Showing posts with label Short Stories. Show all posts

I've finished this short story. I really rushed the end of it today, mostly because I just wanted it finished, but I think it turned out okay. I joke about hating fantasy writers and yet here I am writing a fantasy story. This story's purpose was to play with descriptive elements and showing character thought with descriptive elements instead of saying it. I'll probably come back at some point and rework the ending. But for now onwards to better things.

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Two dwarfs made their way towards a desolate mansion. They were running, and with each step water and mingled mud splashed up. It was raining hard and the ascending forest path which they scaled was like a river. Old pine trees watched out of the darkness as they went. Occasional flares of lightning gave the only light, and peals of thunder were all that could be heard above the din of the falling rain.

The dwarfs themselves looked similar. Each carried a long handled axe in one hand and wore a pair of breeches. Their bodies were well muscled, scarred, and covered in various tattoos. Their beards and hair were dyed orange and the hair on the tops of their heads was greased up into a long narrow crest. To either side of the crest it was shaved to the scalp. The only distinguishing feature between the two was an eye patch.

Up ahead the path opened up into a clearing and in that clearing stood an old mansion, rickety and forlorn. A flash of lightning showed broken glass windows, rotten wooden siding, and holes in the roof. The clearing about it looked no better; the worn cobblestone before the place was overrun with grass and the bushes had grown wild and crooked. A bed of red roses grew around a broken fountain depicting some long forgotten knight. The body was snapped at the waist with the crumpled rider laying in the fountains pool at his horse’s feet. Here the dwarfs stopped.

The first, the one with an eye patch, looked at the other.

“This the place?"

His companion raised a hand to his eyes and wiped away the gathering rain water.

“I think so, he told me it was a great big old house…”

Before he could finish the thought a woman’s scream came from inside the mansion.

The second dwarf spit over his shoulder.

“Oh, this is the place alright.” He muttered.

The two exchanged a short glance before moving for the front door.

As the door opened, lightning streaked across the sky casting two long shadows into the house. Past the door on the right was a set of stairs leading up, ahead a darkened hallway with crumbled plaster covering the floor, and to the left a room with old dilapidated furniture. The walls might once have been an odd shade of purple and were trimmed with almond stained wood.

“Where’d it come from?” the dwarf with the patch whispered.

The other shook his head.

“I don’t know, couldn’t tell for sure. Lets check this floor first.”

They separated then, one moving off down the hall and the other into the room to the left, leaving trails of water drops and wet footprints.

The dwarf moving down the hall, eye patch, walked slowly each foot quietly placed in front of the other. His glance scanned the hallway, knuckles white on handle of his axe, and his breathing quick and shallow.

As he neared the end of the hallway a glowing figured walked through the next room. It was translucent, dressed in an evening gown, and cast a white-green glow as it went. As it passed the hallway its head turned and looked briefly at eye-patch. The shade was a she, her hair pale silver, and her figure slender. She would have been beautiful except for her face. It was puffed up and deformed. Sloughs of her pale skin hung from her jaw. On one side of her face she wore a sad frown, but on the other her skin was missing on her cheek and around her lips, and the exposed teeth produced a sinister grin.

Eye-patch stopped, and stared through the door way for a moment after she had left, his expression slack-jawed. After a few moments he crept down the hall, leaned against the wall and peaked around the corner. The shade was still there, just past the door, staring absently at some shelves which held assorted jars and dried goods. She lingered only for a few seconds more before she looked up and floated through the ceiling.

Eye-patch watched the room for a few moments longer before stepping in. The room was once a kitchen, filled with vacant tables, cooking utensils, and shelves of unused goods. After quickly searching the room eye-patch wandered over to one of the rooms windows, this one broken and letting rainwater into the house, pushed himself up on his tip-toes and took a look outside. While he was doing this something touched shoulder.

“Bargrem.”

Bargrem spun around bringing up his axe, but upon seeing his companion standing before him, lowered it.

“Gods Turic, I ought to have cut your head from your shoulders. What in the blazes do you want?”

Turic grinned.

“I didn’t find her. I was just wondering if you wanted to go upstairs.”

He looked at Bargrem for a moment.

“You’re a bit jumpy.”

“That boy was right, this place is haunted. I saw some sort of ghost woman.”

Bargrem told him about the brief encounter.

“Well, now what?” Turic said. “Upstairs?”

The two dripping dwarfs made their way back out to the hall and began to creep up the stairs. Once at the top they found themselves standing in a long hallway. To the right of the stairs there were four doors two on either side of the hallway, and along the hallway hung a series of large pictures. Starting near the stairs and leading down the hall were on either side pictures of six women, each young and beautiful, and dressed in fine cloths and jewels. The last picture, hanging at the end of the hall depicted a middle-aged gentleman, finely dressed with several medals hanging over his right breast. The left hall was much shorter, ending in a window. There was a single doorway on the near wall.

Turic turned to the left and started down towards the single room, but Bargrem paused at the top of the stairs, staring down the right hallway. Above the sound of the pounding rain ever so faintly could be heard he sobs of a woman.

“Turic.” Bargrem said, turning back to look for his companion.

Turic ,meanwhile, had ventured down the left hall, and as he neared the single door two women floated out from the walls towards him. Both shimmered white in the darkness, the first clothed in an everyday dress. Her hair was shoulder length and her face pretty. Her throat, however, was slit open nearly from ear to ear, the insides of her windpipe showed and her various muscles and blood vessels hung lax. The other woman was dressed in a dark party dress. About her neck hung a string of pearls.

Just as Bargrem turned to look for him, Turic saw the two women. Upon seeing them Turic began to utter a string of profanity, and backpedal away from them. As he did this he waved his axe in the air at them, only to have it pass thought their bodies, which parted like mist and coalesced in the axe’s wake.

“Come on!” Bargrem yelled, “I think she’s this way.”

The two dwarfs turned away from the shades and took of running down the hall. As he ran Bargrem slowed only enough to throw a glance through each doorway he passed. When he reached the doorway on the left, farthest down the hall, he stopped and entered. Huddled in the far corner of the empty room was a young woman her hair long and damp, and her cloths of poor thread. Her face was cut in several places and trickles of blood ran down her face. On her arms there were also several deep scratches.

Bargrem knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Its alright” Bargrem said “ Your young man came and found us in town. Were here to take you home.”

After he’d said this he put his arms beneath hers and helped her to her feet.

“Come on, up you go.” He said.

As the three turned to go, a shade floated through the interior wall. She was dressed in a beautiful gown, hair silver and flowing about her.

“Were do you think your going?” She asked, her voice shrill.

Bargrem stepped in front of the girl, his stance wide.

“I’m thirsty, so I and my friends are going to leave and go to the tavern for a drink.”

“Who is she, Henry?” The shade asked, her voice soft. “Did you find her there, at the tavern? Is she going to be the next Mrs. Fitzgerald?”

“Henry? Who the…”

“I know now. I know why they told me to stay away from you.” She said, cutting Bargrem off, he voice rising in volume.

“What are you going to do with her after she becomes boring? Drown her? Poison her?”

“Get ready.” Bargrem said, under his breath. “When I draw her attention, you and the girl get out of here.”

“What are you saying to him?!” She screamed. Her face tightening and the corners of her lips turning down to frame a snarl. “Don’t you mock me!"

“I’ll say whatever I like, you overbearing wench!” Bargrem yelled back.

At this she let loose a wail and came sailing, head first, across the room at Bargrem, who turned and ran towards one of the rooms windows. He brought his shoulder down and leapt into the air crashing through the window and into the darkness beyond.

Turic grabbed the young girls hand and ran into the hall pulling her behind. Together they raced down the hall to the stairs. Standing on the stairs was the woman with the string of pearls and the black party dress.

“How could you bring that whore into our house Henry?” She screamed. “Our house!”
Turic turned to the girl.

“Get through the door.” He said quickly and after saying this he moved down the stairs a few steps and leapt over the banister into the hall below. The ghost in the black dress floated through the steps and banister after him, and the girl was left in the hall alone.

At first she only stood there, sobbing and looking about, but soon she clutched the banister and began to shakily make her way down the stairs. As she left the bottom step and began to make her way towards the door a scream came from behind her. She didn’t pause to look back but bolted for the door, throwing it open and running out into the rain. Screams followed her into the night.

The girl ran across the courtyard and through the grassy clearing. Soon she vanished into the woods. Shortly behind her came a shadowy figure, tracing along the edge of the woods.
After the girl had gone into the woods, the dwarf with the eye patch stood before the forest path and looked at the distant mansion as the screams of the other dwarf faded. Soon all he could hear was the sound of falling rain. He muttered something unintelligible, turned, and disappeared into the woods after the girl.

The bell rang in the hall outside the elevator.

“Ten minutes”, James thought. It was morning, time for his eight o’clock class. As was his custom, James pressed the button for the third floor followed by the second. The third floor was actually closed off. While constructing this addition to the science building the school had run out of money, and so the third floor was left incomplete. As to prevent mischievous college students from messing around up there the stairs were locked and the button for the third floor was somehow disabled. The first time James had been told about it he had become curios about the button. The next time he had been in the elevator, just as every time since, he always pressed the third floor button, just to see what would happen. After letting out a slow yawn James noticed something was different this morning. The dormant button had sprung to life, and luminously, it informed him that they would go to floor three.

Moments later the door split open and granted him entrance to the third floor. It was dark and for some reason the air was musty with a strange scent.

“Smells like something crawled up in here and died” he complained to the darkness, covering his nose with his t-shirt. He glanced at his watch

“Eight minutes” he muttered aloud.

He turned and glanced suspiciously at the elevator. If he let it go downstairs again it might not come back up. He didn’t’ much care for the thought of explaining to the dean how he had come to be trapped on the third floor so he set his backpack in the door. When the door tried to close the backpack would stop it, keeping the elevator here.

He reached into his pocket to produce his LED pen light. It seemed the Boy Scout motto of always being prepared had paid off for him today. With flashlight in hand he set off into the darkness to explore the third floor.

Supposedly, the new floor was going to contain a research lab for the chemistry department. It would be neat to see all of it before they finished it next fall.

There was a draft. That didn’t really make much sense because all of the windows had been installed and even though it had been windy outside, there shouldn’t be places for the air to circulate through here.

James wandered the halls whistling as he went. At most of the doorways he would stop and point his flashlight in. There wasn’t really much to see. The rooms were unfurnished and some hadn’t even had drywall put up. You could see the wiring in a lot of places. There was something about being up here, however, that was invigorating; perhaps it was the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be in the first place.

He glanced at his watch.

“Five minutes” he told the darkness.

He was about to turn to head back, hoping that the elevator might let him up here again after class, when he got another strong whiff of that smell. Something was definitely decomposing up here.

“Dr. Poe would probably love to show the dead animal to his parasitology class.” He thought, smirking.

He was certain that he must be fairly close now. Having lived on a farm he had been around his fair share of dead animals. The dogs had always loved to kill squirrels and leave them lying about. Just one more smelly thing he’d had to clean up with a shovel.

He wandered down the hall to an area he guessed would become a set of faculty offices.

“It would be neat if I used one of these some day”

As he wound the corner into one of the office spaces that he suspected the smell was coming from, he paused to look at his watch.

He still had a few minutes left.

He was taken aback by the scene that greeted him in the next room. There were men. He was shocked terribly at first. Thousands of thoughts ran through his head.

“Who are these guys?”

“What are they doing here?”

“Do I need to get out of here?”

He realized however that the smell must be coming from them. Dead people really don’t pose much of a threat. They were homeless, all except one. Each was leaned against one of the unfinished walls, propped up in all their final glory, almost as if on display for him to see. He couldn’t imagine what these guys could be doing here. They were all most likely dead, at least from the smell. His first instinct was to run.

He stopped to think for a moment.

“There is no reason somebody would hide bodies up here, these guys were probably in need of shelter and died one night.

“All five of them.”

He decided that perhaps they weren’t all dead and maybe one of them might need help. He went from body to body, checking for a pulse where it seemed needed, and sure enough one after another turned up dead. The strange thing was that each was in a different stage of decomposition. One looked like he had been dead for a while, and number four looked like he had only died just yesterday. He stopped at number five.

Number five was different than the rest. He was bald. His eyes were slightly sunk into his head and he wore a weird frock, or robe looking thing. It was brown and tied with a rope at the waist. He felt like he had only died a few hours ago when James touched him to feel his pulse. He had, it seemed, just recently assumed room temperature. His skin felt completely normal other than being cold and he wasn’t really rigid or anything like that.

James moved the LED to his face to get a better look at him. It was like a flashback into the past. The guy looked like some sort of monk or something.

That’s when his eyes opened.

James had been wrong, earlier about that smell. Something dead had crawled up here and had been living.

With a shriek James stumbled backwards into the hall in a desperate attempt to escape his dark discovery. He only made it a few feet before it was upon him. No sound but a gurgle was able to escape his lips as it sank its teeth into the soft flesh of his throat. The smack of hungry lips echoed down the empty hall. Heart racing James tried to worm his way out of the iron grip of his attacker but it was to no avail, and with each passing moment his struggles grew less and less. Before long he laid still upon the icy stone floor.

Downstairs there could faintly be heard the sound of a ringing bell. It was time for class.