October 23 - Ghost Stories

The season of shiver and scare is here! 

Time to carve your pumpkins and hang up your harvest wreaths. Just one question… so Nightmare before Christmas is a Halloween film right?   

A tradition of the season is to tell ghost stories. Tales of dread, to make you look under your bed. Well… I can only hope to make such a story effective!

So here goes.

*

    The girl ran, fleeing the thing she could not see. 

    Trees had long surrounded her, the town she had called her unwilling home lost to the dark-barked limbs and branches that moved too much for the little wind that entered the forest. The sun was gone, and the moon was veiled by spiteful clouds. Only stars now witnessed her desperation. Her fear. 

    There. It moved again, on the edge of sight. Her heart was so loud, her breathing ragged and making her chest burn against the chill in the air. All she had to do was follow the one she had spooked earlier, the one who would not stop running. She would know where the cabin was. Wouldn’t she?

    The pain was sudden and blinding, and then all she saw was the damp dirt beneath her face and the blood running down her knee. A tree stump, maybe? Or a stick? Just a root? Yes, she told herself it was a root, and then she got up and ran some more.

    Her unease ebbed a mite, something deep inside telling her that the thing behind her had fallen on the same detritus. Whatever had happened, it made her almost feel sick with relief. 

    She near vomited, then, when the dark silhouette came into view, the one before her appearing only briefly before they slammed the door shut behind them.  Whimpering from exhaustion and cold and fear, she bolted up the porch steps two at a time, and pulled at the door. So quick they hadn’t even locked it yet. 

    With hands made deft by adrenaline, she barred the door from the inside, and scanned the windows. Each were black and unknowable, so she slammed the panels shut hard on all of them. Then she heard herself scream for the other one to help her, to say that she wasn’t going to hurt her, that it was okay now, the thing was outside, it wasn’t going to get in, it was…

    The quiet of the cabin betrayed that she was alone. It doesn’t make sense. The cabin was one room, the bed a mouldy mattress in its centre bearing stains like flowers and sagging with damp. To one side, the kitchenette had drawers flanking a small gas stove. She searched them all, yet all were empty despite one. On a shelf was a sealed tin, the yellowed label bearing a number 8. It looked familiar.

    Her attention turned to the sad looking settee and chair, the pleather distressed enough to reveal the stuffing beneath. She looked behind them too, and in her frustration she fell onto the settee and wept. It stank, but she did not seem to mind. She buried her tears in the fabric, and hoped that she would wake in that bed she had grown up in, in the warm blanket with the starfish trim. She hoped, and breathed in the damp. 

   The cabin was where it had happened. Where she had let it happen. The guilt choked her, but she had done nothing to stop the boy from dying as the older ones had tied him up, and cut him. And cut him some more. 

    Sometime later the wind picked up. It barrelled across the tiled roof, and battered the wall opposite her. She could not remember dozing. Maybe she had never slept, not truly. It was not safe to sleep. But she was so tired.

    The mattress. 

    It looks….

    Winding her fingers around a handful of stuffing, she swung her legs off the settee. The mattress looked so… What… What had she been thinking of before? It all seemed so silly now. 

    The stuffing was so soft as she played with it in her hands. Then she heard it. Something lower than a whisper, darker than a hum. It was not a voice, but it spoke. It told her what to do. Speaking, without words, without a mouth. Her hands covered her ears, and shook her head, and only when she heard it say her name did she scream. 

    How long had she been there? It felt like the voice had been taunting her forever. With the shutters closed tight, it was impossible to tell if the sun had risen. If day had ended this terrible night. How had she come to the forest?

    Fingers scraped at the inside of her skull, and screamed louder. She called for anyone that could help. No one heard. The voice continued, ceaselessly, a wet slapping of lips against her ears. She heard her own laughter, as the boy had wet himself after they cut him again. The mattress looked so soft.

    The hiss at her neck made her bolt. Her first instinct was to go for the door, but something told her that was a bad idea. The mattress, silly. It felt right. Was it the same voice that said that? She did not care. Not anymore. She wanted to run away…she wanted to fall into it.

    It called to her, from the mattress. Her hands were empty now, but she needed to use them. She needed to…

    The springs groaned beneath their age and her weight. It told her to get on her knees. It commanded her, so she had to obey. The silent promise of not listening lined her bones. Look down. 

    She smelled it, the stench of her clothes. The filth had grown into her shirt and pants, and she saw crawling, burrowing things move across the seams. The voice laughed. You seem familiar. 

    With a blink, darkness took the world. Beyond the mattress, where there had been the old wooden floor and walls and shutters and settee and chair, now was only impenetrable night. 

    I don’t understand. Nothing responded. The voice that was not a voice was gone. She did not know if she should be relieved. She stayed like that, hugging her knees to her chest, praying to something, anything, to save her. From wherever she was. 

    On one side of the mattress was the dark stain. She sat on the opposite side. 

    Then, when she thought she would stay in the nothing forever, a chill wind wound past her. Begin. Her hands were twisted, her hair a tangled mess that fell before her eyes.

    Sodden leaves sunk before her as she rose to her feet, in the deadlight of the forest. A twig broke beneath her, and the girl before her spun to face her. She could not have been twenty feet away, flanked by the trees like dark sentinels patrolling the night. Know you…

    An upraised hand caused the girl to bolt. She knew her. She had to stop her, before she reached the cabin. 

Story by Rhys Jones.