I knew I had done it this time. I knew I'd finally crossed the line and stepped into something I really should have left alone. Knox had warned me. Spencer had warned me. Hell, even Langley had told me not to even bother looking into this one. Did I listen?
I'll let you decide on that one.
No, I was too determined to prove them wrong, without even considering the fact that I'd proven everyone wrong time and time again. That I could handle what was out there. The shapes that moved in the darkness. The sounds that rattled through the walls of your cosy little homes late at night.
I could do this.
Unfortunately, I bit off more than I could chew. I went one step too far.
The house had tempted me in. Taken me across the threshold. Teased me with thoughts of what I'd lost. And even as I'd watched the familiar silhouettes of Mum and Dad beckoning me into the house on Ecklesby Rd, I knew something was amiss.
I cursed myself. We were trained to resist these things. Trained to block out thoughts of loved ones long gone. And my failure was now staring me in the face as I lay on the dusty, rotting floorboards, covered in cobwebs, and staring up at the haunted faces of my dead parents.
Vacant and lifeless eyes stared back at me. Eyes that weren't really eyes but dead bulbs in sunken eye sockets, their filaments long since burnt out. My father’s beard was unkempt. Ungroomed. And what little remained of his hair lay lankly over his bald head. Greasy strands threatening to slip down over his eyes like some pathetic attempt at a fringe.
My mother, once so beautiful, looked like a corpse. Her red lipstick smudged, her blonde, nearly greying hair, dry like straw. Those eyes that had once contained such wisdom now contained nothing but a void. No reason for existing. The vault of love she had once held for all those dear to her was empty.
These were not my parents. And yet, I couldn’t resist them. The allure of them. The potential that I may have stumbled upon a long-gone piece of my past. A past that called to me. Made my heart ache.
I'd lost consciousness for...God knows how long. Long enough for the cobwebs to have been woven around the lower section of my body. Whatever had done this had left my upper body free except for my arms, which were tightly bound either side of me. And then I inwardly laughed. What else spun spider webs in this world...?
And then my blood chilled. What size spiders would have to exist to weave webs this big?
Mother and Father looked down at me. Emotionless. I was about to speak. Ask them who they were. Why they were doing this to me when they opened their mouths. A thick, black substance - too greasy to be blood – had pooled inside their maws. The dark, almost oil-like liquid dripped out in great, heavy drops, staining Mother's tattered red dress, and splattering on Father's yellowing, cotton, once-white shirt. The sound they produced pierced through to my very eardrums. It was like a screech. A screech combined with a very sharp hissing of a snake. I closed my eyes. I would have put my hands to my ears had they not been bound up by the cobweb.
The scream finally stopped.
And when I opened them again my parents had stepped to the sides of the room. The shadows in the room had converged to the centre and back against the far wall. I could hear breathing and what sounded like the rustling of dead autumn leaves.
The shadow began to expand towards me. Crushed blacks creeping into the corners of the room. My parents put their hands to their faces, covering their eyes, like graveyard statues and slowly turned to face the walls behind them. Were they wishing to not see what was happening in front of them?
Or were they being ordered not to watch?
The darkness crept up the dusty floorboards and across my legs, and when it hit me, I felt my feet go cold. No, not just cold. They went numb. I panicked, my pulse increasing. My heart thumping in my chest. The shadow had now consumed the lower half of my body. My parents had been swallowed by the night. I could smell rotting flesh from somewhere. The chattering of many teeth.
I was about to open my mouth and scream when…
I don’t know what happened next.
The last thing I recall was standing in the room of the house, my parents either side of me. My clothes were tattered, my hair loosely hanging down either side of my face. I looked down at my pale, waxy arms. These were not the arms of a woman in her prime.
These were the arms of a corpse. Withered. Decayed.
And lying in the centre of the room was someone I recognised. Bound up in the same web that had bound me in what seemed like only a few minutes ago. Tied up in the web was Mark. My husband. I wanted to move. I wanted to go to his side. Be with him.
Why did they have Mark? How had they lured him here? Why had they lured him here.
And then I heard the sound again from the end of the room. The same shadows began to flood forwards. I turned to my father, and he gently shook his gaunt face. I knew not to interfere. We were caught now. Caught in a never-ending cycle of the same thing. They had lured me. Somehow, though I couldn’t remember it, I had lured Mark. And Mark would lure someone close to him. Whatever this thing was, it was gathering us together.
I felt my doomed husbands’ eyes staring at me, and I felt nothing. Instead, I simply copied my parents and put my hands to my face to hide my eyes as the darkness consumed the room once more.
Mark screamed as the haunting sound of breathing and dead leaves filled my eardrums.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to cry.
Yet all I could do…was smile.
The End
Copyright © 2022 by Jim Allenby
All rights reserved. This story or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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