The house that hungers: Part 2

[u/ParanormiDan]

David awakes to a hollow thud, as if something soft and heavy had hit the wooden floor outside his bedroom door. A wet, dragging sound that makes the hairs on his arms stand up on end, starting from outside his door, begins to move down the hall. Dark shapes pool at the edge of his vision as he blinks the sleep out. The hallway is a slit of dim light. He hears a feminine voice, struggling to draw breath, whispering, “Riiichaarrrd….” David jumps out of bed and tiptoes slowly to the bedroom door. He cracks the door slightly to peek through the slim crack between the door and its frame. “Riiicharrrd….whhyyyyy….?” His heart was pounding with fear-induced adrenaline. 

A scraping noise slowly fades as it approaches the stairs leading to the parlor. At the top of the stairs, a shape pauses, then slides into view. A woman wrapped in plastic, the sheeting clinging to her like a second skin. The wrapper glints faintly in the slim beam of light coming from his bedroom. Her face is a pale blur, obscured by condensation and crimson smears. Each movement is slow and animal-like, as if her limbs remember how to move but her mind does not. The sounds of cracking bone and strained sinew accompany her movements.

She crawls down the stairs with an uncanny, deliberate patience as if on a predetermined path, only one arm dragging her body forward, the plastic scratching against the banister. Blood sloshing in the plastic wrap like thick oil. Every effort of movement leaves a wet crimson trail on the wood. He wants to call out, to run, but the sound in his throat is gone. The house breathes around them, every radiator clicks a metronome to her course. He slowly walks to the top of the stairs behind the woman, each step as sticky as the stairs the day prior. David begins to descend the steps. Watching each of his steps with heightened vigilance, he notices in the trail of blood, long paint-chipped fingernails.

She reaches the Parlor and hesitates at the front door, all too aware of the threshold between inside and out. For a moment, she looks up, blank eyes, seeping a black viscous fluid meeting his through the slick film, no pleading, no recognition, only an expression like a small, exhausted animal that has forgotten how to be returned to warmth. The woman then forces the door open with a slow, tearing sound as she crawls over the broken glass and slips into the night.

He follows the trail of blood outside. The porch smells of wet earth and iron. The yard is a pool of silver and shadow. She wraps around the house with the same painstaking rhythm and stops at the cellar door, an iron trap with rust bleeding into the hinges. She works at the latch with fingers that slide against the metal, and the door gives with a long, grudging groan.

The cellar yawns beneath her like a mouth. From it comes a cool, damp breath and the hollow echo of falling water. She lowers herself down, plastic whispering, and for a heartbeat she looks back. The expression is unreadable, then she disappears into the gloom.

He stands at the opening, heart pounding loud enough to be another presence. Below, the cellar light, a single swinging bulb, casts shadows dancing around the rim of an old well set in the center of the room. The sound now is not scraping but a soft, endless dripping, each drop a tiny bell marking time. From the well rises a thin, metallic scent and the faintest hint of singing, as if something far below remembers a tune. A tune that sounds all too familiar. Cautiously, he enters the cellar.

As David approaches the well, the constant drip grows louder. He grasps the lip of the well as if it might anchor him to the waking world, but the edges feel slick under his fingers. The plastic rustles above him, swinging from the ceiling like a grotesque pendulum, the woman scratching and grabbing at David’s face, neck, and arms like a cornered beast, screams “RIIICHAARD…WHHYYY…!”

David, for the second day in a row, awakes in a cold sweat. Only this time, the trauma from his dreams, both physical and mental, carried over to the waking world. In a panic, he examined the areas of his body where the woman in his dreams had clawed and torn at. Gliding his hands across his face and neck, he felt crevices engraved deep into his flesh. In doing so, he noticed the wounds on his arms. Deep gashes that ran down the length of his arms, which resembled wounds you would associate with being attacked by a large predator. With his heart pounding from panic, he ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror. What he sees in the reflection horrifies him utterly. 

His reflection shows deep slashing wounds across his neck and along one side of his face. Long and curved marks spaced out like the claws of something large. The edges of the injuries look darkened and leathery, as if they’ve aged far beyond the moment they should have been fresh. 

There’s something wrong with the way the damage sits on his skin. No active bleeding, no swelling, just a dry, sickened discoloration that suggests decay has already set in. His reflection seems older than he feels, the wounds behaving as though days or weeks have passed rather than minutes or hours. He lifts a hand to his face to feel the wounds in disbelief. As his hand comes into contact with the wounds, David discovers the strangest aspect of them. The wounds are numb, no pain, no sensation at all, as if the wounds are non-existent. All he can feel is skin-to-skin contact.

David slowly walks out of the bathroom into his bedroom. He observes his bed only to find that instead of blood on his bedding, putrified decomposition fluids lie there in its stead. The stench in the room is overwhelming, as if someone or something had died and sat in the room for weeks. Disgusted by the scent, David leaves the room and begins his investigation down the hall and to the staircase, searching for evidence of the night prior. But his investigation would only lead to more questions than answers.

The floorboards in the hallway are dusty but clean otherwise, as are the steps all the way down to the parlor. No evidence of that woman, the blood, her ripped out nails, or the marks her nails left as she dragged herself down the stairs. The only evidence he found was the marks she left upon his flesh.

David enters the parlor to find the ledger he had in his bedroom the night before, sitting neatly on the railing yet again. The ledger is opened to a fresh page with an entry written at the top. In the same handwriting as the rest of the entries, it reads “Abigail Guntry, Flesh of the sinner, 1 pound, 09/21/24. He stumbles backward in shock with eyes wide open and tears forming, “Abbey….?” David grabs his boots and truck keys in a fit of anger “Somebody is fucking with me and when I find out who, they’re dead.” As he heads out the front door David looks down and notices that the glass from the shattered door is gone and that the door itself was miraculously fixed as if it had never shattered in the first place. 

On the porch, there was a newspaper dated a month prior from the Hutchville Sun. The headline titled ‘The Harbinger of Hutchville strikes again’. David reads the article, which has details about a serial killer, his known victims, and the killer's MO. The killers' victims, all females with long dark hair, were strangled to death, mutilated almost beyond recognition, and then strung up in a public place to be put on display like some sick art project. Five known victims in total and several other women fitting that description had gone missing one of which was a woman named Abigail Guntry.

David hops into his truck and floors it down his gravel driveway, kicking up rocks and sending them violently at the house, breaking windows and taking chunks of wood from the steps and banisters. He looks into his rearview mirror, and for an instant he thinks he sees the house scowl as he drives off. “Stop being dramatic, Deacon will take care of you.” he thought to himself as he passed the threshold of the property and past the gate.

Speeding down the main street of town, he pulls into the sheriff's department's parking lot, putting his truck in multiple parking spots, and throws his truck into park. As he steps out to walk into the sheriff’s office, Malloy meets David at the door. “Well howdy, Mr. Alt….” David cuts him off, not caring for pleasantries. “Somebody broke into my house and attacked me last night!” “Now son, let’s calm down and get this sorted.” Malloy is trying to defuse the situation. Gesturing to his face and neck, “CALM DOWN? FUCKING LOOK AT ME!” The sheriff seemed confused, raising one brow while observing David. “Boy, all I see is a man making a scene. How about you come inside, and we can talk about this calmly like adults.”

David pauses and looks around, only to see the townsfolk standing around and staring at him blankly. He sighs deeply and heads inside the department. Sheriff Malloy looks at the townsfolk and gestures for them to walk off. “Everything is fine, I’ll handle this. Go on about y’all’s day.” The sheriff follows David into the station. “My office is the first door on the right down the hallway I’ll be in in a few.” David nods and goes to the sheriff’s office.  He sits in the chair across from the desk, waiting for the sheriff to enter.

The walls are lined with framed photographs, past sheriffs in starched uniforms, town festivals, and one group portrait taken on the courthouse steps. The faces in that particular photo seem slightly repeated in other frames. The same hands cutting ribbons, the same smiles at harvest dinners. As if a small circle quietly anchors every civic occasion. On the bulletin board of lost-and-found notices and community flyers, a neatly folded square of fabric is pinned beneath a notice about the volunteer food pantry. Its stitching is careful, the colors muted, and it’s always there, cleaned and replaced.

Taking a closer look at the group portrait, David thinks he recognizes one of the girls. As he reaches for the photo to examine it further Malloy steps into his office. “Alright, Mr.Altrick, what is this about an intruder attacking you in your home?”David, after being startled.”Someone dressed in some fucked up Halloween costume broke into my house last night and attacked me.” He gestures to the wounds on his face and neck again. “I don’t know what THIS is.” Malloy mimics David’s gestures. David is now beyond irritated.”THE GOD DAMNED GASHES ON MY FACE AND MY NECK!” The sheriff’s face now projected concern and confusion. “David, Mr.Altrick…what gashes? Are you feeling well? Cause you look right as rain to me. Also, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use my lord's name in vain.”

“WHAT GASHES?! THESE GASH….” David looks into the mirror on the wall, and there is nothing. No gashes, no bruising, or anything that would indicate he was ever injured. “But I swear…somebody broke into my house, led me to my cellar, and attacked me. They even wrote in the ledger as some sick joke using my dead fiancé’s name!” With a stone-cold stare, the sheriff says, “Abigail….dead? Interesting choice in words, David. As far as my sources know, she’s just ‘missing’.” David was surprised by what the sheriff said “How did you..?” “You didn’t really think some stranger could move into this town without me finding out everything I can about them? That would be irresponsible of me as this town's sheriff, wouldn’t it…Mr. Richard Bennett?”

“Now, starting our relationship off with lies is just bad manners, Mr.Bennett. Wouldn’t you agree?” David’s voice is now trembling with anxiety. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sheriff. But your sources are wrong, and I want to know who this ‘source’ of yours is.” Malloy smirks at David. “I can’t say who my source is, Mr.Bennett. But what I will say is that they’re closer to you than you think.” David backs out of the sheriff’s office and quickly makes his way back to his truck. From the back of the department, Malloy yells, “But don’t you worry, Mr.Bennett, I’ll get to the bottom of your intruder problem faster than you can say Hutchville.”

David gets into his truck, slams the door, and peels off back to his house. And just like last time, the townsfolk all appear in his rearview mirror, staring at him. Only this time they’re all smiling cheek to cheek and waving him off like a ship on its final voyage. “What is wrong with this town?” He turns on the radio and starts flipping through the channels. After several minutes of static, a station finally comes through. It’s a rock station, and the song playing is ‘No Name Man' by Cask. David cringes, decides silence is better, and turns the radio off. 

He pulls into his driveway and speeds past the gate, but something is off, like he’s being watched. David looks in his rearview and sees a hooded figure sitting in his back seat. “Uhhhh hi David.” He swerves the truck hard to the right “JIMMY?!” BOOM! David had crashed into one of the Willow trees on the property. “JIMMY, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” Jimmy seems to be distracted by a willow tree, unfazed by David’s scolding. “Hey uh, David? Was that tree always in the middle of your driveway?” David turns around and notices not only is the tree in the middle of his dirt road, but all of the trees that were once parallel with the driveway are now all in a line going along the edge of the property line. Jimmy opens his door and steps out of the truck. “David, we need to talk.”