One Dark and Stormy Night--Chapter 2

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I performed a thorough search of the house. I even went into the living room, thinking maybe if I was in time, or if they appeared hanging by the neck maybe I could save them and to prepare for such an occurrence, I had retrieved my Gerber multi-tool from my backpack and extricated the blade in case of wayward friends suddenly appearing with a hangman's noose around their neck.

 


Author's note: This is my first attempt at a submission. Just a warning...there will be homophobic slurs, foul language, references to excrement, bad jokes, puns, sexual situations, Homo-erotic themes, horrific elements, blood, gore, lapses in judgment, poor budgeting techniques and more stuff that will probably offend someone somewhere. If these types of themes bug you or trigger unwanted feelings or emotions, then please move on to the next story...ye have been waarrned.


One Dark and Stormy Night

Chapter Two

I performed a thorough search of the house. I even went into the living room, thinking maybe if I was in time, or if they appeared hanging by the neck maybe I could save them and to prepare for such an occurrence, I had retrieved my Gerber multi-tool from my backpack and extricated the blade in case of wayward friends suddenly appearing with a hangman's noose around their neck.

I wanted to go home. I didn't want to be in the house, alone, my friends gone, with all these fucking birds.

Up and down the stairs I went. I yelled for them, calling. I'd decided they were playing a prank so I went back to the bedroom and sat looking at the campaign notes, pretending to be cool as a cucumber in case they popped back into the room saying "Surprise!"

But no such occurrence happened.

I took stock of the situation, pulling out a notebook and making a list of things I knew.

A: I was alone in the house.

Something I never liked being in the most generous of circumstances, but here in this house on this night, alone in the dark with the wind blowing...and from the look of the sky it looked like a real storm brewing. I hated being alone.

Hated

Being

Alone

B: No trace of Arny and Dean.

I looked at our footprints...and they were just my footprints now. I didn't see the flashlights I'd brought them, and the player sheets for Gar Hammon and Kiri were still in my backpack and looked like they hadn't been played...

C: I hadn't searched the attic

D: As far as I could tell, there was nothing remarkable about the house in the slightest. Except for the mirror.

E: There was that attic...

F: And birds.

I stared at my list. The alone thing wasn't something I could do anything about at the moment. I didn't want to call the cops...because I didn't know how to explain the fact that I had two missing friends, and only one set of footprints leading to the house. I also didn't want to *leave* the house for fear the night of Old Mother Hubbard's death was repeating itself and somehow my friends would reappear with new neckties.

I really really tried to find a trace of Arny or Dean. I searched the hole Arny had crapped in...the bums dried old excrement was down there but I could see no trace of anything new. No footprints, no character sheets, no discarded flannel shirt, no hairs, nothing to show that I had arrived at this damn house with anyone other than good old me, myself, and I. I even pulled out my cellphone and stared at my contacts list, over and over again I searched but their phone numbers were no longer lodged in it's tiny memory banks...even my cellphone had forgotten my two best friends. For the life of me, I could not remember their actual phone numbers...and at first I was startled at this, but then I realized it could have been natural because I didn't really remember *anyones* cellphone number once I had entered them into the list.

The rain started. I could hear it hitting the roof. I could smell the moisture in the air, the smell of damp earth. I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply the aroma of rain and that faint tang of lavender sachet...

The attic. Yes, we'd come back to that one.

The mirror. I stood and stared into it's surface. I made faced at it, and everything reflected perfectly and in sync. I touched it slightly, and it didn't shimmer or burble, or suck my finger into it's silvered surface to the mirrorworld beyond my imagination to comprehend.

The birds....ugh, there were dozens of them. I didn't really recognize the breed...they were, you know, birds. Brown and small feathered bodies. They were strangely silent in the house, and there were a LOT of them..more than I think would have entered the house naturally over the years. I'd seen a thing on the nature channel a few years back that said to watch birds to see where and what they eat for a general idea of where and what *I* could eat when I was lost and alone in the forest. I tried to watch one bird, it was up in the corner sitting on a decorative molding that arched up into the darkness. The bird's eyes reddened at the glint of my flashlight...and it sat...and sat...and sat...and when I stood it fluttered away to mix with the other dozen birds in the house...and I gave up trying to pin one down.

The attic...damn.

I went back to the mirror. The rain was causing the moisture level in the room to rise. The mirror was fogging slightly as a result...and...

As I peered closer, I breathed onto the mirror.

Drawn, perfectly rendered in it's surface...was the demon with the giant pecker that Arny and Dean had created a few hours earlier.

"Arny!!! Deaannn!!" I yelled again, my impetus renewed.

I ran around the house, down the stairs, into the living room. "Arnyyy, Deannn!!!"

I shone my flashlight up into the rafters hoping against hope that maybe they were there, maybe they had been released by...whatever it was...or were back from wherever they went.

Nothing. Running back into the kitchen, I yelled again, then into the dining room, down the hallway, into the foyer, and up the stairs. The birds were the only things disturbed by my continual running and again I wondered...where had they come from?

Enough. The Attic.

The stairs to the attic folded down from an entry in the top level hallway. I pulled it down and shone my light up into the arid darkness above.

"It's just a fucking room," I said. "Who the fuck cares if you accidentally got locked in the attic when you were a kid? It can't happen here, there's no lock on the door, there's no way you can get stuck up there."

My heart was pounding as I slowly mounted the stairs, my mind still remembering the time as a 12 year old little boy I had stupidly crawled up into the crawlspace above our house playing hide-n-seek and the ceiling entry had accidentally slid sideways sealing me for hours in the hot darkness. My dad had found me, dusty and crying. I'd clung to him as he pulled me down from the crawlspace, not wanting to ever let go.

"Arnyyyy, Deannn."

My voice got softer and softer as I ascended the stairs. I poked my head above ceiling level and shone my flashlight into the darkness, letting it play around on the covered shapes.

The rain pelted the roof, and I could see many areas that were leaking. I knew it wouldn't be safe going in there, knew I could easily fall through the ceiling and at least part of the area was above the Living room where the drop would be a killer.

My body shaking in fear, I slowly walked into the attic, hunched over to clear my head of the slanted roof. The "floor" beneath me was wet in some places, and I carefully tried to step on wooden slats spreading my weight as evenly as I could. Some steps created alarming snaps and creaks as I walked further and further into the darkness...my beam playing along the surface of the floor.

"Arrnnyyy, Deannnn." I said, my voice barely above a harsh whisper in fright.

The sachet smell was much stronger up here, and I realized some of the covered shapes must have held clothes belonging to the Dearly Departed. I didn't really want to lift any of the coversheets, but I angled my light around each on carefully, hoping against hope that maybe my friends were still playing some kind of elaborate prank.

I could see the far wall of the attic. Furniture sat silently in this part of the room, all of it covered in dusty white sheets. I coughed after bumping into an overstuffed chair that created a cloud of dust to float over me.

"Arnyyy," I played my light along the back wall...to some more covered furniture..."Dea..."

I never finished that word as the name of my friend died on my lips...

Because...in the far corner of the attic...

One of the pieces of "furniture" appeared to be moving.
 


 
To Be Continued...
 

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Comments

ah, I know...

kristina l s's picture

... it's Pazuzu...oh, hang on that's another story, got carried away with that moving furniture in the attic. Ooh, so their numbers are gone, but is it he or they that's shifted? Serves him right for buffing the mirror, then maybe that was a good move, or... So come on then, what's with the birds?

Kristina

Buffing the mirror...

Considering the fact that the two who desecrated the mirror are gone, and the one who buffed it clean is still there, I suspect that his little cleaning job saved him some grief. Whoever or whatever it is that grabbed his buddies could have just as easily grabbed him.

In fact, given the evidence, I suspect that the poopoo expedition took place in a parallel universe (one without the roll of toilet paper,) and he got sent back to his home universe when he was going up the stairs. When he went back down, the TP was right where he had left it, and the stinky stuff was gone.

I Know

It's the Luggage :-) Now where did Rincewind and Twoflower wander off to?? Then again, it might be better they aren't there, Death seems to have a bad habit of following them around.

As for the story in general... curiouser and curiouser as Alice would say. Why, if the shifting or whatever has erased all traces of his friends excepting his own memory of them, is there a trace of skin oils on the mirror surface that show the image they'd drawn on the mirror?

At any rate, I'm liking this, should be interesting to see where the TG element comes in here. I have some ideas considering the tags, but I'm not gonna rule anything out since they cover a lot of ground.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once - Albert Einstein

Pussy Footing

joannebarbarella's picture

Woo-oo-oo-ooh! Shades of Alfred Hitchcock too! It's not the Bates Motel, is it? Lovely spine-tingling stuff. It makes me want to yell "DON'T GO IN THERE!" because you just KNOW the damn door is going to slam shut and lock itself,
Joanne

moving furniture

laika's picture

Scary place to end this chapter. "The Human Chair" by Edogowa Rampo? "Chairy" from the Pee-Wee Herman Show? Aaaaiiieee!! Or maybe the devouring killer-refrigerator from Requiem For A Dream? (Ellen Burnsteyn had the worst luck with furniture! Wasn't there was a cabinet or something after her in The Exorcist?)

Or is it Dean waking up? "How'd I get under here? What happened? What's wrong with my voice? Are these boobs?!"

In any event, I'm hoping Part Three will resolve this cliffhanger soon-
~~~hugs, Laika

Cliff hangers

So far, 100% of the chapters have ended in cliff hangers. Is Marli setting a precedent? Angharad still has the championship for sheer numbers, but how does one beat 100%?

I'm generally not into spook stories, but I like this one.