#horror short

Peekaboo

We wandered down the Labyrinth many hours. Rosalind and I discussed what even was this place.  She didn’t know much. She never planned to come down here.  All she really knew is that this was a physical place that existed beneath the city.  She knew this was the Labyrinth that lead to the nine circles.  What lay within the circles she did not know.

Through the cold walls of the Labyrinth we could hear the creature stalking. Occasionally Virgil would lead us to another dead end where we would wait for the creature to pass again, and we would catch a glimpse its terrifying form, before Virgil would lead us onwards once more.

Now and then we could hear Dante calling to us. He hasn’t lost ground. I could tell Rosalind was scared. I’m not sure why she chose to help me.

Eventually we found ourselves in a round room surrounded by mirrors. There was no entrance or exit to this room. It was as if we stumbled into it through the geometry of another dimension we could not reach by choice. There was no way out of it now.  I’d seen a place like this before; at the fairground of the cultist campsite. The room of mirrors reflecting infinitely that had trapped me before. I placed my hand against the glass of one of the mirrors. It was cold and solid and our reflections were clearly seen on the other side of it.  Our reflections repeated as they bounced between the mirrors far off into the distance before fading into darkness. Between the recursive reflections I could see the shadow of the beast prowling.

“Nine mirrors,” Rosalind said as she sat upon the flagstone floor. I looked around. She was right.

Virgil had stopped leading. This was clearly the destination. I placed him on the floor and went to sit by Rosalind. We were exhausted, hungry and thirsty. We stared into the mirrors watching the reflection of the three headed beast roaming between them.

I checked Facebook to see if anyone had responded to our last post. Five thumbs up. Five heart reacts. A few comments like “Brilliant!” and “So exciting!” and “You should turn these stories into a podcast!”

I sighed. “I don’t think help is coming.”

Rosalind shook her head. “Abandon all hope, neighbour.”

I nodded. “Indeed.”

“There you are.” A familiar voice came from behind us. We saw an occultist emerge from the darkness between our reflections. We jumped back to our feet and faced him.

“Dante,” croaked Rosalind.

“Hello, Rosalinnnd. And who is this with you?” He asked, turning to me. “Virgil,” he commanded, extending an open hand. “Come to me. I am your master now.” I could see his other hand held an ornate dagger.

I shook my head and slid Virgil forward along the floor with my foot. “I’m Tasha. This is Virgil.”

Virgil blinked. Dante looked down at the eye stalk, and back up at me. He snarled and charged at Rosalind, crashing her against one of the mirrors, causing it to crack. Dante pressed his dagger against her throat.

“What game are you playing, Rosalinnnd?” She struggled against him and I tried to pull him off but we were too weak from hunger. He threw me off like I weighed nothing. “We’ve been playing cat and mouse long enough. I DO NOT. HAVE PATIENCE. FOR GAMES!”

“GET OFF OF HER!” I yelled, and got back on my feet.

Above Rosalind’s head, a set of enormous black jaws emerged from the cracked glass. Dante froze. The beast panted heavily, its breath formed clouds in the damp air that circled around them. Rosalind locked eyes with me. She opened her mouth to say something and the great jaws lowered around her head and removed it from her. Only her body remained, slumped against the broken glass. The beast carried her head off deep into the mirror’s reflection until it was gone.

“Rosalind…” I whimpered. “No.”  This was all my fault.

Dante huffed. “No matter. One of you is Virgil. Now. Lead me to The Editor.”

“You killed Rosalind!” I screamed, tears raining down my cheeks.

He grabbed me. “This is not how this story was meant to go. You will lead me to The Editor or we can both die here in Limbo.”

“I don’t know what that means!” I screamed, thrashing against him. He briefly lost his footing and knocked Virgil over.

“You…” his words were cut short as a dark shadow leapt from the mirror and ripped his head from his torso. The beast swallowed it whole and turned to me with ravenous fury in its eyes. My time was up. I thought about what I could have done differently. What an idiot I was. I should have figured this out. It was all so obvious now. I should have left the hole well alone. I should never have taken that sprout.

I picked up Virgil and faced the beast, ready to accept my fate. Over its shoulder, within one of the mirrors, Rosalind was silently pounding her fist on the glass, wordlessly yelling at me.

“Rosalind…”

The beast leapt and my world went dark.

I was in a room. It was about 10 foot square but its edges were hard to define. It repeated on all sides, just like in the mirror room. There was no ceiling. I could see a sky high above me unlike any I’d seen before. It was made of undulating flesh covered in membranous villi that swayed as if in a soft breeze. It was quiet. In the centre of the room was a simple wooden chair that repeated along with the room. Its feet were black with rot creeping up the legs.

I was sat in the chair. I was looking at myself sat in the chair. And I repeated along with the chair along with the room indefinitely in all directions.

I was sitting still in the chair. My eyes and mouth wide open. Arms limp at my side and neck craned backwards so that I was staring up at the hungry sky.

Virgil was with me, staring towards the next room. I walked to the next room. I was there too. In the chair. Staring up. Never blinking. Breathless.

I walked to the next room. And the next. And the next.

I walked for what felt like days. It was hard to tell. There was no day or night. Time moves strangely in the Circle. There was only the room I stood in and the echoing path ahead.

Ahead of me was a different chair. I walked towards it. I wasn’t sitting in this chair. It was Dante. Sat in the same position I was in. Rosalind was there too. Looking over Dante as I did.

His flesh was dry. Desiccated. Brittle skin wrapped around his bones like paper. His eyes, staring upward, sunk into his skull as two shallow pits.

He coughed. The flesh of his lips cracked and they began to move.

“Rosalind… Tasha… I have been… waiting… for this moment…” His neck creaked upright and his head dropped down. “… for millennia…” His eyes closed as he continued. “He takes our past. He takes our present. He leaves us with our future. An endless future. Alone. In silence. In perpetual stasis. Never changing. Eons of nothing. In time, even thoughts fall silent. All we have, all we are, is anticipation of the nothing that is to come.”

Rosalind and I looked at each other.

“Who is He?” I asked.

“The Editor!” he coughed. “There is only endless time in His circle. And fear. We see forward. Into the infinite and empty void. We see how empty it is. And we fear every hollow second that is to come. We suffer.

“But I was blessed by Him. I, I could see a moment in time that was to come. 3000 years into the void. One unlike all the others. I was blessed with this moment to bring you a choice. How I’ve longed for this moment. But soon… even this precious moment shall pass. Then there will be nothing. This will be your fate too. You will wander. In time, your flesh will grow weary. It will abandon you, as all things will. Eventually, you will sit a while. And you will not get up.”

“You said there was a choice,” I told him.

“Be His apostle on Earth. Or be devoured by your future here.”

“Why us?” asked Rosalind.

“You are storytellers. As are all preachers.”

“I mean… I post a bit on Facebook and Reddit.”

“Yes. Yes. He follows your Reddit account.”

“Then he never up votes.”

“What is your choice?” He asked, pointing towards two empty wooden chairs in the next room. “Fear The Editor, or… sit with me for a while.”

“What do you think?” I asked Rosalind. “You know more about this stuff than me.”

Rosalind thought for a moment. “This is hardly a choice.”

I nodded and took Rosalind’s hand.

“We fear The Editor.”

The rooms were gone. Instead we were standing in what looked like a derelict subway station. The tracks appeared as though they had been rusting for decades. On the platform there was an old rotten tram car. The air was saturated with damp and the smell of mould.

“What just happened?” I asked Rosalind. She looked as confused as I. “Are we back in the Labyrinth?”

“I think… we just made a deal with the devil. Ahh!” She grabbed her head in pain and I covered my ears as we were surrounded by a din of static. “The Editor! I meant deal with The Editor!” The din died down.

“Sounds about right,” I replied, my ears still ringing. “So what are we supposed to do? Go out on the streets and tell stories?”

“I dunno.” replied Rosalind. “We could do a podcast?”

An old grey cat dashed from between our legs into the tram and an old grey man appeared at the driver’s window.

“You getting in or not?” he asked, like we’d been keeping him waiting. I shrugged at Rosalind and we got on board.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” I asked the tram driver.

“Unlikely,” he scoffed as he lit a cigarette. His name badge labelled him as Charon.

“Hey yeah! You’re the guy who dropped his wallet near Leeds Market!”

“Eh?” grunted Charon.

“I have something of yours.” I pulled the wallet I found out of my bag and handed it to him. His eyes lit up.

“My cig money!” he grabbed it and rummaged through.

“It’s all there,” I assured him.

He tipped his cap to me. “Well, ta very much, love. Let’s get you back to Leeds.”

The tram bell rang twice, and the wheels excruciatingly squealed into motion on the old rusted tracks.

“We could start a podcast,” Rosalind continued.

“Hmm?”

“A podcast for telling stories and convincing people to fear The Editor.”

“Ohhh, like that queer creepypasta idea we had. What would we call it though?”

“Horror Queers?” she suggested.

I got out my phone. “Taken.”

“Frigay the Thirteenth? ”

“Also taken.”

“Queer Horror Cult? ”

“Dammit. All the good names are taken.”

“Queerpypasta?”

“That has to be taken. Oh, wait. That’s free. I like it. Queerpypasta.”

“Rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?”

“Queeeeerppyyyyypasta.”

“Queerrrrrrrpy…”

So something weird happened this weekend. We were chased into hell by a lunatic cultist and now I guess we’re starting a podcast?

#somethingweirdhappenedtoday

Something weird happened this morning.

I’m not sure if this is gonna go through. There’s no signal down here so have to use the weird open wifi network.

Things have escalated. I dozed off during the night and early this morning a frantic knocking on my front door woke me up. It was Rosalind.

“We have to go. We have to go now,” she told me. “Get dressed. We’re going.”

“What happened? Didn’t you get the ritual?”

She shook her head. “And Dante knows Virgil is nearby. He’s figured out some kind of tracking spell. No time to explain.”

I had already started getting dressed. “Shouldn’t we take Virgil?”

“Screw Virgil! We’ve gotta go!”

I grabbed my bag and nodded that I was ready. Before we got to the door, there was a gentle knocking from the other side. *tap *tap *tap We stopped in our tracks.

“Rosalinnnd,” came the voice from the other side of the door. “We know you’re in there.”

“Fuck,” Rosalind whispered.

“Rosalinnnnnd. Why would you be hiding Virgil from me?”

Rosalind put a finger to her lips, telling me to stay quiet.

*BANG *BANG *BANG

“ROSALIND! You can’t hide from us!”

We stayed perfectly silent.

“Break the door,” we heard from outside.

Rosalind looked around panicking for a way to escape, but this is a basement flat. There are no windows. No other doors. No other doors except…

“We’re out of options,” I told Rosalind and pulled her towards the creepy doorway.

She struggled against my grip, shaking her head in protest. “Down there is no better than what’s out there! And they’ll follow us!”

I grabbed Virgil from my bedside table. “We have something they don’t.”

“That’s the thing they’re following!” she hissed.

Something rammed hard against the front door, nearly taking it off the frame. Rosalind grabbed my hand. She grit her teeth and looked towards the creepy doorway.

“Let’s go.”

We began descending the damp stairs, holding onto the walls to balance ourselves. The racket continued from above us. It wasn’t a strong door so it was only a matter of time before they would break through.

After thousands of steps, we reached the bottom. We entered a dark chamber and on the other side was another doorway, leading to a corridor similar to the staircase; damp and mouldy. We stood outside this new doorway. Virgil’s eye widened in excitement and beckoned us to go through.

“The Labyrinth,” Rosalind told me, still holding my hand.

“Where does it go?” I asked.

“Nowhere good. And there are things in the Labyrinth that don’t want us there.” She let go of my hand and looked up the staircase, listening for any movement.

“Do you hear anything?” I asked her.

“Shh.” Her brow furrowed. I could tell she could hear something. I thought I could hear something too. Not footsteps though. More like screaming. And it was getting louder! We backed up towards the entrance to the Labyrinth. The screaming got louder and it was accompanied by crashing noises. A second later, a beat up occultist tumbled head over heals into the chamber, covered in lacerations from falling down all of those steps. Their arm looked broken.

“They’re following,” said Rosalind.

“Is he dead?”

The body on the floor groaned, and tried to get up. It looked up at us and snarled. From far off up the staircase we heard a voice echoing.

“Rosaliiiinnnnnd.”

The battered occultist managed to stand up and glared at us.

“We are so fucked,” Rosalind whimpered. She grabbed my hand again and ran into the Labyrinth. “Follow Virgil! He’ll guide us through.” she told me.

“To where?!” I asked her. She didn’t reply.

We ran through the maze of wide corridors, following whatever direction Virgil was looking. We could hear the battered cultist limping not far behind us.

We hit a dead end! We both looked to Virgil, and he looked straight back up at us, not giving any indication of where to go. Rosalind grabbed the coffee mug Virgil sat in and shook it.

“Which way?!” she demanded, but Virgil gave us nothing. The limping of the cultist was getting closer. We pressed our backs against the wall.

“There’s two of us,” I said, “and one of him. And he’s pretty beaten up. We can take him.”

“Shhh,” Rosalind quieted me. “He might not find us if we stay quiet.” Virgil nodded.

But the limping was still getting closer. And closer. A bloodied hand emerged from around the corner, followed by the bloody occultist. He was a mess and leaned against the wall to support himself.

“Found you!”

Then in the blink of an eye, an enormous black beast hurtled out of a side passage, crashed into the side of him and pinned him against the stone wall. The occultist’s scream curdled the air. The beast had three heads and all three drooled down upon the occultist. The central head widened its jaws.

“No! No!” screamed the occultist, who fell suddenly silent as the black beast’s jaws wrapped around his head and plucked it from his body, like a cherry from a stem. His body fell limp in its grasp. The jaws closed and crunched like celery. Rosalind and I held each other in the corner of our dead end, watching silently. The beast dragged the body off down another passage and it was quiet again.

The silence was broken by the echoing call of “Rosalllinnnnnd,” from somewhere deep in the Labyrinth.

We’re still wandering the Labyrinth, following Virgil’s gaze and praying he leads to a way out.

#somethingweirdhappenedtoday

Something weird happened tonight.

Ooooh we fked up. So Rosalind came back to my place and had a shower. Afterwards we chatted for a bit before she eventually asked… what was behind the bed sheet in the corner of my room? I pulled it aside and showed her.

She. Flipped. Out. Y’know that stairway to hell the cultists have been trying to summon? Well, here it is.

“WHAT THE FK?!”

“Is this bad?”

“THIS WHOLE TIME?!”

“Well, a few days anyway.”

“Do you have any idea what’s down there?! That is a direct opening to the gates of hell! All the worst parts of HP Lovecraft and Clive Barker combined. Why’re you even alive?!”

“That seems more of philosophical question…”

She grabbed me by my shirt collar and stared straight into my eyes. “I am dead serious. Just an open door in your bedroom to the harbingers of everlasting torment. A cage for creatures too foul to desecrate the Earth with their malevolence. The Labyrinth to the nine circles of Hell!”

“OK! OK! That obviously does not sound good.”

She released me and tentatively peeked down the stairway. “How is this even possible? How did it end up here of all places? And the stairs. Only Virgil could have done this.” She gasped. “You’re Virgil?!”

I laughed. “Ha. I am definitely not Virgil.”

“You’re Virgil!” she asserted.

“I swear I’m not! I don’t know anything about this!”

“It’s the only explainati…” she paused. There was a rustling coming from the cupboard under my sink. Rosalind grabbed an empty wine bottle from the coffee table and brandished it as a club. She positioned herself between me and the cupboard. “Stay back,” she commanded me and began inching towards the cupboard. She slowly put her hand on the handle, raised the bottle above her head, then swiftly flung open the door!

Gomez blinked up at her from the lower shelf.

I held my chest and sighed in relief. “Phew, it’s only Gomez.” Rosalind lowered her club. She looked puzzled.

“Gomez?” She knelt down to have a closer look.

I explained it grew from a sapling I rescued from the hole. Rosalind pinched her temple in frustration.

“All this time,” she repeated. “Virgil has been sitting in a coffee mug under your sink.”

“Ohhhhh, *that’s* Virgil!” I knelt beside Rosalind and spoke to the eye plant. “I’m sorry, Virgil. I’ve been calling you Gomez this whole time. What are your pronouns?”

“I’m pretty sure he can’t speak,” she said. Virgil nodded in agreement. “Looks like he couldn’t grow fully formed after getting plucked. Oh shit. Dante’s gonna be pissed.” She stood up and turned back towards the doorway. “He’s gonna be so pissed. We have to seal it. Or he’ll have your blood.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” I protested. “This wasn’t my fault!”

“You have no idea what you have gotten yourself in to. Dante might be a shit cultist but he isn’t playing games. How much clearer do I have to spell it out. This is a doorway to Hell! A conduit to every horror ever imagined and a limitless font of forbidden knowledge and heresy. In *your* bedroom. And you’ve reduced our only guide through it to an eye stalk!”

“Fine! What do we have to do?”

“I have to go back to camp.” She began collecting her things. “With any luck I can find the ritual to seal it in our community library. And that we can perform it with just two people. Otherwise, we’re gonna need reinforcements. Lock the door behind me and keep Virgil away from that doorway. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t answer the door to anyone else.”

She’s been gone for hours now. I’ve moved Virgil to my bedside table on the opposite side of the room. He keeps looking between me and the doorway, as if asking me “What am I waiting for?”

What was I waiting for again?

#somethingweirdhappenedtoday

Something weird happened just now.

Things have been escalating with the Occultists in the park. This Virgil character still hasn’t shown up and they have been getting… agitated lately. The fairground has been taken down. Now there is only their campsite around the hole dotted with pyres that burn throughout the night as they try evermore eccentric rituals. The locals are getting tired of them. At the supermarket there were people collecting signatures to get them moved and for the council to fill in the hole. I’m honestly surprised they’ve lasted this long, what with the citywide ban on Occultists.

I was on my way home from my weekly shop and passed the pub. Through the window I saw one of the Occultists perched at the bar with her head nesting in her arms. Resting on the bar in front of her I recognised Rosalind’s owl mask. I hadn’t seen Rosalind without her mask before. I peered through the window to get a better look. She was a mess. Her hair was dishevelled, her boots caked in mud, and her robes were soaked in blood. One of her hands picked at the label of a bottle of berry cider. I couldn’t see her face from where I was so I went in to say hi.

“Abandon all hope, neighbour,” I greeted her. She lifted her head from her arms and turned around.

“Tasha,” she smiled before plopping her face back into her arms. “Way ahead of you.” She waved a hand at the empty stool beside her. “Have a seat.”

“What happened to you?” I sat and ordered a coffee.

“Urg. It’s Dante. He’s pisssssed.”

“Still no Virgil then?”

“Nope.” She slugged at her cider. “Y’know, when I joined this book club I thought we would just be reading epic poetry, hanging out with friends, starting a podcast, and maybe summoning a low level owl demon or something. No one said anything about having to bathe in the blood of anemones when we’re camped around a bottomless pit with no hot running water for a shower.”

“Wait. Blood of anemones?”

“I know, right? Probably another mistranslation. I’m starting to think Dante isn’t a very good occultist.”

“Ha! So you *are* Occultists!”

“Shhhh!” she hissed. “Not so loud. OK. Yes. Fine. It’s a cult. Just don’t tell the Council.” She sighed.

“So, what’s the deal with the hole?”

“It’s meant to be a stairway to the underworld. Dante summoned it. But there’s no way down without Virgil. They’re the guide who’s meant to lead us down there.”

“Why would you want to go to the underworld?!”

“I don’t! It’s all Dante. He’s getting insufferable. Every night it’s some new ritual to get Virgil to appear. All so he can raise one of Leviathan’s apostles. I just want to go back to raising genetically modified owls and reading creepypasta.”

“Omg, I love creepypasta. What’s your favourite?”

“Hmm,” she pondered. “Maybe Tales from the Gas Station. Or Lonely Broadcast Station.”

I nodded enthusiastically. “They’re so good. Quite a few series like those popping up now.”

She shrugged. “Yh, a bit derivative, but still good.”

We sipped our drinks.

“Now a creepypasta bookclub,” she continued. “I could get behind that.”

“Sign me up.” Now I could clearly see her face, I took a moment to check her out, out of the corner of my eye of course so as not to be too obvious. Even with the anemone blood soaked robes, and the patches of mud, she was cute. Very cute. Too cute to live (possibly deceased). “What if it was queer, though?” I asked testingly.

“OMG!” She sat up and faced me. “What if it was queer though? That would rock. I wonder if that even exists. Queer creepypasta I mean.”

“It must do,” I grinned. “Y’know. If you want a shower there’s hot water at my place. I live just over the road from the hole.”

Oh she’s coming back from ladies. Sorry, was trying to write this all out while she was gone. Long story short, I’ve got a guest coming back to my place. :D Hope she doesn’t mind the creepy doorway.

#somethingweirdhappenedtoday

Something weird happened last night.

It’s been snowing again so during my daily checks on the hole I took Rosalind a coffee to warm herself up. The snow was coming down hard, and she was sat in a beach chair beside the hole with a parasol heavy with the fallen snow. Her eyes lit up as I handed her the hot drink. I was hoping she would take off her owl mask to drink it. No luck. She had mastered a technique of sipping it from under the mask.

I felt like we had been getting pretty familiar, so I asked her what made her want to join this ‘book club’.

“Just a change of pace really. I used to work in a genetics lab. About a year ago I was brought a DNA fragment to sequence that was found inside a meteor.”

“Not the meteor that wiped out the City Square pigeons?!” I asked her.

“That’s the one. Lucky no one got hurt. Except the pigeons I guess. Poor pidgies.

“Anyhow, this DNA. It had all the usual AT CG base pairs, but at one point there was a pair we hadn’t seen before. We named them YZ and it only showed up once in the short sequence. We decided to stick the pair in the DNA of an E coli bacteria to see if it did anything, similar to how we manufacture insulin. Maybe we’d synthesise some exotic protein from it?

“Instead, adding that single base pair changed the entire nature of the organism. It quickly became a colony and then a simple multicellular organism similar to a water bear. But it didn’t stop there. It became more complex. Growing to the size of a grapefruit. It looked a bit like a cross between a toad and a hippo, with a long yellow stalk coming from its back.

“One morning, it decided it didn’t want to sit in its nutrient solution any more so it began hovering about 3 feet in the air above it. Just vibing. And its form had changed again. It’s hard to describe. Kinda like a black void? Picture a neutron star, but instead of shining light, it radiates terror, existential dread and the anxiety you feel when waiting to hear about the outcome of a job performance review for a job you really need because society is literally falling apart and apparently now would be a perfect time to make you redundant, even though there was a perfectly good furlough scheme that could be funding your wages.

“It was pretty nuanced as ominous voids go.

“I left soon after that. Not sure what happened to it. I guess it’s still there.”

I left her to sip her coffee and went to check on Gomez. He’s stopped staring at me now, but he won’t take his eye off the second door to my room. I’ve no idea where that door goes. As I’ve said before, I live in a basement and until last night there was only one door in here. At least, I think there was. Maybe I just haven’t noticed it before? I’m surrounded by dirt on all sides so there shouldn’t be another room down here.

It isn’t even really a door. Just a door shaped opening in the corner of my room edged with an inscription that reads:

Per me si va ne la città dolente,

Per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,

Per me si va tra perduta gente.

Which Google Translates reads as “Null Reference Exception: Hope Not Found”, but my phone has been playing up since its trip down the hole so it could be a recipe for vegan pain a chocolat for all I know.

The mysterious door leads to a damp narrow staircase spiralling deep into darkness. The ceiling drips with a malodorous fluid from finger-like stalactites onto the stairs, making them slick and treacherous. The walls are irregularly cut stone with crumbling mortar. Every surface is covered in a mosaic of slime mould lined in miserable gardens of nitre.

This has to be a health hazard. I’ve covered it with a bed sheet.

I emailed my landlords to complain. They say it’s probably rising damp and they’ll send someone to have a look at it. They better sort it out soon. There is a hot and humid draft pouring out of it and the screams are keeping me up at night.

#SomethingWeirdHappenedToday