by Paul Berry
‘Have you forgotten about your horror films? No one escapes from the haunted house.’
‘Why are you doing this? I thought we were friends.’
‘We are. I swear it’ll be quick, then we can be together forever. I know that’s what you want.’ I frantically twist the door knob. ‘Where are you going? You can’t go home. Your father doesn’t want you. He thinks you’re disgusting.’
‘You’re wrong. My dad is the only one who cares about me.’
‘Really, Sam? Wouldn’t he rather be with his girlfriend, just the two of them? Not with a basket case like you, a sexual deviant weighing them down.’ Despite the fear, his words slice into me.
I edge around the bed towards the open window, the cool air clearing my head slightly.
‘The fall will kill you when you climb out. No escape that way, my dear.’
‘People will know I’m missing. They’ll come looking.’
‘You think so? Not even your friends care, if you had friends. There’s no other place for you to be except here.’
‘I have friends.’ I feel myself starting to cry. ‘Rachel is my friend.’
‘Haven’t you forgotten all the times her boyfriend insulted you, called you faggot, gay-boy? She never defended you, not once.’ Adam is somehow digging through my memories and finding the most painful ones to use against me. ‘Your books and videos are your only friends.’
‘Feel sorry for me all you want. You’re the one who’s alone in this house.’
Adam shakes his head. ‘You were about to slash your wrists before I found you. It doesn’t get more alone than that.’
The walls seem to undulate as though membranous. Wisps of shadow gather in the top corner of the room, becoming more concentrated as they coalesce together into a single shadow that slithers down the wall. It looks like a large centipede, its body scraping dryly against the wallpaper.
‘I was going to wait until you were ready, until you wanted it,’ he says. My skin crawls in revulsion when I realise what the shadow creature wants to do. Crawl into my mouth.
‘What is it?’
‘My father. A small part of him.’
The centipede disappears under the bed.
‘The house is your father?’ I creep towards the door, hoping Adam doesn’t notice.
‘In a manner of speaking.’ He steps in front of it, blocking my exit. ‘Stop resisting. Let him inside and all the pain you’re feeling will melt away.’
‘It’s not what I want.’
‘I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, my love.’
He leaves and slams the door behind him and locks it. I start banging on it, cracking my elbows against the wood.
‘Let me out!’
I hear Adam’s muffled voice. ‘Forgive me.’
There is the sound of laughter. ‘See you soon!’ Marcus shouts through the door.
I frantically look around the room for the creature. It could be anywhere. The candlelight casts everything into shifting silhouettes.
The painting of Theseus above the bed has changed. The Minotaur has eaten him and blood trickles from its snout, Theseus’ ribcage stripped of flesh like a chicken carcass.
I think about setting the bed on fire. Maybe being burnt alive would be better than that thing squirming into me. I hold my breath, trying to listen for the rustling sound of its body.
The window. That is my only escape. If I can somehow get onto the drainpipe, I can try to shimmy down. I look down at my leg.
The thing is crawling up my thigh.
It is so insubstantial that I can’t even feel it through the silk. I scream and try to shake it off, but it slithers upwards onto my chest like a cold finger tracing along my skin. I try to grasp it with my fingers, but it senses what I’m doing and scuttles over my neck and onto my cheek.
Before I can raise my hands it is pushing between my lips. I feel the tops of my cheeks expanding outwards as it tries to force its way between my teeth, which I have clamped shut. I put my fingers inside my mouth, trying to grasp it, keeping my jaw clenched as it scratches against my teeth, trying to find a gap.
It bites the soft flesh behind my lower lip and I cry out in pain. It jumps down my throat, sliding coldly against my oesophagus into the pit of my stomach. I claw at my throat, then push my fingers down it, gagging, trying to vomit it back up.
I collapse to the floor and hear laughter coming from the walls as a wave of blackness crashes over me.
Chapter 12
I awake naked, half covered with a sheet on a filthy mattress.
The bedroom has changed.
Peeling wallpaper hangs down in strips like shed skin; the ceiling is speckled with black mould. I sit up, my head pounding. The window has planks of wood nailed across it, allowing a few shafts of daylight to penetrate the gloom. I slowly stand up, the muscles in my legs cramping with the exertion. The floor is strewn with detritus and empty syringes.
It’s as though a fire of decay and neglect swept around me while I slept.
I touch my neck and prod my windpipe. It feels tender, like the time I had glandular fever.
That thing is inside me.
It squirmed down my throat and now it’s infecting my insides like some monstrous black cancer.
A panic attack starts squeezing my stomach and I know that if it gets stronger I’ll pass out and never escape, so I breathe slowly, willing myself to stay calm on every exhale.
The clothes I wore last night lie in a crumpled pile next to the mattress and I pull them on, trying to control my shaking hands as I fasten the buttons. These were his clothes, and I grimace as they touch my skin. I tiptoe carefully around the syringes and manage to slip on the shoes without skewering my foot on a needle.
I try the door, even though I know it’s locked, then pull at the planks across the window, but they won’t move no matter how hard I strain. I press my face against one of the cracks. All I can see is an overgrown garden, the brown grass spotted with snow. Still recognisable is the dragon topiary, although now it’s misshapen and grotesque, its head an oversized mass of twisted branches.
Anger prickles across my forehead. I’ve acted like a naive idiot. I’ve watched enough horror films to realise that nothing good happens when you go alone at night with a stranger to a house in the woods.
Unless I get out of here quickly he’ll kill me. Or something much worse.
I want to scream for help until my vocal cords are raw, but instead I try to recall how Peter Cushing acts when facing evil – he considers every possibility calmly and methodically.
I start examining the walls, pressing my palms against them and gently rapping in case there’s a hidden door or exit, trying not to make too much noise. They’re solid brick under the wallpaper and crumbling plaster, with no secret doors to escape through.
I worry about the time and look through the window boards. The sun seems lower, almost late afternoon. At sunset he’s going to return.
Like a vampire.
I examine the door one more time, sweating despite the chill. It’s locked, but the wood might be affected by the decay that fills the room. There’s a rusted water pipe running over the skirting board, and I start kicking and pulling until I manage to loosen a section, the sound painfully loud. Black water spurts upwards into my mouth as I wrench it free, the taste of sewage almost making me vomit. I grasp it in both hands and swing it over my head, striking it against the wood around the handle and keyhole. It clangs against the metal and the vibration travels down the pipe into my teeth.
I press my ear against the door and listen for footsteps.
Nothing.
I hit the door again and the pipe bends into a lazy ‘L’. I stand back and kick it with my heel, pain flaring in my knee.
I listen again. It’s still quiet apart from the tinnitus ring of metal in my e
ars. Amber light from the boarded-up window stripes the room.
The sun is about to set.
I take a few steps back from the door, then ram it with my shoulder. Wood hits bone and I suppress a scream. Gritting my teeth, I run at it again, the impact jerking my head back. I rub my shoulder, eyes watering with pain.
An inch of darkness creeps around the open door.
I slowly pull it towards me, half expecting Adam to be standing behind it, smiling, with his arms folded and shaking his head when I ask him if I can go home.
The corridor’s empty and quiet apart from the thud of my heartbeat.
I try to remember everything about killing vampires, flicking through memories of every film I’ve seen and every book I’ve read. They burn up in daylight, although Bram Stoker’s Dracula was able to walk around without much discomfort. A wooden stake in the heart is the gold standard. They can also be decapitated, although that always ends messily, and not just for the vampire. I think about fashioning a crucifix from some pieces of wood, but in films that tends to make them more angry. Some vampires are unable to cross running water, but I can hardly threaten Adam with a river. There is also garlic and holy water, which I doubt they’d leave lying around.
But they didn’t look like the brooding vampires from the films with handsome aristocratic features. They looked like things that had crawled out from some nightmarish world, and I doubt if normal vampire lore would even affect them.
The rest of the mansion is also decrepit and broken, the paintings that once lined the walls now blackened scraps in their frames, the rugs threadbare and brown with rot. Through the dusty gloom, the staircase leads down to the hallway and front door.
This is just too easy.
As I walk past the last room before the staircase, I hear a faint whimpering from inside. It’s the room where I saw them with Terry. I hesitate, then turn the handle. Locked. I tap on the mouldy wood.
‘Terry? Is that you?’ Floorboards creak inside.
‘Sam? Get me out of here.’ His voice is crackly and barely audible.
‘Have you tried opening it?’ I realise how stupid the question is.
‘Yes.’
‘How did you get here?’ Another irrelevant question.
‘I saw what you did to my picture and followed you into the park.’
‘I’m sorry about that.’ The apology seems pointless now.
‘I lost you in the maze,’ he says, ‘but then I saw you leaving with him. I followed you both here and he found me when I was looking around the garden. His eyes. I couldn’t say no.’ He starts crying. ‘He … he kissed me and said I could live with them so my dad would never be able to hit me again. They were so strong, I couldn’t fight them.’
When Terry came to class with bruises on his face I thought he’d just got into a fight after mouthing off to someone. I never suspected what he was suffering at home. I wonder how many others have been seduced by Adam’s promise of a happy ever after and fallen under the same spell he corrupted me with only to realise they were just lies from a monster.
‘I’m not gay,’ he says. ‘You know that, but I wanted them to do it to me. Then their faces changed. They hurt me.’
‘I’m going to get you out,’ I say.
‘I don’t know why I’m such a tosser. I like you.’
‘I’m flattered. Is there anything you can use to break the door?’ I hear him scuffling around the room.
‘Nothing,’ he says.
‘I’ll try and find something.’
‘Don’t leave me.’ He starts crying again.
I creep down the stairs, ignoring the survival voice screaming in my brain to just run through the front door to safety. I open a drawer in a rotting cabinet and lift up the stack of yellowing newspapers, grimacing as silverfish scurry over my hands. One page catches my attention. In the corner there is a black-and-white picture of someone partly obscured with mildew.
Adam.
He’s smiling and wearing a t-shirt, an older man standing behind him with his hand on his shoulder. The writing beneath it is barely legible, but one word stands out.
Missing.
I tear it out and stuff it into my trouser pocket.
The semicircular glass window above the front door is the only one not boarded shut, and the afternoon light shines weakly through. Sunset is almost here. I open another drawer and rummage through the grimy contents, almost screaming in revulsion when I touch the fuzzy body of a desiccated rat. Beneath it is a rusty letter-opener. I take it and run back up the stairs.
‘Hurry!’ Terry shouts.
‘Be quiet,’ I say, ‘or we’ll never get out.’
My arms and shoulder still throb from ramming the door, but worse is the jealousy when I remember Adam stroking Terry’s face. I should just walk away and leave him to his fate. He deserves nothing less; his only pleasure in life has been ruining mine. If Adam wants him so much, he’s welcome to him. Let him suffer the way he made me suffer. I smile with satisfaction as I imagine him screaming as they feed on him.
‘Something’s happening!’ Terry cries out.
His voice breaks the rumination I have fallen into, and the strange darkness encircling my mind retreats.
A sound vibrates the air like someone strumming the lowest chord on a double bass, barely audible but tickling the back of my head.
Walls start expanding outwards. The red in the carpets grows more intense and paintings unfurl in picture frames. Lights twinkle like fireflies in the shadows of the ceiling as a giant chandelier starts to take shape, threads of crystal joining to create geometric patterns as though woven by an invisible spider. The floorboards groan as they turn smooth and white, becoming gold-flecked marble. Even the surface of the door is transforming from flaky paint into rich mahogany.
I push the point of the letter-opener into the crack of the door next to the lock and wiggle it around.
‘They’re coming back!’ Terry shouts.
I feel the point scraping against metal, thrust it forward and hear a click. I pull the handle down and the door opens.
Terry is wearing bloodstained underwear, ragged teeth marks on his neck and thighs, and is shaking uncontrollably. He stumbles forward and I put my arm around his waist.
‘Am I having a nightmare?’ he asks.
‘I think we both are.’
‘What are they?’
‘Monsters, vampires. I don’t know.’
‘It’s like we’re trapped in one of your films.’ He wheezes and collapses to the floor. ‘I can’t make it … I’m too weak.’ I point down the stairs to the front door.
‘That’s the way out. Just a few steps.’ I help him to his feet. ‘If a gay-boy like me can get there, so can you.’
‘No, you can’t,’ Adam says.
He steps out from the shadows at the bottom of the staircase, bare-chested.
Laughter echoes from above, and I look up to see Marcus and Philip crawling across the ceiling like giant bats. They drop down, landing perfectly on each side of him.
‘Whose idea was it to escape?’ he asks. ‘It can’t have been Terry, he’s a spineless mouse.’
‘But he tastes so sweet,’ Marcus says, making smacking noises with his lips.
‘Sam, go back to your room and wait for me,’ Adam orders. ‘You must be so scared. I can sense your anxiety clawing you up inside.’ He starts walking up the staircase. ‘Terry, on the other hand, is food for the beasts.’
‘Don’t let him get me,’ Terry says, grasping my arm.
‘Let us go,’ I say. ‘We won’t tell anyone.’ I wince at the pathetic cliché said by every horror film victim.
‘It’s too late for that,’ Adam says. ‘And Terry, don’t pretend that you didn’t enjoy everything you begged us to do to you.’
I hold out the letter-opener, my hand qui
vering. ‘Stay back or I’ll use this.’
‘Oh no.’ Marcus gasps dramatically, cowering behind Philip. ‘He’s got a letter-opener.’
As Adam walks up the stairs, he begins to change.
His head shudders and elongates, his face puckering and stretching into a tangled mass of black tentacles. His mouth opens impossibly wide and a long tongue slides out and licks curved fangs.
His torso jerks in constant transformation, bristling with spines, which flatten into scales like one of those magic pictures in cereal boxes that change when you tilt them.
‘You’ve made him angry,’ Philip says, his face and Marcus’s undergoing similar transformations.
Terry stares at Adam blankly, as though his mind has finally snapped.
‘Move!’ I shout at him, trying desperately not to scream hysterically.
‘You boys are in a lot of trouble,’ Adam says, his voice chittering like an insect’s. He reaches the top of the stairs.
I start thinking about Hammer House of Horror films. What would Peter Cushing do?
Attack.
I raise the letter-opener and run at him. His arm whips out and knocks it from my grasp, the momentum throwing me to the floor.
He grabs Terry’s shoulders, the twitching growths on his face burrowing into his mouth. There’s a gurgling sound as Terry starts choking. Adam’s human face forms for a few seconds and grins at me before returning to the face of a monster. He bites Terry’s throat and spots of blood splatter against my cheek. Terry’s body spasms, his arms flailing uselessly as he tries to push him away.
‘Stop!’ I shout.
Adam lets go of him and he crumples to the floor like a broken marionette, his lifeless eyes staring back.
‘Don’t be jealous, Sam,’ Adam says, wiping blood from his mouth. ‘He was merely the appetiser.’ His face is human again, his muscular torso like a living sculpture.
‘That was very greedy,’ Philip says sulkily from the bottom of the stairs. ‘You didn’t leave anything for us.’
