A Carnival of Dreams

Burning Questions

This was for my English class: I had to write a horror story. This was written last year, so please be nice to it.

What if humans, not animals, are the real monsters?

It was early morning, and the customary dense fog was descending on the Leary manor. It was a forbidding place, although only one story. It sprawled across ten thousand square feet, most of which was brown brick covered in grey lichen. It was in need of repair in several places, and it was fairly obvious that it was only occupied by a handful of people.

A tall, strange man entered the manor's gates. He was wearing a dark grey trenchcoat and a serviceable bowler in a similar shade. He went up to the door and knocked on the elaborate imported bronze knocker.

An elderly lady answered the door. Granny Martha Leary.

"Detective Sam McCorvus?"

"Yes, ma'am." He inclined his hat respectfully. "Now that I'm here, would you explain the urgent problem you couldn't speak of over the phone?"

"Call me Granny." She paused, took a shuddering breath, and then continued. "My grandson... he's missing. He's been with me out here in the country for about three weeks, ever since his parents died. It's just... locals disappear. There are local legends about strange grotesqueries wandering around snatching people and making them vanish. I didn't want to believe it, but now I'm almost convinced the local legends are true."

She ushered McCorvus into the manse's hallway. He looked around at the sumptuous decor. It was rather extravagant, with suits of armor lining the hallways and large bookshelves filled with ancient tomes. The carpets, however, were cheap Persian imitations. The house smelled like several things had burned to a cinder in a back corner a long time ago.

Granny Leary led McCorvus to her grandson's bedroom. It was a mess. The floor was covered in dirty clothes, half-done homework, and heavy metal band paraphernalia. The heaps of unwashed clothes smelled like teen funk and testosterone. It was a mess any teen would have been proud of. Granny shook her head at it.

"Is there anything you need, or can I go lie down? I need to calm down."

"I'm good."

McCorvus waited until Granny was out of the room. He muttered to himself under his breath. "She knew about us. She got most of the details wrong, but still. The others had better be careful."

He opened the bedroom's window, shoving at the stuck catch until it gave with a barely audible click. Then he took off his hat. Underneath the hat was not hair, but shiny black feathers. They stuck up in two tufts on the sides of his head. He shook his head to unruffle them. He then pulled off the trenchcoat, revealing a well-tailored suit, shrugged his shoulders, and flew out of the window. He was a crow! If the sun had been shining, his feathers would have gleamed.

He flew low, to look for the Leary boy. It was still foggy out, so he skimmed the treetops and bushes in his search. He flew outward from the manor in wider and wider circles, dodging obstacles that appeared in his path as the fog revealed them. He tasted the air as he flew, small tongue flickering in and out of his black beak. He found nothing. There wasn't a trace of teenage boy clothing, no smell of testosterone, and no trail of crushed plants.

McCorvus went back to the house. Flying low through the window and then the corridors, he skidded to a halt in the hall and assumed his human form, the vest of his suit and his tie in slight disarray. He adjusted them meticulously, then jerked his head up. The burning smell was stronger, with new notes to it. Fleshy notes. It smelled like a piece of burned steak, unseasoned.

McCorvus followed his nose through the halls. He could smell the stench of burning hair, and the metallic tang of hemoglobin. He kept walking. The smell got stronger and stronger, adding the scent of burning synthetics, until he could see old and new bloodstains on the fake rugs. He began to run, following the splotchy red trail. It looked like multiple prints of the same sneaker treads soaked in blood.

He ran through the halls until he reached a door with a large pool of blood seeping under it. The door was locked. It was also very warm to the touch. He tugged at the door handle. It wouldn't open. He kicked at the door several times, until the wood around the handle splintered and he was able to shove the door away from the handle. Smoke came billowing out of the room.

He coughed several times, entered the room, and then cursed, looking at the panorama of destruction. "God."

There was blood everywhere, from the walls to the floor, in various states of drying. Some bloodstains were at least three weeks old, and others were still slick and fairly fresh. There were knives embedded up to the hilt in the walls in the largest of the bloodstains. The worst spectacle was the oven. It was on fire, burning from the inside. In it, there was a body with its face pressed to the window.

McCorvus gagged. The corpse's misshapen and burning face was pressed to the window with an expression of absolute horror. Its hands were clawing at the metal of the oven door. The corpse's hair was burning, its nose was melting, and its eyeballs had almost boiled all the way away. The scene was worthy of a Stephen King novel.

McCorvus pulled his phone out of his vest pocket and dialed a number: 772-2547. "I need backup. There's an awful scene. Yeah, it's at that old manor. Flyers only then."

The splintered door moved. McCorvus was too busy talking on the phone to notice. Granny stepped into the room, wincing at the fire.

"It appears I slept too long," she said, picking up a knife from the floor, brushing off her sneakers, and turning toward the detective, "but this is easily remedied."

She advanced on McCorvus, knife raised. He slammed his phone shut and assumed a defensive posture, ready to take wing. She took several steps forward, licking her lips.

"Why?" McCorvus demanded of Granny, an expression of disgust and dread on his face.

"Don't you judge me!" she screamed at him, jabbing the knife forward, narrowly missing his hand. "That boy was filthy! Filthy! All of the people in the area were filthy!"

He flexed his shoulders and was about to fly away when she sliced at his arm. The cleaver bit deep into his shoulder and became stuck in the bone. He screamed with pain. McCorvus tugged at the knife to try to pull it out, because it was restricting his ability to become a crow, but it was firmly embedded in the bone and he only succeeded in making it bleed profusely. Granny then smacked the knife handle with her palm, bruising her hand but cutting deeper into his arm. McCorvus fell to the floor, holding his injured arm. Granny then kicked the knife, cutting his arm off. Sobbing, McCorvus crawled away as his arm writhed between crow wing and human arm on the floor. Granny advanced through the pools of blood, making very familiar sneaker tracks on the floor.

A loud hissing noise arrested her attention. The corpse's hair had caught the oven's guts on fire. It gave up its fight against the fire and exploded, throwing out gears, filaments, and flaming metal chunks. Granny screamed in pain as her dress and sneakers were shredded by flame...