A submission of horror written by Debra O’Neal-Ortiz, aka Daesina. I think she is a talented writer and if possible I’ll ask for more to be shared with us, if you like this one.
It stretches before him.
Shadows flickering across grime caked floor with debris clogging the perfect line leading into darkness seeming to throb at the very end of his vision. Bits of tattered cloth their color long since made indiscriminate by fading and age clings tenaciously to brass rods dull with blackness. It’s stench of age, abandonment, decay assails his flaring nostrils as he grips the cool metal of the key within his palm. Scratching, scurrying sounds tease at his ears while a large glutted black beetle lazily treks across the shiny leather at the toe of his shoe. Through boarded windows late afternoon light illuminates the forgotten inhabitants lining the left wall in various states of disarray. Canvases, fodder to silverfish and other vermin glare their outrage in demonic castings of ancestral faces. Silently they study the shadowed figure poised within the doorway, seeming to dare his encroachment into their hell of dark destruction.
He answers to the challenge…
Hollowly, sturdy soled boots ring out their halting cadence as he takes first one step, then as if compelled several until he is standing amid the devastation. Compulsively his fingers grip then release around the long key clutched within his hand. Dark eyes flash their revulsion as he turns slowly taking in the comportment of his ancestral home, Duncab Hall. Spotlighted within the weak light filtering through cracks between the boards blinding the windows he grunts his distaste. Would they had left him something besides this crumbling heap of stone and decay. Angrily his foot kicks out, connecting with the wall. As if through water, his foot slips through the plaster snagging within the wall. “Damnation!” he cries tugging vainly on his wrested ankle and foot.
“Damnation, Damnation, Damnation” echoe seerily, growing fainter with each incarnation until it is a mere whisper as it slips beneath the darkness at the halls end. Hobbling, he works to gain some sort of leverage. His hands grasp a nearby beam in an attempt to anchor his body so that he can tug with more force, but the strength of his fingers sink within the rotted wood and handfuls come away. Surprised he lowers his hands gazing into his palms. The wood is dark streaked with moisture, its interior filled with tiny blind white bodies squirming at the invasion of light into their domain. Quickly he drops the bits of rotted wood and brushes his palms against his jeans. Bile rising in a bitter vetch at the back of his throat, he stares at the infested wood. Glancing at his hands quickly to ascertain that no visitors remain he swallows at the presence of his stomach at the back of his throat. “Damned house” he mutters.
“Damned House, Damned House, Damned House.”echoes sibilantly while his gaze jerks up in surprise at the echo of his whisper. Swallowing again, his palms rubbing reflexively at his jean leg as he fights against the unease slipping along his skin. “Just have to get my leg out and I’m out of here” he mutters his gaze skittering from shadow to shadow.
“Get out of here, Get out of here” echoes along the hall. “Stop it” he shouts foolishly only to have the echo resound back it’s virulent mimic of his voice, “Stop, Stop,Stop”.
Frowning with embarrassment at his childish actions he concentrates upon freeing his leg. Placing his palms against the wall he braces himself and jerks upon his captured foot. It budges, but only a small fraction. Beads of sweat gather along his brow as he concentrates upon freeing himself. Collectively they gather and giving into gravity begin to trickle from his brow.
“What the devil?” he grunts as he tugs again and his foot remains snared. Sinking to the floor to try another position he fails to catch the echo’s voice “The Devil, The Devil, The Devil”.
Brushing at the salt laded moisture flowing into his eyes with his forearm, he frowns in puzzlement at the hole through which his foot has disappeared. Jabbing at the plaster with his fingers he attempts to peel away bits of it to reveal what has caught his foot so securely. Steadily he works, his breathing growing heavier as his labors become tiring and strenuous from the angle. Harshly they rasp within the empty hall, slithering along the walls, brushing at cobwebs dangling from gingerbread adorning the corners. Quietly they multiply as the echoes begin to give birth to more echoes until the combined heavy rasping resonates into a simulated heartbeat. Still he works. His fingers bleeding copiously from the many wounds caused by the sharp jabs of the plaster as he tears at it. Anger churns within him at the stupidity of his action and now the consequence. Blinding anger that deafens him to the echo filling the hall.
Slowly the shadows begin to lengthen as the light begins to fade. At the end of the hall the darkness begins to slip forward inch by inch with each rasp of the breathy heartbeat. Back to its encroachment, he digs at the plaster, the top of his boot rewarding his efforts and encouraging their doubling. Snarling he grasps wedges of plaster and rips it from the wall. Paper and rotted paneling peel away from the wall like skin exposing the under layer it’s face red with abuse and decay. Tossing the part in his hand aside he grasps another wedge tugging it upward. The tearing groans through the hall as another section lifts from it’s mooring. Horrified he freezes as the wound vomits it’s black seething blood of tiny missile shaped bodies.
Waves of cockroaches spill from the opening. Seething then crash over him covering him in their elongated shapes. Silently a scream tears upward from his horror only to wait trembling at the back of his throat, his lips refusing to part beneath that black tide of filth. Frantically he brushes at the shapes squirming along his body, pushing away their scurrying feet, the antennae fluttering, and the glittering dark eyes. His hands tear at his face, his hair, his neck, and his ears, brushing away hundreds of tiny feet brushing against his skin.
And still the harsh heartbeat breathes within the hall. Resonating along the walls as the darkness creeps steadily forward.
Terrified he digs at his ears, pulling squirming bodies from their canals. Blowing harshly through his nostrils in hopes of dislodging investigators to that dark cavity. His hands fly randomly, everywhere at once, ineffective against the tide rushing over him. His scream pulsates at the back of his throat, growing with the terror of this invasion as he begins to lose the fight against tiny bodies squirming for the darkness within his.
Closer the pulsating darkness creeps. Slender fingers slipping outward to brush at the man squirming in terror along the grime coated floors.
Slowly the tatter of his reason slips, sinking within a deep void. His frantic struggles against the clicking bodies over riding the realization that his foot is free. Brushing wildly savagely at the bodies milling over his, he thrashes along the floor. His struggles pushing him closer to the darkness slithering in his direction.
It is the swallowing of the first squirming body to have invaded his nostrils that pushes his mind into the quicksand of madness. With the second and third flowing down his throat his lips part in a scream of pure terror. Raw it tears through the gloom of the hall stabbing at the face of the darkness looming over him. Over and over his screams rip from his throat as bodies begin to fill his mouth, their feet brushing along his tongue toward his throat. Eyes wide with mad terror he falls back, writhing upon the floor as the darkness begins to envelop him. It’s oily fingers slipping along his body to pull him toward it’s gaping maw pulsating with the harsh heartbeat. Jerking his body tenses then begins to convulse as it slowly begins to disappear vermin and all. Asthe darkness sucks at his chest a flicker of sanity returns to eyes dull with horror. Head thrashing he watches horrified as his body is ingested alive. His screams attempt to return through tattered vocal cords. His efforts deteriorating into ragged coughs. Gagging he spews black bodies coated in clots of blood from his throat as the darkness suckles him. He can feel his bones liquefying then sucked within the throbbing blackness. Forward motion slows as the darkness’ face ruffles as if in pleasure at his terror. Almost stopping it seems to regard the whites of his eyes rolling within his head, the thrashing of his bony skull against the floor, the spatters of his blood, from the resulting crack, in decode signs across the grime. The dark surface ripples as if in laughter at the tiny bodies squirming over each other slipping along the skin, the eyes, to invade another cavity.
Harshly the breathing resonates its heartbeat as another echo ripples along the hall. It’s cadence growing louder as the darkness resumes it’s movement engulfing the neck, the chin, then upward along the face. Stark madness gleams from his eyes as the echo fills his ears past the squirming bodies and tiny feet…
“Damnation, Damnation, Damnation..” it echoes louder and louder and louder as the darkness envelopes him wholly.