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the woman in the hallway

What we do in the past is what we do in the future.

By Nick SolidPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 40 min read
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1

Jack twisted the cap off his beer, closed the fridge, and walked back to the couch in the living room. He picked up a sweater that was strewn across the cushions, threw it onto the love-seat in the other corner of the room and flopped onto the couch. After fidgeting around trying to find the perfect comfy spot, he took a sip of the cold brew and pulled his phone out to see if he got any new messages. As he swiped open his phone, he noticed something in his peripheral view, just beyond the phone on the wall. He took his focus off the phone, and gazed at what looked like a droplet of water streaking down from the ceiling. He stood up and walked over to get a closer look, grabbing a chair along the way to be able to look real close. He propped the chair next to the wall, hopped on and investigated. He reached up to wipe the single droplet and hoped that it wasn’t a leak of some kind. After wiping it away, he gazed at the small pin-sized hole in the ceiling where the drop appeared from, but nothing else dripped. He reached his hand up to feel around the hole to make sure there was no moisture around it, and just as he was about to touch it there was a loud BANG BANG BANG at the front door.

Jack almost lost his footing as the sound startled him out of his fixated trance on the ceiling hole. He gathered himself, hopped down off the chair and made his way towards the front door. He was not easily scared, it would take a lot more to throw him off, but he was surprised nonetheless. When he got near the front door he picked up the bowl of candy that was sitting on the side-table and opened the door.

“TRICK OR TREAT!” yelled a little Dracula and his partner in crime, a tiny zombie Donald Trump.

“Whoa, hey guys.” Jack said. “Awesome looking costume there Dracula, and... wow. I’m surprised people aren’t stealing your candy there Donny.”

“Huhh?” replied little zombie Don.

“Never mind... you have the best costume I’ve ever seen, believe me, I know costumes” Jack said, sporting his best Donald impression.

The two kids just smiled smiles that were fuelled by sugar and youth, and they shifted awkwardly while Jack threw a couple handfuls of candy in each of their pillow cases. He looked up and saw their Dads shivering in the cold while taking little nips out of a steel flask that shimmered under the smokey glow of yellow street lamps.

“Make sure you guys eat all of it tonight, or else they’ll eat it while your sleeping” Jack said as he pointed to the two men standing on the sidewalk.

“THANKS! BYE!” The two kids yelled in unison as they turned and ran maniacally back to their patient and well-oiled fathers.

Jack closed the door while cracking a wry smile formed out of equal parts nostalgia for a simpler time, and contentment for being exactly where he was. He shuffled off the cold air from outside and made his way back to his happy place on the warm couch with a now not so cold beer sitting on the coffee table.

Jack was having a celebratory beer in honour of finally finishing a screenplay he had been working on for about a month. He just turned 35 and it was the first time he finally put his mind fully on his passions and finished a project of such nature. First drafts, second drafts, third drafts and final drafts, he did it all and finally had a piece of work to hold in his hands, it deserved a beer... or five. It had been a hard month, but it was always hard this time of the year for him. It was not so much hard directly for him, but it was hard for his girlfriend Kerri. Her mother committed suicide five years prior on Halloween, at least that’s what the coroners reported had happened. Kerri firmly believed that there were other matters at play, other matters like her mothers social life and the kinds of people she surrounded herself with after losing her husband a year prior. It was a hard time of the year for Kerri, and it was a hard time of the year for Jack with him wanting to make sure she was okay, all the while still focusing his attention on staying somewhat creative.

While Jack continued to gaze over his work, he was overcome with pride and accomplishment. It was Kerri who stood by him and supported him through the whole ordeal of leaving his job to focus on his passion of writing, and this was the first physical thing he had to show for all the months of stress and creative agony. He flipped through the 120 pages of the script, and let the soft breeze that the flipping pages created brush against his face, and he smiled. He put the script back on the coffee table, picked up his now barely-cool beer and slammed the whole thing in one chug. He put the bottle back on the table next to his phone as it began to vibrate with an incoming text from Kerri.

“Are you home?” it read.

“Yep! Are you coming by?” Jack replied. Three dots instantly filled the bottom of the phone screen.

“I’ll be there in an hour, just helping Anna with something.” she replied.

2

Kerri, an avid reader, worked at the local town library with her friend Anna. She met Jack there two years back when he came in and asked if they had any Stephen King novels available. She did him one better and told Jack about the Bachman Books. They were a collection of stories that King wrote under the Pseudonym “Richard Bachman” which included a story (Rage) that had been banned from sale—but she had one last copy at the library and gave it to Jack. She was incredible at telling stories, and would always try and scare Jack by making up elaborate fables and never letting up or dropping character. It almost worked all the time as Jack was a reasonably gullible guy, but for the most part the stories always sounded so real.

Jack stood up to get another beer from the fridge, but before he could get to the kitchen he noticed it. The ceiling produced another tiny droplet of water that ran down the exact same streak as the previous one. He ran over with the chair again to check on it, and after he wiped it away there were no more drops. He waited a couple minutes but nothing changed, so he decided to go upstairs and see if he could figure out if something was dripping from above; the hole in the ceiling was roughly just below the upstairs bathroom.

It wasn’t an old house by any means, if anything it was relatively new. Jack purchased it with money he saved from his previous job as a Financial Advisor for the major bank in town. He still had mortgage payments that were eating away at his savings on a monthly basis, now that his income had gone from some to none, but it never got to him because he was chasing a dream and dreams come with price tags; be it money, strain or time.

Jack made his way to the upstairs bathroom; climbing the stairs and pacing down the narrow hallway. Once in the bathroom he checked around the floor and under the sink, but there was no evidence of any water or leakage of any kind. He double checked, but again found nothing to explain the drips. As he started making his way downstairs, he picked up on a faint smell... like a mixture of sulphur and freshly extinguished matches. He tried to follow the smell but it didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere, it just sort of... was.

Kerri only ever told Jack snippets of what she was told happened to her mother, Helen. She would often use humour and storytelling as a defence mechanism against the potentially deeper feelings. The coroners report said that she committed suicide, but her body was found in a burned down house owned by Mary, her mothers friend and a spiritual medium, that she had gotten involved with a few months after her husband David had died. Helen started trying to contact him, and started participating in rituals to try and speak to the deceased. It started out rather casual by going to those open spiritual readings where the medium shouted out names until it landed with somebody in the audience. After a few sessions with no luck, Helen was approached by someone in the audience about doing a private reading. The private readings turned into group rituals, and then turned into sacrifices and seances. Kerri recalled her mother slowly fading away into this other person who cared more about talking to the dead then with the living, especially Kerri. After learning of her mother's passing, Kerri was almost numb to the information as it wasn’t her mother she lost, but merely a ghost of what her mother had become. Regardless of the circumstances, it was still a hard time of the year for Kerri when it came around.

Jack found his way back to the living room couch after grabbing another beer from the fridge, this time aiming to enjoy it while it was still actually cold and fresh. He sat down on the couch, popped his feet on the coffee table and brought the cold bottle to his lips and started to guzzle it back. As soon as he swallowed the first stinging-cold gulp, he heard fast and heavy steps running outside along his loose-gravel pathway that goes from his driveway to the front door. Before he could turn around to see who it might be, Kerri burst through the front door in a fear-induced panic. She stood in the doorway doing a rapid scan of the front entrance, kitchen entrance, and finally the living room where Jack was seated and unable to move as he was shocked by the loud bang of the door. She ran over to Jack, swung her arms around him and burst into tears.

“Jesus, what's the matter Kerr?” Jack said.

“I made... we made a horrible mistake, Jack. I fucked up.” Kerri said through her tears and gasps of breath. “We shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t think anything would happen, but it did, something happened. It won’t stop, I can’t... I can’t stop seeing it. I think it followed me here. I just didn’t think anything would happen...” Kerri was speaking so fast she barely got the end of the sentence out before bursting into tears again. Jack didn’t have time to take it all in.

“Slow down, I’m right here, ok? What are you saying? What happened?” Jack said slowly in a calming tone. “Tell me what happened from the beginning.”

“Ok...” Kerri started and took a few deep breaths to gather herself. “I just think I’m losing my mind, Jack. I don’t know what I saw... I can’t explain it. It was so...” she trailed off and closed her eyes as if she was fighting something in her mind. She took some more deep breaths and tried again.

“I was closing down the library with Anna. She went down to the basement to take the recycling out – which is usually just a one person job – but she yelled for me to come down. So I went down to see what she needed, and when I got down there she had a board game looking thing on the table. I got closer and it was a ouija board.”

“You’re kidding me right?” Jack interrupted. “Ok, you can save the act girl, you’re not going to scare me with this one. Why would you even... Anyway, I’ll admit it, you had me with the big entrance and the fake crying but...”

“LISTEN!” Kerri yelled, cutting off Jack. “I know it sounds cliche, and you know I have no time or mental space for that kind of shit, but just listen please.”

Anna took one more moment to collective herself and began.

“I saw Anna standing over the board and she told me to come check it out. Believe me, I reacted the same way you would, I don’t... I didn’t believe in any of that shit before either but...” Kerri paused. “We both figured, what the fuck, it’s halloween, why not try and scare ourselves a little bit. I’m trying to find some acceptance in all the things my Mother did... even if this was just a joke, which it was. But Jack...” she trailed off again.

“Look, you’re not gonna scare me girl” Jack said unconvinced. “I know you, this is a great gag, but you’re busted.” Jack said this in a tone that suggested he was trying to convince himself he was right more than prove a point about Kerri. She looked sternly into Jack's eyes.

“We were standing there in the middle of the basement, and only had one light on because she was just taking out recycling and not looking around down the aisles of books and storage” Kerri said. “We put our hands on the glass circle and Anna asked the first question, but nothing happened. So... I asked a question about my mom.”

“Fuck, Kerri.” Jack said with an undertone that suggested more concern than confusion.

“I just... I had to ask. I told you, I’m trying to put away all this shit and I’m tired of letting this time of year affect me. I figured of all the days, this would be the time to do it, right? So, I asked...” Kerri paused.

“What did you ask?” Jack replied.

“I... I didn’t even get a chance to ask anything. It happened before I could say a word. I thought about what I was going to say, and asked the question to myself a few times in my head, then when I started to ask the question the light bulb exploded. We were in the pitch black for a few seconds and I tried to pull my phone out of my pocket”

Kerri paused to take a few more deep breaths.

“Anna started freaking out, and I couldn’t get my phone out. When the bulb burst... I don’t know if it was chemicals or something, but the air smelled like burning, like burnt wood and sulphur.”

Jack thought back to the smell when he was looking around upstairs for the leak, but it was brushed out of his memory as soon as Kerri started speaking again.

“I finally got my phone out and turned the flashlight on. I scanned down to the board and tried to calm Anna down, but then we heard it. A book fell off the shelf behind us, so I turned around with the light and saw it... saw someone. It... She was hiding behind the bookshelf, but I saw her face Jack... Her face was grey and black and she just stared at me for a second then my flashlight turned off. I scrambled to turn it back on, and when it came back on she was gone.”

Jack was still trying to figure out if this was all still a gag or not, he had never seen Kerri like this before, not even when she was trying to convince him of something scary in the past. She was shaking in his arms as he held her, and he tried to find some reason to apply to the situation to calm her down.

“I know this is a hard time for you, and maybe it was just your mind playing tricks on you” Jack started quietly. “I mean, you guys have those life-size cardboard cutouts of Authors down there, maybe it was one of those? or...”

“It wasn’t a fucking cutout! It was a woman. A grey woman with no clothes staring right at me with... jet black eyes, and her face was twisted, or burned...”

Jack held her and they both existed in the silence for a few seconds as she buried herself in jacks chest and arms.

“I know how this sounds” she said. “Believe me, I’m hearing it, and I don’t believe it, but I know what I saw. I’m not fucking crazy.”

Kerri stood up and walked to the bathroom leaving Jack to sit on the couch and try and comprehend everything that she just said to him. Either this is the most elaborate prank of all time, or... no, it had to be a prank.

Jack picked up his phone and called the one person he could think of to verify if this was in fact true or not – Ben, Anna's boyfriend.

After a few rings, Ben picked up, and Jack could hear yelling in the background that sounded like Anna.

“Is this a fucking joke man?” Ben yelled into the phone.

“Wait... what?” Jack replied.

“This fuckin... ghost story, or whatever” Ben said. “Something about a woman in the library basement? I thought it was a joke, but Anna won’t stop freaking out at me and she’s acting crazy, it’s starting to piss me off. What the fuck is going on? Tell Kerri that it’s gone to far, and to call it off.”

Jack sat in silence for a moment, still hearing the distant yell of Anna as Ben walked into a different room to try and talk in private.

“I was calling to ask you the same thing. I mean... Kerri came over in hysterics. She said the same thing that Anna...”

“Well tell her to cut it out man!” Ben interrupted. “The joke is up, it’s not fucking funny anymore.” Ben hung up the phone.

Just as Jack was putting his phone back on the coffee table, Kerri came back from the bathroom and sat next to Jack who was still staring at the blank phone screen. Kerri’s demeanor had completely changed and she had calmed down significantly.

“I’m sorry. I just had a couple moments to hear what I said, and could process everything and... Maybe we did just scare each other down there” she said. “I just hate this fucking day. It always brings up shitty memories of the past. It was a stupid idea to use that fucking board in the first place. I mean it’s not Anna's fault, she didn’t know, she was just trying to be funny.”

“No, I’m sorry” said Jack. “I know how hard this time of year is for you and... Look, you’re here now, I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you, ok?” Jack paused and pulled Kerri in close in a big hug. “Plus, when I was nine I went as a ghostbuster for Halloween so... you’re in good hands” Jack said hoping to raise a smile from Kerri.

“Yeah...” she said through a sniffle and a tiny laugh.

“Let’s take our minds off this a little” Jack said. “As a matter of fact, I actually finished the final draft of the screenplay this afternoon, so I picked up a celebratory bottle. What say I make us some extra bold whisky sours? I won’t even charge you anything... maybe labour costs.”

Jack stood up and started to make his way to the kitchen in the next room. Kerri forced a larger smile, but it transitioned back into a macabre blank stare as soon as Jack left the room.

3

Four whisky-sours, some weed smoke, and two orders of Chinese food later the nights previous events were mostly out of both their minds. Kerri stood up and walked to the bathroom so Jack decided to give Ben a call to see if everything settled on his end as well. It rang three or four times and then went to message.

“Ben, how’s it going over there man? Hope it’s calmed down. Give a shout when you get this you pussy. I’ll be right baaaaaack...” said Jack before hanging up abruptly.

He typed out a text and sent it over to Ben. No three dots. No immediate text back. Jack assumed that there was some possible make-up sex happening and thought nothing more of it. Kerri walked back into the living room and stumbled slightly through the doorway.

“You didn’t fuck around with those whisky’s, huh babe?” She said with a slight smile. She pranced across the room and jumped onto Jacks lap – her knees on either side of his legs sinking into the spongy couch cushions.

“Hell no! If they aint strong, you’re doin it wrong... That’s what I always say..I always say that.” said Jack.

“Do you always say that?” Kerri leaned in and whispered in his right ear and then bit it hard.

“Shit!” jack said startled. “Sure I do. I say a lot of things, I’m a wordsminths... a "wordsmith". I’m great at words.”

Jack lifted his drink and slurped back the rest of his whisky, leaving nothing but clinkling ice cubes. Kerri laughed and knocked the glass out of his hand, sending the glass and withered ice cubes sliding across the wooden floor, and put Jacks hands around her back and started to kiss him. Jack lowered his hands to the small of her back and pulled her in just a little bit. They were kissing so heavily that neither of them noticed jacks phone screen light up and vibrate showing a new text alert. The green message bar showed that it was Ben, and the message was short enough to fit in one sentence... “Help”

4

Jack had Kerri wrapped around his body like a tipsy backpack and was carrying her around the house. He weaved through the living room, the kitchen, up the stairs, past the bathroom, down the narrow hallway, and into the bedroom. He threw her onto the bed and walked across the room to his stereo to pick out some music. Kerri started removing her clothes as he thumbed through a crate of records that were sitting next to one of the tower speakers. He picked out the song Kiss by Prince, put the record on the player, placed the needle in the start position and cranked the volume. He turned around to find a now naked Kerri laying on his bed waving him in with one finger.

He started doing his version of a strip tease which was basically him losing his footing and tripping over his jeans while trying to dance. Kerri laid there and eyed up this clumsy dancer like a predator sizing up a potential kill. He eventually escaped his pants, kicked them across the room and jumped on the bed. Unbeknownst to Jack as they both started making out and fooling around, his phone was ringing and vibrating on the couch downstairs. Four missed calls and four unread texts, all from Ben. After the phone stopped ringing for the fifth time, there were soft steps in the loose gravel outside the front door. The steps continued up to the front door of Jack's house. A few seconds later, the doorknob began to turn, and then popped out of its casing within the locking mechanism.

5

The numbers 1:14am on the alarm clock illuminated the otherwise pitch black bedroom with a dim red glow as Jack and Kerri rolled off of each other and tried to catch their breath. Jack turned on his side and kissed Kerri on the back of her shoulder.

“I don’t mean to brag, but I think I’m the best at that... probably in the world” he said with a sarcastic and fake-egotistical edge. “Like seriously... you’re welcome.”

Kerri turned over and bit his neck. Jack jumped and pulled back.

“Jesus! What’s gotten into you? I always knew you were a vampire” Jack said as he started to stand up from the bed. “I’m going to the bathroom... and then to the hospital for a rabies shot.”

Jack stumbled out of his bed and started to navigate through the pitch black bedroom along the wall and feeling his way towards the light switch.

“Don’t turn it on! Too bright” Kerri said softly in the darkness.

“Oh, sure thing” Jack said in a comedic tone. “In other news, local writer found dead in a naked heap at the bottom of his staircase. He’s survived by his girlfriend, who’s eyes don’t hurt at all.”

He shuffled to the doorway and opened the door. He stumbled into the equally dark hallway where there were no lights, just one strip of moonlight that shined through the skylight and illuminated one tiny section of the wood floor. He navigated through the darkness the same way he always has since moving in by tracing his fingertips along the wall until they hit the moulding of the bathroom door frame. He felt his way into the bathroom at the end of the hall, switched on the light, closed the door and started to clean himself up and take a piss.

After two minutes or so, Jack turned the light off and opened the door. With eyes completely blinded by the bathroom light, he emerged into the pure blackness of the hallway. He stood outside the bathroom for a few seconds to let his eyes adjust, he placed his fingertips against the wall, then took a few steps forward. As his eyes slowly started to adjust to the darkness, the moonlit strip of floor appeared in front of him. As he took his shuffled steps towards the moonlit sliver, he saw two feet step into the visible strip and stop. Before he could stop his momentum, or react to what he saw, he ran into the cool soft skin of the body standing right in front of him.

“Jesus Christ!” he said under his breath too scared to scream out loud, and he took two steps backward. The two feet stepped backwards out of the light as well. Jack walked forward with his hands out in front of him, unable to see anything still.

“You scared the shit out of me, Kerri” He said as he kept walking forward. His fingers touched skin and what felt like shoulders and a neck. He put his arms around her and leaned in and kissed her on the top of the shoulder.

“Fuck, that literally almost gave me a heart attack” he said, and walked past her and headed down the hallway feeling his way towards the bedroom.

Jack pulled open his bedroom door and slowly shuffled inside. The dim red glow of the alarm clock flashed 1:18am as it guided him back to the foot of his bed. Once he got his bearings, he jumped onto the bed on what he thought was his side, but ended up jumping into the middle. Just as he made contact, he felt it. He bounced off an object that was sprawled out on the other side of the bed, it was Kerri.

6

“What the fuck are you doing?” She said as she woke up violently.

Jack twisted and kicked his way off the bed and fell in a crumpled heap on the floor. He shifted on his ass, dug his heels into the floorboards, and pushed himself backwards until he ran into the cold of the wall next to the closet with a thud and began to hyperventilate.

“Jack? What’s wrong?” She said.

Jack couldn’t catch his breath and had his back pressed hard against the wall as if he was trying to push himself through it. Kerri came out from under the covers and sat on the floor next to him and put her hands on his head. He shook them off and tried to push himself away more, but had nowhere else to go.

“How the fuck... how did...” Jack scrambled to put a sentence together and try and make sense of what just happened. “I just... You were just in the hallway...”

“What?” she said in a confused, half asleep state. “What are you talking about? I’ve been laying here. What’s going on?

Jacks breathing began to intensify again as his reality began to close in all around him like walls of a tomb.

“I saw something... Someone. Jesus Kerri I touched someone out in the hallway just now, I swear it!” he said through gasps for breath.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “This isn’t fucking funny at all.”

“I’m not... I just...” Jack was cut off by the bathroom light turning on. The light splashed down the hallway and spilled into the doorway of the bedroom. Both Jack and Kerri sat in silence for a moment, too scared to move.

“Jack...” Kerri whispered, frozen with fear.

“Stay here. Don’t leave the fucking room.” He said as he started to try and stand up.

“Jack, no! Wait...” she said. “Call the police, somebody is in the house.”

Jack looked around for his phone and realized it was downstairs.

“My phones downstairs” he said. “I’m going to see what just happened. You stay right here, and don’t leave the room. Shut the door behind me.”

Jack walked towards the doorway, and slowly peaked his head out. The light was on but the bathroom door was closed. The thin sliver of yellow along the base of the door illuminated the floor leading from the bedroom down the hallway, but it was still dark.

“I have a gun!” Jack yelled. “Show me your...your fuckin hands right now!”

He slid one foot out of the doorway and started taking slow footsteps towards the bathroom door. After four or five steps, Jacks down-step caused one of the thick wooden floor boards to pop and the sound ricocheted off the walls up and down the hallway. He paused and tried to control his breathing which up to this point was short and fast. After a few seconds Jack went to step closer towards the bathroom door, but as soon as he finished his first step the bathroom light turned off.

Jack, now frozen in the panic and darkness, couldn’t move a muscle in his body. His breathing was now even shorter and quicker than before and his heartbeat could almost be heard in the silence. He started blinking to try and focus his eyes on the bathroom door. After a few seconds, the doorway started to take shape. He shuffled forward as his fear kept rising and his heartbeat got louder and louder to the point where he could hear it and feel it in his head. He gripped his hand around the cold aluminium of the doorknob and tightened his stiff fingers. He started twisting the knob slowly clockwise until the big wooden door popped out and away from the door frame as it shifted an inch inward.

Jacks muscles were completely tightened and felt like they could snap from stress at any second. He put his other hand on the middle of the door and lightly pushed forward. Once the door was opened about five inches, he stopped. He slid his left hand into the bathroom and glided it along the cool wall tile towards the light switch. He felt the raised-groove of the switch panel and kept sliding his fingers towards the switch itself. As soon as his fingertips grazed the switch, there was a loud banging at the door that echoed throughout the silent house. It startled Jack and he jerked his hand back out through the tiny space between the door frame and the door. He stood in the hallway and stared at the semi-open door in contemplation. He felt a little trickle of blood moving down his wrist and fingers, dripping onto the floor. He couldn’t make out how bad the cut was, but could just feel where the pain was coming from. Jack was contemplating what to do first, head downstairs or continue into the bathroom. He stood in the silence for a moment. He took a deep breath, and kicked the bathroom door open and turned on the light.

“Jack!” Kerri yelled from the bedroom. “Are you okay?”

Jack was staring into the bathroom but the rush of light burned his eyes and he had to close them. He put his injured hand up to his face to help block the fresh bright light, and he was able to squint a little but the light still burned. He felt the blood start to transfer from the cut on his wrist on to his forehead and eyebrows, and start to drip down his face. There was a slight pitter-patter in the hallway that sounded like wet feet pacing towards the staircase and down, but Jack still couldn’t see much and didn’t notice it. He squinted his eyes and scanned the bathroom from left to right, but there was nothing. Empty. The window was closed and the room was still. He turned to the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He was white with fear and red with blood from the cut on his hand.

After washing his hand under cold water briefly, Jack noticed small pools of water on the floor. He rubbed his eyes to focus on them, and when he knelt down he noticed they were in the shape of footprints. They led out of the bathroom and into the hallway.

7

“Jack!?” Kerri yelled.

“It’s alright!” Jack yelled back in a panicky unsure tone.

He bent over, turned the faucet on and splashed water on to his cut. It wasn’t deep, but it was larger than he originally thought. Once it was flushed, he splashed water onto his face to remove the semi-congealed blood from his eyes and cheeks. The blood mixed with the water and turned the white porcelain of the sink a dark pinkish red. He turned the water off, wrapped a large bandaid over his cut and stood back up straight, once again staring at his reflection in the mirror. As he was staring, he glanced over his shoulder behind him and that’s when he noticed it, the fully closed shower curtain.

He loosened his grip on the bathroom sink and started to turn around. His heartbeat started racing again as he walked the few steps towards the bathtub. He stopped and stood directly in front of the shower curtains. He gripped his hand around the edge of the curtain and ripped them to the side in an instant. Nothing.

As he was looking into the empty bathtub, he heard a pitter-patter of footsteps race by the doorway and down the hallway towards the stairs. Before he could turn around and look, the bathroom light turned off and he was once again in complete darkness.

“Kerri?” he shouted. No response.

He stood in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust again and then his phone started to ring from downstairs. As he leaned his head out into the hallway, he started to smell the same stench as he did before; burnt matches and sulphur. Rotting.

“Kerri!?” He shouted again.

“It’s okay, Jack” a soft, almost toneless voice said from the bottom of the stairs. “I’m down here.”

Jack started for the staircase and felt his way down to the bottom of the stairs, stumbling a little but balancing himself by holding on to the railing. His phone kept ringing and it got louder and louder as he got closer. After reaching the first floor, the light from the moon and streetlamps washed in through the front bay windows enough to illuminate the floor and some of the walls. His eyes, once again adjusted to the darkness, scanned the kitchen doorway and peered into the living room.

“Kerri?” he asked out loud in the same way a boy calls to his mother after a bad dream.

Jack walked through the kitchen and into the living room. He took two steps towards the couch, and his phone rang again, startling him now that he was so close. He was still shocked, and let it ring for a second or two, then he bent down to pick it up and looked at the screen to see who it was.

8

“Ben?” Jack asked into the phone.

“Thank god man, where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling forever!” Ben said.

“What’s going on? I can’t really talk right now...” Jack said, still more focused on looking around his dark living room for someone or something.

“Annas gone. She ran away with no shoes... I don’t know what the fuck is going on man. She tried to attack me in the middle of the night. She came at me with a fucking knife!” Ben yelled.

Jack, pretty much at his edge, didn’t even know how to respond to this. He was still scanning the room for Kerri. He was pacing around slowly in between rooms, lurking around corners scared of what he might find.

“Where are you?” Jack asked.

“I’m at home man, I called the police earlier. They came by, took a report. It’s fucked up man. She kept yelling Kerri’s name but... it just didn’t sound like Anna. Her voice was deeper, raspier. She called herself... Helen at one point, and literally just ran out of the house with barely anything on. I don’t know what to think.”

Jack was now standing in the hallway that ran between all the lower floor rooms, and ended at the door to the basement. The door was cracked open slightly.

“Fuck, I don’t know what’s happening either, I’m dealing with something over here as well too. I think there is someone in my house.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Is it Anna??” Ben asked.

“I don’t know... I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t find Kerri now. I saw someone in the hallway... I thought it was Kerri, but...” Jack was interrupted by a crash sound that came from the basement.

“I’m calling the police for you. Something's going on and you might get hurt, man. I have to stay here in case Anna comes back. Call me back after.” Ben hung up.

Jack ended the call and stood frozen in front of the basement door. He slowly opened up the door and slid his good hand inside to hit the light switch, but he remembered the bulb burnt out a couple days prior and he forgot to change it. He turned the flashlight on from his phone and prepared to go downstairs.

“Kerri, answer me!” he shouted. Nothing.

The smell was stronger here than it was anywhere else in the house. It was thicker somehow, and more intense. Rotting eggs and rancid meat filled the air as Jack opened the door and peeked his head in with the flashlight. He started stepping down the stairs leading into the basement. His flashlight illuminated a small area of the room at a time as he panned back and forth looking for anything. He got to the bottom of the stairs and started looking around.

He slowly paced forward and shined the light on whatever was directly in front of him. His basement was cold, and unfinished. Boxes were everywhere and the walls were exposed insulation and wood with wires connected throughout. Jack walked to the first corner and peaked behind the boxes, but found nothing. As soon as he turned around his furnace kicked on, scaring him so much that he dropped his phone on the hard cement floor. Jack dropped to the ground and fell backwards over a couple of boxes a few feet away from his cellphone. The light was facing directly upwards and when Jack opened his eyes again after the fall, he saw grey legs scurrying across the ceiling back into the darkness.

He immediately screamed in panic and tried to get to his feet to pick up his phone and run back upstairs and call the police. He took two strides toward his phone, grabbed it, and when he brought it up to illuminate himself back to the stairs he ran into Kerri who was standing completely still in the middle of the room, looking away from him. He stumbled back and away from her.

“Kerri! We have to get out of here let’s go!” he yelled.

Kerri remained completely still. The only signs that she was alive at all was the fact that she was standing up and her shoulders were rising and falling with each rapid breath she took. He shined the light on her.

“Kerri?” Jack said. He approached her from behind and put his hand on her shoulder to turn her around to him. Her skin was ice cold. He couldn’t turn her around, so he walked around her to look at her face. She was standing completely still with her eyes closed and she was expressionless besides her short, quick breaths.

“Kerri please! We have to go now!” he yelled.

“Shes not here” Kerri whispered. As soon as she stopped talking, her mouth shifted and her jaw opened impossibly wide. Her eyes opened, but they weren’t her eyes; they were completely black.

Jack took a step back and noticed that Kerri was holding a 10 pound metal weight in her right hand. Before he could make a move away from her, she raised her hand and struck him directly in the skull. Jack collapsed to the ground and the phone fell away to his side, facing upwards and illuminating one area of the basement from ground to ceiling. Grey hands could be seen on the outer ring of the light that shined on the ceiling. They shifted away into the darkness once more.

9

Jack was laying unconscious on the basement floor, blood dripping from the gash on the side of his head and pooling slowly around him. The light from the phone was still shining on one area of the basement, and everything else was pitch black. As the seconds ticked by, Jacks fingers began to twitch.

After ten minutes of laying on the ground, Jack began to slowly awake from unconsciousness. His eyes started moving behind dark bruised eyelids, and his fingers began to clench into fists and straighten out again. He let out a cough which sprayed drops of blood up in the air and back on to his face as he lay almost motionless on the ground. The sounds of wet footsteps were going on around him in the darkness but he could barely make them out in his current state. He started slowly opening his mouth, as if to try and scream but was only able to release a small gargle and a slight moan. He shifted his head back and forth, still in a daze, and tried to open his eyes. Before he could open his eyes though he felt a drop of liquid hit his forehead. Then another one, and a few more after that every few seconds. As his hearing came back slowly, he started hearing what sounded like sawing. His hearing continued to return and the sawing began to sound like metal cutting through hide or leather. The drops continued to fall on to his face and neck from above. They had a metallic smell, and the few that fell into his mouth tasted like pennies. As soon as his senses started to fully come back was when the smells of gasoline fumes filled the air, thick and gaseous.

He finally managed to muster enough strength to open his eyes and wipe the congealed blood from his face and eyelids so he could adjust his eyes and look up. The cell phone light was still shining directly up above him from the basement floor, and was illuminating the cause of the dripping. He wiped his eyes one last time and focused on the ceiling above him.

Floating directly above him was Anna. Her back was against the ceiling and she was holding a large knife against her throat and sawing violently back and forth. Her eyes were rolled into the back of her head, her jaw hung wide open and her skin looked grey and dark. The blood from her neck, which started out as drops, started to pour and cover Jacks face and upper body. He was still badly injured and could do nothing but lay there and blink his eyes to try and wash out the blood from blinding his vision. The sawing got faster and more aggressive as the skin gave way to the spinal bones. The knife gored its way into the bone and pieces fell towards Jack.

The smell of gasoline became stronger and stronger and soon jack could feel a running stream of gasoline soak into his hair and run down the sides of his arms. He managed to turn his neck slightly to try and make out where it was coming from, and he saw Kerri standing above him with a red jerry can in her hands. Her eyes were still jet black and her jaw hung as wide open as Annas did.

Anna cut through the final pieces of bone and started to slice through the remaining strands of skin that kept her head from falling to the ground. Jack, through his own tears and blood from above, blinked and saw Kerri take out a book of matches from her pocket. She lit one and let it burn in her fingers for a few seconds. Jack tried to scream, but he was still unable to produce barely any sound besides a muffled moan and gargle. Kerri dropped the match and the basement floor ignited in a blue wave of heat that quickly turned into an orange and red rage of flames that briefly illuminated the whole basement. Jack was able to see that the entire basement ceiling was covered in symbols and text that he did not understand. He was able to make out that it was only a circle of fire that he was laying in the middle of.

Annas final cut sliced through the skin and her head fell towards Jacks from the ceiling above. It struck Jack directly in the forehead and knocked him back into unconsciousness. The headless body still floated above Jack, and Kerri still stood behind him with her arms out in the cross position. The headless body began to slowly float down over the circle of orange flames. Annas body floated down over jacks in the same cross position that Kerri was in, but she began to rotate counter-clockwise until she was upside down.

In that moment, both Kerri and Anna burst into flames as they both held the cross and upside-down cross positions. Kerri’s body floated up off the ground and started to rotate counter-clockwise to match the upside-down cross of Annas headless body. Suddenly, as soon as Kerri’s body rotated completely upside-down, both of there bodies exploded into a cloud of black residue and ash. In that exact same moment the circle of flames that surrounded Jack extinguished itself, and he once again existed in darkness.

10

Jack was in too much shock to move, and was still considerably injured enough to keep him incapacitated and motionless on the basement floor. The intense smells of rotting flesh were replaced with burnt wood and gasoline fumes. The black ash still floated in the air, and slowly started falling down towards the ground like fresh dry snow.

Jacks phone was still shining and illuminating one single area of the basement, but he was unable to reach it with his grasping fingers. It started to ring.

In that moment, Jack was faintly able to hear the sounds of thuds on his front door upstairs. There was yelling from outside, but it sounded like a distant murmur in Jack's mind. The thuds ceased, and then one large BANG that caused the front door to fly off its hinges and crash onto the floor in the entryway.

“POLICE! WE ARE ENTERING THE HOUSE!” Came a shout from upstairs.

Jack closed his eyes once more. Existing in the darkness of his mind, a mind trying to live more than piece together what just happened.

A darkness that would haunt him as he lay on the cold floor, covered in blood and sweat.

A darkness he would never understand, or forget.

psychological
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About the Creator

Nick Solid

Writer - Wildland Firefighter - Bartender - Former child.

I love Horror.

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