All Roads Lead to the Hollow (aka. The Communion)

Photo by Joshua Kettle on Unsplash

Elena vanished during the darkest hour of the night, when the world outside lay mute beneath a veil of thick June mist. Gone with the biting wind. Just… gone.

It was 1999. I was thirteen back then and still wet behind the ears. The old house, nestled at the end of a winding country lane, had always been surrounded by secrets, but that night it was different; the shadows themselves were listening in every corner, conspiring about something.

She, my younger sister, was in bed when I retreated to my room, tucked beneath the patchwork quilt Mum stitched for her before the days turned grey and the past became a distant memory.

When I woke up later that night, her bedroom door stood ajar, and the sheets inside lay flat and empty. There were no signs of a struggle, no broken windows, and no disturbed furniture. Nothing, at all. And Elena was gone, just like that, as if she had never existed.

Mrs Berkeley, our maid, told the detectives she had checked in on her shortly before midnight, said she was sleeping soundly, that there were no disturbances, no strange visitors, or late-night wanderings. But she left out something. Something very important.

That night, I had wet the bed again. It was a secret of mine, one I kept from everyone else, though I always got caught. It all started after Mum fell ill. Dad’s sudden passing during his deployment to Afghanistan took its toll on her, more than any of us could foresee or prevent. That unspoken grief hollowed her out completely, and anger became the only thing that kept her alive.

Anyway, ashamed of what I had done yet again, knowing what my afflicted mother would do if she found out, I crept out of my room with the soaked sheets bundled in my bony arms and descended into the basement, careful not to wake anybody, and that was when I noticed Elena’s door ajar. At the time, however, since I was too occupied with my own issues, I did not think much about it.

The air was damp down there, always had been, but I preferred it to the slap of Mum’s belt or that disappointed look on her face. That was when I heard it and recoiled so fast that the sheets slipped from my grasp out of confusion. Who on earth could be down in the basement at such an odd hour?

Footsteps. Two sets. They came from the hallway up the rickety stairs, groaning under my weight despite my skinny frame. One belonged to Mrs Berkeley, I had no doubt, since she always dragged her slippers wherever she went. The other, on the other hand, I couldn’t quite place. It was heavy and unfamiliar, and it belonged to someone I had never met before.

I ascended the stairs with wary steps just enough to be able to crouch and peer through the gap between the basement door and the doorframe, where soft lights spilt through and Mrs Berkeley’s voice grew clearer by the second. She stood just outside the door, whispering to someone I couldn’t see, someone out of sight, or maybe she spoke to herself?

But before I could grasp what she was saying in such a hushed tone, a shadow stretched across the floorboards and came into my line of vision. I jumped up so fast that, had I not grabbed onto the bannister, I might have fallen down the stairs and this story not come to be.

I couldn’t tell why, but that strange shadow arrested me in ways no words could truly capture. It was like… like it wasn’t the shadow of a human being but something else entirely, something that had long since lost its human shape and become… almost disfigured.

When they moved on. Finally. I waited until the footsteps faded before I crept back up again as my frantic heart pounded violently against my ribcage, threatening to rip out of my chest any second.

The hallway was darker than it had been when I went downstairs and colder, too, for some reason, like someone had turned the temperature down within minutes and chilled the entire place on purpose. But it wasn’t just cold as one might think reading these words, but more like the chill of death as it sets in and turns the body stiff and icy to the touch.

I reached for my doorknob, inches from the safety of my room, when something breathed down my neck and broke me off. When I whipped around, my breath caught in my throat, my frantic eyes unable to focus, something compelled me to glance at Elena’s room at the time. Even to this day, I’m not sure what exactly made me do that, only it did.

A muffled scream rose beyond the cracked bedroom door, like someone gasping for air beneath a pillow pressed against their face, struggling to catch their breath but unable to fight off the force they were put under.

My hand on the doorknob trembled, but I could not move, not right away. It was as if some unseen force had crippled me and numbed all my senses. This strange numbness lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like several hours had passed when I finally snapped out of it.

I had barely turned, ready to run to Elena’s room, when a dark silhouette spread across the opposite wall, swelling larger and more menacing with each passing second. It was the same shadow I had seen through the basement door, and now it was in my sister’s bedroom, advancing into the hallway. Advancing towards… me.

Continue. 

Abaddon, or the Collapse Within (aka. Asgerald Hill)

 1

The road to Asgerald Hill wound through the desolate countryside, veiled in morning mist and forever trapped in silence. Towering trees of varying sizes, some uprooted and others as old as the snow-capped mountains, loomed on either side of it. Truth be told, I had not expected the chill to settle in so early in the season, nor for the clouds to hang so low over the mountains, pressing down as though the sky itself wished to hide this godforsaken place.

I slowed the car as the gravel path gradually became uneven, the crunch beneath the tyres giving way to the hush of dew-covered earth. Not long afterwards, the denseness cleared, the rolls of mists perished, and the trees thinned – and there it stood again.

Time had not been kind to the guesthouse, nor had it tried to be. Its skeletal frame sagged and the once-vibrant paint I recalled so vividly from my childhood peeled in long, curling strips. Even the boarded-up windows blinked solemnly in the overcast light, as if they too had been lost to the passage of time, while ivy along the western flank pulsed in a sinister tune to the mournful cadence of the breeze.

But it was not the dilapidated exterior, nor the wretched memories threatening to consume me, that broke me and kept me rooted in place like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. What truly consumed me was flower, the hauntingly beautiful rose before me. There, nestled beneath the low wall that marked the boundary of the garden, it bloomed hauntingly. It should not have survived the jaws of winter, least of all in this infertile soil.

I stepped out of the car, advancing towards it as if my feet had a mind of their own. It drew me in, pulled me closer as if it once were my companion in the darkness, the only beacon helping me out from within the abyss. I crouched, close enough to feel its sorrow deep in the marrow of my bones and took a deep breath in, feeling the crisp air stir every fibre of my being. A tightness wrapped itself around me at that moment, a sudden ache blooming in my chest and catching me off-guard. I dared not touch it, for reasons I could not understand, but something about it betrayed a past encounter – and that thought alone made me recoil.

In a way, the rose seemed to know me. It had witnessed my birth and childhood, seen every part of my existence, even those I could no longer recall. But not only that. Its drooping petals mocked my resolve, telling me I had no business here. Whatever I had forgotten of the past should remain forgotten it whispered, that the secrets of this place were too great for my mind to bear.

But I did not heed its warning. I had come here to find the truth, to find the peace I had never known. The never-ending nightmares had already taken their toll, leaving me unable to discern reality from imagination. What if those nightmares were fragments of the past, clawing their way back? The only way to stop them was to face my demons, cruel or dangerous as they might be! I had been sick for far too long, afflicted and broken. I deserved peace of mind, the ability to fall asleep without fear! I was… only human, skin and bones. Why must I endure this pain when the solution lay before me?

I rose back to my feet and let my gaze settle on the goodly structure. Not even a single warmth shone through at that moment, not even the false comfort of nostalgia. The only thing I felt was a shiver shooting up my spine and an innate dread of someone – or something – watching me from the other side.

The wind picked up, rustling the dry blades of grass like whispers in an unfamiliar tongue. My gaze lingered on the house’s entrance still, where the warped gate swung subtly to the cadence, singing a most macabre and wretched tune. Right then, without warning, a memory pressed against the edge of my mind and a voice called me by a name I no longer used. I blinked it all away; I had to, for my own sanity. It was too soon, too soon for those memories to resurface.

I walked the path towards the garden wall, each step heavy and suffocatingly loud in the stillness. The flowerbeds were overrun, yet there was a strange symmetry to the disarray, with the hedgerows curved in gentle arcs and the gravel holding the imprint of old footsteps. The shed stood to the side, its roof barely holding under years of rain and neglect; the door had collapsed inwards, exposing a dark hollow, filled with tools too rusted to identify.

My feet moved before my thoughts caught up; I crossed the garden one step at a time, the weight of the air deepening with each laboured breath. The guesthouse loomed closer still, its breathless silence wrapping around me like an old friend. I stopped at the porch and the wind stilled. I looked back once more, back at the rose, its petals now trembling as if bracing for something inevitable, telling me to not to take another step.

But I did not listen, why would I?

The rotting floorboards groaned beneath my weight, and the stench of damp, decaying wood filled my lungs, making them burn and sting, and the door gave way under my light touch, as if it had anticipated my visit all along.

The first thing that arrested me was the floating dust that had fought its way through the boarded windows, and the way the light seemed to arch unnaturally, leaving the corners especially dark and the strands of light unusually bright. Then I felt it deep inside: this was no welcome, no blessing. Every shadow, every speck of dust, every string of light was a witness to the past, or rather, my past.

It would be a lie to say I did not wish to return to my car, that I did not fear what awaited me in that choking silence, but curiosity and the need for closure weighed heavier still, and so I stepped through the doorway, and the once-swinging door came to a slow stop, cloaking the entire guesthouse in pitch darkness.

In the Walls

Photo by Pascal Meier on Unsplash

It’s only been a few weeks since I moved to this place. I’m already regretting it. The panelled walls are talking to me.

I should’ve listened to my sister and given this place up for sale. It’s in the middle of nowhere, in a dilapidated condition, and far from civilisation.

I thought I could fix up the shack and earn a profit on the margin. But things have been really odd these few days. It started with the tapping. I ignored the strange din at first. I tried to. I really did.

I worked my fingers to the bone trying to make this place work. My debt kept piling up. I was too deep into the mud to just succumb to my inane fears and make a break for it.

Then again, how could I know what awaited me? I was only human, made of dirt and composed of skin and bones. 

A hole in the peeling wall bothered me. It wasn’t there when I first got here. It gradually grew bigger. A perfect circle.

It would be a lie if I said I didn’t consider tearing down the whole thing. But I couldn’t. I tried, though. But whenever I made up my mind, something beyond the wall fixed its eyes on me. Through that hole. That massive black hole that beckoned me to challenge it. 

The whispers, however, were what really got to me. Man, that shit broke me! How do I put this without sounding crazy? Whatever it was, on the other side of the wall, it knew me.

I had these dreams, nightmares if you will, about these- these people I had never met before. They kept whispering the same thing over and over again like a broken record: ‘We come from the walls.’

My sister wouldn’t pick up her phone. I sent a message three days ago. I told her to pick me up, that I was scared to death and about to lose my damn mind.

Something about this place was off. It was as if I was cut off from the rest of the world and trapped in another dimension far from home and everything familiar.

I’ve been staring at the phone screen for hours, waiting tirelessly and rocking back and forth like a distressed child. The hole kept getting bigger. The whispers were louder now. I stopped sleeping. Hell, did I even breathe? 

Eyes. Several of them. Packed into that freaking hole! Those people, they talked with their eyes. They were trapped behind the crumbling walls and they watched my every move. 

I shouldn’t have come here. They were coming for me. I just knew it, I… Oh, god! I promised I’d buy Denise that doll on her sixth birthday and now I was—what were they gonna tell her? I recoiled and fixed my bloodshot eyes on the deepening hole.

Crawling backwards in a state of panic, towards the locked front door, a decaying hand stretched out from within the hole.

I clutched to the door and shut my eyes with a grimace, convulsing in place. The- the people in the walls escaped! I- I'm going to die! I'm going to die…? No! Oh, god, no! I don’t want to die here! I don’t—oh, god, please, I…

Hundreds of hands ripped my face off. 

When I flew my eyes open, the mouldering hands and the blinking eyes enclosed me from all directions. Profound darkness surrounded me. A single string of light shone through the narrowing hole. In the walls.