Body Snatchers

A lot of people had died in this house. It was part of its charm. Countless horrible, gruesome stories blanketed Valeswyn House‘s history in a marred and hungry darkness. It was a soul pit down which many lives had tumbled to feed the House’s insatiable needs, and yet always more souls would swagger up its drive like sheep to slaughter - hungering for their own desires; to chase Death, to cheat it, to dance on the precipice and hope for a glimpse or breath of the afterlife - but what I witnessed of my friend’s undoing was a fate far worse than death.

Timothy and I were just as youthful and naive as many who had come before us, seeking paranormal excitement at Valeswyn. We had booked its habitable East Wing for an overnight stay and like so many others had marvelled at the house’s beautiful yet fading facade, taking framed photos for our blog. Photos of a dormant beast.

The caretaker was an odd woman. She had posted the listing for Valeswyn online and ran a tidy business of weekend thrill seekers booking rooms in the East Wing. People flocked to it to carry out paranormal investigations of the old house. She leaned on her broom after welcoming them in with the weariness of an eighty year old, and yet I would only have placed her age a decade more than us at most.

‘Do not go into the West Wing’, she said. It was strictly forbidden. ‘Do not go there.’

She didn’t have to say it any more, we got the point - but as the whole house was ours for the weekend because we booked in the off season, we absolutely planned to go into the West Wing. She didn’t need to know that though.

She left us alone in the gaping maws of Valeswyn House and told us to call if needed, though she also said the electrics were a bit funny and the call might not connect. Timothy and I were rapt to be left alone in a house with such murky history and the delicious taste of unlikely but life-threatening danger.

After the sun shied away it revealed a stark contrasting beauty to the growling ambience of the house: stars, thousands of stars, littering the sky. I suggested to Timothy the best place to see them would be the West Wing balcony, which I had spotted when we arrived and noticed it looked out over the Valeswyn estate. We were surpised to find the doors to the West Wing unlocked. Stepping through the door with such ease felt less like breaking the law and instead like betraying a pure and trusting promise, but we couldn’t help ourselves.

As the caretaker had prophesied, our electronics were bust. The moment we put a foot inside the West Wing, the batteries in the torches failed us. The moonlight pouring softly through a window highlighted an old candle on the sill. It still had some wick in it. We lit it, its light framing the window and showing me my own reflection - and for a second, I thought, the reflection of many other eyes in the room. I tensed, but I had imagined it.

The West Wing was empty, lifeless. All furniture and decoration had long gone, picked clean by the house’s line of heirs. The structure was falling into disrepair and I wondered if we were more at risk of black mould than a ghost, but we snuck through the contrast of moonlit silver-blue and inky black rooms as we navigated our way to the balcony, holding our breaths and trying to still our hearts as we listened for any sound of the afterlife.

Timothy found the doorway to the balcony and I remember how excited he was to step out into the night. I remember the jovial look on his face last only a breath before giving way to panicked horror. The balcony struts had rotted through, right to the core, and collapsed. Timothy fell a good four metres in a tumble of snapped wooden debris and splinters. I had half the mind to scream his name and jump down after him.

I called out, to no answer. I called again... nothing. I called once more. Silence.

I sprinted through the house. It seemed to yield to my adrenalined need to find Timothy, and through its twists and turns led me right to him, presenting me his lifeless body.

I panicked, I reminded myself panicking wouldn’t help. I thought about calling the caretaker. I looked at the damage done to the West Wing balcony and I realised I had been brought into a situation where I had no choice and no rescue. I attempted to wake Timothy. I called his name, I tapped his face, I checked his pulse - it was very weak but he was still within reach.

I held my breath, prepared to do CPR. Silence. Darkness. A stirring in the trees on the estate and a thousand stars watching me, delighting in my torment, elated to see me alone. Something scratching at the back of my skull, ready to pounce.

I breathed into his mouth, I pumped his chest, I held, I breathed into his mouth, I pumped his chest, I held. The trees held their breath. The House invited me back inside, but I declined, and tried again.

On the fifth attempt I got a flutter of response from Timothy’s lungs and then he gasped, breathing air, sucking in oxygen, revelling in his life returned to him. I cried with great relief to not be alone and also to see him again. He observed his hands, he laid back and looked at the stars, sucking in air through his nostrils. He kicked his legs out, testing them, seeing if they worked.

I helped Timothy to his feet and he didn’t say much, he was still in shock. I slung his arm over my shoulder and together we made our way towards the East Wing like soldiers returning from war. Not all soldiers come back the same.

I thought about leaving, but I was too tired to drive, having driven all day. We would have to simply tell the caretaker in the morning what had happened. Even if we attempted to flee we would be on her books, in her emails, our details ensnared in a digital database. Valeswyn House had our faces, our fingerprints, our names.

We would have to sleep the night. The thought was uncanny and outlandish now, my blood was coursing on the high of rescuing Timothy and wanting to run away. He on the other hand looked like he’d aged a hundred years with the shock of it all and needed to lie down.

We rested on the bed together and I checked him over. I found painful, colourful bruises but nothing severe. He was pleased to hear it, but he didn’t say thank you. Not a word of gratitude passed his lips and I nearly had the mind to hit him for it, but didn’t want to add another bruise to the bunch.

‘Goodnight,’ he said, ’goodnight.’

I laid down next to him.

‘Goodnight,’ he said again, ’goodnight.’

He was being quirky, I thought, but as I rolled to face him I found his eyes wildly fixated on me, glowering. His eyebrows were bent in a way they never did. His smile grinned a devilish smile that wasn’t his.

‘Goodnight,’ he said, ‘goodnight.’ He grasped my face with an iron grip. ‘Goodnight,’ he whispered, ’goodnight,’ and he ensnared me in a limb lock and squeezed my mouth and nose shut. I struggled against him unsure if it was a joke, but the look his eyes was not Timothy, it was a stranger’s. Timothy was not here.

’Goodnight,’ he said one last time, ‘goodnight.’

My lungs swelled and screamed for air, a pressure cooker ready to explode. I reached my limit and burst from my body, breaking free of his grip, to discover a hundred shifting and shaking figures standing around the bed. The cold eyes on their shaded faces, staring, watching us. I sailed up to the ceiling and turned over, to watch Timothy recede and leave my deadweight body on the bed.

I witnessed a feeding frenzy. My corpse was swarmed by those screeching and screaming ghouls, those hundred souls Valeswyn had claimed but not yet devoured. I watched, helpless, as they grasped at my feet and clawed at my arms until one pushed and shoved the others and dived into my open mouth.

I felt nothing. How would I? My body that could feel pain was down there, below me, while I hovered uselessly above and watched myself sit up in bed. I watched myself turn to Timothy, grinning a smile that was not my own. I watched us leave in the middle of the night, completely unable to intervene and stop them, completely unable to rescuse myself from whatever soul had taken my place.

Timothy and I - our mortal forms - drove into the night to do what deeds I’ll never know. Our lives had been hijacked. I wished I could warn my loved ones but it was impossible. Was that even where they were going? To resume our lives as impostors? Or were they headed to chase their own desires? A dark force had escaped Valeswyn House that night - and it wore my face.

Lost and bereft, I wandered and searched for Timothy’s ghost for some form of comfort. I found him haunting the balustrade of the West Wing where he had died from the fall. He was pleased to see me but he seemed distant, his attentiveness like a tide flowing out. We quietly watched the stars and unpicked the consequences of our fate, but at times I felt my presence slipping to somewhere unknown. I wasn’t sure where I was going. Whatever consciousness I had left was being picked at, scratched at, it was that same clawing at the back of my mind I felt earlier. I knew it was Valeswyn House; hungry for more.