Horror 100 Volume 2

Shadow

It is limping towards me. I am trying to scream but no noise is coming out. I am alone with the thing...

Looking back at my arrival at the brooding Hall, I have to admit that it didn't look half as forbidding in the shimmering sunlight. I crunched over the gravel to that main, blackened door, which, with a creak, swung inwards.

As I crept through the forbidding entrance, I pocketed the fine, rusting key that had granted me access. I stared in defiance at the glassy-eyed bears that menaced all comers to the Hall, daring anyone to place one foot into the next room. With a shiver, I crept up the stairs to my bed. Living where I did, I was terrified every day by anything, from shadows, or rather what could be in them, to those old glass-eyed, white, furry bears who towered over the hall way. And with these fears in my head, and my eyes glancing to every shadow that my wavering bedside lamp cast, I fell into a feverish sleep.

My body shook me awake minutes later. The light! Its wavering reassurance had gone, leaving me in pitch darkness. I lurched over to the curtains and, drawing them back, discovered that the moon had not bothered to rise tonight, leaving the sky illuminated only by the stars, which seemed still duller than average. But, despite the darkness, noise still came from that dark night. Swish...thunk, then silence. Then again, swish...thunk, then nothing. A rhythmic sound from below. My heart smashed against my chest. I stumbled down the stairs, groping for my shotgun. Gone! I cursed foully, my ill words barely concealing the dreadful noise. I tried to shut it out, but its rhythm was now entwined with mine. My brain screamed at me to run and never look back, but my heart, its beating inseparable from the clunking, demanded I stay.

Sweat frosted my brow as I stood there in indecision. Swish...thunk! Swish...thunk! Then the door to the hallway burst inwards, the dimmed starlight revealing a dark limping shadow carrying a cane, which it leaned on as it clunked along. The light snapped me from my reverie and I ran through the hall to the library; swish.... thunk following my every step. It thunked towards me, crossing the library floor. Suddenly its cold hands closed around my neck. I stumbled backwards, clutching at thin air as I toppled into a bookshelf, musty books crashing around me. My desperate fingers closed around a sizeable book, and I swung at the darkening figure, who stumbled back. I leaped to my feet, only for its frozen fingers to push me back into the bookcase. I hit the old oak, which slid aside to reveal a stone stairwell that stank of dust and antiquity. I managed to stumble up the concealed stair with it thunking after me, breathing heavily on my heels. I glanced behind me and, in my blindness, ripped through a barrier of plaster.

I blinked around and, realising I was in the attic, stumbled along the corridor. I passed doors, one, two and three before I turned. The ceiling in front of me was caved in. I was trapped!

It was getting closer. Swish...thunk! Swish...thunk! Its cane was raised. Swish...thunk! Two paces away. Swish...one...thunk! Help!

I jumped up, my fingers closing around the lip of the trapdoor and pulled myself up. Its searching fingers enclosed my ankle and pulled me to the floor where it stood over me.

Tendrils of dawn fingered the window and it turned. It left without a trace, my limping stranger, leaving me lying alone in the echoing, dusty hall.

Over the weeks that followed I filled the Hall with laughter, friends, visitors and servants to banish the shadows.

After several years my mind almost managed to forget the horrors of that dreadful night. Almost.

Swish...thunk! Swish...thunk! My blood turned to ice as I sat at my dinner table. My fork paused half way to my mouth and began to shake as I remembered it. Swish...thunk! It limped into the room. Swish...thunk! My white hand reached for the bell pull. Swish...thunk! I yanked it up and down. Swish...thunk!

It is limping towards me. I am trying to scream but no noise is coming out. I am alone with the thing. Swish...thunk! Swish...thunk!

The exhausted maid dragged herself into the room in response to the insistent, chiming bell. Steam rose from the coffee cup.

"Someone there?" She addressed the empty room.