetid breath grazed my cheeks. A solid neck, traced wildly with muscle and vein, merged into a powerful body that hung low to the ground on all fours. I glanced down at the feet and saw long fingers with equally long talons. They looked more like hands than an animal’s paw! The beast was still outside, staring at me as if giving me time to consider my impending death, perhaps not realising, or caring, that I was already dead. I took my chance and leaped at the door, pushing it shut hard. Before it closed completely, the brute’s paw jabbed out, slashing at my arm.

  I screamed in agony as the nails sliced into my arm and the creature shrieked in mutual pain as its entire leg burst into flames. The door clicked shut and I lay clutching my savaged arm, sobbing. Outside, something dreadful howled and beat against the door. Somehow, as before, the door held.

  I crawled away from the exit and leaned against the sidewall. Gritting my teeth, I drew my hand away from my wound… to find there was nothing there. My shirtsleeve wasn’t ripped, my arm wasn’t a shredded mess. I could feel where there should have been gashes raked across, the skin hanging and the bone exposed. If I closed my eyes I could almost see it. But I was a ghost! Ghosts weren’t real – weren’t tangible. How could I feel pain? How could that creature have seen me, let alone attacked me?

  My arm burned white-hot fire. I moaned, feeling lost and pathetic. I didn’t understand any of this. Nothing. I just couldn’t understand!

  I think I may have passed out. It was dark when I next opened my eyes. The pain in my arm had receded somewhat and was now a sharp ache, much like the retching feeling that hung in my stomach like… a bad curry. That was how I felt – as if I’d eaten something that really didn’t agree with me. Not that I’d be eating anything anymore. I looked at my watch and was shocked to see that around a week had passed since my run in with whatever waited for me outside. It was well past midnight and the house was silent. I could hear no wind or creak of settling wood. I turned my head to the back door. All was quiet. Somehow, that wasn’t very comforting. I suddenly felt very uneasy – vulnerable - sitting there in the dark. I had been unconscious, or whatever dead-equivalent state compared, for six days. The thought of that and the realisation that only a rotten wooden door stood between a horde of monsters and me, made me feel sick. I needed to move. I could think of nowhere safer than a room with no doors and crawled (not trusting my legs to hold me) through the wall to the room beyond.

  The voices were virtually shouting my name as I passed through the wall. That, along with a myriad other sounds, created a cacophony that was just too much and I collapsed through it onto the floor on the other side. Again I may have, must have, passed out. It was light when I woke. I checked my watch. It was mid-morning and around three weeks had passed. Well, I thought, at least three weeks had passed. It could have been months for all I knew. My head ached, but my arm was more or less OK now, the throbbing was no little more than a dull twinge.

  I needed to get out of here. I had an almost irresistible urge to run straight out of the house. I could open doors and lift knives, so maybe I could even go as far as being able to drive my car, if it was still parked on the road. Of course, a mad sprint across the fields was not such a good idea with dozens of jaws snapping at my heels, but staying here was not an option. I had to get out.

  I pushed myself, with some effort, to my feet and looked out of the window. It was a bright day. The grass was long and flowing freely in a mild breeze. Wispy clouds skittered across an otherwise clear sky. I suddenly longed to feel the warmth of the sun on my face, but wasn’t sure if I’d be able to enjoy even that small luxury. I had to stop myself walking to the front door – I hardly needed to take that route now – and stepped to the window. I paused, wondering if I was being idiotic. I was safe in here, for now at least.

  That was what made up my mind. ‘For now.’ I didn’t know how long the door would hold them back. It, like the rest of the house, wasn’t strong. It was a wonder how it had withstood the battering for this long. I could wait where I was or leave now and be attacked either way. I may as well try my luck outside.

  I hesitated again. One thing played on my mind. Why had the creature’s leg caught fire after it had struck me? Was it some sort of immediate allergic reaction to me? I doubted that somehow. I didn’t have any skin or blood anymore, unless it didn’t particularly like ‘ectoplasm’, or whatever I might be made of now. Perhaps it had something to do with the cottage itself? But what? I shook my head. I didn’t know and there was no way I could find out. I wasn’t prepared to offer myself up as the main course to find out either. Staying where I was could only postpone the inevitable, I was sure.

  The urge to flee blindly had faded, but I knew I had to leave. The window would provide no resistance. I could simply walk forwards and be out of here. I may even be lucky and not attract the attention of those beasts.

  So I did.

  I stepped forward and rested my hand on the glass. It felt cold. Maybe I would feel the sun’s heat. I dropped my arm and walked… into the window! Not through it, into it! I tried again, and a third time. Nothing. It was like walking into a balloon – the glass would give slightly, bending outwards as I pushed, but something prevented me from passing through it. I struggled to keep calm. Perhaps there was something about glass that… No, that was ridiculous. Wood, glass, brick – I was a ghost. It was all the same, surely!

  The front door. That would work!

  I turned and ran towards the hallway. I could feel a sense of panic creeping at the back of my mind. I wanted to escape before it took hold and made me do something stupid. Escape. That was what I was trying to do. I suddenly felt a prisoner.

  I was moving through the wall. Abruptly I stopped, or rather was stopped. I couldn’t move. It was as if my body and the wall had become one – had merged as I stepped through. No, that was wrong. I wasn’t part of the wall. My body hadn’t solidified. I was being held. I could feel it, like a clamp around every part of me – I was a prisoner. But why? How?

  And where were the voices?

  As if on cue, they started. The raucous clamour that had accompanied each of my previous encounters was gone. It seemed the house had me now – I was a captive audience, and it didn’t need to shout.

  Whispers.

  I could hear my name over and over, almost a chant. A song, somehow familiar, became entwined with my name, giving the mantra a melody. The hallway (my head, like the rest of me, was half in the room and half in the hall) began to fade to be replaced by a soft blue river that flowed across my eyes. I felt relaxed and strangely calm.

  After a while the voice repeating my name became more insistent, emphasising the syllables. It grew louder, drowning out the song until it was almost shouting at me. The blue river became a violent torrent and I squeezed my eyes, futilely,
shut. Even with them closed, the deluge continued. The din increased until I couldn’t take anymore.

  “WHAT?” I shouted.

  The sound ceased. The river slowed, then stopped. I realised I was panting.

  “What?” I asked quietly.

  I heard my name.

  “Yes,” I said.

  The song began again and the waters of the river parted to show the house with the Moors behind. The house in this image was in much better condition than it now looked. The fence was straight and complete and the front door looked almost new. The picture blurred slightly then focussed to show the nearby village. It seemed to be a live picture, as I could see cars and people moving about. The view changed again and I saw another town, not one I recognised. This, too, appeared to be live as people milled about their daily lives, oblivious to the dead person watching them. The town became indistinct and then settled on the house once more.

  I frowned, not sure of what I was being shown.

  “And?” I asked the air.

  The river surged suddenly and the song became momentarily angry. Then it calmed and I got the sense of a deep breath being taken somewhere close by.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  The water became the house.

  I repeated my question. The image shifted and stilled. It was the house.

  “You are the house?” I didn’t understand. The house was talking to me? Had my recent demise sent me mad?