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the-third-letter · 8 months ago

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So my family has a tradition of telling spooky stories during our October family gathering. Here's mine (plus some cool art I found for it via freepik)

A few minutes later, Emura opened her eye yet again. She didn’t remember closing it. She didn’t know what had happened in those few minutes. All she knew was that suddenly, she was a lot hungrier, and she was in a hall she had never seen before.

Emura strode down the hallway like a new inmate in a prison yard. Her shoes sloshed on the soaked wood floor. The oil lamp in her hand did not burn. The waxing moon outside the window, over the western cliffs, was the only light she had. But that didn’t make the oil lamp any less important. At least, that’s what her instructions said.

Patches of flesh grew on the walls like mold. Her shoes would be the color of pus by the time she reached the door below the window. Emura was not yet old enough to know that in this house, that was a good sign.

Emura heard a loud thump behind her, like someone hitting their hip on a table edge, followed by the sound of an egg cracking. She looked over her shoulder, despite specific instructions not to. Nothing was there. Nothing except for an empty eggshell the size of a chair, floating gently in the fluid filling the hall.

Emura remembered why she wasn’t supposed to look behind herself. Her nerves were too strung up to curse, even inside her own head. Something might hear. Something would hear. She was old enough to know that, at least.

Emura had the presence of mind not to turn forward again. A chill descended on her back. Instead, she turned the rest of her body around, and started down the hall in the other direction. Back toward the egg shell. She pretended she was wearing one of those helmets that stopped her from looking side to side. Whatever was behind her now would take any opportunity she gave it.

Emura’s destination had not changed. Her instructions had not changed. But this hallway was now off-limits. Whatever was in it now couldn’t hurt her as long as she never looked at it, but if she couldn’t look, she couldn’t know which handle on the door wouldn’t grab back.

Emura was old enough to know that just because there were no splashes in the hall behind her, no voice, no sound of breathing, and not the faintest scent, meant she was alone. She wasn’t. She would never be alone again, if she turned.

But how else was she supposed to reach that room? How else was she supposed to open that door without seeing it? She could follow the pointing fingers sticking out of every door frame, but she knew only half of them pointed where she wanted to go.

Emura wanted out of this hallway as soon as possible. She knew how to leave, but only by getting further from the exit. Her best option was right in front of her. But she would have to take off her shoes for it to work, and she knew she wouldn’t get them back a second time. She only had one eye left to trade.

Emura reached the egg shell and stopped. She felt a shiver run down her spine, and wished her dress was thicker. The fingers on the doors to her left and right both pointed in a direction she couldn’t turn. Taking care not to spill the oil in her lamp, she placed one foot into the egg shell. She flinched at the crunch, but forced herself to place her other foot beside the first. She shut her eye and covered the empty socket with her free hand.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, Emura felt the fluid draining from her shoes with a sickening slurping sound. She started counting under her breath to make sure she didn’t miss her window to re-open her eye. The instant her feet felt dry and her shoes were no longer there, she turned around and looked.

The hallway was no longer there either. Emura was standing in the kitchen. Again. The cracked egg shell still surrounded her feet. She tried not to stare at the pot boiling soundlessly on the stove. It didn’t like being stared at, especially by only one eye.

Emura had lost so much progress, but at least she was safe. It was a trade-off she was tired of making. If only she’d remembered not to look over her shoulder after seeing the moon. If only she’d remembered to do up the top button of her dress. If only she’d remembered to give away her left eye, and not her right. So many little mistakes. So much time lost. She was getting hungry. She couldn’t do this forever. Maybe now at least, she could get her right eye back.

“YOU’RE BACK ALREADY?!”

After she recovered from the yell, and checked to make sure she still had the oil lamp, Emura turned to face the speaker. It was a human, but instead of a right arm, she had four huge spider legs, and instead of a left arm, she had four tentacles lying down and around her human legs. So far, Emura’s instructions said she was a friend.

The house was such a still and silent place. Something deep inside of Emura rebelled at the idea of raising her voice. But the instructions were the instructions. Gathering her courage, Emura raised her voice as loud as she could go.

“YES!” she shouted back. “I MADE A MISTAKE AND HAD TO DOUBLE BACK!”

Emura glanced at the boiling pot to make sure it hadn’t heard anything. If she spoke too quietly, the thing inside would hear her, and it would get angry. Emura noticed the hybrid woman stealing a glance at it too; the scald marks across her body were the only explanation Emura had for what was in that pot.

“DO YOU WANT YOUR EYE BACK?” the hybrid shouted.

“NO!” Emura answered, thinking fast. “YOU NEVER TOOK IT AWAY, REMEMBER?!”

Emura blinked three times. When she opened her eyes for the last blink, her eye was back in its socket. It felt sore, and a little sticky, but it was her eye. She wondered if it had changed colors, but she didn’t dare look in the dressing room mirror again to find out.

The hybrid was no longer there. She had disappeared in between blinks. Emura sighed with relief, and glanced at the stove. She frowned.

The pot was no longer boiling. What was she supposed to do now? Whisper? The instructions hadn’t mentioned the pot stopping boiling.

Emura felt like there was a timer ticking somewhere. It was an important sixth sense to develop in this house, and hers was very well tuned by now. Quickly, without looking anywhere, Emura lifted and then placed back down both her feet inside the egg shell. It cracked a little more. She shut her eyes tight.

Cool air washed over her, as if Emura had stepped outside. Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked around the room. She held up the unlit oil lamp out of habit while her eyes adjusted. The instructions said that would make them adjust quicker, and ward off anything in the dark that might be drawing near. They could sense when that lamp was raised, fire or not.

Emura’s heart sped up as she gradually realized she was back in the dressing room. More flesh grew on the walls here, like in the hallway. Clothes littered the floor. Some of them writhed like meat in a skillet. She stepped out of the egg, and then stomped on each shirt. They stopped moving after the third stomp, but the instructions said if she didn’t do a fourth, they’d follow her out of the house.

Emura didn’t know where the mirror was, and she didn’t want to. Once she knew, her head would be pulled toward it as if it had its own gravitational field. And once she looked at it, she’d have to win a staring contest to pull away. With glass. Again. She’d won the first time, but it had cost her an eye.

Emura pushed and stomped her way past more haunted clothing, taking care not to touch anything with skin growing on it. One shirt had eyes instead of buttons going up its front, and they followed her as she passed. Finally, she reached the exit and stepped into the next room, the last one between her and that hallway.

Emura was in the study now. The feather pen scribbled away at an old, blank page, without a hand to guide it. It wrote in a language Emura recognized, but couldn’t read. The instructions said not to try under any circumstances, so that was exactly what she did. Instead, she focused on being as silent as possible. This was the only room in the house where she was actually supposed to be dead quiet. Nothing louder than the scratching of that pen.

When Emura passed the vacant chair in front of the desk, the oil lamp started to twist and turn in her hands as if made of wet clay. She didn’t drop it, but she didn’t try to stop it from moving. It morphed over half a minute from a lamp into a wrist watch. It wound around her wrist like a curling snake. She winced when it tightened, but it relaxed once it was firm. There were four clock faces inside the watch, and none of them agreed with each other. She needed to make sure they never aligned. The clock started to tick, and when it did, the pen stopped writing. That was good. This was going much more smoothly this time.

Had she done this before? She couldn’t remember. Which was odd, because she was definitely hungrier than last time. If there was a last time. Time. Time.

Emura cast her eyes around the study before heading for the door with oily yellow fluid leaking beneath it. She hadn’t spent much time in this room, before the house changed. Before she changed. But it was her older siblings’ favorite place to be. They loved languages. That was part of why everything had gone so wrong, and why she was the last person stuck in here, with only their instructions to go by before she starved. She’d been in here for days, and she didn’t dare eat anything in this place.

If she was foolish enough to try and read the foreign language written by that ghostly pen, she’d see words on every surface. Even the backs of her eyelids. That was what the instructions said. Emura checked her watch. The four clocks were almost aligned. She gave the thing a shake, steeled herself, then pushed open the door and waded into the moonlit hall again.

There was the egg shell, floating in the ankle-deep stuff. Emura’s nose was hit with the strong smell of oil. As she closed the door to the study behind her, the watch on her hand morphed back into a lamp. She almost dropped it. She took a deep breath of the fetid air, and looked down the hall toward the door beneath the cliff-facing window. Her hunger combined with the air to make her nauseous.

Emura clenched her free hand. She could do this. She was almost there. Just a few more rooms.

Emura’s foot hit something a few wet steps later. She looked down. It was the pot from the kitchen.

And it was starting to boil, in the middle of the oil. Now Emura remembered what her empty lamp was for.

Quickly, Emura stepped away from the pot and ran forward. The oil around the pot lit up in a blaze, casting the entire hallway in a bright orange light. The fire spread out in every direction, but stopped when it reached her feet, making a moving circle of wet oil wherever she held the oil lamp. She heard the egg crack behind her, but resisted the urge to turn her head this time. She couldn’t afford to walk back, not with all that flame everywhere. It was getting hard to breathe; the smoke was replacing the air at an alarming rate. The flesh on the walls retracted to avoid the inferno around her, but most of it was caught and burned off, charred skin and bone splashing into the fiery floor.

Emura reached the door. There were three knobs. The oil around her ankles was getting warmer. The lamp’s unlit oil was visibly shrinking. She didn’t have much time to choose.

The first knob was shaped like a spider. The second was an octopus. The last one was a normal door handle. Emura scrambled her mind trying to remember which was the correct one.

Then, she remembered why the instructions had said to look in the dressing room mirror. She was supposed to only have one eye when she got to this part, but when she had the chance, she got it back too early. Ugh, this was a mess. But she knew what to do before the fires closed in on her.

Emura shut one eye. She could no longer see the spider knob and the normal knob. She turned the octopus knob and opened the door.

But when she tried to shut it behind her, and escape the fires engulfing her, Emura couldn’t get her hand off the knob. She could feel suckers on her palm and fingers, gripping and holding her tight. The oil lamp in her hand was empty. The fire was coming through the open doorway, and reaching for her feet.

It was then that she realized her mistake: she’d closed her left eye. That was the eye that could see the correct knob, not the right one. That was why she’d given it away.

The fire reached her feet, shot up her dress, and everything went black.

***

Emura strode down the hallway like a new inmate in a prison yard. Her shoes splashed on the soaked wood floor. The oil lamp in her hand did not burn. The waxing moon outside the window, over the western cliffs, was the only light she had. But that didn’t make the oil lamp any less important.

At least, that’s what her instructions said.

#my writing #short story #horror fiction #excerpts #concept art #story with art #absurdism #halloween story #spooky season

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