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voidishmoss · 14 days ago

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Reath's Tower

The tower was a monolith that scarred the sky of their sleepy fishing town, marring the Irish coastline with a dark line that reached the heavens. Like anything old or unknown, the children of the village were eager to come up with their own conclusions on the obelisk’s history or even more so inclined to cling upon the theories of their older peers. In the younger years the tales would be of excitement, of adventurous pirates and princes leaving treasures beyond their understanding beneath coal black stone. Stories of sea monsters morphing into murderous tower keepers that buried not treasure but bodies.

Eventually the stories would become too much, tipping the scale over until the numerous questions would spill. Usually when the particularly nasty lightning storm would press a black shadow against their window. Their eyes wide and watery, asking babbling questions while clutching at the pajamas of their half-asleep parents. “It’s just an old building” The tired response would slip from their lips without much thought, even if something nagged at them. Even if their memory was so clear, that the tower had once been much smaller.

Kyle didn’t have the privilege of an early memory of the ancient architecture. No understanding of its supposed height or colour. He barely had an understanding of the aisles in the local grocery store that stood as a monolith of food sources for the town. Unless you liked eating fish for every meal. He had moved to Reath less than a year ago. The tower his fellow classmates had such an obsession over was under no illusion for him, it was just an old building. A possibly hazardous decrepit building but just an old building none the less.

“Go on Chicken!” Timothy Quinn called from behind the seemingly permanent temporary fencing. He had a cigarette drooping from his mouth, his thick autumn coat pressed into hexagons by the wire panels. Tim was a senior at their rinky-dink high school, the apparent leader of everything childishly occult and an absolute dick. Kyle readjusted the thin strap of his sleeping bag, casting a glare and wishing the burning end of his cigarette would engulf him in flames. He pushed himself to ignore the clucking and laughing from the gaggle of teens as he made his way up the steep hill.

It was a stupid ritual, beloved by the half-wits that shared a classroom with him. Every junior, or new foreign kid, had to spend a night in the tower. At least on the first floor. Theoretically, the safest floor in the forbidden place, as long as you didn’t think about the rest of it all collapsing down on you. Kyle stepped carefully over whatever remained of ancient cobblestone, finding his footing on sickly grass as he looked over the corpse of a building that should have been forgotten. Sea salt clung to every stone, eating away at rock and leaving its textured bite behind.

Kyle’s hands shook as he grasped the stone doorway, feeling his fingertips slide against the slightly damp surface. Salt clung to his fingers as he stepped over the cracked threshold, every fibre of his being aware of where the toe of his canvas sneakers fell. He glanced around, the room was deathly still. Dust frozen in midair like fruit in jello. It was as empty as expected, a circular room of stone coated in a thousand years worth of dust. It boasted only two parallel archways less eroded than their cousin facing the elements. The one with descending stairs was barred, filled just barely with uneven concrete, barely covering the bags of sand they used to bulk up the blockade.

The stairs upwards though. They were clean, open and damnright pristine compared to the room he was standing in. His phone felt heavy in his pocket, a comforting weight against his leg as he crept closer to the first step. The third floor of the tower had a thin rectangular window that opened to the ocean and in three hours, the sun would be setting over that dark water. A photo of himself against that gap in the stone would blow that junior’s crappy selfie off everyone’s minds forever. He’d never have to worry about getting a date and he’d have something to hold over Timothy’s stupid ass when he was running this town.

He dropped his backpack and sleeping bag down at the base of the steps, lifting his foot to gingerly take the first step upwards. The stairs were surprisingly smooth, polished by their frequent use but decorated with handfuls of pebbles and cracked concrete. Kyle kept his eyes downward, fearful that stepping on one of the smoother pebbles might send him to his embarrassing doom. Smashing his jaw and requiring an ambulance ride back down the cliff would definitely not help him acquire any social credits. He kept one hand on the wall to steady himself, holding his breath before each footfall.

His grip on the wall tightened as each step seemed to be taller than the last, forcing him to have to pull his knees further and further up. He felt like a kid, he wondered if he’d be having to pull himself over the stony ledges eventually. He thought about dropping to all fours, clambering up like an animal until he reached the landing. He used to do that, racing up the carpeted stairs of his family’s brownstone in Connecticut. Though that childish behaviour was trained out of him well before his dad dragged them halfway across the globe.

He swallowed a gulp of air as soon as he reached the landing, a mistake, his mouth was immediately clogged by dust particles sticking to anything with moisture. He hacked up the particles of ancient stone, hoping with all his might that it wasn’t Asbestos clogging up his windpipe. He coughed, his hands clutching at his knees as he spat blackened phlegm onto the floor. He glanced upwards to the shadowy room, blinking tears from his eyes as he tried to take in the emptiness. Much like the room below, it was a blank state of stone coated in dust. Other than an overturned mound of wood centred in the room.

Kyle slipped his phone from his pocket, holding it up as a flashlight to break through the shadowy room. It caught on the face of a carving, an opened mouth horse caught in a whinny was aimed at Kyle. The pegs either side of its head causing it to tilt, almost curiously at the intruder. The rest of the rocking horse's body and rockers were cracked and blackened, as if it had been chopped apart for firewood. It wouldn’t make such good kindling, from here, Kyle could smell the seawater. Seaweed clumped around it like knotted hair, paint had chipped away from it entirely except for the glassiness of its white eyes. “Creepy” Kyle mumbled, flipping his phone around to take a photo before looking to his next challenge.

If the previous stairs were gruesome, the next were horrific. Kyle cursed whatever evil medieval bastard architect had designed these stairwells and pitied whatever loser pheasant had to trek up and down them. Forget a gradual but annoying increase in height, these were jagged. Some were only a few inches tall and wide while others were at least a foot tall, wide enough to be a landing on their own. He groaned as he lifted himself to the next mini landing, clicking his tongue as he tried to bring the moisture back to his mouth.

He turned, weighing up going back down to grab his water bottle from his bag but he found the second floor landing further away than he had expected. He smirked at this, exhaustion eased by his apparent achievement. By his calculations, he’d be up on the third floor before the sun even grazed the horizon. He’d have enough time to take a thousand photos, he could pick the best one later. He was emboldened, turning back to the stairs and going up at a much faster pace. He even felt less inclined to stare down his feet as he hopped up the larger steps.

His eyes widened as the murky darkness was broken by the warmth of daylight cascading down the stairs. His concentration was further loosened though that did not make it any less shocking when his foot broke away from the next step. His arms flew out to try to steady himself on the corridor walls, a gut wrenching frozen horror settling in his gut as the wall to his right gave way. His hand fell into the new space while his knees hit the last step hard enough that he felt it in his teeth. Light swallowed up his vision through the gap as he willed his shaking body to stop, to stay still as he waited for the sound of the rest of the building to give way.

Once he was sure the falls of rocks had finished and he was not in danger of being crushed, he looked fearfully at the hole. He stared, eyebrows furrowing as he took in the sight of the cliffside. His aching head switched to the opposite wall, the one that should face the outside. He glanced back to the serene picture of his new town, somehow all contained on the inside of the tower. “That’s impossible” He thought out loud as he pulled himself to his knees, trying not to vomit from the surge of vertigo from the sudden exposure to heights.

His body shook uncontrollably, without thinking he crawled up the next few steps just to get away from the gap in the tower’s wall. He didn’t trust himself to stand, the thought of his body falling from the gap at the forefront of his mind. “Fuck it” He cursed, he’d go back down. Take a photo with the creepy rocking horse and maybe avoid being flamed for being the new kid for a while. It was better than falling to his death from this stupid tower and being added to one of the thousand horror stories told about this building. Fuck, he’d have his dad demolish this place if it was the last thing he did.

He turned, sliding himself down the steps, closest to the unbroken wall. He breathed deeply, his deep gulps of oxygen causing a string in front of him to shift with the movement. He raised his brows at it, following its glossy trail up to where it attached at the sloping ceiling. “What in the hell” He whispered to himself as he took in the substance-covered stone above him. Spiderwebs… maybe? Yellowed by age and clumped up with the piles of caught dust. Following the creeping lines of yellow showed how they dripped down the walls like wax until making up a pile of tangled wetness fusing into the very stone itself. Now that he was down, he could see the fibres, everywhere. He gasped as he caught the sight of the strings entangled in the laces of his shoes, he pulled at the fibre. Finding it more like fishing wire than web before something thin and cold dripped down the back of his neck.

He screamed, the sound akin to a pig being slaughtered as he booked it down the stairs. Jumping past the taller steps and taking the smaller three at a time. Fuck this, Fuck this stupid ritual and fuck anyone that’d call him chicken for not staying in this death trap of an archeological dig site. He slowed for just a moment when the beloved sight of sunlight on stone caught his eye. Finally, he had reached the ground floor, but he hadn’t yet passed the landing on the second floor had he? He turned in confusion, expecting the landing to be a few steps behind. He’d just missed it, he was too panicked. He didn’t see the landing. He saw the hole.

The impossible gap was not alone, beside it were the remains of the rocking horse, its white glass eyes shimmering with the light of the setting sun. It was swaying, its sea rotten body covered in the same strands that seemed to coat everything here. His fear turned to anger as he noticed a silvery strand of fishing wire, clinging to the carved tail of the horse and leading up the dreaded stairs. He hoped this was a prank, the seniors fucking with him yet again but he didn’t find the smirking faces of Tim or Elliot Lute, he found someone else.

White, smooth, impossible features looked down on him. A neck like the body of a giant snake curled around the circular stairway. He stared, it had to be a puppet or something One of the freaky things they had in the historical centre. “Real Funny-” His breath was caught in his throat, his organs leaping up to try to force it out as the stone face’s lips twisted into a very slight smile. He couldn’t move, his body froze in its entirety as the head raised. It pulled with it a veil of those strands, falling over it’s polite smile as a sharp bug-like leg pulled out from the shadows. Hitting the stone step with a terrifying crunch.

He broke from his fugue state just as an identical limb crunched down the next step, his head was echoey and full of a thousand whispered voices. He whipped around, fearful to put that thing behind him but without much other choice as he made a break for it down the stairs. He heard nothing from behind him, a good sign? He thought so. His heart leapt with joy as he spotted light. Not the light of a hole but the uniformly square cut of light like from a door. He mistook the height of the last step, sending him sprawling to the ground floor. Despite the pain blossoming in his shoulder, he laughed, a maniacal kind of thing as he grabbed his bag from where he had left it before realising there was no more door.

Only a window.

#horror story #short story #writing #horror #Volt of the tower #Volt #scary story

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