Horror Stories

Innocent Souls

Such a dark and drippy cave on a dark and drippy night, where the deepest of dwellers never roam and the darkness is as blinding as the sun’s rays on a summer’s day. The deeper you go, the darker it grows, and you feel consumed by the maw of the cave that swallows you into its belly for digestion. It is cold at first as the breeze chills your rain damp jacket covering your t-shirt, which is also beginning to form small puddles within the cotton, but the deeper you go, the warmer it gets. You are in here for no purpose, for no reason, but you’re there and walking forward into the hall of rocks and clay, and that’s all that matters.

A couple miles in you see a small light, like a candle or a star. It is straight ahead, too perfect for a natural occurrence. The light becomes no bigger the closer you get, it only gets more and more clear and crisp. You can see the outline of it now. It is a light from a small hole in the stone. The stone is flat like a manmade wall and seemingly flawless. You notice that the hole is the same girth of your index finger. It must mean something, right? You peer through the hole but see that there is only a glow of yellow and gold. Not knowing what else to do, you hook your finger into the circular gap and pull open a door of stone. When your eyes get used to the light, you see four figures in front of you in the room.

Three of them are sitting and one of them is standing. They all look quite alike, with little differences. Their skin is bleach paper white with barely noticeable eyes. It seems that they have no gender or genitals. Many things are missing, actually: hair, pigment, and iris color. Through more focused eyes, you see another oddity of their appearance; there are needles strategically piercing their body.

One of the sitting ones has needles in its eyes. The way it is stuck in their eyes, the eyes are forced to look up so the iris is only shown a little bit under the top eyelid.

Another one of the sitting ones has needles in its ears. At that moment you see how long the needles are, much like knitting needles, only thin, like sewing needles.

The last sitting one has needles in its throat. Another thing you notice is that no matter where the needles are, the pierced skin does not bleed. It also seems that the skin has healed around the needles as if part of their body.

You see the standing one is covered in needles. It is awake and looking straight at you, like the others. Even the needle-eyed one, though their eyes are not on you, you can feel them staring at you.

“Hello, stranger,” the needle-covered one hummed. “I see you are here, so I must tell you our story.”

“Story?” you ask.

“Feel free to sit if you wish to; take advantage of what I will never have again.”

“Why?” you respond with.

“I will tell you,” the standing one looked over the sitting ones. “These are my siblings, we were all born at the same time to the same parents.” Its hand floated over the one with needles in its ears. “This, is Hear, it was born first; Hear was the one who first left our mother’s womb while she was still in labor with us.” It did the same to the one with the needles in its throat. “This is Speak, the second child of us.” Repeated to the one with needles in its eyes, “This is See, the third child.” With a pause, the standing one looks you in your eyes with sadness and solemn tenseness. “I am Feel, the last child. Here is what happened to us and why we are like this.

“We were born to seemingly normal parents, until Hear was born. When Hear was born, they first put needles in their ears, so they could hear no evil. But Hear would cry louder than the other babies, so they did that to none of us afterwards. Our mother and father say that many words are horrid and should never be heard by anyone, but at such a young age being able to hear is important for everyone, for a baby cries to get the attention of the parents, and thus if the baby cannot hear themselves they will cry louder because they do not believe the guardians can hear them.