Deeper into Darkness

by James, Russell

  In tonight’s double feature, he now stood alone in what he had dubbed The Mansion, a brick antebellum masterpiece, complete with an immense two story front porch. The house had been with him his entire life, a slowly evolving symbol of Southern graciousness. A warm sense of recognition filled him upon each arrival.

  Pete stood at the base of a staircase that rivaled Tara’s, stretching to the unfinished second floor. Ornate trim work surrounded each door in the room and the dark wood floor was waxed to a mirror finish. Paintings of places Pete had visited and loved hung on the walls, scenes like Niagara Falls and the backyard of his grandmother’s house. The open front doors ushered in a breeze touched with the invigorating scent of fresh-cut alfalfa.

  Some things in the mansion changed with each visit, some always remained the same. The second floor never altered, forever a maze of rough framed walls and plywood flooring. Old-fashioned copper stubs of incomplete plumbing poked through the floors and errant pigtailed wires sprouted from the wall studs. Pete had plans for the expanse on the second floor; a room with a pool table, a master bedroom with a veranda, a bathroom with an archaic claw foot tub. One night he would arrive, and the new rooms would be finished.

  On the ground floor, hallways snaked away in impossible lengths, promising yet more undiscovered spaces. Through each door, some rooms were familiar, some not. Often first floor rooms were empty, though they had been furnished in other visits. Pete peered inside a few doors, rediscovering the mansion, finding details his subconscious had added.

  Pete entered his favorite room, an elegant sunroom, with three walls and a ceiling of solid glass panels in a wrought iron frame. Potted tropical plants covered the floor, parting to make a path to an open observation area. Daylight blazed down on the white marble floor. Through the glass, a lush green lawn rolled away from the mansion. Pete decided to spend the dream right here, warmed by the sun and bathed in the scents of rich earth and flowering plants.

  Suddenly something ice cold blew through him, like an Arctic blast that penetrated his clothes, his skin, his soul. He shivered. His stomach clenched in an involuntary knot of fear.

  A low rumbling noise rolled across the vast stretch of lawn, like the roar of a distant jet. At the far edge of the grass, a dark, amorphous mass emerged from the trees. The pulsating mix of black smoke and grey substance nosed out into the open. It slithered across the grass like a huge worm and began a slow zigzag up the hill to the mansion.

  Pete stepped to the window and gripped the cold iron window pane. His short, shallow breaths fogged the glass.

  The apparition closed on the house. Its bellowing’s pitch grew piercing and shrill. It probed Pete’s head like steel needles. He covered his ears.

  The creature sharpened into a massive grey snake, a freight train of shifting scales with jagged spikes along its back. The head reared up. A gaunt shadowy face, as misshapen as a Picasso abstract, stared through the window at Pete with empty black eye sockets. Its mouth stretched into a howling oval. The head wore a peaked officer’s cap with an indistinct central white logo. Around its neck hung a tarnished medallion on a thick chain. It bore the likeness of two crossed snakes, one dark and one light.

  It slithered back and forth across the yard ever quicker, but its gaze never wavered. It remained locked on the mansion, the head swiveling counter to the body movement, always facing the sunroom, always facing Pete.

  Pete staggered back from the glass. This was all wrong. He was in the mansion. Mansion dreams were never nightmares. What was this thing he summoned that came on like a killer entering a schoolyard?

  The creature turned again, and charged the sunroom. The hideous head closed on the mansion. Its ear-shattering shriek pierced Pete’s skull. The hairs on his arms stood on end and vibrated in time with the creature’s wailing. The white object on the peak of the cap came into focus, a clenched skeletal fist.

  Its pit of a mouth opened wider, as if to ingest the house. Windowpanes in the house shuddered from the screaming noise. Pete fell to his knees. His heart slammed inside his chest.

  Pete’s subconscious reached up, grabbed a hold of the real world, and pulled.

  He woke up in his dark dorm room in a cold, soaking sweat. He clenched the edge of the bed and prayed it was really over. His roommate snored. Pete relaxed and slumped back into his pillow. The clock read 4:50 am.

  This is no way to start the first day of midterm exams, he thought.

  Ω Ω

  Want more short stories?

  Try Tales from Beyond.

  Eight tales of terror from acclaimed writer Russell James, author of Dark Inspiration, Sacrifice, and Black Magic.

  A serial killer stalks America's interstates.

  A naive boy signs aboard a slave ship for a passage plagued with death.

  A woman adopts an elephant with a dangerous past.

  A Special Forces veteran searches for two lost boys at a mysterious Honduran plantation.

  An author discovers the route to writing true horror.

  These, and more, are all Tales from Beyond. Available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.

  About the Author

  Russell James was raised on Long Island, New York and spent too much time watching Chiller, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and Twilight Zone, despite his parents’ warnings. Bookshelves full of Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe didn’t make things better. He graduated from Cornell University and the University of Central Florida.

  He has published the paranormal thrillers Dark Inspiration, Sacrifice and Black Magic in 2012 with Samhain. His novels Dark Vengeance and Dreamwalker will be published in 2014 and 2015. His Gothic horror novella Blood Red Roses will release in 2014. Short fiction collections include Tales from Beyond, Deeper into Darkness, Out of Time and In a Land Far Away… His short stories have appeared at Tales of Old, Encounters, Daily Science Fiction and Dark Gothic Resurrected magazines. He is a founding member of the Minnows Literary Group.

  His wife reads what he writes, rolls her eyes, and says “There is something seriously wrong with you.” They share their home in sunny Florida with two lazy cats.

  More free short stories are available at www.russelrjames.com.

  Drop a line to denigrate his writing at rrj@russellrjames.com.

  Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Russell-R-James/172907172791996.

  Follow on Twitter @RRJames14.