Lying in the darkness, letting the world turn about me on its black spindle, I began to have the queer sensation that I was not alone in the room. Bildad, of course was lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, but it was not his presence that disturbed me so, I could hear his usual panting, and that was a sound that I had grown to take some comfort in. No, this was a presence heretofore unfelt by me, a dark and foreboding specter that chilled my very blood, and caused me to cease stirring entirely, so as not to arouse its interest. Still, still, in my bed and only listening to the hushed silence of my chambers, I dared not draw a single breath. And then in that abysmal quiet, I heard a sound that made me long for the erstwhile silence.
It was a long, slow creek from somewhere in the black and I knew it, but prayed it was not, in the direction of my bureau. The long, slow creaking, like some serrated bow being drawn across my very nerves. I could hardly stand to hear it without crying out. That long slow creaking of my bureau door. Has ever a more frightful sound escaped the blackness of nightmare to be heard in the horrid world of day? I’ll not wish to know. But know I did, for as suddenly as the door ceased its dreadful squealing on its hinges, there came a most horrific sound indeed. It was the light tap, tapping of something tiny and hard. If I were pressed to further describe that horrid abomination of vibration, I would say it was the sound of rounded porcelain tapping against a hard wood. And what is more, and most disturbing was that it had the distinct cadence of footsteps. One two. One two. One two. The tapping steps, something tiny and grim walking out of my bureau that night.
I listened further, and still I heard, lying in my bed,listening and breathlessly so, the tiny footsteps move across the floor. And in that next instant I heard poor Bildad first growl, and I could vividly imagine his hackles raised, teeth bared, and then it was ever so quickly followed by a most painful yelp, that seemed to shatter all pretense of silence, and alarm me so greatly that threw the bed covers over my own frightened head, and held my eyes shut. Childish perhaps to react this way, but it was of great comfort to me. But this did nothing to dispel the final horrid sound to follow. Which was, the door to my bedroom being slowly pulled open, creaking ever so slowly as the bureau door, and this ghastly tintinnabulation was preceded by the tap-tapping of porcelain on hardwood, yet again, but growing fainter as if making its way down the hall, and finally, the stairs, from which I hear the faintest weight pressing down on each step, one by one, until I heard nothing at all. I stayed listening for what was to come next. I stood shivering from fright under my blanket, until the rays of light could be discerned through its material, and not a single sound was heard again that night.
The next morning I hastily cast aside the bedclothes under which I had spent the night cowering; the light of day allayed my fears and made them seem asinine in retrospect. With my nerves now as calm as the throbbing after-drinking discomfort would allow, I resigned to bathe and make myself presentable for the day and so entered my toilet room. I filled the tub, and soaking in the hot water seemed to do much to replenish what that the vapors of alcohol had consumed, and I took much pleasure lying under the warm and soapy waters. Upon exiting, and assaying my countenance in the damp surface of my bathroom mirror, I determined that my appearance was rather grim and gaunt, angular cheekbones, darkness under the eyes and an overall pallid complexion, but nothing a good shave and perhaps an after-breakfast nap could not remedy. And a curious thing occurred, for I could not find my shaving-razor, though I searched the entirety of the room from stem to stern, but did not reveal a thing. How very odd to ,lose such a thing, as I was in the extreme habit of replacing it in the medicine cabinet after each use, and was so diligent in this regard, that I personally could attest that it had not moved to any other position in many years, for I did not travel with it, it being somewhat sentimental to me, and decorative, that I always feared losing it. What an odd mystery, I thought, but did not bother my decidedly overtaxed mind that morning, and was quick to produce another.
After that, swaddled in the delicate comfort of my bathing robe, I returned to my quarters to dress, and suddenly halted. I eyed the bureau, and how one side of the door was hung just askew, and decided that since I was not to head out that day, I could forgive myself the sloth of lingering in my robe for just a while longer, at least til after breakfast, perhaps so fortified, I’d have the fortitude to dress myself.
And so to breakfast it was. Loyal old Bildad awaited me in the kitchen as was his morning custom, as he knew that it was more likely than not that he should be allowed to partake in some small portion of my breakfast. I prepared it, but as my mind was so thoroughly ravaged, and my nerves were still somewhat aggravated by the night’s previous and sinister going on, that Bildad had much more than his usual ration of my breakfast. He did not seem to mind that I was forgoing my nutrients and went at it with great vigor. I managed to swallow a few cups of coffee, and that lifted my spirit somewhat, and I thought it best to peruse the morning paper, as was my habit, but this morning I seemed to need the distraction.
I sat down, and had not got the periodical spread out in front of me on the table when I gasped in alarm at what was on the first page. It was a rather grim and bloody account, which is no uncommon affair for the papers these days, but what caught my eye was that it had occurred in my own neighborhood, and very close to my home. The paper recounted a rather queer incident of the previous night in which a small child was attacked, the result being that his face was hideously maimed, and queerer still this incident happened while the child was asleep in bed, and the intruder responsible took no money or any other possession after his crime, both entering and escaping through a door that remained locked the entire time. This was explained by the child, a young boy, who described his assailant as a man “no more than eight inches tall, with a clownishly deformed countenance, and wielding a straight razor.”
What utter rubbish they print these days. But I could not help but feel a cold shudder as the paper went on to describe the struggles of the child to articulate himself through the mass of bandages surrounding him, and going on to detail the injuries to the child's face in almost medical detail, of which I can still recall the asymmetrical and flat topography of the boy’s face now that he was without most of his nose. Grim and bloody affair indeed! Not worth recounting in my opinion.
I shook the paper before me in frustration, no longer able to glean much sense from any other articles. It was perhaps sensationalist to allow the child’s version of a miniature psychotic running about under beds at night, but still, something was responsible for assailing the child. Something still on the loose in my very neighborhood. I tried not to worry myself further. After all, I was no mere child and thought myself perfectly capable of fending off a man of eight, or even twelve inches should the situation arise.
And then, good Doctor, something transpired that forced all thought of the newspaper’s stories out of my mind. I felt a sudden chill in the air. It was no simply draft, mind you, but a spectral breeze, a rush of frigid air that rose the hairs on the back of my neck, like the onset of sour air from a newly opened tomb mingling at last with the open air of the living world. This horrid breeze, I could sense had an origin within the walls of my home, and I got up from the table, determined to find it, and expel whatever could be causing this foul and frigid odor. As I journey through the abode, a small amount of steps brought me to the realization that the stench emanated from behind a door to a room that had not been opened for many a year. For you see, this was the provisional sanitarium I had contrived in the years that my poor Abner and Batilda were stricken with their fever. Many a long night I sat helpless outside that door, listening to the mad shrieks and wails their suffering coerced. It was a dire room, that, one of misery and torment of such hellish formulation, that I can scarcely bear to recall it, though suffice to say, their agony was so profound, that, listening to it, I often found myself pleading with the divine to take them at last, so that their suffering may be ended, but it was
not to be, and their misery endured for many a long month.
And with what transpired through that door, I was heavily reluctant to open it once more, but the stench and coldness of this wind was so strong that I though that something frozen and diseased had somehow found its way into the room.
I pushed the door in slowly.
And what I found inside . . .to glimpse Hell in all its entirety could not have startled me more.
There, on the bed, the bed on which my beloved Batilda had wasted away, and beside her, my dear child, sat the hideous doll.
But its macabre, and mocking countenance of the fever I was so familiar with, was rendered even more hideous by the odium of spattered maroon all about it, a thickly dried substance that I could not but immediately recognize as blood. It seemed to stare back in some blank, but utterly satisfied reflection, so snug in its spatters of blood that no living or unpossesed souls could ever know such contentment. God, the horrible features of its face, and beside it, I had at last fund my razor, its blade caked most thickly with the same crimson gore as bespatted the doll's clothes. And more horrible, in its lap sat a pulply, mangled thing I could scarcely identify, save only the crudest of speculation, I knew only that it was flesh. Pallid and bloodied, and freshly severed. And human.
The thing had situated the small crimson nub of flesh in its lap, and I saw then that its little trousers had been pulled down, and the little nib of skin was arranged, quite purposefully, to resemble the male anatomy. What hideous design could concoct such a terrible mosaic, I do not know, nor did I wish to discover.
I hurried to the doll, and snatched only my razor, and the offensive flesh arranged at the dolly’s loin, and hurried to my quarters, remanding both gory objects to a drawer that sits beside my bed. I then went to the storied bureau, knowing it to be free of specters, and arranged a suit of clothing for the day. I dressed quickly, knowing I did not want to spend a moment longer inside, and took Bildad out with me, where we spent the day walking the city streets, and mostly lazed about the park, pondering many an absurd scheme to which I may never have to return to my home, for the dread that those walls contained summoned such a dire chill in me, that I was not sure I could ever go back.
From a park bench, I watched the sun at last set and turn the cityscape to a craggy silhouette, and all the oily smoke from factories become finally unnoticed in the blackness spread total over the sky. It was some short time later that my poetic reverie was disturbed by a uniformed officer, informing me that the park was closed at night. I argued with the man, thinking that because of my hasty dress and frazzled demeanor, that he mistook me for a vagrant, but like a vagrant, I was ultimately rousted from that spot, and forced to find another.
And do you think I went home, Doctor? If you do then you’re sorely mistaken, for a man with a penchant for reveling in miseries of the past, and a taste for strong spirits may not have any difficulty finding company after the daylight hours if he is so inclined. So Bildad and myself sought shelter in a public house which bore the somewhat baffling appellation “The Rusted Buckle” and by the comfort of its fires we both took in a slight meal and partook of several libations. I soon fell in with the company of a rather sordid and vulgar woman whom the regular patrons had Christened Jolly Molly- a cherubic lush with a powerful contralto voice, who solicited many patently illegal physical acts to be preformed on or by her, or that many patrons were invited to preform upon themselves, none of which I was entirely sure were suggested in jest. But I found her, as her name implied, jolly and she tried very hard to keep me in good spirits, and she even plied me with several grains of opium which she assured me were very strong and dissolved them in my drink, for which I thanked her.
In the course of keeping my spirits up, I swallowed several more droughts of liquor, and my mood suddenly soured, as strong drink often wills it. No more could I hear the raucous sublimations of the patrons, or the the vulgar jeers of Jolly Molly. I found nothing but shadows now absent of the gaslights and roaring fireplace, all was black, and deathly silent. All was eclipsed by my sudden mood, and there was not but darkness and despair, and the memory of my dearest child and his mother. I swallowed yet another drink, and turned to Jolly Molly, and in the briefest of instances saw her fleshy and ruddy countenance transform before me into the sweet visage of my dearest Batilda! I stood up very quickly, so quickly, in fact that I knocked over my stool, disturbing poor old Bildad, who slept beneath me. I stared at the countenance of Molly, who only looked back at me in bewilderment. And what occurred next I can only recall briefly, but I remember shaking her rather violently, and calling for my dear wife to again return as I knew she had been there before. But I, of course, did not see the form of my wife posses the countenance of that saucy souse. Instead Bildad and I were most forcefully extricated by a gang of overeager patrons.
I was on the streets once more, lucky not have been beaten to death, quite intoxicated now, and with nowhere left to go. The drink, and I daresay opium as well, must have fortified my nerve somewhat, because soon after I resolved to return homeward.
The walk, which was not short, I completed in swaying and staggering fashion, lurching and flailing about the cobbled and darkened streets as I made my way. And not long after, I was home, though I cannot recall arriving in any specific detail. And did I stand hesitant outside that familiar entrancement? Did I reach for the knob with quivering hand? Was I frozen to my steps, paralyzed by the horrors that awaited me within? I cannot say.
Though I mostly create the tale of my consequent path from the front door to my bedroom; I, having little memory of theses events, and what memory remains being darkly obfuscated by strong drink and Oriental potions, I must think that I traversed the steps carefully enough, and then commenced to wobbled to and fro about the corridor, careening and sliding my hand along the walls to keep me steady, the noble and ancient Bildad at my heels, until I found my quarters, and collapsed upon my bed. And as I previously admitted, much of this I create, though I know it to be true enough, based on my habits, this next bit bears no embellishment, for the severity of utter terror that was visited upon me will be forever imprinted upon my psyche, no matter how scarred and troubled it was previous.
As I lay in my bed, I once again heard the sound from the night before; which was a horrible tapping, tapping, and tapping as if pegs of crockery were being rapped against the hard varnished wood of the floors, as footsteps, from one end of the house to the other, and then down the stairs, and then out the door and gone. I, as the night previous, flung the bed covers over my head, and was I such a state of terror that if it were not for the abundance of intoxicants weighing so heavily upon my consciousness, I might have not slept at all.
Upon waking the next morning, I found myself in most abominable discomfort, as if the trauma of dual nights of overindulging were compounded, and visited upon me all at once. Shaking, and fragile, I tumbled out of my bed, and nearly crawled to my toilette wherein I moaned and retched, attempting to dispel whatever leftover spirits had spoiled inside me overnight. And feeling marginally better afterward, I managed to slip into a hot bath, and then later, shave. With my new razor, of course, the whole time using it, being reminded of that hideous thing that scrambled about my house in the night.
Even after my warm bath, I still shivered with cold chills. I managed to somehow convince myself that it was due to a frigid draft, and not, of course, the perpetual anxiety my new guest had put me under the strain of, and so I lighted a fire. I sat warming myself before it and my breakfast table, feeding Bildad scraps from my plate, all the while with the morning’s paper unread before me. I dared not read it. I knew that only horrors awaited me within its vellum. Ah, but how quickly a morbid curiosity can overcome the most staunch resolution. Which is to say, that I soon found myself perusing the headlines. It did not take long to find what I sought, and upon discovering it I must say that I was supremely horrified, but not in the least bit shocked.
The night previous, just as the
one before, found another child mutilated with a sharp cutting instrument, much in the manner of the first, although this child did not have any bizarre tales of minuscule men attacking her- mostly because she had been so thoroughly carved up, that her capacity for speech was no longer intact, a detail provided in much relish by the paper.
And just as I had finished the article, I felt an arctic chill in the air, compelling me to the room where my wife and child had given up their souls. Outside the door this time, something fundamental had changed. There was not the quivering fear and pitiful horror that crippled me so, as before. No. It was now replaced by a terrible fury, so sever that I would have taken up arms against any conceivable enemy, both natural and supernatural. I flung the door open, and there, sitting on the bed, as it had the previous day, its wide, elliptical grin so proud and mocking, was the gruesome doll. It’s tiny clothing had accumulate excess gore, I could see, and the entirety of the hideous thing was covered in dense clots of bloodstain, which it wore proudly. And beside it was my straight razor, also stained with untold measurements of blood. I could see that the doll’s trousers had been downed, and in its smooth sexless lap, again sat a pile of human viscera, this time which I could not begin to identify, it being so thoroughly ravaged, and only knew it to be flesh, horribly rent, and nothing more.
And I say, I was incensed, and still was upon viewing this abomination and its pride in wanton cruelty. I quickly snatched the doll up and carried it through the house. And I took it into the breakfast room, and I held it out over the fire saying, “To Hell with you, motley and accursed instrument of damnation. How great will be my pleasure to watch you burn!” And, as I should have done days ago, I flung the doll in its entirety into the flames. And though it never moved or struggled that I could notice, and I must say I watched it shrivel and burn to a cinder, it seemed to produce the most articulate and precise howl of evilness that I could ever expect to hear, and it’s echos, bloomed up my chimney, as thick and as blackly horrible as the smoke which bore it.
Stranger Realms Page 18