A thirty-minute free Halloween read.

 

Pull up a hard chair, place it in the middle of the room, turn the lights down low and spend a little time, hopefully, being scared. To turn the music off use the central switch above. Whilst you're here, stick around and read some more, you might just find a longer story you really like...

 

         …When I need you. By G.H.BRIGHT

  

                                                                                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright, G. H. Bright  2014                                                                                             Available only here until

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1.

I answer the phone as it stirs me from an afternoon nap. Running a hand up and over my face I press the mobile to my ear with the other.

‘Hi, honey it’s me, how are you?’

I blink, sleep is not yet gone. ‘Yeah, yeah I’m fine.’ I reply as I sit up and figure out it’s still mid-afternoon.

‘Are you home?’

‘Yes I’m home. Just had a nap, as it happens.’

‘Oh good, so glad you got some rest.’

‘Really?’ It seems strange that my wife would be saying such a thing.

‘Of course I am. You’re always so tired and distant these days.’

I turn from the wall clock as someone comes into the living room. I watch with open mouth as my wife walks past and sits on the other end of the sofa, no mobile phone in sight.

‘Don’t forget what you promised, darling.’

‘Promised?’ I say. My throat is constricting, sweat has broken out everywhere and I can’t take my eyes off my wife. She is beside me yet; I‘m talking to her on the phone.

‘See you soon, sweetheart…’

The phone goes dead, useless in my hand. I start to say something, stop when I find I have nothing to say. I simply stare at my wife instead.

 

I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ve no doubt the phone call was from her sister, some sick joke between them, but why the wife didn’t react and come in on it I have no idea.

I iron my shirts for the week as usual on a Sunday evening, put a deep crease in the trousers too and, as usual, she sits there impervious to my presence while she watches brain-dead TV.

We’ve not spoken for what seems years. I am sure it’s only weeks but this marriage, this family, it’s falling apart at the seams and I can do nothing about it. I know if I try to say something she will bite my head off, it’ll become a row, tears will flow and I, as always, will come out the loser.

I think back to the phone call. I can remember conversations like that; we used to speak that way to each other not too long ago. Things went bad when we moved here six months ago, to this new house, a new life. Until then I thought we were blissfully married.

Life for me now consists of work and home with weekends being a knife in the gut for the most part. We do nothing together, don’t talk, it’s as if we lead separate lives. I know we should talk about it; I’ll lose her if we don’t, but I’m too weak, tired and afraid.

Work tomorrow will be no better than it is here, right now. I’m middle management, not upper management - as the real managers are always eager to remind me. I am out of the loop with the work force because I dared to take the leap up the ladder, earning more money for the larger mortgage due to the house we have moved into, and I’m left out of policy-making at work because, well because I’m just middle management!

My home life is pretty much the same. I’m one step up from the kids but two steps down from the wife!

I spend a fitful night in bed, tossing and turning the whole time. She, on the other hand, sleeps like the dead, unmoving, cold and immovable, sleeping like a log and without a care in the world.

The house phone rings. I lie there willing it to stop but it seems to fill the house, fill my head with its incessant ringing tone and eventually, I rise and go to answer it.

‘Hello?’ I say, as I squint at the wall clock in the living room and realise it is past midnight.

‘Sorry, sweetheart, were you asleep?’

‘Asleep, how could I be asleep?’

‘Oh, poor bunny, do you miss me?’

Tears form in my eyes and I nod down the line. ‘God yes, I miss you so much.’

 

2.

 

 Work is the same as always on a Monday morning. Meeting after meeting after endless bloody meeting and I, having been awake all night, have trouble staying awake now and concentration is out of the question. I can’t recall anyone paying me attention, but I know if I do nod off, everyone will notice me! I stand at the back of the room, no elbowroom at the table for me, and try my best to focus and take it all in.

Last night is something of a blur, the memory of the wife’s sister on the phone is of no concern. Focusing on the here and now is the problem!

I make it to lunchtime, struggle to my feet, smile at a few upper managers, all of whom ignore me, and make my way out at the back of the small line of bodies headed toward food and a break. I need to get out, to get fresh air in my lungs and I make for the main doors and get outside the building as fast as I can.

I walk a short distance to the park situated next door to the company HQ and I see a few others have beaten me to it. They occupy the benches; sit chatting and eating sandwiches whilst watching ducks float about on the pond. They’re all wrapped up against the weather but I have to admit I don’t feel cold. I walk on by; keeping my head down and make no eye contact because I know to do so will open the gates. The gates to my floods, to my fears and the entrance to my wracked brain will be opened, and everyone will know just how weak and confused I am.

The phone goes again, on silent it vibrates against my breast and I reach to my shirt pocket to retrieve it. 

‘Are you coming?’

‘Who is this?’

There is a soft laugh on the line. ‘Me, silly! See you when you get here.’

I walk along the pathways, I think I know where to go, we used to walk this way years ago. I approach a copse and glance toward the trees. She is there. My wife stands in the tree line smiling at me. She is wearing her favourite dress, I don’t think I’ve seen it in years, and she is looking straight at me smiling. We used to walk round this gathering of trees often. I remember it well.

My mobile vibrates again in my pocket and I fumble to take it out.

‘Is this you?’ I can see her hugging herself, swinging gently back and forth, a mobile phone pressed to her ear.

‘Yes it’s me, silly; who did you think it was? Got another woman?’

‘No, no of course not…I just, I just…’

‘Oh poor baby, flustered as usual, has that boss been nasty to you again?’

I walk toward the trees. Mountains of golden and brown leaves rustle under foot and get kicked about as I move while others wither on the finger-like branches trying to hang on to life till the very last.

‘Are you coming to me?’

A twig catches me in the left eye and I break it off the branch in anger.

‘Don’t be angry, honey, you know I hate it when you’re angry.’

‘I’m not angry, I’m just-’

‘I can hear it in your voice, babe, you’re all worked up again at work, aren’t you?’

‘No, no I’m not, I’m fine.’ I say, as more twigs and branches try to prevent me gaining access to the small woodland. Ducking under more branches I raise my head, look up and find her gone.

‘Where are you?’

‘Right where you left me, baby. Are you coming home?’

‘What?’ My mind races, I search the trees for her but I can’t see her.

‘You work too many hours, always working late; you should come early for a change, forget work and come home early.’

The phone goes dead and I am alone. Less than three feet into the copse and whirling about like a madman trying to untangle myself from the branches, people begin to notice me and laugh.

 

I get back to work to find everyone already busy. I look around and feel utter despair. No one gives a hoot that I am there, not a single colleague looks at me. I look at my desk; the computer screen fish swimming by and I realise I don't even recognise the thing! Bugger it! I walk out. I figure I’ll go home early, earlier than she thinks I’ll be home but, I’ll go home anyway and we will talk this through.

I almost bump in to the big-bosses secretary on the way out the big doors but she looks through me. I’m nothing to this company, nothing at all!

 

3.

Shop fronts carry reminders of the time of year with pumpkins and witches everywhere. I notice a few mothers and toddlers about, a pram here, another there and pushchairs’; at least one of which is decked out with gore and scary paraphernalia. Won’t that affect the child’s mind?

 I walk in the front door and realise I am too early, way too early. The wife is still at work and I’ll be alone for two hours or more. The wife said come home early not come home now!

I decide to make an effort. Whatever this game of hers is it must be a way to get us back on track. I might have to thank her sister for the calls last night, even though I can’t stand the cow, but if it means we are happy again I’ll do whatever it takes.

I start to question why my wife stood in that copse but dismiss it, she’ll tell me later.

Entering the kitchen I spy a mixed bag of sweets on the side and an empty teacup she will have drunk from before rushing out the door this morning.

 

I shave, not that I really need to, go to the bedroom, take my jacket off, and then I check the kitchen again, clean the cup and stow it away in the cupboard, before returningto the bedroom and hanging up my trousers. I double-check the crease is right, no point in creating an argument for no reason, and then I go to the bathroom turn the shower on and strip off my shirt and socks, pants and, standing before the bathroom mirror, check myself for any little lumps. That task seems natural to me now, since she drummed it into me about the chances of testicular cancer.

I enter the shower and shampoo my scalp. I am lost in the heat, the feeling of water cascading down my body. The glass steams up and, I realise I must have been in there longer than I thought, my fingers turn prune-like.

Shampoo gets in my left eye. I clamp it shut and grit my teeth as I rub a soapy hand over and over the eyelids trying to get the damn stuff out. It seeps into the small cut from the branches and I wince with pain. If the pain that causes were a noise it would be high-pitched, very high-pitched!

I lower my head, blink rapidly to complete the job and then my blood freezes in my veins. My heart stops beating and my lungs refuse to inflate.

Blood fills the floor of the shower cubicle. Blood runs down my body, it’s on my arms, my torso and my legs. I scream out loud, which kick-starts my heart and lungs, and I fall backward into the glass door, it bursts open, I slip and I’m out and on to the cold bathroom floor in a crumpled naked mess.

 

I manage to get my feet under me and stand shakily looking back at the shower cubicle. Something black and matted blocks the drain hole. The blood-red water climbs ever higher, almost reaching the lip of the door and I reach in, turn my head away and gingerly pluck the obstruction from the drain.

I hold it between finger and thumb turning it this way and that. It dawns on me that it is hair. Hair and scalp, and the hair looks remarkably like that of my wife’s!

 

I flush it away down the loo, then think maybe it might be needed for identification and then I wonder identification for and of what?

I go to my phone, ring her but there’s no answer and I feel silly leaving a message asking if she is okay and ‘oh by the way, did you have a little accident in the shower this morning?’ I slam it down and wonder what to do next.

I pick the phone up again, this time determined to leave that message, but just when I’m meant to speak I get doubts again. I don’t want to appear silly; I don’t need a row, not now, not like that, not now we’re looking to be getting things back together.

 

4.

The fire roars and I find myself sitting next to it, still naked but dry, and clean of blood. I don’t know how long I have been there, don’t even recall lighting the fire, but it’s been such a strange twenty-four hours, I don’t think anything would surprise me.

I glance at the wall clock, stand up and warm myself before the fire and look long and hard in the mirror above the hearth. It crosses my mind that someone could walk up the short drive, look in the window and see me naked, but I don’t care, they shouldn’t be so nosy!

I go to the bedroom, it's downstairs, the only room upstairs is the kids room, I dress in jeans and jumper and return to the living room. Giving the bathroom a wide berth, my mind drifts back to the blood and the matted hair.

I must have drifted off thinking about it because the next thing I know I hear her car pull up on the driveway.

She comes in, dropping her bag on the carpet and removing her coat before the front door has even closed. She is shaking the water off the coat and muttering something under her breath. I see out the window that it is tipping it down outside and that a storm looks to be brewing. I just hope the storm stays out there and does not come between us, as is so often the case. I also notice a pumpkin head in our window, an unlit Jack-o-lantern facing the street.

She crosses the room to stand before me. She stoops down but I refuse to allow my eyes to follow her movement. Wishful thinking will get me nowhere and it’s not going to be what I think it is anyway! She stands again and holds her hands out and it is then that I realise something impossible.

She stooped down to light the fire, the very same fire that was already alight!

More worryingly, that means that I must be standing in the fire, actually stood in the chimney and the wall, because she’s now looking me full in the face and doesn’t see me at all and I’m looking back at her from the bloody fireplace. My wife looks at her reflection but doesn’t see me at all!

Her lips bend slightly, a half-smile and not one of happiness. She runs a hand through raven hair and then, standing back slightly, she holds her arms out to the heat again. I don’t exist to her, and then it hits me!

I am inside the mirror!

I bang on the glass with both fists, I scream her name, I scream my name and a thousand and one names but she just stands there with that slight grin on her face and deep in thought, warming her hands.

I repeatedly thump the mirror glass, I’m hot, I can’t breathe and I’m choking. I’m choking on fear not fumes and I feel icy fingers scratch the inside of my skull.

 

I hit and hit the glass repeatedly trying to break free of this insane prison. It bends and bows under my incessant attack and then I hear it. The glass has cracked!

One minute I am beating the pane fearful I shall die here, struggling for my life and sanity, and the next I am watching helplessly as a million mirror glass shards fly outward like daggers and hit my wife.

 

5.

Cleaning up as best I can, I try to say something to her. She refuses to even acknowledge my existence.

I don’t know what is happening, I have no idea if I am going mad or what is happening, but I do know she blames me. Whatever she had planned for this evening and night is forgotten as we clean up in silence.

She is unhurt, I think, thankfully, not that she seems to care much, and every time I got near her to have a look she moves away.

My head pounds, my heart is coming out my throat and she is acting as if I’m not even here.

I walked out of my job today; it’s only just dawning on me that I could face the sack for that, I want and need to know for certain that she is not injured in anyway, that she understands what I have done today, that I want us to be perfect again...

I need to hold her, need to be held, and I need to know what is going on with the phone calls and the damn mirror and the blood…the blood in the shower, God my head hurts!

She simply gets up and walks off to the kitchen, leaving me there on my hands and knees in the living room. I hear the bin open and broken shards fall from the dustpan.

I sit on the sofa once more and hold my head in my hands. I don’t know how long I stay like that but when she re-enters the room she has a meal for one and sits next to me on the sofa without a word being spoken.

 

The silent treatment! Of all the times she could pull that one it has to be now!

I am weak, I know I am. I’d rather take the long route than face confrontation. I hate confrontation. It’s the same at work as it is at home. I’m too weak for my own good but I feel powerless and she is always so sure and aloof. In the early days of courtship confrontation didn’t surface, obviously, but as time went on and weeks turned into months and then to years, she just took over the dominant role, it happened naturally.

I know I should grab her, shake her and demand to know what is going on but I don’t do that. Instead, I get up and make my way to the kitchen. I decide on omelette and I get the large pan down from its hook and place it heavily on the stove.

I’m looking at the eggs, I have two in my hand, and I’m wondering if I should do chips or go the healthier option and have a salad to go with the omelette when she storms in and grabs hold of the pan, and hurls it!

The pan flies into the far wall, bounces and clatters to the floor.

‘Leave me alone…just leave me alone! You were never here when I needed you… when I need you…never…’

I watch in astonishment as my wife sinks to the floor sobbing.

I drop the eggs, go to her, attempt to put my arm round her but she moves before I can get there. She is up and out the door, into the bedroom where she slams the door shut behind her.

I go back to the lounge, my head none the better and I sit in stunned silence wondering what the hell is going on. I feel sick to my stomach.

 

The house phone rings. I try my best to ignore it again, but as before, it works its way inside my skull and grows louder with each and every ring.

I lean across the sofa and pick it up, place it against my ear and listen.

‘Are you there, lover boy?’

I jump out of my skin! ‘What, what, who are you?’

She laughs down the line. ‘Good one, you nearly got me there.’

‘But you’re…’

‘I’m what? No don’t tell me, save it for tonight, yeah?’

‘What are you talking about?’ I ask as I look over my shoulder toward the bedroom door. It’s still sealed shut, an army might break it down and gain access but I’m not going to mess with the wife in this mood.

‘What do you want?’

‘Oh come on, sweet-cheeks, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?’

‘Forgotten? Forgotten what?’

Her voice grows stern. ‘Now we’ve been over this, you know damn well we have. You are not, I repeat not, staying on at work today. You promised me and you promised the kids.’

‘I did?’

‘What is the matter with you these days?’ She screams the words down the phone and I have to lift it away for fear of a burst eardrum.

‘It’s Halloween, and you promised!’

 

6.

She’s right; I did promise I remember it now. I promised I would knock off early today, not that she believes me.

‘It’s the first Trick or Treat the kids have really done; you’ve got to be home for that. You promised you would be.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ I say still looking at the bedroom door. I visualise her on the other side of the wood door speaking into her mobile but I don’t believe it.

‘I’ll be there.’

‘And don’t let that boss of yours tell you different. You’ve a family to think of. He can afford to give you some time off, Christ it’s not as if you don’t work ten-hour days already, is it?’

‘No, you’re right, honey, I’ll ask him, tell him…I’ll be there, I promise.’

‘Stand up to the pig for once in your life, okay?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. My mind is alive with crawling creatures, each one thumps inside my cranium as they jostle for space and I feel sick again.

I go to ask her something but all I get is just a single note coming from the ear-piece. She has gone.

 

I place the phone back in the cradle and turn toward the house again; noting the bedroom door is still closed. The room grows darker and cold. I look at the fire and see it is still lit but the heat has vanished from the room. The mirror over the fireplace is intact, it looks as if it never broke, the Jack-O-Lantern is now lit and I again feel those fingers, ice cold and steely, only this time they’re crawling up my spine.

I go to the kitchen, pass the bedroom and bathroom doors on the way, and find the kitchen is as dark as the living room and hallway. It is lit by candles, which give off an orange glow, but I’m damned if I can remember them being there when I got home and cleaned up.

 

She said something about Halloween and the kids first Trick or Treat. I turn and look up the stairs. It’s dark up there, save for another orange glow crawling up a wall, and I know I have to go up and check my kids, like it or not. They should still be with the child-minder but I somehow know that is not the case. Nothing makes sense anymore, nothing!

I take the treads one at a time. My mind races, tells me to take two at a time, maybe three, but my legs are lead, heavy as hell, it’s all I can do to lift them one tread at a time. I’m walking toward the light, the bedside light the kids sleep with; its glow creeps out from under the door to illuminate the wall opposite and casts an off-white light that fuses with the orange glow as they mingle farther up the wall. It’s enough light for me to focus on.

My breath catches in my throat as I make the top step and I turn toward the kids’ bedroom door. I reach out and grab the doorknob. I stand there for an age, unable to turn it, unable to leave. I need to see them, to check they are okay, but I don’t need to see what I think may be in there, and that is going to be something horrendous, I just know it is.

I take deep breaths, control my heart rate, move stiffness from my neck for reasons I don’t really understand, and turn the doorknob. I can smell the blood from here.

The door opens easy, the top hinge squeaking, the top hinge that is on my list of things to do that never get done, and I look at the blood stained beds of my children.

 

7.

Their beds are smothered in blood. My youngest boy lies on his bed; his little body broken and twisted. He’s dressed in a Gothic-style outfit, I guess for Trick or Treat, and his head sits at an odd angle. Multiple stab wounds cover his little body and he stares toward his brother through eyeless sockets. It’s all too much and I collapse, falling against the side of my eldest son’s bed.

His right arm hangs over the side; blood runs along it and drips from the ends of his fingers. I look up at his face and see sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. He too has multiple stab wounds to his frail little body and I am forced to look away. My brain registers the broken body under the warlock outfit but I try to push it away from my mind.

I want to hug them both, bring them back to life but I know that is impossible. I am aware of holding his hand, his blood is on my fingers and I recoil with shock at the sight of it. I am sobbing for them, sobbing for my inability to connect, in life and in death and then I am moving, an urgency within telling me I must hold my boys one last time.

I see the mirror move, a bulge in the lower right corner that becomes a ripple and a wave moving across and out into the wall. The wall bulges, it stretches out toward me. Hands, arms and body, form, a grotesque gargoyle-like face rips through the wallpaper and a monster from hell leers down at me. He’s almost free of the wall, his upper body looms over me, his lower half and legs yet to be pulled free, and his long thin arms and twig-like fingers claw in my direction.  I know what made the multitude of holes in my little boys; I can see the blood dripping from the fingers.

I shift backward, crab walk toward the door as fast as I can. Eventually I stagger to my feet and with a final last look at my little boys, I back out of the room, slam the door shut and vomit over the landing carpet. I slide down the wall and sob some more. My poor gentle boys, my poor gentle-.

I wipe my eyes and lever myself up the wall. My legs are still leaden but I force myself down the stairs urgency in my movements now. I need to see my wife, need to know she is all right, need to know she had nothing to do with this horror! 

 

I round the banister at the bottom of the stairs and make for the bedroom. I stomp past the bathroom door and approach the bedroom. I kick the door inward, all pretence of being the nice husband gone; I need answers to this nightmare. The bedroom is empty, the bed has not been recently vacated, it is fully made just as it always is at this time of the day, the only difference being the glow from Jack sitting smiling at me from the windowsill.

I make my way back out the door, turn and freeze on the spot. The bathroom door is wide open and a trail of blood leads from the blood-soaked cubicle out the door, across the hall carpet and into the living room.

I am numb. I enter the living room moving zombie-like and look down at the body of my wife. She is laid face down, a pool of blood about her head. The mirror is on her back, the frame broken and the glass smashed into a zillion pieces. The other Jack-O-Lantern has turned to smile at me too. I am dimly aware of a female voice shouting down the phone line.

I reach for the phone, holding it again between forefinger and thumb, I lift it from the bloody mess and I bring it up to my face and listen to the shouting female on the other end of the line.

‘Ma’am, are you still there? Madam…can you still hear me? Ma’am, are you telling me someone is in the house with you? Are you all right, has he attacked you?’

I feel him behind me…I smell and feel his halitosis breath on my neck…I start to turn and face him.

 

8.

‘At least he’s having a comfortable night,’ he says to the new intern. ‘It’s always worst at Halloween, the anniversary?’

The intern points at the screen. ‘Drugged and a padded cell?’

‘Medicated, sedated, not drugged, as you well know, and yes, it’s for his own good, most full moons he has a turn. Halloween, full moon or not, things is always worse for the poor sod. We have to bring him off the ward for his own safety.’

And he found them, yeah, the whole family dead?’

‘That’s his story, yeah. Naturally the police think otherwise or he wouldn’t be here, but he swears blind to this day that he found them all dead.’

‘Got any details?’

‘He worked late, maybe if he hadn’t he’d be a victim too, or saved them, assuming you go with his version of events. The wife had her throat cut and part of her head was missing, attack started in the shower. She managed to drag herself into the living room, phoned for help but she died before the police got there. They think the kids went first, whilst she was busy in the shower.’

‘It’s hard to have sympathy for him.’

‘Well, he’s usually okay, he just has these moments, you know?’

‘Moments?’

He chuckles. ‘Yeah he says he visits her.’

‘Who does?’

‘The husband,’ he points at the screen. ‘Him. He used to claim he visited her every year, some kind of guilt-trip where he tries to make it up to her and the kids or something. Says he should have been stronger, worked less hours, been happy with what they had…the usual delusional ideals we so often see in these sort of cases.’

‘So he’s guilty…’

‘We do not use that terminology here, young man and you best get used to that rather quickly if you wish to remain working here. He is a patient, you understand?’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, I was thinking more like what he feels, he thinks he’s guilty, images come back to him at certain times, that sort of thing?’

‘He’s under good supervision, extra at this time of year, medicated right up for the night, he’ll be fine,’ He taps the screen and smiles.

‘He says a hooded man, all in black, tall with a strange cackling laugh attacked the family but they never really looked into that, obviously.’

‘Why, I mean, what if he was telling the truth?’

He stands and stretches the stiffness from his back. Night watch can be very sedentary thing. ‘…Said the attacker lived in the wall and expects the police to go looking for him, does that sound like the truth to you?’

‘I guess not, no. Poor sod’s sick, ill, I mean.’

‘Yes, so we look after him here in the secure unit until the day he dies. Ours is not to judge young man…his illness caused the problem. Although we have tried to bring him back at times over the years, with varying degrees of success, he just seems a lost cause now.’

‘At least he’s okay. The medication he’s on, he’ll sleep peacefully ‘til at least midday tomorrow.’

‘Yes, nothing can harm him right now. At least he’s having a peaceful Halloween…poor man.’

 

The End...or is it?

 

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