Creeper

by Brooke Vaughn

  CREEPER

  by Brooke Vaughn

  This eBook edition published 2010 by Ghostwriter Publications , Dorchester, Dorset, England .

  http://www.thepennydreadfulcompany.com/

  © Brooke Vaughn 20 09

  Cover design by Neil Jackson

  eBook created by Stephen James Price

  Brooke Vaughn grew up in Herefordshire in the English countryside, but has lived in London since graduating from University with a degree in International Business and French. A great lover of fiction, she can not remember a time when she did not want to be a writer and has always been a fan of the horror genre.

  She has been influenced by a number of styles, ranging from creature-based pulp horror to apocalyptic terror to the understated psychological works that insinuate themselves beneath the reader’s skin. She believes that it’s always the nasty little details that will haunt a person for days, weeks and even years after reading a novel, and she enjoys fiction the most when she doesn’t want to turn out the light after closing the back cover.

  Brooke has had six chapbooks published, which have also been combined to create a box set entitled Dark Reaches, and has appeared in the Creature Feature anthology alongside some of the best writers in the genre. Her debut novel, The Barn, was released at the World Horror Convention in March 2009.

  Two dark stories from a fast rising star in UK fiction.

  Creeper - Katrina Winters knew that she was crazy. But that didn’t mean that something wasn’t very wrong at the Bellevue Clinic. The vines seemed innocuous enough during the daytime, but at night they stretched and spread and crept...And they’d found a way in.

  Lucky - He had been in a car accident and he was lucky to be alive. As he began to heal and memories emerged from the fog, he couldn’t quite understand how he’d ended up in an isolated edifice of a hospital in the woods...or why his room was soundproofed.

  CREEPER

  Katrina Winters was crazy. Completely bat-shit, bug-humping, doughnut-flinging crazy, as her dear old grampy – none too sane himself, by all accounts – would have said.

  Cray-zee. She’d be the first to admit it.

  But she wasn’t blind, and she knew for sure that there was something weird about the creeping vine outside of her window at the Bellevue Clinic. (“Clinic” of course being a euphemism for “loony bin” and wasn’t it so much better and more socially acceptable if it sounded like you were in smack rehab rather than crazy camp?)

  For a start, it crept. And yes, maybe it was supposed to “creep”, what with it being a creeping vine and all, but she was pretty certain that it was meant to be a gradual process. But this thing would move as she watched, slinking sinuously over her window pane as she peered wide-eyed through the semi-gloom during the witching hour. It generally obscured the glass completely, mottled green shoots folding and overlaying one another like tentacles, leaving her feeling trapped and claustrophobic before she fell back into uneasy slumber. Of course, by morning it had always returned to its rightful place.

  Last night, she’d awoken to see one fine green tendril snaking over her windowsill and down her wall.

  It had found a way in.

  “You say that the vine was inside your room?” reiterated Dr. Mildred in his usual soft, even tone. Patronising prick. Mildew: that’s how Kat thought of him. He was a small, balding fellow whose head sweated when the air conditioning was set on low, probably because he insisted on wearing a tie even in the height of summer. Today’s was yellow.

  Kat somehow resented getting therapy from someone in a self-important yellow tie. She spared a glare at it before answering.

  “Yes. It must have found a gap around the window frame.”

  “I see. Why do you think that it would come inside? Was it maybe seeking something? Trying to harm you…?”

  She raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “It’s a plant. How the hell am I supposed to know what it wants?”

  “Right.” He scribbled something down with a pompous little scratchy sound. Even his pen was officious.

  “Do you think that it’s linked with the bugs?”

  Kat sighed, beginning to wonder whether she shouldn’t have just asked for maintenance to cut back the vine. Mentioning it during her sessions had been a mistake, because now Mildew thought it was all mixed in with her other craziness, which it wasn’t. She knew that the other shit wasn’t real, even though it felt that way at the time.

  “Linked with the bugs? What, like some flora-fauna conspiracy against me? With all due respect, Doctor, that’s insane. I’m starting to think that you should be in here with me, rather than giving me therapy…”

  Dr. Mildred pursed his lips in a tight little line, trying to keep his irritation at bay. The young Miss Winters was a fascinating case, but she could be extremely difficult and adversarial. She was college age, a bright and attractive young woman, and she needed something to occupy her mind. Unfortunately, despite all the educational and craft activities on offer, she appeared to prefer fantasising – and antagonizing him, of course.

  She’d been in and out of mental care since her early teens, finally becoming admitted to a full-time facility at eighteen. She hadn’t resisted the decision, made by concerned and exhausted parents who didn’t know what to do with her.

  It had started with roaches.

  Their clickety-clack made her hysterical, their nasty hard carapaces and swift little legs. She was convinced that the scuttling creatures would burrow their way into your flesh if they could or crawl into any open orifice while you slept.

  The paranoid phobia had soon extended to other types of bugs – centipedes, beetles, earwigs, woodlice…Before long Kat had been sleeping under a mosquito net in her room with citronella candles burning around her. Apparently, the bug tunnel in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark had inspired a convulsive fit and she’d awoken screaming from nightmares for several months afterwards.

  Whenever anyone had tried to assure her that these creatures weren’t harmful, she’d quoted endless facts at them: the way that roaches transferred disease, how many spiders carried venom potent enough to kill a human, the number of people who died each year from ant bites…She’d also pointed out that insects consumed dead bodies: first maggots, then houseflies and beetles, followed by parasitic wasps and later mites, clothes moths and spider beetles. Her argument was that if they were really hungry, what was to stop them waiting until a person was dead…?

  Arachnids, crustaceans and then moths and butterflies had followed. Later, some mammals and birds had begun to bother her, notably bats and crows.

  The thing that almost every one of the focuses of her fear had in common was that (under normal circumstances) they were not harmful to humans. Every psychiatrist who’d worked with her believed that she projected real-life worries and problems onto things that, ultimately, couldn’t hurt her. Each also believed that she’d suffered some trauma – most likely sexual – during her childhood and had completely blocked it from her mind, causing these strange manifestations of terror.

  Kat thought all of that was bull. Shit.

  She further thought that some of these self-congratulatory pencil-pushers should try to pull their heads out of Freud’s ass for one second and accept the fact that she was just plain crazy. It was how she’d been wired.

  But, just because she was a nut job, that didn’t mean that she imagined things. Why the hell would she invent a plant coming after her? That was just stupid. Plants weren’t like insects. Bugs were sneaky little bastards, devious and burrowing and always trying to wriggle their way inside. She shuddered.

  “Look, forget about the vine. I’ll speak to one of the gardener. I want to ask you a question.”

  “Of course,” replied Dr. Mildred politely, crossing his l
egs and tugging at his knee to right the crease.

  “When’s the bug buster coming by again? I saw an ant in the hallway yesterday…If he doesn’t come by soon, the place will be crawling with them. Did you know that Pharaoh ants spread infection in hospitals and can get into wounds, drip lines and even sterile equipment…?”

  “I believe you mentioned it.”

  “Oh. Well…Anyway, you need to call that guy. Bill; they usually send Bill.”

  Dr. Mildred nodded. Bill was one of their caretakers, who posed once – or even twice – a week as a pest controller, because it was the easiest way to keep Kat calm.

  “Of course, Katrina.”

  Kat blinked up into the darkness until her eyes adjusted and she could faintly discern vague shapes. She strained her ears, wondering what had awoken her.

  The Clinic was usually quiet at night, the noisier and more disturbed occupants dosed up on Valium or God knew what. Tonight was no exception and she couldn’t hear anything apart from the low drone of the air-con unit and her own measured breathing. For a full minute she listened even more attentively, even holding her breath and trying to tune out the sound of blood rushing through her ears. Finally, just as she was about to give up, she heard it.

  The low, creaking whoosh wasn’t recognisable, although it seemed like something she should be able to place. Kat frowned. It sounded kind of like fingers running over a scalp, but also like wood under pressure, shifting and groaning.

  Curious, not yet really afraid, she shuffled up onto her elbows and squinted towards the window, noting first of all that the rectangle of pale light that she was accustomed to seeing was mostly obscured. Then she registered the wall and she gasped, body going rigid.

  More tendrils had found their way into her room, seeping around the edges of the window pane like some kind of spreading rot. They were thicker than the one she’d seen the night previously and a couple of them split near the end to form new offshoots that looked like reaching fingers. She watched with horrified fascination as the vines inched achingly slowly over her wall, which was a cheerful yellow in the daylight but looked grey and bleak at night.

  The noise was definitely coming from them, even though they were barely moving fast enough for the human eye to discern, and Kat shivered as she decided that the sound was almost insect-like, scraping and furtive.

  There were six of them now…No, wait, seven; another was just stealing over the sill. They appeared to be spreading out, branching away from their mutual starting point. But they had one thing in common…

  They were all heading towards the bed.

  Slowly, Kat pulled the covers up over her head, hoping that she was imagining things after all.

  “Hello, Miss. How are you doing today?”

  Kat smiled at Pete, the Clinic’s chief gardener. He was a stocky, sturdy old boy in his late fifties, with thick silver hair and a ruddy tan. She normally only saw him when he came inside to water the house-plants because she refused to take part in the horticultural activities offered; she hated the way that they kept trying to distract her from the fact that she was mentally imbalanced. Besides…earth tended to have bugs in it.

  But today? Well, she’d pleasantly surprised everyone by asking to take part in the border planting. She’d hoped to get a moment to speak to Pete and had surreptitiously dug her way over to him.

  “I’m fine thanks, Pete.” Why did people ask how she was? And why did she lie? If she was fine, then she wouldn’t be cooling her heels in the nut house, would she? “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure thing, little lady.”

  “Those creepers outside my room…You know, on the west wall?”

  “Oh yeah, I know! Got ‘em couple of months ago, we did – and they’re growing up a storm! You like ‘em?”

  “They’re…uh…creepy.” Perceiving that he seemed to take this as a compliment, Kat shrugged and continued. “I don’t recognise the species…and they seem to grow unusually fast…”

  “Special deal on ‘em down at the nursery. Shipped all the way from Haiti or some such. Dunno how fast these’uns grow, but I heard some species can grow up to a foot a day!”

  Tramping on the hysteria that threatened to rise at the thought of all the Haitian bugs and parasites that might have stowed away on the plant shipment, Kat asked casually, “A foot a day, huh? So, you probably wouldn’t be able to see them grow then?”

  He frowned. “Don’t think so, Miss.”

  “Uh-huh, okay. And, do they…um…grow places and then sneak back?”

  Pete gave her an odd look, which then immediately softened into relieved understanding. Kat nearly rolled her eyes; she thought of it as the “delicate” expression, which invariably occurred whenever someone remembered that they were talking to a complete lunatic and that the conversation wasn’t really supposed to make sense.

  “Don’t you worry yourself, my dear. They only grow up walls and they don’t sneak anywhere. Promise.” He smiled reassuringly and patted her arm.

  “Thanks,” she replied wanly.

  Once Pete meandered off, Kat threw her trowel and gloves to the floor and slipped around the side of the building, eyes turned upwards to search out her own window.

  On what planet did it seem like a good idea to get plants from Haiti? Wasn’t that where all the voodoo was? And shamans who had special mystical powers? And zombies and cannibals and a whole host of other undesirables? They’d probably gone and bought a damned cursed vine! And why? Because it was on sale. Frickin’ typical.

  She soon found what she was looking for and studied the young creepers. They looked unassuming in the daylight, a vibrant and healthy green, slender stems clinging to the brickwork and the highest shoots barely nudging at the third floor windows, including her own. Frowning, gathering her courage, she hesitantly reached forwards and ran a fingertip over one of the stems and a quivering leaf disturbed by the breeze.

  Kat gasped at the unpleasant tactile experience, drawing her hand away as if burned and noting with shock that the plant seemed to have a similar reaction to her, stem sliding off to the left. It had felt like flesh, only softer…almost rotten. A little wave of nausea passed through her and she leaned her hand heavily on the wall to support her weight.

  She watched with fascination and mounting horror as the tendril closest to her seemed to shiver and then slithered and stretched slowly across the brick, reaching for her as if drawn by her heat. At the last moment before its questing shoots slipped over her fingers, she snatched her hand back with a little cry. Appalled and strangely outraged, she darted her thumb and forefinger forwards and snapped off the offending green tube.

  Kat cursed under her breath and then backed away a step as the broken vine split, two tendrils racing out over the wall to replace the one that she had taken – and which had turned to black ash in her hand.

  Just as she was processing the fact that, in some Hydra-esque display, the vine doubly regenerated itself, she became aware of an odd tugging sensation at her sneaker. Whipping her head down, she saw that the creeper had managed to grow one vine across the grass to her and that it was now wrapping its serpentine way around her foot.

  Shrieking, she kicked out. The plant held fast as if suctioned to her sneaker and she frantically worked her foot free, grateful that she never closed the Velcro straps (they weren’t allowed laces). As the vine snatched her footwear and drew it back to the wall, seemingly triumphant, Kat turned and ran.

  Seconds later, as she hurtled around the corner looking fearfully over her shoulder, she ran smack dab into the orderlies who’d been alerted by her scream.

  “It’s really quite an odd change to her usual psychoses,” commented Dr. Bartley to Dr. Mildred once she’d heard the recent developments in the Winters case.

  “Indeed. But I can’t help but see it as a breakthrough of sorts.”

  “But didn’t you say that she seems to be creating more elaborate fantasies than ever?” asked the middle-aged woman with a raise of he
r eyebrow as she delicately stirred her tea.

  “Well, this is really the first time that she’s had a “fantasy”, per se. The paranoia surrounding the bugs was always more of a “what if”. It seems to me that her wall of denial might be breaking down; I don’t think that she’ll be able to sustain it for much longer.”

  “Really? How exciting.” Any change in a patient like Kat, even if initially for the worse, must be viewed as progress.

  “And one can’t ignore the significance of the fantasy either. She believes that this vine invades her room at night, reaching for her…” Mildred trailed off significantly, casting a pointed look at his companion.

  They nodded sagely, content that this was – as they’d always suspected – an open and shut abuse case.

  “Let’s just hope that we can help her.”

  Kat hadn’t wanted to go to bed that night, but after being ‘offered’ a sedative by a fairly insistent, two-hundred pound nurse, she’d backtracked in a hurry and promised to be good.

  The last thing she wanted was to be calm and subdued if her paranoid delusion started crawling through her window again. And the bitch of it was that this delusion was actually real; she’d felt it, had it wrapped around her body. And no-one was going to believe her, obviously. It was the classic case of the boy who cried “psychotic episode”.

  The lights had been switched out at ten and ever since then she’d been staring into the semi-darkness, flinching every time that she heard a sound or her windowpanes darkened as a cloud floated across the moon.

  Finally, after three nerve-wracking hours of empty vigil, Kat’s eyes drifted inexorably closed.

  An indeterminate amount of time later, she was propelled into wakefulness by the crack and tinkle of breaking glass. Blinking desperately to try to clear her vision, her eyes flew to the window, where the glass had shattered behind the wide-holed safety grille.

  The vine had previously been able to stretch and flatten itself to sneak around the frame…but now the sheer volume and superior size of the shoots had made that impossible. The creeper was just a darker shape among shadows, but Kat could see it spreading across the walls, dividing and multiplying as it crawled around the room, branching up to the ceiling and down to the floor. It still wasn’t fast, but its motion seemed inevitable somehow, like the ocean.