tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50171366157599558882024-03-14T11:50:11.392-07:00Michael WhitehouseLet Me Tell You a Story...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-72348976282991724842018-07-15T14:56:00.003-07:002018-07-15T14:56:48.791-07:00Something Borrowed | Short Horror Story by Michael Whitehouse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tbRl-Rx914I/W0vC8USJFBI/AAAAAAAAAh4/tPsOd5eqRNc4RgwX_Rg9D8X73c8AzVtVgCLcBGAs/s1600/Something%2BBorrowed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1078" data-original-width="1600" height="215" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tbRl-Rx914I/W0vC8USJFBI/AAAAAAAAAh4/tPsOd5eqRNc4RgwX_Rg9D8X73c8AzVtVgCLcBGAs/s320/Something%2BBorrowed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Bill was late for his wife’s birthday. But then, he was always late. Martha told him time and time again ‘plan ahead’, but no matter how much he prepared he was still late for everything. It was November, and the streets of Inverness were dusted with frost that morning. The usual North of Scotland winter threatened: cold winds, cold rain, and even colder snow. So far, the latter had missed the city, but the air had a bite to it, and so a blizzard in the coming weeks seemed inevitable.<br />
<br />
Walking along Bank Street, which flanked the River Ness, Bill moved steadily, the frozen air smoking from his mouth. At 79, he had slowed down in recent years, each winter the cold seeping further into his bones and the spaces between. He had lived in Inverness his entire life; a place he loved. But as he walked alongside the river in the centre of the city, he could not help but notice how much things had changed. Much of the 19th and early 20th century architecture had been joined by modern buildings, though the spire of Inverness Cathedral still dominated the cityscape as he passed it. As a child he was always impressed by it. The spire reached up to the sky, a large cross at its peak, and to five or six year old Bill back in the day, it was as though it touched heaven itself.<br />
<br />
He was still not used to calling Inverness a city. It was a town when he was growing up and through most of his adult life, but in the last couple of decades it had become home to nearly 50,000 people. Still a quiet place, but busier than before. Even silence was relative. He was happy with this change though, it meant more work for the young. He had had a difficult life struggling through poverty as a teenager, taking any job he could. By the time he reached his forties he was finally settled in a career, but it had been a rough route to take, and he hoped the future held a different kind of hope for those now living in the city. The young had enough to contend with in the world.<br />
<br />
Passing the cathedral, Bill continued along the riverside. He pulled his navy blue scarf, a gift from his sister before she passed, closer to his worn face, and as he did so he could feel the end of his nose going numb. Looking down at the flowers in his left hand and feeling the small wrapped present in his pocket, he was sure Martha would be happy with her gifts, even if he was a little late. They had been married sixty years, and even though Bill was aware that he sometimes pulled at his wife’s nerves with his ways, he knew she loved him. And he loved her. Even if they did not say it enough.<br />
<br />
The sky was grey, and, looking up at it for a moment, Bill wondered if the snow would be as bad as it had been back in ‘92. He wondered too long, for as he looked to the street ahead once more, two shapes moved quickly towards him. 13 months earlier Bill had had a cataract out in his left eye, but the right was now clouded, his vision dimming with the rest of his body. With his ailing vision, the two figures looked for all intents and purposes like a pair of blurred monks, hoods draped over their heads ominously walking by the riverside; as though the cathedral itself had sent two spectres from its past to meet with him.<br />
<br />
As they neared, they finally came into focus and Bill saw both young men grinning at him from beneath their hoods. Bill, always a friendly type, smiled back, but his heart began to race. There was something in their faces, something insincere. The two men parted to allow Bill enough space between them to continue down the street, but as he passed, one of the men stuck out his foot. Bill tripped forward losing his balance. Holding onto the flowers, his free hand reacted too slowly. The icy ground broke his fall, his face smashing against the frozen pavement, the cartilage in his nose cracking and both front teeth breaking in two. Blood trickled through his mouth, the pain from his teeth unbearable.<br />
<br />
Bill let out a groan, trying desperately to shout for help. But broken teeth and blood choked in his throat.<br />
<br />
‘Grab his wallet!’ one of the young men said to the other, looking out from his grey hood to see if anyone was coming.<br />
<br />
The other responded, grasping at Bill’s coat, pulling it apart, buttons torn asunder. ‘Where’s yer wallet!’ the man said. But when Bill was too dazed to answer, his attacker punched him in the stomach. Tears filled Bill’s eyes.<br />
<br />
‘Inside pocket, hurry!’ the grey hooded figure sneered.<br />
<br />
‘Got it!’<br />
<br />
‘No!’ Bill finally screamed, reaching out at the wallet in the man’s hand.<br />
<br />
In response, the grey hooded figure knelt down and punched him in the face. Bill lost consciousness, his grip loosening as he lay on the ground motionless.<br />
<br />
‘Wait, there’s something else,’ one said to the other. Quickly searching Bill’s silent body, they grabbed the small wrapped present in his other pocket and then ran off down the street, trampling on Bill’s flowers as they passed the cathedral, disappearing into the grey day ahead of them.<br />
<br />
<br />
They had robbed people before. Whenever money was an issue, Baz and Murty would head out and find an unsuspecting victim. The first time they had mugged someone was three years previous. Back then, they had two rules: Men only, and no one older than fifty. ‘We’re no’ animals’, as Murty put it. But those rules quickly fell by the wayside as each time got easier and easier. The people no longer resembled humans - they were just things with money. And as time went by, the two young muggers found fun in it. The buzz of taking and not being caught. But even by their standards, attacking a pensioner was a stretch. Murty felt guilty about it as they sat in their grubby little flat looking over their loot:<br />
<br />
‘You didnae need tae smack the old guy,’ he said as he sat on an old couch.<br />
<br />
‘And wit?’ replied Baz, sneering through a missing front tooth which had fallen out the year previous. ‘Should a hiv left you tae fight o’oer his wallet while someone called the polis?’<br />
<br />
Murty did not reply.<br />
<br />
‘Didnae think so. We needed tae get oot o’ there.’ Baz pawed over the wallet, looking through it as Murty unwrapped Bill’s present for Martha.<br />
<br />
‘Anythin’ good?’ asked Baz.<br />
<br />
Tearing the wrapping paper off, Murty revealed a small jewelry box. He opened it, and inside found a golden bracelet. Quickly, Murty’s guilt about the old man melted away at the sight of it, the elegant gold catching the light of the solitary bulb in their living room.<br />
<br />
‘This looks worth a bit,’ Murty said, fingering the jewelry in his grimy fingers. ‘Let’s take it doon tae Fran’s and see what we can git.’<br />
<br />
‘Don’t be daft!’ Baz leaned over and grabbed the bracelet from Murty’s grasp. ‘You want tae lead the polis here or wit?’<br />
<br />
‘How?’<br />
<br />
Baz was the smarter of the two, but only just, and even that wasn’t saying much. ‘Someb’dae would’ve phoned the polis by noo.’ He pointed to the bracelet. ‘And the first thing anybody watchin’ would’ve told them was that we took this.’<br />
<br />
‘And?’ The penny took an age to drop with Murty.<br />
<br />
‘You’re an idiot. If the old man was awright, he’d’ ‘ave told them whit this bracelet looked like. Aw the pawn shopes fae here tae Aberdeen ‘ill have been telt tae look oot fur it.’<br />
<br />
As the realisation that they couldn’t take the bracelet to Fran’s for an immediate payout dawned on Murty, he wore a disappointed look on his face. ‘So, that’s that then! We cannae dae anythin’ wae this!’<br />
<br />
Baz smiled. ‘I’ll stick it away somewhere safe. We’ll trade it in in a couple of months when naebody’s lookin’ fur it.’<br />
<br />
Murty’s disappointment gave way to a smile. ‘Nice wan. So, how much dae ye think it’s worth?’<br />
<br />
‘Nae idea. We’ll just wait and see.’<br />
<br />
‘And whit aboot the wallet?’<br />
<br />
Baz had already pocketed 50 pounds from old Bill’s wallet when Murty wasn’t looking. ‘I found a tenner, you can have it.’ Leaning over, he handed a ten pound note to Murty, just enough to keep him sweet.<br />
<br />
Murty’s face lit up. ‘Thanks, Baz!’<br />
<br />
‘Noo, I’ll put the bracelet and the wallet away with oor stash. Maybe ye can get us a take away wae that tenner, eh?’ Baz stood up and walked to his bedroom. There, he lifted up a floorboard - they had already sold the carpets to Fran - and placed the wallet and bracelet in with a few other things Baz and Murty had stolen over the last few weeks.<br />
<br />
Murty was easily led astray, and Baz always knew exactly how to get what he wanted out of him. If he had told Murty that there had been nothing in the wallet, Murty might have grown suspicious; but instead, Baz gave him just enough to make him think things were fair between them. Baz grinned smugly as he replaced the floorboard. He would take the bracelet to a friend the next morning and get a good amount for it. If Murty asked any questions about it in a month or two, Baz would make up some story about how he’d seen a picture of the bracelet in The Inverness Courier, and that he had to throw it away as it was too hot.<br />
<br />
That night, after Murty spent his ten pounds buying food, both men ate well and decided that they would try the East side of the city the next morning in search of their next victim. Murty then fell asleep on the couch in the living room, and Baz curled up in his bed like a cheshire cat.<br />
<br />
<br />
It was the scratching that woke him. Murty had been dozing on the couch for several hours, dreaming about what he would spend his money on in a few months when they had been able to trade in the bracelet. The quiet scratching invaded his dream for a moment, mixing with his aspirations and producing an unnerving vision - the bracelet sitting somewhere in darkness, covered in soil with rats gnawing at the metal, the wriggling mass of worm-like tails scratching anyone who came near.<br />
<br />
When he opened his eyes to the night, Murty was thankful that he was safe on the couch once more. Having been in and out of foster homes most of his life, the flat he rented with Baz was about the closest thing to a real home he had ever had.<br />
<br />
A chink of light snuck through the window of the living room from a streetlamp outside. It cut across a small coffee table, reflecting on empty takeaway boxes and then abruptly ending where darkness resumed its cloak.<br />
<br />
As the thought crossed Murty’s mind that the rear of the room seemed darker than usual, he became aware that the scratching was not part of his dream after all. It was very real. Looking around, he tried to pierce the shadows around him but to little avail. The thought that the scratching was the product of a rat rummaging through rubbish in the corner turned his stomach. He was always asking Baz to stop leaving food lying around, that it would attract pests. Now they were paying for it if there was an infestation of rats nearby.<br />
<br />
Pulling himself up out of the couch, Murty walked with trepidation across the floor, his foot touching something as he did. He recoiled for a moment, picturing a large rodent readying itself to gnaw at his foot, but he breathed more easily when he realised it was an old issue of Razzle he kept next to the couch for lonelier times.<br />
<br />
And yet the scratching was still real. Still there. Still clawing away at his nerves.<br />
<br />
He reached into the blackness and touched the open doorway leading into the hall. From there, he stretched his hand out to the right and flicked a light switch. But instead of light coming from the solitary bulb above, Murty was greeted with only darkness. The click felt empty, and it was then that Murty noticed how comfortless the flat felt at night in the dark.<br />
<br />
‘Baz hasnae put money in the meter again,’ he grumbled to himself, half hoping that Baz would hear him.<br />
<br />
Standing in the doorway, Murty strained to listen. He could now hear the scratching louder than before and was certain that it was not coming from the living room. More than that, it was most definitely coming from Baz’s bedroom. Probably Baz carvin’ his name in tae somethin’, he thought. Baz had a tendency to leave his name in places, whether it was carved into a school desk with a knife when they were children or it was spray painted on someone’s front door. Baz Woz Here was about as imaginative as the signature got.<br />
<br />
‘Baz, whit ye doin’?’ Murty said groggily.<br />
<br />
There was no reply.<br />
<br />
‘Baz! I’m tryin’ tae sleep, man!’<br />
<br />
But the scratching continued.<br />
<br />
It was rare for Murty to get really annoyed at Baz. He looked up to him in a way. Baz always had a plan, and that was something Murty never had. Any time they mugged someone, it was Baz who handled the goods and split up the money fairly. Or so Murty presumed. But, every now and then, Murty would get angry at Baz for being plain thoughtless. Causing unwanted noise at night by wrecking another part of their flat definitely qualified.<br />
<br />
With Baz refusing to answer, Murty had had enough. He walked into the hallway and as he stumbled through the darkness, the scratching grew louder. Reaching the closed door to Baz’s room, a thought crossed his mind. Sounds like somebody’s fingernails.<br />
<br />
At that thought, Murty paused. An uneasy feeling had washed over him, and he thought for a moment that he would be safer if he returned to the cosiness of the couch and waited until morning. Safer, now that was a strange thought to have. Why would I no’ be safe?<br />
<br />
‘Baz’, he said through the door, but the scratching only grew more fervent, and while a part of Murty urged him to leave it be, he gave into his annoyance despite the warning in his mind.<br />
<br />
With a push, the door opened slowly, creaking like an old boat on unsteady waters. Baz’s room was a mess, empty wrappers and rubbish across the floor. Through the window, the street lamp cast its hue as it had done in the living room, falling short before the end of the room. But as he stared at his dimly lit surroundings, Murty was unsure of what he was looking at. He could see Baz’s bed, the grey outline distinct, but he had to squint in the dark to take in the Baz’s crouched figure on the floor beside the bed.<br />
<br />
‘Baz?’ Murty said, his voice groggy. ‘Whit yae dain?’<br />
<br />
‘Beat it, Murty. I’m trying tae sleep,’ came a groan from the Bed as the scratching continued.<br />
<br />
At the sound of Baz’s voice, Murty knew the truth, someone else was in the room and they were crouching beside the bed.<br />
<br />
‘Baz,’ Murty whispered with a tremble.<br />
<br />
Baz sat up in his bed angrily. ‘Whit!?’<br />
<br />
Murty’s whisper shook with dread. He pointed. ‘There’s somebody sittin’ next tae ye.’<br />
<br />
‘Oh, away and…’ But Baz never finished that sentence. He turned his head slightly to the side and stared at the dimly lit crouched figure on the floor.<br />
<br />
The scratching sound became fevered once more, the crouched figure shuddering slightly as it finally heaved up a floorboard. Revealing Baz’s stash, the figure let out a low staggered groan, like a tree creaking in the wind.<br />
<br />
‘Whit is it!?’ Baz tried to scramble to his feet, but the figure reached out and grabbed him by the ear, yanking his face down to the pillow. The skin split where his ear joined his face, and blood trickled from the wound.<br />
<br />
The still crouching intruder let out another creaking groan.<br />
<br />
‘Murty! Help me!’ Baz had never sounded so vulnerable.<br />
<br />
But Murty had frozen. He watched in horror as the figure slowly raised up to its feet and leaned over Baz in the bed. A slither of light from the street outside caught something. A flash of discoloured cloth, like an old death shroud. Two thin hands wrapped across Baz’s face, its thumbs pushing into his eyes. He screamed, and Murty ran out of the room in abject terror. Seconds later, Baz’s screams ended.<br />
<br />
Now in the hall, Murty lurched towards the front door. Scrambling for the lock, he pulled the door open, the icy cold air from outside stinging his lungs. As he stepped over the threshold into the night, something pulled on the back of his neck. It was cold and sharp and dug deep into his skin as his body was yanked to the ground. Something inside of him shattered as his ribs broke on the foot of the door frame, piercing his lung. Looking up, Murty gasped for air as his lungs filled with blood, and the thing from Baz’s room leaned over him, its arms outstretched. It shuddered in the cold air from outside, and, as it did so, its discoloured shroud shuddered with it. As the figure leaned over him, Murty saw that the shroud had been torn, a piece missing, revealing a glimpse of a rotten leg, and dust powdering off of the skin.<br />
<br />
<br />
It was two weeks before old Bill fully regained consciousness in hospital. And when he did, he found himself the focus of interest for an aging police inspector by the name of Moffat, and a younger officer by the name of Wilson. When the doctors were satisfied that Bill could speak once the stitches were removed from his mouth, he was happy to answer any questions the police had.<br />
<br />
‘Mr Nairn,’ Inspector Moffat said, holding two photos in his hand. ‘Do either of these men look familiar to you?’<br />
<br />
Bill pulled himself up in his hospital bed, still in some discomfort from the attack, though the worst was now behind him. ‘Is that the two men who attacked me?’<br />
<br />
‘You tell us, Mr Nairn.’ Inspector Moffat was direct with his line of questioning, but not without sympathy.<br />
<br />
Bill peered at the photographs for a moment. ‘It could be, but it’s difficult to remember. They had hoods up and I didn’t get much of a chance to see their faces. It’s all a little fuzzy to me now, if I’m honest. All I remember is they kind of resembled monks from the old cathedral, but that’s my eyesight for you.’ Bill chuckled to himself.<br />
<br />
Inspector Moffat handed the photographs to officer Wilson.<br />
<br />
‘That’s okay, Mr Nairn,’ said Wilson with a softer approach. ‘The two gentlemen were found dead two weeks ago, the very night after your attack, and we were wondering if you could help us with our enquiries?’<br />
<br />
‘Oh dear, that’s terrible,’ said Bill. ‘Was it an accident?’<br />
<br />
‘Murder, Mr Nairn,’ said Inspector Moffat, pointedly.<br />
<br />
‘Both men were found in their flat,’ continued Wilson. ‘One in his bed, the other lying across the threshold of his front door. It’s a puzzle, Mr Nairn. They were almost unrecognisable from these pictures. I’ve never seen such brutal injuries.’<br />
<br />
‘That’s just awful. Young men, too.’ Bill let out a sigh, thinking to himself how much of a waste it all was.<br />
<br />
‘Yes, they were young,’ replied Inspector Moffat. ‘But we believe they were either the two men who attacked you or at least connected to the mugging in some way.’<br />
<br />
‘And why’s that?’ asked Bill.<br />
<br />
‘Because lying next to one of the bodies was your wallet, Mr Murty, and a gold bracelet which matches the description of the one you bought for your wife which was stolen from you.’<br />
<br />
‘Can I see it!’ Bill said, his eyes lighting up.<br />
<br />
‘Ofcourse.’ Inspector Moffat handed over a sealed transparent bag with the bracelet inside of it.<br />
<br />
‘No… Not that… My wallet!’<br />
<br />
Puzzled, Wilson pulled out another evidence bag. This one contained the wallet.<br />
<br />
‘Can I look inside?’ said Bill with enthusiasm. ‘I don’t want to tamper with your evidence.’<br />
<br />
Inspector Moffat smirked. ‘I don’t think we need to worry about that. We’ve looked over the wallet for prints.’<br />
<br />
‘Did you find any?’<br />
<br />
Wilson looked a little pale. ‘No prints, Mr Nairn. But it was covered in a powdered substance which our labs identified as... Dead skin. That’s one of the reasons this case is so unusual.’<br />
<br />
Bill opened the wallet frantically, and then smiled. ‘Thank God! I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost it.’ He pulled a small piece of old white cloth out of the wallet.<br />
<br />
‘I would have thought you would have been more concerned about the expensive bracelet, Mr Nairn,’ observed Wilson.<br />
<br />
Bill shook his head. ‘No, this piece of cloth is priceless.’<br />
<br />
‘What is it?’ asked Detective Moffat.<br />
<br />
‘The morning I was attacked,’ said Bill. ‘I was on the way to see my wife. She’s buried at Tomnahurich cemetery.’<br />
<br />
‘I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Nairn. But what does that piece of cloth have to do with your wife?’<br />
<br />
Bill smiled. ‘We buried Martha in her wedding dress. But before she died, she asked me to cut a piece of cloth from the dress and carry it around with me. That way, wherever my wallet went, she wouldn’t be far.’<br />
<div>
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The End</div>
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If you enjoyed this story or any of my other works, please consider <a href="https://www.paypal.me/mdwhitehouse" target="_blank">donating a small one-off amount via Paypal</a> or a rolling contribution via <a href="https://www.patreon.com/MichaelWhitehouse" target="_blank">Patreon</a>. It really helps, and all money raised is put towards creating new stories and horror content. </div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-2777013200539833872018-07-12T17:47:00.000-07:002018-07-15T17:52:07.429-07:00Permission to Narrate or Adapt My StoriesI get asked a lot about whether it's okay to narrate my stories, so much so in fact that I'm leaving this FAQ here to answer that question and a few others for anyone.<br />
<br />
1) Can I narrate, adapt or use one of your stories?<br />
<br />
I'm always flattered when someone wants to use one of my stories. But we need to have a quick chat via email just to make sure we're on the same page before I give you permission. My email address is michaelwhitehouse@ghastlytalespublishing.com<br />
<br />
2) Your stories are public domain, why do I even need your permission?<br />
<br />
None of my stories are in the public domain. You're legally required to have written confirmation from me to use my work, especially for a commercial project (even Youtube).<br />
<br />
3) But X website says your stories can be used without permission?<br />
<br />
Those websites, including the creepypasta wiki, are incorrect. In some cases, other people have posted my stories without permission, and in others, someone has edited the license agreement to make it appear as though my stories can be used without my permission.<br />
<br />
4) What do I need to do to get your permission to use your work?<br />
<br />
I negotiate on a case by case basis. It really depends on what the nature of your project is, and if it's commercial or not.<br />
<br />
5) Do I need to pay you to use your stories?<br />
<br />
Again, I negotiate on a case by case basis. However, if you are going to make any money from my work, then you will be required to pay me either a cut of revenue or a one-off fee.<br />
<br />
6) How much?<br />
<br />
It depends on the size of your project. A rule of thumb is 10% of the money you'll make from using my work, but if this doesn't suit, a one time fee is also acceptable.<br />
<br />
7) But what if I don't make any money?<br />
<br />
If it's a non-commercial project (no adverts or direct sales) then I'm open to allowing my work to be used for a nominal fee of $1. But again, it depends.<br />
<br />
8) But writers X, Y, and Z, let me use their stories for nothing!<br />
<br />
I understand your frustration, but by paying writers nothing when others are profiting from their works, we all share the blame for devaluing writing as an artform. Do you expect to work for free? Neither should a writer.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-68783264587681398902018-02-04T13:29:00.000-08:002018-02-04T13:40:12.567-08:00What Scares You Most? | Horror Detour #9<div style="text-align: center;">
I've just uploaded my latest Horror Detour vlog entry, complete with a new intro and outro. This time around, we're discussing real fears, the things which keep you up at night. The fears which haunt you in real life and won't let go.
I hope you enjoy it, and I'll be back with another post soon (and a new short story) for you ghastly ghouls out there to devour. </div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-61034120347182662082017-10-29T09:58:00.002-07:002017-10-29T09:59:57.884-07:00'Down Here' | A Horror Story by Michael Whitehouse<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-INrUoJyOFr4/WfYIOrN2i5I/AAAAAAAAAhE/DSdq_Mz9ZqMjwiiM3S3qfpHs2bStLFapgCLcBGAs/s1600/Down%2BHere2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Down Here" border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-INrUoJyOFr4/WfYIOrN2i5I/AAAAAAAAAhE/DSdq_Mz9ZqMjwiiM3S3qfpHs2bStLFapgCLcBGAs/s640/Down%2BHere2.jpg" title="Down Here" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
‘Down Here’. Those were the words my friend whispered to me that night, and though a year has passed, they still fester in my mind, shapeless and meandering like a blinding fog.<br />
<br />
When I entered his house the lights at the front were off. Outside, the weather was still; the air thick and muggy as if waiting for a breath. It seemed as though the summer had been building towards that evening. Stifled, sweat-drenched, sleepless nights one after the other - we just needed a little rain to clear the air. Forecasters warned us that we were in for a lot worse than that, but they had been wrong so often that many in our little suburb did not listen. I was one of them.<br />
<br />
I had received a phone call from Aalia an hour earlier. It had been a while since we had spoken, a couple of years in fact. When I answered the call there was a momentary silence before she spoke. Her words trembled with nervousness. I put this down to anxiety - she probably thought I would yell at her considering everything that had happened before - but now I know there was much more to it than that.<br />
<br />
After a brief exchange of reluctant pleasantries, we finally got down to the root of the phone call.<br />
<br />
'David,' her voice said quietly. 'Eric needs you.'<br />
<br />
Those were the last words I expected her to say. Two years previous I had cut both of them out of my life. Aalia and I had been in a relationship, albeit in its early stages. But I cared for her deeply. Eric was a close friend. I need not tell you of what went on between them, it was too painful then. It still is now.<br />
<br />
'Why would Eric need me?' I asked, feeling the old resentment, the festering betrayal still burning a poisoned hole somewhere in the back of my mind.<br />
<br />
A slight crackle of interference hummed over the line. 'He’s sick. We broke up a few weeks ago and he won’t get help. I’ve tried to get through to him. His parents too. But he won’t listen to any of us.'<br />
<br />
'And you think he’ll listen to me? What makes you think I’d want to help him anyway?'<br />
<br />
'Please, David. Put everything aside for a minute. If you can’t do it for Eric, do it for his parents.'<br />
<br />
Aalia was right. Eric’s parents had always been good to me when I was growing up. My own parents were pretty cold, but Eric’s had always welcomed me into their home with open arms like a surrogate son. At first, I wasn’t sure what help I could be, but from what Aalia told me, David had been suffering from delusions and refused to seek medical help.<br />
<br />
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. Eric had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia several years previous. It had been a tough time for everyone who knew him. After spending nearly a year in a psychiatric ward, he was released back into the community. Everyone rallied around him, and in time, with medication, therapy, and support, his symptoms became manageable. As long as he stayed away from booze and drugs, it looked like he’d be able to live a normal life. Things had obviously changed since then.<br />
<br />
Aalia sounded desperate, and when she finally told me that she had split up with Eric a few weeks earlier, that softened the blow to a degree. If Eric didn’t have her, then at least he could not hold that over me. I am ashamed to admit it, but where love is involved, pettiness seeps through the marrow. It gets into your bones.<br />
<br />
As it turned out, Aalia had tried to phone Eric earlier that night and check in on him. Although they were no longer an item, she still wanted to make sure that he was okay while his family was out of town. She had promised Eric’s parents that she would check in on him a couple of times while they were away on an important business trip. When she knocked on his front door, Eric refused to let her in, his voice sounding manic and confused.<br />
<br />
'I’m afraid he’s going to kill himself,' Aalia said, the pain in her voice evident. The fact that she still cared so much for him stuck in my throat like a jagged lump of ice. And yet, I was unable to resist the pain in her voice. She was asking me for help, and there was a satisfaction in that. Not something I am proud of, but there nonetheless. Bolstered by this, and giving into what little affection I still had for Eric - most of it from memories of us playing together as children - I did as Aalia asked and headed over to his parent’s house.<br />
<br />
The big storm weather forecasters had predicted still had not hit. We were warned that when it did we were likely to see 100mph winds, which would bring with it damaged roofs, falling trees, and power cuts. Driving for ten minutes to Eric’s house, I looked at the sky which was a deep purple-red, with night about to fall. Above, the clouds moved swiftly like sea foam on a torrent, while down at ground level things were deathly quiet.<br />
<br />
Pulling up outside of Eric’s family home, I got out of my car and was immediately struck by the smell of ozone in the air. I had always loved that smell and the charged feeling only present before a storm. But in the back of mind I knew I could not hang around for too long. Hopefully, I would get back to my own place before the storm hit.<br />
<br />
When I reached Eric’s front door, I expected to knock. But as I raised my hand, the door opened slowly. There, standing in the light of his hall, was my old friend. His black hair was longer than I remembered, reaching down to his jawline which was covered in stubble, and his eyes were red as if he had been up all night or crying, probably both. His unshaven face stared at me in disbelief for a moment, and before I could so much as muster a 'hello', Eric reached out and wrapped both arms around me. He held me close, and let out a short whimper as if overcome with emotion. The smell of tobacco and sweat from him was strong and sickening, and immediately those smells conjured up an image of Eric, awake for several nights, smoking, pacing, and trying to figure out some horrid delusion.<br />
<br />
‘It’s so good to see you, David,’ he said, letting me go and ushering me inside. ‘I’ve missed you.’<br />
<br />
Deep down inside I still sheltered resentment towards him for stealing Aalia from me, but seeing him in such a state of distress, I felt the older feelings of care and friendship returning to me. Like blood flowing to a limb long gone to sleep. A tingle, then a surge of emotion. I had forgotten just how much I had missed Eric too.<br />
<br />
His parent’s home was a good size, a four bedroom townhouse. Eric’s mother had made a tidy sum as a real estate agent, and so the street they lived on was one of the more affluent in the area. Since Eric’s breakdown, he’d been living with his family, but they were away on a business trip for a few days - I suppose they needed to get one with their lives as much as anyone - and that had left Eric to delve deeper into his delusions.<br />
<br />
I followed him down the hallway, and as I did so I noticed that the cellar door was open slightly, a solitary light bulb glowed at the foot of a flight of stairs burrowing under the house. As I peered down there, Eric turned to me and reacted quickly to my curiosity. He reached across and pushed the cellar door shut, and as he did so a draft caught the light bulb dangling below. It moved slowly like a pendulum, catching wooden beams and boxes with its light, spreading shadows momentarily before the door clicked shut.<br />
<br />
‘How’ve you been, Eric?’ I asked, walking through the doorway into the living room.<br />
<br />
Slumping into an armchair, he didn’t answer me at first. He reached up with his hand and rubbed his forehead, pushing his long hair against his eyes as if in pain.<br />
<br />
‘Aalia phoned me.’ That was enough to get his attention.<br />
<br />
He looked up at me as I sat across from him in a wicker chair, which I knew was once his grandmother’s. We stared at each other across the tiny space between us. Outside, the clouds swirled and closed in, visible through a large window which looked down on a sloping hill.<br />
<br />
‘You know we broke up, then?’ Eric didn’t take his eyes off of me for one second. As if he were searching for a tell. Perhaps he was frightened that I was now entangled with her.<br />
<br />
‘Yeah, I know,’ I answered, looking him straight in the eye.<br />
<br />
He scratched the stubble on his cheek. ‘Are you two a thing now?’<br />
<br />
I laughed. It was a ridiculous question. After everything, she and Eric had put me through. ‘No, we’re not. And we won’t ever be. I’m here because I don’t want your parents to come back from their trip to find you swinging from a rope.’<br />
<br />
There was a silence between us, Eric looked at me through thin strands of hair.<br />
<br />
‘Aalia thinks you’re suicidal. Are you?’ I took off my jacket, placing it next to me.<br />
<br />
‘I…’ The hesitation told all.<br />
<br />
‘Christ, Eric… What are you thinking?’ I was getting agitated. I had hoped that I would come and see him and find that Aalia’s claims were exaggerated. But his sullen expression, the fact he had not washed for days, and the look in his eyes - there was every chance I would have to phone an ambulance and let a psychiatric ward deal with him.<br />
<br />
‘You don’t understand, David. You can’t.’<br />
<br />
‘Try me,’ I moved to the edge of my seat, clasping my hands. ‘Eric, I’m here to help you. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.’<br />
<br />
Sighing, Eric rubbed his eyes as if to rid himself of tears or tiredness. Perhaps both. ‘Just promise me you’ll stay away from Aalia. I don’t think I could cope…’<br />
<br />
‘And I could!?’<br />
<br />
‘You don’t understand, David. I’m on the edge here. One push and I’m finished.’<br />
<br />
‘I’ve no interest in her. She left me for you, Eric. You’re best done with her. We both are. Now, are you going to tell me what’s been happening or what? Have you been taking your medication?’<br />
<br />
A look fluttered across Eric’s face; guilt, shame, helplessness - take your pick.<br />
<br />
‘There’s your answer then.’ I was relieved that there was a solution. ‘Where are they, you need to start taking them to help you balance out. You know that.’<br />
<br />
‘It’s not the medication, David.’ He now gazed across at me intently. ‘It’s… You won’t believe me.’<br />
<br />
Something then tapped against the window.<br />
<br />
Eric recoiled back in his chair, his eyes wide with fear. ‘What’s that!?’<br />
<br />
It was almost dark, and something outside was attracted to a lamp which sat next to the window. ‘It’s just a moth or something.’<br />
<br />
‘Is it?’ Eric asked.<br />
<br />
‘Well… Yes,’ I assured him, as the indistinct shape now moved off. ‘What else would it be?’<br />
<br />
'Oh God…' Eric started whimpering. Bringing his hands up to his mouth, he stared at the rich red carpet at his feet and shuddered as if a great anxiety were trying to escape from inside.<br />
<br />
Seeing Eric like that, I could not help but feel pity for him. The illness had robbed him of his mind in the past, and now it was threatening to do the same again. 'Eric, please, just tell me what’s upsetting you, maybe I can help.'<br />
<br />
At first, he seemed unresponsive, but after fetching him a glass of water, he finally gave in to my requests, his only stipulation that I had to be open-minded about what he had to tell me. Sitting forward on the edge of his chair, the night now in full effect as the wind began to howl outside, Eric told his tale:<br />
<br />
'Everything was fine up until a few weeks ago. Things seemed great with Aalia. My parents were really pleased because we were talking about getting a place together. I think mum and dad feel it’s time I try and get back out on my own two feet. With Aalia, anything seemed possible… I… I’m sorry, David. I know it’s not fair to go on about her to you… I just mean that I’ve been stable for a good while now and I was ready to move on with my life.<br />
<br />
'Every day I go for a long walk. It gets the endorphins going, helps my mood, the doctor says exercise is critical for mental health, and I’ve really felt that. It’s made a big difference. I go for a walk and listen to a podcast, Joe Rogan, usually, or Duncan Trussell. That walk is something I look forward to each and every day. But on that day, about three weeks ago… It was different. I’d just finished listening to something on my phone when I came to my usual spot. Just next to King’s Park train station. Now, normally, I walk back up past the primary school and up towards home, but… Something caught my attention.<br />
<br />
'I know it sounds weird, but I thought I could see smoke coming from the railway bridge. From the street on top, at least. I mean… You ever looked at a road on a hot day and you see that haze coming off of it? Well, it was like that, but there was a kind of black fuzziness to it, like some of it was transparent and the rest… Not. I thought something was burning, so I walked across King’s Park Avenue and ended up standing at one end of the bridge.<br />
<br />
'When I got closer, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was no traffic around at that time, but I swear to you, David. I saw this black haze in the middle of the road. There was no fire, it was just sitting there on top of the road surface about three feet high. Looking around I was alone with it on the bridge. I started to walk towards it, and as I did things got stranger. I could hear my footsteps, but they sounded sort of… Muddied. Deeper, and stifled somehow. No echo or nothing, like I’d walked into a small room. I looked up and the sun blinded me for a second. It was brighter than before, but I swear. It was like I was looking at everything through water, you know how it bends light?<br />
<br />
'Then, the black haze… Smoke… Whatever it was. It started moving off to the side. It mounted the pavement and then reached the wall above the train station. It started moving… I swear to God, David. It started moving like a person, or an animal or something, like it had hands. It climbed over the wall and disappeared over the edge of the bridge.'<br />
<br />
There was another silence, I guessed that Eric was waiting for me to react, but I didn’t know what to say except: 'Eric, you were hallucinating again. That’s all it was. You need to take your medication.'<br />
<br />
Eric looked at me with pleading eyes. 'No! It wasn’t a hallucination. I swear! It was real…'<br />
<br />
'And this is what’s been on your mind?'<br />
<br />
Eric calmed for the moment and sank back into his story. 'As soon as it disappeared under the bridge, everything went back to normal and I ran home in a panic. I thought just like you do now. I thought it was a hallucination. But, David, I was still taking my medication then.'<br />
<br />
That made things worse. If Eric’s medication was wearing off, or he was relapsing, there was no telling how bad he would get. I had seen him at his worst years before. It took him and his family years to get over it.<br />
<br />
'Eric…' I said, not sure what I was going to say next.<br />
<br />
'Let me finish… I need to get this off my chest. I wish I’d been able to leave what I saw at the back of my mind, but over the next couple of days I started to obsess about what I’d seen. I’m not doing a very good job of putting it into words, but I kept thinking about the haze coming off the ground and the black smoke inside. Worse, I couldn’t stop thinking about how it climbed over the wall like it had arms.'<br />
<br />
'You went back?' I asked, knowing the answer before I’d even asked the question.<br />
<br />
Something tapped against the window again. Eric looked at the sheet of glass, his face drained of colour. The outside world was now a deep, abyssal black, orange street lights from the city beyond the only reprieve. Sweat dripped from my friend’s forehead, and his mouth began to tremble.<br />
<br />
'Eric, look…' Standing up, I walked over to his side and pulled the tall lamp stand over to the glass. There, a large moth bumped against the glass, feverishly trying to reach the light. 'See, it’s just a moth. Nothing to worry about.'<br />
<br />
'Can you be sure?' said Eric, slumping back into his chair looking exhausted.<br />
<br />
Moving back to my chair, I sat down ready to continue the conversation. 'What happened when you went back to the bridge?'<br />
<br />
'I couldn’t help myself. I had to see if it had just been all in my head.'<br />
<br />
'And what did you see?'<br />
<br />
'Nothing… I saw nothing.'<br />
<br />
'Well, there you go, Eric. It was just a one-off incident. I’m sure once you take your…'<br />
<br />
Eric cut me off. 'I saw nothing, but I heard something.'<br />
<br />
The delusion had obviously taken full hold of my old friend. And I worried that it was becoming more likely, as the storm closed in, that I would have to phone an ambulance to have him committed or sectioned. 'What did you hear?' I said, hoping that by talking through it, I could persuade him out of his obsession.<br />
<br />
'I got to the bridge. It was raining, but not too heavy. There was nothing there, just a couple of parked cars and someone walking with an umbrella on the other side of the street. Part of me was delighted that I couldn’t see anything, but another part… It wanted to know more about that strange thing on the road. When I reached the section of wall where the thing had climbed over, I hesitated for a second. The wall was too high to peer straight over, but it was just above one of the arches where the train line runs through.<br />
<br />
'I stood there for a moment, waiting. Just as I’d convinced myself that it was all in my mind… I felt that same strange, oppressive atmosphere, like the sounds of the world had been deadened. Then, I heard a voice. It came from under the bridge and said in a horrid whisper: “Down here”. I was terrified. I can’t convey how sinister it was, but I felt a strange compulsion to do just as it said… Or asked… I’m not sure if it was a command or a request. “Down here”. What did it mean? Was it telling me there was something under the bridge which I had to see? Or was it whispering that phrase for some other purpose? I struggled against the urge to follow, knowing that to give in to a hallucination would be such a huge step back for me. It would jeopardise my state of mind, letting the illness back in. So, I came home, but with each step towards my mum and dad’s house, the thought that it wasn’t a hallucination tugged at me. That I’d witnessed, and heard, something incredible. Those thoughts wouldn’t leave me, and so by the next day, I knew that I’d have to return. I’d have to find out what it was without facing it. Without putting myself in danger. I hoped that I would find nothing, and so then I could be sure that it was all in my head.'<br />
<br />
Rain now joined the wind outside, tapping the glass furiously like a thousand unseen fingertips. 'Looks like that storm has arrived.' My heart sank a little. I had hoped to avoid driving home in it, especially given the weather warnings. I knew I would have to leave soon, but I was gripped by Eric’s account of his hallucination, and wanted to be sure that he would not do anything silly once I had left. Just a little longer, I thought.<br />
<br />
Eric looked out at the water dripping down the outside of the glass. 'You should go, David. Before this gets worse.'<br />
<br />
'It’s okay, Eric. Please, at least tell me the rest of your story and then we can chat about how to get you back on the right track.'<br />
<br />
'I went back to the bridge the following day. But this time, I took a camera with me. My DSLR. I wanted to see if I could capture an image of whatever that thing was. So, I waited until about 2PM, the place is always quiet at that time. No school kids running around on their lunch break, and no one else coming and going from their work. I got to the bridge, and…' He trailed off for a moment, turning his attention to the window, where the rain now lashed against the house outside. There was a look on his face, just a flicker as if he thought he saw something, before shaking his head slightly and whispering a few words to himself. I never heard what it was, but it had all the hallmarks of someone reassuring themselves that all was well with the world, even though trouble clearly brewed.<br />
<br />
Composing himself, he continued: 'At first, I stood where the thing had climbed over the wall. Just waiting to see if anything was said. But all I heard was a train moving underneath and stopping at the station before heading off to Glasgow Central. So, I walked down the station stairs and took a couple of shots of the stone arches from about half way down. I’d never been afraid of that place before. We used to play around there as kids, remember? I mean, King’s Park train station can be a little isolated, but apart from that. In fact, I’d always enjoyed getting the Newton train on my way home from town. But something was different about it. Looking at the stone arches, I could see where the trains passed under the bridge, but I realised then that that was not where the haze would have hidden. On the embankment, directly beneath that part of the wall, was another half arch which was covered by overgrown thorn bushes. There’s no train line through there.<br />
<br />
'You know what I’m talking about. We climbed down there a couple of times when we were kids, remember?'<br />
<br />
I laughed. That was something I had long forgotten about, but it was true, we had climbed down there once. I remembered being egged on to run across the train tracks. When we had gotten to the half arch, we found it filled mostly with soil, but there was a pretty big space inside. It was dark and spanned the width of the street above. Once inside, you could stand up. It felt like another world in some ways. When Eric and I had been kids we had built countless dens around King's Park, and found several places away from prying eyes. Those were secret places where we would visit, our crowd of friends feeling like a group of bandits in their hideouts. That thought was exciting. But we didn’t frequent the half arch under the bridge very often. It was too dark. Too cold and damp.<br />
<br />
I think we were about twelve at the time, and I remember we found some smudges in the soil which our friend Stewart swore were footprints. I guess we only went back once or twice after that, and when we found more markings in the ground, we decided we didn’t want to run into the owner down there in the dark, away from the world. That, and when the trains passed through the main archway, which we were about a foot of solid stone away from, the place vibrated like hell. The noise was deafening. I remember thinking I could feel my insides moving as the trains passed. It was not a pleasant sensation.<br />
<br />
'Did you see anything in the half arch?' I asked.<br />
<br />
'Not at first,' Eric scratched at the stubble under his chin. 'I took two pictures and checked them on my DSLR. I could only snap the opening of the half arch, as it’s further away on the other side of the train tracks. There was nothing unusual about the photos, so I turned to walk all the way onto the platform to see if I could get a better view. The train station was empty. Again, I took a few pictures on the edge of the platform, but all I got was the blackness of the opening under the bridge.<br />
<br />
'A train neared, and I heard the high pitched whine on the tracks before it reached me. When it stopped, a few people got off, not many. Then, the train continued on its way far down the line towards Glasgow Central. When I turned to look at the archway once more, I was struck by what I saw. A form of some kind, peeking out… glaring at me from the archway. A transparent haze with something black, like smoke or mould at its centre. Quickly, I raised my camera and took a picture as it moved back under the bridge. And then it was gone.'<br />
<br />
'Let me guess,' I said. 'When you looked at the picture, there was nothing there?'<br />
<br />
A wry smile crept across Eric’s face as the storm - wind, rain and all - was now in full effect outside. He stood up excitedly and rushed out of the room. Moments later, he returned, camera in hand. With a click, the camera powered on, and a dull glow emanated from the LCD screen, uplighting Eric’s face like a macabre gargoyle as he smiled down at his work.<br />
<br />
'Here,' Eric said. 'Take a look for yourself.'<br />
<br />
Handing me the camera, he sat back down in his chair, the excitement in his face now diminishing, replaced once more with worry.<br />
<br />
I looked down at the LCD screen. It was indeed a picture of the half archway under the station bridge. At first glance, I could see nothing, but as I zoomed in, sure enough there it was. A shape of some description cast in shadow. It was difficult to make out, in fact, it could have been almost anything. 'This is your ghost?'<br />
<br />
'Hah!' Eric proclaimed. 'A ghost? Who knows? Maybe that’s exactly what it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s something we’re not meant to see and for some reason, I was unlucky enough to cross paths with it on that day. Something which usually stays out of sight. Now it doesn’t want me to go on telling people about it.'<br />
<br />
'You’re putting far too much weight on a blurry image, Eric. It could be dirt on the lens, or an insect moving quickly in front of the camera.'<br />
<br />
'No!' Eric was getting angry. 'Look at it!' he stood up and practically leaped over to me. 'Look at the shadow cast across it. That’s from the bridge. Whatever it is, it was there, and it’s under the half archway.'<br />
<br />
The wind battered against the window, the glass reverberating, and with it a flash of lightning across the sky. Eric turned to it for a moment, then returned his gaze to mine, standing above me. 'You should go. You don’t believe me, and this storm is only going to get worse.'<br />
<br />
'It’s not that I don’t believe you saw something, Eric. But look at it objectively. Either you saw something otherworldly that can’t be explained, or you hallucinated, which has happened to you before when your medication needed tweaking. Which seems more likely?'<br />
<br />
'It’s nothing to do with my schizophrenia. It has everything to do with that thing under the bridge…' His voice trailed off for a moment as if a distant threat made itself known in his mind. 'David… It spoke to me. It said ‘down here’. It wants me to go somewhere, I can feel it.'<br />
<br />
'Have you been back to the bridge since you took the photo?'<br />
<br />
He shook his head. 'No… But I’ve no need to…'<br />
<br />
'What do you mean?' I asked, worried.<br />
<br />
'I don’t think I’ve ever been alone since the day I took its picture. Not truly.'<br />
<br />
'You mean you’ve seen it elsewhere?'<br />
<br />
'Not exactly,' a look of frustration swept across his face, he started to pace up and down, wringing his hands as he spoke. 'It hides... It hides in the dark. I don’t think it can last long in the light. I think the day I saw it in the sun, and the haze around it, I think it might have been burning.'<br />
<br />
'Burning? Come on, Eric, snap out of it!'<br />
<br />
'Let me prove it to you, David. Come with me to the bridge tomorrow once the storm has passed. If there’s nothing there then I’ll concede it’s in my mind. And if there is something, then maybe we’ll be the first to come face to face with… I don’t know what, exactly, but it could be monumental.'<br />
<br />
When someone is caught in such a delusion, trying to persuade them out of it can be a thankless task. I had to change my strategy. 'Okay, Eric, tomorrow we’ll go to the bridge. On one condition.'<br />
<br />
'Name it.'<br />
<br />
'You start taking your medication, right now.'<br />
<br />
Eric reluctantly agreed to my terms, and I watched as he took his medication pill by pill. I knew how the drugs worked, it would be some time, perhaps even weeks before they would start to affect his system and bring him back to earth. But the earlier he took them, the sooner he’d be back to his usual self.<br />
<br />
After that, he assured me that he would be okay. My promise of going to the bridge the next day seemed to have lessened his feverish behaviour. He actually thanked me, now he did not feel so alone. After that, he then walked me to the front door and we said our goodbyes. Tomorrow we would see what we would see. I hoped that it would be reason.<br />
<br />
<br />
Outside, the complexion of the night had changed markedly. The storm was now rampant, and so I hurried out onto the street and to my car, pulling my jacket around me. Thunder roared overhead up in the black clouds and the wind raged against it in return, nearly knocking me off my feet as I reached the door of my car. Now the rain came, and as I sat in the driver’s seat, even with my windscreen wipers on, I was staring through a sheet of water which warped the world and all of its shadows. What had been a simple drive earlier in the night, was now going to be fraught with danger.<br />
<br />
Above, the lightning sparked, and soon after the thunder clapped like the gods waging war in the sky. I was taken back to being a child on a caravan holiday. I remembered the thunder sounding like it was just above where I slept, roaring so loud that I imagined my bones shaking. It was the first time I realised that man is powerless when faced with the will of nature.<br />
<br />
'This is crazy,' I said to myself; commenting on both the ferocity of the storm and my foolish attempt to travel home during it. But I felt I had already done my bit, and did not want to spend more time with Eric than I had to; I wanted to help, but our friendship was far from mended, and the thought of spending the night in his company was something for which I was not ready.<br />
<br />
The car grumbled into life, and I waited for a moment to see if the rain would subside enough for me to see better. The windscreen wipers flashed back and forward over the glass in excited motion, barely providing a split second of good visibility through every movement. The lightning and thunder screeched once more. It felt closer that time, and as I looked around me, two trees further along the road were being shoved around, bending and leaning in the wind, so much so that they looked like they could give in at any moment.<br />
<br />
Another flash of lighting, this time forked, cutting across the sky like a bloodied scar, peeking through the dark clouds. Just as I concluded that the weather was not going to get any better - in fact, it looked like it was getting worse - I turned my attention to Eric’s house again.<br />
<br />
The lights were off.<br />
<br />
The storm must have caused a power cut, as the other houses in the street were also now bathed in darkness, and the streetlights were no longer working. 'He’s an adult,' I said to myself. 'He can take care of himself.'<br />
<br />
Then I thought about something he had said earlier in the evening. 'It hides… It hides in the dark.' I berated myself for even considering it… No… Whatever he saw that day under the bridge was a hallucination. But now stuck in the dark… I had an image of Eric in my mind, besieged by his own illness, seeing and hearing things that were not there.<br />
<br />
Frustrated with myself that I could not just drive away, I opened my car door to the elements and headed back towards Eric’s house. The street was in complete darkness, the only light source the increasing cracks of lightning, which drew hideous caricatures of the world around me in shadow. Taking out my mobile phone, I turned the flashlight function on and used the underpowered narrow beam to light my footsteps as best I could.<br />
<br />
A gust of wind blew towards me, and in it I found it difficult to breathe. I walked at an angle against it, passing a tree which groaned under the weight of the wind, which itself swirled around everything, consuming it in an elemental roar. Quickly, I moved down the garden path, and finally, I reached Eric’s front door. I was expecting to have to knock, go in and make sure he was okay, perhaps even reluctantly spend the night until the power came back on. But when I reached the front door, it was lying open.<br />
<br />
The wind now carried the rain into the open doorway. All I could see was the blackness therein, and presented with it, I felt nervous about stepping inside. 'Eric! It’s David, are you there?' I shouted, trying my best to be heard over the storm. But nothing was said in return.<br />
<br />
Moving inside, I was cautious of where I was stepping in the dark. The house was a mirror image of the world outside. The ferocity inverted. The space was still and lifeless. 'Eric!' I shouted again. A door creaked along the hallway from me, and so, phone light in hand, I made my way towards the living room where we had spoken before.<br />
<br />
The two chairs in which we had sat now lay empty. The glass of water which Eric had drunk from when taking his pills lay on its side, the remnants of the water dripping onto the floor. I was about to shout Eric’s name for a third time, but something stayed my tongue. A feeling. That someone was watching me.<br />
<br />
Footsteps now quickly sounded behind me. They rushed down the hallway and then were accompanied by the sound of a door opening up. Turning to the hallway, I could not see anyone there, but now something had changed. A door halfway along the wall now lay open.<br />
<br />
'Eric,' I whispered under my breath, almost scared by the idea of what might answer. I cannot explain the irrational thoughts which were running through my mind, clambering for images and forms while surrounded by the nothingness of night, mentally filling the void with something tangible.<br />
<br />
Walking towards the door slowly, I peered around it and saw that it led down into the cellar. A steep set of wooden stairs delved deep below the house. 'Eric… Are you there?' I finally said, my voice louder this time. I thought I heard an almost inaudible creak below, but it was quickly drowned out by another crash of thunder. The wind howled like a banshee, finding cracks in the building through which to seep, and I was gripped by uncertainty.<br />
<br />
I could have run. Or at the very least, stayed upstairs. Perhaps I should have, but the gnawing image of Eric cowering, terrified below, was enough to shake me into action. I resented him for what he had done to me, for taking Aalia from me, but I knew how debilitating his illness was, and I could not in good conscience leave him to it, or it to him.<br />
<br />
Warily, I descended the stairs, knocking the dust from them as I did so. They were evidently rarely trodden, but there was no doubt that Eric had used them recently, perhaps just moments before, as I could see large smudges in patches of dust which looked like footprints on each step. My own footsteps sounded like dim remnants of the thunder outside, with a dark storm of the unknown waiting for me at the foot of the stairs.<br />
<br />
Lightning clattered near the house again, the momentary spark shining through a small vent near the roof of the cellar. The light from my mobile phone was not enough to illuminate the entirety of the room, but from what I could see, I was amazed at how empty it was. The floor was like powdered concrete, the occasional cardboard box sitting upon it, filled with childhood memories and toys. A thick layer of dust covered the little that was there. It was clear then that the cellar had never been converted into a habitable part of the house, there should have been no one down there, good or bad, but the sight of a darkened doorway in front of me filled me with dread no less. Ducking underneath, I found myself in another empty room, the walls made from old reddened brick, but the colour was dampened by the dust. The cellar was a copy of the house above. Like a dark twin. The same layout. The same rooms. The same hallway at its centre. But while the house above was filled with the things of the living, the cellar was filled with their absence.<br />
<br />
'Eric…' I whispered now.<br />
<br />
I am not sure why - I have never been one to be frightened of the dark, not since I was a child - but down there in the darkness, while lightning crackled high up in the atmosphere, I felt justified in my caution.<br />
<br />
The sound of a foot scuffing the powdered concrete floor sent a cold shiver through my veins. Apprehension took hold of me, and a deep desire to go back upstairs threatened to overthrow any notion of finding or helping Eric. A self-preservation which, like the dust hanging in the air, blanketed my emotions. My heart raced. My breathing rasped as I inhaled the dust. Moving in a panic, I headed back to the stairs.<br />
<br />
At least, that was my intention. For a moment, caught in the grip of anxiety, I became disorientated. Turning, I could see two doorways, and I was unsure which one I had come through. Staring at them anxiously, I tried to set my thinking on a more sensible course. All I had to do was walk through one of the doorways, if I then found myself in an unfamiliar part of the cellar, I would turn back and go through the other door.<br />
<br />
Then, it felt as though the air became charged. Like the tense warning before a lightning strike. My skin turned to goose bumps, and, reaching up, I could feel the hair on the back of my head standing on end from the static electricity. My attention momentarily distracted from the two doorways, it was quickly brought back into focus, when, from one of the rooms ahead, I heard it. A voice. In a barely audible whisper, where I could hear more breath and saliva in the mouth than speech, someone spoke two words. But they were so indistinct, that I could not be sure what they were. Nor even if they had just been a figment of my imagination - a product of my strange surroundings.<br />
<br />
Whether it was because of Eric’s story or not, I cannot say, but the only phrase I could fit to those two whispered sounds was ‘down here’.<br />
<br />
A cold sweat clung to my body, and a nervousness gripped me as my hand began to shake while holding the phone. The light from it vibrated in return, and I stood for what felt a lifetime staring at the two doorways. Which one contained the voice? Which one contained my path to freedom. Excitement then grew as I remembered the powdered concrete at my feet. Looking down, the blue light from my phone dimly lit smudged markings on the floor which I was certain were my own. They led back through the doorway on the right.<br />
<br />
Feeling courage return, I stepped through, and in a moment of utter shock, I realised that the markings were not made by me. They were made by someone else. I found myself in an unfamiliar part of the cellar and turned immediately to leave. When I did so… It all happened so fast. My light caught something in front of me, a person or form, it moved past me and headed through another doorway. Then, I heard the scream. Eric’s scream.<br />
<br />
‘It’s here!’ he shrieked. Manic, clearly in the throes of his delusion.<br />
<br />
I followed quickly and then heard panicked footsteps accompany the cries, which now turned to a plea. A direct plea to me. ‘Follow it, David! It’s here!’ The footsteps now ran up the staircase, and as they did I noticed that the charged feeling in the atmosphere had dissipated. The lightning must have struck elsewhere. The feeling of dread lifted and was then replaced with a different kind of anxiety. Up above, I heard Eric run down his hallway and out into the night, screaming ‘I see it! I see it!’<br />
<br />
Clambering through the cellar, I finally found the staircase, and, relieved that I was leaving that dark place behind, rushed up them in pursuit of my friend. I gave chase and headed out into the night. The rain was coming down in sheets, and above the lightning and thunder coerced each other into terrifying displays of combined might. But there was no sign of Eric in the garden.<br />
<br />
The water streamed down my face, making it difficult to see as the wind battered me from left and right, a swirling invisible force intent on leaving no stone unturned. Rushing out to the street, I looked again. And at the top of the hill, some way away, I saw him. Eric was running through the night. He had too much of a head start, and in any case was faster. I would never catch him on my feet.<br />
<br />
A gust of wind and rain buffeted me around before I finally reached my car and got inside. Turning the ignition, the engine burst into life, growling as if threatened by the storm. Putting my foot down, I drove up the street in his direction, it would only take me seconds to catch up to him even in that damned weather. But the night had other plans for me. I was gaining, but just as I reached within a few feet of him, ready to stop and pull him into my car, a painful creak shrieked nearby - the groan of a life ending. A tree which had stood for at least a hundred years fell, crashing in front of me. Instinctively, my foot slammed on the brakes. I felt a thump as the front of my car smashed into the tree trunk lying before me. A large branch jutted out, and as I crashed, it smashed through the windscreen. I saw it only a second before and hid under the dashboard, my heart pounding. The glass shattered over me, and the wind and rain broke into the car like a swarm of rats, climbing through the open wound in the front of the vehicle.<br />
<br />
Disorientated, I opened the door to my right and fell face first onto the road. The concrete surface gushed with water, carrying with it leaves and dirt. As I hit the ground, the water splashed up into my mouth, and I gasped and coughed as some of it stuck in my windpipe. Lightning shattered the sky, and the thunder raged as I caught my breath.<br />
<br />
Pulling myself to my feet, I looked at the car. It was caught in the clutches of the fallen tree, the branches enveloping it. Steam rose from somewhere, and the engine answered my cough with one of its own. It would take some effort to get the car out, and even then I was not sure it could be salvaged. Any feelings of grief for my car were quickly wiped away as a squall of wind wrenched at a garden fence across from me. It tore several wood slats from their housing and launched them further down the street. A lamp post above rattled in the wind, its light still extinguished, and I feared that it too would topple, crushing me in the process. It was too dangerous, I had to get back to Eric’s house and out of the storm.<br />
<br />
I guess I felt more for Eric than I could admit to myself that night, even after everything he had done to me. I saw up ahead through the storm, the rain lashing against my eyes and blurring my vision… I saw the distinct figure of Eric. not much further along the street, heading deeper into the storm. Something indistinct then flew through the air, carried on the wind… At least, it appeared that way. Perhaps it was a plastic bag… Or, no… A piece of cloth? Whatever it was, it weaved and darted through the rain and I watched as Eric waved his hands above him, trying to batter it away. The object must have carried more weight than at first apparent, as it struck Eric on the head. He fell to the ground, and the object continued on its way, carried by the fierceness of the night.<br />
<br />
I could not leave him lying on the road, so I climbed over the fallen tree and ran along the street towards him. The wind blew in my face, and as it did so I found it almost impossible to breathe, turning my head to the side just to inhale barely enough air to continue. As I approached Eric in the dim light of my phone, I saw a cut on his unconscious head, blood trickling from it. Leaning down, I reached out in an attempt to wake him, but as I did so he opened his eyes and let out a hideous scream. A sort of panicked cry, like a child seeing something awful under its bed. His arms flailed as he pushed me back.<br />
<br />
‘Eric! It’s me, David!’ I yelled, but the thunder drowned out my voice. 'Eric! We need to get back to the house!' I could barely hear my own voice, and I imagine that for Eric it was a nightmarish scene; waking up disoriented, seeing your friend above you, the lightning illuminating his face as his mouth opened and shut without apparently conveying any meaning.<br />
<br />
He lashed out, striking me on the nose. I fell to my knees for a moment, dazed, as he climbed to his feet and dashed off into the night. 'Eric… No…' I felt myself say under my breath. It was madness. Madness which had gripped him. Madness to follow. But follow I did.<br />
<br />
I ran down the street as the hill now descended on the other side, then through a small wood across from the primary school we had both attended as children. Finally, I struggled across King's Park Avenue, a long street usually bustling with traffic, now doused in darkness, rain, and dread. And there we were. On Station Road - the bridge which crossed above King's Park train station, that innocuous little place where all of this had begun.<br />
<br />
Eric stopped for a moment in the middle of the empty road. Whether it was terror or confusion, I could not rightly tell, but it was as if he was waiting for something to happen. Perhaps hoping for evidence of the thing under the bridge which he believed had been hounding him. I saw nothing but the raging storm.<br />
<br />
Tilting his head as if he had heard something - as if you could in that storm - he suddenly ran to the staircase which led steeply down to the station. I followed as quickly as I could, still gasping for air, fighting the wind which threw itself with all its might against me. Reaching the stairs, I saw Eric below me on the platform, peering across the train line to the half archway under the bridge.<br />
<br />
'Eric!' I screamed again, this time a momentary lapse of thunder allowing my voice to be heard.<br />
<br />
He looked up at me. Looked up… And pointed across the train tracks to the half tunnel.<br />
<br />
I shook my head. 'No, Eric! Please! We need to get out of here!' But he paid no heed to my words, if he heard them at all.<br />
<br />
He dashed across the platform. Rushing to the bottom of the stairs, I was helpless to stop him. By the time I reached the platform, he had already climbed down from it onto the tracks and was making his way across them to the underside of the bridge. Above the line, the power cables swayed aggressively in the wind like necrotic veins, and a cold feeling now passed through my body.<br />
<br />
How I wish I had rushed across the tracks to stop my friend immediately. But I could not. Something gripped me. A fear like no other. Something primal. Like the terror which spiders and snakes illicit automatically even from those who have never encountered such creatures. It felt as though we were not alone, and that whatever accompanied us was something which should not have been.<br />
<br />
Eric pushed on. I watched as he reached the other side of the tracks. Standing before him was the half tunnel, its mouth gaping and dark. Yes, that was it. That place was darker than everything around it. A place not fit for people. Perhaps fit for something else. Something inhuman. That irrational thought finally spurred me into action. Jumping from the platform, I peered down the train line which continued for miles vacantly. Then, I rushed across them to my friend.<br />
<br />
The thunder and lightning coalesced once more, and as it did so, Eric stepped into the half tunnel. I moved forward, the gaping maw of it seeming bigger somehow than I remembered. Once again the paralysis of that strange fear, that uncanny feeling of otherness took me, and so I stood for a moment, waiting. My only company the howling wind and seething trees on the side of the tracks as they spasmed rhythmically with the storm.<br />
<br />
I could not see inside. Nor could I see any trace of Eric. it was as if he had entered into another plane, another place, and vanished; to a stygian abyss into which human beings were not meant to wander. I tried desperately to free myself from Eric’s own delusion as I stared at the nothingness of the half archway, but I could not help but question what was meant by the two words which had started it all. 'Down here'.<br />
<br />
A hand reached out from the darkness and grabbed hold of me. Eric’s drawn face appeared too, and he pushed me down the embankment. I tumbled and fell onto the track, my chin and shoulder crushing against the cold wet metal of the train track. Above me, Eric stood, his eyes wide and bright, but his face etched in terror.<br />
<br />
He said something, and the elements covered it like a shroud.<br />
<br />
'What!?' I said, standing up, feeling blood gushing from my chin.<br />
<br />
He spoke again, this time more fervently. But again, I could not hear him for the storm.<br />
<br />
Rushing forward, he pushed me away again, pointing up the stairs to the road above. He screamed and yelled, his arms flailing, glancing back several times to the mouth of the half tunnel. But I could not hear him, all I could see was the fear in his face. For the last time, he pointed back at the half archway. Lightning crackled, and… Did I see something inside? Was it illuminated by the lightning, just for a moment? A shape? A shadow? I could not be certain.<br />
<br />
Something cracked nearby. The sound of wood splintering. Eric pushed me out of the way as a large tree from the embankment above us gave way. Falling several feet from him, I watched in horror as the tree cut through the power lines above. Cut through them in sparks of electric blue, and then swallowed Eric whole. I saw it, the main trunk hitting him. Crushing him into the ground. The power lines flailed around, thousands of volts emanating from them, the electricity like an enraged prisoner unleashed. If they touched me, I was dead.<br />
<br />
Instinctively, I pulled myself quickly back onto the platform and fell onto my hands and knees scrambling away. Turning back, I watched as the power lines smoked and growled. Somewhere under it all, Eric’s body lay.<br />
<br />
<br />
I called for an ambulance, and for the fire brigade. I guess they were busy that night with the storm and the havoc it was causing around the city. It took nearly an hour for them to arrive. By that time, the wind and rain were calming. The thunder and lightning still sounded, but now miles away on the horizon, like a ferocious animal moving off, well fed and sated. After the power lines had been shut off, I watched as the fire fighters sifted through the smoking embers of the tree; watched, as they finally lifted the tree trunk off the line, and discovered the pulverised body of Eric.<br />
<br />
He had been burned to a crisp from the electricity. Whether it was that which had finished him off or the impact from the tree, I do not know. All I do know is that now he is gone. My old friend. I often tell people that it was his illness that killed him. That the hallucinations were too much for anyone to cope with. They believe me, though I wonder sometimes if I believe myself.<br />
<br />
I’ll conclude my account by simply saying this: Sanity is a fleeting, temporary condition. We all have our delusions, our ideas of how the world works and what constitutes reality. But such things are not concrete. They are merely interpretations of what the world truly is. A shadow of the universe. An echo of what is really there. A facsimile put together by our brains collecting data from our unreliable senses. In this way, we are always removed from the truth. Staring out from behind the warped glass of our own eyes. Who knows what the world is actually made of, and what is contained within it? For Eric, whatever he heard, whatever he saw, it was real for him. Real enough to make him believe in something far removed from the ordinary. Something most people are not meant to see. For myself, I truly hope that such a revelation is kept far away and that the world remains understood, calculable, and known. I choose to believe that what Eric saw was not objectively real. Despite this belief, I have never visited the station at King's Park since that night. For in my weaker moments, I fear that I may hear those same two words. Those two words, real or imagined, which led my friend to the dark recesses of the human mind, where our own personal monsters lie in wait, ravenous, and ready to make themselves known.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-89538673021664335822017-10-15T09:51:00.003-07:002017-10-15T09:51:30.894-07:00Three Ghost Ships | Real Horrors #1<div style="text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-23390710200751666172017-10-14T19:38:00.000-07:002017-10-14T19:38:06.186-07:00Fritz Lang's M: Mob Mentality | The Horror Imperative #1<div style="text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-15865758956345712912017-10-14T07:14:00.002-07:002017-10-14T07:32:44.462-07:00Horror Detour Section Open<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w2mOZ_NvVvk/WeIe-iBlrjI/AAAAAAAAAg0/aeYQBOqQqXQU8lv0wqqSm-MjL4LmXBU4ACLcBGAs/s1600/Horror%2BDetour%2BThumbnail%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Horror Detour Now Open" border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="1600" height="304" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-w2mOZ_NvVvk/WeIe-iBlrjI/AAAAAAAAAg0/aeYQBOqQqXQU8lv0wqqSm-MjL4LmXBU4ACLcBGAs/s640/Horror%2BDetour%2BThumbnail%2B2.jpg" title="Horror Detour Now Open" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Join me for a little chat. I promise I won't bite... Much.</td></tr>
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Progress on the site is going well. I still have a few things to add and tinker with, but really happy with how it's turning out. This is just a wee note to say that the <a href="https://michaelwhitehouse.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Horror%20Detour" target="_blank">Horror Detour section is now open</a>. It contains all of my Horror Detour videos (8 and counting). Each video is a relaxed little chat about various horror topics. I get some great feedback on these via Youtube, and thoroughly enjoy making them.<br />
<br />
If there are any horror topics you'd like me to discuss, please do let me know in the comments. Hope you're all getting ready for Halloween. I know I am, I have a few things planned...<br />
<br />
Stay creepy,<br />
<br />
MikeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-36205056973776163312017-10-13T14:00:00.000-07:002017-10-13T14:00:27.239-07:00It's Friday the 13th! | Horror Detour #8<div style="text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-92091701359183817522017-10-08T04:39:00.000-07:002017-10-29T10:41:06.119-07:00Off the Beaten Path | A Horror Story by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert Francis started the day with purpose and verve. Thrilled by the thought of no drive to work - no grey boring suit or stifled office air - he negotiated the sporadic city traffic with glee. He owned two other bikes, but for this adventure would rely upon his favourite and most trusted of wheeled companions. With a custom paint-job reading ‘ROB’ in large white letters across a frame of black, this was a bike which had never failed him - no bumps, no bruises, not so much as a punctured tyre.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">His itinerary was set and he was filled with excitement at the prospect of finally being on holiday. It had been eleven months since he had taken so much as an hour off from his suffocating suit and tie, so the thought of spending eight whole days cycling through the Scottish wilderness, with only his backpack and tent for company was, frankly, exhilarating.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Within an hour he had reached the city limits, breathing a sigh of relief as he left the world of work and sales targets behind. Most of his time was spent in the concrete office blocks of that grey place, but the countryside was where he longed to be, exploring the unbound wilderness. The unpredictable Scottish summer cast its unwelcome interruptions as the busy traffic gave way to winding country roads. It was colder than he had anticipated; but even this could not dampen his spirits. As he made his way through the open countryside, passing the occasional car and rural dwelling, a smile crept across his face - cycling was his passion and Robert was in his element.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">A couple of hours passed as the sparse yet vibrant green grassland soon surrendered to a more imposing and altogether impressive setting. Slight hills rose up to become domineering mountains, pockets of isolated woodland soon weaved together into thick and impenetrable forests, and wide open roads soon constricted into narrower, less trodden avenues. For the past three months he had been in a quandary about where to go on his adventure, which remote part of Scotland to explore. But when he passed over an old stone bridge - with a babbling stream underneath like a thousand voices whispering for attention, and found himself face to face with a forest covering hills, mountains, and valleys like a blanket - he knew he had made the right decision. A dirt road cut through the labyrinth of trees ahead, winding and twisting for miles. It occurred to Robert that as he cycled further into the forest the daylight above seemed to diminish with each panting puff of air, blocked by the huge pine trees on both sides as if the sun were an unwelcome visitor. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">As the sky darkened it became clear it was time to stop for the night, so, after spotting a gap in the trees not far from the road, he clambered through some thick underfoot and entangled bushes, hauling his bike and backpack behind him, looking for a suitable resting place. On reaching the clearing and observing the broken and felled trees which encircled it, he set his tent up for the night on a small patch of unassuming grass. Before long he was sitting next to a roaring fire under the stars. Unimpeded by the false light of man, they shone bright and bold above. After a few hours of watching the warm glow of the fire, he reluctantly turned in for the night, excited by the prospect of another day’s adventure: another day of distance between himself and the city. That night he slept soundly, but for one ill-defined dream; of a noise in the darkness growing louder with each breath.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">The next morning he set off as soon as there was daylight. It had rained slightly during the night, and after cycling for an hour Robert noticed a change in the landscape. It had become increasingly unkempt, less constrained. The trees seemed closer together and any occasional gaps in the forest scenery were filled by clearings and small fields which had been left unattended for some time. It became clear that he had travelled far enough into the forest that he was now out of the reach of even the park rangers who would normally maintain such a place. It seemed as though, beyond that point, the land had been neglected by its carers. The thought that even those familiar with that wilderness were afraid to tread there weighed on his mind momentarily, before being quickly dismissed as a flight of fancy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">The sky dulled as the day wore on and it was clear that rain was on its way once more. After pushing his bike up a steep incline which he felt was too uneven to cycle on, Robert reached its peak revealing another breathtaking change in front of him. The land spread out to the horizon, sprawling forward between pockets of woodland and stagnant pools of water, slumbering in a deep set valley which stretched across an ancient basin for miles below. With brooding storm clouds above, he looked down at the valley and decided that it would make sense to set up camp early.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Not half an hour later he had descended and stood in a wide circle of grass, and after putting his tent in place, all that was left was to gather some firewood. The only problem was that Robert had picked a camping spot dominated more so by bushes and shrubs than trees. He would have to venture out across the valley and find what he needed from one of the wooded areas nearby.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">A collection of pine and fir trees, which formed an isolated island of woodland about half a mile across, was close enough to the camp. After ten or fifteen minutes of trudging through the long green grass, occasionally sinking his feet unwittingly into the remnants of a marshy bog, Robert found himself at the edge of the woods. Its boundary was dominated by older trees which had long since withered, covered by thick brown hanging moss - nature’s own burial shroud. The broken trunks of once beautiful and majestic pines and sycamores littered the ground, open and rotting from the inside, not unlike a decomposing animal. It occurred to Robert that the woods seemed somehow out of place. The trees did not belong to the landscape as others did. The long grass which characterised the entire area seemed to thin out and change from a healthy natural green colour to a morbid yellow-brown. As this thought ruminated, accompanied by an increasing sense of unexplainable dread, he realised that he was looking at a large dead ring of grass which followed the tree line perfectly, encircling the pocket of woodland as if marking the limits of a tomb.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">On their own in a forgotten part of the world, many would have been cautious of such a sight, but Robert quickly shook off his initial sense of vigilance, finding the area intriguing - a place unlike any he had seen before. With a bold stride he stepped over the woodland threshold into the dim light within. On the forest floor he could see many relics of past trees slumped on the ground. As he continued inward, the canopy above grew increasingly thick with each step, sheltering everything from the rain. Scanning the ground for firewood, he looked up and noticed that, while it was daylight outside, the woodland trees were now blotting the sun from the sky. Had he not known better he would have sworn it was dusk. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">At last he found a collection of broken branches and logs which were dry. Robert knew this was as far as he should go as it was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate through the trees which seemed to be growing closer together, their branches often interlinked and touching as if trying to keep those inside from escaping.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Don’t be silly</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, Robert smirked to himself.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">It had started to rain and although he could hear the drops of water pelting off of the leaves above, his surroundings were perfectly dry. It made sense to make his way back and get a fire started as soon as possible because, once everything was wet, it would prove increasingly difficult to do so. He quickly gathered the last of the wood up into his arms, but just as he turned to leave and follow his own tracks on the pine covered floor out of those unnerving woods, something caught his eye. Several feet away, obscured by a ring of trees particularly close to one another, there appeared to be a strange arrangement of stones on the ground. Robert being Robert, he just had to investigate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">After clawing his way through a net of branches, he found himself staring at what looked suspiciously like a grave. Hundreds of uneven grey stones the size of a fist, and some substantially bigger, had been piled on top of one another about three feet wide, seven feet long, and a couple of feet off of the ground. It looked as though a mourner had marked the resting place of a body.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">A shudder crept up Robert’s spine as he momentarily experienced a feeling of being watched, but quickly dismissed this fear, replacing it with curiosity. Nearby, he noticed that lying around the stones was a collection of randomly scattered belongings. Several empty beer cans lay strewn on the floor, a jumper covered in rotting leaves sat on the ground, while a sleeping bag, scraps of newspaper, and even some old food cans betrayed the ‘grave’ for what it really was: someone’s campsite.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert breathed a sigh of relief and surmised from his surroundings that a few students had probably been there in the summer, got caught in the rain, moving into the woods to remain dry. The stones were probably just placed there out of boredom, or even as a prank to creep out any passer by in the future. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">University summers really were great, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Robert thought, casting a fleeting eye back to memories of summer trips with his friends.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">One thing about the stone configuration intrigued him, however; sticking out between two plain grey rocks on the side of the pile was a rock which appeared to be markedly different from the rest. Triangular in shape, it was wider than a human hand, smooth in places and not dissimilar to black marble, tapering off to a dull point at one end. Before he really considered it with any degree of scrutiny, Robert dropped the firewood, bent over, and tugged at the stone. It felt polished and cold in his hands, but it seemed to not wish to leave its home, wedged as it was so tightly amongst the other rocks. Growing slightly exasperated, he wrapped both his hands around the stone and finally, with an exerted judder backwards, it was free. Staring at it intently, it looked suspiciously like an ancient axe head. Whether it was or not, Robert was not qualified to answer, but it certainly looked like a man-made object and he could see chisel marks along its side. Perhaps the previous campers found it nearby and then used the rock in their construction without knowing of its significance. He was excited by the prospect and knew instantly that on his return home he would ask a friend of his, who had studied archaeology at university, whether it was what he suspected or not. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">After examining the object for some time, Robert was reminded by the sound of rain above that he really should make his way back to his campsite. Pocketing the stone, he bent over to pick up the firewood, but as he did so he heard a noise. It appeared as though one of the stones on the pile had slid off and landed on the ground. A creeping sense of unease slowly started to exert itself upon his nerve, one which he could not explain. Picking up the firewood quickly, leaving the rest of the stones unmoved, he began to make his way back.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">With every step something deep within was telling Robert that he was no longer alone, and worse - that he was being followed by someone in the woods. But with several nervous glances over his shoulder, he could see nothing. There were moments when he even fancied that he heard the sound of twigs and pines cracking under foot, but again, no one was there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Breathing a sigh of relief, the tree line came into view, and Robert was filled with cheer knowing that in a few moments he would be back out in the open air. But just before he reached the periphery of the woods, he heard a crack again. This time it was definite, it was louder than before, more pronounced, and accompanied by the hairs on the back of his neck rising in unison. He was convinced that someone was standing just a few feet behind, staring at him. Caught between the fear of knowing and the fear of not, he finally turned around slowly. Yes, there it was, he saw it! Only for a moment, but he saw it! A shoulder or arm, something disappearing behind a tree nearby.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert’s mouth grew dry making it difficult to swallow and his heart started to thud deep within his chest. He began to back pedal slowly, hoping that he would not trip on an unseen root or weed on the floor, leaving him vulnerable on the ground. With each step the woods grew lighter, and as he neared its edge the light from outside bathed its interior in a blueish hue. He did not take his eyes off of the large sycamore trunk where that shadowy figure seemed to be hiding. Not for one moment.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">It was peculiar, but an overpowering sense of safety out in the open dominated his thoughts. Normally a person feels exposed and vulnerable in the open wilderness, but not Robert, at least, not in that situation. As he edged slowly towards the grassy plain outside, the subtle, foreboding sound of leaves rustling and swaying almost in anger progressed into a crescendo of noise. But there was no wind to gust, no breeze to disturb. There was only one conclusion to be reached; something was moving towards him. And then he was outside. Out of the woods, away from whoever had been following - no not following - stalking him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert was not a superstitious man, you could not afford to be when camping alone in such remote locations, as the mind tends to play tricks twisting the benign sounds of nature into something much more malevolent, but regardless, he did not wish to stay around long enough to find out who his unwanted companion in the woods had been. Dropping all but the sturdiest piece of wood which he reckoned would make a good makeshift weapon, he ran as fast as he could towards his own camp, all the while glancing back at that strange island of trees, surrounded by dead, withered grass.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">But nothing emerged from within it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Arriving at his tent, out of breath and agitated, he packed up his belongings as quickly as possible, and then carried his bike up a small hill and back onto the dirt path. Waiting not one moment longer, he cycled hard and fast, hoping to put as much distance between himself and that place - and its unseen resident - before finding somewhere safer and more welcoming to camp.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">The road was now nothing but a single track of mud which covered Robert in a shower of dirt every time his bike sloshed through an uneven depression in the ground. The weather was bitter, unusually so at that time of year, and the rain, accompanied now by a freezing wind, battered his face making each foot of distance travelled feel like a hundred. He tried to continue for as long as he could, hoping to leave the necessity of making camp until the last usable ray of sunlight, but after a couple of hours the skies opened further and the rain came down in sheets. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">He had to find shelter, and quick, concluding that he had put at least fifteen or so miles of winding, difficult track between himself and that bizarre coven of trees. Regardless of whether it felt enough or not, it was simply impossible to continue due to the elements. On the left hand side of the path there was a rather steep drop which led down into a large field, but it would not provide the shelter Robert knew he required. To his right was a humble gradient of grass which rose up into a large stretch of woodland. Following his strange experience from earlier, some hesitancy did present itself to him, but the horrendous weather soon increased the motivation for shelter, and after pulling his bike up through the grass, he entered the tree-line. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">The torrential rain filtered through the tree canopy and it took a while before Robert could locate a suitable spot to camp. Finding a large bush under several tightly nit fir trees, he pitched his tent there and then, as the area remained relatively protected from the storm outside in the open. Using some dried roots, grass, and twigs from the forest floor, he was able to start a small camp fire which allowed him to cook some food while raising his spirits. Night began to close in, and as the wind and rain diminished, the sound of sausages sizzling in a frying pan on the fire provided the first sense of well-being and comfort that he had experienced since the morning.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Thinking over his experience in the woods, he began to rationalise the events. He had found various belongings in there; a sleeping bag, clothes, food and beer cans. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">It was obvious now that he had just disturbed a fellow camper.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Someone who no doubt became frightened seeing another human being wandering around their campsite in the middle of nowhere. That must have been it. The man, and he was reasonably sure that it was a man from the little he had seen of him, probably hid behind that tree because he was simply scared or unnerved. Robert relaxed into a sigh of relief, but just as he did so he slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. Touching its cold black surface, he had completely forgotten about the unusual stone he had picked up from that collection of oddly arranged rocks. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Removing it from his jacket pocket and observing it in the low, red light of the campfire, Robert was certain that it had been shaped by human hands. It felt old, ancient even, but he would wait to contact his archaeologist friend before getting his hopes up too much. He would have to admit though that the idea of finding a relic from the past was something which thrilled him deeply. Since he was a child he was always obsessed by hidden or undiscovered history, which perhaps explained his fascination with exploring the Scottish countryside, a land steeped in stories and myths of strange and forgotten peoples. Above all else he hoped that it was of Pictish origin; that mysterious indigenous people who vanished without a trace over a thousand years ago. Something which historians still pondered and puzzled over. Of course in all probability it was a modern replica, but the romantic side of Robert’s personality hoped that it was so much more, and enjoyed entertaining that hope.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As he stared at the relic, something unusual began to filter into his awareness; something different. Above the crackling sound of the fire, the now subtle wind, and the occasional rustle of a woodland animal nearby, came a noise. It was distant, how far Robert could not tell, but it echoed out through the ridges and valleys nearby, scattering through the trees in the dark. It repeated again and again with only a moment’s pause between utterances; and it was an utterance of some description. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">An animal perhaps?</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Robert could not identify it despite his impressive knowledge of the local wildlife. The sound possessed strange characteristics of a creature unknown to him. In some ways it was reminiscent of a bird of prey, parts high pitched and shrieking, but under this lay a painful wretched noise more akin to that of a fox crying in the night looking for its young.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">That was it exactly, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">it sounded like it was looking for something</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">For the next three hours Robert lay awake listening to the screeching noise ebb and flow as whatever was producing it moved closer, then farther away. As he eventually drifted towards sleep, the thought occurred to him that the movement of the sound was not unlike that of a search party, yelling and shouting, looking for someone lost in the wilderness, following a distinct search pattern.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">In the cold light of day the noise was gone, and while he had accepted that what had scared him the day before was simply a timid camper cautious of a stranger nearby, he still could not shake a feeling of impending dread deep from the pit of his stomach. The day passed quickly, and while he made good progress he did not do so with the delight he had previously felt. Something toxic lay in his mind, just outside of his awareness, something which suffocated his spirits.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">That night again he camped in a clearing, and yet again that same horrible shriek screamed out across the wilderness looking for something lost. Something precious, shrieking with one subtle difference from the night before - it was closer. Sleep did not come easy once more, and Robert fancied that during the night he had heard footsteps nearby, but attributed these to the simple nocturnal wanderings of a lonely deer or stag.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">While the following day remained overcast and grey, the wind and rain were gone, both a distant memory but for the occasional accumulation of water on the dirt track. Robert cycled onward, negotiating a network of paths while realising that he had strayed from his intended route at some juncture. Despite this, he was confident that he knew where he was and that this unanticipated change would simply be a small detour and nothing more. At times he made great progress when the ground was even enough, stopping occasionally to take in a variety of delving valleys and rising peaks. Uncharacteristically, however, he kept his distance as much as he could from the woods and forests which often accompanied the road. While dismissing it as merely his imagination, at times he felt like there was something within them, peering out from the dark, watching.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">It was late afternoon and he was beginning to feel tired, most probably due to a restless night combined with the unrelenting pace he had set himself throughout the day. In the back of his mind he was still running from something, fleeing an unseen ominous threat. The path he had been on for the past couple of hours had been rather predicable for the most part, but now it curved sharply around a grassy hill to reveal a change in the landscape which had been previously hidden from view. A long stretch of dirt and uneven track penetrated a thick forest of fir trees. What Robert found interesting about the path was that it was unnaturally straight, and what he found oddly frightening about it was that it was so narrow, only a couple of feet across, both sides of the forest only an arm’s length apart. This proximity provoked deep feelings of over exposure and claustrophobia. If he had been a soldier in a war-zone, Robert would have highlighted this long narrow path as a perfect place for an ambush.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Standing with his mountain bike only a few feet from the beginning of both forest and track, he felt uneasy about the current situation. It was clear that the path was the only way forward and, while it appeared as though it exited the forest a few miles from his position, there was something inherently dubious about it. What, he could not tell, but he did feel that he did not wish to traverse it. Weighing up the pros and cons, he realised that both the way he came and the unknown land ahead provoked trepidation in him. For that reason he dismissed the sense of dread as a figment of his over-active imagination and, with measured movement, slowly set off down the long, straight track hoping to quickly pass in and out of the forest without incident.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">A black cloud hovered above and as Robert negotiated the overly uneven path as quickly as he could, the feeling of foreboding which he had so nonchalantly dismissed began to ferment in his stomach, rising up through his body forcing the hairs on his arms to stand on end. He kept his head down for the most part, occasionally glancing ahead at what he assumed was his exit in the distance. He just wanted to be through and out of that place as quickly as possible, the trees closing in on either side creating a suffocating atmosphere. Just over halfway down the path an unnerving and unwelcome familiarity overtook him. A sensation which had accompanied him for days, but now seemed to be sharper, grating more profoundly on his nerves, filled his every thought; the feeling of being watched.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Stopping for a moment to catch his breath, he tried as best he could to shake the immovable sensation that he was not alone. The path stretched out ahead and as is common amongst those who attempt to reach a goal or threshold, without thinking he looked back to measure his own progress. He had managed to cover a substantial amount of the track’s length and was quite confident that in a short time he would escape the narrow stretch of dirt. But just as he turned to continue onward, something caught his eye farther down the path in front of him. He immediately wished that he had not taken the route he had chosen, that he had turned back and started homeward. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">It was there. Unmistakable. Unwavering and utterly paralysing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Some distance away in the direction he was heading stood a figure. He could not entirely make out the discrete features of the individual, because they were standing to the side of the path between a cluster of trees, covered in shadow, but it was there, no doubt, and was certainly a product of his imagination. Someone was standing there, watching, and while Robert was a distance away, it felt to him as though the figure’s presence was almost on top of him; its stare accompanied by an uncommonly potent sense of... well... malice was the best way that Robert could describe it to himself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Then, it was gone, disappearing back into the forest. But the feeling of danger, of the necessity to flee, did not diminish or decline, but grew in intensity. The sound of something moving between the trees rang out across the emptiness, increasing in volume as it neared. Robert panicked, turned, and cycled as quickly as he could in the direction he had come. So eager was he to escape that narrow passage flanked on all sides by the impenetrable forest, that he did not see a deep hole in the ground. The front wheel of his bike crashed into the depression sending him flying over his handle bars, scraping along the ground.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Dazed for a moment, the shambling sound of broken branches and displaced leaves which was nearly upon him brought his mind back into abrupt focus. Blood dripped from a wound in his leg, and his arm was badly bruised from the impact, but all he cared about was escaping from that suffocating pathway, away from whoever seemed to be moving in the woods.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert’s beloved paint job, including the letters ‘ROB’ on the bike’s frame, had been scratched slightly in the crash, but that did not concern him. Two spokes on the bike’s front tyre were broken, and that most certainly did. The last thing he needed was to be completely stranded there, so he would have to ride carefully and hope that the wheel would not buckle, lasting long enough to carry him home.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Home</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">That was exactly where he intended to go, as quickly and directly as possible, and as he was now facing in the direction he had been travelling for days, there was no time like the present. The moving sound in the trees continued, and as Robert carefully, yet at pace, negotiated the broken ground, he hoped above all else that his trusted mountain bike would get him out of there. Despite his obvious advantage of speed, the sound seemed to be only moments behind and as he came closer to the end of the forest path and out into the open, he heard a noise which chilled him to his very core.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">From within the dark recess of trees spewed that same, shrieking, tortured cry from the nights before, echoing out, piercing Robert’s ears and scratching through his nerves. Was it that figure who had been wandering near his camp at night?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Surely no human could make such a sound.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Panicking, he increased his speed as the front tyre of his bike wobbled and creaked under the pressure and strain. Finally, he was out of that narrow place, but he did not stop, cycling for hours without once looking back. Only when sure that his pursuer could not have followed, did he stop to rest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Night was once again drawing in, and now every sound, every smell, every part of what had always made the countryside fascinatingly inviting to him took on a new, ominous, and menacing form. The remoteness, the solitude, to be left alone far away from the buzzing lights of the city. He decided that tonight he would not set up camp; no fire, no tent. Robert was sure that the person following him had been able to do so because of the noise and light which he had made from night to night. It would not be pleasant. It would be cold, wet and uncomfortable, but he wanted to make sure that he could not be tracked. There were various paths and dirt-tracks in the area that he could have taken, but hopefully the man who was stalking him, for whatever reason he was doing so, would not be able to find him again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert knew of course that his tyre tracks could easily betray his location if his pursuer was smart enough to follow them. The bike marks were obvious. For this reason he backtracked for several minutes off the path in an attempt to confuse anyone following, should the need arise. The worst thing he could do would be to sleep next to where his tracks ended. Finding a large bush with space underneath to sleep, he hid himself and his bike for the night with one question on his mind: if this stalker was able to keep up with his progress each day, he must have been using a bike or vehicle of some description, but where were the tyre tracks?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Sleep did not come at all that night, but around three in the morning that wailing inhuman noise did. Moving around the area, searching. By now Robert was beginning to suffer from lack of rest, but in spite of this, at the first sign of daylight, he quickly uncovered his bike from its hiding place and started on his way once again. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Not one foul noise was heard that day, nor any evidence that his stalker was nearby. Rationality began to overtake Robert’s fear as night once again settled in. He had covered much ground throughout the day and had managed to take care as best he could of his bike’s front wheel, which bar the occasional creak or groan was performing admirably. He concluded after much soul searching that he had allowed himself to get carried away by the isolation of his surroundings and the, admittedly, unnerving person he had seen in the forest over the past few days. But surely it was preposterous to believe that he was really being followed? Perhaps the individual he had seen was not the same as the one he had encountered at that strange island of trees? It would make more sense that it was in fact just another camper. Maybe there were a few of them in the valley, and as for the unfamiliar animal screeching at night, it must just have been a species of bird in the area which he had never heard before. That night, Robert would set a camp fire. He would cook his food, eat well, and enjoy the solitary countryside as he had intended to for such a long time since planning his holiday. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">After locating a suitable spot in the forest, that was exactly what he did. He cooked on a roaring campfire and sat for hours gazing at the night sky through the branches of the trees above. There were no noises, no strange shrieks, no shambling footsteps in the darkness; nothing. Confident that his unwelcome travelling companion had been left far behind, he retired to his tent exhausted, in much need of a well earned rest. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Two paltry hours of sleep later, however, Robert woke to the sound of something stirring outside. He had left the campfire burning as he was uncomfortable in spending another night in darkness, and its flames seemed to dance, shifting and changing shape in the night air, casting shadows all around onto the thin canvas of the tent like a naturally occurring cinema screen. But it cast one shadow in-particular which dominated all others; that of someone sitting by the fire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert froze, his mouth went dry and his breathing became shallow and anxious. He could not believe that he had been so stupid to persuade himself that no one was following him. In lighting another fire he had led the stalker directly to where he slept, and now they had the upper hand. God only knew what they wanted!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">After a moment of utter terror, Robert realised that he needed to defend himself. Sitting up slowly and pulling his sleeping bag off and out from under him as quietly as possible, he scanned the tent looking for something he could cannibalise as a weapon, but anything of any weight was in his backpack (a metallic torch, the wood he had taken days earlier, a glass bottle etc.) and he had stupidly left that outside of the tent. He cursed himself for being so reckless, and could scarcely believe that he had left his bag outside when he always kept it inside, away from rain and wild animals. Exhaustion was the only explanation, but that did not help his current circumstance at all.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Then he remembered, the old axe head; the black rock he had found at the stranger’s camp! </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Indeed, if it was a hand axe as he suspected, he reckoned it could still deal a nasty, perhaps even fatal, blow. Running his fingers along its once sharp ridges, Robert composed himself, never for a second taking his eyes from the flickering shadow on the tent wall. The door to the tent was luckily unzipped, but the two flaps from the outer flysheet were draped over the entrance, obscuring his view. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">With one eye, he peeked through the slit between the canvas, slowly. There it was. Someone sitting at the campfire. By his build, Robert was certain it was a man. The back-light of the fire made it difficult to decipher any of his features, but the shoulders were broad, strong, and it was clear that this man had been in the wilderness for some time, as it appeared that he was wearing rags of cloth which hung loosely around him. His head was covered in long strands of black, wet hair which had clumped together in places, presumably because it had not been washed for some time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Staring at the rear of the man’s head, Robert tried as best he could to subdue his fear. He thought that he could conceivably sneak up behind him and knock him out with a blow to the back of the head with the black stone, but that could be murder. And Robert did not even know if the man was violent, perhaps he was a nomadic type, a gypsy, a traveller? Yes. Maybe it was best to wait, maybe he would just wander off into the woods, although that seemed unlikely.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Just as Robert affirmed to himself that if the man made a move towards the tent he would rush out into the open and fight him head on, he noticed something. Something was odd about the way the man was sitting. First of all, he was sitting still. So still that anyone would have been forgiven for mistaking him for a statue. Not the slightest movement was made, nor was there any indication of life at all. No subtle shifting of weight, no rising and falling of breath. Nothing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">While this stillness was unnerving, it was Robert’s second observation which bothered him the most. The man was sitting forward, facing the fire, but the shape and position of his upper body and head was somehow... off. They did not seem to quite add up, his frame seemed unnaturally positioned.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A crackle from the fire followed by a wayward flicker of light revealed the truth. The flames lit up the area momentarily, the light bouncing from tree to tree, even onto Robert’s tent and reflecting back onto what surrounded it. Two pin points of light momentarily shone in the night through black clumps of matted hair. Yes, the man’s legs were facing the fire, but his body and head were horribly contorted, twisted into an inhuman posture. The man’s legs </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">were</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> indeed facing the fire, but his head and body were facing Robert.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">This was no man at all.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">How long it had sat there staring at the tent, waiting, he did not know, but a creak of movement from its neck was enough to send Robert out of the tent, into the woods, consumed by a terror so profound that it could be likened to madness. He did not know how long he had been running, nor if he had been screaming the entire time, but his feet were cut in several places and the first rays of sunshine were peeking out through the still thick branches of the forest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">In the distance Robert could see the flame from his camp fire still burning bright, and despite his terror at the knowledge of being stalked by something entirely inhuman, he had to get to his bike to stand any chance of escape. For a while he hid behind trees, under bushes, his nerves absolutely shattered, refusing to go near the fire. His preconceptions were broken, but Robert was a strong character, and, after a time, a modicum of composure returned to him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Step by cautious step, he neared his own camp. There was no sight of whatever had been sitting at that fire staring at him. By now, daylight illuminated the wider area and after much self bargaining, Robert decided to reclaim his belongings, grab his bike, and continue as quickly as he could on his way out of the wilderness, back to the city. Everything seemed to be accounted for, and he even allowed himself a smirk at the thought of that creature </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">at least not being a thief</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. That smile soon vanished at the sight of his bike, however; unharmed, yes, but strands of a black putrid liquid covered the seat and front wheel.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">This was not the time to be concerned with sludge on his means of escape, it was still working and that was all that mattered. Had it been a week earlier Robert would have been angry about the slightest scratch to his beloved mountain bike, but now he just cared about it getting him home, or at least back to Aberfoyle village, to civilisation. After cleaning the liquid off and packing up his tent, Robert once more continued onward as fast as he could. He reckoned, with a hard push, that he could be out of that horrid place in a day and a half, as long as he took minimal rests and cycled for the duration of available light. The weather was not exactly ideal, but while rain occasionally came, it quickly disappeared leaving long stretches of the journey clear from the wearing effects of the elements.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">As the day progressed so too did Robert’s unease. He felt oppressed on all sides, as if he were running from something terrible, yet nearing an undefined danger. A horrible realisation bubbled up from his subconscious: what if that thing followed him all the way home? As this thought swirled around in his mind, he passed over the crest of a hill and down again, suddenly realising what was wrong and why he was feeling so much unease about what lay ahead.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A gulf in the land opened up before him. Pockets of stagnant water lay strewn between stretches of marshland and long grass, and in the centre there it lay, that horrible island of wretchedness. It was the woods where Robert had first seen his pursuer, and then in a flash it all made perfect sense. Call it superstition. Call it blind stupidity. Whatever you </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">would</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> call it, Robert knew that he did not wish to see that twisted man again. As a child he had been told ghost stories of people disturbing graves, and the ghosts of dead rising up to haunt the living, but he never took much stock in such things. Not until then, at least. What he did know was that he had inadvertently triggered the whole, terrifying ordeal. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">He had taken something which did not belong to him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">After hiding his bike in the long grass, he trudged towards that isolated pocket of woodland where what he now knew to be a grave lay, minus one oddly shaped black stone which he had been carrying with him ever since the ordeal had begun. He half expected for that thing to be sitting next to its resting place, but while there were a number of strange noises and movements between the trees, there was no sign of Robert’s unwelcome travelling companion. He assumed it was still out there looking for him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Wasting no time, he plunged into the woodland and headed straight until finally finding the grave, that elongated pattern of stacked rocks and stones. After locating the gap where he had torn the black stone from, he wedged it back in tightly. A noise echoed from the other side of the woods and Robert did not wish to hang around to find out what it was. Running as fast as he could over roots, mud, leaves, and fallen branches, he jumped out of that dark place into the open outdoors, filled with a sense of accomplishment and utter relief. It was not long before he was back on the dirt path, moving forward on his bike in search of one more place to sleep for the night, then home the next day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">A weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He knew he had unwittingly disturbed something unimaginable, unfathomable, but by returning that which he had taken, he had narrowly escaped what he assumed would have been a terrible fate; death, or perhaps worse. There was no explanation of this feeling of elation and survival; he just knew deep down that he had righted his wrong.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">That night Robert lay in his tent. It was dark, as he had decided against a campfire, just to be on the safe side. He was confident that he would be left alone, however, and took great comfort in knowing that he was safe, while looking forward to the next day and the comfort of home. That was a funny thought. A man who had always adored the countryside, detesting the humdrum of daily city life, relishing the idea of a couch, a television, a beer, and a warm bed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Next year he would holiday at a sunny resort and lie on a beach for a couple of weeks, one preferably far removed from his homeland!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert closed his eyes with a smile on his face and drifted off. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">The noise which he had heard outside for so many nights suddenly screeched at a blood curdling and overpowering volume. Without having to open his eyes, he knew: the sound did not come from the woods, it came from inside the tent. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Robert Francis was never seen or heard from again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Scotland is old. It has an ancient and hidden history of peoples and places long forgotten, but perhaps some trace remains, isolated and alone in the bitter wilderness; so, should you ever wish to wander the hills, forests, or lochs of this old country, bear one thing in mind: if you find a collection of stones heaped together not unlike a grave, and they are surrounded by trinkets of modernity - a sleeping bag, food cans, or perhaps even an old bike with the name ‘ROB’ etched into it - walk on, do not look back, do not touch anything whether it is an unusual black stone, or a simple piece of forest wood. Above all else, most certainly never take a souvenir, for those who lie in slumber nearby, may just take one from you.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-52904507277577802722017-10-04T14:13:00.000-07:002017-10-04T14:13:45.587-07:00Play It Again | Campfire Horror by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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Throw another log on the fire. That’ll keep us warm for a while, keep the darkness at bay. Perhaps we should pass the time with another story by the campfire. Just long enough to see us through past midnight. I’ve told you stories before of ancient evils lurking in the woods which surround us, a malevolence which reaches out from the distant past to touch us here. In the present. But we needn’t delve into an obscure history of vengeful spirits or abhorrent monstrosities to find that these woods contain their fair share of secrets. A macabre fate may make itself known, even in these technological, modern times.</div>
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Take, for example, what happened not far from here just three years ago.</div>
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Now fame and fortune is something which fuels the creative heart. And at no time in our lives is that desire for the crowd, for an audience, more potent than during the rocky road of our teenage years. Many, take to the guitar, the drums, the bass or a keyboard, but whatever the chosen instrument, music provides an intoxicating creative outlet for the part of us which craves attention. The skills we learn, the songs we sing, surely they will lead us to stardom and glory. In our naivety, we assume this as our right, it is only a matter of time before we succeed. Before the world learns how special we are.</div>
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But when those teenage years pass and fame and fortune have proven more elusive than once thought, a quiet desperation slowly sets in. A fervent desire to hold on to youth, hoping that your band, your music, all your talent, will receive that magical piece of good fortune which will propel you towards your dreams.</div>
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Your twenties roll by, but you still feel young enough to be snapped up by a record company. Jobs, partners, hobbies - they’re all just distractions from what you were put on earth to do. Then, your thirties come, and age begins to present a problem. For the music industry is littered with talented acts, but most of them come to fruition when they are teenagers or in their twenties at best. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but they only prove that it exists. Sleepless nights and growing dread wash over you as a voice inside your mind whispers “time is running out”.</div>
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A few towns over from where we are now, one such band was struggling with this fact of life, the unerring flow of time. Its lead singer and leader was a man called Matt, he had always talked big to the other three members of the group, and had managed to keep them hopeful of one day landing a big fat record deal, complete with adoring groupies, and mountains of cash. Tommy was on bass, Jackson on drums, and Freddy on guitar. Up until that time, it had all seemed so simple, so <i>right</i>. When they were teenagers, playing gigs, their friends and a small fan base would cheer them on to unavoidable greatness. Heady days indeed, but in the end, the fruit of their efforts withered, replaced only by a malignant doubt and failure which clawed within. The good times were well and truly over.</div>
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But Matt was not quite ready to let the dream die. At 35, he still felt he had something relevant to say to the world, and believed with every inch of his being, that he and his band would soon reach their goal. A goal which he had continuously pledged to the other members for twenty years being <i>just around the corner</i>. Money was the real problem. To keep the band going until they made it big. For a long time they’d had a decent local following, so could play gigs and make just enough to scrape by. But even those faithful followers had now moved on to other things, to other chapters of their lives. And the music the band played, while enjoyable, was mired in the fashions of two decades previous.</div>
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The future was looking bleak, that was, until one day Matt received a letter. It read as follows:</div>
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“Dear Matt,</div>
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I have been a fan of your band for some time, and have been to several of your live shows. I’m sure you have noticed, however, that your fan base has dwindled recently. Luckily, I have found myself in a privileged situation. I have recently come into a large inheritance, and I’m wanting to set up my own record company. I’d very much like for you and your band to be our first signing. This would involve a record contract for three albums over the next three years, and a small promotional tour. If this is something that you are interested in, please contact me on the following cell number.</div>
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Sincerely,</div>
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A devoted fan.”</div>
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Well, Matt was delighted at this offer, and as quick as he had read the letter, he had dialled the enclosed number and spoke with this devoted fan. His name was Harry Schofield, and he seemed to be the real deal. He was willing to invest over a million dollars in the band, with 500K of that being split between the four band members. You can imagine how happy this made Matt. Finally, after all those years of struggling, it was really happening. All those gigs, all those songs, all that heartbreak. Now he had finally shown the doubters that they were wrong.</div>
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But as Harry Schofield continued on the phone, it became apparent that there was one stumbling block. As it turned out, Harry was only a part owner in this new record company, his older brother, Tomas, had to sign off on the deal before it could go through. Harry referred to Tomas as <i>unusually careful </i>with his business, and that the only way he would allow Matt’s band to be signed, would be if they auditioned for him. If it went well, then they would receive a concrete record contract within days.</div>
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And so an audition was set up for the band.</div>
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But it was an unusual one. Matt, Tommy, Jackson and Freddy were to go to Tomas’s house and audition personally for him. When Matt learned that this house was in these very woods which surround us, deep in the Southern portion, he began to grow a little uneasy. He and the band worried that it was some sort of joke, auditions were usually held at a venue or a practice studio, but here the band was being asked to venture deep into an isolated area, so that they could be evaluated by someone they had never met face to face, even spoken to, in fact. After several phone calls to Harry, these issues were reduced to a degree when, as a token of goodwill, he deposited four thousand pounds into their bank accounts as an audition fee.</div>
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At the sight of this money, the band knew that Harry, Tomas, and this new record company were the real deal. Who would pay that sort of money if they weren’t taking the process seriously?</div>
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And so the day came for the audition, and Matt and the boys drove out through these very woods, and finally, after an hour or so of wrong turns and nervous glances at each other, they found the house. It was impressive. The band had expected nothing more than a log cabin. But there in front of them in a large clearing, the house sat - two stories tall, with a well groomed lawn and clean, maintained grey stonework, as well as a large wooden porch out front.</div>
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It was Freddy, the guitar player, who found the note. A piece of paper lodged in a plant pot at the front door. He opened it and read it aloud to his fellow band members.</div>
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“Hey guys,</div>
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Unfortunately Tomas is busy today, but we’ve organised a compromise. Please make yourselves at home. You’ll notice we’ve set up a few cameras inside. Tomas has left strict instructions that you should switch all the cameras on and then play your best 30 minute set. Give it everything you’ve got, as Tomas is very particular about the act he wants to sign. He’ll be watching remotely, and should he wish to contact you he’ll give you a ring. Please do follow all of his instructions, as I dearly want to sign you guys to the new label, but I can’t do it if Tomas doesn’t agree. Thanks much, and good luck with the audition.</div>
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Sincerely,</div>
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Harry</div>
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P.S. The door is open.</div>
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Freddy thought this was a bizarre turn of affairs, and the others agreed. They had all thought they were there to play in front of Tomas, only now to find themselves performing for a camera. When they went inside, they found everything just as Harry had described. There were three cameras on tripods, staring vacantly at an empty space against one of the walls in the living room. Other than that, the place looked like a holiday home, a corner couch, TV, and a large bookcase to the rear.</div>
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The setup seemed a bit over the top, but Matt and the others were desperate for the contract to go through, and so they agreed to give it their all. They also agreed outside, that they would not say anything else about the strangeness of the situation near those cameras, as the feeling was that Tomas was watching, and they didn’t want to offend him and risk scuppering the deal.</div>
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And so, as per the instructions, Matt and his band set up their instruments and played. They played their hearts out as if performing for a crowd of fifty thousand. Finally, when the thirty-minute set was over, they put their instruments down, packed everything up and left the house, but as they walked towards their car, a ringing now came from inside the house. A phone.</div>
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“It must be Tomas,”<i> </i>Matt said to the group, and then rushed inside to answer. Freddy the guitar player went with him, and so they picked up the telephone inside the house, and they both listened over the receiver.</div>
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After a crackle in the line, a voice soon came. Thin and croaked. Matt thought that it reminded him of something, maybe from an old black and white film, as if speaking out of time. It was the cadence, the intonation, the music to the voice. It was sombre, like a funeral march, yet it spoke very plainly.</div>
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The voice said:</div>
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“I am Tomas. Play it again.”</div>
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Matt and Freddy didn’t know what to make of it. They asked which song Tomas would like to hear again, but the reply did not answer this, though it did come swiftly. <i>Play it again</i>. The voice said. Then the line went dead as if Tomas had hung up. Freddy figured that Tomas meant the entire set, and Matt didn’t want to miss the song Tomas liked the most, so it seemed sensible to play the entire 30 minutes through once more.</div>
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And so, begrudgingly, the band set their equipment up in the empty space of the living room once more. Then, they performed. Matt sang his heart out, Freddy played note-perfect, and the thumping bass of Tommy was driven forward hopefully by Jackson’s perfect timing on the drums. At the end of the thirty minute set, they all stopped and looked at each other, wondering what would happen now. If that was it, and if they should now head home and wait for the outcome.</div>
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The phone rang loudly. Once more, Freddy and Matt listened in. They asked the sombre voice on the other end of the line what it thought, but all it said was: “Play it Again.”</div>
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Confused, and a little dejected that their efforts had not been good enough, the band nonetheless pushed onward and played again. They thrashed through the songs, music they’d all written over the course of two decades. Their best, their brightest, their catchiest, their <i>big hits</i>, as Matt referred to them. When they finished, they were covered in sweat, and exhausted, for now, they had played an hour and 30 minutes of music and were starting to feel the strain.</div>
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Feeling now that they had surely done their best to win Tomas over, they were shocked when the phone rang, and that thin, croaked voice stated plainly: <i>Play it Again. </i>
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This time, Freddy started talking, almost refusing. Saying that he could not see what good it would do, that they’d put everything into it already. There was a silence, the slightest crackle on the line, and then the voice spoke: <i>Play it Again</i>, before hanging up.</div>
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Freddy started questioning Matt about the entire thing, wondering if it was all some horrible practical joke, but Matt was as puzzled as he was, though not willing to give up just yet. <i>Let’s do it once more, this could be our last chance at the big time! </i>There was a desperation creeping into his voice, a sound which spoke of fear, a creeping disappointment that their dreams were once more to be dashed, perhaps forever.</div>
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Matt was a good leader, and he was always able to energise the band when they were feeling despondent. he had had two decades of practice at that. All those conversations of quitting, of ending the band, only to pull it back from the brink each time with a smile and a resolute belief. He managed it on that day too, and so they played again. Again with heart. Again with everything they had. And again, by the end of the performance, they were utterly exhausted.</div>
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They waited.</div>
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The silence was overwhelming, the only sound the distant call of some unseen bird deep within the woods outside. The atmosphere felt charged, like the breath before an oncoming storm. Anticipation has its way of sucking the life from the moment.</div>
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But the phone did not ring this time. It sat there, silent. The band members remained for a time, too tired to talk. Finally, Freddy suggested that perhaps Tomas and Harry were talking it over and that was why no one had called to let them know yet; but after an hour passed, they had lost their patience. It would be dark soon, and none of them fancied staying the night in a remote house out in the woods. Even as they stood there, the sky was greying above, promising to snuff out the light sooner rather than later.</div>
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And so, feeling dejected, they packed their instruments up and decided to head home. But just as they did so, Freddy had an inclination, he picked up the phone to see if he could dial out and get the phone number of the last caller. If they were going to waste the band’s time like that and get their hopes up, then he would give them a few choice words to take with them.</div>
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But when he picked up the receiver and tried to dial out, he realised that there was no dial-tone. It was as though the phone line had been disconnected. Silence met his ear. And then, a sound. The stillness was briefly, subtly broken. On the other end of the line, a mouth breathed shallowly. Yes, Freddy was certain of it, Tomas had never hung up, in fact, he was now sitting with his mouth to the receiver for some reason, close and present. The breaths moved in and out, with a rhythm of their own, but there was a quiver therein, a sort of nervousness, which sounded remarkably like twisted excitement.</div>
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Matt listened, then Tommy, then Jackson. Matt spoke several times, but the breaths continued and at no point did they break into voice. They stared at the cameras which still pointed at them, and Jackson observed that perhaps Tomas was watching them on the cameras as they tried to engage with him over the phone. Somewhere out there, a wide open eye accompanied that stuttering breath.</div>
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The band members became so unsettled by this, that they quickly got into their cars and drove through the forest. The trees passed. The dark pockets therein which have seen countless people come and go, come and go, come and go. Matt began to feel as though the forest had gobbled them up from the modern world, only finally to be greeted by the last wisps of sunlight as they broke through the forest’s boundaries and then to a busy road, and home.</div>
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You will not be surprised to learn that they never heard from Harry, or Tomas, ever again. No emails, no phone calls, and when Matt made some enquiries about the mobile phone number Harry had given him, the police informed him that the phone had been stolen and that the real owner was a woman.</div>
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Now, you’d be forgiven for simply thinking this a strange tale, unusual, but nothing more. Alas, that is not the way of such things as these. One week after their bizarre audition, Matt organised a band meeting to discuss how they would move forward. Tommy arrived. As did Jackson the drummer. And Freddy… But not Matt himself… No, Matt did not attend the meeting he had set. And he did not call or text as to why.</div>
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He would not answer his phone, nor message on social media. And when the band drove down to his house and knocked on the front door, no one answered, for Matt lived alone.</div>
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Eventually, Freddy and the rest worried that Matt had gotten drunk and fallen or hurt himself somehow in his home. After much persuasion, the police decided to act and broke into the house. The other band members were there when they did so, and they feared what they would find. But there was no stench of death, as one might have feared. No sign of a struggle. No sign of anything untoward. That was, except for two things. The first was that Matt had vanished, taking with him only the guitar on which he had written many of the band’s songs; leaving behind his dreams of being a famous musician with his band, abandoning such pursuits, and to my knowledge, no one has seen or heard from him again. The second troubling find was a small piece of paper left on the pillow of Matt’s bed. It read: “I like this one best. He can keep playing.”</div>
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<style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { size: 21.59cm 27.94cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> </style>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-29380326350970823872017-10-03T13:57:00.000-07:002017-10-03T13:57:16.175-07:00One For the Road | A Horror Story by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
I woke to my friend, Tom, climbing through my window. It was a summer’s night, around 2AM, and the heat had been unbearable for days. For that reason, I had left my window open slightly to let what cool air there was filter into my bedroom while I slept. It was a scrambling, panicked noise which brought me to consciousness and immediately I thought someone was breaking into my home. In the darkness, I couldn’t tell who it was, but as soon as I heard ‘help me’, I recognised my friend’s voice.<br />
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After turning on the light I pulled Tom into the room and sat him down on my old brown armchair, which had seen better days.<br />
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‘Close the window!’ he seethed, half shout half whisper, completely occupied by the nighttime scene outside. ‘Switch the light off’.<br />
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‘Why?’, I asked, confused and still half dazed.<br />
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‘It might see us’.<br />
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That word <i>it</i> sat in my mind, distilled and unerring. I would have laughed if Tom hadn’t had such an unsettling look on his face. I’d never known him to be spooked by anything, and to see him so visibly shaken took me by surprise and filled me with trepidation. I switched off the light, and my eyes adapted once more to the dark. Tom sat there with his head in his hands, the room lit dimly by the street lights outside filtering through the blinds.<br />
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‘What’s going on?’, I said.<br />
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‘You won’t believe me’. He looked up at me and, even in the low light, I could see the sweat running down his temple.<br />
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‘Tom, whatever it is, it’s okay’.<br />
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‘No, you don’t understand’.<br />
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‘Try me,’ I said. And with that, he relayed his story in a hushed, wavering voice.<br />
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1.</div>
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Tom had been out that night, no surprise really as he always enjoyed a drink. In fact he enjoyed it too much, and his behaviour of late had been erratic at best, self-destructive at worst. He’d been at the Windarm Lodge, a small old-man’s pub near the town main street. I knew why he’d been there before he even told me. His ex-girlfriend, Shelley, worked there behind the bar. A month earlier she had broken up with him; she just couldn’t take his drinking anymore.<br />
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That night, Tom had dragged a mutual friend of ours, Greg, to the lodge, under the guise of ‘a couple of games of pool and just one drink’. Come midnight, as the pub closed, Tom had to be dragged from the bar by the manager and thrown out into the street. He’d been pleading with Shelley to have a drink with him when she finished her shift. When his simple question turned into a bitter demand, he was quickly ejected.<br />
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I knew what Tom was like when he had a drink in him, which was one of the reasons I’d refused to go out with him that night. He’d been increasingly argumentative and unpleasant. The break-up with Shelley had made him even worse. We were all trying to help him as best we could. I’m not painting a great picture of him, but when he was sober he was a thoughtful and caring person, and a good friend.<br />
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After staggering down a couple of streets and lanes, Tom produced a hip flask filled with whisky which he carried in his pocket, and asked Greg to join him for one more drink on the way home. Greg refused, no doubt already having had his fill, and so it wasn’t long before an argument broke out. Greg was just trying to help Tom up the road, but instead received drunken insults; Tom throwing around words he’d regret in the morning. After a few minutes of a verbal bashing, Greg gave up and made his own way home.<br />
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Tom staggered along the road and cursed Shelley, Greg, and the rest of the world for refusing to have another drink with him. There was nothing else for it but for Tom to drink alone. As he wandered along an empty street not far from where I live, the rain came on, slight at first then torrential; so heavy was the downpour in fact, that he was forced to take shelter and wait for it to pass.<br />
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It just so happened that the street he was on, Serling Road, had its fair share of abandoned buildings, having once housed the workers of a now defunct factory. One house in particular had an old porch which encased the front doorway on either side and had a pointed roof, which provided just enough shelter for one drunken twenty-something during a downpour.<br />
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Tom climbed a small fence and staggered across the weed filled garden to the front door.I say the front door, but in reality it had long since been broken in, no doubt rotting somewhere inside the house alongside unseen floorboards, roof beams, and memories. No matter how drunk my friend was he had no intention of exploring inside. He just wanted somewhere to stay dry, and the porch would provide enough protection for that. And so he sat on the front step, angry and embittered, the rain for the most part being rebuffed by the over hanging roof above.<br />
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He waited there a while, looking out across the overgrown garden to the street beyond, the rain dancing off the tarmac. It seemed clear to Tom that he was going to be there for a while longer, and so, if all else fails — <i>drink</i>. There he sat taking increasingly longer slugs from the hip flask: it filled with cheap whisky and Tom filled with anger at the world, at Shelley, Greg, and everyone else who ‘didn’t understand’.<br />
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Now, Tom had a habit common to heavy drinkers. When he would get to the precipice and intoxicate most of his sober mind, he started to talk to himself; and that night, after the pub and a good portion of the hip flask, he began a conversation. He cursed his friends and family, his situation. He called Shelley a ‘whore’, and, beyond all else, he hated those around him for being so <i>perfect</i> and lecturing him on how to live his life. At least the drink wouldn’t turn its back on him. That was something he always said he could rely on.<br />
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The rain hadn’t abated, falling with the same ferocity as it had from the start, Tom’s words swallowed up by the white noise which blanketed everything around him. Finally, after another slug of whisky, he slumped against the cold rotting porch frame, closed his eyes and began to drift off to a drunken sleep. As he did so he mumbled once more about Greg and Shelley’s refusal to join him; that it was <i>just one drink for the road</i>.<br />
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It was then that Tom felt a drip of rain make its way through a crack above onto his forehead, and at the same time the weight of something uncomfortable prodding into his shoulder. As he opened his eyes he felt a warm, humid breeze flutter across his face, arid and stale, far removed from the air around him which pulsated with each sheet of rain.<br />
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‘I’ll drink with you’ a gravelled voice breathed into Tom’s ear.<br />
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He turned, startled and horrified by those words, only to be confronted by an unnatural, aberrant face which rested its pointed chin on his shoulder, its body poking out from the darkened doorway behind. The face was covered in dirt and grime as if it had spent decades beneath the earth, and had the shrouded appearance of ivory cloth pulled tightly over a withered frame, implying skeletal features beneath and showing every movement of jaw and bone.<br />
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There are some sights which will sober even the most inebriated drunk, and this was one of them. Tom dived forward, falling onto a slabbed garden path thinly concealed by weeds and soil. He screamed at the top of his voice, only to be drowned out by the torrential rain, its million voices engulfing his forsaken one. Clawing at the ground he rushed to his feet and leapt over the garden fence into the street. Then, on; on into the rain, into the night, away from that house, from whatever thing he had disturbed there.<br />
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Blood coursed through his veins as he fled, and his head began to ache excruciatingly from a potent cocktail of fear and alcohol. Gasping for breath, he stopped for a moment, now far away from the house at the other end of the street. He turned to look back, but it was difficult to see, the rain hurling itself into his eyes with such force that the scenery was blurred and indistinct.<br />
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Slowly, he calmed and entered into a sober dialogue with himself about having ‘drank too much’ and ‘just seeing things’. It was then that through the bubbling wall of rain he saw something move. A figure, shrouded in darkness and cloth, climbed over the fence in pursuit. Tom wiped his eyes in disbelief as it began to run towards him at speed.<br />
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Panic, absolute and controlling. Tom turned, screaming, no one able to hear his pleas for help. He kept running. He left Serling Road behind, and yet at every turn the shrouded thing from the house followed. Finally, he made it to the street where I live, and clambered through the window hoping to be saved.<br />
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2.</div>
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I stood there in silence. He seemed so upset, so certain, that he even had me believing his story for a moment. But then what I saw as the truth presented itself.<br />
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‘Tom’, I said gently. ‘You’re bone dry’.<br />
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‘What? No, I’m…’, he stopped as he ran his hands over his clothes and then his hair.<br />
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‘There hasn’t been a drop of rain in weeks, and tonight has been just as still as the others’.<br />
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‘But…’ He hesitated for a moment, shaking his head and rubbing his mouth with his hand. ‘No, I’m telling you. This happened. That thing is real’.<br />
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‘Tom, you’ve been drinking too much, and you probably fell asleep, and in a daze you made it here’. I placed my hand on his shoulder to reassure him. ‘Please, let’s get you home. Give me a minute to change my clothes and I’ll walk you there’.<br />
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As I moved across the room Tom pulled out his whisky flask and took a big slug. ‘Maybe you’re right. Just need to sleep it off’.<br />
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I turned to put the light on, but before I had a chance to, Tom let out an almighty scream. I have never heard anything like it. Utter fear, complete and distraught. He leapt to his feet, opened my window in hysteria, and then fled into the night.<br />
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3.</div>
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Two months passed, and myself, Greg, Shelley, and our other friends who cared about Tom were unable to contact him. Indeed, the only reason I knew he was alive, and not drowned in a river somewhere, was because his brother assured me he had spoken to him.<br />
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Finally, one day, Tom appeared at my front door looking in as good a shape as I had seen him in a long time. He claimed that he had in fact went through an alcohol rehabilitation program which, while he still struggled with an urge to drink, had kept him sober for several weeks. He said that the tipping point, his lowest ebb, had been that night, when he hallucinated that thing into being on Serling Road. Indeed, he said that for days whenever he had a drink near him, the figure would appear from the darkness; following, chasing, never relenting. In the end, more than anything else, it was the fear of a mental illness taking hold and seeing that hallucination again which made him stop drinking.<br />
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I was, and am, so happy for Tom, and would hate to do anything to change his interpretation of the events. Doing so could perhaps undo his rehabilitation. I’m sure he’s right, about the whole thing being an hallucination. That seems like the reasonable and obvious conclusion to have. But I often lie in bed kept awake by an uneasy memory, unsure whether to trust my own senses. For when Tom jumped back out of the window into the night, I saw something follow him from the corner of the room.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-27253671490070821282017-10-02T12:14:00.000-07:002017-10-02T12:20:06.205-07:00Between the Lilies | A Ghost Story by Michael Whitehouse<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qQSoYaNhZjM/WdKQ-HWLx5I/AAAAAAAAAgY/XwqR_kcxKzgsjrYKgpYsi1n-kXuRu125ACLcBGAs/s1600/walkers-486583_1920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="990" data-original-width="1600" height="197" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qQSoYaNhZjM/WdKQ-HWLx5I/AAAAAAAAAgY/XwqR_kcxKzgsjrYKgpYsi1n-kXuRu125ACLcBGAs/s320/walkers-486583_1920.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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She fell in love with the cottage as soon as she’d seen it. We’d driven for an hour, and, at first, my wife had been the most unsure of us both, but once we were standing in front of it, she was sold. It was a sultry summer’s day, the sky above blue and as deep as the ocean, a sea of white-petalled flowers populated the grassy field, and there we were - both of us just two little dots among the lilies, looking across at the place we would call home.</div>
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The cottage was perfect. While I’d grown up in the city, I’d always pined for somewhere less hectic. A place with trees and rolling fields. Suzanne wanted to stay near her friends and family. I could understand that, but I hoped that soon we’d have kids. When that happened I dearly wanted to bring them up in the countryside, but I believed I’d have an uphill battle to persuade my wife that moving was the right decision.</div>
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“<span lang="en-GB">Pay whatever they ask,” Suzanne had said, smiling at the red cottage, its flaking white window frames, black slated roof and oak door all from another era. It was a place of sanctuary from the modern world, sitting on its own among the fields at the end of a diminutive path barely big enough for my car.</span></div>
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<span lang="en-GB">I was shocked by how much Suzanne had fallen for the cottage. I’d visited once myself before that day, and knew it would be the perfect place to write from, staring out from the attic window across the glorious fields. But Suzanne had always been city-proud, and yet there she was, her red hair and ruby lips beaming towards me in happiness that I’d found the place; </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>our place</i></span><span lang="en-GB">.</span></div>
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We moved in three weeks later, and for the first month I would say that it’s the closest the two of us have ever come to bliss. We busied ourselves decorating and moving our things in. Suzanne often sat looking out to the field in front of the house; a million lilies in bloom, their long stems and white flowers waving in the breeze. It was idyllic.</div>
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<span lang="en-GB">A few weeks later two things occurred which I now know were omens of what was to come, a veiled threat. One morning I was up in the attic, arranging my desk by the window, when I felt something peculiar; the sense of being stared at. I happened to look out, and I was right. There, in the lily field stood a man. It was a hot summer’s morning, and yet he was dressed strangely, in what I can only describe as </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>old </i></span><span lang="en-GB">clothes. A fashion from another time. With long white shirt sleeves which looked as though they had been covered in soil, and black trousers of a bygone era, I assumed that he’d been working in a farmer’s field somewhere in the area.</span></div>
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But that didn’t explain his intense gaze. While he was too far away for me to say much about his features, it was clear that he was staring at the house. Though now, instead of looking up at the window where I stood, his uneasy attention seemed to be aimed beneath me. I climbed down from the attic and then descended the stairs to the ground floor to tell Suzanne about the strange man in the field, but when I did so, he was gone. Suzanne didn’t say much of anything to me, she just let out a sigh of acknowledgment and continued to stare out at the lilies.</div>
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The next night, I woke to Suzanne sitting up in bed. Her sweat drenched skin glistened in the moonlight, her chest moving in and out with a panting breath. Her eyes were open, trained on the end of the bed. I looked there for a moment and saw nothing. I’m not sure why I did that, perhaps deep down I knew that we were not alone.</div>
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I slowly lay Suzanne back down.</div>
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“<span lang="en-GB">It’s okay, Suzie, it’s just a bad dream,” I said.</span></div>
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<span lang="en-GB">She did not respond at first, the whites of her eyes wide and pronounced as she stared upward vacantly. But then the words came from her mouth: “Dreams are hell for the living...” She then closed her eyes, and within a few minutes her breathing had calmed and she was sound asleep. I lay awake for a time after, those words never leaving my mind, </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>dreams are hell for the living</i></span><span lang="en-GB">, but in the morning the sun came, and with it the comfort of living in the real world where all was well, concrete and obvious.</span></div>
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Several weeks later, I had to leave for a couple of days to meet a publisher in London, she was interested in making a deal once my current one expired. It was a pretty big thing for me, and would hopefully set us up financially for many years to come.</div>
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I didn’t think that anything would be wrong when I returned. Suzie had smiled and kissed me on the lips as I left, wishing me good luck. Even after three years of marriage her beauty surprised me, held me in its trance. As I drove away I counted myself lucky; the perfect wife, the perfect home, and perhaps now the perfect career, if everything went well.</div>
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<span lang="en-GB">Indeed things </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>did</i></span><span lang="en-GB"> go well. I returned home two days later with a contract and a bottle of champagne ready to celebrate. It was a beautiful day, bright bleaching sun on the road, and as I reached our little red cottage in paradise, I was struck by the field of lilies opposite. How they shone brightly against the tall green grass, and, if it were possible, they were whiter than ever before. </span>
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When I pulled into the stone driveway, I realised quickly that something seemed off. The door to the cottage and all the old flaking windows were lying wide open to the summer air, and there was no sign of Suzanne.</div>
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I walked in, holding the bottle of champagne in my hand in victory. I tried to smile, waiting to greet my wife with the good news; but there was a sinking feeling in my soul, and all I could think of was to find my Suzie and make sure she was okay.</div>
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“<span lang="en-GB">Honey, I’m home!” - a little joke entrance I often made when returning from a trip. We both loved old black and white films, and we often laughed at how husband’s seemed to announce their arrival loudly, an artefact of a bygone era. </span>
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But there was no answer.</div>
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Outside I heard a bee buzzing around the flowers under the window sill. Out there life was abundant and in full bloom, but inside the house was as still as a grave. My heart raced as the sinking feeling took hold. I tried to recover from it as I moved up the staircase to the first floor. “Honey, are you here?” I said, quieter than before.</div>
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How I wish those words hadn’t been answered, but they were.</div>
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A voice from our bedroom replied: “Yes, she is here.” It was old, rasped, and unwelcoming.</div>
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I rushed to the bedroom door, now brandishing the champagne as a weapon, but when the door opened all I could see was Suzanne, sitting on the edge of our bed with her back to me, looking out through the window to the lilies in the field.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Suzanne...” I said. “Are you okay?” I approached slowly, reaching my hand out to her shoulder.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But before I touched her silky white skin, a young woman’s voice came from the other side of that beautiful head of red hair.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Alone at night. He came for me.”</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-GB">I froze for a moment, and a strange thought ran through my mind. </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>This is not my wife</i></span><span lang="en-GB">. I walked in front of her, half expecting to see a face I did not know. But no, it was Suzanne, her gaze transfixed by the window. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Suzie!” I said loudly, and with that she looked up at me.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It was as if nothing strange had happened. She smiled lovingly, stood up and threw her arms around me, kissing me. “So, how did it go?”</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">It went well... A three book deal,” I said, still unsettled at the strange voices which had greeted me.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She then walked off downstairs, taking me by the hand. We started getting dinner ready, I chopped all the veg, Suzanne prepared the steak. But nothing else was said, and when I broached the subject later and asked about the strange, old voice I’d heard from the room, she said she had no recollection of it and must have been sleep walking after taking a nap. But what worried me the most, was that she seemed unfazed by the lack of memory, like it was to be expected.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Three nights later I realised how quickly things were escalating.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I woke in the night to an empty bed. The dark clouds outside blotted any moonlight from the sky, and the world around me felt cold; like a rotten body covered by a shroud, outlining its end.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Suzie?” I said, slowly wiping the sleep from my eyes.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But she was not there, the room lay cold and empty like an unoccupied tomb. Then I heard the front door downstairs moving in the breeze, gently rattling against the wall. It was open, and I knew then that Suzanne had wandered out into the dark, alone and probably unaware.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I quickly pulled on some clothes, ready to run downstairs and into the world below. But as I passed the window in our bedroom, something caught my eye. A grey outline in the field opposite our house. My eyes struggled with the lack of light, but there was no doubt: Suzie was standing among the lilies, still, her white night gown blurred by the starless sky.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In just a few steps I was out of the room, down the stairs, and through the open front door. The gravel crunched beneath my feet as I ran down the driveway. With each footfall, I was getting nearer to the road and then to the field of lilies nearby. But the sound of my chase brought a realisation into my mind. There was no other sound to speak of; no crickets chirping in the night, or things scurrying in the undergrowth. It was as if the entire scene had been caught on canvas, a reflection of something which was once alive, now only a shadow of life.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As I approached the road I could see Suzie standing there among the flowers. They reached up, motionless, brushing against her waist, entangled by the long grass.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Suzie!” I shouted as I rustled between the lilies.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But she did not respond, obviously still caught in the trance of a dream. A trickle of red blood made its way from her shoulder across her white milky arm, dripping to the ground from her fingers.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">My God, Suzie, you’re hurt!” </span>
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I stepped forward to hold her and make sure she was okay, but that was when I heard the voice:</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">You shouldn’t be here.” </span>
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I recognised it immediately. I turned to see Suzanne standing behind me. A horrid chill ran up my neck. I spun around to see the woman I had believed to be my wife wandering away through the lilies, kneeling down, then disappearing into the darkness of the night, obscured by the grass and flowers. I rushed forward but could see no one there on the ground.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Who... Who was that?” I asked Suzanne, nervousness poking through my otherwise steady voice.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Dreams are hell for the living,” Suzie said, but this time her voice seemed aged and warped. She then turned around and started walking back to the cottage.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I followed quickly, but never for a moment taking my eyes away from the lily field behind. On reaching the front door of the cottage I looked back once more, only to see the field empty. But in that void of night, as a breeze came in to gently shake the lilies and grass, I knew we were not alone. Someone was staring at us from the darkness, and in my mind, for the briefest moment, I thought I saw the man covered in soil as I had done before; whether it was only a shadow brought forth by a wearied mind, I do not know.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The next day, Suzanne had no recollection of what had happened. She had gone back to sleep and in the morning seemed none the worse for her nocturnal wanderings, except that she complained of feeling very tired, almost drained.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I told her about what had happened, but again what disturbed me was that she seemed so dismissive of it. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe me, it was as if she didn’t care.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Don’t worry, dear. Everything’s fine.” That was the response she gave me, but in her eyes I saw something else, a distance growing between us, and more importantly, between her and the world. She wasn’t concerned about the woman in the field, nor was she concerned that she could have been hurt sleepwalking. She didn’t seem concerned at all.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The next night I couldn’t sleep. The air was stifling, and the heat from the day’s sun had been locked in by the blackened clouds above. In a way, I was thankful for the lack of rest, as it allowed me to catch Suzanne as she tried to leave the room once more.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I gently guided her back into bed, and when she lay down, she looked at me. Her pupils wide adjusting to the lack of light. She opened her mouth and sniped in that gravelled voice: “You’re a bothersome one, aren’t you.”</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Suzie, please. Just go back to sleep,” I said, trying to hide my apprehension at the voice.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And in the same rasping tone, she muttered: “I’ll be dealing with you.”</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Two more nights passed, and I was becoming exhausted. I had to get some sleep, but I feared for Suzie’s safety if I did. And so I took some precautions. I stole her key to the house from her bag, and kept it in my nightstand. At least that way she’d be stuck inside the house when sleepwalking.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I wasn’t prepared for the response.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I woke during the night to a pounding sound, a muffled, hard repetitive knocking. Rising slowly, I saw that the bed was empty. I knew the noise must have been Suzanne, but I was hesitant at first. The thought of the woman in the lily fields still haunted me. But while I worried that a stranger could be in my home, my priority was making sure my wife was safe.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Slowly descending the stairs, I flipped on an old light switch and could see Suzanne standing at the front door, the light from the staircase cascading forward, breaking the darkness below. She was just standing there, rhythmically banging her head against the wood of the door.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Suzie, stop that!” I cried out.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She did as I asked, and slowly turned to face me. I recoiled in horror. It wasn’t Suzanne, but the woman in the field! I stumbled backwards as she walked slowly towards me. Blood trickled down her arm, and she walked with a strange gait, a staggered, disjointed motion. Her face was as pale as snow.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Get out of my house!” I yelled, stumbling backwards and whacking my back against the stairs.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She came forward, one pale foot in front of the other, and began to climb the stairs, her white eyed stare never leaving me. I was terrified, and looking upon her filled me with dread. As I tried to pull myself up, the woman crouched and leaned over me as I lay there, her long red hair dangling, touching my face, her hands either side of me on the steps. Her body pressed against me forcefully.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">She’s with us, between the lilies...” she said, staring at me.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Then... Nothing.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The woman just remained frozen, her mouth lying open and her eyes glazed over. I touched her hand next to my face. It was icy cold. I was staring into the eyes of something vacant, empty; a shell. An unseen breath then seeped out of her open mouth sounding not unlike gas hissing quietly.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Her head slowly bowed, as if her neck would no longer support it, then her body went limp and she collapsed. Her icy body lay on top of me, and although my first instinct was to violently push her to the side and search for my wife, I knew I did not have to look far. The warm, loving fragrance from Suzanne’s hair vanquished my fear. Gently, I pushed the red hair from the side of the woman’s face - but all I could see were my wife’s beautiful features; asleep, and tranquil.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I carried Suzanne to bed and lay her there. Switching on a small lamp, I pulled an armchair next to her and watched as her long, deep breaths continued until morning. When she woke, she smiled, and again dismissed the entire hideous night as a combination of simple sleepwalking and a lack of rest on my part, in terms of believing she was someone else momentarily.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But I was not having that as an explanation.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-GB">Call me superstitious, but I have always believed in </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>something </i></span><span lang="en-GB">out there in the vastness of the world. Unseen forces, if you will; and while I’d never encountered the supernatural before, I was certain that that was exactly what we were facing. I was also certain that it wasn’t the house exactly, but the lily field which seemed to be the epicentre of the phenomenon, the source which called to my wife.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My mind went back to the man I’d seen in the field. Somehow I felt he was the cause, whether spectral or human. I therefore tried to remedy the situation. I said we should move, but the first time I suggested it, Suzanne just laughed it off and said she was very happy at the cottage.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Oh, dear, honestly, this really is all in your head,” she said.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Whether it is or not, I’m not happy here, and we always said if one of us didn’t like it we’d move,” I replied, trying to be as diplomatic as possible.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Then her voice changed slightly. It was hers but not hers, as if two different personalities had momentarily mixed: “You should leave,” the sombre voice said.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I knew at that moment that the strange nightly occurrences had crossed the boundary. They had made it to the daytime. In my mind that only meant that the influence was growing stronger, and my wife was slowly being consumed by something evil.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There was no persuading her. As the days wore on it felt as though she was growing more distant, sometimes not answering my questions at all. She was fixated, staring out at the lilies, and then at night I would have to stop her from leaving the house in her sleep.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I phoned a doctor, but when she arrived to look at Suzanne she thought there was nothing wrong. And no wonder, my wife suddenly came to life as the doctor arrived, appearing completely healthy and sound of mind. When the doctor left, Suzanne smiled at me, but not with kindness, not with her usual love; it had been replaced, usurped by menace and malice in equal measure.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I began to grow desperate. I felt I was losing her, losing the woman I loved more than life to something out there. Something uncanny. That’s when I decided to really take matters into my own hands. I felt terrible doing it, but I crushed up some sleeping pills and put them in Suzanne’s tea. Once she was sound asleep I gently lay her on our bed, kissed her head, and left.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I drove as quickly as I could, and within thirty minutes I was at Windarm town hall. There, I gained access to the town records, specifically looking for any information I could find about the cottage and that damned field which lay nearby. Perhaps the history of the place could provide some explanation, and maybe even a cure.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sitting there in the old musty records office surrounded by stacks of yellowing papers, I eventually found what I was looking for. In some way there was relief. To find a reason for my wife’s affliction and that it came from the field, and to hope that if I took her to somewhere new she would recover.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But as I read on, the horror of what I was up against made itself known.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I found little about the cottage itself, but in some old newspaper clippings from 1894, the mystery was revealed. At that time, Windarm and the surrounding countryside was caught in fear, a panic which was not easily forgotten. Several young women had gone missing and the local police, initially explaining the disappearances as runaways, finally had to admit the possibility that there was a killer in their midst. That someone in or near the town was a brutal murderer.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The disappearances continued for nearly five years, the police never turning up a suspect, until suddenly, the kidnappings stopped. But just as I was about to move on to another batch of files, something caught my eye. It was a newspaper clipping from 1899, when the killings ceased. Apparently, the Windarm Herald received an anonymous letter at that time, which read:</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>To Whom it may concern,</i></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-GB"><i>I recently discovered that a loved one is the man you have labelled, The Windarm Snatcher. While I cannot reveal his identity for fear of shaming my family, I wish to convey my sincerest, heartfelt thoughts for those taken and murdered by him. I have done something terrible, but there was no option left to me. I have killed him in his sleep, and buried his body with those of his victims. All I can hope is that there his soul will pay for his crimes, and that all those poor women can rest knowing justice has been done.<br /><br />He will never again terrorize the people of Windarm, but for me his memory holds a twisted pull. At night I hear the whispers. There is no going back. There is no coming back. Dreams are hell for the living.</i></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>Sincerely,</i></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-GB"><i>A.</i></span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
At once, it all made sense to me. I rushed out of the town hall and into my car. As I raced along the country roads outside of town towards my home, the skies dimmed above. I had to get there as quickly as possible, and hopefully, if Suzanne was still under the effects of the sleeping pills, put her in the car and drive her away from that place, never to return.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Turning onto the single track road which led to the cottage, the last wisps of daylight gave up their claim and relented to the dark. When I drove into our driveway, my heart raced at what I saw. The downstairs window at the front of the house was smashed, and along the broken shards of glass which stuck upward from the bottom of the frame, blood dripped to the ground below.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What terrified me most was not that Suzanne was obviously gone from the cottage, but that the glass had smashed inward. Someone had entered the house first. Terror, fear, panic - call it what you may - but they all came to roost in my soul.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Suzanne!” I screamed in desperation. But there was no answer. The night was still, and as I had noticed before, not a sound could be heard. No crickets, no rustling of leaves. Nothing. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I did not need to check the house, because I knew where my wife must have gone. I turned slowly to look across the road. The stones in the driveway crunched under my feet as I neared the lily field. There in the darkness, I could see her, wandering between the stems which seemed higher than before somehow, their white flowers reaching above her waist, brushing against her white nightgown.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Without thinking I rushed across the road and through the sea of flowers towards my wife, but as I neared, confusion took me. There was another woman in the field further on, a few more to the sides, and as I turned around I could see more, pallid, lifeless, and blocking the way I had come. How many there were, I could not tell, 20, 30 maybe? I had no idea which one was Suzanne, their empty expressions seemingly robbing each of them of their personality.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I then realised that they were moving, seamlessly as one towards the heart of the field, and as I too moved forward I could see what they were drawn to. A tall figure stood there, a man, his face covered by night, his clothes old and covered in soil. I could feel his gaze seeping into me.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He was calling all of them to him. His victims, their bodies somewhere beneath the lily field, intertwined with his own. Those poor shadows of emptiness all that remained. How often had they been called by their master? How many times had they risen to meet him? Only to be drained further to sustain his spectral form. They shuffled onward like moths to a flame.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I had to find my wife before she became the Windarm Snatcher’s latest victim. We had to get the hell out of there! I ran ahead to the first woman I’d seen, but she was not my wife, her hair black against her ghostly skin. Another, then another. Each time I was presented with a different face, but they all had the same expression, wide-eyed and vacant.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Closer they drew to the man in the field, that snatcher of life. As I confronted another of the women, shouting my wife’s name as loud as I could, I had finally found my Suzie. I barely recognised her. She looked so drawn, so pale, so ill. Looking into her wide open eyes it was as if she were almost empty, the flame of the woman I loved nearly extinguished.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Seeing Suzanne that way, how the evil presence in that place had tried to take her from me, I grew angry. “You won’t have her!” I screamed. I tried to lift Suzanne up onto my shoulders, but as soon as I touched her she began to cry out.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Help me!” she screamed, kicking her legs out and clawing at my face.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I wrapped my arms around her and began dragging her through the lilies, the flowers snapping as we moved. It was at that moment that I looked up. The place was silent, and yet the pale figures of the field were still there. They had turned towards me, each wearing the same vacant look on their face. Slowly they began to move, shuffling through the tall grass and flowers towards me with that unearthly gait. All the while, the shadowy figure of their master watching from a distance.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">No! Leave us alone!” I yelled.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But I wasn’t fast enough. They closed in, and Suzanne looked up at me as I tried to pull her as quickly as I could through the undergrowth. In that old rasping voice, which I now knew was the voice of a man, she spoke: “She belongs to us, between the lilies.”</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A hand then grabbed my neck from behind, another pulling at my arm. Then another scratched at my face, nails dragging down into my skin. I fell to the ground, blood trickling into my eyes as my wife was torn from me.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Suzie...” I said half dazed.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She turned her back to me, and hand in hand with the other women of the field, she walked towards the twisted puppet master at the heart of it, leaving me alone in the tall grass.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I knew there and then I only had one chance to put an end to that madness, to save Suzie and myself from being consumed by the place. Staggering, I made my way as fast as I could away from the field, to the cottage. In a small shed out back, I found what I needed.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When I returned to the field what I saw terrified me more than any sight I have ever beheld. Standing around the heart of the field, the pale figures joined hand in hand forming a large circle, and at its centre, Suzie approached the soil covered figure, the cause of all this tragedy.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-GB">I quickly set to work as the snatcher wrapped his hands around Suzie’s slender neck. I would rather watch that place burn than allow him to touch my wife again. Opening the petrol can I’d taken from the shed, I ducked out of sight beneath the tall grass and began pouring. There was enough, just. As I poured the fuel in a circle around the women of the field and their master, suddenly I heard a shriek. A thick accusatory sound, like broken stones. But it was a voice, this time coming from </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>him</i></span><span lang="en-GB">, the one who had blighted that place with his hatred a century before, the one who had taken so many from their families, now arisen again to add Suzanne to his coven of lost souls.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
He had seen me.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The women turned from their circle as their master yelled, his hands still firmly around Suzanne’s neck as he began to choke her. The pallid white figures moved silently through the lilies towards me. Quickly, I opened a box of matches and struck, lighting one of them. But as I thrust the flame towards the petrol sodden ground, a hand burst upward through the dirt. It was a woman’s, grey and rotten, and its flaking fingers wrapped around my wrist.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I dropped the match, and like a beacon of hope, a circle of fire rose up around them all, the killer, the lost souls, and poor Suzanne. I clawed at the putrid hand which held my wrist, pulling it towards the fire. Touched by flame, it released me, and that was when I made my move. I leapt through the flames and headed straight for the centre of the circle. There he was, his hands around my Suzie’s neck, worms crawled across his skin as bone and rotten muscle protruded from his face. Dirt and soil festered where once there were eyes.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">She’s mine!” he seethed through decayed teeth.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Charging at him, I was able to break his hold. Screams rose to a crescendo around me, as smoke and flame closed in.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span lang="en-GB">Where... Where am I?” Suzie said confused from the ground.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As the flames grew higher, and the heat unbearable, I lifted my wife up onto my shoulder and darted towards where the ring of fire seemed weakest. As we fled, nothing evil passed through it. I did not look back until we reached the cottage. We both stood there, peering out from the broken window towards the fields as the fire turned it to soot, charcoal and dust.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="en-GB">It’s been three weeks since that night. After the fire, I informed the local police officer that I believed the field was the resting place of over thirty women who had disappeared nearly a century ago. A small excavation was carried out, and indeed, the bodies were found. Each a victim of the man they’d called the Windarm Snatcher. Who he was, no one has been able to tell so far, but his body </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>was</i></span><span lang="en-GB"> found. That is the only detail which truly perplexed the police, though it did not surprise me at all. The corpse was not found beneath the earth and dirt, but instead lying lifeless in the middle of the now cremated field of flowers.</span></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Suzanne has little memory of what took place. She seems back to her old self for the most part, but occasionally I find her sitting almost motionless, her gaze distant as if she is contemplating something important. What, I do not know.</div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As for me, I’m fine. You may find this surprising, but we’re back at the cottage right now as I write this. I felt as though whatever evil resided here is now gone, and Suzanne seemed very happy when I suggested that we give it another go. What surprises me most as I type, is the field opposite. How the lilies have returned more vibrant than ever. Yes, I would say all in all we are as happy as we’ve ever been. Except for the odd dream or two. I have such visions here, strange shapes moving in the night. They frighten me, but I think I will go to them, just for a while. I will go... There is no going back. There is no coming back. Dreams are hell for the living...</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-13209593274108449272017-10-01T13:31:00.001-07:002017-10-14T06:24:00.406-07:00The Empty House | The Ghost Story Society #2<div style="text-align: center;">
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Take a seat as our 13th member. The Ghost Story Society awaits as we read Algernon Blackwood's "The Empty house"...<br /><a href="http://ghastlytales.libsyn.com/the-empty-house-the-ghost-story-society" target="_blank">Download the MP3</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-10903650959580836242017-09-27T13:54:00.000-07:002017-10-02T12:24:34.352-07:00Among the Trees | Weird Fiction by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
I grew up on campfire ghost stories. Loved them in fact. I used to sit there as a kid by the fire, listening to my Uncle tell tales of crazed killers and vengeful ghosts as we huddled around a dancing flame, all the while keeping one eye on the darkness over my shoulder. That was what made it exciting, being out there, remote, where many of the stories took place. Safe but not safe. Those are warm memories for me, and I cherish them, but my own experience of a campfire ghost story is anything but happy.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
I was 32 years old at the time and had decided to do a spot of wild camping in the countryside with two friends. All three of us were adventurous, but it was Jack who was the most intrepid, while Derek and I were a little more cautious — cowardly or sensible, take your pick.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
We had hiked into a thick web of forest thinking we’d be able to find somewhere flat and comfortable to camp for the night, but it proved much more difficult than we’d anticipated. Initially, we followed a thin sliver of dirt track for a few miles. The forest grew darker as we progressed, and I was fascinated by how close together the trees had grown, blocking out much of the light above.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
We had been hoping to pass a clearing at the side of the track, but as it narrowed Jack grew restless. Suddenly, he stepped off to the side and disappeared between two trees. Derek shouted on him but no reply was given. I laughed nervously, looking around me at the strangeness of the place. The thin track stretching off in a straight line for some distance.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Derek called out again seemingly just as nervous as I was. We peered into the dim light of the forest and waited. Silence. Broken only by the occasional leaf or branch being moved by the cold air, which seemed to whisper out from within like a silent breath.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Finally, Jack answered: “I thought I saw something.”<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
His voice seemed distant, as if he had wandered farther than I would have thought possible in the short few minutes since he left the track. I started looking back the way we came and noticed that the long path must have curved slightly in the distance. There was no light from the outside like I would have expected — a pinpoint in the distance at the end of a woodland tunnel.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
The place began to feel claustrophobic to me and, I’m sure I imagined this, but it was as if the forest had closed in slightly, the light dimming overhead, partially obscured by the canopy above.</div>
<div class="western">
<br />
“I thought I saw something.” Those words have always stuck in my mind because they seemed genuine.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Derek and I stood for another few seconds, waiting for Jack to expand on what he’d seen from wherever he was behind the tree line; but again we only found silence. After calling out several times and waiting for a few minutes, I decided that I was going to go in and find Jack. I knew deep down that he was probably playing a prank, as he often did when he got bored, but in the pit of my stomach, I felt that there was something off about the entire situation.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
I dropped my bag to the ground and took out my torch. The light barely penetrated the trees and was stopped as the forest grew even thicker a few metres in. I took a deep breath and stepped forward off the track, but as I did so Derek grabbed hold of my arm. He didn’t say a word and just pointed ahead down the path. It was Jack. He was standing about 20 metres away. I was confused by how he had managed it. The forest was so thick where he had entered, we should have heard him breaking through branches as he moved in that direction. But we had heard nothing since he shouted he had seen something, his voice sounding distant and much farther away from where he now stood.</div>
<div class="western">
What was left of the light broke through the trees above as a breeze swayed the canopy overhead.<br />
<br />
Jack was standing with his back to us, motionless. We called his name, but he never responded. At this point Derek started to laugh and was sure our friend was just messing around, but when I started to walk towards Jack, Derek stayed where he was, still laughing but his eyes appearing apprehensive.</div>
<div class="western">
I must admit, I was certainly feeling nervous. The entire situation felt strange, something was not right but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I drew closer, and as I did I asked Jack how he’d got over there without making a sound, but he didn’t turn around. He just stood there with his back to me.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Finally I reached him, standing directly behind. “Jack”, I said.”Stop messing about, it’ll be dark soon and we need to find somewhere to camp.” Again, no answer. He was as quiet as the forest. My heart began to race, and as it did I started to get angry. “Jack! Stop being an idiot!” And with that I put my hand on his left shoulder and spun him around towards me.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Two things I have never forgotten happened to me at that moment. When I touched his shoulder I felt a cold sting arc across my hand, like placing your hand in frozen water. The second occurrence has always stayed with me and still haunts me when I think of it. For the briefest of seconds, a flicker, the man who faced me was not Jack. I know how that sounds, and he did look like Jack, but there was something about his eyes which made me shudder. A moment where I looked into my friend’s face and saw a stranger.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Of course I passed it off as a ridiculous notion. Jack started laughing hysterically, and as he did I began to persuade myself that everything was fine and that it was just another prank. The three of us continued on and in fact we made it out of the forest on the other side, where we set up camp next to a river. Jack seemed fine, his usual adventurous self, and so I thought nothing of it… For a while.</div>
<div class="western">
We camped for another four nights in different places. Thankfully, on the way back to where we had parked our car, we were able to avoid the forest entirely, which I wished we had done in the first place. It was when I suggested taking a different route that Jack began to seem annoyed: more than annoyed in fact. He flew into a rage and stormed off ahead of us as if leading us back there, but I was always able to talk Derek around to my way of thinking, and so we outvoted Jack and followed the river to where we started instead.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
On the way home Jack sat in the car in silence for most of the journey, which took a few hours. Derek was driving and dropped me off at my house first, but as I said goodbye to both of them, Jack leaned in from behind my seat and placed his hand on my shoulder before saying: “See you later, mate”</div>
<div class="western">
The same chill which I had felt in the forest ran across my shoulder and up my neck. I will not lie when I say I was glad to be out of the car.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Over the next few months Jack seemed to continue his grievance with me, at least that was the way it felt. He would leave me out of meet-ups and nights out, inviting Derek but not me. It didn’t entirely bother me as the experience at the forest had left me uncomfortable around him. Even though I knew logically that it was probably all in my mind, I kept coming back to that feeling I had when he first turned around to face me on that lonely path.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
As of this writing it’s been a year since we went on our trip, and the real reason why I’ve written my experience down. You see, Jack managed to persuade Derek to go back to the forest with him, and he’s never been the same since. I’ve spoken to him, we’ve laughed and spent time together, in fact the three of us have, Jack’s grudge seemingly disappearing when they returned. I know this all seems ridiculous, and more than a small part of me thinks I have just exaggerated this whole thing and jumped to unrealistic conclusions; but there are moments between the laughter and good times, when the three of us are together and I feel like I am in the company of two strangers.<br />
<br /></div>
<style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { size: 21.59cm 27.94cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> </style> They continually ask me when we’re going to go on our next camping trip. I keep making excuses, and, imagination or not, that’s a habit I intend to maintain.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-81070905843909581552017-09-25T03:40:00.000-07:002017-10-14T06:24:00.411-07:00A Warning to the Curious | M. R. James | Ghost Story Society #1<div style="text-align: center;">
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Take a seat as our 13th member. The Ghost Story Society awaits as we read the M.R. James tale of dread, A Warning to the Curious...<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-45729982541676060802017-09-23T16:57:00.001-07:002017-10-14T06:18:58.637-07:00Carson's Folly | Written & Narrated by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: left;">
The 5th episode in my campfire horror story series. Come join me by the fire now as two teenagers journey along a deserted path, a place long abandoned, known only as 'Carson's Folly'...</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-12056976933632401252017-09-22T11:11:00.000-07:002017-09-23T17:17:01.482-07:00Pre Halloween Horror Livestream - September, 2017Hey folks. I'll be livestreaming with my compadres over at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/ghastlytales" target="_blank">Ghastly Tales</a>. We're playing some horror card games, telling a few macabre tales, and having a swell time. You can message me directly on <a href="https://twitter.com/HorrorOfMike" target="_blank">Twitter</a> or ask questions in the chat. Come join us... If you dare...<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m6hcRTDKmDg" width="560"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-62279322939468926122017-09-14T14:56:00.002-07:002017-10-14T07:38:06.360-07:00Updating the Site: Gremlins in the System<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://tropicsofmeta.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/female-gremlin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://tropicsofmeta.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/female-gremlin.jpg" title="[Feature] Gremlins Are Sexy" width="400" /></a></div>
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Please Enjoy This Uncomfortable Picture Until Everything is Sorted.</div>
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Hi everyone. Just a wee announcement to say that I'm currently updating the site. This could take a few days, so things will be... Weird... Until I fix everything. Or the gremlins get me. Either way. It's all in the name of entertainment. See you on the other side.<br />
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~ MikeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-80246727179493927822017-08-15T07:00:00.000-07:002017-10-14T07:01:41.210-07:00G. M. Danielson | Horror Detour #7<div style="text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-1784943907268749572017-07-11T12:04:00.002-07:002017-10-14T06:19:23.417-07:00'Old Maggie's Pool' | Campfire Horror, by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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Another entry in my From a Campfire's Embers series. Weird fiction perfect for a campfire setting. The written version of this story is available to my <a href="https://www.patreon.com/MichaelWhitehouse" target="_blank"><span style="color: yellow;">Patreon</span></a> subscribers only, but will be available as a short story collection early next year. Come with me now to the fire, and listen...</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-63867386377853948822017-05-23T14:13:00.001-07:002017-10-14T15:45:51.454-07:00'The Melancholy of Herbert Solomon' | A Ghost Story by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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Watch Above | Read Below | Or <a href="http://ghastlytales.libsyn.com/the-melancholy-of-herbert-solomon-by-michael-whitehouse" target="_blank"><span style="color: yellow;">Listen Within...</span></a></div>
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On several occasions my interest in the supernatural has taken me to some of the most prestigious seats of learning in the entire United Kingdom. From the venerable halls of Oxford and Cambridge, to the more humble surroundings of inner city colleges and schools, my pursuit of evidence to substantiate such claims has rarely been fruitful. However, while exploring the University of St Andrews in Scotland, I found an intriguing tome hidden away in a dark and musty corner of the old campus library.</div>
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The book itself was unusual, its cover bound in a weathered and blackened leather which unashamedly wore the wrinkles and cracks of time. It dated back to the 16th century, and seemed to contain various descriptions and accounts of the daily lives of the people of Ettrick; a small isolated town built in the south moorlands of the country.<br />
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Perusing the volume there was a variety of entries from a number of authors spanning a 60 year period. It seemed to have been handed down from town elder to town elder over that time, and to be quite frank most of it contained idle musings on the townsfolk and plans for a number of humble building projects and improvements. But just as I was about to conclude that the book was of little interest to me, I noticed on the inside of the back cover that someone had drawn a picture. It was elegantly depicted, but I would never have described it as a pleasing sight, in fact my immediate reaction was one of disgust. </div>
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The combination of the harsh, almost angry black lines used and the stark imagery of the scene, as relayed by the artist, left me with a thoroughly unpleasant impression of its subject. I shuddered as I cast my eye over it in an attempt to take-in the picture of what seemed to be a man, tall with long, thin arms and legs. His face was partially obscured by one of his gaunt white hands, but what could be seen was certainly monstrous. Prominent veins protruded from his forehead leading up to a pallid balding head with wisps of greying hair, his eyes were deep set into his skull and the surrounding woods seemed to twist and lean away from him fearfully.</div>
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At first I assumed that the picture was some form of hideous graffiti, but at the bottom of the page was inscribed the date of 1578, along with two unsettling words: Herbert Solomon. Whether this was the name of the menacing figure in the drawing or of the artist, I did not know.</div>
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Disturbed yet compelled by that dark woodland scene, I decided that the book required further study. I desired greatly to know who this creature was, and why someone had felt the need to capture his strange form in a drawing; a drawing at the back of a book otherwise used to record the lives of the townsfolk. On closer inspection what surprised me further was that the same image seemed to recur elsewhere in the book, but drawn by apparently different individuals. Scribblings, uncertain, almost unfinished depictions. A visual record of someone very much alive and present in the minds of the book’s many authors.</div>
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Within its pages I found numerous mentions of Herbert Solomon, and a detailed account of what happened to him. He had lived in the 16th century on the outskirts of the town. It was a small and underdeveloped place, surrounded on all sides by the thick cover of Ettrick forest, which itself sat in the midst of a vast region of southern moorland. The town had a small parish church with one humble steeple, an inn normally used by those travelling through the unforgiving countryside, and quaint cobbled streets which wound their way around the stone cottages and town hall. </div>
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According to the descriptions in the book, during the December of 1577 children began to disappear from the area. The first was a young girl by the name of Alana Sutherland. She had been playing with some friends by an old well on the outskirts of town, but had dropped a small toy doll down it accidentally, which had caused her much distress. Unable to retrieve it, she returned home to borrow some string and an old hook in the hopes of being able to fish the doll out of the water below. She was last seen walking towards the well just as the sun set.</div>
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In a panic the townsfolk searched, they dredged and emptied the well, they combed the wheatfields, and even sent several groups of those willing into the surrounding woods. Alas, the girl was not found. A few days later a young boy by the name of Erik Kennedy was running an errand for his grandmother. It was dark, but he had to take some wool over to the Munro place as way of thanks for the grain they had provided, and they lived but only a few streets away. It was assumed that at least the centre of the town would be safe, but the boy never completed his errand. He vanished, as if he were torn from existence.</div>
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By the end of January an unusually bitter winter had caused significant damage to the town and its people. Large, thick sheets of ice and snow covered each house and building. Several people died from the cold alone, and the general mood of Ettrick town was a sombre one. Despite these trying times, the townspeople were more concerned with the safety of their offspring. In total, seven children had now disappeared without rhyme or reason. Whole families wept in despair as everyone began to view one another suspiciously. They knew the truth; someone was taking their children from them.</div>
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By mid February two more had went missing and accusatory glances were now being shared between every family, and every member of the community. The town elder decided to act, and took upon himself the arduous task of identifying and catching the fiend. Bureaucratic discussions were had, church groups convened, and in every house, in every street, in every corner of Ettrick, one name crossed the lips of its inhabitants: 'Herbert Solomon'. The more the name was mentioned, the more certain his guilt became.</div>
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He was an outsider. He lived in a small wooden cabin amongst the woods which surrounded the town, and due to his unfortunate appearance tended to avoid human contact. What his malady was no one was sure and in the unenlightened times of 16th century Scotland, many believe that he was cursed. Modern eyes would have guessed him to be the victim of a wasting disease. He rarely ventured into town, except on a few occasions to trade for supplies and even in those instances he covered his face with a brown tarnished hat and a grey piece of cloth, which obscured his features below two deep set and darkened eyes.</div>
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Several of the townsfolk told stories of Herbert Solomon, according to these accounts he would stand on the edge of the forest bathed in shadow, watching the farmers till their land and their little ones play in the fields. It was his fascination with children which left many feeling uneasy. Some had returned home from playing near the woods on a number of occasions with beautifully crafted dolls and toys. They were a present, from Herbert Solomon they said, and being innocent children they could not know of the dangers a strangers gift could hold.</div>
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When the children began to disappear, eyes immediately turned to the strange man living in the woods. Accusations were carried by the whispers of fearful parents, and as those whispers increased in number so did their volume, until it was decided that Herbert Solomon must be stopped. </div>
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On a cold February night the elders of the town decreed that Solomon should be arrested immediately. Grief, anger, resentment, and fear grew to a fever pitch with this news and every man woman and child set out across the fields, entering into the surrounding forest in search of the child killer. Details of exactly what occurred that night were only recorded briefly, but it seemed as though the people of Ettrick town removed Solomon from his small cabin by force. One paragraph within the book stated that he had been knocked unconscious, beaten and then hanged, his body left to rot on a tree by the fields. </div>
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The townsfolk believed that justice had been done, and while the grief of the parents who had lost their children could never be quenched, there was at least the satisfaction of knowing that the man responsible was now dead. However, over the following few days an unease descended upon that place. Stories began to spread of strange encounters in the streets at night; a gaunt shadowy figure prowling the cobbled stones, hiding in the darkness. </div>
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Within a week numerous residents claimed to have been disturbed during the night by the petrifying sight of an unwelcome visitor. One account was of an elderly lady who woke to the sound of something rustling under her bed, only to scream in terror as a tall, thin man pulled himself out from underneath. She fainted, but not before she saw his face; a withered complexion as if ravaged by disease, his eyes blacker than night and his hands composed of tightly pulled skin over a bony interior.</div>
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Another story told of a local tradesman who, while investigating a noise from his cellar, was confronted by a hideous figure so tall and gaunt that it had to hunch over to avoid the low ceiling entirely, its sheet-white face flickering in the candlelight. The man managed to escape the intruder’s grasp, but not before being hounded and chased out into the street.</div>
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When one of the elders himself spoke of finding the nightly intruder with his hands placed on the head of his sleeping grandchild, it became clear to the townspeople that the ghost of Herbert Solomon had returned to seek his revenge. He was still searching for other victims from beyond the grave. His hate and hideous form haunting those who had murdered him.</div>
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With each passing day the sightings grew in intensity and number. A fog descended on the town, and the people wept and grieved as the sound of Herbert Solomon terrorised each person, night by night. He was seen wandering amongst the wheatfields, in the cellars and lofts of cottage houses, his long gaping footsteps ringing out each night through the streets of Ettrick town. They had been cursed. In life Herbert Solomon had taken and murdered their children, and now in death he seemed to possess the twisted means to terrorize the entire town once again.</div>
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Families were encouraged to take turns watching their children at night, never leaving them alone as the stuttered footsteps of Solomon creaked from nearby darkened corners. Then the unthinkable happened; another child was taken. A young orphan girl - who often wandered the streets when she could not find a place to call home for the night - was heard screaming for her life. The townsfolk rushed to their windows, looking out but not daring to leave the imaginary safety of their houses. Paralysed by fear all they could do was yell from their windows, “Solomon is here, the beast has come!”. </div>
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The screaming ceased quickly, followed moments later by the menacing figure of Herbert Solomon, wandering out of the fog no doubt pleased by his most recent prey. He rushed down the street, his lifeless arms bashing against the houses which he passed, scraping the doors and windows with his rigid fingers, emitting an unnatural yell of anger and hatred on his way.</div>
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The girl was gone, and the town grieved once more.</div>
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In the proceeding days the fog grew denser and with it came the unwelcome news of two more children taken. One a 14 year old girl whom after having a raging argument with her family, left the house never to be seen again. The other a boy named Matthew, the son of a notable drunk, who was taken from his own bed by the hands of Solomon while the father lay unconscious from drink.</div>
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Sacrilage was now added to the campaign of terror being waged against the people of Ettrick from beyond the grave. During a holy service Solomon appeared briefly in the aisles of the church, seemingly unaffected by consecrated ground. The congregation whimpered in horror and disdain as his warped, spindly form walked slowly behind a pillar and then vanished. It was indeed a show of influence. A statement that even their God could not save them.</div>
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Hope was almost lost. Not even a place of worship could deny him, and he was now capable of entering any home at night and then taking whatever, or whoever he wished. The town had to act, or abandon the place altogether, but there was no guarantee that the curse of Solomon would not follow.</div>
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The local vicar, a man by the name of Colville was asked by the people of Ettrick to use any sacred power which was ordained to him to exorcise the foul curse of the creature. In an attempt to destroy or banish the spirit of Solomon, a plan was formulated. The vicar and a few chosen individuals armed with torches, swords which had been blessed, and vials of holy water, would take guard over the town waiting for the cursed figure of that child killer to show his deformed face once more.</div>
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Then they would confront him.</div>
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Observing as much of the town as possible from several house windows, roofs, and strategic street corners, Colville’s chosen waited. They did not, however, have to wait long. That night the ominious figure of Herbert Solomon appeared through the suffocating mist, walking the streets of Ettrick with purpose. Yells and screams rang out, announcing in terror that Solomon had returned. </div>
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Families held their children close as dark thoughts consumed the town: <i>Please spare my child, take another's.</i></div>
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Colville was the first to confront him. His will was shaken by the sight of the beast’s hideous pallid face, rotten and ravaged. The gangly spindling figure stood staring intently at the vicar through black, clouded eyes. Another man now joined, then another, before long Solomon was surrounded. Colville instructed the men to slowly close the circle, drawing their swords with one hand while brandishing flaming torches in the other.</div>
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Fear gripped them, but they knew that this could be their only chance to banish the curse. Colville threw a vial at Solomon's lumbering feet and as he uttered a Christian Psalm, another man struck out with his torch. The blow crackled as the cloth covered arm of Solomon caught fire. Cheers rang out from the townsfolk watching from their homes above, but the man had strayed to close, providing a gap in the circle which Solomon claimed with purpose. </div>
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He fled.</div>
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His spindling legs and flailing arms cast spider like shadows on the walls and cobbled streets as he passed. The townsfolk gave chase, following the murderous figure as it negotiated each street corner, lane, and courtyard in an attempt to escape their rage. </div>
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The noise alerted all others in the town: <i>Herbert Solomon is trying to flee</i>!</div>
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From every home across the town, people poured out of their houses carrying whatever they could as a makeshift weapon. They flooded the streets and ran towards the protestations, shouts and screams of their brethren. With every turn of a cobbled street corner, Solomon was running out of places to hide. Finally, as he stumbled down the town's main street, he stopped. The townsfolk had blocked all escape routes; he was trapped. </div>
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Colville pushed his way to the front of the crowd, asking for quiet and calm as he approached the hunched defeated figure of Herbert Solomon. He and his chosen few were going to rid the town of Ettrick of this abomination once and for all. Vial in hand, accompanied by several large bullish men brandishing swords, Colville stepped towards the twisted figure slowly, reciting verses from the bible. Solomon stared intently at the vicar through darkened eyes, before looking into the faces of the families he had terrorised; the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the children he had brutally taken. The crowd now closed ranks, moving towards him, fear for such a wretch now replaced by thoughts of vengeance. Then, the foul figure simply turned and entered an open doorway next to him.</div>
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The people gasped as Colville and his followers rushed inside after him. The house they had entered was still, and lying on the hard wooden floor of the main hallway was the pale body of a young girl. The creaking of floorboards under weight sounded above as numerous pursuers searched the building, disappointed to find nothing. </div>
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Then something miraculous occurred, the little girl gasped for air – she was alive. She had little or no strength left in her tiny body, all she could do was whisper one word into the attentive ear of the vicar: <i>Below</i>.</div>
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In the cellar of the house Colville’s men found a grim and horrific scene. The floor was covered in blood and the dead body of a man lay face down upon it. Chained to the walls of that dim place were the children who had been taken. They were partially drugged, malnourished, and traumatised, but they were alive.</div>
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The town rejoiced with the news, families were reunited, lives were mended. The mist of a bleak and morbid winter slowly lifted, and all seemed well. On regaining their strength the children described their horrible ordeal. Each of them had been taken by a man called Tom Sutherland. He was the father of the first girl who had went missing, and it appeared that it was he who had killed her. No one knew for sure, but many were aware of his bad temper and on more than one occasion he had struck poor Alana in public. </div>
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Consumed by guilt and loss, Sutherland began taking children at knife point and locking them in his cellar. Often drugging them with a local herb and occasionally beating them while pathetically weeping in self pity. On the day that the children were found, Sutherland had entered the cellar drunk, carrying a knife and rope. He began striking the children once more, and told them that one would die that day. He chose a young girl as his victim - she would “know Alana’s pain”. He dragged her to the floor before pinning her to the ground with his knees. The knife hovered over her neck, but just as he was about to plunge the blade into her fragile body, someone entered the house.</div>
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Sutherland grew ferocious with anger, but whoever was standing at the top of the staircase struck such fear into him that he quickly back peddled into the cellar. Ducking under the doorway was the tall scarred figure of Herbert Solomon. At the sight of him, and now being free, the little girl crawled quickly between Herbert's long legs. She made it to the top of the stairs, but was too weak to run, fainting before she could escape the house.</div>
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Details of what happened to Tom Sutherland were muddied by the unstable, semi-conscious condition of the witnesses. But it was clear that his neck was broken, his head twisted with such force that it faced an unnatural, opposite direction.</div>
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There were various accounts of subsequent glimpses of Herbert Solomon, and some of the children claimed to find beautifully crafted dolls and toys on occasion sitting at the edge of the woods, but of course this cannot be substantiated. </div>
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<span class="s1">Indeed, I would have said that the entire story could not be substantiated, if it were not for a newspaper article during subsequent research. The article had been written roughly two years before I had stumbled across the book at St Andrews, and what it contained moved me greatly. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It spoke of a couple and their young daughter picnicking on the edge of Ettrick Forest. Their daughter, only four years old at the time, was sleeping soundly on a blanket, and so in the summer sun, both parents nodded off after a couple of glasses of wine. They were woken by screams coming from nearby, and the realisation that their daughter was missing. Panic stricken, they followed the cries for help over an old fence and down a steep grassy hill, where they reached a winding and furious river. Their daughter had fallen in and was clinging to a large tree root which thrust out from the opposite embankment into the water. The root was wet and with screams of anguish, they watched as their daughter lost her grip. She fell and was swept down stream towards a large formation of huge sharp rocks which jutted out from beneath the surface. The river would not let go and threw the little girl around with such force that it was difficult to see how she could survive.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Filled with the abject terror that their daughter was about to be dashed against the rocks, no doubt growing soon after, the couple finally made it to the water's edge. As they rushed into the murky torrent they watched helplessly as the poor little girl was about to crash into the rocks.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Their attention was then suddenly grabbed by the cracks and creaks of a tall gaunt figure at the other side of the river, rushing out of the woods at tremendous speed on the opposite bank. With one swift motion a thin, bony hand plunged into the violent water, prevailing against the immense currents, finally pulling the young girl to safety.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The pale faced, emaciated figure placed the girl gently on the ground, patted her on the head, and then stared at the parents from across the water through eyes which they described as dark and sad. He then returned back into the woods, fading away to nothing but a memory.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-71917549883691063642017-04-25T06:58:00.000-07:002017-10-14T06:59:18.514-07:00Youtube is Killing Horror | Horror Detour #6<div style="text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-9457762760328225272017-01-06T07:05:00.002-08:002017-09-14T07:39:30.889-07:00Haggard's Peak | A Horror Story by Michael Whitehouse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Folds of grass mounds dipped and rose as we climbed the cliffs. At their peak an old cottage stood, the time of its construction long forgotten. We drove, and had been driving, for hours. It was all I knew how to do. Our house foreclosed, my dreams - our dreams - repossessed along with them. I sat in the driver’s seat, my wife alongside me, and our two children in the back. It was good that they couldn’t see my expression. How could I face them? How could I explain that our lives had just been cut loose, taken out by a nameless tide swathed in empty bank accounts and red letters typed harshly demanding final payment. I had failed.</div>
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Lauren knew. She hadn’t spoken since we started driving. The men had come; we put the last of our things in the small caravan, which now toed behind us, filled with the echoes of our previous lives. Our home had been lost, and the old rickety caravan, which had been my Aunt’s, was now our only hope of shelter. Thank God it had not been taken from us as well.</div>
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‘What will we do now?’</div>
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Lauren’s words still rang in my ears, a wife unsure, swirling through my mind for the duration of the drive. The kids had laughed and giggled, excited by the adventure. But their sweet ignorance was more painful to me than any bailiff. The children were happy, but for how long? We were now miles from the city, climbing up the incline to Haggard’s Peak, away from our neighbours, our friends, our church group, the school - their world was undone, and yet they did not know it.</div>
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When we found ourselves in the car driving along the motorway with caravan in toe, I just wanted to go somewhere safe; somewhere comforting. The kids would be on their summer holidays just a few days later, and so I didn’t see the point in staying in that bleak city for one more day. I needed to think things through, far away from any reminder of the bad decisions I had made.</div>
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As the night drew in and a small dusting of rain pattered on the roof of our car, one place spoke to me through the darkened, red-tainted sky. A place which reached out from my childhood like a comforting embrace — Haggard’s Peak. The name didn’t sound appealing, but I had spent several summers there when I was a boy, playing on the beaches and exploring the hills; and felt the air of the sea would be as good a tonic as any to the poisoned grip of the city. I wanted to relive that feeling of freedom, when hope was boundless and the realities of life were nothing more than a darkened cloud hovering in the distance.</div>
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The car struggled in several places, the ascent steeper than I remembered, but as we rose up above the rocks and thrashing sea below, my daughter Beth let out an excited ‘wow’ as the moon broke through the clouds above to provide a brief glimpse of the landscape. The sea warped and undulated below as the rain made countless impressions on its surface. Hills and cliffs dotted the land into what could be seen of the horizon, and as we reached the top of Haggard’s Peak, the old cottage at the summit brooded, frozen in white and grey stone, a small red wooden door locked against the encroaching moonlight, and its solitary chimney reaching up to a sky which threw nothing but rain down in reply. The years hadn’t changed it, and if anything it appeared even more resolute against the elements than I remembered. No one had lived there when I was a boy, but how glad I was to see that it had survived the years a little less battered than myself.</div>
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‘Why here, Joe?’</div>
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I turned to my wife to answer: ‘It’s away from everything.’ I looked out at the sea and to the cottage which now partially shielded us from the wind. ‘My aunt used to take me here in the summer.’ I feigned a smile of reassurance. ‘The Kid’s will love it.’</div>
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Lauren was concerned about the place. She worried about the cliffs, but as we parked on a small patch of grass where others before us had visited, I assured her that the kids would be quite safe as long as we kept an eye on them. The summit rolled with thick, long, dark green grass, as we sat in the car far away from the precipice to the rear of the cottage, which dropped down to the violent seas hundreds of feet below. Yes, we'd be quite safe, the cottage was now at least a five or ten minute walk from us and the cliffs further than that.</div>
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We set a table in the caravan as night finally fell and treated the kids to a midnight snack before putting them to bed. Beth complained about not being tired, as any seven year old would, but our youngest, Ross, was all but asleep when we tucked him into his bed. As the wind crept up and shook the caravan gently, I told both of them they’d be safe and that we would be going home in a few days. It’s a terrible thing when a parent lies to their children, hoping that somehow their words will come true.</div>
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I lay next to my wife in the small room next door, listening to each creak and rattle, the wind seeping out from the night. Perhaps Lauren was awake, running the same bleak thoughts of homelessness through her head, searching feverishly for an answer, but I did not know as I could not bear to face her. I just stayed in the darkness hoping that in the morning a way forward would be clearer to me. </div>
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I focussed on the sound of rolling waves in the distance, but then noticed something peculiar. Light sounding at first, yet becoming more pronounced as it neared. A shuffling through the long grass outside. I dismissed it as a bird simply rustling through the undergrowth. I lay there until finally sleep came, to the pleasant backdrop of wind and rain and sea.</div>
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In the morning I woke, numb to the world with a momentary loss of memory, not registering the house being repossessed or the drive towards Haggard’s Peak. Soon the comfort of a fogged mind passed, and the reality of my situation, of my family’s, filtered through. I struggled to rise, feeling no clearer about what to do next. Lauren seemed brighter, but as the children dressed to go outside and explore their surroundings with us, I saw a glimpse in her eyes; a look which told me she was hurting, putting on a brave face for our children, something I was not sure I could do.</div>
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After breakfast we went outside to stretch our legs and to let the children explore the imposing scenery. In the summer morning the sea breeze momentarily blew away my anxiety, and while looking out across the bay below, the tide receding to reveal patches of sand and stone, ground out from the ancient coast by eons of tidal movement, the beauty of the place spoke of hope. </div>
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It was sad to me that there were no other caravans on the hilltop, as the long luscious grass provided more than enough space for a large number, indeed the cliff tops followed the coastline for miles, something which I was sure would provide the kids with plenty to do, under a watchful eye of course. I remembered when I was younger, Haggard's Peak dotted with caravans and all the kids, strangers to each other, thrown together into fleeting friendships for the summer. Those long warm glorious days when life was simple.</div>
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After taking in the now misted view of the sea, it wasn’t long until Beth and Ross turned their attentions to the old cottage, that remnant of a past life which stemmed back much farther than my own.</div>
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‘Can we go inside?’ Beth asked hopefully, curling a strand of her blond hair in her fingers. </div>
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‘No, the cottage hasn’t been open for a long time as far as I know.’ As those words slipped out of my mouth I felt apprehensive about the statement. There was no doubt that the cottage was looked after. The small garden which sat in front was mowed, with several flowers and shrubs clearly planted along the inside of the black and rusted iron fence which surrounded the building at chest height. </div>
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When I was there as a child we used to play in the grounds, until my Aunt told us off for not respecting the absent owners. Thinking back it was taken care of even then. I assumed that it was a listed building, as it was clearly several hundred years old, and the pristine nature of its impressive rear gardens spoke of care and nurture when there seemed to be no other indication that someone lived inside. Yet the building itself, set against the backdrop of where ocean met sky, seemed rigid and imposing, far more so than its size should otherwise have reasonably mustered.</div>
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The children giggled as I unlatched the iron garden gate which squealed as we pushed it aside. Lauren protested against us going in, but I had experienced adventure and long innocent summer days on Haggard’s Peak, and wanted my family to experience the same carefree sentiment. ‘No one lives here. It’s fine.’</div>
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We wandered into the garden, the slabbed path which cut through the lawn leading to the front door and around the back. It was then that I noticed that Ross had refused to follow. He stood by the garden gate looking at the windows which were blackened by a vacant inside. I took him by the hand and told him everything was fine, but he wouldn’t budge.</div>
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‘Someone’s watching you, daddy’ he said, before cowering behind his mum’s legs.</div>
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Lauren looked at me sternly: ‘why must you always push things?’, she said before walking Ross back to the caravan.</div>
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Why must I always push things indeed.</div>
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Something had certainly perturbed my son. He'd only just turned four and I could understand how the place might have spooked him; but as I walked towards the cottage front door, I felt a caution wash over me. The door was dark red, the paint peeled and bubbled revealing a greyish wood underneath. There was no handle or, stranger still, any sign of a keyhole. The door seemed in every way an exit rather than an entrance. </div>
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I realised then that I was alone; that my daughter Beth was nowhere to be seen. Knowing that the cliffs were nearby, I panicked. I shouted her name, but received no reply. Looking to the caravan across the hilltop I hoped that she had wandered to it. My eye was then drawn to the garden path which, after meeting the doorway, moved off to the side and then rear of the house. I rushed down the path quickly, surprised by the length of the cottage. I felt hemmed in by the large hedgerow which marked its boundary, running alongside me as tall as the house.</div>
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After passing through an arch of vines, I found myself in the garden which ran long and terminated just a few feet from the cliff edge. It was surrounded by a pristine hedgerow, the sides tall, keeping the place from prying eyes, yet at the foot of the garden it gave way allowing for an unimpeded view of the rolling seas and cracked rocks far below. A wooden bench sat down there, facing the waters, offering itself up to me.</div>
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In the centre of a sprawling lawn there stood a small orchard of a few apple trees, and in the middle an old wicker seat surrounded by vine arches, similar to the ones I had passed through before. And on the seat was Beth, looking up at the rear of the cottage. I called her name, the only reply a swishing of waves and swooshing of sea air. I called again, and finally she broke from her stillness and looked at me. The colour had drained from her face, and she looked dazed. </div>
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‘Someone lives here, Daddy’ she said, her eyelids falling slightly as she did so.</div>
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‘I’m beginning to think that myself. Let’s go back to the caravan, okay?’</div>
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I could tell that Beth had something on her mind, the same look she gave me when she had stolen a toy from a neighbour’s garden the previous summer, and experienced true guilt for the first time.</div>
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‘She’s watching us.’</div>
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I looked around, and it was then that I noticed the strange construction of the cottage. From the front it appeared like any other, bar for the unusual door without a keyhole; but from the rear it became utterly unique. The roof arched up slightly to reveal a solitary window, a large spherical porthole held together by a metal frame which met in the centre to create a huge cross. The glass appeared substantially thicker than a normal window, warping slightly and twisting rays of light to create a dull, murky and blurred impression. From the front I would have sworn that the house only had one level, but that strange window allowed the world to glimpse a half-floor or attic which was not immediately apparent. What unsettled me more than anything else, more than the strange construction, was that the there were no other windows, and that the entire rear of the ground floor was encased in a wall of grey brick and mortar.</div>
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I couldn’t be sure that someone hadn’t been looking at us, and while I saw no evidence for it, I did feel unwelcome in that pristine garden; so much so that I had to look away from the window and reassure Beth that no one was nearby - even though I didn’t believe it.</div>
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We walked out of the garden together, and as we did so the light warped and moved through the thickened window. The sound of gulls broke the silence, carried by the winds across the shore.</div>
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That evening we had a family dinner, followed by a board game to entertain the children. There were moments when I forgot about our situation, no longer suffocated by our financial plight. When the children went to bed, however, the reality of being homeless and its affect on my marriage were brought to the fore once more. Lauren was unhappy, and she had every right to be.</div>
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‘How long are we going to stay here?’</div>
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‘It’s a holiday, Lauren,’ I said pointedly ‘I don’t know, maybe a week or two.’</div>
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‘I can take the time, my boss doesn’t mind, but you need to find a job as soon as you can!’ she said, half whispered half shouted.</div>
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‘Look, I know this is my fault, but I... We all need some time. All I want is to stay here on the peak for a few days and to figure out a way forward.’ I smiled and leaned across the table touching my wife's hand. 'Maybe we could all do with a bit of relaxation?'</div>
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‘We don’t have time to relax. We need a home!’ Lauren turned away from me, no doubt hiding her tears. </div>
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‘Don’t you think I know that? All I’m asking is for a few days to get my head around what’s happened.’ I wrapped my arms around her. ‘I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll make this right.’</div>
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There was a pause, and in that moment I could sense a gulf between us, one which was growing by the day, and if we weren't careful, we'd soon all fall in. </div>
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Lauren turned to me, wiping her cheeks: ‘I know you will honey. I know you will.’</div>
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I felt a weight lift from my shoulders as we went to our tiny room and climbed into bed. If she had wanted to, Lauren could have left me, but she was so committed to our family. As I drifted to sleep, our bodies close to one another, I knew how lucky I was. I fell asleep listening to the grass flutter in the breeze below the caravan.</div>
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It was that same breeze which woke me. But now it filtered through the caravan and under the door into our room, the salt in the air stinging my nostrils. A low hum droned outside accompanied by a subtle whistling as the wind filtered through the nooks and crannies of our belongings inside. </div>
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At first the sea air made me feel alive, enraptured by the clean breath it provided, but then the unease of the situation swept over me - the door to the outside was clearly open. I woke Lauren, putting my fingers to my lips intimating that she should remain quiet.</div>
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‘I think someone is in the caravan,’ I said, trying to appear in control of the situation, but in my depths fear festered. Slowly, I opened our bedroom door and stepped into the cold darkness. My eyes watered, the stench of salt and sea far more potent than I had ever experienced before. A low audible creak sounded as the door to Haggard’s Peak moved in the breeze. Looking around I saw no one nearby, and then closed the door sure that the old lock must have given way during a rough wind. Then, another creak joined the chorus and a profound terror gripped me at the sight of the source - the door to Beth’s room. Forgetting quiet steps and eschewing any element of surprise, I ran towards the noise only to be greeted by an empty, utterly empty, bed.</div>
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I cried out ‘Beth!’ as I checked on our son to find him sleeping soundly. Lauren appeared from the room and let out an aching gasp at the realisation that our daughter was not in the caravan. </div>
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‘Everything is going to be okay,’ I said, trying to still the anxiety coursing through my body. ‘Stay here with Ross and lock the door. Don’t let anyone in unless it’s me or Beth, okay?’</div>
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Lauren nodded as I jumped out of the caravan half dressed with a coat wrapped around me. The cool morning air put its fingers gently through my hair, the smell of salt and sea with it. Yet there was something else in the air that day. A faint scent of rotten fish. I looked around, the sun was low in the sky, but Haggard's Peak was fully lit, and in the slow breeze it appeared almost still, like the holding of a breath.</div>
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'Beth!', I screamed, as only a parent searching for a missing child can. No reply. A sick, turning sensation gripped my stomach as the waves in the distance filtered through the panic. The cliffs, they were far enough away for children being watched, but a child on her own could wander to them in ten minutes. How long had Beth been gone!?</div>
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I ran across the grass of Haggard's Peak, shouting, yelling, crying out; my voice breaking in waves of fear. I couldn't see her. There was no sign. Then the old white cottage fell into view, its two front windows like eyes, glaring at me across the grass peak. As I approached, a strange thought entered my mind the house was laughing at me. </div>
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Entering the garden as fast as I could, I gasped for air as I ran along the side of the house, under the arch of vines and then to the rear. I felt the adrenaline shooting through my veins, my heart racing, and finally as I reached the sprawling lawn at the back, I let out an audible gasp of relief. </div>
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Beth was there. She was standing in the middle of the grass, facing the house. Facing that strange old circular window with thick warped glass.</div>
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'Beth, what are you doing!?' I shouted, grabbing hold and hugging her as if I hadn't seen her in a decade. </div>
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'Hi, Daddy,' she said. And her tone seemed unusual, distant as if her thoughts were focussed on other things.</div>
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I turned and looked at the warped window, the sight of it providing a creeping sense of unease, the same I had felt the day before. 'Beth, why did you leave the caravan? Anything could have happened to you!'</div>
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'I don't know. I don't really remember,' she looked at me with a puzzled expression. 'Who is that person in the window, Daddy?'</div>
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I froze to the spot. The sea air washed over me, and I replied in a cold sweat. A stillness then settled all around. There were no squawking gulls above or on the cliffs, no waves crashing against the rocks below, there was nothing. Just the beating of my heart. I turned around slowly, and looked at the house. Beth was right. Someone was standing behind the window, looking down at us. The figure was grey in colour, but it was impossible to tell whether it was a woman or man, as the thick glass twisted and contorted the image like a funhouse mirror. </div>
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But there it stood. Watching us. Looking down. Someone was in that cottage after all. I suddenly realised that I was trespassing, and so picked Beth up gently. She put her arms around my neck in a warm embrace. I walked towards the side of the house, and as I passed underneath the window I raised one arm to wave, acknowledging that we shouldn't have been there. But the figure stood still, stone-like, and gave no response.</div>
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By the time we exited the front garden, Lauren had dressed Ross and was walking him around the peak looking for Beth. When she saw us, she cried out and ran to her daughter, taking her out of my arms and walking straight back to the caravan with both our children. I turned and looked at the cottage. I scowled, and it scowled back.</div>
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Lauren didn't say much to me when I returned to the caravan, she was more concerned with Beth, as she should have been. When she finally did talk to me we agreed that something needed to be done about the lock on the caravan door, just in case Beth should go sleepwalking again.</div>
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We went for a picnic that day, trying to put the unwanted excitement of the early morning behind us. I thought it best if we explored a little, and so we walked along Haggard's Peak until we found a nice grassy groove which was sheltered partially from the breeze by two large grey rocks. </div>
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For a while we laughed and joked, until Beth asked: 'when are we going home?'</div>
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Lauren looked at me, hurt flickering across her face like a wave quickly broken. 'I'm not sure, darling,' she said.</div>
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I knew then was as good a time as any to broach the subject: 'Kids, we're going to find a new home, somewhere exciting!' I tried to put the most positive spin on the situation I could, but that's a difficult task when your home has been repossessed.</div>
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'Will we live near my friends?' Beth asked.</div>
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'We're not sure yet,' I replied.</div>
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'Can we live in the white cottage,' she said.</div>
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That request brought forward a fragment of the panic I had felt when Beth was lost: 'no. We need to find our own home. Someone already lives there.'</div>
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'No one lives in the house, Daddy. We can move in whenever we want.' Beth bit into a chicken sandwich spilling some mayonnaise on her chin.</div>
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'You know fine well someone lives there, Beth. Remember, the person at the window this morning?'</div>
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'They don't live there, Daddy,' she said, taking another bite.</div>
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I began to grow uneasy. 'What do you mean they don't live there?'</div>
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'She's just waiting for someone to take the house.'</div>
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'And how do you know all of this, sweetheart?' Lauren asked.</div>
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Beth took a drink of her raspberry diluting juice and nonchalantly said: 'She whispered it to me, when we were in the garden.'</div>
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Haggard's Peak had been a place I loved as a kid. I remembered the old cottage, but it didn't seem ominous to me then. As an adult, that had changed. I wondered if I'd been just as oblivious to the eeriness of the place when I was my daughter's age. I snapped out of my contemplation and tried to explain to Beth that she couldn't have heard the woman at the window – if it was indeed a woman – from where she was standing.</div>
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'She whispered it to me, Daddy. Her voice sounds like waves.'</div>
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I changed the topic of conversation, sure that she must have dreamt the entire episode, but in my gut I felt that something was wrong with the peak, and for the first time I started to doubt whether it had been the right place to go during our troubles.</div>
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We went home; to the caravan, the only home we had. After another round of board games, we put the children to bed. I double checked the lock on the front door, and then placed two suitcases in front of it, making it almost impossible for our 9 year old daughter to sleepwalk into the outside world. </div>
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Lauren snuggled up to me and passed out quickly. It had been a long day, and the worry of nearly losing our daughter had taken its toll. But I could not sleep so easily. I listened in the darkness to the sounds outside, sounds which had comforted me as a child: waves breaking on the cliffs, wind rustling through the grass underneath the caravan, and the occasional call from a bird or two. I thought about those birds, how when the wind gets up, they take to the sky, wings outstretched, letting the ferocity of the world carry them upward. And there they glide, hoping to weather the storm. I fell asleep thinking of those birds; hoping, dreaming.</div>
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When I woke it was early morning, a roar of wind was in its element, bringing with it a heavy downpour of rain which sounded like hail as it battered against the caravan's roof. I could see through the net curtains to the outside peak, the sun hadn't yet fully risen, but the sky was a dark blue hinting that soon it would be light. I reckoned the clouds would do their best to keep daylight to a minimum. The wind howled, and the rain seemed angry somehow, we were in for a storm. </div>
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Once awake, my worried mind, filled with finances and dwindling bank accounts, wouldn't allow me to return to sleep, so I stood up out of bed, left our room as Lauren slept soundly, and wandered into the kitchenette and living area. </div>
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I breathed a sigh of relief when I turned the light on. The suitcases were still tight against the door, which itself was locked to the outside world. Good thing too, as the weather was horrendous. </div>
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I poured myself a glass of water and sat for a moment, the caravan moving as each gust of wind caught it, sending a shiver through its bones. But for me, that shudder took me back again to my childhood, to those summers's on Haggard's Peak. Even if the weather turned, there was something undeniably cosy about sitting inside a caravan, thin walls of wood and mental the only barrier between you and the elements. It was safety, and that was exactly what I yearned for most; safety from the world.</div>
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A gull flew outside, no doubt hovering in the wind. Its shriek filled the air above, travelling downward through the storm, through the rain, and then through the caravan's outer shell, with the muffled remnants reaching me. In the low light of early morning the sound took on a more sinister form. It contorted once more, and then I realised it sounded more like a shriek than a caw. The gull's call sounded painful; it sounded like it was away, separated from something dear. From safety, from its family.</div>
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The noise shrieked again, the air outside muffling it, shaping it. When it finally reached me I was amazed how human it sounded. Like a child crying out. </div>
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A shiver ran through me, and the storm lulled momentarily outside. And in that moment the gull squealed again, the shriek clearer now, unimpeded with less rain and wind to contend with. </div>
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It sounded human alright. It sounded very human. </div>
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I rushed to my feet and opened Ross's bedroom door. He lay there sound asleep. Then, I went to the next door and opened it. I was blasted with a cold, salt filled air as the storm reaffirmed itself outside. But it was more than that. The air had invaded our caravan. Not through the front door as it had done the previous day, not through an opened window, no; the outside world had crashed through our sacred little barrier, through a large hole in the floor. </div>
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What I thought was a bird or the sea breeze ruffling the long blades of grass beneath us the previous two nights, was something else. It had indeed been moving, been touching and prodding below the caravan. It had broken through the floor, and it had taken Beth.</div>
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My mind was frantic. I cried out to my wife that our daughter had been taken, as I pulled the suitcases from the front door, unlocked it, and ran out into the darkened sky of a storm strewn early morning. </div>
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Lauren shouted behind me, but I didn't respond. The wind threw rain at me, my dressing gown fluttering in the wind, soaked in the madness. A mixture of sweat, panic and rain. I gasped as each wave of air and rain blew against me, putting my head to the side just to catch a breath. </div>
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I knew where I was heading. There was no doubt in my mind where Beth was. I struggled against the gale and as I did so the old white cottage grew more menacing. The red door a bloodied beacon in the now unnaturally darkened morning. </div>
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When I reached the house I ran to the side, once more under the arch of vines and then to the garden at the back. I ran down the lawn, I searched the small orchard, I made it to the very foot of the garden, to find the old wooden bench, complete with a name plate. But Beth was nowhere to be found. I stared down at the rocks below, as a ferocious waves crashed and smashed against the cliff face. My stomach turned at the thought of my daughter among them.</div>
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As I ran back up the lawn to continue my search, a chill went through my bones. I didn't feel like I was being watched, I knew I was being spied upon. I looked up and through the warped glass window at the rear of the house I saw that strange figure again. Tall and twisted by the glass, grey and lifeless. </div>
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Then another figure joined it from the darkness, a child. Smaller, more fragile. The rain thrashed down once more, and the realisation hit me: Beth had been taken into the house. That strange place with only one door, one exit.</div>
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I ran as fast as I could to the front. Just then the wind calmed slightly. The rain still fell, but it was less harsh, less angered. In that moment I looked into the darkness, a darkness which leapt out from inside the cottage – the door was lying open.</div>
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Turning to look behind me, in the distance I could see the caravan, the last piece of my home. How I wished to take my family away from that place. Away from the cliffs, away from the peak, away from the old house which now called me inward.</div>
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I stepped forward, and I was inside. My eyes took a moment to adjust. The hall was antiquated, the brown floral wallpaper reminding me of my grandmother's house. On the walls were pictures, some older than others. Old metal frames. Colourless photographs, and the subjects all wearing clothes from another era. My best guess was that they spanned the 1800s and 1900s. </div>
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I opened my mouth to shout my daughter's name, but I changed my mind at the last moment. The house felt still, and yet there was something in that stillness. Something which made my insides ache for the outside world. </div>
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The walls were lit with old lamps, they glowed dim, and while they were electric bulbs, they looked decades old, surrounded by glass which would have looked more at home around a Victorian gaslight.</div>
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Stepping forward I expected to hear a creak. But there was none. Another footstep. Still no noise from the wood beneath my feet. It was as if the house were resolute against my presence. The hall continued on, lined as it was by dim lights and old photographs. But it was upstairs, to the half-floor at the back of that strangely constructed house where I had to go. Where my daughter was being kept. </div>
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Finally I found the staircase. It rose up to the next level, narrow, awkward. And as I ascended it my shoulders touched the sides of the walls. It was as if the staircase narrowed with each step.</div>
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At the top there was a solitary door. And I knew what was behind it. The room with the warped glass window. The room where my child had been taken. It loomed large and brooding, and had Beth not been on the other side, I would have ran for my life. Away from that house, that snapshot of the past.</div>
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I pushed the door but it did not creak open. The house lay silent. I felt as though even my breathing did not make a sound there, and the storm outside could not penetrate the walls of the old cottage.</div>
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When the door lay open, I saw that the room was an attic of some description. But I did not take the time to look around, Beth stood alone at the window, and so I rushed to her.</div>
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'Daddy!' she screamed with delight.</div>
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I picked her up in my arms in front of that warped glass window and hugged and kissed her.</div>
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'Daddy, Daddy!' she cried again, burying her head into my shoulders. 'There was a man here. I was out playing and he brought me here.'</div>
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'It's okay, honey, we're going to get out of here,' I said reassuringly.</div>
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I lifted her up and caught a glimpse of the glass window. The glass was strange as it did not warp the outside world as it had done from the outside. Indeed the garden below seemed vibrant and clear. I could see the small orchard. I could see the pristine lawn. I could see the bench at the end of the garden. And I could see Beth sitting on it.</div>
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'Daddy, Daddy... I've waited so long...' the thing in my arms said. And as it did so, a strange, deep, gravelled tone broke through its words.</div>
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I looked down and saw that the dress was not Beth's, it was old, once pink, the ruffles torn and ragged. The hair which sat next to my face as it latched on tightly to me, was grey and white.</div>
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'I'm so happy you're here. This house needs a family...' the voice said, now sounding older and as haggard as the peak.</div>
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The child in my arms pulled back its head and showed me its features. It stared straight into my eyes with warped, wrinkled skin, warts and grey dust. I stumbled back trying to prise it away from me. It clawed at my face as I pulled it from my neck. Finally the old child fell to the ground as I staggered and tripped over a broken wooden rocking horse.</div>
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My head smashed against the wooden, silent floor. I lay there dazed for a moment, coughing as I inhaled a thick sheet of dust on the ground, old skin and dead things long lingered which burned in my throat and lungs. I turned my head and looked as the old child scampered to the corner of the room where it was darkest and hid behind a wooden wardrobe. But it wasn't a wardrobe. It was something else.</div>
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The first creak I ever heard in that house was when the figure the old child was hiding behind stepped forward. But it wasn't the house, it was bone and age which shuddered. It had a wooden walking stick in hand, and whatever clothes it had once worn had all but rotted away, with a few pieces of rag scarcely covering the grey crumbling skin and bones which hobbled towards me. </div>
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An old bandage was wrapped around its eyes, and when it opened its mouth to speak I heard only a groan. What was left of its tongue wriggled between its broken teeth, and it was clear to me that at, some point, the tongue had been severed. </div>
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I staggered to my feet as blood ran down my face. I must have cut my head open in the fall and it left me feeling sick and woozy. The crumbling figure moved towards me steadily, as the old child peeked out from behind. And on its withered face I saw what looked like a smile.</div>
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I ran for the door, and as I did so the old child screamed in its low gravely voice 'stop him!' The old rotten corpse with the walking stick turned and moved, but it was too slow. I had reached the door. </div>
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The old child scampered towards me on hands and feet, and it was then that I first noticed its stoop. Regardless, it moved quickly, and as I reached the doorway it slammed the door in front of me. </div>
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'You're going nowhere, Daddy,' it said.</div>
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The blinded figure moved close behind me, and a thought entered my mind: you'll never leave here. That was enough to push me through the madness. I tried to yank the old child aside, and when I did it lurched forward, opened its mouth, and bit down onto my knee cap. I felt the crunch of cartilage. Fluid and blood seeped out through the holes mixing with the my attacker's putrid saliva. I screamed in agony, and as the old child and the blinded figure lay their hands upon me, I managed to pull the door open, knocking the larger of the two to the floor before I lost my balance and fell down the narrow staircase. </div>
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I tumbled, down and down I went. It's a miracle I didn't break my neck as I lay on the crumpled floor, jammed between the two walls. I heard a muffled voice from the room above 'Daddy, Daddy, are you okay?' the gravelled voice said. But it wasn't me it was talking to, it was the blinded figure. </div>
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With an almighty effort I pulled myself through into the hallway, the pain in my knee agonising. As I made it to my feet I heard a scream. But this was different. I knew it. It was my wife, Lauren. And it came from inside the house. </div>
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I followed the yell and in a moment I was in a bedroom on the ground floor. Lauren stood there holding Ross, our son, covering his eyes from the grisly scene. The room was the same as the rest of the house, aged yet not decaying. Creak-less. Soundless. As if time was not welcome there. The walls were adorned by photographs, and in the centre of the room lay a bed, which held in its embrace the rotting corpse of a woman, the only remaining hint at her gender the dress she was wearing. </div>
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Lauren had seen the door to the cottage lying open and had come in to search for Beth. I told my wife that Beth was safe in the garden, and that she should go to her and take her to the caravan. </div>
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I left moments after. But not before I took with me a holiday memento of my visit to the old white cottage on Haggard's Peak. The corpse in the bed held with brittle skeletal fingers a book, what looked like a journal. I don't know what possessed me, but I took it, and hoped that it would make sense of the place.</div>
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We returned to the caravan. Beth told us what had happened. She had woken up with another little girl 'but not a little girl' in her room, who took her through the hole in the floor. But that was all she remembered. She didn't scream, and it was as if she hadn't wanted to either. After patching up my knee, we drove down the hill, still panicked, desperate to leave that place behind. As we passed the cottage we saw that the door was once again firmly shut, and that was at least something.</div>
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I had wanted to find a piece of my childhood there on that peak, something which would make me feel safe, like the summers of old when the world didn't seem so cruel; but instead we'd all been put in jeopardy. I returned to the real world, the world of bank statements and repossession, not looking back to that place, never looking back at all.</div>
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When we returned to civilisation I had my knee looked at by a doctor. I said I'd fallen, and he seemed to believe me. The wound didn't look like teeth marks, not any I'd ever seen. Just several puncture wounds which, after an x-ray, we'd have to wait and see whether they required surgery or not. They did not. But I did walk with a slight limp for quite some time afterwards.</div>
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As for the journal. I read it over and over, but it was the ramblings of someone caught in a spiral of dementia or madness. All I could gauge from it was that the woman in the bed had been trapped in that house for decades, as I nearly had. She was to play mother to something hideous there. The Daddy in the attic room, he was enticed there well before even that. And in a moment of spiteful rage, the old child had cut out his tongue and clawed out his eyes when he wouldn't play with it. I know now that I was close to being a replacement, and God only knows if my family would have been trapped there as well. </div>
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I only visited that place once more, a few weeks later, as Haggard's Peak haunted my thoughts. In the night I poured petrol over the red door. I splashed it over the walls and roof hoping that something would catch. Then I lit it. </div>
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I don't know why, but I was compelled to walk to the back garden and to sit on the old bench at its foot and look out at the sea, occasionally turning to watch the fire. The flames climbed higher and then fizzled out without leaving a mark. Somehow I knew that it would be hopeless, that house had been there long before I was ever born, and for a long time more it would remain. </div>
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That was when I read the plaque on the bench. The one I had seen when searching for Beth. It read: 'To Mummy and Daddy. I'll find you one day.' I hate to think what brought that creature into this world, and I hope, if I'm lucky, to never cross paths with it, or its creed, ever again. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-71192262828667439462016-12-09T19:03:00.001-08:002017-10-14T15:45:51.468-07:00Cold on Christmas Eve | Written by Michael Whitehouse<div style="text-align: center;">
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Watch above, read below, or <a href="http://ghastlytales.libsyn.com/cold-on-christmas-eve-creepypasta-michael-whitehouse" target="_blank">listen here</a></div>
<br />
It should have been the perfect Christmas Eve. A thick layer of snow had floated down gently from the sky all day. Wishing my colleagues at the office a Merry Christmas, I put on my long winter coat and scarf, and walked out into the snow. It crunched beneath my feet, and as it did so I was reminded of being a kid; of how special it was when the snow came. Then I thought about my own two kids back at home, waiting for me with my wife. That made me smile... That was... Until someone grabbed hold of my arm from a darkened doorway.<br />
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I recoiled at the sight of a homeless man in front of me, his face worn and grey, no doubt from countless nights sleeping in the cold; and his long matted beard gave both the impression and stench that he hadn’t bathed in an age.<br />
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“Spare some change?” he said, coughing.<br />
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Opening my wallet, I hoped to find a small note, but all I had were three twenties. I’m all for charity, especially at Christmas, but as the man looked down at the larger notes, I had to dash his hopes. “Sorry, I don’t have anything smaller.”<br />
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“But it’s cold on Christmas Eve…” he said.<br />
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I didn’t know what else to do, so I simply said sorry, and walked away.<br />
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It was 6PM and the sun had long since set. The streetlights lit the way, and as I walked towards the outskirts of town, I took in the silence. No cars. No people. Everyone was home I suspected, wrapping presents or preparing a feast for Christmas day. Considering how cold the air was, I was looking forward to doing the same when I got home.<br />
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As an icy wind blew down the street towards me, I stopped for a moment to adjust my scarf, pulling it closer to me. Looking up at a streetlamp, flakes of snow silently moving in front, I saw a bird sitting on top of it. It looked like a crow, or a bird with black feathers at least, but it was difficult to tell; the streetlight was overpowering, and so the details of the bird melted into the brightness, set against the jet black sky.<br />
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It appeared strange to me, more so because of its apparent size than anything else, but for the first time since I’d left the office, the feeling of festive cheer had completely abandoned me. Looking up at the bird, I now felt an emptiness, a loneliness even, on that forlorn street. I felt sorry for it, all alone on Christmas Eve, and just as those thoughts passed me by, it made a noise, something akin to a squawk. The sound unnerved me, and it evoked in me a sense of unease. Instinctively, I looked back towards where I had come almost expecting to see someone creeping towards me, but on that snow covered street we were alone.<br />
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A chill seeped through the loneliness, and as it did so I felt my bones grow colder. And so I continued onwards, trying to fill my mind with thoughts of my family, of a comfy armchair waiting for me in front of the television. Maybe a drink or two to keep the cold at bay.<br />
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A noise above startled me. At first I thought it was the wind, but it was in fact only wind-like. There was something off about the sound. Looking upwards, I saw that I was standing directly underneath another streetlight. Flakes of snow danced above me, resting on my eyelids and face. As I wiped them away, I could see it. The bird; it was sitting directly above me on the lamppost. Yet I still couldn’t make out its detail, and now I was beginning to be unsettled by the size of the thing. I couldn’t be certain, as the streetlight and snow blended together to warp what I could see. Staring at the bird, for a moment it would appear to be the shape and size one would expect, but when it shifted its weight slightly, I could swear there was more to it, its black outline more substantial, confused with the night sky.<br />
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Thoughts deep within me unstuck my feet and pushed me on. Get home they said. Leave this place. I decided to listen. Picking up the pace, I walked further down the street, but as I passed each streetlight I heard that same noise above. Like the wind, or was it feathers? Another thought reared its ugly head: It sounds more like cloth rustling in the darkness.<br />
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That impression frightened and overcame me. I began to walk faster. Yet again, the noise above sounded; as if the thing, the bird, whatever it was, was moving from post-to-post.<br />
It’s following me.<br />
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Now I ran as fast as I could, my footfalls sliding in the snow. The night air stung my lungs, and yet as I passed each streetlight the noise of cloth, of wind, of feathers above, followed.<br />
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Move faster.<br />
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And I did; around street corners, between parked cars, across usually busy roads now silent in the snow. Finally, after several minutes, the noise had ceased. As I reached my home street, I could run no longer. Standing still, I caught my breath just for a moment. Looking across the street, our Christmas decorations twinkled in the garden. All I could think of was warmth and of the comforts of home.<br />
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Something cold then touched the back of my neck. And I felt what I can only describe as talon-esque fingers, hard yet knuckled, reaching down underneath my collar and touching my spine. I let out a scream and reached behind me, flailing at whatever was there, out of reach, out of sight. But without laying eyes on it, I knew the truth: The thing that had been following me had grabbed hold of my coat at the back with talons or fingers, or something else entirely. For how long it had been grasping onto my coat, I could not say.<br />
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Pulling at it, I could not dislodge it, and so I did only what I could: I Threw my coat to the ground, leaving it in the snow. Running across the street, I reached the gate to my garden, but in my eagerness to get inside to safety I slipped on a piece of ice and fell sharply onto my back on the ground.<br />
That was when I saw it. Standing there across the street from me was not a bird, or a thing, but a man. The homeless man I had met outside the office. He pulled on my long winter coat, and did the buttons up. He then looked at me and said: “It’s cold on Christmas Eve.” Grinning from behind his matted beard, he then walked away from me down the street, back to whatever obscure place he’d come.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444893451907188044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017136615759955888.post-31312635157342514242016-11-01T06:57:00.000-07:002017-10-14T06:57:43.484-07:00Horror Sequels Better than the Originals: Horror Detour #5<div style="text-align: center;">
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