Once, There was A Library in my Closet

Unidentified Horror - Part 1

Seven people had taken refuge in the old mansion at the time of the mysterious outbreak. There was a marvelous party held in the empty center of the first floor, with a feast on silver plates and wine in golden cups spread neatly around the long table. Grapes and other fruits decorated the middle and sides like a detailed centerpiece, although the guests could pick off the fruits as they pleased. The only parts missing were the chairs.

The seven people consisted of Mark, Tesle, Abbey, Danford, Jack, Andy, and a little girl named Boey. Tesle was thought to be Boey's mother, but the woman nor the child said anything to confirm the fact. As far as they knew, the child was sent on her own.

All of these people were strangers. Besides the few encounters Mark and Danford had in their town a few miles away, none of them knew each other. They had all been invited to this party, but nobody knew who the invitation was from or if the host would show up.

Danford had started the party without a moment of hesitation by playing a song on a rustic record player cast off to the wall where the light above the feast didn't reach. The record was already in place, and it was the only one in the room. All he needed to do was play it. The song was muffled and shaky, like the record was as old as the song itself, but the guests found themselves with more confidence to talk to each other with it on.

The guests didn't seem to mind the lack of chairs. They each picked off the feast with their forks and fingers while idly talking to one another, going through introductions and their lives and wondering why they were there. 

The record stopped not halfway through the song. The guests wouldn't have minded the lack of music and would have just kept talking to one another, but there was a sudden silence that filled the room once the music died. The small gap of silence led to another, much longer, hush. Each of the seven guests gazed around the mansion as a low rumble echoed through the walls. It grew louder after a few seconds, and before they knew it, the polished wood beneath their feet started to tremble.

Jack let out a yelp from across the room. He had his ear to the wall, listening to the rumbling sounds.

"What is it," the guests whispered to him. Jack turned his face toward the other guests, with an expression of confusion and worry.

"It's water."

Boey, the little girl, shrieked once in delight, catching the attention of the others. She pointed down at her bare feet, her pink shoes in her other hand, and the guests stared wide-eyed at the shiny reflection on the floor. It was water.

Water started flowing into the house through the floorboards and cracks in the doors. The first to scream was Abbey, just before the doors caved and a sudden rush of dirty water forced its way through the house. The water swept everyone off their feet, destroying the feast and sending the silverware on the table flying through the water. Red wine and brown gravy colored the water in an instant, mixing in with debris from outside the house.

Mark yelled for the others over the rushing water, trying to get everyone's attention to lead them to safety on the second floor. Danford had sank back below the water and swam frantically until he grabbed hold of the hand of little Boey and yanked her up to the surface. Nobody had heard Mark, but each of them knew they had to get to the second floor, even the third. The water kept swirling and thrashing around in the mansion, unable to leave the house. It made the struggle to the staircase nearly impossible, dragging people down into the water and crashing them against debris. 

Abbey was the first to make it to the staircase, dragging herself up just high enough to grab the hands of Andy and Tesle without getting pulled back down. The rest came soon after, even little Boey.

Everyone fled upstairs to the second floor just before the water splashed upward where they were and dragged itself back down, attempting to swallow them all. Once the last guest pulled himself up, they all heard a devastating crack and watched as the old staircase was pulled away from them into the dirty water below.

"Is everyone okay?" Tesle coughed and pulled out a fork that had dug its way into her calf. 

"Yes," six replied. They all shuffled around the second floor. It was only about half the size of the room they had just been in - granted, the first floor had taken up the entire perimeter of the old house. It had windows, unlike the first floor, and they each let in a foggy gray light. There were turned crates and boxes, and dust everywhere. 

Tesle limped over to the nearest window, fixed adjacent to the road they had used to get to the party. When they had gotten there, the sky was a lovely blue and the grass was green and tidy. The paddocks belonging to neighboring houses as old as the one they were in had fences painted white that were cracked with age. There were plenty of old trees not ten yards away, starting a canopy that hid the cracked road in the distance. 

Now dirty water flooded through, ripping leaves off the shorter trees, tearing up grass, hiding the ground entirely, and dulling everything into a musty grey. 

"Oh my god," Tesle muttered. 

"What is it?" Andy broke from the group and made his way over to Tesle. He took a place next to the now ghostly woman and knelt by the window. His face drained into a pale white, just like the woman's next to him. He stared in disbelief at the merciless flood that had destroyed the beautiful old territory, and at the hundreds of motionless bodies flowing right with it...

*Note: Hello, this is Dominifer! This short story has three parts, one for each dream I had about this... thing. I've divided them as such since each "chapter" is really only meant to count as one dream. Stick with me for a while, why not, and I'll have the next two parts published soon enough. Thank you for reading!*