Day One, The Original – by Elizabeth Averay
Waking to whispered voices, my room is ice cold; breath coming out of me like a heavy fog.
‘Another room.’
‘There’s another room.’
‘Find our room.’
‘Another room.’
Whispered echoes surround me.
Diving out of bed for the door I run, checking the rest of the house. Nothing. Leaning against the living room wall I realise the rest of the house is warm…
And I am alone.
There is no one else here.
I make myself a hot drink and decide it must have been a dream.
The next morning I check my list and head off to the hardware store. I buy paint scrapers, primer, wood, plaster sheets, paint, paint rollers, and brushes, and everything I need to fix up my new home.
Giving my address to get everything delivered, the salesman gulps and asks me to repeat myself.
As I leave the store the young man that served me is talking to a colleague, pointing at me and looking terrified. Strange kid.
At home I start to remove the old and rotting wood from windows, door frames, a couple of doors, part of the floor in the master bedroom, and so-on.
Three hours later a truck pulls up and a horn blears out. I keep working as the horn goes off again and again, then something hits the side of the house. Racing out, thinking kids are messing around, I come face-to-face with the truck driver. She glowers at me. ‘About time! I’ve been waiting to offload for half an hour.’
Slamming the clipboard into my filthy hands she turns, signals her partner, and starts to unload – leaving everything on the lawn.
Coming back she barks at me to sign to say I got my delivery. Then back in the truck she goes and I’m left to shift everything inside. Alone.
Wonderful.
I sleep like the dead that night.
It takes several weeks, but the master bedroom, living room, kitchen, and two bathrooms are done! In that time I dreamt of the voices a lot; they keep talking about another room, one I haven’t found and that I should stop fixing the old place.
I have three bedrooms left to do as well as the garage.
Working on the bedrooms, for some reason I start to feel as if I’m being watched. On day five of the bedroom work I have to go back to the store and pick up more supplies. As soon as I walk in the entire store goes quiet. Then the whispering and pointing from staff and other customers starts up.
I shake my head, grab a trolley and collect what I need.
A small boy no more than four tugs on my clothes, looking up at me with big eyes, and says, ‘Lady, don’t go back to that house! It’s a bad house.’
I think he would have said more but his mother called him.
A shiver goes down my spine. I pass it off as a blast of cold air from the airconditioner.
I rapidly finish my shopping and leave, no need to arrange a delivery this time.
That night, the whispering voices are back.
‘They know.’
‘They lived through it.’
‘Well, some of them lived.’
‘Stop working.’
My sheets are ripped off the bed, cold hands grab at me, pulling me this way and that.
One hard tug and I hit the floor, knocking the breath out of me. A fist of steel clamps around my ankle, hauling me across the room to the wall where a dark crevice has appeared.
I’m scrabbling at the floor, trying to stop the invisible force from dragging me into the darkness.
As I’m tugged through the blackness, a rib-cracking squeezing sensation tenses around my body, then I’m floating in a sea of utter darkness.
A sickly green light starts to glow form above. Just bright enough to see it, but nothing else.
Now the voices are loud. Yelling. ‘Get out!’
‘Escape!’
‘Run!’
‘Hide!’
And of course: ‘Should have stopped when we said! It is too late now.’
Small, invisible hands pat my head and stroke my hair. I think to reassure me. All the voices and hands vanish all at once, leaving me alone. Never have I felt really lonely until right now.
Heart racing, breath gasping, as the silence stretches on and on.
Hours later an outline of a person forms. A fine silvery outline in the green-and-black gloom. It just stands over me. I try to speak but my voice has left me and my limbs are heavy and numb with cold.
The outline moves closer until I can feel the frosty burn coming from it.
A black hand outlined in silver grasps my arm and a cold so harsh tears through me. I can feel my veins burst open from rapid freezing, yet somehow I am standing.
The shadow and I are the same height and build.
Feeling unnerved by this I try to pull away but still can’t move. The shadow drags me along to a door, pulling me through. The light is bright, so bright here! I wish it wasn’t.
There are people, young and old, all about the room.
Ninety percent of them are dead; the remaining percentage are in a state of barely-living decay, all pus and weeping ulcers and flesh rotting as it falls from decrepit bodies.
Horrified by what I’m seeing I try to scream. The shadow punches its fist into my mouth to stop me – yet the shadow person is sucked in to me!
Falling to the floor, writhing from its memories of torment, pain, torture.
This house – my house – is haunted. Has been for two hundred years by the first owner. But worst still is that the original owner always possesses the new to carry on his carnival of carnage.
The memories it has shown me are of me abducting, torturing, killing, and in some cases eating these pathetic creatures. The shadow shows me this because the town burnt the house down – with me inside. The shadow wants me to know I am dead – and why.
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