Post by indi on Sept 30, 2019 2:12:13 GMT -5
Hi guys!
Welcome back. Thanks to everyone who read my first entry, I know it wasn’t as Spooky as a lot of the stories here, but it was kind of an introduction of sorts I guess. Maybe I should have amped up the SPOOK factor from the first entry, who really knows? But this time I am gonna tell you a story that still gives me the heebie jeebies on late rainy nights when just me, Ollie and HH are aboard the Commodore.
It starts kinda slow, well dull might be a better way to explain it - but either way it isn’t like, a super spook fest from the first word. Maybe that’s just the way I tell them, I don’t know. But I DO know this is a heck of a story and I am prettttyyyyyy hopeful some of you at least... Are gonna like it! So without anymore rambling from me; lets get it!
OH! And for anyone who was wondering - I kicked ass in that match. My next round is a tag match with this really quirky dude. We ate some churros, it was cool. He has a swear jar and a weird chick who sometimes wears a gas mask who follows him around… Maybe there’s gonna be a story there one day? idk.
September 28 2019
Somewhere outside of Colorado.
I have this pair of footie PJs, they're fluffy and black and they have silver stars all over them. They are the best thing I own and, since I live alone (Ollie, you don’t count as a human, sorry.) Sometimes I wear these things for a few days at a time. They probably really stink, but it’s just me and I’m not bothered so I wear them a LOT between washes. That’s what I'm wearing right now, these fluffy and probably stinky footie PJ’s. One hand on the wheel and the other waving my cigarette out the window so Ollie doesn’t start lecturing me on the dangers of smoking again. He says if I wanna be an athlete I need to take better care of my temple. I tell him to shut up, cause he’s a cat and he shouldn’t be talking in the first place.
I stopped at a gas station earlier, it was a pretty weird place. Kinda seemed like nobody had been there in days. The whole place was sticky, not the air but like, the actual place? It was sticky. The floors kinda crunched in this suction way against my slippers and all the off brand crap the shelves were over stocked with had this film of grime on them. Maybe people in this town are really into healthy eating; or maybe the universe was tryna tell me I should be; but either way I didn’t buy anything… Except this map that I have sprawled out across the passenger seat beside me.
(Ollie seemed kinda mad that his usual spot has been usurped, but he and HH are engrossed in some staring contest right now, so I guess he got over it.)
The map wasn’t sticky, maybe its cause it was the only one in the whole Gas Station, or maybe it's cause the kinda quiet dude behind the counter pulled it out from a hiding place, but either way; it was refreshingly clean and with a little encouragement from the attendant… I paid for my gas, bought the map and headed back to the Commodore. The guy gave me a crooked kinda smile on my way out the door and that was kinda weird but, whatever. I have an adventure to go on now.
And that’s where I ended up, behind the wheel and smoking up some confidence. The map itself is pretty innocuous, but it seems to have most of the road names wrong. Maybe it's totally outta date and the dude was just making a quick buck off old stock. Only one way to find out… Cause the middle of this map has a thick red line circling a few houses right on the edge of town and I can bet you already know where I'm headed. Even Ollie seems excited at the idea of a new adventure, so I figure we can just head out there and see what we find.
The drive itself is pretty boring, lots of tarmac and trees and junk; not even a challenge for the Commodore, who can handle these smooth roads like it's nobody's business. Which is why it’s kinda weird that we’re bumping about like i’m cutting through the Sahara. HH has climbed up into my bed and has his head hiding under my pillows; he’s always been kinda chicken though. Which is funny when you think about it, since he was forged in the depths of hell itself. But then you gotta remember that I rescued (kidnapped?) him when he was just a baby so he probably doesn’t have the same tolerance for spooky things that most hell hounds do…
Anyway, this road is really bumpy and OW! Oops… I just whacked my head. Talk to text is crazy! It picks up everything!!! Anyway, so aside from hitting my head I have to say this drive has been kinda basic, bumps and all. So I’m glad I can see a little dot of cabins off in the distance, this must be what the map had circled. Well, okay so that’s kinda weird; the whole place seems to be circled around this big fire pit that's spitting out steel blue fire. Maybe it's just the fuel they used? I don’t know.
** My phone recording seems to stop after this, so I’m gonna have to transcribe the rest from memory - LUCKY for you guys, I have the memory of an elephant.
So as we got closer, I started to notice how that weird blue flame wasn’t acting like a normal flame. You know how fire is usually all like woo and wobbly and stuff but it mostly just seems like it wants to devour everything in its path? Well, this fire wasn’t really like that. I wanted to get a closer look at this creepy still fire, but my attention was snapped away by one of the cabin doors swinging open. The cabin closest to my left was your standard cabin really, a bit shabby chic, a bit old but the door. That door was bright blue, the kinda blue the sky is on a really sunny day when you rush to the beach and let ice cream drip down your fingers till they’re all sticky. That’s what that blue door reminded me of, salty air and sticky ice cream fingers. The blue door slammed open and this man, well he was kind of a man… This giant man was standing in the now open door way.
Well, I say standing in it, but he more than filled it. Masses and masses of thick pink fat rolls jiggled as they pressed against the door frame and Ollie (Oh yeah, Ollie came along but HH held back, he was acting really weird when we got close to that fire and the last I saw of him was a swoosh of hit fluffy tail, as he ran back to the safety of the Commodore.) So, Ollie wondered aloud how he even got INTO the Cabin and for a second I forgot that I’m the only person who can understand him and had a very silly fear that the giant, jiggly man was going to eat him of offense. But, either the jiggly man didn’t hear him, or more likely, he didn’t understand him. Instead two beady little eyes that, thinking back, were just a little bit too close together stared out from the middle of his round, red face. Looking at him was kinda like looking at a preschoolers drawing of what they thought a big man looked like. Everything about him was just kinda off. His thick neck that held his bulging red head was just a little too short, so humped shoulders reached his tiny ears that looked like they had been stuck to the side of his head as an afterthought.
Two big meaty fists with curiously hair knuckles gripped the sides of the doorframe and he seemed to… bend the frame? The wood groaned and gave but it didn’t break. Finally the large, round, pink man popped through the door with a loud click. And stood just a couple of feet away from me. That was when I smelled it; it was like warm vanilla ice cream after it goes sticky. You’d think that would be a pleasant smell, but as a matter of fact it was so sweet and warm that bile tickled the back of my throat and I had to hold me breath not to gag and risk offending him. As the smell hit my face with a disgusting hot touch, I noticed him moving closer. He didn’t really walk to much as he waddled… But not even that.
Remember those toys ‘weebles wobble but they won't fall down’? Well, he kinda moved like that, as he weeble wobbled closer, the smell became almost unbearable and just off in my peripheral vision, I noticed the fire finally began to move. Only, it didn’t do fire movements, instead it seemed to shiver… Which made me shiver. Cause if fire is afraid of something, then you probably should be too, right? Well this big kinda man thing was right next to me now and he opened his mouth; can’t like guys, there was a second there where I thought I was gonna be someone's weeble wobble lunch. But instead he smiled, it was this wide smile with not enough teeth to make it friendly and pitch black abyss just past his squirming pink tongue that made me really uncomfortable. As his lips, too thin for a mouth that big, moved back together and he gurgled as though he was gonna say something, I took my notice to get the heck out of there.
Turning on my heels I ran smack bang into someone who I guess had come out of the cabin on just the other side of the fire. Her cabin had a green door, but not a bright green like fresh cut grass or a frog, this was a wet and murky green. The kinda green people use to describe a swamp or, being sickly. It was a wet kinda green that made me think of the time I was climbing a cobbled wall and stuck my hand in some fresh moss. My fingers recoiled to my palm at the memory of that uncomfortable wet feeling and pretty soon the rest of me was following when I realised that the uncomfortable wet feeling wasn’t muscle memory, but it was her. This tall and very thin woman dressed all in black who now stared down at me over her long, crooked nose.
I didn’t really remember falling down when we had collided, but I guess we must have because I was pulling myself to my feet and trying to dust that feeling off when she reached out a hand. Even her skin had that same, dirty green hue. Before I could take her hand and be helped to my feet; Ollie hissed from beside me and she darted up right with a hiss of her own. Maybe my elephant memory isn’t what it used to be, but I swear she hissed just like a snake and the tip of her tongue protruded from her lips when she did. Dusting my wet feeling hands off one my footie PJ’s I smiled weakly. The woman was a little green around the gills, as my dad would say; but she seemed mostly normal and definitely at least LOOKED like a human lady. Just really, really thin.
The kinda thin that people describe as being rail thin. Ollie, ever the charmer, remarked how she was probably so thin because the hulking mass now making a strangled sound from behind us, was so fat. He said that this was how he felt when I always took the last breadstick. I made a mental not to remind him that he shouldn’t be eating ANY breadsticks, because he’s a cat. But that had to wait because right now, we were basically surrounded. Stick thin lady, big jiggly weeble wobble and the weird fire that I coulda sworn had started to whisper my name were all around us.
“Hi, I’m Indi Rhyder.” despite everything in my body telling me not to… I stuck my hand out towards the willowy green lady and summoned up a smile. I realised a few seconds too late why I hadn’t wanted to give her my hand; her grip was wet, not wet like when you just come in from the rain. But wet like something old that has sat in basement for too long and started to decompose. I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood so I wouldn’t shriek at the gross way her fingers coiled around my hand and tugged me closer.
Her breath was cool, but stagnant. The smell was like bad meat in the back of the fridge and her teeth were worn down to black pegs receding into her gums, her voice was almost skeletal, like it rattled in her ribs before the words came out of her mouth.
“Clarissa.” maybe I misheard her, but it sounded like that breathy rattle spoke my moms name, a name I had never said out loud and one that felt like I took a superkick to the gut. Before I could ask her to repeat what she said, the final door swung open. That last door was bright red, as soon as it moved it was hot. My eyes watered and my skin prickled from the intense heat of that red door. My throat was on fire like I had eaten a whole ghost chilli and my insides squirmed with an uncomfortableness I have never felt before or since. I didn’t want to look, Ollie was almost certain if we did, we would see Satan himself standing in that doorway, the air was so hot and clammy.
“Indi… We knew you could come.” I had to look, the voice was soft and smooth like silk. His voice settled the feeling in my stomach and softened the burn of my throat. All at once it was though someone had switched on the air conditioning and I hadn’t realised it, but until he spoke my breath had been wedged in my lungs, too uncomfortable and hot to be released. I exhaled right as the thin, wet woman released my hand from her grasp and all at once it was like reality fell to earth. And then the screaming started.
At first I figured maybe Ollie had learned how to scream, just as he had learned to talk. Then I thought maybe the scream was coming from me… Only it wasn’t one scream. It was hundreds, thousands of deafening screams that echoed against the colored doors and made them tremble and quake with the intensity of the sound. I don’t know what made me do it, but in my search for the screams, I looked into the fire. I finally turned my eyes to what had drawn me here and all at once I wished, I hoped, I prayed that I would never be able to see anything ever again.
Faces, tortured and twisted faces curled up into the flames. Wide open mouths filled with nothing but the empty void of the flames contorted as they emitted the pain-filled and terrified screams that continued to assault my ears. Slowly, the smaller flickers of the flames began to form fingers, hands and arms, reaching out for me with their ghoulish steel blue color. I lunged back, not wanting to be caught by the screaming flames and he caught me in his arms. The man who had come through the red door, the man with the velvet smooth voice who had welcomed me here by name.
I twisted my head around, willing to look at anything but the flames. But all I saw was his grin, beneath an oversized wide brimmed hat that shadowed every line and feature but that deathly smile, he grinned. I couldn’t even feel his arms around me, just that grin that seemed so sinister yet full of promise. I wondered if I could just stare into that smile forever and be safe; no more screams… No more adventures, no more wondering. Just me and that smile and… and who? I was forgetting someone, forgetting everything as I stared into that slowly growing smile.
“OLLIE!” the screams were joined with one of my own as suddenly I recalled my best friend, my one eyed, one eared companion who had come to me in my time of need. How could I forget him? I could I forget all the family I had left in this world summed up in that furry little body?! As soon as his name left my lips, that grin disappeared; morphing into something that was no longer human. Rage and hot white air that burned my skin with such intensity I was sure that tsoon my cheeks would melt, replaced that sinister yet welcoming grin.
Arms I hadn’t felt before were suddenly forcing the air and the life from my lungs and I struggled in his grasp, it was only now when I could see, that I realised how much closer to the fire I had become. Licks of fingers reached out to me, trying to pull me in there with them. Wanting to drag me into their eternal suffering as the man who had lost his grin pushed me closer and closer towards the flames. It was just a second, a fleeting moment of recognition in one of those faces. She wasn’t screaming, instead she was weeping. Weeping for me. Her flickering fingers reached out and pressed something scalding into my palm. Without thinking I pressed the item to the face of the grinless man and he wailed, releasing me and tossing me to the ground as she pulled and tugged at melting skin.
The skin seemed like it was held onto his skull with PVA glue and as it peeled away; a voice told me to run. Gathering myself and ducking the wet arms of the now wailing thin woman, I darted towards the Commodore with Ollie hot my heels, as we slammed the doors closed behind us, there was a sudden and near deafening silence. My body shaking I fell into the driver's seat and thought about high tailing it out of there right there and then. Until, I looked outside. The fire and the cabins were gone, there was nothing out there but more trees and for a few seconds I wondered how we had even gotten this deep into the woods without running a few trees down myself. HH’s soft paw pulled my hand from the steering wheel and with a whining whimper his rough tongue dragged across my palm.
Burned into the skin was a perfect copy of a small St. Christopher. Without thinking my other hand grasped at the chain beneath my footie PJ’s where the one my dad had given me rested over my heart. It was still there, a little warmer than I remembered it being, but still there all the same.
Just then, Ollie spoke up and suggested we not hang around any longer than we needed to. And with his words came that sickly vanilla smell, it filled the Commodore and was all the reminder I needed to head on out. Amazingly, we made it back out of the woods without having to ding a single tree and in seemingly no time at all, we were back on the open road. It was a good hour on the road before I remembered the map that the gas station attendant had been so insistent I needed to buy. Pulling it from the floor where it had slipped to, I gasped to myself.
What the fuck.
Pulling over onto the side of the road, I turned that map over and over and over, only… It wasn’t a map anymore, it was just a big, sticky piece of paper and written in the middle in that same steel blue color;
Damnati omnes qui intrant hic.
Well guys, let’s just say I never purchased another road map from a dodgy looking Gas station ever again.
**
Welcome back. Thanks to everyone who read my first entry, I know it wasn’t as Spooky as a lot of the stories here, but it was kind of an introduction of sorts I guess. Maybe I should have amped up the SPOOK factor from the first entry, who really knows? But this time I am gonna tell you a story that still gives me the heebie jeebies on late rainy nights when just me, Ollie and HH are aboard the Commodore.
It starts kinda slow, well dull might be a better way to explain it - but either way it isn’t like, a super spook fest from the first word. Maybe that’s just the way I tell them, I don’t know. But I DO know this is a heck of a story and I am prettttyyyyyy hopeful some of you at least... Are gonna like it! So without anymore rambling from me; lets get it!
OH! And for anyone who was wondering - I kicked ass in that match. My next round is a tag match with this really quirky dude. We ate some churros, it was cool. He has a swear jar and a weird chick who sometimes wears a gas mask who follows him around… Maybe there’s gonna be a story there one day? idk.
September 28 2019
Somewhere outside of Colorado.
I have this pair of footie PJs, they're fluffy and black and they have silver stars all over them. They are the best thing I own and, since I live alone (Ollie, you don’t count as a human, sorry.) Sometimes I wear these things for a few days at a time. They probably really stink, but it’s just me and I’m not bothered so I wear them a LOT between washes. That’s what I'm wearing right now, these fluffy and probably stinky footie PJ’s. One hand on the wheel and the other waving my cigarette out the window so Ollie doesn’t start lecturing me on the dangers of smoking again. He says if I wanna be an athlete I need to take better care of my temple. I tell him to shut up, cause he’s a cat and he shouldn’t be talking in the first place.
I stopped at a gas station earlier, it was a pretty weird place. Kinda seemed like nobody had been there in days. The whole place was sticky, not the air but like, the actual place? It was sticky. The floors kinda crunched in this suction way against my slippers and all the off brand crap the shelves were over stocked with had this film of grime on them. Maybe people in this town are really into healthy eating; or maybe the universe was tryna tell me I should be; but either way I didn’t buy anything… Except this map that I have sprawled out across the passenger seat beside me.
(Ollie seemed kinda mad that his usual spot has been usurped, but he and HH are engrossed in some staring contest right now, so I guess he got over it.)
The map wasn’t sticky, maybe its cause it was the only one in the whole Gas Station, or maybe it's cause the kinda quiet dude behind the counter pulled it out from a hiding place, but either way; it was refreshingly clean and with a little encouragement from the attendant… I paid for my gas, bought the map and headed back to the Commodore. The guy gave me a crooked kinda smile on my way out the door and that was kinda weird but, whatever. I have an adventure to go on now.
And that’s where I ended up, behind the wheel and smoking up some confidence. The map itself is pretty innocuous, but it seems to have most of the road names wrong. Maybe it's totally outta date and the dude was just making a quick buck off old stock. Only one way to find out… Cause the middle of this map has a thick red line circling a few houses right on the edge of town and I can bet you already know where I'm headed. Even Ollie seems excited at the idea of a new adventure, so I figure we can just head out there and see what we find.
The drive itself is pretty boring, lots of tarmac and trees and junk; not even a challenge for the Commodore, who can handle these smooth roads like it's nobody's business. Which is why it’s kinda weird that we’re bumping about like i’m cutting through the Sahara. HH has climbed up into my bed and has his head hiding under my pillows; he’s always been kinda chicken though. Which is funny when you think about it, since he was forged in the depths of hell itself. But then you gotta remember that I rescued (kidnapped?) him when he was just a baby so he probably doesn’t have the same tolerance for spooky things that most hell hounds do…
Anyway, this road is really bumpy and OW! Oops… I just whacked my head. Talk to text is crazy! It picks up everything!!! Anyway, so aside from hitting my head I have to say this drive has been kinda basic, bumps and all. So I’m glad I can see a little dot of cabins off in the distance, this must be what the map had circled. Well, okay so that’s kinda weird; the whole place seems to be circled around this big fire pit that's spitting out steel blue fire. Maybe it's just the fuel they used? I don’t know.
** My phone recording seems to stop after this, so I’m gonna have to transcribe the rest from memory - LUCKY for you guys, I have the memory of an elephant.
So as we got closer, I started to notice how that weird blue flame wasn’t acting like a normal flame. You know how fire is usually all like woo and wobbly and stuff but it mostly just seems like it wants to devour everything in its path? Well, this fire wasn’t really like that. I wanted to get a closer look at this creepy still fire, but my attention was snapped away by one of the cabin doors swinging open. The cabin closest to my left was your standard cabin really, a bit shabby chic, a bit old but the door. That door was bright blue, the kinda blue the sky is on a really sunny day when you rush to the beach and let ice cream drip down your fingers till they’re all sticky. That’s what that blue door reminded me of, salty air and sticky ice cream fingers. The blue door slammed open and this man, well he was kind of a man… This giant man was standing in the now open door way.
Well, I say standing in it, but he more than filled it. Masses and masses of thick pink fat rolls jiggled as they pressed against the door frame and Ollie (Oh yeah, Ollie came along but HH held back, he was acting really weird when we got close to that fire and the last I saw of him was a swoosh of hit fluffy tail, as he ran back to the safety of the Commodore.) So, Ollie wondered aloud how he even got INTO the Cabin and for a second I forgot that I’m the only person who can understand him and had a very silly fear that the giant, jiggly man was going to eat him of offense. But, either the jiggly man didn’t hear him, or more likely, he didn’t understand him. Instead two beady little eyes that, thinking back, were just a little bit too close together stared out from the middle of his round, red face. Looking at him was kinda like looking at a preschoolers drawing of what they thought a big man looked like. Everything about him was just kinda off. His thick neck that held his bulging red head was just a little too short, so humped shoulders reached his tiny ears that looked like they had been stuck to the side of his head as an afterthought.
Two big meaty fists with curiously hair knuckles gripped the sides of the doorframe and he seemed to… bend the frame? The wood groaned and gave but it didn’t break. Finally the large, round, pink man popped through the door with a loud click. And stood just a couple of feet away from me. That was when I smelled it; it was like warm vanilla ice cream after it goes sticky. You’d think that would be a pleasant smell, but as a matter of fact it was so sweet and warm that bile tickled the back of my throat and I had to hold me breath not to gag and risk offending him. As the smell hit my face with a disgusting hot touch, I noticed him moving closer. He didn’t really walk to much as he waddled… But not even that.
Remember those toys ‘weebles wobble but they won't fall down’? Well, he kinda moved like that, as he weeble wobbled closer, the smell became almost unbearable and just off in my peripheral vision, I noticed the fire finally began to move. Only, it didn’t do fire movements, instead it seemed to shiver… Which made me shiver. Cause if fire is afraid of something, then you probably should be too, right? Well this big kinda man thing was right next to me now and he opened his mouth; can’t like guys, there was a second there where I thought I was gonna be someone's weeble wobble lunch. But instead he smiled, it was this wide smile with not enough teeth to make it friendly and pitch black abyss just past his squirming pink tongue that made me really uncomfortable. As his lips, too thin for a mouth that big, moved back together and he gurgled as though he was gonna say something, I took my notice to get the heck out of there.
Turning on my heels I ran smack bang into someone who I guess had come out of the cabin on just the other side of the fire. Her cabin had a green door, but not a bright green like fresh cut grass or a frog, this was a wet and murky green. The kinda green people use to describe a swamp or, being sickly. It was a wet kinda green that made me think of the time I was climbing a cobbled wall and stuck my hand in some fresh moss. My fingers recoiled to my palm at the memory of that uncomfortable wet feeling and pretty soon the rest of me was following when I realised that the uncomfortable wet feeling wasn’t muscle memory, but it was her. This tall and very thin woman dressed all in black who now stared down at me over her long, crooked nose.
I didn’t really remember falling down when we had collided, but I guess we must have because I was pulling myself to my feet and trying to dust that feeling off when she reached out a hand. Even her skin had that same, dirty green hue. Before I could take her hand and be helped to my feet; Ollie hissed from beside me and she darted up right with a hiss of her own. Maybe my elephant memory isn’t what it used to be, but I swear she hissed just like a snake and the tip of her tongue protruded from her lips when she did. Dusting my wet feeling hands off one my footie PJ’s I smiled weakly. The woman was a little green around the gills, as my dad would say; but she seemed mostly normal and definitely at least LOOKED like a human lady. Just really, really thin.
The kinda thin that people describe as being rail thin. Ollie, ever the charmer, remarked how she was probably so thin because the hulking mass now making a strangled sound from behind us, was so fat. He said that this was how he felt when I always took the last breadstick. I made a mental not to remind him that he shouldn’t be eating ANY breadsticks, because he’s a cat. But that had to wait because right now, we were basically surrounded. Stick thin lady, big jiggly weeble wobble and the weird fire that I coulda sworn had started to whisper my name were all around us.
“Hi, I’m Indi Rhyder.” despite everything in my body telling me not to… I stuck my hand out towards the willowy green lady and summoned up a smile. I realised a few seconds too late why I hadn’t wanted to give her my hand; her grip was wet, not wet like when you just come in from the rain. But wet like something old that has sat in basement for too long and started to decompose. I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood so I wouldn’t shriek at the gross way her fingers coiled around my hand and tugged me closer.
Her breath was cool, but stagnant. The smell was like bad meat in the back of the fridge and her teeth were worn down to black pegs receding into her gums, her voice was almost skeletal, like it rattled in her ribs before the words came out of her mouth.
“Clarissa.” maybe I misheard her, but it sounded like that breathy rattle spoke my moms name, a name I had never said out loud and one that felt like I took a superkick to the gut. Before I could ask her to repeat what she said, the final door swung open. That last door was bright red, as soon as it moved it was hot. My eyes watered and my skin prickled from the intense heat of that red door. My throat was on fire like I had eaten a whole ghost chilli and my insides squirmed with an uncomfortableness I have never felt before or since. I didn’t want to look, Ollie was almost certain if we did, we would see Satan himself standing in that doorway, the air was so hot and clammy.
“Indi… We knew you could come.” I had to look, the voice was soft and smooth like silk. His voice settled the feeling in my stomach and softened the burn of my throat. All at once it was though someone had switched on the air conditioning and I hadn’t realised it, but until he spoke my breath had been wedged in my lungs, too uncomfortable and hot to be released. I exhaled right as the thin, wet woman released my hand from her grasp and all at once it was like reality fell to earth. And then the screaming started.
At first I figured maybe Ollie had learned how to scream, just as he had learned to talk. Then I thought maybe the scream was coming from me… Only it wasn’t one scream. It was hundreds, thousands of deafening screams that echoed against the colored doors and made them tremble and quake with the intensity of the sound. I don’t know what made me do it, but in my search for the screams, I looked into the fire. I finally turned my eyes to what had drawn me here and all at once I wished, I hoped, I prayed that I would never be able to see anything ever again.
Faces, tortured and twisted faces curled up into the flames. Wide open mouths filled with nothing but the empty void of the flames contorted as they emitted the pain-filled and terrified screams that continued to assault my ears. Slowly, the smaller flickers of the flames began to form fingers, hands and arms, reaching out for me with their ghoulish steel blue color. I lunged back, not wanting to be caught by the screaming flames and he caught me in his arms. The man who had come through the red door, the man with the velvet smooth voice who had welcomed me here by name.
I twisted my head around, willing to look at anything but the flames. But all I saw was his grin, beneath an oversized wide brimmed hat that shadowed every line and feature but that deathly smile, he grinned. I couldn’t even feel his arms around me, just that grin that seemed so sinister yet full of promise. I wondered if I could just stare into that smile forever and be safe; no more screams… No more adventures, no more wondering. Just me and that smile and… and who? I was forgetting someone, forgetting everything as I stared into that slowly growing smile.
“OLLIE!” the screams were joined with one of my own as suddenly I recalled my best friend, my one eyed, one eared companion who had come to me in my time of need. How could I forget him? I could I forget all the family I had left in this world summed up in that furry little body?! As soon as his name left my lips, that grin disappeared; morphing into something that was no longer human. Rage and hot white air that burned my skin with such intensity I was sure that tsoon my cheeks would melt, replaced that sinister yet welcoming grin.
Arms I hadn’t felt before were suddenly forcing the air and the life from my lungs and I struggled in his grasp, it was only now when I could see, that I realised how much closer to the fire I had become. Licks of fingers reached out to me, trying to pull me in there with them. Wanting to drag me into their eternal suffering as the man who had lost his grin pushed me closer and closer towards the flames. It was just a second, a fleeting moment of recognition in one of those faces. She wasn’t screaming, instead she was weeping. Weeping for me. Her flickering fingers reached out and pressed something scalding into my palm. Without thinking I pressed the item to the face of the grinless man and he wailed, releasing me and tossing me to the ground as she pulled and tugged at melting skin.
The skin seemed like it was held onto his skull with PVA glue and as it peeled away; a voice told me to run. Gathering myself and ducking the wet arms of the now wailing thin woman, I darted towards the Commodore with Ollie hot my heels, as we slammed the doors closed behind us, there was a sudden and near deafening silence. My body shaking I fell into the driver's seat and thought about high tailing it out of there right there and then. Until, I looked outside. The fire and the cabins were gone, there was nothing out there but more trees and for a few seconds I wondered how we had even gotten this deep into the woods without running a few trees down myself. HH’s soft paw pulled my hand from the steering wheel and with a whining whimper his rough tongue dragged across my palm.
Burned into the skin was a perfect copy of a small St. Christopher. Without thinking my other hand grasped at the chain beneath my footie PJ’s where the one my dad had given me rested over my heart. It was still there, a little warmer than I remembered it being, but still there all the same.
Just then, Ollie spoke up and suggested we not hang around any longer than we needed to. And with his words came that sickly vanilla smell, it filled the Commodore and was all the reminder I needed to head on out. Amazingly, we made it back out of the woods without having to ding a single tree and in seemingly no time at all, we were back on the open road. It was a good hour on the road before I remembered the map that the gas station attendant had been so insistent I needed to buy. Pulling it from the floor where it had slipped to, I gasped to myself.
What the fuck.
Pulling over onto the side of the road, I turned that map over and over and over, only… It wasn’t a map anymore, it was just a big, sticky piece of paper and written in the middle in that same steel blue color;
Damnati omnes qui intrant hic.
Well guys, let’s just say I never purchased another road map from a dodgy looking Gas station ever again.
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