2011 Halloween Writing Contest
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Dreamless Days
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Christoph
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2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Christoph Wed Sep 07, 2011 1:44 pm
The 2011 Halloween Horror Contest
“Are you afraid yet? You should be.”
The word ‘horror’ elicits many images in the mind. One might see a dilapidated house on a gloomy night, windows glaring like sunken eyes and horrible things lurking within. Perhaps there appears a leafless forest, gnarled trees casting long shadows under a full moon. One may see vampires, werewolves, and zombies; another imagines masked killers with bloody knives. Do you picture dark witchcraft or science gone wrong? Great inhuman elder gods or the shade of a dead brother?
What is horror, then? The dictionary defines the word as “a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay.” Horror as a genre is not all about scary things jumping out of cupboards to shout “abooglywoo!” and spook you. Instead, it is defined by a specific aesthetic style and the quest to both portray and elicit the myriad of emotions that define horror. Let me say this again because it bears repeating. Horror fiction need not be ‘scary’ in the blatant or traditional sense. Horror can also disturb the psyche or build an unshakable, subtle sense of dread. The aesthetics of a horror story serve to heighten the sense that ‘something is not quite right.’
The 2011 Footsteps of Ghosts Horror Contest seeks the best works of horror fiction that our talented members can produce. We don’t require blood or gore, spooky ghosts, or anything of that nature for the story -- though we certainly will not discourage those types of themes and ideas. We want stories that frighten and disturb on a variety of levels and in a variety of ways. In short, tap into your darkest imagination. Look into the abyss until the abyss looks back.
The Rules
1.) All entries must be short stories between 2,000 and 6,000 words in length.
2.) All entries must be within Horror genre as defined above.
3.) Christoph (me) and Marcus (and possibly one or two other staff members to be announced) will judge these entries using the new FoG Rubric. We welcome mature questions and comments regarding the results, but all rulings are final.
4.) All entries must be posted in this thread by Friday, October 14th.
5.)The staff will reveal the results on the night before Halloween: Sunday, October 30th. The winner will receive a special contest winner badge for his/her signature and immortal placement for their story in the FoG Hall of Fame.
Good luck!
Entries
“Are you afraid yet? You should be.”
The word ‘horror’ elicits many images in the mind. One might see a dilapidated house on a gloomy night, windows glaring like sunken eyes and horrible things lurking within. Perhaps there appears a leafless forest, gnarled trees casting long shadows under a full moon. One may see vampires, werewolves, and zombies; another imagines masked killers with bloody knives. Do you picture dark witchcraft or science gone wrong? Great inhuman elder gods or the shade of a dead brother?
What is horror, then? The dictionary defines the word as “a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay.” Horror as a genre is not all about scary things jumping out of cupboards to shout “abooglywoo!” and spook you. Instead, it is defined by a specific aesthetic style and the quest to both portray and elicit the myriad of emotions that define horror. Let me say this again because it bears repeating. Horror fiction need not be ‘scary’ in the blatant or traditional sense. Horror can also disturb the psyche or build an unshakable, subtle sense of dread. The aesthetics of a horror story serve to heighten the sense that ‘something is not quite right.’
The 2011 Footsteps of Ghosts Horror Contest seeks the best works of horror fiction that our talented members can produce. We don’t require blood or gore, spooky ghosts, or anything of that nature for the story -- though we certainly will not discourage those types of themes and ideas. We want stories that frighten and disturb on a variety of levels and in a variety of ways. In short, tap into your darkest imagination. Look into the abyss until the abyss looks back.
The Rules
1.) All entries must be short stories between 2,000 and 6,000 words in length.
2.) All entries must be within Horror genre as defined above.
3.) Christoph (me) and Marcus (and possibly one or two other staff members to be announced) will judge these entries using the new FoG Rubric. We welcome mature questions and comments regarding the results, but all rulings are final.
4.) All entries must be posted in this thread by Friday, October 14th.
5.)The staff will reveal the results on the night before Halloween: Sunday, October 30th. The winner will receive a special contest winner badge for his/her signature and immortal placement for their story in the FoG Hall of Fame.
Good luck!
Entries
Last edited by Christoph on Thu Oct 13, 2011 1:39 pm; edited 4 times in total
Christoph- Shadow
- Join date : 2011-06-12
Posts : 191
Age : 36
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Lord Revan Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:00 pm
I am looking forward to reading and helping Christoph judge these entries. Halloween is my favorite holiday so any stories that involve it always interest me. Good luck to all the possible entrants into the contest!
Lord Revan- ★ Administrator ★
- Join date : 2011-07-25
Posts : 842
Age : 46
Location : New York, NY
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Dax Wed Sep 07, 2011 4:13 pm
I am just going to Ditto Marcus here. xD
Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.
A really, really, really big cookie.
Good luck to all who participate!
Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.
A really, really, really big cookie.
Good luck to all who participate!
Dax- Ghost
- Join date : 2009-10-19
Posts : 1766
Location : Montreal
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Sólrökr Wed Sep 07, 2011 4:19 pm
I might consider it, but horror is not my affinity.
Sólrökr- Shadow
- Join date : 2011-08-26
Posts : 142
Age : 37
Location : California
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Ana Kingsley Wed Sep 07, 2011 4:28 pm
Question!
If I wanted to base my story around some sort of creepypasta, would that be allowed?
If I wanted to base my story around some sort of creepypasta, would that be allowed?
Ana Kingsley- Shadow
- Join date : 2011-05-17
Posts : 105
Age : 34
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Christoph Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:38 am
Dax wrote:Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.
A really, really, really big cookie.
Cookies are pretty cool, though to reiterate: good horror stories don't necessarily have to scare or spook the reader in a direct sense.
Ana: You're writing a story about scary linguine, then?
But in all seriousness, it would depend on what exactly you intended. Your entry needs to be your own work. Beyond that, there's nothing wrong with drawing some inspiration from other sources.
Christoph- Shadow
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Posts : 191
Age : 36
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Dax Thu Sep 08, 2011 7:36 am
Christoph wrote:Dax wrote:Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.
A really, really, really big cookie.
Cookies are pretty cool, though to reiterate: good horror stories don't necessarily have to scare or spook the reader in a direct sense.
Yah, that's true. But to truly scare someone with their writing is a hard thing to do, especially for those readers who aren't scared easily.
Dax- Ghost
- Join date : 2009-10-19
Posts : 1766
Location : Montreal
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Ana Kingsley Thu Sep 08, 2011 12:38 pm
Christoph wrote:
Ana: You're writing a story about scary linguine, then?
Oh yes. Gotta love that scary linguine. xD
No, I mean like, could I base it around Slenderman or The Rake or Candle Cove or something like that?
Or does it have to be completely original?
I guess thats what I was really trying to ask.
*assumes everyone knows what a creepypasta is*
Ana Kingsley- Shadow
- Join date : 2011-05-17
Posts : 105
Age : 34
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Dreamless Days Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:03 pm
Dax wrote:Except I am going to add that, if someone is able to scare me in their writing, they will get a cookie.
The only creepypasta I know of is The Haunted Majora's Mask. That was ONE SPOOKY STORY.
But yeah, I might give this a shot. Odds are it might not be generic scary though, prolly something along the lines of "Mindscrew Scary".
Dreamless Days- Spectral Light
- Join date : 2011-06-07
Posts : 455
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Location : The Almighty Oz
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by striDer Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:29 am
Can I write a story about you, going into the bathroom by accident and finding your naked grandpa taking a bath with his socks still on?
Not...not that that ever happened to me...
...
v.v it still haunts me at night...
Not...not that that ever happened to me...
...
v.v it still haunts me at night...
striDer- Mist
- Join date : 2011-06-22
Posts : 33
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Christoph Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:50 am
Ana: You can draw inspiration from such stories, so long as the final product and idea is sufficiently yours.
Christoph- Shadow
- Join date : 2011-06-12
Posts : 191
Age : 36
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Wildsword Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:24 pm
I've been meaning to write a few more horror stories, might a good place to start....
excited to read what other people put down too. Always interesting to see what eerie and disturbing subject matters people can put on paper or screen.
I extend my best wishes of luck and thanks to all who participate, thank you for giving us a taste of the dark road less traveled.
excited to read what other people put down too. Always interesting to see what eerie and disturbing subject matters people can put on paper or screen.
I extend my best wishes of luck and thanks to all who participate, thank you for giving us a taste of the dark road less traveled.
Wildsword- Mist
- Join date : 2011-09-02
Posts : 47
Age : 37
Location : Martinez -
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Raspeyer Fri Sep 16, 2011 4:49 pm
I intend to join in on this. I think the rubric is well-suited for judging writing contests as opposed to other things.
Also shouldn't they be anonymous entries? Why not send the entries to you and have the OP post them all up?
Also shouldn't they be anonymous entries? Why not send the entries to you and have the OP post them all up?
Raspeyer- Mist
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Age : 36
Location : Here and there but not quite every where. -
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Guest Fri Sep 16, 2011 5:49 pm
Why would they be anonymous? I could understand if the voting was open to all of FoG, making the entries anonymous, but Christoph and Marcus are going to be the judges. So, whether you send the entries to the OP or not...they'll know who they got the message from. And when you win, you'll be revealed at the end anyways... but it won't matter because nobody else is voting on them. >_> I mean, right?
Oh, and also, I intend to enter as well. ^^;
Oh, and also, I intend to enter as well. ^^;
Guest- Guest
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Raspeyer Fri Sep 16, 2011 9:11 pm
Oh that's right. Haha, I'm so use to public voting contests. Well, then I hope my little story will bring a wonderful chill to your vertebral columns.
Raspeyer- Mist
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Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Lost Dreams Fri Sep 16, 2011 11:00 pm
Good thinking holly, but since there are only 2 judges it should be alright. I think I want to enter this contest. Horror is something I think I'm quite good at. >> I have stories going though my head all the time.
I've read some good short stories that have actually made me close my blinds and turn on all the lights. Normally it's zombies. But no. That time it was the one about the child who ate himself to death.
It was really scary. It was about this baby who not long after he grew teeth started chewing on his lip, he chewed and chewed until his lips were raw and bloody. The parents took him into the doctor and they told them to just give him a pacifier.
The chewing did not shop. The child continued to chew until there was a gaping hole in his face where his lips were. The child's need to chew still was not satisfied. The parents woke up one morning to find their child covered in blood. He had ate his hands (or something like that) and died. It was a lot scarier than I just wrote it. Anyone else ever read it?
So anyways. yeah. I'm in.
I've read some good short stories that have actually made me close my blinds and turn on all the lights. Normally it's zombies. But no. That time it was the one about the child who ate himself to death.
It was really scary. It was about this baby who not long after he grew teeth started chewing on his lip, he chewed and chewed until his lips were raw and bloody. The parents took him into the doctor and they told them to just give him a pacifier.
The chewing did not shop. The child continued to chew until there was a gaping hole in his face where his lips were. The child's need to chew still was not satisfied. The parents woke up one morning to find their child covered in blood. He had ate his hands (or something like that) and died. It was a lot scarier than I just wrote it. Anyone else ever read it?
So anyways. yeah. I'm in.
Lost Dreams- Mist
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Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Nihilisil Sun Sep 25, 2011 11:26 pm
Hmm, I may well hop on this ride. I've never really attempted horror, so it'll be an interesting experiment. I've already got a few ideas, primarily from an old creative writing course I took my senior year in college. Looking forward to seeing others' stories as well.
Nihilisil- Mist
- Join date : 2011-08-22
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Location : A digital box.
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Blade Barrier Mon Sep 26, 2011 5:48 pm
Raspeyer wrote:Oh that's right. Haha, I'm so use to public voting contests. Well, then I hope my little story will bring a wonderful chill to your vertebral columns.
You think the Rubic is best suited for this contest, yet you're use to public voting?
What is this I don't even-
Anyway, I notice that the topic explaining the Rubic is locked, but I have questions about it. Do I submit my questions here or must I pm someone? Or did I overlook another topic that's being used to elaborate on it?
Blade Barrier- Mist
- Join date : 2011-07-28
Posts : 66
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Gadreille Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:16 pm
FOG Rubric Feedback
I think this is what you were looking for. It was originally part of the Rubric thread but spliced due to...lots of questions
I think this is what you were looking for. It was originally part of the Rubric thread but spliced due to...lots of questions
Gadreille- ★ Administrator ★
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Posts : 5276
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Fate Flyer Tue Oct 04, 2011 6:12 pm
Well, here is my entry. It's not your typical story in the method it is told, but I had fun writing it, and it just all flowed out all at once. I was even able to finish it in one sitting. I had actually started a story before this, written in your typical story format, but I just was not feeling it. I'm not sure if this will really raise the hairs on the backs of anyone's necks, but I hope you at least enjoy it. This is the product of the inspiration from TV shows such as The Haunted (on Animal Planet) or Paranormal Witness (on SyFy).
ANNE:
Hi, I’m Anne Reed, and this is my husband of twenty two years, Ian Reed. The two of us never in our lives believed in ghosts or the paranormal or anything supernatural like that…at least not until we moved into our new home.
IAN:
Our home turned us into believers. (Laughs.)
ANNE:
It all started back in 2005. My husband and I were in a good place financially. He had just gotten a raise the previous year, and I was stable in my position as an at-home accountant. Our daughter Tara was sixteen at the time, and our son Ty was eighteen. After he graduated from high school and moved out into an apartment, we decided it was a good time to move. It was much more quiet in the house without Ty there anymore, and I needed a new project to keep me busy when I wasn’t working.
IAN:
I wasn’t too wild about the idea of moving at first, since that’s a lot of work, and I was stuck in the office until six each day, so I knew I couldn’t help pack much except on the weekends. Eventually she talked me into it though once she got to showing me some of the homes we could now afford. I let Anne and the realtor handle the house hunting, and I just gave them my two cents about the properties when I saw them.
ANNE:
A lot of the times Ian was too swamped with work even on the weekends, so it would just be Tara and I who’d go take a look at the homes together and then come back with some photos for him to see. I remember having a few houses that I liked and could see us living in, but there was one in particular that stood out the most to me when I saw it. It was just perfect for us. It was out in the country and far enough away for us to have our privacy –
IAN:
Which we like.
ANNE:
– and it was the perfect size and with all the right features. It was only a few miles from our previous house, so we’d still be in the same area. I just felt like I was coming home when Tara and I pulled into the driveway to meet our realtor there. It was a little old and needed some updating and elbow grease, or “love” as I called it, but it just had so much character and personality to it, like it had a story of its own. I grew up on a farm, and I don’t really care for modern homes or contemporary style. I like the traditional feel, and that’s exactly what this home had.
Tara immediately seemed to take a liking to it too. She said as soon as we got in through the door and walked past the threshold that she felt a connection to it. She turned to me, and she said, “Mom, this is our house. This is the one.”
IAN:
Anne had showed me some pictures that night of the house and told me how much they liked it. It was a lot of house and a lot of land for the price, and I just felt like if we didn’t make an offer as soon as possible, it was going to be taken from us. It was just too good to pass up, so I told Anne to go ahead with it. We got the house. The owners didn’t even come back with another offer. It was ours just like that. We were thrilled.
ANNE:
We were a little surprised at first that it was so easy, but you know, we figured the owners were satisfied with our offer and were eager to move to their new place, so we didn’t think much on it. We started moving in right after. It was easy piling all our stuff into the house, but it was putting it away and organizing it that was time consuming.
IAN:
I was in charge of minor fixes or improvements while Anne and Tara situated everything. Some things here and there needed replacing. There was quite a bit of wallpaper in the bathrooms and kitchen, and a lot of it was already peeling, so I had been in the process of removing that when a strange sensation overcame me. I felt like I was being watched. It got really cold, and all my hairs stood on end. I figured it was just a draft. It was an older home, and there was still a lot of work to be done, but Anne just had this idea in her head that this place was going to be perfect once we made it all our own. “It just needs a little love,” she’d tell me. I believed her, and I thought we could really bring this older house back to life and that it’d be our dream home. It seemed possible. But all the while I just always had this strange feeling in my gut, ever since the first time I saw the place. I couldn’t explain it though, and I never mentioned it to Anne, since I didn’t want to ruin her dream. This was her project, and I didn’t want to take that away from her.
ANNE:
I don’t remember ever feeling anything unusual in the house at first. If Tara did, she never told me about it. She and I were both unpacking boxes though and were in the basement, where we stored a lot of our things. It was the middle of the afternoon, but it was pitch dark down there. It’s always dark down there, since the windows are so old and dirty. There’s only one light down there, and it’s one of those with just a bulb where you have to pull the cord to turn it on or off. I was going through some things and was really concentrated on what I was doing. Suddenly, Tara jumped up and let out a little surprised scream and turned to me. She said, “Mom, mom, was that you?” I said, “Was what me?” She just looked at me for a moment and frowned. It was like she didn’t want to tell me. I was growing frustrated, and I kept asking her what she meant. She just said, “I don’t know,” and told me it was probably just a spider or a bug. I remember being frustrated that she wasn’t telling me what happened, but I wasn’t going to pester her. I just moved on with what I was doing and put it out of my mind.
That was the first time anything strange happened.
IAN:
The first of many times.
TY:
I didn’t move with my parents and sister when they left. I had already gotten an apartment with my friend. I was just going to community college, but I was eighteen and wanted a place of my own. It was a waste of money, since my parents lived so close to college, but no kid wants to live with their parents once they’re able to move out. I didn’t really hear anything about the house other than it seemed perfect and that everyone really loved it. It thought everything was great for my family, and I was actually kind of envious, since I wished I had gotten to live in it before I moved. No one told me anything strange about it, so I just assumed they were all happy.
TARA:
I loved the house when I saw it. I just looked up at those old windows with the shutters that were falling off and the chipped paint and pointed attic overlooking the driveway and thought, “This is place is amazing.” I loved how old it was. It just had all this history to it, as if it had been fully lived in, like a good pair of shoes that have been worn in to the point of being extremely comfortable. It felt so warm and inviting. At first.
It was incredible how dramatically the atmosphere changed after we had moved in. It was like, once the house roped us in, it started to show its true colors. I started hearing all kinds of strange sounds, like creaking floor boards, banging pipes, unexplained ticking or whistling. I just blew it off as the wind or from it being an old house. It was an adjustment, but I had been swept up in this vision that my mom and I would work together on it and make it fabulous. It was going to be a great mother-daughter bonding experience. I was just sixteen, and my brother had moved out, so it was a strange time. I had to get used to these changes, and all I wanted was to be safe and comfortable and happy. I felt like there was only a couple more years until I move out too, so I wanted to have this thing that my mom and I could do together and finish before I too moved on with my life.
One night after I had finished dinner, I was watching TV in the living room. Mom and dad were still eating, so I could hear them talking softly in the kitchen and the sound of their silverware on their plates. It seemed like an ordinary night. Then, all of a sudden, the channels started to change on their own. I thought, “Great, the satellite’s acting up.” Then the TV turned off completely. I clicked it back on, and it was back on the channel I had been watching. I sat back down and continued to watch my show, and a couple minutes later, the TV turned off again. But this time it turned on all by itself. I had no idea what was happening. I remember yelling for my dad, since I thought he could fix it, but even though I could hear them, he apparently didn’t hear me, since he never responded. I decided to try unplugging the TV and plugging it into a different outlet. As soon as I unplugged it though, it turned on again, completely out of the plug. I felt my entire body go stiff and my heart stop. I knew something was wrong. I just got up and ran out of the room and up the stairs to my bedroom.
IAN:
I remember finding the TV unplugged that night, and I’ve since found out that it was Tara, but at the time I thought, “This is a bit strange.”
I was getting ready for work one morning, and I had just fed our dog Rocky. Rocky was a Labrador Retriever. My wife and I got him a few years after we had Tara. Rocky always scarfed down his food when we put it in his bowl, but that morning he just kept looking up at me, like he wasn’t hungry. I thought it was odd, but I just forgot about it and left for work. When I came home that night, my wife was in tears, telling me Rocky hasn’t eaten anything all day, that his food from that morning was still in his food bowl that night. I told her it was probably nothing and that we shouldn’t worry too much about it. She took Rocky to the vet the next day.
ANNE:
The veterinarian said Rocky was completely fine. There wasn’t anything she could find that could be wrong with him. He was healthy, so she thought that maybe the move had shaken him up a bit and that that was common for a lot of pets. She said to just keep an eye on him and try and keep him company when it was his feeding time. I was so relieved to find out everything was okay and that it wasn’t anything serious. I felt kind of foolish for jumping to conclusions, but I loved that dog.
Well, a few days passed, and Rocky’s behavior got even more peculiar. He would only eat in the afternoon and only small amounts, and he rarely seemed playful anymore. I’d always take him on walks every other day, but he got very persistent in wanting to stay out longer, and it got to the point where he was begging me to go on a walk everyday, sometimes scratching at the front door or barking at me until I got his leash. I figured maybe he’s just bored and he’s getting old. He would stand and bark at the basement door for hours on end throughout the day too. He’d sometimes just stare and stare at absolutely nothing and not move. Eventually, Rocky started sleeping in bed with my husband and I, which he never used to do. He simply refused to sleep on the floor.
IAN:
I was getting fed up with it, because there was this huge dog in bed with me all the time. I couldn’t sleep. There just wasn’t enough room, and Rocky was constantly on edge. I’d feel up jolt up, completely alert and totally focused. Then he’d start growling. It was a low, subtle growl, and he’d always be staring at the door. I thought, “Wow, this dog’s gone mad.” It just got to the point where I had to lock Rocky outside our bedroom at night and close the door on him.
ANNE:
He hated that. He’d sit there for awhile and howl or scratch at the door until finally he got too tired. I felt awful about it, but there wasn’t anything else we could think to do. He had never been like this before.
I remember one morning not long after we started sleeping with our door shut at night that I woke to the entire house being a mess. It was completely and totally in a state of chaos, as if someone broke in when we were sleeping and just threw everything everywhere. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought to myself, “How could Rocky do this?” I knew dogs can do a lot of damage when they’re upset, but Rocky had never shown such bad behavior before, not even when he was a puppy. I was so confused and so furious with him. I was just in tears trying to clean everything up.
IAN:
The kitchen was the worst. The cabinets were open, and food was all over the counters and floor. Some of the contents from the fridge had even been spilt or left out, and we just couldn’t figure out how Rocky had managed to open up the fridge. There were paw prints around the house though from him walking through the ketchup and pudding and sauce that was smeared all over the kitchen, so we knew it had to be him. I felt horrible leaving my wife there to clean it all up by herself, but I had to get to my job.
TARA:
The day our house was torn apart by Rocky, I remember my mom just being so frustrated and upset. I tried to help out as much as I could, and I just felt like Rocky had betrayed us. He was getting so needy and acting up so much. (Sniffs.) I remember just feeling like I had the dog from Hell and that he was turning into a nightmare. I had grown up with Rocky, and I loved him so much. I couldn’t understand it.
ANNE:
The last straw came when Rocky chewed up our furniture. There were just bite marks everywhere, and we figured he must have been doing all this over night. I had to start putting Rocky outside in his kennel at nighttime. He was just becoming too destructive and costing us so much money. I was already busy trying to get the house in order, and I didn’t want to worry about all this extra work that I shouldn’t have to do.
Eventually, Rocky started losing his fur. It started slow, and I just thought nothing of it, but then just overnight, he lost it all. I woke up to find him huddled in his kennel, completely naked. I thought, “Oh my God, he’s sick. He’s dying.” I took him to the vet again, and she gave us some medication for him, but she told me that Rocky just seemed like a completely different dog to her than he had been. He was so much more self conscious and nervous. She thought the move and then the sudden isolation at night, first from our bedroom and then from our house completely might be causing him to feel neglected. I just felt like a horrible dog owner, and I couldn’t figure out how to make this work.
I talked Ian in to letting Rocky stay inside at night again. He agreed, but he set up a couple security cameras around the house to keep an eye on our dog. The following morning, the house was just as it had been before when Rocky would stay inside – a complete disaster. We turned to the security tapes, and we couldn’t believe what we saw.
IAN:
We couldn’t understand it. We just played it again and again in disbelief. There was Rocky, barking and growling at something in the living room facing the basement door, staring at nothing. Then, all of a sudden, some type of mist formed out of nowhere, and the end table rose up in midair and flew at him, like someone had picked it up and thrown it at our dog. Rocky ran out of the room and huddled under the dining table, and then we watched all horror break lose. Things started flying around the house. Drawers and doors would open on their own. Chairs would stack up on top of one another and then, in the blink of an eye, fly back to their original positions, as if frames had been removed from the video. It was… (Rubs eyes.) …unbelievable.
ANNE:
We still have never told the kids about that video.
TARA:
When Rocky started getting sick and losing all his hair, Ty came home frequently to visit and see the dog. You could tell he was upset. He was angry at our parents for not catering more to Rocky’s needs, since he was an older dog. I was at a loss as to what to do for Rocky. I didn’t really understand why he was making such a mess of things at night, and I never once heard him doing any of it.
While all this was going on, I was experiencing some things of my own. I didn’t want to bring them up to my parents, because I didn’t think they’d believe me, and I wasn’t really sure I believed in any of it myself.
When I was alone in my bedroom, sometimes I’d hear laughter from a child. It sounded like a little boy, but kind of off in the distance or somewhat echoy. One day while I was working on homework, I felt my computer chair get pushed. I thought someone was playing a joke on me or that maybe Ty had come home that night and was surprising me, but I turned around and no one was there. It got really cold, just like it had when we had first moved in and I was in the basement with my mom and felt someone grab my arm. I told my mom it was just a bug, but I knew what I felt. Both times it got freezing cold, as if all the energy and all the heat and been sucked out of the room. I soon learned that whenever it got cold, something was going to happen. Then, out of nowhere appeared this little kid. He couldn’t be much older than seven or eight. He just looked over at me from the corner of my bedroom and smiled. He was different looking though, semi-transparent, and kind of grayish. I just remember getting stiff and being unable to move. And then, just like that, he was gone.
TY:
I was home the night Rocky died. He had gotten really weak and sick, and the vet couldn’t figure out why. He otherwise seemed healthy and normal. I was pretty upset, since I had kind of grown up with that dog. He just passed away in my arms, so peacefully. I just remember crying and crying that night when I was alone in the guest bedroom that I always slept in there. (Sighs.) I was thankful I was at least there for him.
ANNE:
After Rocky passed away, we buried him in our backyard and marked his gravesite with a little rock that Ian etched his name into. It was a sad day. Despite Rocky’s behavior in the end, he was a good dog, and I knew he was only acting up because of something we couldn’t see or explain. After we learned the truth from that video, Ian and I just dropped it. We didn’t bring it up or mention it. I guess we just thought if we avoided saying it out loud, then that wouldn’t make it real…that we couldn’t possibly have a haunted house.
IAN:
I was up one night working late at my computer in our office. I got this weird feeling suddenly that I couldn’t dismiss, so I just stood up and said in a stern voice, “Leave me alone.” I didn’t really know if anything that could hear was there or not, but then not a moment later I heard a clear and audible whisper from behind me in my ear say, “GET OUT.” It was so crisp and so clear, immediately I had full body goosebumps, and all the hairs on my body were standing up. I slowly and as calmly as I could walked out of the office, shut the door behind me, and went to bed without another word. Whatever that was, whatever was there, I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to deal with it.
ANNE:
It was about a month after Rocky died that I decided to get the family a cat. I had had lots of cats growing up out on the farm, and I knew Ian wasn’t much of a cat person, but I thought once I brought her home, he’d warm up to her. I surprised him and Tara that evening, and Tara was of course thrilled. She loved animals. Ian wasn’t so excited at first, but over time he slowly started to love her too. Missy, as I called her, was a sweet kitten. She was so playful and calm for a baby. I knew we couldn’t really replace the hole Rocky left in our hearts, but Missy was there to at least keep me company when I was alone in the daytime while I worked.
Since I make my own hours working at home, I was able to stop what I was doing and start up one of my many projects on the house whenever I felt like it. It was nice being able to hop between both my job and work on the house. When Tara would come home from school around 3:30, the two of us would work on something together until Ian came home. It was nice for awhile. Then everything fell apart.
TARA:
Soon, I noticed Missy started losing her hair, just like Rocky did. I told my mom, and she was just heartbroken. I knew she felt like the animals having gotten sick was somehow her fault. I was worried for them and for us. I knew something was in the house, and I thought, “If it can do this to the animals, what is it capable of doing to us?” Missy only lived for about two months, then she too got sick and died, just like that. My mom doesn’t like talking about it. I was starting to feel threatened in my own home. More and more unexplained things started happening, like lights turning on and off, footsteps coming from the attic or basement, things going missing and then reappearing in places you never would have put them, and just an assortment of things that were out of the ordinary. There was one occasion when I was eating dinner with my parents and we all heard what sounded like a gun being shot right in our own home. It was so loud, it made all of us jump out of our chairs.
TY:
After a year, my lease was up at my apartment, and my roommate wanted to move in with his girlfriend, so I couldn’t stay there by myself, since I couldn’t afford it, and no one else I knew could move in. I was forced to live with my parents again while I worked on getting my Associate’s Degree. The day I moved back was pretty surreal. Going to that house out in the country was like being sentenced to some dark fate. I just remember pulling into the driveway and it raining heavily outside. It was like a corny horror film with the lightning striking from somewhere off in the distance behind the house. Everything I had fit into my van, so I was able to get everything there in just one trip. I walked inside, and I just had this overwhelming feeling like I wasn’t welcome. I had had strange feelings in the house before and had had a lot of frightening and realistic nightmares when I visited, but I never felt such an oppressive and demanding feeling before.
I had just finished getting my room together, claiming the only guest bedroom they had, when I was attacked. That’s the only way I can describe it. Suddenly, things started flying off their shelves, my bed started to shake, and a baseball I had sitting in my glove shot out at me and hit me straight in the mouth. It broke my jaw. I had to go to the emergency room. Some welcome back.
ANNE:
I believed Ty when he told me the ball flew into his face by itself. I knew he wasn’t making it up, not after that video I had seen from the hidden camera Ian set up back when Rocky was alive. As time went on, everything just kept building and building, and it just felt as if it was all going to pop at any moment. I was terrified for my family and for myself. I was angry and feeling helpless. I decided I needed answers.
I went to the library’s records on the history of our home and discovered that everyone that has ever lived there – and I mean everyone – has had horrible bad luck, be it health issues, sudden and dramatic money problems, or even death or suicide. The owners we bought the house from had become quite ill, and the woman had even been diagnosed with cancer. I also discovered that the original owners, the ones who built the house in the 1800’s, had had a son. He died at the age of seven. Apparently he had been murdered by the father after he discovered his son had brutally and sadistically killed the family pets. After the dad had taken his son’s life, he then took his own with a shotgun. Suddenly, everything was beginning to make sense.
TY:
I knew a guy that was into paranormal investigating like they do on TV. I didn’t really take it all that seriously until all these things were going on in my parents’ new home. I thought maybe we could have him and his team come in and investigate. I told my mom about it, and she seemed interested, but my dad was kind of hesitant. I don’t think he wanted to know what it was that was in their house. He just wanted to ignore it all and pretend it didn’t exist. I felt like if we kept ignoring it, it was going to continue with its activity and that maybe someone else was going to get hurt next time.
The team came in one weekend and set up all their equipment. They had a few stationary cameras, some voice recorders, EMF readers, thermometers, and some other gadgets that they were going to try. We all had to leave them alone in the house so that we wouldn’t interfere with their investigation, so we just went out for a late dinner while they worked. When we came back a couple hours later, the whole team was outside on our lawn. We thought they’d be there for a few hours and that we’d just have to wait outside in the car until they were done, but they looked like that had already packed everything up and were getting ready to leave.
I walked up to the guy I knew and asked him why they were leaving so soon. He just looked at me and said, “We don’t want to mess with this,” and he handed me his digital recorder to borrow so that I could play it back and listen to whatever it was they had recorded.
I couldn’t wait, and neither could my parents or sister, so we all just sat around the dining room table and listened to it. The sounds that came out of that thing… They were otherworldly. We heard screams, cries, chanting, singing, sobbing. And this was all from the recorder which had been left alone in the basement. When the team went to retrieve it before they left, we all clearly heard a man yell to them, “GO AWAY.”
I don’t know if it was just from everything that had been happening or the adrenaline of hearing that voice recorder, but we all decided it was time to figure out what was really going on. The activity was pretty widespread throughout the house, but it seemed most concentrated in the basement. That’s where the first experience took place, and that’s also the only area of the house that the animals wouldn’t ever go. It didn’t matter if you had a treat in your hand or was calling their name. They just refused. So, we went to the basement. Together, as a family.
ANNE:
I was scared to bring my kids down there with us. I thought it might be dangerous, but I knew they wanted to go and be a part of this. We were stronger together. I let Ian take the lead, and we just went on down into the darkness. Ian had to find his way over to the light to pull the cord, but when he did, nothing happened. I had some flashlights sitting on the old desk down there, so I felt my way over to them and quickly switched mine on. It was so cold, once there was some light, we all noticed we could see our breath. We didn’t know what we were searching for. We just knew whatever it was, it was down there.
IAN:
I was scared to death, more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, but I didn’t want my family to know that. I had to be strong for them. We just scoured the basement, dusting off our boxes and old things we had stored down there. It was actually Tara who found it.
TARA:
There was a hidden door in the floorboards below a rug. It hadn’t ever been discovered by any of us when we moved in. It was pretty well concealed, even without the rug over it. I called everyone over, and we just kind of looked at one another and then at the door. Ty was the one to grab the handle and pull it up.
TY:
We never could have prepared ourselves for that. Down in the hole, buried in the dirt below our house inside that hidden door in the floor were bones – human bones and skulls and animal bones, all mixed in there together. We had discovered some of previous residents and the original owners of the house. The police identified the father that had shot himself in the head, his skull having a hole through it, alongside the son who had been strangled to death. There were also dogs and cats in there, the animals the boy had killed. It was…a horrible scene.
ANNE:
We had all the skeletons removed and buried respectfully. We felt they were finally put to rest. They had problems in their lives, and they carried their troubles over to the afterlife and onto all those who lived on the property. We had the house blessed by a priest, and afterward, the air just seemed to lighten. It was literally easier to breathe, and we all felt better.
IAN:
Occasionally, we’ll still have the odd thing disappear and reappear in odd places, or we’ll hear the sound of footsteps, or there’ll be a door that opens on its own. But the violent activity, the dark atmosphere, the feeling of being watched and the cold spots have all gone. I love our house, regardless of everything it’s put us through. I know my wife made a good choice when she chose this one. It’s a beautiful home now, and it’s entirely ours.
ANNE:
It just needed some love.
One Grave
- A middle-aged couple sits together on sufficiently comfortable chairs in a dark room with a single mood light shining down on them from above. The woman, a bit larger in figure than the man but wearing a flattering sundress, fiddles rather nervously with her light blonde hair while her husband, dressed in plaid and balding, sits back with his legs crossed staring ahead. A TV studio camera is pointed at them, and the director instructs them on what to do, telling them to relax and to just retell their tale from beginning to end. He then starts to count down from five. Four. Three. Two. One.
ANNE:
Hi, I’m Anne Reed, and this is my husband of twenty two years, Ian Reed. The two of us never in our lives believed in ghosts or the paranormal or anything supernatural like that…at least not until we moved into our new home.
IAN:
Our home turned us into believers. (Laughs.)
ANNE:
It all started back in 2005. My husband and I were in a good place financially. He had just gotten a raise the previous year, and I was stable in my position as an at-home accountant. Our daughter Tara was sixteen at the time, and our son Ty was eighteen. After he graduated from high school and moved out into an apartment, we decided it was a good time to move. It was much more quiet in the house without Ty there anymore, and I needed a new project to keep me busy when I wasn’t working.
IAN:
I wasn’t too wild about the idea of moving at first, since that’s a lot of work, and I was stuck in the office until six each day, so I knew I couldn’t help pack much except on the weekends. Eventually she talked me into it though once she got to showing me some of the homes we could now afford. I let Anne and the realtor handle the house hunting, and I just gave them my two cents about the properties when I saw them.
ANNE:
A lot of the times Ian was too swamped with work even on the weekends, so it would just be Tara and I who’d go take a look at the homes together and then come back with some photos for him to see. I remember having a few houses that I liked and could see us living in, but there was one in particular that stood out the most to me when I saw it. It was just perfect for us. It was out in the country and far enough away for us to have our privacy –
IAN:
Which we like.
ANNE:
– and it was the perfect size and with all the right features. It was only a few miles from our previous house, so we’d still be in the same area. I just felt like I was coming home when Tara and I pulled into the driveway to meet our realtor there. It was a little old and needed some updating and elbow grease, or “love” as I called it, but it just had so much character and personality to it, like it had a story of its own. I grew up on a farm, and I don’t really care for modern homes or contemporary style. I like the traditional feel, and that’s exactly what this home had.
Tara immediately seemed to take a liking to it too. She said as soon as we got in through the door and walked past the threshold that she felt a connection to it. She turned to me, and she said, “Mom, this is our house. This is the one.”
IAN:
Anne had showed me some pictures that night of the house and told me how much they liked it. It was a lot of house and a lot of land for the price, and I just felt like if we didn’t make an offer as soon as possible, it was going to be taken from us. It was just too good to pass up, so I told Anne to go ahead with it. We got the house. The owners didn’t even come back with another offer. It was ours just like that. We were thrilled.
ANNE:
We were a little surprised at first that it was so easy, but you know, we figured the owners were satisfied with our offer and were eager to move to their new place, so we didn’t think much on it. We started moving in right after. It was easy piling all our stuff into the house, but it was putting it away and organizing it that was time consuming.
IAN:
I was in charge of minor fixes or improvements while Anne and Tara situated everything. Some things here and there needed replacing. There was quite a bit of wallpaper in the bathrooms and kitchen, and a lot of it was already peeling, so I had been in the process of removing that when a strange sensation overcame me. I felt like I was being watched. It got really cold, and all my hairs stood on end. I figured it was just a draft. It was an older home, and there was still a lot of work to be done, but Anne just had this idea in her head that this place was going to be perfect once we made it all our own. “It just needs a little love,” she’d tell me. I believed her, and I thought we could really bring this older house back to life and that it’d be our dream home. It seemed possible. But all the while I just always had this strange feeling in my gut, ever since the first time I saw the place. I couldn’t explain it though, and I never mentioned it to Anne, since I didn’t want to ruin her dream. This was her project, and I didn’t want to take that away from her.
ANNE:
I don’t remember ever feeling anything unusual in the house at first. If Tara did, she never told me about it. She and I were both unpacking boxes though and were in the basement, where we stored a lot of our things. It was the middle of the afternoon, but it was pitch dark down there. It’s always dark down there, since the windows are so old and dirty. There’s only one light down there, and it’s one of those with just a bulb where you have to pull the cord to turn it on or off. I was going through some things and was really concentrated on what I was doing. Suddenly, Tara jumped up and let out a little surprised scream and turned to me. She said, “Mom, mom, was that you?” I said, “Was what me?” She just looked at me for a moment and frowned. It was like she didn’t want to tell me. I was growing frustrated, and I kept asking her what she meant. She just said, “I don’t know,” and told me it was probably just a spider or a bug. I remember being frustrated that she wasn’t telling me what happened, but I wasn’t going to pester her. I just moved on with what I was doing and put it out of my mind.
That was the first time anything strange happened.
IAN:
The first of many times.
- In another room equally small and dark sits two twenty-something-year-olds, a girl and guy – Tara and Ty. Tara is sitting with both her hands folded neatly on her lap, her short blonde hair partly covering her reluctant eyes. Ty’s brows are knitted together, and he looks weary to speak. They seem uneasy, scared, as if speaking about past incidents may revive them. Ty sighs heavily and looks up at the camera facing them. The director tells them, “Whenever you’re ready.”
TY:
I didn’t move with my parents and sister when they left. I had already gotten an apartment with my friend. I was just going to community college, but I was eighteen and wanted a place of my own. It was a waste of money, since my parents lived so close to college, but no kid wants to live with their parents once they’re able to move out. I didn’t really hear anything about the house other than it seemed perfect and that everyone really loved it. It thought everything was great for my family, and I was actually kind of envious, since I wished I had gotten to live in it before I moved. No one told me anything strange about it, so I just assumed they were all happy.
TARA:
I loved the house when I saw it. I just looked up at those old windows with the shutters that were falling off and the chipped paint and pointed attic overlooking the driveway and thought, “This is place is amazing.” I loved how old it was. It just had all this history to it, as if it had been fully lived in, like a good pair of shoes that have been worn in to the point of being extremely comfortable. It felt so warm and inviting. At first.
It was incredible how dramatically the atmosphere changed after we had moved in. It was like, once the house roped us in, it started to show its true colors. I started hearing all kinds of strange sounds, like creaking floor boards, banging pipes, unexplained ticking or whistling. I just blew it off as the wind or from it being an old house. It was an adjustment, but I had been swept up in this vision that my mom and I would work together on it and make it fabulous. It was going to be a great mother-daughter bonding experience. I was just sixteen, and my brother had moved out, so it was a strange time. I had to get used to these changes, and all I wanted was to be safe and comfortable and happy. I felt like there was only a couple more years until I move out too, so I wanted to have this thing that my mom and I could do together and finish before I too moved on with my life.
One night after I had finished dinner, I was watching TV in the living room. Mom and dad were still eating, so I could hear them talking softly in the kitchen and the sound of their silverware on their plates. It seemed like an ordinary night. Then, all of a sudden, the channels started to change on their own. I thought, “Great, the satellite’s acting up.” Then the TV turned off completely. I clicked it back on, and it was back on the channel I had been watching. I sat back down and continued to watch my show, and a couple minutes later, the TV turned off again. But this time it turned on all by itself. I had no idea what was happening. I remember yelling for my dad, since I thought he could fix it, but even though I could hear them, he apparently didn’t hear me, since he never responded. I decided to try unplugging the TV and plugging it into a different outlet. As soon as I unplugged it though, it turned on again, completely out of the plug. I felt my entire body go stiff and my heart stop. I knew something was wrong. I just got up and ran out of the room and up the stairs to my bedroom.
IAN:
I remember finding the TV unplugged that night, and I’ve since found out that it was Tara, but at the time I thought, “This is a bit strange.”
I was getting ready for work one morning, and I had just fed our dog Rocky. Rocky was a Labrador Retriever. My wife and I got him a few years after we had Tara. Rocky always scarfed down his food when we put it in his bowl, but that morning he just kept looking up at me, like he wasn’t hungry. I thought it was odd, but I just forgot about it and left for work. When I came home that night, my wife was in tears, telling me Rocky hasn’t eaten anything all day, that his food from that morning was still in his food bowl that night. I told her it was probably nothing and that we shouldn’t worry too much about it. She took Rocky to the vet the next day.
ANNE:
The veterinarian said Rocky was completely fine. There wasn’t anything she could find that could be wrong with him. He was healthy, so she thought that maybe the move had shaken him up a bit and that that was common for a lot of pets. She said to just keep an eye on him and try and keep him company when it was his feeding time. I was so relieved to find out everything was okay and that it wasn’t anything serious. I felt kind of foolish for jumping to conclusions, but I loved that dog.
Well, a few days passed, and Rocky’s behavior got even more peculiar. He would only eat in the afternoon and only small amounts, and he rarely seemed playful anymore. I’d always take him on walks every other day, but he got very persistent in wanting to stay out longer, and it got to the point where he was begging me to go on a walk everyday, sometimes scratching at the front door or barking at me until I got his leash. I figured maybe he’s just bored and he’s getting old. He would stand and bark at the basement door for hours on end throughout the day too. He’d sometimes just stare and stare at absolutely nothing and not move. Eventually, Rocky started sleeping in bed with my husband and I, which he never used to do. He simply refused to sleep on the floor.
IAN:
I was getting fed up with it, because there was this huge dog in bed with me all the time. I couldn’t sleep. There just wasn’t enough room, and Rocky was constantly on edge. I’d feel up jolt up, completely alert and totally focused. Then he’d start growling. It was a low, subtle growl, and he’d always be staring at the door. I thought, “Wow, this dog’s gone mad.” It just got to the point where I had to lock Rocky outside our bedroom at night and close the door on him.
ANNE:
He hated that. He’d sit there for awhile and howl or scratch at the door until finally he got too tired. I felt awful about it, but there wasn’t anything else we could think to do. He had never been like this before.
I remember one morning not long after we started sleeping with our door shut at night that I woke to the entire house being a mess. It was completely and totally in a state of chaos, as if someone broke in when we were sleeping and just threw everything everywhere. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought to myself, “How could Rocky do this?” I knew dogs can do a lot of damage when they’re upset, but Rocky had never shown such bad behavior before, not even when he was a puppy. I was so confused and so furious with him. I was just in tears trying to clean everything up.
IAN:
The kitchen was the worst. The cabinets were open, and food was all over the counters and floor. Some of the contents from the fridge had even been spilt or left out, and we just couldn’t figure out how Rocky had managed to open up the fridge. There were paw prints around the house though from him walking through the ketchup and pudding and sauce that was smeared all over the kitchen, so we knew it had to be him. I felt horrible leaving my wife there to clean it all up by herself, but I had to get to my job.
TARA:
The day our house was torn apart by Rocky, I remember my mom just being so frustrated and upset. I tried to help out as much as I could, and I just felt like Rocky had betrayed us. He was getting so needy and acting up so much. (Sniffs.) I remember just feeling like I had the dog from Hell and that he was turning into a nightmare. I had grown up with Rocky, and I loved him so much. I couldn’t understand it.
ANNE:
The last straw came when Rocky chewed up our furniture. There were just bite marks everywhere, and we figured he must have been doing all this over night. I had to start putting Rocky outside in his kennel at nighttime. He was just becoming too destructive and costing us so much money. I was already busy trying to get the house in order, and I didn’t want to worry about all this extra work that I shouldn’t have to do.
Eventually, Rocky started losing his fur. It started slow, and I just thought nothing of it, but then just overnight, he lost it all. I woke up to find him huddled in his kennel, completely naked. I thought, “Oh my God, he’s sick. He’s dying.” I took him to the vet again, and she gave us some medication for him, but she told me that Rocky just seemed like a completely different dog to her than he had been. He was so much more self conscious and nervous. She thought the move and then the sudden isolation at night, first from our bedroom and then from our house completely might be causing him to feel neglected. I just felt like a horrible dog owner, and I couldn’t figure out how to make this work.
I talked Ian in to letting Rocky stay inside at night again. He agreed, but he set up a couple security cameras around the house to keep an eye on our dog. The following morning, the house was just as it had been before when Rocky would stay inside – a complete disaster. We turned to the security tapes, and we couldn’t believe what we saw.
IAN:
We couldn’t understand it. We just played it again and again in disbelief. There was Rocky, barking and growling at something in the living room facing the basement door, staring at nothing. Then, all of a sudden, some type of mist formed out of nowhere, and the end table rose up in midair and flew at him, like someone had picked it up and thrown it at our dog. Rocky ran out of the room and huddled under the dining table, and then we watched all horror break lose. Things started flying around the house. Drawers and doors would open on their own. Chairs would stack up on top of one another and then, in the blink of an eye, fly back to their original positions, as if frames had been removed from the video. It was… (Rubs eyes.) …unbelievable.
ANNE:
We still have never told the kids about that video.
TARA:
When Rocky started getting sick and losing all his hair, Ty came home frequently to visit and see the dog. You could tell he was upset. He was angry at our parents for not catering more to Rocky’s needs, since he was an older dog. I was at a loss as to what to do for Rocky. I didn’t really understand why he was making such a mess of things at night, and I never once heard him doing any of it.
While all this was going on, I was experiencing some things of my own. I didn’t want to bring them up to my parents, because I didn’t think they’d believe me, and I wasn’t really sure I believed in any of it myself.
When I was alone in my bedroom, sometimes I’d hear laughter from a child. It sounded like a little boy, but kind of off in the distance or somewhat echoy. One day while I was working on homework, I felt my computer chair get pushed. I thought someone was playing a joke on me or that maybe Ty had come home that night and was surprising me, but I turned around and no one was there. It got really cold, just like it had when we had first moved in and I was in the basement with my mom and felt someone grab my arm. I told my mom it was just a bug, but I knew what I felt. Both times it got freezing cold, as if all the energy and all the heat and been sucked out of the room. I soon learned that whenever it got cold, something was going to happen. Then, out of nowhere appeared this little kid. He couldn’t be much older than seven or eight. He just looked over at me from the corner of my bedroom and smiled. He was different looking though, semi-transparent, and kind of grayish. I just remember getting stiff and being unable to move. And then, just like that, he was gone.
TY:
I was home the night Rocky died. He had gotten really weak and sick, and the vet couldn’t figure out why. He otherwise seemed healthy and normal. I was pretty upset, since I had kind of grown up with that dog. He just passed away in my arms, so peacefully. I just remember crying and crying that night when I was alone in the guest bedroom that I always slept in there. (Sighs.) I was thankful I was at least there for him.
ANNE:
After Rocky passed away, we buried him in our backyard and marked his gravesite with a little rock that Ian etched his name into. It was a sad day. Despite Rocky’s behavior in the end, he was a good dog, and I knew he was only acting up because of something we couldn’t see or explain. After we learned the truth from that video, Ian and I just dropped it. We didn’t bring it up or mention it. I guess we just thought if we avoided saying it out loud, then that wouldn’t make it real…that we couldn’t possibly have a haunted house.
IAN:
I was up one night working late at my computer in our office. I got this weird feeling suddenly that I couldn’t dismiss, so I just stood up and said in a stern voice, “Leave me alone.” I didn’t really know if anything that could hear was there or not, but then not a moment later I heard a clear and audible whisper from behind me in my ear say, “GET OUT.” It was so crisp and so clear, immediately I had full body goosebumps, and all the hairs on my body were standing up. I slowly and as calmly as I could walked out of the office, shut the door behind me, and went to bed without another word. Whatever that was, whatever was there, I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to deal with it.
ANNE:
It was about a month after Rocky died that I decided to get the family a cat. I had had lots of cats growing up out on the farm, and I knew Ian wasn’t much of a cat person, but I thought once I brought her home, he’d warm up to her. I surprised him and Tara that evening, and Tara was of course thrilled. She loved animals. Ian wasn’t so excited at first, but over time he slowly started to love her too. Missy, as I called her, was a sweet kitten. She was so playful and calm for a baby. I knew we couldn’t really replace the hole Rocky left in our hearts, but Missy was there to at least keep me company when I was alone in the daytime while I worked.
Since I make my own hours working at home, I was able to stop what I was doing and start up one of my many projects on the house whenever I felt like it. It was nice being able to hop between both my job and work on the house. When Tara would come home from school around 3:30, the two of us would work on something together until Ian came home. It was nice for awhile. Then everything fell apart.
TARA:
Soon, I noticed Missy started losing her hair, just like Rocky did. I told my mom, and she was just heartbroken. I knew she felt like the animals having gotten sick was somehow her fault. I was worried for them and for us. I knew something was in the house, and I thought, “If it can do this to the animals, what is it capable of doing to us?” Missy only lived for about two months, then she too got sick and died, just like that. My mom doesn’t like talking about it. I was starting to feel threatened in my own home. More and more unexplained things started happening, like lights turning on and off, footsteps coming from the attic or basement, things going missing and then reappearing in places you never would have put them, and just an assortment of things that were out of the ordinary. There was one occasion when I was eating dinner with my parents and we all heard what sounded like a gun being shot right in our own home. It was so loud, it made all of us jump out of our chairs.
TY:
After a year, my lease was up at my apartment, and my roommate wanted to move in with his girlfriend, so I couldn’t stay there by myself, since I couldn’t afford it, and no one else I knew could move in. I was forced to live with my parents again while I worked on getting my Associate’s Degree. The day I moved back was pretty surreal. Going to that house out in the country was like being sentenced to some dark fate. I just remember pulling into the driveway and it raining heavily outside. It was like a corny horror film with the lightning striking from somewhere off in the distance behind the house. Everything I had fit into my van, so I was able to get everything there in just one trip. I walked inside, and I just had this overwhelming feeling like I wasn’t welcome. I had had strange feelings in the house before and had had a lot of frightening and realistic nightmares when I visited, but I never felt such an oppressive and demanding feeling before.
I had just finished getting my room together, claiming the only guest bedroom they had, when I was attacked. That’s the only way I can describe it. Suddenly, things started flying off their shelves, my bed started to shake, and a baseball I had sitting in my glove shot out at me and hit me straight in the mouth. It broke my jaw. I had to go to the emergency room. Some welcome back.
ANNE:
I believed Ty when he told me the ball flew into his face by itself. I knew he wasn’t making it up, not after that video I had seen from the hidden camera Ian set up back when Rocky was alive. As time went on, everything just kept building and building, and it just felt as if it was all going to pop at any moment. I was terrified for my family and for myself. I was angry and feeling helpless. I decided I needed answers.
I went to the library’s records on the history of our home and discovered that everyone that has ever lived there – and I mean everyone – has had horrible bad luck, be it health issues, sudden and dramatic money problems, or even death or suicide. The owners we bought the house from had become quite ill, and the woman had even been diagnosed with cancer. I also discovered that the original owners, the ones who built the house in the 1800’s, had had a son. He died at the age of seven. Apparently he had been murdered by the father after he discovered his son had brutally and sadistically killed the family pets. After the dad had taken his son’s life, he then took his own with a shotgun. Suddenly, everything was beginning to make sense.
TY:
I knew a guy that was into paranormal investigating like they do on TV. I didn’t really take it all that seriously until all these things were going on in my parents’ new home. I thought maybe we could have him and his team come in and investigate. I told my mom about it, and she seemed interested, but my dad was kind of hesitant. I don’t think he wanted to know what it was that was in their house. He just wanted to ignore it all and pretend it didn’t exist. I felt like if we kept ignoring it, it was going to continue with its activity and that maybe someone else was going to get hurt next time.
The team came in one weekend and set up all their equipment. They had a few stationary cameras, some voice recorders, EMF readers, thermometers, and some other gadgets that they were going to try. We all had to leave them alone in the house so that we wouldn’t interfere with their investigation, so we just went out for a late dinner while they worked. When we came back a couple hours later, the whole team was outside on our lawn. We thought they’d be there for a few hours and that we’d just have to wait outside in the car until they were done, but they looked like that had already packed everything up and were getting ready to leave.
I walked up to the guy I knew and asked him why they were leaving so soon. He just looked at me and said, “We don’t want to mess with this,” and he handed me his digital recorder to borrow so that I could play it back and listen to whatever it was they had recorded.
I couldn’t wait, and neither could my parents or sister, so we all just sat around the dining room table and listened to it. The sounds that came out of that thing… They were otherworldly. We heard screams, cries, chanting, singing, sobbing. And this was all from the recorder which had been left alone in the basement. When the team went to retrieve it before they left, we all clearly heard a man yell to them, “GO AWAY.”
I don’t know if it was just from everything that had been happening or the adrenaline of hearing that voice recorder, but we all decided it was time to figure out what was really going on. The activity was pretty widespread throughout the house, but it seemed most concentrated in the basement. That’s where the first experience took place, and that’s also the only area of the house that the animals wouldn’t ever go. It didn’t matter if you had a treat in your hand or was calling their name. They just refused. So, we went to the basement. Together, as a family.
ANNE:
I was scared to bring my kids down there with us. I thought it might be dangerous, but I knew they wanted to go and be a part of this. We were stronger together. I let Ian take the lead, and we just went on down into the darkness. Ian had to find his way over to the light to pull the cord, but when he did, nothing happened. I had some flashlights sitting on the old desk down there, so I felt my way over to them and quickly switched mine on. It was so cold, once there was some light, we all noticed we could see our breath. We didn’t know what we were searching for. We just knew whatever it was, it was down there.
IAN:
I was scared to death, more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, but I didn’t want my family to know that. I had to be strong for them. We just scoured the basement, dusting off our boxes and old things we had stored down there. It was actually Tara who found it.
TARA:
There was a hidden door in the floorboards below a rug. It hadn’t ever been discovered by any of us when we moved in. It was pretty well concealed, even without the rug over it. I called everyone over, and we just kind of looked at one another and then at the door. Ty was the one to grab the handle and pull it up.
TY:
We never could have prepared ourselves for that. Down in the hole, buried in the dirt below our house inside that hidden door in the floor were bones – human bones and skulls and animal bones, all mixed in there together. We had discovered some of previous residents and the original owners of the house. The police identified the father that had shot himself in the head, his skull having a hole through it, alongside the son who had been strangled to death. There were also dogs and cats in there, the animals the boy had killed. It was…a horrible scene.
ANNE:
We had all the skeletons removed and buried respectfully. We felt they were finally put to rest. They had problems in their lives, and they carried their troubles over to the afterlife and onto all those who lived on the property. We had the house blessed by a priest, and afterward, the air just seemed to lighten. It was literally easier to breathe, and we all felt better.
IAN:
Occasionally, we’ll still have the odd thing disappear and reappear in odd places, or we’ll hear the sound of footsteps, or there’ll be a door that opens on its own. But the violent activity, the dark atmosphere, the feeling of being watched and the cold spots have all gone. I love our house, regardless of everything it’s put us through. I know my wife made a good choice when she chose this one. It’s a beautiful home now, and it’s entirely ours.
ANNE:
It just needed some love.
Fate Flyer- ★ Administrator & FoG Mother ★
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Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Christoph Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:23 pm
Thank you for entering, Fate. I look forward to reading it. Everyone else: remember the deadline looms ever closer. All entries must be posted by 11:59 PM EST on October 14th. So, make those chilling finishing touches and get them posted.
Christoph- Shadow
- Join date : 2011-06-12
Posts : 191
Age : 36
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Ragter the junior greeter Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:29 pm
Huh, the fourteenth. I was thinking of entering...and still will! 8 days is plenty of time for me.
8 days is plenty of time for me.
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Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Lord Revan Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:33 pm
Thanks for the entry Fate. I look forward to reading it as well.
Please everyone who plans on entering, get us your entries by the 14th.
Good luck to everyone!!
Please everyone who plans on entering, get us your entries by the 14th.
Good luck to everyone!!
Lord Revan- ★ Administrator ★
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Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Bird of Hermes Thu Oct 06, 2011 2:36 pm
Thank you for your entry, Fate. I can't wait to read it!
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Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Gadreille Thu Oct 06, 2011 3:38 pm
I guess I'll put something up, just to encourage members to go through with theirs. Question: may I include a photo, or a link to a photo, in my entry?
Gadreille- ★ Administrator ★
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Posts : 5276
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Christoph Thu Oct 06, 2011 9:58 pm
You can if you feel so inclined, but the judges won't take it into consideration when reviewing. It wouldn't impact your score, but you could include a picture for the benefit of other readers if you want.
Christoph- Shadow
- Join date : 2011-06-12
Posts : 191
Age : 36
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Fate Flyer Fri Oct 07, 2011 7:31 am
I'm REALLY looking forward to reading everyone's entries. I love scary stories so much. Kudos to all those who enter too, since (as I have discovered) it can be very hard to write something spine-tingling.
Fate Flyer- ★ Administrator & FoG Mother ★
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The Vision of Sara Lyle
by Lenny V Fri Oct 07, 2011 12:00 pm
Light a candle at sundown, pour a glass of your favorite libation and savor the words of:
THE VISION OF SARA LYLE
In the desolate countryside many kilometers to the north of London, on the outskirts of the town of Hobbs, two young lads walked along a dirt road lined by aged, gnarled oaks, encompassed by swamp, in the shadows of towering cliffs. As they approached an adjoining trail leading off into dense thickets, the older lad veered off, while the smaller boy hesitated.
“Mum doesn’t want us to go through there,” the younger lad whispered fearfully, looking up at his older brother. “She wants us to stay on Gully Road... you know that. She’ll be spanking mad!”
“Stop being a sissy-boy.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Well, Michael, that’s what you are. If you want to follow me, fine. If not, take the long, sissy-boy way home.” The taller lad turned and disappeared down the trail, leaving his little brother standing beneath the dark canopy of interwoven branches of the great oaks rimming the road. It always seemed darker beneath those trees, and no more so than the present, now that the sun had dropped behind the hills.
Michael looked up at the tall cliffs, imposing, dark palisades extending to the darkening sky, and shivered. “You’re not supposed to leave me, Colin!” he shouted.
There was no answer, beside the faded echo of his voice from the distant, rocky bluffs.
He wanted to follow his brother, but was too scared. Nearly in tears, he chose to stay on Gully Road, and started running fast as his seven year old legs would carry him.
Colin had made his way deep into the brush. Finally, he heard footsteps coming up quickly behind him. Running footfalls crunching leaves. Sissy-boy is getting braver, he thought, and then realized the steps were much too heavy for little Michael. Alarmed, he started to turn, but a large arm hooked him around his throat from behind, choking his cry before it could reach his lips. He tried to struggle, but was yanked off the ground, helpless against the strength of his attacker. As the vise tightened around his thin neck, I’M DYING! was the last living thought he ever had.
And so went the first of many disappearances of a child from the village of Hobbs. Throughout northern England, it was whispered that a modern day curse had enveloped the village, as one child per year was taken after Colin had vanished. Despite vigilant parents and guardians hovering over the children, an opportunity would always arise, and a child would disappear. The frantic villagers would mount an ineffectual search, with the same result: Failure to locate a body.
On three occasions, the trail would lead to the quicksand bog beside Gully Road. Had the child fallen in? Pushed in? Did the trail really end there, or was that simply a ruse?
Even the hounds had failed. Once, the dogs had led searchers to the local ne’er do well’s house. Little did the group know, that the killer had deliberately baited the property with the missing child’s clothing, then returned to join their ranks prior to the search commencement. The murderer, a pillar of the community, helped incite the search party to mob-induced violence.
During the brutal interrogation, the man was beaten severely and died. Still, the missing child was never found. And then, the next year, another child disappeared.
Twelve long years had come and gone since Colin had disappeared. During that time, eleven others, nine boys and two girls, had simply vanished without a trace.
It was true that the bodies were near the quicksand bog. But the killer, a lifelong resident of this area, had, as a child years before, discovered a narrow, invisible trail of igneous bedrock lying just beneath the quicksand surface, leading to a peat bog, an excellent medium for burying and preserving bodies. No one else knew of this trail.
So it was there, in the desolate, God-forsaken mire below the great cliffs that the murderer buried the small corpses, under cover of darkness, where the swamp and night melded and reigned supreme.
~
During that dreadful span, there’d come a time of year when the mountain mists would cascade down the palisades in a spiraling fleece, blanketing the unmarked cemetery in an opaque fog. From there, the children’s spirits would arise to perform their macabre dance, to the beating pulse of the black night; a caliginous pulse real as a living heart, to this they would move in a whirling circle above the ground, the dance of death, holding hands, spinning faster and faster to the insidious throb of the earthly hell that was theirs.
The mist was so thick, that none alive had ever seen the ghostly prance, but the cacophony of restless souls, forever damned in earthbound perdition while awaiting justice done in their name, was said to have been heard from Gully Road and the swamp beyond.
It was during the fortnight leading to All Hallows Eve, when the spirits would converge in earnest, arising at dusk. With their communal lament consummating All Saints Day, they’d call for the soul of the one who had forced them all into their present and final state. The children would clasp hands, floating, circling their unmarked and ungraced graves, free from another year of hellish limbo, free for the one night when the dead may return to the world of the living.
Now, through the ethers, the spirits sensed an unprecedented opportunity. A convergence of the fates was at hand, setting to conspire for them. A living, young child, one with the ability to see them, to hear them, to allow them access to the world of their killer, would soon be in their midst.
~
Sara Lyle hadn’t always been different than the other children. On the contrary, she’d always been a beautiful little girl, with the brightest smile, and prettiest bows adorning her curly, auburn locks. With her little girl friends, she would play tea party, and they’d dress up their dolls and kittens in miniature Victorian gowns, then parade through her garden, alongside the pool filled with emerald-hued water, where orange, fantailed fish swam slowly amongst water hyacinths and pond lilies.
After the complications that arose during Sara’s birth, her mother had become a sickly, bedridden young woman, so Sara was raised by a nanny, and of course, her father, Sir Franklin Lyle. When her mother had died when she was a toddler, Sara was too young to understand the reality of death, so she grew up believing that her mother was in heaven, watching down on her. That was Sir Franklin’s wish for his daughter to think that, because inside his broken heart, he knew that to be true.
But the true differences that set Sara apart began that dark day when she contracted the raging undulant fever, presumably from drinking unpasteurized milk. Priests were called to the Lyle residence, where they administered her Last Rites while she lay submerged in an ice bath. Though she did not die, the girl’s existence changed from the happy-go-lucky glee of childhood, to a world of never-ending nightmares, where joy was a full night’s sleep without baneful, debilitating visions.
Too many nights of sudden and horrible visions forming within her mind’s eye forced the child to mature too abruptly. Though her father brought in a succession of doctors and specialists, with their elixirs, prescriptions and pseudo-cures, her mind’s eye never lost the ability to siphon images conjured through the air, inexplicably released from seemingly brutal deeds of horror and violence.
The new gift was not limited to visualizations. Sara was dually transformed, displaying a highly developed sketching talent, able to record her visions with utmost clarity, dead-on details from the murder that only an eyewitness would know. Those horrible details that sound benign on paper, such as multiple, bilateral lacerations, eviscerations, decapitations, strangulations. One can only imagine the impact on a young child, enduring the graphic horrors of these murders, the types of weapons used, the facial imagery of killer and victim, and then, swiftly developing the telling scenes as images of charcoal upon paper.
While her classmates were still playing dress up and serving tea, Sara would now spend her days recuperating from those sleepless nights drawing pictures of dark and foreboding scenes, violent images that couldn’t possibly be conceived by a child’s mind. So vivid were these drawings, that one day a constable arrived at the Lyle home, inquiring about the child artist. Sara’s reserved father, Sir Franklin, though concerned, did not seem particularly surprised that the police would want to see her drawings. The neighborhood girls would still visit with Sara when she was well enough. Invariably, they’d ask to see her macabre drawings, and she’d show them. One of the girls had a father who was an officer on the local precinct.
The night that Constable Charles Winston’s daughter informed him about Sara’s drawings, they had just finished eating dinner. He was reading in the parlor by the fireplace, engrossed in the sensational newspaper account of the murder of a renowned London socialite. The maid had found the woman dead in her bedroom chamber, and the police speculated that she had known her assailant, as the house had not been broken into. But there was much more to the story then what the newspapers had printed. Winston’s position with the police department allowed him access to the real sequence of events.
First, the police had not released the full details of how the woman was killed. She had been garroted from behind with a thin strand of rope.
Because of the victim’s celebrated social status, the heat was on from Windsor Castle for an arrest to be made quickly. But the prime suspect, as it turned out, was the victim’s estranged husband. He, too, was from an equally prominent family, afforded the lofty protection that only went to the very wealthy. The scuttlebutt was that the police had nothing that could directly connect him to the murder. To complicate matters further, his family had retained London’s most renowned defense barrister.
So while Constable Charles Winston read the account, his daughter Kate was trying to get his attention. She would talk, and he’d absently nod and say “Yes, my dear.”
But then Kate began talking about Sara, and her drawings. And when she spoke of the dead woman, and a length of rope, Charles started paying notice. And when she said, “The man had rope wrapped around his hands,” he put down the paper, directing his full attention to his daughter. There was too much of a coincidence, between what the girl said and what really happened, for him to ignore.
The next day at work, Winston approached the station Inspector with his findings. The man was skeptical, but knew Winston to be a solid constable. Plus, though not advertised to the public, he knew the police had consulted with psychics on occasion. He granted Winston some leeway for follow-up.
That night, Winston walked the four blocks to the Lyle residence. After some small talk with Sir Franklin, with whom he was acquainted, he explained the reason why he was there.
A distraught Sir Franklin frowned as he thought of his poor daughter, and the new ordeal that she must now endure. “Constable, you must promise me that you will not frighten her. Go gently, please. Between losing her mother when she was a toddler, and now, with these visions of hers, she’s been through quite much, I’m afraid,” he said, leaving the room.
After a few minutes, Franklin returned with Sara. The constable’s heart dropped at the sight of the pale, haggard little girl, listlessly devoid of happiness. Dark circles ringed her eyes, as she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Winston suddenly felt absurd for having disturbed them. Sensing the policeman’s hesitation, Sir Franklin broke the awkward silence. “Sara, this is Kate’s father, Constable Winston. He’s heard about a drawing you’ve made. He’d like to see it.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?” Sara asked with a quivering lower lip.
“Of course not, my child,” the constable spoke up. “Quite the contrary. Your drawing might help us catch a bad person, Sara. Scotland Yard, and Her Majesty the Queen would be forever grateful.”
Sara smiled a bit at the thought that she could do something that would be appreciated by the Queen.
The detective asked her about a particular drawing that he’d heard about, where a man was holding a short length of thin rope, wrapped in each hand, around a woman’s neck. And though Sara didn’t know what the word garrote meant, she knew exactly what one looked like, thin strands wrapped and knotted in the killer’s hands as it was.
Sara nodded, moving to her desk, the site where she’d often interpret her thoughts into transfixing images. Leafing through her macabre manuscript, she withdrew one of the sketches and handed it to the constable. The man was taken aback by the darkness and intrinsic detail of what was undoubtedly a murder scene. How could a child conceive such horrible images? Yet the details of the drawing were complex, and the killer’s facial portrait, including an unusual birthmark on his cheek, and puffy, coiffed hair was a dead ringer for the suspect, the estranged husband of the socialite victim. Winston couldn’t take his eyes off the drawing and the harrowing expression on the victim’s face, with its bulging, lifeless eyes.
Suddenly, Sara clutched at her chest, breathing hard. “It’s starting!” she cried. The startled constable watched as Sir Franklin quickly went to her side, pushing a charcoal stick into each of her hands.
“It’s usually at night when this happens. I guess most murders occur at night, Constable?” Sir Franklin asked. “That’s usually when she draws…hardly ever happens during the day.”
Icy fingers clasped the back of the gaping policeman’s neck at the sight accosting his eyes. Sara’s face contorted with anguish, as her eyes rolled white and glazed over. The stunned constable watched as the girl’s ten fingers curled and twitched with an eerie, writhing action, as if controlled by unseen strings. Both hands, drawing independently of one another, found their range with unerring certainty, marking images of violence, occurring at that moment, somewhere in London.
All the while, she’d stare off into space, with those whitened eyes never looking down at the paper. An inner vision seeing a killing committed firsthand, as a ballet of murder…a stabbing death…a victim with many wounds…with an especially deep one in her throat…so deep that only a flap of flesh kept the head intact. The murderer lived one floor above the victim. Sara drew the room numbers. The murder occurred in 512. The killer lived in 612…one block from the red-bricked church facing the river.
A transfixed Winston shuddered at this sight. Surely, it wasn’t possible for this little girl’s hands to move so fast and accurately, while staring sightlessly into space with blank, white orbs? And the quality of her images was extraordinary and certainly could not be duplicated by Scotland Yard’s best police composite artist in five times the span it took the girl to sketch.
Finally, Sara was done. She dropped the charcoal sticks on the desktop, sweat dripping down her face. Sir Franklin poured her a glass of water, which the girl gulped down. “She must rest now, Constable. I’m sure that you understand.”
“Of course, Sir. May I have these two drawings, Sara?”
Looking up to Winston through melancholy eyes, she nodded. The constable thanked the girl and her father, and left. He walked quickly through the darkened, empty streets. As the fog began to swirl around the gas lit street lamps, he looked over his shoulder more than once.
Forty-five minutes and two whiskeys later, Winston’s hands still trembled, as he studied the drawings in the security of his own home. He kept visualizing Sara’s grimace, the dreadful, leering face devoid of eyes. Shuddering, he knew this was all too horrible to be just a nightmare.
In less than twenty-four hours, two arrests relating to Sara’s sketches had been made. Of course, the detectives still needed to interrogate the suspects, but now, armed with the drawings, they skillfully extracted detailed confessions: One suspect’s admission for the garroting murder of his estranged socialite wife, the other from the man who’d butchered his neighbor residing one floor below.
Word of the gifted child artist circulated rapidly through Scotland Yard. Sara immediately became known to the police community as an empath; a visionary. Detectives combed through her portfolio, marveling at her skills. A few whispered that they wished she had been afflicted a few years earlier, when Jack the Ripper had eluded their grasp.
Within a few days they’d determined that Sara had recorded nearly every murder that occurred within a twenty-kilometer radius of her home on the outskirts of London, since her affliction began.
Some cases remained unsolved: Scotland Yard couldn’t identify the depicted killer, who had, perhaps, moved from the area, or had randomly preyed upon the victim, and had nothing else in common with them beside the fateful interlude. And because forensic science was in its infancy, and the police had just embraced the new technology called photography, most criminals were still unphotographed.
However, the cases involving the spouse, jilted lover, or neighbor as a prime suspect, or where the murderer committed multiple killings over a period of time using serial methodology, Sara’s drawing’s proved to be an invaluable tool for the police. Constable Winston was quickly promoted to detective, and was the vital energy driving the special task force investigating the drawings.
Despite Scotland Yard enjoying an unprecedented homicide arrest and conviction rate, there came a point when the logic of the police finding led Sir Franklin to hypothesize that if his daughter was removed from the city, with its relentless violence, then perhaps she could again experience a normal childhood. He decided to put his theory to the test, by taking Sara into the country for an extended, peaceful holiday. The family doctor debated the logic, but Sir Franklin remained steadfast, convinced that he had to at least try. As a retired, knighted army officer, with vast, inherited wealth, he could simply afford to pickup and leave.
Sara loved and trusted her father deeply, and looked forward to the trip with unbridled enthusiasm. She so loved the English forests, with its ancient trees and winding trails of green, and the clear streams of shimmering, cool water that flowed like rivulets of jade. The times that they’d visited the parks near her home, she had nearly forgotten the horrors running rampant through her head.
It was into the village of Hobbs that Sara Lyle and her father Sir Franklin arrived late one autumn afternoon, on their planned trek through the English countryside by horse and carriage, in search of the ever-elusive peace that would allow the lass to recapture the childhood that had been wrested away and still so cruelly eluded her.
But the stop at Hobbs began a new and immediate downward spiral for Sara, as the lass took ill the moment she stepped from the carriage. Within minutes she developed a high-grade fever and began to swoon. Sir Franklin carried Sara to their inn room, where he swabbed her head with towels soaked in cool water. Finally, he asked the proprietor to locate a doctor to examine his daughter, and then bring a bucket of ice. The proprietor in turn ordered his son to fetch Dr. Simon.
Sara began to hallucinate, crying out about the children, the pallid dead ones floating over her bed…with black circles surrounding their lifeless eyes. She verbally anguished for paper and charcoal. At first saying no, her father quickly relented, realizing that she had to draw. As much a necessary function to her life now as breathing and eating, the drawings were her way of coping, a cathartic response to the visionary overdose of violence forced into her mind. Propping her up on two pillows, Sir Franklin gave her the drawing tools.
Her eyes had glazed white, locking with the horror floating over them. Sara’s fingers began their awful dance, like strobing marionettes controlled by the unseen horrors undulating above and now materializing on paper. Limbs adjoining torsos and heads. Repeatedly. Many victims, levitating above the four bedposts.
Watching her draw, her father kept glancing above the bed, knowing that something awful was right there, right then, but an arm’s length beyond. He cringed, with no way of knowing that the spirits were ignoring him, concentrating solely on the fevered Sara. They’d known about her for a long time, knowing that she was their only chance to finally be avenged. All Hallows Eve was nigh; their collective strength could be no stronger than its present state.
Sara’s drawing was quickly completed. In it, twelve children floating above her bedposts, to the backdrop of a tall mountain, with flowing mists leading to a blackened zone at the base. Twelve graves emerging from the darkness beneath the ominous shadow of a man wearing a suit, sporting a neatly trimmed Van dyke beard, holding a shovel.
Sir Franklin examined the sketch. This was perhaps Sara’s most gruesome work. He put the sketch down, swabbing Sara’s fevered forehead with a cloth dipped in cool water. The girl drifted off into a shallow, fitful sleep.
Pacing the room, Sir Franklin again studied the horrid drawing, shuddering. Having faced death and the unknown many times in his life, he was not a man to frighten easily; in his younger days, on an obscure piece of parched earth known as Rorke’s Drift, Natal, he and the 100 men under his command had battled and miraculously repelled 4000 enraged Zulu warriors that had surrounded them, earning him and nine others the Victoria Cross.
During his ensuing military tour of British colonial Africa he’d also witnessed the nocturnal exorcism of a young boy seemingly possessed by demons. The village shaman performing the rites went mad and died while invoking his gods. Sir Franklin had witnessed many ghastly events on that night which he was never able to explain, nor forget.
He had seen the worst that humanity could inflict upon the world. Yet it was all by his own volition, and he was a grown man and a trained soldier.
His poor Sara was just a little girl, forced to not only endure unrelenting horror, but now, the ghosts of murdered children haunting her consciousness. Again, he looked above the bed, knowing they were still there.
For a moment he felt helpless, but had the presence of mind to recall his resolution that he must present a strong front to Sara at all times, even when she was asleep. There was a bond between them that transcended the spoken word. No matter what might happen, he must maintain his strength so she may draw upon it. If all else failed them, it wouldn’t be due to his shortcomings.
Suddenly there was a low rap on their door. Opening it, Sir Franklin did a vivid retake, deeply startled by the man standing with the innkeeper. His blood pressure surging, Franklin fiercely eyed the nattily dressed, bearded Dr. Simon. The man could have been the floor model for Sara’s drawing.
Sensing her father’s sudden stress, the child’s eyes fluttered open. She saw the doctor and her reaction to his presence was severe. Through all this her burning fever intensified, raging forth for the worse, as she recognized the man’s face from her inner vision.
Indeed, Dr. Simon was the murderer of the children, and now she saw that the spirits no longer floated above her, but tore at the doctor with gossamer hands gnarled into claws, faces contorted and eyes ablaze with hatred. Only poor Sara could see this macabre nightmare playing out, in and around her bed.
Not only did she see the children’s spirits, but now, was forced to endure seeing them murdered, again, one at a time, strangled quickly by the leering Dr. Simon. All this within the outline of an inverted pentagram inhabited by dark, cowled figures, contained in a whirling montage detailing the horrific final moments of twelve drastically shortened lives.
“MURDERER...MURDERER,” she screamed out, rearing up, thrashing, her father barely able to hold her down. “The bodies...the bodies in the swamp...In the peat bog!” The doctor flushed at the apparent unveiling of his ruse, though the inn proprietor thought it was just fever talk.
Sara’s father, however, knew of her uncanny gift and of course her most recent drawing, with this doctor drawn so precisely. He eyed the physician with great wariness, contemplating whether to hold him for the village authorities.
The doctor was panicking. He sensed correctly that it wouldn’t take long for people to start listening to this girl. He wanted to kill her, and from his black leather bag prepared a syringe with a lethal dose of barbiturate. Sara sensed this too, watching the children’s spirits tear at the doctor with a renewed frenzy. She screamed to her father “DON’T LET HIM TOUCH ME!”
Having never seen his daughter this hysterical, Sir Franklin forbade Simon from examining, let alone injecting her, physically placing himself between Sara and the doctor. “Leave here, while you still may,” he scowled at Doctor Simon, still a formidable presence with his ire evoked, as now.
There was a tense standoff between the men. The doctor realized if he attacked the man before him to get to the girl, there’d be no rational explanation he could later provide, so he hurriedly exited the room and left the inn, heading back to his office to collect digging tools. If he could dispose of the bodies into the quicksand before the girl could lead searchers there, he thought, there’d be no direct evidence to tie her claims to him.
As he left his office, shovel and lantern in hand, he paid no heed to the calendar, or the wall clock chiming half-past eleven. All Hallows Eve.
Hurrying along darkened roads, forcing his horse to gallop faster than prudence would allow while pulling a buggy down winding paths traveled more by sheep than men, he pushed with the madness borne of desperation.
Finally, he jerked in the reins and stopped, on Gully Road near the point where Colin and Michael had fatefully parted ways twelve years before. The white, billowing mists had already cascaded down the cliffs, shrouding the swamp. Lighting his lantern, the doctor moved quickly, knowing he had much work to do before sunrise.
In the dark, tense silence he made his way to the secret place where the children were buried. He began digging. Time did not seem to pass…
All of a sudden an icy shroud of fear clasped his limbs as he saw that the interred children, in various states of decomposition had begun to push out of their graves, grasping at him. Swinging the shovel, he shrieked, but the blade just swiped empty air. The ghastly children, with the collective strength of the supernatural that was theirs but once a year, were able to tear at him with ripping hands.
The vengeful moans of the damned were a frightening sound to behold, and the terror-stricken Dr. Simon ran blindly through the dark, bellowing, with the children flying after him, swarming, smiting, biting, able to keep up with him effortlessly, though he was running fast as he could. Bleeding from a score of cuts, eyes gouged, he lost his bearings in the mist.
Suddenly, the earth below him was gone as he stepped into the quicksand. As he frantically clawed for solid ground, the spirits suddenly disappeared, and he momentarily caught his balance by grabbing a handful of sedge grass strands. For an instant, his frantic breathing the only audible sound, he nearly pulled himself clear.
But then, sounding ominously in the distance the village clock struck midnight. The children’s spirits pounced upon him anew, rending, tearing, laughing with sardonic malignancy. Losing his grip, Simon screamed, slowly sinking into the mire and drowning beneath the fouled water.
With requited tenacity, the spirits watched grimly, as Simon could only die once, instead of twelve times like they. Silent now, satiated with the revenge that finally was theirs, they held hands, ascending in a slow, numinous spiral, higher and higher into the heavens until they had disappeared.
Hours had passed before the local constable arrived and spoke at length with Sir Franklin Lyle and the innkeeper. He’d, of course, heard of the child empath who had helped Scotland Yard solve dozens of London homicides. After taking a long, hard look at Sara’s drawing, they searched for the good Doctor Simon. By dawn, the trail led to the swamp beneath the cliffs, where the doctor’s horse and buggy were discovered.
Shortly after, they found his footprints, still outlined in the stagnant water, leading across the bedrock trail through the quicksand. Then the lantern, still lit, and shovel were found, along with the twelve full graves, and his footprints-alone-leading to the quicksand’s edge.
The ensuing investigation never revealed why the killer hadn’t simply disposed of his victims instead of burying them in the peat. Suffice to say, the police located evidence of satanic ritual beneath the doctor’s residence, in an ancient chamber dating to the days of druids and runes, laden with dark, stained stone altars, and carved, inverted pentagrams.
Beneath the words 'MOLOCH EST ET VIVIT' chisled into the walls of stone, robed figures in black, with but lambent eyes visible beneath ebony cowls had been painstakingly painted throughout, mute witnesses to the horrors inflicted by Dr. Simon. The black arts were long-rumored to involve the periodic exhumation of remains. There was ample proof of that having transpired in this awful room.
Just at the stroke of midnight, as Dr. Simon was meeting his demise, Sara’s fevery illness had suddenly broken, and soundly she slept till late morning. Upon awakening, with the visions of the previous night fading to memory, she sensed that the forces were again aligned, as the green calm of peace permeated her vision. The children were gone.
Word of the murderer’s identity spread through the Hobbs populace like wild fire. People were devastated by their doctor’s connection with the village curse. Though grief-stricken parents lamented the twelve children that were finally found, there wouldn’t be a sigh of final relief from the rest of the village until a full year had come and gone without a child disappearing.
As for Sara Lyle and her father, they moved finally to a village far north of Hobbs. On the cusp of the moors was the hamlet of Leedston. There hadn’t been a killing there in anyone’s memory.
In the quaint village a tiny, one-roomed schoolhouse stood, above which lazy, gray smoke drifted out of the chimney from the black, pot-bellied wood stove within. A pretty school marm, whom both Sara and her father would grow to adore, taught twenty students there. Four were girls Sara’s age, and they took to her right away. When school was out, they’d play tea and dress their dolls in the latest Victorian outfits.
Now that she slept the night through, Sara’s eyes shined with life again, with the return of her enchanting smile. Sir Franklin’s heart was at peace once more.
The girls would often play a game, where the object was to quiz your opponent with a series of true or false questions, then bluff with answers, and decide who was lying, and who was telling the truth. Though always able to win if she desired, Sara chose to intentionally lose more often than not, knowing that it was only fair to her new friends for her to do so.
* * * * *
Lenny V.
THE VISION OF SARA LYLE
In the desolate countryside many kilometers to the north of London, on the outskirts of the town of Hobbs, two young lads walked along a dirt road lined by aged, gnarled oaks, encompassed by swamp, in the shadows of towering cliffs. As they approached an adjoining trail leading off into dense thickets, the older lad veered off, while the smaller boy hesitated.
“Mum doesn’t want us to go through there,” the younger lad whispered fearfully, looking up at his older brother. “She wants us to stay on Gully Road... you know that. She’ll be spanking mad!”
“Stop being a sissy-boy.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Well, Michael, that’s what you are. If you want to follow me, fine. If not, take the long, sissy-boy way home.” The taller lad turned and disappeared down the trail, leaving his little brother standing beneath the dark canopy of interwoven branches of the great oaks rimming the road. It always seemed darker beneath those trees, and no more so than the present, now that the sun had dropped behind the hills.
Michael looked up at the tall cliffs, imposing, dark palisades extending to the darkening sky, and shivered. “You’re not supposed to leave me, Colin!” he shouted.
There was no answer, beside the faded echo of his voice from the distant, rocky bluffs.
He wanted to follow his brother, but was too scared. Nearly in tears, he chose to stay on Gully Road, and started running fast as his seven year old legs would carry him.
Colin had made his way deep into the brush. Finally, he heard footsteps coming up quickly behind him. Running footfalls crunching leaves. Sissy-boy is getting braver, he thought, and then realized the steps were much too heavy for little Michael. Alarmed, he started to turn, but a large arm hooked him around his throat from behind, choking his cry before it could reach his lips. He tried to struggle, but was yanked off the ground, helpless against the strength of his attacker. As the vise tightened around his thin neck, I’M DYING! was the last living thought he ever had.
And so went the first of many disappearances of a child from the village of Hobbs. Throughout northern England, it was whispered that a modern day curse had enveloped the village, as one child per year was taken after Colin had vanished. Despite vigilant parents and guardians hovering over the children, an opportunity would always arise, and a child would disappear. The frantic villagers would mount an ineffectual search, with the same result: Failure to locate a body.
On three occasions, the trail would lead to the quicksand bog beside Gully Road. Had the child fallen in? Pushed in? Did the trail really end there, or was that simply a ruse?
Even the hounds had failed. Once, the dogs had led searchers to the local ne’er do well’s house. Little did the group know, that the killer had deliberately baited the property with the missing child’s clothing, then returned to join their ranks prior to the search commencement. The murderer, a pillar of the community, helped incite the search party to mob-induced violence.
During the brutal interrogation, the man was beaten severely and died. Still, the missing child was never found. And then, the next year, another child disappeared.
Twelve long years had come and gone since Colin had disappeared. During that time, eleven others, nine boys and two girls, had simply vanished without a trace.
It was true that the bodies were near the quicksand bog. But the killer, a lifelong resident of this area, had, as a child years before, discovered a narrow, invisible trail of igneous bedrock lying just beneath the quicksand surface, leading to a peat bog, an excellent medium for burying and preserving bodies. No one else knew of this trail.
So it was there, in the desolate, God-forsaken mire below the great cliffs that the murderer buried the small corpses, under cover of darkness, where the swamp and night melded and reigned supreme.
~
During that dreadful span, there’d come a time of year when the mountain mists would cascade down the palisades in a spiraling fleece, blanketing the unmarked cemetery in an opaque fog. From there, the children’s spirits would arise to perform their macabre dance, to the beating pulse of the black night; a caliginous pulse real as a living heart, to this they would move in a whirling circle above the ground, the dance of death, holding hands, spinning faster and faster to the insidious throb of the earthly hell that was theirs.
The mist was so thick, that none alive had ever seen the ghostly prance, but the cacophony of restless souls, forever damned in earthbound perdition while awaiting justice done in their name, was said to have been heard from Gully Road and the swamp beyond.
It was during the fortnight leading to All Hallows Eve, when the spirits would converge in earnest, arising at dusk. With their communal lament consummating All Saints Day, they’d call for the soul of the one who had forced them all into their present and final state. The children would clasp hands, floating, circling their unmarked and ungraced graves, free from another year of hellish limbo, free for the one night when the dead may return to the world of the living.
Now, through the ethers, the spirits sensed an unprecedented opportunity. A convergence of the fates was at hand, setting to conspire for them. A living, young child, one with the ability to see them, to hear them, to allow them access to the world of their killer, would soon be in their midst.
~
Sara Lyle hadn’t always been different than the other children. On the contrary, she’d always been a beautiful little girl, with the brightest smile, and prettiest bows adorning her curly, auburn locks. With her little girl friends, she would play tea party, and they’d dress up their dolls and kittens in miniature Victorian gowns, then parade through her garden, alongside the pool filled with emerald-hued water, where orange, fantailed fish swam slowly amongst water hyacinths and pond lilies.
After the complications that arose during Sara’s birth, her mother had become a sickly, bedridden young woman, so Sara was raised by a nanny, and of course, her father, Sir Franklin Lyle. When her mother had died when she was a toddler, Sara was too young to understand the reality of death, so she grew up believing that her mother was in heaven, watching down on her. That was Sir Franklin’s wish for his daughter to think that, because inside his broken heart, he knew that to be true.
But the true differences that set Sara apart began that dark day when she contracted the raging undulant fever, presumably from drinking unpasteurized milk. Priests were called to the Lyle residence, where they administered her Last Rites while she lay submerged in an ice bath. Though she did not die, the girl’s existence changed from the happy-go-lucky glee of childhood, to a world of never-ending nightmares, where joy was a full night’s sleep without baneful, debilitating visions.
Too many nights of sudden and horrible visions forming within her mind’s eye forced the child to mature too abruptly. Though her father brought in a succession of doctors and specialists, with their elixirs, prescriptions and pseudo-cures, her mind’s eye never lost the ability to siphon images conjured through the air, inexplicably released from seemingly brutal deeds of horror and violence.
The new gift was not limited to visualizations. Sara was dually transformed, displaying a highly developed sketching talent, able to record her visions with utmost clarity, dead-on details from the murder that only an eyewitness would know. Those horrible details that sound benign on paper, such as multiple, bilateral lacerations, eviscerations, decapitations, strangulations. One can only imagine the impact on a young child, enduring the graphic horrors of these murders, the types of weapons used, the facial imagery of killer and victim, and then, swiftly developing the telling scenes as images of charcoal upon paper.
While her classmates were still playing dress up and serving tea, Sara would now spend her days recuperating from those sleepless nights drawing pictures of dark and foreboding scenes, violent images that couldn’t possibly be conceived by a child’s mind. So vivid were these drawings, that one day a constable arrived at the Lyle home, inquiring about the child artist. Sara’s reserved father, Sir Franklin, though concerned, did not seem particularly surprised that the police would want to see her drawings. The neighborhood girls would still visit with Sara when she was well enough. Invariably, they’d ask to see her macabre drawings, and she’d show them. One of the girls had a father who was an officer on the local precinct.
The night that Constable Charles Winston’s daughter informed him about Sara’s drawings, they had just finished eating dinner. He was reading in the parlor by the fireplace, engrossed in the sensational newspaper account of the murder of a renowned London socialite. The maid had found the woman dead in her bedroom chamber, and the police speculated that she had known her assailant, as the house had not been broken into. But there was much more to the story then what the newspapers had printed. Winston’s position with the police department allowed him access to the real sequence of events.
First, the police had not released the full details of how the woman was killed. She had been garroted from behind with a thin strand of rope.
Because of the victim’s celebrated social status, the heat was on from Windsor Castle for an arrest to be made quickly. But the prime suspect, as it turned out, was the victim’s estranged husband. He, too, was from an equally prominent family, afforded the lofty protection that only went to the very wealthy. The scuttlebutt was that the police had nothing that could directly connect him to the murder. To complicate matters further, his family had retained London’s most renowned defense barrister.
So while Constable Charles Winston read the account, his daughter Kate was trying to get his attention. She would talk, and he’d absently nod and say “Yes, my dear.”
But then Kate began talking about Sara, and her drawings. And when she spoke of the dead woman, and a length of rope, Charles started paying notice. And when she said, “The man had rope wrapped around his hands,” he put down the paper, directing his full attention to his daughter. There was too much of a coincidence, between what the girl said and what really happened, for him to ignore.
The next day at work, Winston approached the station Inspector with his findings. The man was skeptical, but knew Winston to be a solid constable. Plus, though not advertised to the public, he knew the police had consulted with psychics on occasion. He granted Winston some leeway for follow-up.
That night, Winston walked the four blocks to the Lyle residence. After some small talk with Sir Franklin, with whom he was acquainted, he explained the reason why he was there.
A distraught Sir Franklin frowned as he thought of his poor daughter, and the new ordeal that she must now endure. “Constable, you must promise me that you will not frighten her. Go gently, please. Between losing her mother when she was a toddler, and now, with these visions of hers, she’s been through quite much, I’m afraid,” he said, leaving the room.
After a few minutes, Franklin returned with Sara. The constable’s heart dropped at the sight of the pale, haggard little girl, listlessly devoid of happiness. Dark circles ringed her eyes, as she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Winston suddenly felt absurd for having disturbed them. Sensing the policeman’s hesitation, Sir Franklin broke the awkward silence. “Sara, this is Kate’s father, Constable Winston. He’s heard about a drawing you’ve made. He’d like to see it.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?” Sara asked with a quivering lower lip.
“Of course not, my child,” the constable spoke up. “Quite the contrary. Your drawing might help us catch a bad person, Sara. Scotland Yard, and Her Majesty the Queen would be forever grateful.”
Sara smiled a bit at the thought that she could do something that would be appreciated by the Queen.
The detective asked her about a particular drawing that he’d heard about, where a man was holding a short length of thin rope, wrapped in each hand, around a woman’s neck. And though Sara didn’t know what the word garrote meant, she knew exactly what one looked like, thin strands wrapped and knotted in the killer’s hands as it was.
Sara nodded, moving to her desk, the site where she’d often interpret her thoughts into transfixing images. Leafing through her macabre manuscript, she withdrew one of the sketches and handed it to the constable. The man was taken aback by the darkness and intrinsic detail of what was undoubtedly a murder scene. How could a child conceive such horrible images? Yet the details of the drawing were complex, and the killer’s facial portrait, including an unusual birthmark on his cheek, and puffy, coiffed hair was a dead ringer for the suspect, the estranged husband of the socialite victim. Winston couldn’t take his eyes off the drawing and the harrowing expression on the victim’s face, with its bulging, lifeless eyes.
Suddenly, Sara clutched at her chest, breathing hard. “It’s starting!” she cried. The startled constable watched as Sir Franklin quickly went to her side, pushing a charcoal stick into each of her hands.
“It’s usually at night when this happens. I guess most murders occur at night, Constable?” Sir Franklin asked. “That’s usually when she draws…hardly ever happens during the day.”
Icy fingers clasped the back of the gaping policeman’s neck at the sight accosting his eyes. Sara’s face contorted with anguish, as her eyes rolled white and glazed over. The stunned constable watched as the girl’s ten fingers curled and twitched with an eerie, writhing action, as if controlled by unseen strings. Both hands, drawing independently of one another, found their range with unerring certainty, marking images of violence, occurring at that moment, somewhere in London.
All the while, she’d stare off into space, with those whitened eyes never looking down at the paper. An inner vision seeing a killing committed firsthand, as a ballet of murder…a stabbing death…a victim with many wounds…with an especially deep one in her throat…so deep that only a flap of flesh kept the head intact. The murderer lived one floor above the victim. Sara drew the room numbers. The murder occurred in 512. The killer lived in 612…one block from the red-bricked church facing the river.
A transfixed Winston shuddered at this sight. Surely, it wasn’t possible for this little girl’s hands to move so fast and accurately, while staring sightlessly into space with blank, white orbs? And the quality of her images was extraordinary and certainly could not be duplicated by Scotland Yard’s best police composite artist in five times the span it took the girl to sketch.
Finally, Sara was done. She dropped the charcoal sticks on the desktop, sweat dripping down her face. Sir Franklin poured her a glass of water, which the girl gulped down. “She must rest now, Constable. I’m sure that you understand.”
“Of course, Sir. May I have these two drawings, Sara?”
Looking up to Winston through melancholy eyes, she nodded. The constable thanked the girl and her father, and left. He walked quickly through the darkened, empty streets. As the fog began to swirl around the gas lit street lamps, he looked over his shoulder more than once.
Forty-five minutes and two whiskeys later, Winston’s hands still trembled, as he studied the drawings in the security of his own home. He kept visualizing Sara’s grimace, the dreadful, leering face devoid of eyes. Shuddering, he knew this was all too horrible to be just a nightmare.
In less than twenty-four hours, two arrests relating to Sara’s sketches had been made. Of course, the detectives still needed to interrogate the suspects, but now, armed with the drawings, they skillfully extracted detailed confessions: One suspect’s admission for the garroting murder of his estranged socialite wife, the other from the man who’d butchered his neighbor residing one floor below.
Word of the gifted child artist circulated rapidly through Scotland Yard. Sara immediately became known to the police community as an empath; a visionary. Detectives combed through her portfolio, marveling at her skills. A few whispered that they wished she had been afflicted a few years earlier, when Jack the Ripper had eluded their grasp.
Within a few days they’d determined that Sara had recorded nearly every murder that occurred within a twenty-kilometer radius of her home on the outskirts of London, since her affliction began.
Some cases remained unsolved: Scotland Yard couldn’t identify the depicted killer, who had, perhaps, moved from the area, or had randomly preyed upon the victim, and had nothing else in common with them beside the fateful interlude. And because forensic science was in its infancy, and the police had just embraced the new technology called photography, most criminals were still unphotographed.
However, the cases involving the spouse, jilted lover, or neighbor as a prime suspect, or where the murderer committed multiple killings over a period of time using serial methodology, Sara’s drawing’s proved to be an invaluable tool for the police. Constable Winston was quickly promoted to detective, and was the vital energy driving the special task force investigating the drawings.
Despite Scotland Yard enjoying an unprecedented homicide arrest and conviction rate, there came a point when the logic of the police finding led Sir Franklin to hypothesize that if his daughter was removed from the city, with its relentless violence, then perhaps she could again experience a normal childhood. He decided to put his theory to the test, by taking Sara into the country for an extended, peaceful holiday. The family doctor debated the logic, but Sir Franklin remained steadfast, convinced that he had to at least try. As a retired, knighted army officer, with vast, inherited wealth, he could simply afford to pickup and leave.
Sara loved and trusted her father deeply, and looked forward to the trip with unbridled enthusiasm. She so loved the English forests, with its ancient trees and winding trails of green, and the clear streams of shimmering, cool water that flowed like rivulets of jade. The times that they’d visited the parks near her home, she had nearly forgotten the horrors running rampant through her head.
It was into the village of Hobbs that Sara Lyle and her father Sir Franklin arrived late one autumn afternoon, on their planned trek through the English countryside by horse and carriage, in search of the ever-elusive peace that would allow the lass to recapture the childhood that had been wrested away and still so cruelly eluded her.
But the stop at Hobbs began a new and immediate downward spiral for Sara, as the lass took ill the moment she stepped from the carriage. Within minutes she developed a high-grade fever and began to swoon. Sir Franklin carried Sara to their inn room, where he swabbed her head with towels soaked in cool water. Finally, he asked the proprietor to locate a doctor to examine his daughter, and then bring a bucket of ice. The proprietor in turn ordered his son to fetch Dr. Simon.
Sara began to hallucinate, crying out about the children, the pallid dead ones floating over her bed…with black circles surrounding their lifeless eyes. She verbally anguished for paper and charcoal. At first saying no, her father quickly relented, realizing that she had to draw. As much a necessary function to her life now as breathing and eating, the drawings were her way of coping, a cathartic response to the visionary overdose of violence forced into her mind. Propping her up on two pillows, Sir Franklin gave her the drawing tools.
Her eyes had glazed white, locking with the horror floating over them. Sara’s fingers began their awful dance, like strobing marionettes controlled by the unseen horrors undulating above and now materializing on paper. Limbs adjoining torsos and heads. Repeatedly. Many victims, levitating above the four bedposts.
Watching her draw, her father kept glancing above the bed, knowing that something awful was right there, right then, but an arm’s length beyond. He cringed, with no way of knowing that the spirits were ignoring him, concentrating solely on the fevered Sara. They’d known about her for a long time, knowing that she was their only chance to finally be avenged. All Hallows Eve was nigh; their collective strength could be no stronger than its present state.
Sara’s drawing was quickly completed. In it, twelve children floating above her bedposts, to the backdrop of a tall mountain, with flowing mists leading to a blackened zone at the base. Twelve graves emerging from the darkness beneath the ominous shadow of a man wearing a suit, sporting a neatly trimmed Van dyke beard, holding a shovel.
Sir Franklin examined the sketch. This was perhaps Sara’s most gruesome work. He put the sketch down, swabbing Sara’s fevered forehead with a cloth dipped in cool water. The girl drifted off into a shallow, fitful sleep.
Pacing the room, Sir Franklin again studied the horrid drawing, shuddering. Having faced death and the unknown many times in his life, he was not a man to frighten easily; in his younger days, on an obscure piece of parched earth known as Rorke’s Drift, Natal, he and the 100 men under his command had battled and miraculously repelled 4000 enraged Zulu warriors that had surrounded them, earning him and nine others the Victoria Cross.
During his ensuing military tour of British colonial Africa he’d also witnessed the nocturnal exorcism of a young boy seemingly possessed by demons. The village shaman performing the rites went mad and died while invoking his gods. Sir Franklin had witnessed many ghastly events on that night which he was never able to explain, nor forget.
He had seen the worst that humanity could inflict upon the world. Yet it was all by his own volition, and he was a grown man and a trained soldier.
His poor Sara was just a little girl, forced to not only endure unrelenting horror, but now, the ghosts of murdered children haunting her consciousness. Again, he looked above the bed, knowing they were still there.
For a moment he felt helpless, but had the presence of mind to recall his resolution that he must present a strong front to Sara at all times, even when she was asleep. There was a bond between them that transcended the spoken word. No matter what might happen, he must maintain his strength so she may draw upon it. If all else failed them, it wouldn’t be due to his shortcomings.
Suddenly there was a low rap on their door. Opening it, Sir Franklin did a vivid retake, deeply startled by the man standing with the innkeeper. His blood pressure surging, Franklin fiercely eyed the nattily dressed, bearded Dr. Simon. The man could have been the floor model for Sara’s drawing.
Sensing her father’s sudden stress, the child’s eyes fluttered open. She saw the doctor and her reaction to his presence was severe. Through all this her burning fever intensified, raging forth for the worse, as she recognized the man’s face from her inner vision.
Indeed, Dr. Simon was the murderer of the children, and now she saw that the spirits no longer floated above her, but tore at the doctor with gossamer hands gnarled into claws, faces contorted and eyes ablaze with hatred. Only poor Sara could see this macabre nightmare playing out, in and around her bed.
Not only did she see the children’s spirits, but now, was forced to endure seeing them murdered, again, one at a time, strangled quickly by the leering Dr. Simon. All this within the outline of an inverted pentagram inhabited by dark, cowled figures, contained in a whirling montage detailing the horrific final moments of twelve drastically shortened lives.
“MURDERER...MURDERER,” she screamed out, rearing up, thrashing, her father barely able to hold her down. “The bodies...the bodies in the swamp...In the peat bog!” The doctor flushed at the apparent unveiling of his ruse, though the inn proprietor thought it was just fever talk.
Sara’s father, however, knew of her uncanny gift and of course her most recent drawing, with this doctor drawn so precisely. He eyed the physician with great wariness, contemplating whether to hold him for the village authorities.
The doctor was panicking. He sensed correctly that it wouldn’t take long for people to start listening to this girl. He wanted to kill her, and from his black leather bag prepared a syringe with a lethal dose of barbiturate. Sara sensed this too, watching the children’s spirits tear at the doctor with a renewed frenzy. She screamed to her father “DON’T LET HIM TOUCH ME!”
Having never seen his daughter this hysterical, Sir Franklin forbade Simon from examining, let alone injecting her, physically placing himself between Sara and the doctor. “Leave here, while you still may,” he scowled at Doctor Simon, still a formidable presence with his ire evoked, as now.
There was a tense standoff between the men. The doctor realized if he attacked the man before him to get to the girl, there’d be no rational explanation he could later provide, so he hurriedly exited the room and left the inn, heading back to his office to collect digging tools. If he could dispose of the bodies into the quicksand before the girl could lead searchers there, he thought, there’d be no direct evidence to tie her claims to him.
As he left his office, shovel and lantern in hand, he paid no heed to the calendar, or the wall clock chiming half-past eleven. All Hallows Eve.
Hurrying along darkened roads, forcing his horse to gallop faster than prudence would allow while pulling a buggy down winding paths traveled more by sheep than men, he pushed with the madness borne of desperation.
Finally, he jerked in the reins and stopped, on Gully Road near the point where Colin and Michael had fatefully parted ways twelve years before. The white, billowing mists had already cascaded down the cliffs, shrouding the swamp. Lighting his lantern, the doctor moved quickly, knowing he had much work to do before sunrise.
In the dark, tense silence he made his way to the secret place where the children were buried. He began digging. Time did not seem to pass…
All of a sudden an icy shroud of fear clasped his limbs as he saw that the interred children, in various states of decomposition had begun to push out of their graves, grasping at him. Swinging the shovel, he shrieked, but the blade just swiped empty air. The ghastly children, with the collective strength of the supernatural that was theirs but once a year, were able to tear at him with ripping hands.
The vengeful moans of the damned were a frightening sound to behold, and the terror-stricken Dr. Simon ran blindly through the dark, bellowing, with the children flying after him, swarming, smiting, biting, able to keep up with him effortlessly, though he was running fast as he could. Bleeding from a score of cuts, eyes gouged, he lost his bearings in the mist.
Suddenly, the earth below him was gone as he stepped into the quicksand. As he frantically clawed for solid ground, the spirits suddenly disappeared, and he momentarily caught his balance by grabbing a handful of sedge grass strands. For an instant, his frantic breathing the only audible sound, he nearly pulled himself clear.
But then, sounding ominously in the distance the village clock struck midnight. The children’s spirits pounced upon him anew, rending, tearing, laughing with sardonic malignancy. Losing his grip, Simon screamed, slowly sinking into the mire and drowning beneath the fouled water.
With requited tenacity, the spirits watched grimly, as Simon could only die once, instead of twelve times like they. Silent now, satiated with the revenge that finally was theirs, they held hands, ascending in a slow, numinous spiral, higher and higher into the heavens until they had disappeared.
Hours had passed before the local constable arrived and spoke at length with Sir Franklin Lyle and the innkeeper. He’d, of course, heard of the child empath who had helped Scotland Yard solve dozens of London homicides. After taking a long, hard look at Sara’s drawing, they searched for the good Doctor Simon. By dawn, the trail led to the swamp beneath the cliffs, where the doctor’s horse and buggy were discovered.
Shortly after, they found his footprints, still outlined in the stagnant water, leading across the bedrock trail through the quicksand. Then the lantern, still lit, and shovel were found, along with the twelve full graves, and his footprints-alone-leading to the quicksand’s edge.
The ensuing investigation never revealed why the killer hadn’t simply disposed of his victims instead of burying them in the peat. Suffice to say, the police located evidence of satanic ritual beneath the doctor’s residence, in an ancient chamber dating to the days of druids and runes, laden with dark, stained stone altars, and carved, inverted pentagrams.
Beneath the words 'MOLOCH EST ET VIVIT' chisled into the walls of stone, robed figures in black, with but lambent eyes visible beneath ebony cowls had been painstakingly painted throughout, mute witnesses to the horrors inflicted by Dr. Simon. The black arts were long-rumored to involve the periodic exhumation of remains. There was ample proof of that having transpired in this awful room.
Just at the stroke of midnight, as Dr. Simon was meeting his demise, Sara’s fevery illness had suddenly broken, and soundly she slept till late morning. Upon awakening, with the visions of the previous night fading to memory, she sensed that the forces were again aligned, as the green calm of peace permeated her vision. The children were gone.
Word of the murderer’s identity spread through the Hobbs populace like wild fire. People were devastated by their doctor’s connection with the village curse. Though grief-stricken parents lamented the twelve children that were finally found, there wouldn’t be a sigh of final relief from the rest of the village until a full year had come and gone without a child disappearing.
As for Sara Lyle and her father, they moved finally to a village far north of Hobbs. On the cusp of the moors was the hamlet of Leedston. There hadn’t been a killing there in anyone’s memory.
In the quaint village a tiny, one-roomed schoolhouse stood, above which lazy, gray smoke drifted out of the chimney from the black, pot-bellied wood stove within. A pretty school marm, whom both Sara and her father would grow to adore, taught twenty students there. Four were girls Sara’s age, and they took to her right away. When school was out, they’d play tea and dress their dolls in the latest Victorian outfits.
Now that she slept the night through, Sara’s eyes shined with life again, with the return of her enchanting smile. Sir Franklin’s heart was at peace once more.
The girls would often play a game, where the object was to quiz your opponent with a series of true or false questions, then bluff with answers, and decide who was lying, and who was telling the truth. Though always able to win if she desired, Sara chose to intentionally lose more often than not, knowing that it was only fair to her new friends for her to do so.
* * * * *
Lenny V.
Lenny V- Mist
- Join date : 2011-10-01
Posts : 1
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Ragter the junior greeter Sun Oct 09, 2011 4:44 pm
Welp, I got it done; started about...4 or 5 hours ago and just finished it. I have to say, I had a lot more fun writing it than I thought I would. I don't really know either if it'll scare people; I'm not an expert in the genre, after all. Still, what matters most to me is that I loved writing this and that I tried my best.
Sin
- Spoiler:
- A man known as Marcus was staring out a window, across the street into an alleyway. The alleyway was dark, that much was sure, but just a few moments ago, he was sure he had seen movement. Just as he saw movement again in those shadows, a voice snapped him out of his thoughts on who or what could be causing the movement. “Hey, Marcus, you gonna just stand there all day? Break's almost over.” a man said to him, causing Marcus to look away from the window.
“Ah, right,” Marcus said with a nod of his head. He wanted to look back out the window, but he was at work, and his coworker was right; lunch break was indeed almost over.
Marcus himself was a bit taller than most men his age, 25, which belied his somewhat meager courage. He had brown hair cropped close to his face, and eyes that often gave others the feeling that he was wary of others. That day, he was wearing a suit, which he did most days anyway. He was, after all, a secretary; male secretaries weren't too common, but he had excellent typing and communication skills. Ever since I messed around on that site, strange things have been happening Marcus told himself as he headed towards the reception area.
A few weeks ago, Marcus had visited a site due to a rash of mysterious deaths in the city. All of the victims had been completely drained of blood, which to Marcus, meant vampires. From a young age, he had been interested in the supernatural; ghosts, vampires, werewolves, everything. However, soon after doing this, odd things had been happening, at least nearby him. Glimpses of shadows, movements in alleyways, laughing, which was particularly chilling due to the small hint of darkness he felt in it.
He hadn't been doing too well either. The stress of these odd happenings caused him to be unable to sleep at nights, and consequently, his job suffered. True, one didn't need to be fully awake to type messages, but communication suffered greatly when Marcus was tired. Like most, he was really irritable when he was tired. Just as he was thinking about how his friends in the workplace were worried about him, he heard that laugh again. “Damnit...couldn't you just leave me alone?” Marcus muttered irritably to himself.
He hated that laugh because he feared it. There was malice in the laughter, and it chilled him to the core. Plus, no one else ever noticed the laughing; that was another reason he feared it. He often tried to tell himself all of this might be in his mind, but then how would that explain the mysterious murders happening in the city? He looked up from the ground upon thinking he heard a small giggle, as if whoever was causing this was trying to contain their entertainment at his torture.
Either it was his imagination, or whoever was causing this could cause sounds to only reach one person. Either way, the source of this certainly wasn't in the area; he was walking by himself back to the reception area. With a wary glance around the area, he continued onward; it was not long before he reached the reception area. Not many people were there at the moment, so he sat down in his usual seat and got to the monotony of his work.
The work was occasionally interrupted with noises; mostly laughing, which he tried his best to show he didn't hear. He wanted to prove to himself he wasn't as afraid of this as he seemed to be. Then there were the people to think about; what would they think if a secretary of a business started talking, or trying to talk, with an invisible something? He managed to keep his cool during the workday, though just barely; whoever or whatever was causing this was truly torturing him.
The day, thankfully, finally came to an end, and with a grateful sigh, he left the building. He looked suspiciously at the alley he had been looking at earlier, before shaking his head and moving along. There was nothing there now, that much was obvious. Besides, if what he suspected was true, what could he do?
There were virtually no people on the streets, which he was thankful for. He wanted to put his thoughts together. If the cause of all of this truly was a vampire, why would they be so sloppy? Vampires had plenty of opportunities to kill someone without anyone noticing. Prostitutes, for one; not many would miss them. Then there were blood banks, unless vampires had something against aged blood. He paused for a moment while walking past a chapel that seemed to be in a severe state of disrepair.
It had been ages since the old chapel had been used; most people went to the new church, easily within range of almost everyone. This chapel wasn't near the center of the town either; it was near the outskirts. He wondered idly if he might spend the night there before dismissing the thought. It was doubtful, at this point anyway, that it truly was the work of vampires. The only clue was the drained blood, and humans could do that too with certain objects.
He began walking again, and frowned when he thought he heard footsteps right behind him. Several times he cast quick glances behind him. However, every time, he always saw something moving away out of the corner of his eye, and no one was there. Damn...I'm not imagining this though Marcus told himself with a frown as he looked ahead of himself again and began to walk. The footsteps didn't come this time; why, he didn't know, but frankly, he was glad.
He was just nearing his house when he passed by an alley, and paused once again, seeing something out of the corner of his eye. The alley was dark, just as dark as the alley across the street from his work; he frowned as he stared at it some more. No, it was much darker than the alley near his work; and he could see movement. “Who's there?” he questioned warily, keeping a close eye on the alley; although he didn't show it, his pulse was racing.
“Your pulse is racing?” a voice questioned in response, though from the tone of voice, it was probably meant as a statement. The voice itself was hard to place; it was cold and malicious, yet at the same time, it had the hint of something pure in it. All he knew for sure was that it was feminine in nature. “I'm warning you off, stop lurking about. You will not like the consequences if you continue to do so.” the owner of the voice continued before he could even speak.
“Lurking about?” was the only thing Marcus could say, causing the voice to giggle a little; it sounded eerily familiar.
“Lurking about. You know, snooping, sneakily gathering information, not being entirely truthful. Lurking about,” the female spoke again, a condescending tone in her voice. “I've given you fair warning. Now, stop looking for information and go on with your meager life,” the person spoke again. Out from the darkness he could make out a big mass of darkness rushing towards him before he crumpled to the ground. “Always such a pain.” the voice commented again before departing.
Marcus awoke the next morning, unaware of how he had gotten into his bed. For that matter, he was unaware of how he had gotten into his house at all; he frowned as he recalled last night. He had met something, or someone; it had warned him off of his information search before knocking him out.
“How did she know where I live?” Marcus muttered to himself as he got out of bed, grabbing his head. He had a massive headache, and he thought he knew the source.
It was the weekend now, Saturday; which meant an opportunity to search for more information. The company he worked at was closed on weekends. As he made his way to the computer in his living room, he considered the female's words. She had told him to stop lurking about, and that he had been untruthful. It was eerie; the only place he had gone for for information was that one site.
His first destination on the Internet was that site. It was a site that featured a lot of information about vampires; their habits, food source, origins and myths, he didn't know what he would have done without it. It also contained news stories about recent happenings related to vampires; that was how he had found it in the first place. He had been searching for more information on the murders in his town and he'd stumbled across this site. It also had a chatroom, which he had utilized before, and would utilize again.
He got onto the chatroom with his usual ID, inquisitivemind; it was stupid, sure, but it was the best he could come up with. The chat was not too active at the moment; he skimmed through the previous messages before attempting to type his own. Before he finished, however, he noticed that Gabriel, a person he had chatted with on a few occasions before, had entered their own message in a private chat with him.
Gabriel: Hey inquisitivemind. Any luck with your vamp search?
He frowned, just a little at that; did Gabriel know something? He doubted it; Gabriel had said on previous chats that they were nowhere near Marcus' town, so there wasn't a big chance they had much information on the happenings there. Marcus shrugged and finished typing his own message.
inquisitivemind: Actually, something really weird happened last night. Spoke with some person in the shadows and after warning me off on searching for information about vamps, they knocked me out. Really freaked me out too, cause I woke up in my bed, at home, just a little while ago.
Gabriel: Hm, really? So the only thing you learned was that this vamp, if that's what she is, is ticked that you're trying to locate her?
Marcus frowned at this latest message, skimming his own once again before looking back at Gabriel's. He hadn't mentioned the person's gender, had he? He stared suspiciously at Gabriel's message for a little while before typing, warily and slowly, again.
inquisitvemind: I guess. She did mention that I wasn't being entirely truthful, that I was lurking about for information. Thing is, this is the only site I've 'lurked' on, so...
Gabriel: Intriguing; I'll be sure to do some lurking of my own then.
Marcus was thankful for that. Despite the wary feeling he got from Gabriel's message earlier, Gabriel did know the person who ran the website. Perhaps they would be able to turn something up to explain this person knowing so much about Marcus' activities.
inquisitivemind: Thanks Gab, I appreciate the help. Well, I'm gonna go now; all this talk about what happened last night is making me paranoid. I guess I'll just browse the Web today.
Gabriel: See ya inquisitive.
After seeing Gabriel's latest message, Marcus left the site and let out a sigh. Gabriel definitely knew more then they were letting on. That, or Gabriel had just guessed at the gender, but...he couldn't see Gabriel doing that. Gabriel usually didn't slip up like that either; it almost felt like Gabriel had let it slip on purpose. No...he wouldn't do that; he's helped me a lot Marcus admonished himself, before doing exactly what he had told Gabriel, browsing the web.
During the entire day, he thought he was going crazy; one might question why he thought so. It was because of the fact that he kept hearing that voice in his head. It was threatening him for still seeking information; how did this person know so much was what he kept asking himself. True, it was several hours later after he had visited the site that the voice came into his mind, but it was still all very suspect.
He again managed something; this time he managed to keep his sanity. He kept questioning if the voice was just a figment of his imagination, or if this was truly happening. He had read on the site that some powerful vampires could direct thoughts to people, and that some others could create illusions; all of this was pointing to vampires. As the day was drawing to the close, he still puzzled over how he was dishonest.
True, he had come to the site in false pretenses; he acted as if he was just curious about vampires. The only one who really knew the truth was Gabriel; Marcus didn't know why, but Gabriel seemed to be the most trustworthy person there. Besides that, most of the other members didn't really want to give out information on how to actually hunt vampires; if they existed, wouldn't said vampires be angered at this information being given out?
It was a small chance that the vampires would even find the site, and an even smaller one that they would bother to do anything, but still. It was sad, in Marcus' eyes; here they were giving out so much information on vampires, but nothing on how to kill one. Still, he couldn't blame them; it was doubtful that anyone had a lot of experience in vampires.
The voice went away as he headed off to his bed for a well-deserved rest. The headache had gone down during the day, but the voice, it had somehow brought the headache back. Rubbing his head as he laid down in his bed, Marcus stared at the ceiling before turning off the lights and attempting to sleep.
He found himself staring into a dark, bottomless looking void. How he had gotten here, he did not know; all he knew was that he felt cold. Staring into that void was like staring at his soul laid bare; he was still so very cold. Then, he was afraid; in that void he saw movement, much like the movement in the alley yesterday night. Was it yesterday? Marcus asked himself this inane question as the source of the movement spoke; at least, he assumed that was what spoke.
“So, it would appear that we are at an impasse, inquisitivemind. Truly a shame; I would have preferred you keeping your affairs to yourself and the affairs of others to others,” it was the same voice as yesterday that spoke. This time, the cold and malice were gone, replaced by amusement; at least, that was what he thought. It was hard to place the female's tone of voice considering the cold and fear he felt.
“I gave you fair warning before, Marcus. Now, unfortunately, you will have to die,” the female said again; he heard her laugh as he widened his eyes. He tried to speak, but nothing came out of him. It was then he realized that he couldn't move either; he could only stand and listen. “I suppose you do not wish to die, Marcus. I shall play a game with you then; you shall still die, of course, but you might live longer,” she said. “Maybe.” she added a moment later, before the darkness vanished, her vanishing along with it.
He woke up with a loud shout, drenched in his own sweat. His heart was beating wildly, and it was a few minutes before he relaxed enough to glance at the clock. It was still early, about six am; he took a few shaky breaths and looked downwards at the blankets he was covered in. Much like himself, they were covered in sweat too, which was odd; it was that time of the year where the weather was unusually cold. This is not good Marcus told himself as he got up on shaky feet.
What am I going to do? he questioned to himself as his thoughts wandered. It was almost certain that a vampire was out to kill him. As he thought, his thoughts drifted to the chapel; vampires were supposed to be the direct opposition to the church, now that he thought about it, and to Christian religion in general. They mocked man with their immortality, and their taking of blood was sinful.
Without thinking too much, he threw on a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans, then as he was exiting the house, he put on his jacket. It was chilly outside, though not as chilly as he had felt in his dreams. For once, nothing happened to him as he walked; it was eerily quiet, and despite it being six am, the sun hadn't risen yet. Gives me a creepy vibe he told himself, casting occasional glances as he walked.
Despite nothing happened, he was still highly paranoid right then. Anyone would after what he had been going through. It was not long before he came across that broken chapel, and he let out a sigh. The only truly broken part of it was the top right portion when facing it; it was completely collapsed in on itself. Other than that, there were only minor problems, like parts of the roof being gone. After a moment's thought, he went inside the decrepit building.
He found himself pausing once more; near the altar, which was made of stone, was a person. He couldn't tell who considering they had some sort of cloak on with its hood up, but they were child-sized. From his position, it appeared that this person seemed to be praying; he could also tell this person had heard him enter, considering the way their head lifted slightly when he had done so.
“Amen,” the end of a whispered prayer reached his ears; much like in his dream, this voice sounded so familiar.
He put that thought out of his mind; vampires couldn't enter churches, they were holy ground. Plus, as the person turned to leave, he noticed it was a little girl; it would be stupid of him to assume her to be the vampire. He thought his paranoia truly was getting to him now. He couldn't make much of the girl's features save the long dark hair she had, flowing around her face, and the red eyes, which really struck him; considering her paleness, he thought she might have albinism, but that would contradict with her dark hair.
He frowned at her as she passed by him, watching as she muttered a small “Good day.” to him as she passed. He didn't say anything, merely watched her go before turning to the altar. He had to admire it for how long it had managed to endure; surely this chapel must be fairly old. Usually, Marcus was not one to believe in religion; in fact, he thought himself an atheist. However, these events the past few weeks...well, they caused him to question his beliefs.
“I know I don't always believe in you, Holy Father, but something has happened recently to make me question my believes. I think I have been marked for death by a vampire. I would seek your aid and guidance,” Marcus said in prayer, believing in everything he said. “Amen,” he added as he made the figure of a cross with hand motions before standing up and leaving. True, it probably wouldn't have too much of an effect, but he figured that he might as well try it; it couldn't hurt him too much after all, now could it.
He figured that before he did the rest of his activities of the day, he might as well check the chatroom to see if anyone was on. As it so happened, Gabriel was on once again, and almost as soon as he entered, he got a message from them.
Gabriel: So, Marcus. Anything interesting happen at the chapel?
Marcus froze as he read this, trying to digest what it meant. It certainly meant Gabriel knew that there was a chapel near his house, and it also hinted that Gabriel knew that something had happened. Swallowing up his courage, Marcus did his best to respond.
inquisitivemind: What chapel?
Gabriel: Being dishonest once more I see. I think dishonesty on your level is a sin, you know. You know very well what chapel.
Marcus frowned at this new message; the tone he was getting was decidedly not like Gabriel, and yet, it seemed like Gabriel at the same time. Plus, then there was the subtle hostility in the message; it was harder to detect than it would be in real life, but it was definitely there. What is his problem? Marcus asked himself as he typed once more.
inquisitivemind: Gabriel, what are you talking about? Who are you?
Gabriel: Honestly, you haven't figured it out by now? I am the one who has been 'torturing' you; it has been quite fun. I'm also the one who marked you for death. Now, did anything interesting happen at the chapel?
Marcus didn't know how Gabriel could be so...passive about this, like it didn't matter to them how this turned out. Plus, then there was what Gabriel had just told him; they were the one that had been doing all of this? For what purpose though?
inquisitivemind: I saw a girl, that was it. Now, why did you do all of this?
Gabriel: Why? You ask why? Because it is fun, of course. It's frightfully boring for an immortal; once in a while, we tend to play with our food before feeding.
Marcus' response to that was to log off and close his browser, his eyes staring at the screen. Gabriel was the one that had been doing all of this; freaking him out, stalking him, threatening to kill him. Again though, why him? Why did it have to be him that received all of this negative attention from a vampire?
Throughout the day, he again heard noises, although this time they were decidedly violent in nature. Large crashing noises, the sound of furniture breaking, those sorts of things. It was all an illusion, as he would find out later whenever the noise would die down, but it was still mildly frightening. He barely got any sleep that night, and on Monday, the next morning, he went into work more irritable than ever.
Then more illusions happened; numerous times throughout the day, the clients seemed to have fangs. His intense staring at them more often than not caused them to leave. He also felt, at times, something pointy near his throat. Whenever he tried investigating it, it was gone; whoever Gabriel was, they were messing with him more than usual.
This pattern repeated for a month, and Marcus was close to losing his job. Just the previous week, he had lost it and nearly attacked a client. He couldn't understand why he had done so either; at the time, the person looked much like what one would expect a typical vampire to look like. Yet, later, the person looked nothing like they had earlier that day.
He was just getting off another day of work when he noticed movement in that one alley again. He had gotten used to this, and although as he walked past it his instincts told him to keep moving, he stopped. After a moment's hesitation, he stepped inside of the alley, and the first thing he heard was a voice.
“Marcus, I believe it is time for us to end this dance. I think I've given you more than enough chances to prove your worthiness at life,” he heard that voice again, coming from the shadows in front of him. “Yet, you failed utterly at that. I had been hoping you would have been more amusing in this charade,” the voice said again, its owner stepping out of the darkness.
At first, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He wasn't positive, but he thought it was the same girl as from the chapel, at least a month ago. Yet...she had been on holy ground then; if she was truly a vampire, then how could she be on holy ground? In addition, she was a child; he had never thought a vampire might have been turned as a child.
Her skin looked more like porcelain than the paleness he thought it was a month ago, and her eyes were still the same color; a vivid red. Her dark hair was much unchanged, still hanging, messily he noted, around her face and down her back, stopping between the middle of her back and the middle of her neck. One more thing he noticed was the small metal cross attached to the necklace around her neck, which he frowned at; it seemed like a mockery of God, to him, for a vampire to wear that.
Her clothes were the new thing about her. Whereas before she had been wearing a brown cloak, she was now wearing a dress that stopped halfway between her knees and ankles. He could see the ends of something, bloomers he thought they were called, covering the skin exposed between her ankle and knees. There was white lace on the bottom of the dress, on the sleeves, and near the collar. The dress itself was a deep blue color, which he figured was why it was so difficult to see her in the darkness; one last thing he noticed before she moved and he lost sight of it was the big black cross stitched to the back of her dress.
“So, before I do kill you, is there anything you would like to say? Perhaps you would like to apologize for your dishonesty?” she questioned, a small smile finding its way onto her face.
“Gabriel? That is you, right?” he questioned, narrowing his eyes. She didn't answer, almost sensing that he still had more questions to ask. “Why would I apologize for my sin of being dishonest when you vampires are the greatest sin of all? And why did you choose me, of all people, to torment?” he asked; he decided to not comment on her appearance. He didn't know why, but he got the feeling that to do so would be very foolish of him.
“I am indeed Gabriel. My full name is Alessa Gabriella Alucard, though I prefer to go by Alice. Of course, you won't have long to refer to me as such,” the vampire, Alice, replied, amusement in her tone and demeanor right now. “As for your sin...it is true, vampires commit the greatest sin,” Alice said, frowning a bit. “They are doomed to rack up countless sins, no matter what,” she added, momentarily clutching her cross as she spoke before letting go.
“Ahem, anyway, as for why it had to be you, it didn't have to be. You were just incredibly unlucky. Any more questions?” she questioned as she stepped towards him. It was eery; here he was, almost about to be killed, and his killer looked like they didn't have any interest in this at all.
“Why was it that you showed yourself to me a month ago, at the chapel? And why could you even be there in the first place?” Marcus questioned. This at least got her to stop, which was good; he quickly glanced around for anything he could use as a weapon. While the girl spoke, he moved slowly to a nearby garbage can. He knew it wouldn't help too much, but it was still something; he also knew, or felt rather, that she was letting him get the garbage can. She was still playing with him, as if he were a mouse.
“I wanted to see you with my own two eyes. It is no fun tormenting someone if you haven't the faintest idea what they look like,” she said, right around the same time he moved towards the garbage can and grabbed it. “I could be there because it was abandoned. True, it was still holy ground, but it wasn't nearly as holy as a church still in use would be, so I could bear the small pain it caused me,” she said, glancing towards the garbage can as she finished speaking. “I dearly hope you don't think that piece of metal will be enough to injure me.” she commented.
He was afraid as he looked at her; she might look like a little girl, in a really odd outfit, but he could tell she was a vampire. As she spoke, he caught glimpses of her sharpened fangs; there was no doubt about it.
“At least it'll slow you down.” he commented to her, causing the girl to let out an amused laugh.
“Tell you what, I shall give you on last chance. I won't kill you today, but I nearly will. I want to see if you'll be able to survive.” Alice said, and before he could question why, the girl rushed to him.
She was fast; he barely had enough time to chuck the garbage can at her. He stared, wide-eyed, as she knocked the garbage can effortlessly upwards, and she continued moving to him. He didn't even get a chance to move before the small vampire's fist hit him in the stomach, and her leg hit his own. Both of these in conjunction with each other knocked him to the ground, winded and injured, but certainly not nearly dead. Before he knew it, she was on top of him, her fangs poised over his throat; and then he felt them pierce his throat.
He struggled, trying to throw the girl off of him. For her small size, Alice was really strong; she would not budge an inch. Plus, the longer he took to get her off of him, the more he lost his strength. It took a while, but she eventually got off of him, stood up, and brushed some of the dust off her dress. “So it seems you don't even bathe regularly,” she commented with a sigh, looking away from her somewhat dirty dress to look at him. “Like I told you, I am giving you one last chance. I do so hope you survive; it would be amusing to see you try and kill me again in the future.” she said, giving him a smile before turning on her heel and leaving.
“Monster...you enjoyed doing this,” Marcus managed to get out, struggling to control his body and the severe weakness he felt. “And why do you wear that damned cross? You're a mockery of God, you shouldn't wear his symbol!” Marcus shouted this at her. Unfortunately, this emotional exertion caused a new surge of pain, and with a small cry of pain, Marcus dropped his head to the ground, trying to stay conscious.
“A monster,” she said, pausing in her speech as she cast a glance behind herself at him. Surprisingly, he saw...sadness in her eyes. “I suppose I am one, yes. I have committed countless sins, and in the future, I will again. It is the way of my species,” she said, looking forward again. “As for the cross, it is a reminder of my first victims. My first victims, the ones who cared for me,” she said to him, letting out a sigh to clear her emotions before walking away, further down the alley. “Remember, this is your last chance. Don't mess it up this time, Marcus.” he heard just before he slipped into darkness.
Ragter the junior greeter- Ghost
- Join date : 2009-07-30
Posts : 1189
Age : 30
Location : Shibuya -
Re: 2011 Halloween Writing Contest
by Guest Thu Oct 13, 2011 12:25 pm
From the Mirror
- Spoiler:
- There was no one else like her in the world and he couldn't imagine life without her. Isadora. Beautiful like the stark and empty death of winter, but filled with the bubbling warmth of summer. Dark hair, bone-straight and falling over her face into dark and brightly shining eyes. Pallid skin made all the more pale by the rainbow designs she chose to package herself in. Logic argued with insanity across her breast and plaited skirts, down across her bright purple legs and yellow shoes, emphasized by the soundtrack created by the baubles dangling from ears, waist and wrists. Not just a fashion statement but the way she lived life: Izzy was a grown woman addicted to party balloons, ridiculous hats and riding elevators to the top floor for no apparent reason.
She was different and she made him feel different. Like two aliens visiting on a distant planet, they were alone in the subway crowds or coffee shops, completely wrapped up in themselves and set apart from the scenery. Surrounded by rushing business suits locked to their phones and frazzled mothers arguing with bedraggled dads with screaming spawn clinging between them; none of it touched her. And he couldn't visualize her within the same category as all of the rest of those beings. She'd become his new normal.
Nobody understood either of them but everyone said they were made for one another. And everyone said he was lucky to have found her, considering his history. Collin wasn't always so sure. On the outer levels of his heart and mind, he couldn't agree with them more. Every morning, she conjured up a new spontaneous adventure, either exploring the lowest levels of the city, or traveling way out into the country, just for the hell of it. Whisking him away to new experiences out in a land so distant from the supposedly "adult" world he was expected to live in. Even when she went domestic, she never let things slow down or stress out. Some evenings spent indoors, with music in the background and cooking together, more food being played and danced with than was eaten. Sleeping in occasionally, whispering against warm skin and cuddled close to battle the morning chill, locked in a cocoon that seemed untouched by time. It was like a dream he never wanted to wake up from.
But every dream has it's nightmare side.
There was something wrong with her. Inside of her. He didn't want to see it, that very first time, but once he had, he couldn't unsee it. They'd been making love that first night, intertwined together in an endless moment of bliss. He was on his back with her above, cradling her close and drowning in her blissful warmth as the world swiveled on it's axis around them. Raising herself up, he could see her by the light filtering through the window blinds, her creamy skin turned into miles of glowing blue and the shadows deepening like cuts in the fabric of reality, leading off to empty space. Black hair obscuring her face was tossed aside as she threw her head back, her petite form rising and falling as she floated on the waves he made with his undulating body beneath her, and her blue-stained face was the most vulnerable and confident as she'd ever looked. Beautiful and intoxicating, he was held prisoner by her enchantments and her flesh.
Then it wasn't her. It was her, physically and he could feel it when he reached out to cradle her delicate hips in both hands. But for a split second, her features opened and split apart revealing something hideous underneath. Gasping, he shook his head and his eyes popped wide while he stared and searched frantically for the phantom in the darkness. When his hands grasped her to make her stop, his beloved gazed placidly down at him and released a breathless giggle around a reassuring smirk, the touch of her hand instantly setting him at ease. He tried to tell himself it was just the shadows playing tricks and even though it didn't reappear for the rest of the evening, he never stopped looking for it the entire time, always fearful that it would come back and take her away from him again. He didn't have to wait long.
It continued to show up in the following days, always for a moment and just long enough for Collin to get a good look at it. And she never seemed to realize it was there. Picking her up from work at the library, she would smile in delighted recognition and then her features would briefly distort into the second, ugly visage. While she got her things together, she would hum obliviously to herself as if nothing were out of the ordinary, the sweet sound of her voice echoing out of the demon's maw until it finally retreated back into the depths from which it came. Nobody else seemed to notice either, but that was just because they didn't see it. Always, whenever it happened with people around, somebody was looking down at their plates or glancing away, their attention drawn elsewhere. Except for Collin, who only ever had eyes for Isadora. Now he had to share his focus with this thing that had possessed her.
He gave it a name. It occurred to him one morning as they got ready together, he was fresh from the shower and lathering his face in front of the bathroom sink. She passed through while he was shaving, ready to jump into the shower and she stopped to plant her lips on his, giggling as she briefly played with his cream beard. As he turned back to the mirror, his entire body froze as lightning struck through his core. There It was looking back at him from the comfort of the spot between her forehead and shoulders.
Golden yellow eyes like a Serengeti lion set far apart over a slit nose and a humongous, warped smile full of thousands of long, canine teeth. When he dropped his razor from trembling hands and the thing stared into him as she undressed, the sound of a horse screaming in the throes of death echoed inside his head, seemingly planted there psychically by the monstrous beast. Glancing quickly at her, she tossed her shirt and underwear in the hamper and paused to cross her pretty dark eyes in a silly expression, sticking out her tiny pink tongue at him and pushing up her cute little nose. Then he watched from the mirror as the monster got into the shower, shutting the curtain with that nasty grin leering at him.
Vom Spiegel. "From the mirror", in German, is what he chose to call it, giving the fiend a foreign title from his own heritage, marking it as alien and yet connecting it to himself. Fitting, since in addition to the brief glimpses he got of it under normal circumstances, it showed up in every reflective surface that she passed, twisting her from the reality that stood beside him. Passing store front windows; hallway mirrors; wine bottles; television sets; plastic wrappers and even tin foil.
How could they not see it now? It was everywhere, reflected in everything. Eventually, Collin came to realize that they were too wrapped up in themselves to notice. Other people with their selfish desires and self-absorbed lives were so fixated on themselves that they never truly saw anyone, least of all Isadora or himself. It made him angry and it made him want to reject the whole lot of them for their ignorance and arrogance.
It wasn’t just her that was different, it was him as well! Because he did notice and see her for what she really was. More and more it began to look like a blessing in their lives, just one more confirmation of his love for her and how they were meant to be together. He struggled. Collin tried to accept her, all of her, including this new twisted form that she occasionally showed to him but it was beginning to wear on his sense of harmony and well-being. He just wanted her to put the face away sometimes and when he asked her, she vehemently denied that any such thing existed. But he wasn’t crazy. He saw it with his own eyes and sat across the table and ate dinner with it on a regular basis. In restaurants or out at the park with It, he didn’t mind so much, despite the hungered looks it gave him and the tireless sanguine smile it always possessed. It was when it invaded those intimate moments they shared that made him put his foot down. Nothing ended a romantic evening quicker than to be kissing her breasts and glance up at the Psychotic Clown Demon.
Eventually, she refused to even talk about it and since it upset her, he decided not to push it. He loved her, after all. That is until Vom Spiegel made it clear that it wanted more than to just “hang out” and stare at everything.
One evening, just a week ago, Isadora sat curled up at his side on the couch, enjoying a movie together upon their flatscreen TV hanging on the wall. The lights were out with only the bright colors from the latest Bruce Willis action film illuminating the room. Relaxing and cuddling with her, Collin suddenly tensed and then released a heavy, frustrated sigh when he noticed Vom Spiegel had joined them. Another night invaded and gutted by the hideous mirror monster.
It was alright and he dealt with it the best he could... until the thing began to make noise. He noticed the movement first, probably because of the explosions in the movie drowning everything else out, but out of the corner of his eye he could see the elongated chin of the thing bobbing up and down as if it’s teeth were chattering. He ignored it, until he heard the whispering that was filtering out of it’s throat. Glancing at it, it looked like a puppet chattering, it’s open-mouth smile frozen in place, jaw bouncing lightly and a soft, repetitive whispering emptying out between the horrible teeth. No words that he could discern but just an empty, haunted gibberish.
Shuddering, he looked away but couldn’t go back to the movie, instead lost in his thoughts as he listened to it’s tiny nonsense conversation in between badass one-liners uttered by the main character on TV. Shaken loose from his wandering mind, he suddenly glanced down at his lap where a tip-toeing hand was making it’s way across his leg. He recognized the gesture as Isadora’s and it was her hand, with bright rainbow colored nails, chipped and needing a repaint. But he didn’t look at her, since he could still hear Vom Spiegel chattering away. As her fingers made their way to his crotch, Collin sat incredibly still, his heart hammering in his chest while the demon’s voice grew louder, each syllable sounding like the rumbling growl of a tiger on the hunt.
She was moving closer to him, her body responding to him, supple breasts encased in a gaudy floral print vest and cotton candy pink shirt, rubbing against his arm as she leaned into him. He could feel her hot breath on his neck and smell the rotted death wafting from the depths of it’s gullet. And the growling grew louder as he felt the 3 inch long teeth separate and close around the flesh of his throat.
“Ow! Dammit!” he blurted out as he surged up from the couch, panicked and wide-eyed as he backed away from her. Nothing but surprise contorted her features now and when she asked him what was wrong, he snapped.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?! Lookit my Goddamn neck, Izzy!” he pulled his hand away from the cut in the side of his throat, shallow but bleeding on his shirt and his hand as he removed it to show her. “You let it bite me!”
“What?”
As if she didn’t know! “Don’t gimme that! You know exactly what! Vom Spiegel!” It was insulting the way that she pretended. Honestly, it was like she thought he was stupid!
Her doe-like eyes grew sad and guilty as she looked at him, but she kept her voice firm as she said, “I bit you. Collin, whatever you saw, it was me and I really wish you would stop talking like it isn’t.” His whole body tensed when she slipped off the couch and approached him and he flinched as she pulled his hand away from his wound to look at it. “It’s not even that bad. I didn’t think you’d get that upset about it... you always kinda liked things a little rough and it was just a nibble.”
He couldn’t take this. This little game she was playing with him. Jerking away from her, he ignored her pleas for him to stay and rushed himself to the bathroom and locked himself in. After the darkness of the living room, the florescent bulb above the mirror glared in his eyes, bleaching everything with it's sanitizing light. At the sink, washing the blood off, he inspected his neck and the three tiny holes she’d stabbed into him with her gargantuan teeth.
Then he paused. Her teeth. That’s what she’d said, wasn’t it? All of this time, he’d entertained thoughts that Vom Spiegel was just another part of her or something that lived inside her. Now, from her own mouth she confirmed: Isadora was Vom Spiegel. But there was no way that what happened was her “playing a little rough”. Something else had been going on tonight and her seduction took on new shades of menace as he considered how deep those teeth might have gone if he hadn’t moved out of the way so quickly.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it and over the next several days, he wasn’t allowed to as Vom Spiegel came to stay. Sitting at the breakfast table with his newly bandaged neck, he stared anxiously as the lovely body of his girlfriend moved about the kitchen making him apology pancakes, but when she turned to look at him it was Vom Spiegel’s face that he encountered. He waited for it to fade, for her to return to normal like she usually did after a time. But it didn’t. And lying in bed next to it at night, Vom Spiegel whispered in it’s eerie language, staring with sentient animal eyes. It never slept, so Collin didn’t sleep either.
Eventually, Collin became convinced that his girlfriend wanted to destroy him. Every new adventure that she suggested seemed blended with hidden meaning and intent, all veiled attempts to lure him into death or plans to try and eat him. Even sex turned into violent physical attacks with shades of brutality that no lover ever deserved in the pursuit of pleasure and intimacy. If it hadn’t been true before, then it certainly was now. Isadora was a monster and she was going to kill him.
He had to get rid of it and destroy it before it decided to strike. No one could help him now and they'd probably lock him away if he confided in anyone about it. It was just her and him alone in the world... like always.
It only took Collin a week to plan it, aiming for a night when she'd be home late from work after closing up the library. When she came through the door, slumped and exhaustedly tossing her purse into a chair, she would see the candles lighting the living room up and the trail of rose petals leading to the bathroom... where he'd be waiting. She would follow it and find him there, her hands cupping around her canine teeth and then resting a palm on her breast in a parody of cute, feminine surprise. He smiled easily at her, giving her a sultry look carrying on the facade - was Vom Spiegel suspicious? Was it set at ease by his romantic demeanor? Did it buy into his tender kisses on her neck as he helped her undress, trying to ignore the animal fear within himself as he passed near to those teeth?
His ruse worked well enough to get her in the tub, laying back with the glass of white wine he poured for her, black hair wet and scented with things he put in the water. And she hummed pleasantly, deep in her throat, as he dipped his hands into the tub to massage her shoulders, kneeling behind her on the bathroom floor. Feeling her smooth skin beneath his fingertips and looking over her feminine form seen through the rippling, golden shadowed water, Collin faltered a moment, unsure whether he could bring himself to do this. Then Vom Spiegel angled it's face upwards to look at him, it's golden eyes flickering with bestial intelligence in the candle light. It's mouth opened and in a deep, guttural voice, completely unlike Isadora's in every way, it uttered, "I love you..." and the screams and wails of children filled Collin's mind as he locked gazes with it. It was all the motivation he needed.
Putting pressure on the shoulders he held, he quickly shoved her down into the water until her head was submerged, keeping a firm hold on her as she immediately began to struggle. As she flailed and kicked, sending up tsunamis of bathwater to crash over the edge of the tub, Collin watched the leering face of Vom Spiegel through the distorted and blurred water. He was transfixed on watching the life fade from the creature that he did not notice when her groping hand flopped about the sill next to the tub and grabbed up the wine bottle. Blinding white lights flashed behind his eyes as the bottle smashed against his temple and he fell back on the floor, blinking to clear his vision.
He was only half aware when her wet feet slapped onto the bathroom floor and she fled from the room, but he quickly rose to unsteady feet, regaining his bearings and swallowing the nausea that swirled in his gut. Through a curtain of blood dribbling down from the side of his forehead, he searched the bathroom for something to use as a weapon instantly zeroing in on the towel rack. Wrenching it from the wall as he walked by, he stalked into the hallway, searching for the evil entity that was now using his home as it's hiding place. The bedroom door was closed and when he tried the handle it was locked. In there then. Filled with the satisfaction from having cornered it, Collin slammed his shoulder into the door, praying that the general, over-used state of all of their apartment appliances would hold true for the locks on the doors just this one time.
In minutes, he'd made it through, brandishing his weapon as he searched the darkened room for his twisted lover. And he found it, huddled in the corner next to the bed, the phone from the night stand clenched in its claws. And it did indeed possess claws. Now the entire mask had slipped free to reveal it's demonic form: abnormally long and gangly limbs, with slender, bestial and oversized hands and feet on the ends, attached to a skinny and emaciated form, sexless and pale with thin, long, black spiked hairs protruding from it's back and shoulders. Isadora was gone and now this thing sat crouched in the corner, chittering into the phone in it's secretive, whispered language, looking at him with a mixture of defensive fear and antagonism. Yeah, nowhere else to hide, motherfucker.
Walking up to within a few feet of it, Collin bent down and grabbed ahold of the snaking cord, yanking it violently from the thing's hands, leaving it to snarl and growl aggressively at him from it's spot on the floor. He didn't hesitate as he stalked forward, slowly raising the metal bar over his right shoulder, staring at that hideous face and aiming to obliterate it forever. Then he stopped, blinking as the image in front of his eyes changed. No longer Vom Spiegel, but Isadora's naked, petite form crouching by the bed, raising a slender, womanly arm up to block the intended blow. In fact, it wasn't the creature at all, and he found himself frozen as he stared into the features of the woman he loved. Her beautiful dark eyes were filled with a film of tears, her eyebrows contorted into an expression of fear that he'd never seen her wear before, her black hair wet and clumping against her head and back. Those plush lips... the very same ones that tasted so sweet and addictive were opening and closing in sobs and terrified pleas, begging him to stop.
It was a trick, he decided, raising the bar again after he glimpsed Vom Spiegel in the reflective metal of the towel rack. He'd had enough of the demon's tormenting him and not even taking on the appearance of Isadora could save it from being sent back to Hell, where it belonged. Collin's pity had run dry when it had decided to bite him, tasting him for that very first time. The last time.
Swiftly, the bar came down and her feminine weeping was abruptly cut off with the sound of metal cracking into bone. That first blow... he could feel her skull give way and collapse under the edge of the metal bar, all the way up into his arms and briefly, he felt overwhelmed with sickness. But he didn't stop. He couldn't stop, slamming it down into it's face, again and again, warm blood splatter speckling his own features, even as it's faded into a crushed and mangled mess of meat and bone. And when it slumped over, unable to hold itself up anymore, he continued to batter at her body, convinced a few times that he saw the creature's true form flicker through her skin with each blow that landed.
Finally, exhausted, Collin stood over the dead monster, wandering from the room and dropping the towel rack on the floor in the hallway as he weaved into the kitchen. Without realizing it, he found himself slumped in a chair at the kitchen table, the lone light shining above him and illuminating the blood splatter on his clothes and hands. It was over... It was finally over. He won.
Remembering the past week and thinking over his courtship with the dead creature, Collin reached a hand up to scratch at the taped bandage on his neck, the sweat on his skin making the sticky medical tape itch. Realizing he hadn't really checked his wounds since the night it happened, he slowly peeled the bandage away, laying it on the table. Huh. That was weird. There wasn't a single drop of blood on the gauze square. Touching the side of his neck where he remembered the three gouges being, he became distraught and confused as his searching fingers found nothing. Not even the scabs of scratches or bumps of scars. Wait a minute! He saw it! He knew what happened that night and he felt it when it's teeth sliced through his skin!
Rising from the table, he rushed past the abandoned bar, ignoring the grisly scene in the open bedroom door and ran to the bathroom, flicking on the light as he stomped up to the mirror, his eyes searching his neck frantically for the marks that should be there. They weren't there of course, but all motivation left him as he stood staring at his own face in the mirror. Not his face, but the distorted smile and lion eyes of Vom Spiegel leering back at him triumphantly. There was a moment of fear when his first thoughts fluttered for an explanation - maybe when she died, it had jumped into him? - but everything came to a stuttering stop as he realized... it hadn't been possessing her in the first place.
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