Tales of an unexpected nature

The curious incident of Holibury Lane

Dark shadows clung to the walls of the dingy teo bed Georgian house that was 36 Holibury lane. Nothing but weak oil lamps lit the space in a mournful glow, melancholic and pitiful in its attempts to give light to who ever would occupy such a drab, besmirched hovel. Rising damp stained the walls with its green revulsion and flame red wallpeper flayed from the walls as if to attempt to escape this odious space that stood for a pitiful excuse for a living room.

On the floor, there was nothing but wooden boards, splintered and spiteful in the state they were allowed to get to. But if there was one thing that stood out in the room its self, it was the strange stains that covered it. Splattered up the walls, sprayed across the floors, clinging to the crevasses and the cavities of the peeling paint of the ceiling, stained yellow with age. The stains themselves ranged in age, from freash and still dripping, to brown and withered, detaching at the edges with what appeared to be an other worldly life growing from it. Of couree the stains only could have been one thing in thie house. The house of horror. The house that goes bump in the night. A place where screams can be heared, raw, ringing, pure. A place that would turn your hair white and your soin green with nausea. The stains where the hateful remains of the victims of the man...

Looking through he fleapit that was crumbling away with neglect, its walls groaning with longing to be free of their bonds to this abhorrent existance. You could not begin to fathom the repellent sights they have had to suffer, had to watch with revulsion, shock and disgust. There appearance reflected this. They all peeled with decay and age. The hallway looked shocking with its flaking paper and what appeared to be green water slowly running down the walls. The floor was much the same as the throughout the house, apart from the hallway that is. The floor in the hallway had deep gouges running its length. Each of the gouges varied in depth, but the deeper ones reflected something sinister. Each scrape mark was thin, finger thin. Each was stained with something. Something frech. Something raw. Something red. They reflected a battle. An all out war to cling to their right. Their right to live.

If you followed the gouges through like a trail of bread crumbs, only they consisted of something altogether more disturbing, they lead to a door. A big, black, blistered door. The kind of door that is loked to hide deepest darkest secrets. The kind of door you long to open to know what lies behind, you can't help it. The macabre interest moves you forward by yourself, you don't know why, but that's what this kind of secret does to you. Sticking out from under the menacing door where little chios of something. Something very out of place. Something baleful and altogether chilling to the soul. Lying just under the small gap under the door where the short blooded ends of what had been used to make those marks in the cracking floor boards...

Suddenly, the front door was kicked open with tremendous force. Through the door came the face of horror it's self. However, there was an edge to it, like this scene had happend before, long ago. It seemed more like a vision then a reality. A large man was striding through the door, each floor board creaking and cracking under the weight of him. As he walked through the feeble light given from the lamps, his face became visible.

Deep gashes ran across his large, red face. They looked angry and seemed to pulse, like they were seperate from the rest of his features. The skinwas tightly pulled across his corpulant face, blotchy with patches of red, but the rest was pale with a greenish hue. It was greasy and a puss like substance seemed to ooze from his sweaty, nauseating flesh. His hair, much like his face wws greasy an d dripping with sweat. His thin mouth was twisted into a cruel foul smile, each dirty, rotten tooth visible, covered in slimy yellowish salivia. If you hadn't of seen him coming, you could have most certainly smelt him as a waft of rancid meat and death filled the stale air. He was breathing heavily, like he had been doing some kind of heavy physical exercise. Slung across his broad, portly shoulders was a young girl.

She was screaming, writhing and wriggling. She was begging, she was pleading, her finger nails where ripping along the floor, only adding to the howls she made as the pain riveted her body ridged as her nails split, broke, and ripped themselves from the base of her fingers. Her hair was matted with mud and grime, evidence of her fight to escape the man. Her features would once have been pretty, dool like even, if it hadn't have been twisted into a painful wreck. Still she cried, still she begged, and still she pleaded. The mans only reply to her preys for mercy was to let out a low guttural laugh. He liked it when begged. It gave him a kick. Well, everyone has something, right?

He was stomping quicker now through the hall, he had to be quick, the screams only went on for so long, but he could tell this one was a fighter. His open tailed coat trailed out behind him only to add to the confusion of the mess that was the girl's body., mixed with frilly petty-coats and the pale blue silk that was her dress.

He had cleared the hall now, past the living room, the dinning room and the kitchien, and was nearly at the door. The dreaded door. The door of no return. The thought of this only made him laugh harder. He knew what was to come. The poor, helpless girl did not. The very reflection made him shuder wih pleasure. He closed in on the door, that door that was too firmiliar to him, this was his true home. With one last stride, he passed the through the door with a great crescendo scream ripping from the girl as the ends of her fingers shredded clean off with the slamming of the door upon them. A small flood of crimson spouted from under the entrance to a doomed space, before receding back into the mysterious depths of what lurked behind the big, black, blistered door.

Behind the door was some stairs. Dirty, rotten, filthy stairs. They rotted away at the edges and looked to be unable to bear weight, but somehow carried not only the man, but his terrified child captive down into the murky, dank depths. The smell could onoy be described as feat it's self, concentrated and potent in its deliverance, reaching every corner, nook and cranny the cellar had to offer. The man reached out to his side and lit an oil lamp set on a low table. When the flame spluttered into life, the rest of the room became visiable. Meat hooks ran the entire room, from the ceiling, the walls, the floors. They were everywhere. Each was rusted, and was stained with deep burgandy hatred. Some had things hanging from them, odds and ends really, but they were diffrent. What had they once been? On seeing them, the girl started to scream loader, harder and more deeply then anything ever heard to the human ear. The man's sick laughter had come to a halt as he lifted her from his shoulders, pinning her tona table at the end of the room. It looked like a theatre table, like the ones in hospitals, she had seen them before. Suddenly, she couldn't scream anymore. Fear froze her as she was slammed onto the table, hearing her back click in the process. Pain rang through her body like she had never experienced before. Suddenly, thick leather straps were being tide tightly around her wrists, ankles and middle. Still she was frozen in fear, her body rigid with pain. She could do nothing now, all was lost. The man walked to a rack in the far corner of the room, pausing only for a second to pull off his heavy coat, roll up hiw grubby shirt sleeves and pull on a blood stained apron. He grabbed for something, something heavy and rusty in the darkness. He pulled it up to the light. It was a knife. A big, heavy butcher's knife. The girl let out one final scream as he turned and stalked towards her, holding the knife above her. "Now hold still." He hissed, "This wont hurt a bit, well, maybe a little". And screamed like she had never screamed before as the knife came towards her head...

"Well guys, what do you think?" The bright cheery estate agent asked to Mary and her young son Joe. "I mean it will take a lot of work, but it is do-able". As all this was happening, this normal, average conversation, Joe wasn't sure what he had just witnessed was really there. How could it be? The vile evilness of what had just been seen by his young, pure eyes. He was horrified. " Well baby, what do you think? Do you fancy this as a play room?" Mary asked her young son . Joe looked at her face, looked deep into her eyes, yet something in the background distracted his sight. He was there, the man, the girl was pinned to the table, but it was diffrent this time, the man turned his wicked face and looked at him. Joe froze, thatwas until the man blew him a kiss and winked before turning to finish off the job on the girl. Joe screamed. He turned and ran as fast as his little legs could carry him. Mary and the estate agent looked at each other. "I am so sorry, he is never usually like this." Mary explained. "Its quite alright, he is the fifth child this week to behave like that." The estate agent sighed, shrugging and walking up the stairs outnof the cellar. Mary looked around the dark, damp room. She couldn't see anything wrong. She shrugged and started to climb the stairs, taking them two at a time as a chill seemed to creep through her. And what the hell was that chopoing sound...?