by Darcy Coates
It’s getting lower, I realised with a stab of shock. The ceiling is getting lower.
Panic hit me, and I tried to scream, but even though my throat vibrated, I couldn’t hear my own voice. I turned again, trying to find the walls, trying to find anything I could latch on to, but my fingers found no purchase, and every movement seemed to reduce the vertical space I had.
I rotated to face the opposite direction, desperate to find a wall. The stone felt ice cold under my burning, aching fingertips. The space had reduced so that I couldn’t crawl anymore. I had to stretch my hands forward, press my palms to the floor, then use my arms and my toes to drag my body a few inches forward.
I tried to call for help again. Just drawing in the air to yell pressed my chest and my back against the floor and ceiling. Tears began to leak out of my eyes as I gasped. I was suffocating, my arms aching, my head pounding, my skin chilled from where it touched the unnatural stone enclosure.
I had no more wiggle room. My head was tilted, and even by exhaling as deeply as possible, I couldn’t get enough space around my body to move. I was trapped in a vice that refused to let go.
tk tk tk tk tk tk tk
I turned my head towards the noise, and my eyes finally found something other than black. A shape was coming towards me out of the darkness—a child.
And yet… the figure was not a child.
Its eyes were the clearest; they had no pupil or iris, but they shone at me like huge white disks in the dark. Its face was narrow, gaunt, and unnaturally wrinkled, as though its skin had aged while the flesh and bones underneath remained those of a child. There was no colour in its face—I could have been looking at a corpse.
My mouth tried to scream, but my lungs had no room to draw in air.
The child–the thing–dragged itself towards me. As its hand extended in my direction, I saw its nails had grown long. When the fingers hit the floor, they made the abhorrent tapping noise that had haunted my stay in the house.
tk tk tk tk tk
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t protect myself. I couldn’t escape. All I could do was watch as the thing that belonged to the darkness scuttled closer.
Henry isn’t in the house anymore…
Then I felt them touching me—creatures had approached me from behind, unseen and silent. With their bony, bloodless hands, they grasped my legs and arms, tugging at me, squeezing my flesh, and scratching at my skin. Henry’s nails tapped on the ground twice more as he closed the distance between us, and his mouth spread into a toothless smile as he reached out two unnaturally long fingers to caress my face.
I drew in a deep, hungry gasp of air. It was such a shock to be able to breathe that, at first, I didn’t realise where I was.
Shadows cast in moonlight by the tree outside my window danced over the wall, painting beautiful patterns on my wallpaper. I stared at them for a moment then moaned, flipped myself over, and stared at the door.
The keys lay scattered on the ground where I’d left them beside the jar and the knife. The door was open a little, its wallpaper edges jagged from where I’d cut it, exposing a sliver of the nightmare-black inside. The house was quiet, but I thought I could hear my father’s faint snores from down the hallway.
I kept my eyes fixed on the doorway. It was almost possible to believe I’d fallen asleep on the floor and dreamed up the hellish tunnel with the slowly lowering ceiling and the decades-old forgotten children… but then, as I watched, unable to look away, the door closed slowly and carefully, until a faint click told me it was locked… and I heard him leave.
tk tk tk tk tk tk tk…
HITCHIKER
The setting sun was unpleasantly hot on Helen’s back. Her car, a decades-old model with more replacement parts than originals, had tapped out halfway through the drive to Surry. The town, where Helen’s new apartment was waiting, was still two hours away.
She was on a long, derelict road flanked by tangles of sickly shrubs and dry weeds. She hadn’t seen another car since leaving her own vehicle more than an hour before, and there was still no sign of the next town. The dirt road crested a few kilometres ahead, and Helen prayed she would top the gentle hill and find a sprawling town on the other side, preferably one with a payphone and a car repair station that catered to customers who were borderline broke.
The insects hidden in the reeds that poked through swampy land sent up a shrill chatter. A long way away, a bird of prey screeched. Helen shifted her bottle of water to her left hand and rubbed her sweaty right palm on her jeans. She’d kept her burden as light as possible; the bottle of water was vital for the long walk into town, and she’d tucked her wallet and car keys into her pocket. Everything else, including her flat mobile and the eight large cardboard boxes full of possessions waiting to be unpacked into her new house, were still in the car.
At least I had the forethought to change into walking shoes, Helen thought as she scuffed her sneakers through the long brown grass that crept onto the dirt road.
A low hum made Helen turn. A ute was coming up behind her, sending clouds of grey dust up in its wake. For a moment, Helen entertained the idea of hitchhiking. It would save her a huge amount of time, no small amount of frustration, and probably a few blisters, but she dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came into her head. She’d heard more than enough stories about hitchhikers going missing and their remains turning up months, or even years, later. There’d even been a spate of disappearances around the area she was moving away from. Young women walking home from the train station and waiting for a bus late at night had vanished. The police were urgently seeking any information the public could provide, but the clues were so sparse that they were almost non-existent.
Helen focussed on watching her feet, hoping the owner of the ute wouldn’t try to stop for her. As it drew closer, its engine’s noise became clearer; the deep grating rattle seemed both unhealthy and unnatural. Keep your head down. If you show no interest in him, chances are he’ll just pass you by.
The wheels crunched on loose rocks as the vehicle drew up beside her and, to Helen’s frustration, slowed to a crawl.
“Found a problem, miss?” a man asked.
Cancer. That’s exactly how Uncle Jerry sounded when he had throat cancer.
She made herself look at the vehicle. It was old, almost as old as her own ill-fated car. Except, where she’d taken care to keep hers clean and well-maintained, the stranger hadn’t. Trash littered the front carriage: crumpled cigarette packages, empty brown bottles, plastic bags, wadded receipts that were so discoloured Helen thought they must have been sitting there for years, and a used Band-Aid that had been casually discarded on top of the dashboard.
The man behind the wheel matched his car perfectly. Helen guessed him to be around fifty, but he looked much older. Greasy, steel-grey hair hung too long over his wrinkled forehead, and three days’ worth of stubble covered his sunken cheeks. He looked sick—the sort of sick of cancer that’s progressed too far to be treated. His skin seemed thin, like crepe paper, and his fingernails were long and stained yellow from nicotine.
As he turned to face her properly, Helen felt a pang of shock; his left eye was an intense sky blue, although age and illness had sent red veins and a yellow tinge over the whites. His right eye, however, was opaque. A bump and a slightly darker circle where his iris had once been pointed at an odd angle compared to the other eye, as though it were blindly staring at a space far past Helen’s left shoulder.
“I’m fine,” Helen said bluntly, averting her eyes. Instead of stopping, she increased her speed as she moved off the dirt road and began marching through the underbrush.
“You sure about that?” the man slurred. “Pretty woman like you shouldn’t be walking this road alone.”
Helen didn’t answer. Her heart was thundering, and her stomach was cold and tight. Leave me alone. Can’t you see I don’t want to talk? Just keep driving.
She was drawing ahead of him, so the man tapped his accelerator to push his
ute forward, sending black smoke from the exhaust. Motion just above the dashboard attracted Helen’s attention—a trinket hung on the rear-vision mirror danced around. At first, she thought it was a strange furry fruit, but then it rotated on its cord and Helen caught sight of a nose, two eyelids sutured closed, and a mouth distorted into a bizarre grimace.
What the hell? He has a shrunken head. A shrunken head in his car. Is it real? She spared a second glance at the tanned, stitched-up skin then looked away again as nausea rose into her throat. It looks real.
“This isn’t a good road.” The man licked his dry lips. His good eye was skimming Helen’s body, while the blind eye stared intently at the sky.
“I’m fine,” Helen repeated, and her voice sounded very strange and weak in her own ears. She was all but running, but the man in his ute kept abreast of her easily. He was grinning at her, and Helen saw that although he still had the majority of his teeth, many of them were rotting.
A thousand scenarios ran through Helen’s mind. Keep off the road so he can’t run you over. Use your keys as a weapon. He’s old; you could probably beat him in a fist fight if it came to that.
Then the man said the one thing Helen had been dreading. “Lots of people go missing on this road, you know.”
Heart in throat, bottle of water sloshing in her sweaty hand, Helen started running. The ute’s engine revved as it lurched forward to match her pace. The man was saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear him over the engine.
Don’t turn around. Don’t slow down. Don’t look at him—
Something hard was digging into Helen’s stomach. She rolled backwards, trying to escape it, and dry, prickly weeds scratched at her face. She opened her eyes to see the sky filled with dirty twilight.
With a groan, Helen sat up. Her back, arms, and legs ached, almost as though she’d been run over. She pressed her palm to her swimming head, waiting for it to clear.
What happened? Did he –
Suddenly panicked, Helen did a quick mental inventory. Her jeans were still buttoned, and while her back ached and her limbs felt bruised, nothing hurt where it wasn’t supposed to. She let her breath out and pushed her loose hair out of her face. What happened then?
She was sitting on the edge of the dirt road, in almost the same spot she’d been before she blacked out. The gnarled tree to her left looked familiar.
The twilight didn’t seem to have deepened much, either. shapes melted together and played tricks on her eyes. Insects were chattering in the weeds beside her, and a bird of prey cried out in the distance. The ute and its repulsive occupant were nowhere to be seen.
Get into town. Find somewhere with a lot of people. You can worry about everyone else once you’re somewhere safe.
Helen’s legs felt unsteady as she pushed herself to her feet. She stretched, felt the bruises along her arm flare, then started walking. When her sneaker hit something solid, she looked down, surprised to see the bottle of water lying barely a foot from where she’d been left. She picked it up then remembered about her wallet and keys. Both were still in her pocket.
If he didn’t assault me or rob me, what exactly did he do?
Helen unscrewed the bottle of water and took a deep drink. Then she started walking again, suddenly wanting to reach the town more than she’d wanted anything in her life. Maybe I’ll splurge on a hotel room and wait until morning before continuing the drive.
Then she heard the rumble of another approaching car. The reaction was immediate; her heart rate rose, and a sheen of sweat covered her body as her adrenaline prepared her to respond to the threat.
Relax. It’s just a car. Not every human on this planet is dangerous. Keep your head down, and it’ll pass you by.
She couldn’t stop her reaction to the noise, though. Fear clotted in her chest and left a metallic taste in her mouth as she increased her pace to a jog. The roar of the engine felt familiar; it had a rattle and unnatural cadence similar to the man’s ute. Almost… exactly the same.
Helen glanced over her shoulder, and the fear, previously just a whisper in her ear, commandeered her body. The ute, its dashboard littered with long-empty cigarette cases and beer bottles, was gaining on her quickly. Its shrunken head bobbed and danced on the string as its owner’s sallow, diseased face watched Helen.
The bottle of water fell from Helen’s hand. She was running, dragging in terrified breaths. Squeezing her eyes shut against the image, she prayed she was going crazy and that it was all in her mind.
He’s come back for me. Come back to finish the job. He’ll skin me, probably, turn my face into a new shrunken head so I can bob along beside his other trinket for the rest of eternity—
“Found a problem, miss?” the man crowed at her as the ute’s engine roared.
This time, the rock was digging into her back. Helen gasped, feeling disoriented as she rolled onto her hands and knees. The dizziness had returned, and the bruises on her limbs made her shudder. She lurched into a sitting pose and waited for the ache in her head to clear.
He came back for me. Why? What for? Did he run me over with his ute? It would explain why everything hurts…
But it didn’t explain why she was still alive. If she’d really been hit by the ute going at that speed, she would have broken bones and serious internal damage at the very least.
Helen rubbed her hair out of her eyes and looked around. She was still on the same stretch of road, with the same twisted black tree sticking out of the reeds to her left. The insects were humming; above her, a bird of prey gave a loud cry.
This feels so familiar. Like déjà vu.
Helen scanned the ground and saw the bottle of water lying there, waiting for her. She picked it up and swirled it around, confused by what she saw. It was half-full. Didn’t I drink most of it earlier?
She looked at the sky. It was still twilight, hovering in that indefinite time that never lasted more than a handful of minutes.
Don’t go there, Helen told herself as she unscrewed the bottle of water and took a drink. Don’t you dare start thinking about time travel.
But what if? The other, more adventurous half of her mind asked.
Don’t start asking what-ifs. The last thing we want is to see that damn ute again.
She glanced to the right, where the empty road behind her stretched into the distance. She let her breath out in a sigh and massaged her left shoulder, where the bruised muscles were tight. Something very strange has happened, but you can worry about that after you reach the town. What’s important is that you’re alive, you’ve still got all of your limbs attached, and that ute is nowhere to be seen.
She’d barely gotten to her feet when she heard the rumble of an engine behind her. Dread, icy cold and uncomfortably familiar, filled her chest as she turned around.
The ute was topping the ridge down the road. It was still too far away to see clearly, but she was sure it was the same dirty vehicle. Helen licked her lips, which suddenly seemed very dry.
Should I run? Hide?
Running hadn’t helped her before. After two encounters with the ute, she was reluctant to turn her back on it again.
The vehicle was gradually gaining on her, kicking up black dust behind it as it roared down the road. Helen stood her ground, shivering and sweating as stress built in a tight ball inside her. She felt as though she might be sick.
Don’t run. Don’t let him out of your sight.
Helen carefully pulled her keyring out of her back pocket and gripped it in her fist so that the keys stuck out between her fingers like tiny, blunt blades. The ute had come close enough for her to see its occupant; the grizzled man’s face split into a rotten-toothed smile as he met her gaze. The shrunken head bobbed like a Christmas bauble below the mirror.
He slowed down as he drew closer and eventually came to a halt right beside her. Helen was close enough to smell the ute, which stank of beer, cigarette smoke, and urine.
“Found a problem, miss?” the man asked for the third
time that day.
“I don’t know,” Helen said, choosing her words carefully. Her hand holding her keys was hidden behind her back, and her muscles were tense as she prepared to lunge and attack at a second’s notice if the man made a move towards her.
“Pretty woman like you shouldn’t be walking this road alone.” He tilted his head back to scratch at his stubble with yellowed nails. His good eye roved over her as though assessing her for the first time, while his blind eye watched the slowly rotating shrunken head.
Helen hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she should tell him about her broken car, but she guessed he must have passed it and would have put two and two together already.
“This isn’t a good road,” the man continued when Helen didn’t speak. “Lots of people go missing round here.”
“Why?” Helen asked, surprised by her own boldness. Her nerves had been charged with electricity; she shifted from foot to foot, intensely uncomfortable but determined not to show her fear.
The man regarded her for a moment, head cocked to one side, dry lips pursed. Then he said, “You’ve not long left Carlton’s border. If you continue up the road a little way, you’ll be in Mellowkee. But here, this little patch of road, is Harob land. You heard of Harob before, miss?”
“No.” Helen couldn’t guess where he was going. The twilight was gradually fading into true night, and the insects behind her had quietened.
“Not many people have.” The man scratched at his grizzled chin again. “’cept, of course, for the souls who live there. I suppose most folks want to forget it exists. Strange things happen in Harob. Things that might give you and me some trouble sleeping at night. If you find yourself in Harob country, you’re best if you move on as quick as you can.”
