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Cottage of the Damned
- Cottage of the Damned -
A Terrifying Horror Story in Three Parts
Part One: Arrival
As day begat night, the old wooded land seemed to darken, and if fog and mist could become an absolute darkness then that is what they became as the car sped down the road, past rugged hills and rusty signs. It was the kind of place that told you, practically screamed at you, to turn around and go back the way you came. But the car sped on, and the night was no less dark for the headlights’ illumination. Once in a while, a deer would jump out and run across the road, and the car would screech its’ brakes, stopping just short of striking the animal. The man in the car looked at one deer, and noticed in passing how strange the creature’s eyes were. Were they like a normal deer’s eyes at all? The woman with him screamed, seeing a shape moving next to the deer. “What is that? Look, Charles, look at that!” but the man saw nothing but the deer. “I don’t see anything that can’t be explained.” He said, lying, and not mentioning the eyes. The woman was short, with curly blonde hair and bright green eyes. The man, in contrast, was tall, with dark eyes, dark hair, and almost cruel features. Hawkish, as some called it! Yet, he had always been a gentle man and loved the outdoors as much as she did. Her name was Allison, and she was student of the occult, though her boyfriend did not believe in such things. As Charles resumed driving, letting the incident with the deer pass without any further remark, she watched the landscape they drove through go by, faster and faster as the vehicle picked up speed. “How long until we get to the lake?” She asked, and the man said to her, keeping his eyes on the road intently as he did so: “Oh, it won’t be long now, darling! Just a few more miles, that’s all… then we’ll be there.” But he said that an hour ago, or so it seemed. And now it was dark, and the fog and mist were very disturbing to Allison. She was not easily frightened, having seen much in her lifetime, but certain things… just did not feel right to her. As if on cue, a loud bump snapped her from a passing reverie in which she was nearly lost in her thoughts. They were driving over an old dirt road off the main highway, and going through some wild country. The woods seemed to be closing around the car as if to swallow it. The lake was at the very heart of those woods, and that is where they were going, that man and that woman. Those two travelers in the night, who in their innocence imagined: this would be a vacation. They were wrong. The deer sped away for a time before something dark closed in on it and snapped its’ neck with a sickening crunch. The animal made a horrible sound as it died, but the thing that had killed it could not have cared less. It was hungry, and angry! Ravenous, as all beasts of the woods sometimes can become. Man had intruded on its’ land far too often! Not any more.
The car stopped, and Allison could see… even in the midnight hour… the water of the lake and the shape of the cottage on its’ shore. “We’re here at last, honey!” Charles said, his face smiling cheerfully as he got out of the car. Allison followed him to the door of the cottage, but both of them stopped when they heard a loud howling seeming to come from someplace just close by, but not close enough to discern its’ origin. Allison looked at the building before her, and noted how normal and quite ordinary the small house seemed. Like any other vacation home, really! Charles had purchased it cheap, too cheap for her to understand how the original owners could have let it go like they did. She never met the pair, an old man and his equally ancient wife… but Charles had, and he said they seemed anxious to part with the property. “I wonder how old this place really is? It looks no older than a decade to me, but you never can tell.” She appeared thoughtful, musing on this as Charles replied: “I don’t know, the owners said it was build over an older structure though… whatever they meant by that.” Indeed, whatever that meant! Perhaps the cellar was older, or something of that sort. The woman grasped her shoulders, trying to warm herself. “The air is so cold all of a sudden! Let’s go inside and see if we can get warm.” And her boyfriend nodded in agreement. He unpacked the bags from the car, unlocked the cottage door, and the pair entered the structure. The door had an odd creak to it, as if the hinges were rusty, and Allison noticed one of the windows had scratch marks on its’ surface. She said nothing of it thought, assuming it had been the work of an animal, possibly a raccoon. The interior was small, only a few rooms, but all of them cozy enough and sparsely furnished with quaint décor. Charles took off his coat and hat, and set about starting a fire in the hearth. The fireplace itself was framed in wood and stone, very rustic looking, and over it was a clock that had stopped at precisely 2:00, whether in the morning or afternoon it was impossible to know. Whilst Charles was busy, Allison tried to set the clock but noticed it was broken beyond repair, the insides of it torn out. “I wonder why they would leave this old, broken clock here like this?” she asked her boyfriend, who was at a loss. “Maybe they thought they’d unload some of their old junk on us!” and he was laughing, enjoying his joke. Allison laughed also, and put the clock back after realizing it was pointless to tinker with it any further. She kicked off her boots, took off her jacket, and smooth out the wrinkles in her skirt as she adjusted her clothes after the long ride and having slept in the car on at least two occasions. “God, is it ever good to be out of that car!” She said, stretching as she walked about. God was not there. Not in that place, and not at that hour. Something watched from the woods, something feral, bestial, and not of this world.
After getting warm by the fire, the couple decided to explore the cottage and check out each of its’ rooms. Off of the main room with the fireplace, a door led into the kitchen and also opened into a small hallway with other doors. The scent of the wood was very heavy in the air, much like old colonial houses sometimes have about them in certain places. “At least they left plenty of food in the kitchen for us!” Allison noticed, as she saw the shelves filled with cans. Charles opened the door of the refrigerator and noticed a lot of game meat and such. “The old man must have been a hunter, look at all this! It’s fresh, too.” It seemed odd, actually, how perfectly prepared everything seemed to be. The two bedrooms odd the small hall had been comfortably appointed, and the bathroom at the end of the hall had plenty of toilet paper and other necessities. “Even toothpaste!” Charles jokingly noted. “It is almost like they wanted us to be welcome here.” The woman mused, tapping her fingernails on the doorframe, an act that obviously annoyed her boyfriend to no end. “What!” she chuckled, “It isn’t like I was running them down a chalkboard or something.” But there was a rather unsettling air about the place, something that was belied by the sheer normality of how everything appeared. After inspecting the ground floor, it was decided the two would investigate the cellar, which was down a flight of steps through a door off the main room of the cottage. Cobwebs were everywhere and it was pitch black. Charles had brought a flashlight with him, and shone it before him as he led the way down. The air had a musty odor to it, and Allison coughed a bit from it. The couple had not said a word in some time, and the tension about the cottage was palpable. They could sense it, and it disturbed them. The cellar was filled with all the usual old crates and boxes, and barrels filled with junk. Perhaps much of it was useful junk, but junk it was nonetheless. The cellar was all one large room that was only marginally smaller than the building above it. At the far end of it was a small… shrine of sorts… set up. An old oak table carved with strange designs, upon which were some grotesque looking statues. There were stains that looked like bloodstains, and old leather-bound books stacked in the center of a pentagram that was carved across the tabletop. A small silver chalice, otherwise quite ordinary, sat upon the book stack with an ornate dagger leaning out of it. “Charles, look! There objects… what were the previous owners into?” And the man looked truly at a loss for words. He moved the chalice and began to skim through the books, but could make no sense of them. They were all in long-dead languages and filled with very strange designs, and horrid illustrations depicting demons torturing damned souls. He left them where they lay after paging through them, but the dagger… called… to him. He heard voices, whispering soft.
Back in the main room, Charles seemed fascinated with the chalice and dagger from the cellar. “I’ll bet this dagger is worth quite a bit of money! Look at this craftsmanship.” And indeed it was beautiful! Silver blade, gold hilt, serpentine design all along the handle, and an emerald set into the crosspiece. “That was a dark shrine, darling! A Dark shrine!” Allison stated, trying to impress upon her boyfriend the seriousness of it. “I mean, I have done some dark shit in my time, but that was… it was utterly horrible. And I could sense the evil in it!” But Charles seemed not to be listening to her, as his eyes were held by the emerald’s glitter, made more magnificent by the firelight. Irritated, Allison went to take the dagger from his hand, but the man grew agitated at that and resisted. “Charles, just put it down and listen to what I am trying to tell you!” Suddenly, he felt ashamed and laid the weapon aside. “I am sorry darling, I don’t know what I was doing for a moment there. What were you saying?” But the woman did not feel like repeating herself. Instead, she uttered an exasperated sound and walked off toward the kitchen to prepare dinner. Outside, something was scratching at one of the cottage windows but Charles did not notice it because the dagger had entranced him once again. Allison ate alone, her boyfriend deciding not to join her. “What do I even see in him?” She asked herself. Though he had never behaved this aloof before. Wiping her mouth with a napkin, the woman decided to see what was in the attic. The only room place they had not examined thus far. “Charles, let’s go and see what’s upstairs!” And that tore him away from the dagger long enough to toss his flashlight at her when she walked into the room. “Go then!” He snapped at her. “I’m busy.” And what he was doing horrified her terribly. He was carving strange runes into the palms of his hands. A man who had never shown even the slightest interest in Allison’s occult fascinations… and here he was, carving into his very flesh the strangest designs she had ever seen. “Honey stop, what are you doing to yourself!” She cried, and tried to grab the dagger from his hands. His response was even more terrifying: he slashed at her wildly, just narrowly missing Allison’s face. She slapped him, trying to restore sense into him, but he slashed again. “Get out! Get away from me!” He shrieked, and Allison, in sudden fear of the man she had loved for so long… bolted for the trap door that held the attic stairs folded up. She opened the door, folded down the steps, and clambered upstairs, turning on the flashlight as she did so. She pulled the stairs up behind her, so her suddenly insane boyfriend could not follow her. The attic was dark, but outside the night was far darker. What was the hour anyway? It had to be at least an hour… after midnight, after the witching hour, as they called it. But worse things were yet to come! Allison was not prepared for the sheer horror.
Part Two: Insanity
The attic held chains suspended from the rafters above, and manacled to some of them were human remains, bloody and foul smelling, with scraps of flesh still attached and torn clothing evident on the decomposed forms. “Oh my God!” Allison screamed. And how she screamed at that sight! “Oh my God! What is this place?” For all around her, the walls ceased to exist and flames, roaring more lustily than those in the fireplace downstairs… towering flames had replaced any semblance of structure. “I must be going crazy! This must be a hallucination.” She kept thinking to herself. She had never done drugs, never drank any alcohol… she could not account for this warping of reality through logic. She rubbed her eyes, and then suddenly the chains were empty of the corpses that had been there before. And the flames were gone! She could not go and tell Charles, not right now, not until he came back to his senses from whatever madness was upon him. As soon as this thought went through her mind, Allison could hear her boyfriend screaming down below, as if he was being horribly killed by some terrible… what? She had to know, and so she opened the trap door and clambered back downstairs, making her way to the fireplace where Charles was burning his left hand. She gasped, and screamed for him to stop, but his face was no longer human. It was twisted into a grin, but one that was horrifying to look at because he had cut his mouth to enlarge it. Blood oozed down his face, and his widened maw was: like a monster’s, no longer as a man’s. “I can’t… stop!” He said, clearly in agony. “I would… if I could!” and the smell of burning flesh filled the house’s air, mixing with the pleasant scent of the burning wood to create a new, sickening smell. Deciding she had to stop her man from doing himself any further harm, Allison struck him on the back of his head with the flashlight, attempting to knock him out. Weakened by all of his excessive self-mutilation, the man was knocked out by the sudden blow in an instant. “Oh my God, I hope I didn’t kill him!” Allison said aloud, dragging his body back away from the fire and laying it on the couch near one of the windows. He was breathing so she knew he had not died. But he would surely get an infection or even bleed to death if she did not act soon! So she ran to the bathroom to retrieve some medical supplies… bandages, disinfecting agents, painkillers, a needle and thread to repair Charles’ face… anything she thought could be of some use. But when she got back to where she had left her man… he was gone. “No!” She screamed, and stormed into each of the rooms looking for him. He was nowhere upstairs, and must have gone down into the cellar since the attic entrance was untouched but the cellar door was wide open. The clock struck two. How it did so, made no logical sense, but strike it did, and it could be heard in every room as if each room held that clock.
“Wait a moment! That clock is broken.” Allison said, realizing how crazy it was she was talking to herself. She ran to the clock, which was indeed still broken but which had just chimed the hour nonetheless. Allison feared she was losing her mind, but feared more what had become of Charles. She stormed back to the hall and then downstairs, brandishing the flashlight before her to light the way. Why had Charles come down here in the pitch dark, with no light? But there he was, kneeling before that terrible shrine and chanting in some foreign tongue. What was it? It sounded almost like Arabic… or Aramaic, more correctly. His charred hand was lying flat upon the pentagram, and his other hand grasped the dagger as if it were a part of him now. The silver chalice lay to the left of the pentagram, and was filled with blood from Charles’ mouth. The blood was still running quite thick, and there was pus as well. His back was to her; she could easily strike him again if she moved silently. She turned off the flashlight and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She moved without making a sound, until she could hear the man breathing in the dark right in front of her. Her hand was trembling as she raised the flashlight to strike once again. Suddenly, her former boyfriend… now something else entirely… spun around, his eyes glowing with a pale green flame in each vacant socket where his eyes used to be. He had clearly cut them out. Allison screamed at the awful sight and struck Charles across the face as hard as she could. “Stop it! Stop doing these things to: yourself!” she was yelling, but he was not himself any longer. “Charles isn’t here, Allison!” a serpentine voice hissed from that ruined mouth of his. And he tried to bite her with teeth filed to fang-like points. He had been busy remaking himself in the image of the one who now dwelt within him. Blood spat out from the fiend’s face as the woman struck repeatedly, again and again. But no matter how hard she struck it, the thing that had been Charles was unmoved by it. “Far too late for that, little girl!” Said the snake-like voice again. The monster charged at her, trying to stab her with the dagger. Allison broke free and ran back to the stairs, turning on her flashlight. She sped up, spun around, and slammed the door shut behind her. There was no way to lock the door, but nearby were several bookshelves and other furniture, which the desperate woman hastily threw over to block the door. “Let’s see him try to…” but suddenly, the door shook as the monster below pounded upon it, shrieking in an inhuman way that was difficult for Allison to bear listening to. She grabbed he ears, screaming: “Shut up! Shut up!” but the thing that had been the love of her life did not care. It howled like a wolf, or perhaps more like a jackal. It howled loud! From somewhere else, other voices were howling, laughing, cackling, and screeching along with him. A true cacophony!
Try as it might, the awful monster could not manage to break free of the cellar, and Allison went to the kitchen to fetch a steak knife. “Something sharp, just in case!” She muttered to herself as she picked it up. She offered a prayer to several of her patron goddesses, and ran some cold water from the sink over the blade, consecrating it, attempting to somehow bless it as best as her magic-craft would allow. She was ready, at least, in case that thing broke free. She decided to go into the main room and wait by the fireplace for the inevitable moment to occur, when she noticed one of the windows was utterly shattered, the glass sharps and pieces of wood from the frame lying all over the floor where something had broken through and gotten into the cottage. There was a definite thumping sound coming from one of the bedrooms, and though the half-shut door Allison could make out the terrible, dark, shadowy shape she had seen on the road earlier. She was breathing hard and heavily, panting from fear. Whatever it was, it was some sort of demon! Nothing of its’ features could be seen, except the glinting of fangs in the moonlight and the glow of fiery red eyes. The sounds it made as it feasted on the carcass of the deer it had killed earlier, were horrible. The head of the deer then gazed at Allison and the dead animal opened, its’ mouth and shrieked in a totally human voice: “Help me, Allison! Don’t let it get me!” and the voice was that of Charles, as it sounded before he became… whatever it was he was now. Allison clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent herself from screaming, and turned away, closing her eyes as she walked down the hall. “No… no…. no!” she kept saying. “This cannot be real, this cannot be happening!” But it was real, and it was happening. The thing in the cellar was still pounding on the door, and the makeshift barricade moved every time its’ claws struck the wood. It was still howling, and the deer was still calling for help, and the demon was still licking its’ chops as it feasted on the deer’s carcass. All of this was too much for Allison to take any more of, so she ran out the door of the cottage and made her way back to the car. “Damn it! Charles has the keys in his pants’ pocket!” she thought to herself, as she pounded on the hood of the vehicle in frustration. She had to take her chances with the woods, and attempt to find some trace of civilization. But who would believe her, even if she could find help? But first, she had to escape, before she could even consider what she would tell anyone. She ran past the lake, down the old dirt road, and hoped no savage animals or horrible demons would find her. The woods… grew darker! The wind blew stronger, and small animals watched, eyes beady with low cunning. A spirit was at work, in hidden realms.
The road seemed far more twisted and winding than she remembered it, and the woods seemed to grow closer and closer about her as she ran. Allison could barely make out the road after a while, as brambles, thorns, and thickets closed in, forming barricades to keep her confused and impede her progress. “Are these woods… alive?” She mused in her mind, but she knew it was impossible. Then again, everything she had experienced tonight had been impossible! Suddenly, all about her were towering walls of vegetation that seemed almost solid, like hedges. The forest shifted, morphed, and changed the more she tried to get away. The road eventually led back to the lake and the cottage once again, in a big circle. “No!” she screamed, her voice almost a howl of anguish and frustration. She was tired of running. Tired and angry, and determined to do something, however futile it might be. She kicked open the cottage door, stormed in, and entered the bedroom where the demon had been… only to find it empty. No deer remains, no demon. Nothing was out of the ordinary. The window was back to normal also, unbroken as though nothing had come through it at all. Checking on the cellar barricade, Allison found it to be intact… though the awful pounding had ceased. “Maybe he’s given up, realized he’s not getting up here.” She thought to herself silently. The clock then chimed the hour again, and it chimed 2:00 in the morning. Even though it had to have been well past that time by now! And as soon as the chiming ceased, the thing in the cellar resumed pounding on the door. It shrieked and moaned, and in between it mimicked Charles’ voice, saying: “Please, darling! Save me! Save me!” And by this time, Allison was crying, her tears falling down her cheeks. “I can’t, honey! I just can’t!” she yelled back. “You have to stop yourself!” she yelled, but the thing’s voice grew more and more animalistic, more guttural and unintelligible. If this was some kind of insanity, she was suffering from it also. How else to explain the things she had seen? “I’m going totally crazy… I must be having a nervous breakdown or something.” She whispered under her breath. Suddenly, the thing broke free from the cellar, breaking the barricade as the cellar door was cast open. “Give us a kiss, little girl!” It shrieked with a perverse tone in its’ voice. “I’m a grown woman!” she replied, “And my name is Allison!” and with that, she slashed at the monster to keep it at bay. The consecrated knife glowed a faint blue, and when it grazed the monster’s flesh, the former man screamed in mortal pain. “Bitch! I’ll make you feel my pain.” It shrieked, and the desperate woman struck again with the knife, slashing and stabbing. The thing tried to strike back with its’ dagger, but it was too slow and finally fell backward. Blood and other fluids spattered from the creature’s mouth, pouring out, oozing down. Had that thing ever been… human?
Part Three: Awakening
As he fell backwards, Charles took the dagger and sliced his own stomach open with it, pulling out his intestines and other organs. From the gruesome wound emerged thousands of maggots, flies, and other insects… as if he had been long dead and in an advanced stage of decay. Allison vomited at the sight, and turned away. She could not look, but then snapping and squishing sounds made her dare to look just the same… and she saw a black, shadowy form emerge from the gaping hole in Charles’ stomach. The demon literally tore its’ way out of him, like a child being given birth but more violently… as if the child was tearing its’ way free of the womb. But that was no child, and Charles was no womb. The shadow demon took on a more tangible form, and all Allison could see was a mass of bubbling, amorphous flesh, tentacles, teeth, eyes, and what looked like faces. Charles’ face was there, as were the faces of an old man and an ancient looking woman. The two former owners of the cottage! The fanged maw of the beast was filled with blood, and the flesh of it was slick with the blood of Allison’s slain boyfriend. She was screaming at the sight of this thing, and she was slashing at it with her knife. In one of its’ claws, the demon held the emerald dagger and stuck it hard into Allison’s upper right arm. “Oh God!” She yelled in pain, for it felt like she had been burned… or perhaps even jolted by electricity. Blood tricked forth from the wound the creature inflicted upon her, and between that and the scent of her own vomit, Allison felt quite dizzy. The horrible thing was preparing to strike again, and seizing the opportunity, Allison sped behind the bulky mass of the thing… all eight feet tall of it… and she stabbed her consecrated blade deep into the thing’s back. It shrieked and howled in pain, and dropped its’ dagger unto the floor. Acting quickly, the woman lunged for it: and ran back down the cellar stairs to escape the monster for a bit and so take a moment to collect herself and regain her wits. She now had the evil dagger in her possession, and could hear a voice audibly whispering to her from the emerald upon it. “The old man and his cow of a wife used to sacrifice to us here… they did… and now we are hungry again. Feed us! Feed us or we will feast on you!” And the voice was a blend of many voices. A legion, of sorts! Allison went back to the dark shrine, where the silver chalice still lay next to the pentagram. What was the significance of that chalice? Allison wondered, placing the dagger back into it: as it had been when they first found it. But nothing happened. “I should have known that would be too easy!” She muttered, and took the dagger back out of the silver cup again. The demon was suddenly right behind her, its’ faces cackling with inhuman glee: “Yes, good, we want you here!” She felt one of its’ tentacles reaching up her skirt, slithering swiftly across the flesh of her thighs, seeking out her more tender places. She screamed, grabbed the disgusting tentacle, and tore it fast away from her before it could molest her any further.
How had it moved so silently for something so large? Allison struck at it with the dagger, but the thing deflected her blows and with a clawed hand twisted the blade around until her hand was facing back, with the dagger pointing toward her face. It pushed her hand and the dagger, and the blade scratched her left cheek, drawing blood. A drop of the blood, by simple chance, flicked back and landed in the chalice, which seemed to cause the demon pain. “My blood… that chalice… that is the answer!” and so Allison broke free from the creature’s grasp and ran over, drawing the dagger over her palms, cutting them open and letting the blood fill the silver chalice. The demon seemed immobilized by this, and then Allison thought to put the dagger into the cup so that the emerald was submerged in her blood, the blade pointing upward out of the chalice. That seemed to be the final straw, for with that the demon began to smoke and steam, its’ flesh falling away in hunks. It was as if the creature were decomposing before Allison’s eyes, and when at last it lay dead at her feet, it was not the decomposed and burned corpse of a demon at all… but two corpses: that of an old man and an ancient woman. The two former owners of the cottage! Now murdered at the desperate woman’s hands. She knelt before their bodies, sobbing. “Oh God, what have I done? What have I done!” as the wound she had taken before began to throb and burn even worse. She got to her feet stumbled up the stairs, and saw the gutted body of Charles lying there, his mouth gashed open in that ruined grimace. He was covered in stab wounds and slash marks. Had she killed him too, and concocted the fantasy of the demon to block it from her mind? As she clearly had, with the old man and his wife! It was like she was awakening from a dream, or some horrible nightmare, and she was awakening from one delusion into another. The attic stairs suddenly fell down of their own accord, and for no reason she could think of, Allison clambered upstairs. If only to get away from the scene of her grisly crime! The chains and the corpses were back, as was the fire. Reality was warping again, and this time the woman did not care. She took off her skirt and blouse, and undergarments, so that she was totally naked, and began to slash and stab at her body with the dagger. Why was she still carrying that accursed dagger? Had she not left it in the chalice! But no, it was in her hand, and she was carving at herself with it, lovingly, lustily, and hungrily. Soon, she was covered from head to toe in cuts, gashes, and slices. The chains began to move on their own, and encircled her body, cold on her bare skin. Cold, yet comforting. They had a certain bitter reality to them, something the cottage and its’ countless horrors no longer possessed for her. She felt like a child safe in its’ mother’s womb, free from all the cares of the world for but a time. She was not safe!
Allison did not know how long she hung in those chains in the Attic, but when she finally came to her senses she realized no chains were there at all, and she had been lying on the floor rather than being suspended from the rafters as she had at first imagined. The fire was gone, the chains too, and no corpses were there to be seen. All was quiet, and outside there was the sound of wind howling. “Stop that! Shut up!” she screamed. She had enough of howling, for one night. But the wind did not care, and continued to shriek and was its’ want. “Oh my head!” Allison complained, noticing she was unharmed and fully clothed. The trap door was open, the attic stairs down, and Charles was calling her. “Honey, what is taking you so long? Come on down, it’s almost three in the morning and you’ve been up there all night!” Had she dreamed everything? Hoping that was the case, she called out cheerfully: “I’m coming down now, sweetie!” and hurried down, slipping and tripping as she stumbled over the man’s gutted corpse that still lay upon the cottage floor, right where it had fallen. “No! It can’t be!” Allison wailed, but then she noticed the corpse was not that of Charles, but that of the old man. Nearby was the corpse of the old man’s wife, who was gutted similarly. Both had been gutted like a hunter guts a deer. “Charles! Come and look… there’s been a murder!” but her boyfriend was not answering. “Charles, didn’t you hear me? I said, there’s been…” but he was there, right behind her, the evil dagger in his hand. “I know. A murder!” he sneered, and stabbed the dagger into the same place where Allison had been wounded previously. She mercifully passed out, everything going dark. “A murder! A murder!” Those words kept echoing in her mind, until at last she heard and thought nothing at all. When she awoke, she was lying on the couch in the main room of the cottage. The clock kept chiming over and over, even though it was broken. The hour was perpetually 2:00 in the morning. Charles was nowhere to be seen, and the fire was totally out in the hearth. The air was cold, as cold as the grave, and a thick mist was beginning to enter the house from under the front door, and between the cracks in the wooden walls here and there. The carcass of a deer had been dumped near the door to the kitchen, and when she entered the kitchen Allison saw the old man and his wife standing there, preparing a meal from the deer’s bloody guts. “Aren’t you hungry, Allison? Come, join us for a meal!” the old man said, a butcher’s cleaver in his hand. He struck it down, and it fell upon Charles’ dead body, which was strapped to the kitchen table. The old man was cutting off pieces of Charles’ flesh and giving them to his wife, who then threw them into a stewpot to be cooked. The witch-like ancient hag took a bite from a piece of the dead man’s liver, savoring the taste of it. Allison then screamed, and fainted unable to cope.
It was dawn, and the police soon arrived at the old cottage by the lake. The place had been there a good decade: build by an old hunter and his wife… a reclusive couple, a rather peculiar couple by all accounts. They routinely came by to check on things when the old couple was away, since the place was otherwise ripe for burglars. The police car stopped by the lake, right next to the strange car that was parked outside the cottage. The officers noticed the out of state license plates, and decided to investigate. Inside the cottage, they found the old man and his wife dead, gutted. Murdered. They also found a man’s body in even worse condition… his face had been hacked into a horrible grin, his intestines torn out, and pieces of his flesh removed. The kitchen was a disgusting sight, a stewpot filled with human flesh… blood everywhere. But there was no trace of the perpetrator of these crimes! The attic was empty… but in the cellar was a strange shrine. The murders may have been ritualistic in nature, the police officers realized. “Didn’t the old man sell this place to an out of state couple?” the younger officer, a rookie, asked. And the older officer replied: “That’s right! He did sell the place. I wonder why he and his wife decided to come back? I’ll bet the murderer is the other half of that out of state couple. We’re looking for a woman, I suspect. Wonder why she killed her boyfriend?” The rookie then said, stifling the urge to throw up: “Killed him and ate parts of him, by the look of it.” Suddenly, a loud shriek pierced the air and the cellar door slammed shut, plunging the room into utter darkness. The rookie turned on his flashlight and spun it around, but no one seemed to be there. “Hello? Come on out miss! We know you’re there.” And she was there, but she was not alone. The two police officers screamed at the sight of the demon, as the shadowy creature savaged them with terrifying ferocity. They drew their guns, shots rang out… but those shots missed their mark entirely. Allison smiled as she watched the demon feast upon the two police officers. They were so wrong… she was not the one who ate parts of Charles; that was the demon that had done that! The demon, that had made first Charles and then her, its’ servant. Soon, it would have enough power to bring others of its’ kind into this reality through the portal in the attic. Allison would lure more visitors here, and the demon would feed! “I hunger!” It growled, and the mad and twisted thing that had been a woman said in an insane, cackling voice: “Let me go and get you some food, then!” and she left the cellar, took the car keys from Charles’ pocket, and locked the cottage before leaving. This time, the woods would let her go, because she would be back soon with new guests. And each night, at exactly 2:00, the demon would feast and feast well. It was her cottage now, hers and hers alone. Hers and her new man’s… even if he was, in fact, a demon.
A Terrifying Horror Story in Three Parts
Part One: Arrival
As day begat night, the old wooded land seemed to darken, and if fog and mist could become an absolute darkness then that is what they became as the car sped down the road, past rugged hills and rusty signs. It was the kind of place that told you, practically screamed at you, to turn around and go back the way you came. But the car sped on, and the night was no less dark for the headlights’ illumination. Once in a while, a deer would jump out and run across the road, and the car would screech its’ brakes, stopping just short of striking the animal. The man in the car looked at one deer, and noticed in passing how strange the creature’s eyes were. Were they like a normal deer’s eyes at all? The woman with him screamed, seeing a shape moving next to the deer. “What is that? Look, Charles, look at that!” but the man saw nothing but the deer. “I don’t see anything that can’t be explained.” He said, lying, and not mentioning the eyes. The woman was short, with curly blonde hair and bright green eyes. The man, in contrast, was tall, with dark eyes, dark hair, and almost cruel features. Hawkish, as some called it! Yet, he had always been a gentle man and loved the outdoors as much as she did. Her name was Allison, and she was student of the occult, though her boyfriend did not believe in such things. As Charles resumed driving, letting the incident with the deer pass without any further remark, she watched the landscape they drove through go by, faster and faster as the vehicle picked up speed. “How long until we get to the lake?” She asked, and the man said to her, keeping his eyes on the road intently as he did so: “Oh, it won’t be long now, darling! Just a few more miles, that’s all… then we’ll be there.” But he said that an hour ago, or so it seemed. And now it was dark, and the fog and mist were very disturbing to Allison. She was not easily frightened, having seen much in her lifetime, but certain things… just did not feel right to her. As if on cue, a loud bump snapped her from a passing reverie in which she was nearly lost in her thoughts. They were driving over an old dirt road off the main highway, and going through some wild country. The woods seemed to be closing around the car as if to swallow it. The lake was at the very heart of those woods, and that is where they were going, that man and that woman. Those two travelers in the night, who in their innocence imagined: this would be a vacation. They were wrong. The deer sped away for a time before something dark closed in on it and snapped its’ neck with a sickening crunch. The animal made a horrible sound as it died, but the thing that had killed it could not have cared less. It was hungry, and angry! Ravenous, as all beasts of the woods sometimes can become. Man had intruded on its’ land far too often! Not any more.
The car stopped, and Allison could see… even in the midnight hour… the water of the lake and the shape of the cottage on its’ shore. “We’re here at last, honey!” Charles said, his face smiling cheerfully as he got out of the car. Allison followed him to the door of the cottage, but both of them stopped when they heard a loud howling seeming to come from someplace just close by, but not close enough to discern its’ origin. Allison looked at the building before her, and noted how normal and quite ordinary the small house seemed. Like any other vacation home, really! Charles had purchased it cheap, too cheap for her to understand how the original owners could have let it go like they did. She never met the pair, an old man and his equally ancient wife… but Charles had, and he said they seemed anxious to part with the property. “I wonder how old this place really is? It looks no older than a decade to me, but you never can tell.” She appeared thoughtful, musing on this as Charles replied: “I don’t know, the owners said it was build over an older structure though… whatever they meant by that.” Indeed, whatever that meant! Perhaps the cellar was older, or something of that sort. The woman grasped her shoulders, trying to warm herself. “The air is so cold all of a sudden! Let’s go inside and see if we can get warm.” And her boyfriend nodded in agreement. He unpacked the bags from the car, unlocked the cottage door, and the pair entered the structure. The door had an odd creak to it, as if the hinges were rusty, and Allison noticed one of the windows had scratch marks on its’ surface. She said nothing of it thought, assuming it had been the work of an animal, possibly a raccoon. The interior was small, only a few rooms, but all of them cozy enough and sparsely furnished with quaint décor. Charles took off his coat and hat, and set about starting a fire in the hearth. The fireplace itself was framed in wood and stone, very rustic looking, and over it was a clock that had stopped at precisely 2:00, whether in the morning or afternoon it was impossible to know. Whilst Charles was busy, Allison tried to set the clock but noticed it was broken beyond repair, the insides of it torn out. “I wonder why they would leave this old, broken clock here like this?” she asked her boyfriend, who was at a loss. “Maybe they thought they’d unload some of their old junk on us!” and he was laughing, enjoying his joke. Allison laughed also, and put the clock back after realizing it was pointless to tinker with it any further. She kicked off her boots, took off her jacket, and smooth out the wrinkles in her skirt as she adjusted her clothes after the long ride and having slept in the car on at least two occasions. “God, is it ever good to be out of that car!” She said, stretching as she walked about. God was not there. Not in that place, and not at that hour. Something watched from the woods, something feral, bestial, and not of this world.
After getting warm by the fire, the couple decided to explore the cottage and check out each of its’ rooms. Off of the main room with the fireplace, a door led into the kitchen and also opened into a small hallway with other doors. The scent of the wood was very heavy in the air, much like old colonial houses sometimes have about them in certain places. “At least they left plenty of food in the kitchen for us!” Allison noticed, as she saw the shelves filled with cans. Charles opened the door of the refrigerator and noticed a lot of game meat and such. “The old man must have been a hunter, look at all this! It’s fresh, too.” It seemed odd, actually, how perfectly prepared everything seemed to be. The two bedrooms odd the small hall had been comfortably appointed, and the bathroom at the end of the hall had plenty of toilet paper and other necessities. “Even toothpaste!” Charles jokingly noted. “It is almost like they wanted us to be welcome here.” The woman mused, tapping her fingernails on the doorframe, an act that obviously annoyed her boyfriend to no end. “What!” she chuckled, “It isn’t like I was running them down a chalkboard or something.” But there was a rather unsettling air about the place, something that was belied by the sheer normality of how everything appeared. After inspecting the ground floor, it was decided the two would investigate the cellar, which was down a flight of steps through a door off the main room of the cottage. Cobwebs were everywhere and it was pitch black. Charles had brought a flashlight with him, and shone it before him as he led the way down. The air had a musty odor to it, and Allison coughed a bit from it. The couple had not said a word in some time, and the tension about the cottage was palpable. They could sense it, and it disturbed them. The cellar was filled with all the usual old crates and boxes, and barrels filled with junk. Perhaps much of it was useful junk, but junk it was nonetheless. The cellar was all one large room that was only marginally smaller than the building above it. At the far end of it was a small… shrine of sorts… set up. An old oak table carved with strange designs, upon which were some grotesque looking statues. There were stains that looked like bloodstains, and old leather-bound books stacked in the center of a pentagram that was carved across the tabletop. A small silver chalice, otherwise quite ordinary, sat upon the book stack with an ornate dagger leaning out of it. “Charles, look! There objects… what were the previous owners into?” And the man looked truly at a loss for words. He moved the chalice and began to skim through the books, but could make no sense of them. They were all in long-dead languages and filled with very strange designs, and horrid illustrations depicting demons torturing damned souls. He left them where they lay after paging through them, but the dagger… called… to him. He heard voices, whispering soft.
Back in the main room, Charles seemed fascinated with the chalice and dagger from the cellar. “I’ll bet this dagger is worth quite a bit of money! Look at this craftsmanship.” And indeed it was beautiful! Silver blade, gold hilt, serpentine design all along the handle, and an emerald set into the crosspiece. “That was a dark shrine, darling! A Dark shrine!” Allison stated, trying to impress upon her boyfriend the seriousness of it. “I mean, I have done some dark shit in my time, but that was… it was utterly horrible. And I could sense the evil in it!” But Charles seemed not to be listening to her, as his eyes were held by the emerald’s glitter, made more magnificent by the firelight. Irritated, Allison went to take the dagger from his hand, but the man grew agitated at that and resisted. “Charles, just put it down and listen to what I am trying to tell you!” Suddenly, he felt ashamed and laid the weapon aside. “I am sorry darling, I don’t know what I was doing for a moment there. What were you saying?” But the woman did not feel like repeating herself. Instead, she uttered an exasperated sound and walked off toward the kitchen to prepare dinner. Outside, something was scratching at one of the cottage windows but Charles did not notice it because the dagger had entranced him once again. Allison ate alone, her boyfriend deciding not to join her. “What do I even see in him?” She asked herself. Though he had never behaved this aloof before. Wiping her mouth with a napkin, the woman decided to see what was in the attic. The only room place they had not examined thus far. “Charles, let’s go and see what’s upstairs!” And that tore him away from the dagger long enough to toss his flashlight at her when she walked into the room. “Go then!” He snapped at her. “I’m busy.” And what he was doing horrified her terribly. He was carving strange runes into the palms of his hands. A man who had never shown even the slightest interest in Allison’s occult fascinations… and here he was, carving into his very flesh the strangest designs she had ever seen. “Honey stop, what are you doing to yourself!” She cried, and tried to grab the dagger from his hands. His response was even more terrifying: he slashed at her wildly, just narrowly missing Allison’s face. She slapped him, trying to restore sense into him, but he slashed again. “Get out! Get away from me!” He shrieked, and Allison, in sudden fear of the man she had loved for so long… bolted for the trap door that held the attic stairs folded up. She opened the door, folded down the steps, and clambered upstairs, turning on the flashlight as she did so. She pulled the stairs up behind her, so her suddenly insane boyfriend could not follow her. The attic was dark, but outside the night was far darker. What was the hour anyway? It had to be at least an hour… after midnight, after the witching hour, as they called it. But worse things were yet to come! Allison was not prepared for the sheer horror.
Part Two: Insanity
The attic held chains suspended from the rafters above, and manacled to some of them were human remains, bloody and foul smelling, with scraps of flesh still attached and torn clothing evident on the decomposed forms. “Oh my God!” Allison screamed. And how she screamed at that sight! “Oh my God! What is this place?” For all around her, the walls ceased to exist and flames, roaring more lustily than those in the fireplace downstairs… towering flames had replaced any semblance of structure. “I must be going crazy! This must be a hallucination.” She kept thinking to herself. She had never done drugs, never drank any alcohol… she could not account for this warping of reality through logic. She rubbed her eyes, and then suddenly the chains were empty of the corpses that had been there before. And the flames were gone! She could not go and tell Charles, not right now, not until he came back to his senses from whatever madness was upon him. As soon as this thought went through her mind, Allison could hear her boyfriend screaming down below, as if he was being horribly killed by some terrible… what? She had to know, and so she opened the trap door and clambered back downstairs, making her way to the fireplace where Charles was burning his left hand. She gasped, and screamed for him to stop, but his face was no longer human. It was twisted into a grin, but one that was horrifying to look at because he had cut his mouth to enlarge it. Blood oozed down his face, and his widened maw was: like a monster’s, no longer as a man’s. “I can’t… stop!” He said, clearly in agony. “I would… if I could!” and the smell of burning flesh filled the house’s air, mixing with the pleasant scent of the burning wood to create a new, sickening smell. Deciding she had to stop her man from doing himself any further harm, Allison struck him on the back of his head with the flashlight, attempting to knock him out. Weakened by all of his excessive self-mutilation, the man was knocked out by the sudden blow in an instant. “Oh my God, I hope I didn’t kill him!” Allison said aloud, dragging his body back away from the fire and laying it on the couch near one of the windows. He was breathing so she knew he had not died. But he would surely get an infection or even bleed to death if she did not act soon! So she ran to the bathroom to retrieve some medical supplies… bandages, disinfecting agents, painkillers, a needle and thread to repair Charles’ face… anything she thought could be of some use. But when she got back to where she had left her man… he was gone. “No!” She screamed, and stormed into each of the rooms looking for him. He was nowhere upstairs, and must have gone down into the cellar since the attic entrance was untouched but the cellar door was wide open. The clock struck two. How it did so, made no logical sense, but strike it did, and it could be heard in every room as if each room held that clock.
“Wait a moment! That clock is broken.” Allison said, realizing how crazy it was she was talking to herself. She ran to the clock, which was indeed still broken but which had just chimed the hour nonetheless. Allison feared she was losing her mind, but feared more what had become of Charles. She stormed back to the hall and then downstairs, brandishing the flashlight before her to light the way. Why had Charles come down here in the pitch dark, with no light? But there he was, kneeling before that terrible shrine and chanting in some foreign tongue. What was it? It sounded almost like Arabic… or Aramaic, more correctly. His charred hand was lying flat upon the pentagram, and his other hand grasped the dagger as if it were a part of him now. The silver chalice lay to the left of the pentagram, and was filled with blood from Charles’ mouth. The blood was still running quite thick, and there was pus as well. His back was to her; she could easily strike him again if she moved silently. She turned off the flashlight and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She moved without making a sound, until she could hear the man breathing in the dark right in front of her. Her hand was trembling as she raised the flashlight to strike once again. Suddenly, her former boyfriend… now something else entirely… spun around, his eyes glowing with a pale green flame in each vacant socket where his eyes used to be. He had clearly cut them out. Allison screamed at the awful sight and struck Charles across the face as hard as she could. “Stop it! Stop doing these things to: yourself!” she was yelling, but he was not himself any longer. “Charles isn’t here, Allison!” a serpentine voice hissed from that ruined mouth of his. And he tried to bite her with teeth filed to fang-like points. He had been busy remaking himself in the image of the one who now dwelt within him. Blood spat out from the fiend’s face as the woman struck repeatedly, again and again. But no matter how hard she struck it, the thing that had been Charles was unmoved by it. “Far too late for that, little girl!” Said the snake-like voice again. The monster charged at her, trying to stab her with the dagger. Allison broke free and ran back to the stairs, turning on her flashlight. She sped up, spun around, and slammed the door shut behind her. There was no way to lock the door, but nearby were several bookshelves and other furniture, which the desperate woman hastily threw over to block the door. “Let’s see him try to…” but suddenly, the door shook as the monster below pounded upon it, shrieking in an inhuman way that was difficult for Allison to bear listening to. She grabbed he ears, screaming: “Shut up! Shut up!” but the thing that had been the love of her life did not care. It howled like a wolf, or perhaps more like a jackal. It howled loud! From somewhere else, other voices were howling, laughing, cackling, and screeching along with him. A true cacophony!
Try as it might, the awful monster could not manage to break free of the cellar, and Allison went to the kitchen to fetch a steak knife. “Something sharp, just in case!” She muttered to herself as she picked it up. She offered a prayer to several of her patron goddesses, and ran some cold water from the sink over the blade, consecrating it, attempting to somehow bless it as best as her magic-craft would allow. She was ready, at least, in case that thing broke free. She decided to go into the main room and wait by the fireplace for the inevitable moment to occur, when she noticed one of the windows was utterly shattered, the glass sharps and pieces of wood from the frame lying all over the floor where something had broken through and gotten into the cottage. There was a definite thumping sound coming from one of the bedrooms, and though the half-shut door Allison could make out the terrible, dark, shadowy shape she had seen on the road earlier. She was breathing hard and heavily, panting from fear. Whatever it was, it was some sort of demon! Nothing of its’ features could be seen, except the glinting of fangs in the moonlight and the glow of fiery red eyes. The sounds it made as it feasted on the carcass of the deer it had killed earlier, were horrible. The head of the deer then gazed at Allison and the dead animal opened, its’ mouth and shrieked in a totally human voice: “Help me, Allison! Don’t let it get me!” and the voice was that of Charles, as it sounded before he became… whatever it was he was now. Allison clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent herself from screaming, and turned away, closing her eyes as she walked down the hall. “No… no…. no!” she kept saying. “This cannot be real, this cannot be happening!” But it was real, and it was happening. The thing in the cellar was still pounding on the door, and the makeshift barricade moved every time its’ claws struck the wood. It was still howling, and the deer was still calling for help, and the demon was still licking its’ chops as it feasted on the deer’s carcass. All of this was too much for Allison to take any more of, so she ran out the door of the cottage and made her way back to the car. “Damn it! Charles has the keys in his pants’ pocket!” she thought to herself, as she pounded on the hood of the vehicle in frustration. She had to take her chances with the woods, and attempt to find some trace of civilization. But who would believe her, even if she could find help? But first, she had to escape, before she could even consider what she would tell anyone. She ran past the lake, down the old dirt road, and hoped no savage animals or horrible demons would find her. The woods… grew darker! The wind blew stronger, and small animals watched, eyes beady with low cunning. A spirit was at work, in hidden realms.
The road seemed far more twisted and winding than she remembered it, and the woods seemed to grow closer and closer about her as she ran. Allison could barely make out the road after a while, as brambles, thorns, and thickets closed in, forming barricades to keep her confused and impede her progress. “Are these woods… alive?” She mused in her mind, but she knew it was impossible. Then again, everything she had experienced tonight had been impossible! Suddenly, all about her were towering walls of vegetation that seemed almost solid, like hedges. The forest shifted, morphed, and changed the more she tried to get away. The road eventually led back to the lake and the cottage once again, in a big circle. “No!” she screamed, her voice almost a howl of anguish and frustration. She was tired of running. Tired and angry, and determined to do something, however futile it might be. She kicked open the cottage door, stormed in, and entered the bedroom where the demon had been… only to find it empty. No deer remains, no demon. Nothing was out of the ordinary. The window was back to normal also, unbroken as though nothing had come through it at all. Checking on the cellar barricade, Allison found it to be intact… though the awful pounding had ceased. “Maybe he’s given up, realized he’s not getting up here.” She thought to herself silently. The clock then chimed the hour again, and it chimed 2:00 in the morning. Even though it had to have been well past that time by now! And as soon as the chiming ceased, the thing in the cellar resumed pounding on the door. It shrieked and moaned, and in between it mimicked Charles’ voice, saying: “Please, darling! Save me! Save me!” And by this time, Allison was crying, her tears falling down her cheeks. “I can’t, honey! I just can’t!” she yelled back. “You have to stop yourself!” she yelled, but the thing’s voice grew more and more animalistic, more guttural and unintelligible. If this was some kind of insanity, she was suffering from it also. How else to explain the things she had seen? “I’m going totally crazy… I must be having a nervous breakdown or something.” She whispered under her breath. Suddenly, the thing broke free from the cellar, breaking the barricade as the cellar door was cast open. “Give us a kiss, little girl!” It shrieked with a perverse tone in its’ voice. “I’m a grown woman!” she replied, “And my name is Allison!” and with that, she slashed at the monster to keep it at bay. The consecrated knife glowed a faint blue, and when it grazed the monster’s flesh, the former man screamed in mortal pain. “Bitch! I’ll make you feel my pain.” It shrieked, and the desperate woman struck again with the knife, slashing and stabbing. The thing tried to strike back with its’ dagger, but it was too slow and finally fell backward. Blood and other fluids spattered from the creature’s mouth, pouring out, oozing down. Had that thing ever been… human?
Part Three: Awakening
As he fell backwards, Charles took the dagger and sliced his own stomach open with it, pulling out his intestines and other organs. From the gruesome wound emerged thousands of maggots, flies, and other insects… as if he had been long dead and in an advanced stage of decay. Allison vomited at the sight, and turned away. She could not look, but then snapping and squishing sounds made her dare to look just the same… and she saw a black, shadowy form emerge from the gaping hole in Charles’ stomach. The demon literally tore its’ way out of him, like a child being given birth but more violently… as if the child was tearing its’ way free of the womb. But that was no child, and Charles was no womb. The shadow demon took on a more tangible form, and all Allison could see was a mass of bubbling, amorphous flesh, tentacles, teeth, eyes, and what looked like faces. Charles’ face was there, as were the faces of an old man and an ancient looking woman. The two former owners of the cottage! The fanged maw of the beast was filled with blood, and the flesh of it was slick with the blood of Allison’s slain boyfriend. She was screaming at the sight of this thing, and she was slashing at it with her knife. In one of its’ claws, the demon held the emerald dagger and stuck it hard into Allison’s upper right arm. “Oh God!” She yelled in pain, for it felt like she had been burned… or perhaps even jolted by electricity. Blood tricked forth from the wound the creature inflicted upon her, and between that and the scent of her own vomit, Allison felt quite dizzy. The horrible thing was preparing to strike again, and seizing the opportunity, Allison sped behind the bulky mass of the thing… all eight feet tall of it… and she stabbed her consecrated blade deep into the thing’s back. It shrieked and howled in pain, and dropped its’ dagger unto the floor. Acting quickly, the woman lunged for it: and ran back down the cellar stairs to escape the monster for a bit and so take a moment to collect herself and regain her wits. She now had the evil dagger in her possession, and could hear a voice audibly whispering to her from the emerald upon it. “The old man and his cow of a wife used to sacrifice to us here… they did… and now we are hungry again. Feed us! Feed us or we will feast on you!” And the voice was a blend of many voices. A legion, of sorts! Allison went back to the dark shrine, where the silver chalice still lay next to the pentagram. What was the significance of that chalice? Allison wondered, placing the dagger back into it: as it had been when they first found it. But nothing happened. “I should have known that would be too easy!” She muttered, and took the dagger back out of the silver cup again. The demon was suddenly right behind her, its’ faces cackling with inhuman glee: “Yes, good, we want you here!” She felt one of its’ tentacles reaching up her skirt, slithering swiftly across the flesh of her thighs, seeking out her more tender places. She screamed, grabbed the disgusting tentacle, and tore it fast away from her before it could molest her any further.
How had it moved so silently for something so large? Allison struck at it with the dagger, but the thing deflected her blows and with a clawed hand twisted the blade around until her hand was facing back, with the dagger pointing toward her face. It pushed her hand and the dagger, and the blade scratched her left cheek, drawing blood. A drop of the blood, by simple chance, flicked back and landed in the chalice, which seemed to cause the demon pain. “My blood… that chalice… that is the answer!” and so Allison broke free from the creature’s grasp and ran over, drawing the dagger over her palms, cutting them open and letting the blood fill the silver chalice. The demon seemed immobilized by this, and then Allison thought to put the dagger into the cup so that the emerald was submerged in her blood, the blade pointing upward out of the chalice. That seemed to be the final straw, for with that the demon began to smoke and steam, its’ flesh falling away in hunks. It was as if the creature were decomposing before Allison’s eyes, and when at last it lay dead at her feet, it was not the decomposed and burned corpse of a demon at all… but two corpses: that of an old man and an ancient woman. The two former owners of the cottage! Now murdered at the desperate woman’s hands. She knelt before their bodies, sobbing. “Oh God, what have I done? What have I done!” as the wound she had taken before began to throb and burn even worse. She got to her feet stumbled up the stairs, and saw the gutted body of Charles lying there, his mouth gashed open in that ruined grimace. He was covered in stab wounds and slash marks. Had she killed him too, and concocted the fantasy of the demon to block it from her mind? As she clearly had, with the old man and his wife! It was like she was awakening from a dream, or some horrible nightmare, and she was awakening from one delusion into another. The attic stairs suddenly fell down of their own accord, and for no reason she could think of, Allison clambered upstairs. If only to get away from the scene of her grisly crime! The chains and the corpses were back, as was the fire. Reality was warping again, and this time the woman did not care. She took off her skirt and blouse, and undergarments, so that she was totally naked, and began to slash and stab at her body with the dagger. Why was she still carrying that accursed dagger? Had she not left it in the chalice! But no, it was in her hand, and she was carving at herself with it, lovingly, lustily, and hungrily. Soon, she was covered from head to toe in cuts, gashes, and slices. The chains began to move on their own, and encircled her body, cold on her bare skin. Cold, yet comforting. They had a certain bitter reality to them, something the cottage and its’ countless horrors no longer possessed for her. She felt like a child safe in its’ mother’s womb, free from all the cares of the world for but a time. She was not safe!
Allison did not know how long she hung in those chains in the Attic, but when she finally came to her senses she realized no chains were there at all, and she had been lying on the floor rather than being suspended from the rafters as she had at first imagined. The fire was gone, the chains too, and no corpses were there to be seen. All was quiet, and outside there was the sound of wind howling. “Stop that! Shut up!” she screamed. She had enough of howling, for one night. But the wind did not care, and continued to shriek and was its’ want. “Oh my head!” Allison complained, noticing she was unharmed and fully clothed. The trap door was open, the attic stairs down, and Charles was calling her. “Honey, what is taking you so long? Come on down, it’s almost three in the morning and you’ve been up there all night!” Had she dreamed everything? Hoping that was the case, she called out cheerfully: “I’m coming down now, sweetie!” and hurried down, slipping and tripping as she stumbled over the man’s gutted corpse that still lay upon the cottage floor, right where it had fallen. “No! It can’t be!” Allison wailed, but then she noticed the corpse was not that of Charles, but that of the old man. Nearby was the corpse of the old man’s wife, who was gutted similarly. Both had been gutted like a hunter guts a deer. “Charles! Come and look… there’s been a murder!” but her boyfriend was not answering. “Charles, didn’t you hear me? I said, there’s been…” but he was there, right behind her, the evil dagger in his hand. “I know. A murder!” he sneered, and stabbed the dagger into the same place where Allison had been wounded previously. She mercifully passed out, everything going dark. “A murder! A murder!” Those words kept echoing in her mind, until at last she heard and thought nothing at all. When she awoke, she was lying on the couch in the main room of the cottage. The clock kept chiming over and over, even though it was broken. The hour was perpetually 2:00 in the morning. Charles was nowhere to be seen, and the fire was totally out in the hearth. The air was cold, as cold as the grave, and a thick mist was beginning to enter the house from under the front door, and between the cracks in the wooden walls here and there. The carcass of a deer had been dumped near the door to the kitchen, and when she entered the kitchen Allison saw the old man and his wife standing there, preparing a meal from the deer’s bloody guts. “Aren’t you hungry, Allison? Come, join us for a meal!” the old man said, a butcher’s cleaver in his hand. He struck it down, and it fell upon Charles’ dead body, which was strapped to the kitchen table. The old man was cutting off pieces of Charles’ flesh and giving them to his wife, who then threw them into a stewpot to be cooked. The witch-like ancient hag took a bite from a piece of the dead man’s liver, savoring the taste of it. Allison then screamed, and fainted unable to cope.
It was dawn, and the police soon arrived at the old cottage by the lake. The place had been there a good decade: build by an old hunter and his wife… a reclusive couple, a rather peculiar couple by all accounts. They routinely came by to check on things when the old couple was away, since the place was otherwise ripe for burglars. The police car stopped by the lake, right next to the strange car that was parked outside the cottage. The officers noticed the out of state license plates, and decided to investigate. Inside the cottage, they found the old man and his wife dead, gutted. Murdered. They also found a man’s body in even worse condition… his face had been hacked into a horrible grin, his intestines torn out, and pieces of his flesh removed. The kitchen was a disgusting sight, a stewpot filled with human flesh… blood everywhere. But there was no trace of the perpetrator of these crimes! The attic was empty… but in the cellar was a strange shrine. The murders may have been ritualistic in nature, the police officers realized. “Didn’t the old man sell this place to an out of state couple?” the younger officer, a rookie, asked. And the older officer replied: “That’s right! He did sell the place. I wonder why he and his wife decided to come back? I’ll bet the murderer is the other half of that out of state couple. We’re looking for a woman, I suspect. Wonder why she killed her boyfriend?” The rookie then said, stifling the urge to throw up: “Killed him and ate parts of him, by the look of it.” Suddenly, a loud shriek pierced the air and the cellar door slammed shut, plunging the room into utter darkness. The rookie turned on his flashlight and spun it around, but no one seemed to be there. “Hello? Come on out miss! We know you’re there.” And she was there, but she was not alone. The two police officers screamed at the sight of the demon, as the shadowy creature savaged them with terrifying ferocity. They drew their guns, shots rang out… but those shots missed their mark entirely. Allison smiled as she watched the demon feast upon the two police officers. They were so wrong… she was not the one who ate parts of Charles; that was the demon that had done that! The demon, that had made first Charles and then her, its’ servant. Soon, it would have enough power to bring others of its’ kind into this reality through the portal in the attic. Allison would lure more visitors here, and the demon would feed! “I hunger!” It growled, and the mad and twisted thing that had been a woman said in an insane, cackling voice: “Let me go and get you some food, then!” and she left the cellar, took the car keys from Charles’ pocket, and locked the cottage before leaving. This time, the woods would let her go, because she would be back soon with new guests. And each night, at exactly 2:00, the demon would feast and feast well. It was her cottage now, hers and hers alone. Hers and her new man’s… even if he was, in fact, a demon.
Published 30th Dec 2012
| Edited 1st Jan 2013
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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30th Dec 2012 10:50pm
“Give us a kiss, little girl!” It shrieked with a perverse tone in its’ voice. “I’m a grown woman!” she replied, “And my name is Allison!” and with that, she slashed at the monster to keep it at bay. The consecrated knife glowed a faint blue, and when it grazed the monster’s flesh, the former man screamed in mortal pain. “Bitch! I’ll make you feel my pain.”
Sooo... this isn't so much a comment on the content of your story as much a comment from the waaaay back of this reader's brain, where awareness of the author behind the words stays on. Stories are conversations to me. Maybe to other readers they're one-sided. Must be simple, but I can't help but to hear what's unwritten sometimes. As a transgendered woman you must've busted out an intense level of strength to have to be who you were even in the wrong body and while I have never stood in your shoes, I have meditated upon the view in order to gain a better clue. I've tried to empty my preconcieved notions of physical form enough to better understand what it is to be a whole and complete person who mother nature put in a role where they have no choice but to explore the polar opposites of humanity, hold them together and be fully balanced. A taoist meditation, after a few such sessions, followed by reading your work it seems as if a greeeeat plateau of inner strength must've been reached when you were able to fully be yourself.
"I'm a grown woman! My name is Allison!" This world is aggressively male-dominated. Aggression isn't in and of itself a problem. Mother nature is vicious. There is, however, an incredible insecurity in male aggression as a sole tool of command and dominance. Coupled with the fear of the unknown, the mystery of life and creation, the absense of ability to relate to the makers of life oft leads to a mind-meld, blending of such xenophobic self-doubt until as a knee-jerk reaction it comes back out again as "Villify the women!" "They seem weak, yet they can do what we can't!" "Hence we MUST project their perceived physical weakness as an intrinsic inferiority in order to cover up our own insecurity!" A projection of self-collection like early 3-D. (Holograms of 3 kinds had to be overlapped in order to form the earliest 3-D images. Tech-wise it's pretty cool, but the same concept applied on an emotional-behavioral level helps to explain why so many deluded pituitary cases bash what they see in the mirror by bringing women low.)
It's fascinating to me henceforth to see a character you invented who stands up and says "Hey! Testerodemon! FUCK YOU! I'm a grown woman and if you're in such agony that you have to feed on me? I'll cut you up first!" Also, I guess I relate 'cuz that itty bitty rant up there is alot of what remains subtextual when I apply a single broad brushstroke to rhyme and flay and expose Patriarchy in a single line as I often do.
To see and feel it delivered, especially when tackling something like a enter-the-mysterious depths frame of horror is deeply comforting to me. Horror-woods is suuuuuch a steadily used frame. Sam Raimi possessed his audiences fear forever with Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. Your story when it came into the woods brought to my mind the cabin scenes with the woods coming to life first brought up that way. Then diverged in a wood, not into 2 roads like Robert Frost imagined...
...but a twisting bramble, aspiring unto wrath like the briar patch that Brer Rabbit was wary enough to make his habitat. That looong outlasts the same tired romp through the fire swamp that lets others ride like beginning of ACT II in Princess Bride. No real fear inside when the forest is just more of this...
...mortal mystery... a portal into history... few have the gumption to plow into the renunciation of the disavowed...
...but that's all the same scene. Exploration of foreign lands. Scary. Conquer them. Okay. It worked for most of European history as a way of justifying the extermination of indigenous people for imperialistic or religious purposes. Wait, that was redundant. Anyways, from a martial "We don't know what's in there, but it's scary and womb-like and dark so let's bring fire to it." frame the forest-coming-to-life-and-then-individual-human-life-is-possessed thing? Hellraiser, Hansel and Gretel, Cabin Fever, Troll Hunter, it's all been done, but always from the same feel. I like reading the same image but from a synergistic "You can't escape... modern steel and tech and close-mindedness and brutish, alpha dog bullheadedness is your inner WEAKNESS and FOIBLE and not a secret weapon to foil the unknown threatening that boils inside of your own recollection...?
Especially with such an abusive character to mention? That's a twist that even this HorrorJunkie wouldn't have come up with. This was cool! Thank you Ms. Ashton!
I'll prolly have more to relate and say when I re-read this a few times, but I just clocked in and need to get to my actual gig and not read horror, even though this was beautiful. So I will return.
OH! And rarely do I see typos in your work but here was one...
The carcass of a deep had been dumped near the door to the kitchen,
Sooo... this isn't so much a comment on the content of your story as much a comment from the waaaay back of this reader's brain, where awareness of the author behind the words stays on. Stories are conversations to me. Maybe to other readers they're one-sided. Must be simple, but I can't help but to hear what's unwritten sometimes. As a transgendered woman you must've busted out an intense level of strength to have to be who you were even in the wrong body and while I have never stood in your shoes, I have meditated upon the view in order to gain a better clue. I've tried to empty my preconcieved notions of physical form enough to better understand what it is to be a whole and complete person who mother nature put in a role where they have no choice but to explore the polar opposites of humanity, hold them together and be fully balanced. A taoist meditation, after a few such sessions, followed by reading your work it seems as if a greeeeat plateau of inner strength must've been reached when you were able to fully be yourself.
"I'm a grown woman! My name is Allison!" This world is aggressively male-dominated. Aggression isn't in and of itself a problem. Mother nature is vicious. There is, however, an incredible insecurity in male aggression as a sole tool of command and dominance. Coupled with the fear of the unknown, the mystery of life and creation, the absense of ability to relate to the makers of life oft leads to a mind-meld, blending of such xenophobic self-doubt until as a knee-jerk reaction it comes back out again as "Villify the women!" "They seem weak, yet they can do what we can't!" "Hence we MUST project their perceived physical weakness as an intrinsic inferiority in order to cover up our own insecurity!" A projection of self-collection like early 3-D. (Holograms of 3 kinds had to be overlapped in order to form the earliest 3-D images. Tech-wise it's pretty cool, but the same concept applied on an emotional-behavioral level helps to explain why so many deluded pituitary cases bash what they see in the mirror by bringing women low.)
It's fascinating to me henceforth to see a character you invented who stands up and says "Hey! Testerodemon! FUCK YOU! I'm a grown woman and if you're in such agony that you have to feed on me? I'll cut you up first!" Also, I guess I relate 'cuz that itty bitty rant up there is alot of what remains subtextual when I apply a single broad brushstroke to rhyme and flay and expose Patriarchy in a single line as I often do.
To see and feel it delivered, especially when tackling something like a enter-the-mysterious depths frame of horror is deeply comforting to me. Horror-woods is suuuuuch a steadily used frame. Sam Raimi possessed his audiences fear forever with Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. Your story when it came into the woods brought to my mind the cabin scenes with the woods coming to life first brought up that way. Then diverged in a wood, not into 2 roads like Robert Frost imagined...
...but a twisting bramble, aspiring unto wrath like the briar patch that Brer Rabbit was wary enough to make his habitat. That looong outlasts the same tired romp through the fire swamp that lets others ride like beginning of ACT II in Princess Bride. No real fear inside when the forest is just more of this...
...mortal mystery... a portal into history... few have the gumption to plow into the renunciation of the disavowed...
...but that's all the same scene. Exploration of foreign lands. Scary. Conquer them. Okay. It worked for most of European history as a way of justifying the extermination of indigenous people for imperialistic or religious purposes. Wait, that was redundant. Anyways, from a martial "We don't know what's in there, but it's scary and womb-like and dark so let's bring fire to it." frame the forest-coming-to-life-and-then-individual-human-life-is-possessed thing? Hellraiser, Hansel and Gretel, Cabin Fever, Troll Hunter, it's all been done, but always from the same feel. I like reading the same image but from a synergistic "You can't escape... modern steel and tech and close-mindedness and brutish, alpha dog bullheadedness is your inner WEAKNESS and FOIBLE and not a secret weapon to foil the unknown threatening that boils inside of your own recollection...?
Especially with such an abusive character to mention? That's a twist that even this HorrorJunkie wouldn't have come up with. This was cool! Thank you Ms. Ashton!
I'll prolly have more to relate and say when I re-read this a few times, but I just clocked in and need to get to my actual gig and not read horror, even though this was beautiful. So I will return.
OH! And rarely do I see typos in your work but here was one...
The carcass of a deep had been dumped near the door to the kitchen,
1st Jan 2013 7:08am
Firstly, thanks for pointing out that typo, it has since been fixed to read "deer" as it should have. Indeed, I do not oft have typos slip through, but I was writing this at an ungodly hour of the morning (pun intended) so it just of snuck in there. ;) But, those things happen! I am pleased to read your thoughts on my story, Loki, and you are very perceptive to notice so much.
You know, I did base Allison a *lot* on myself! I had in fact wondered if anyone would notice, and I am glad you did since it was very subtle the way I did it. I did a similar thing with my short story "Scarlet Steel and Crimson Cults" where I based the hermaphrodite anti-heroine of that tale on myself as well. If you enjoyed this journey into horror, you'd definitely love that one too. It is set in medieval times, as opposed to modern like this one... but it has very similar themes to this story.
The demon, and how it absorbed its' victims into itself, was in many ways representative of the whole of society and how it seeks to absorb what it wants, reject what it does not want, and preserve its' patriarchal same-ness at the cost of the individual sometimes. When Allison stood up to the demon, she was standing up to all of that. She was defying organized religion and its' patriarchy, society and its' conventional mores, and the masculine dominating principle that would subjugate what is knows it cannot fight against - free will, which in Allison's case came from not just a realization of her own inner strength but also from overcoming her own weaknesses. In being bound to the demon at the end, while still being herself and maintaining all of her strength, that was a sort of metaphor for being bound (whether we like it or not) within the system of society as it is today and having to work for change from within. In a way, we all have to make a pact with some darkness in this day and age... but whether we can remain ourselves at the end of that pact… that is what is most important. And Allison, like me, remains herself no matter what. Perhaps she has been to Hell and back, and maybe is a bit of demon herself at the end... but her strength and her will remain, and you can imagine her going on to eventually mayhaps break free of the demon and escaping the cottage once and for all. Though did her experience there mark her for life? I believe all our experiences mark us. Not just for one life bur for all eternity. Allison is not so much murdering people in this story, but in fact those people are symbols for society, for “the system” and for oppression and suppression in general. She is a trying to break free at all costs, and because she is a fighter, a warrior queen at heart, she is in mortal combat against these symbols of a society that does not care about her, only about what it wants from her and expects from her. As a Transgender Woman, I’ve had to fight against the stereotypes, the bigotry and prejudice, and even sometimes I had to stand up to members of my own immediate family who hated me for choosing to be myself, for being the woman I am today. But in standing up to all that, I grew stronger and overcame the odds. Yet I had balance that overcoming with having to live in this society…. such as it is today… and with having to make peace with even those who hate me in my family. Since you can’t pick and choose your family. In the end, they came to respect me as the woman I became and now they love me for who I am, for being Jessica, and they cannot imagine how I ever existed before. So in a parallel way, I had to make a pact with the “demons” in my own life in order to achieve the freedom I was seeking all along. Allison’s moment of self-mutilation and allowing herself to become chained have personal parallels too… I have had some self-destructive moments in the past; back when I used to hate my body and blame my soul for being different, and which led me to take things out on myself harshly. But then I had to stop and reflect, and when I did I realized I was not to blame because I was different. Rather, it was society’s oppression of people who are different, that was the true culprit. So what did I do? I came out, went full-time and fully embraced my female nature, becoming the woman you know me as now. Allison’s moment in chains, is her time to stop, reflect on everything, and discover the truth about herself and the world around her… since the demon is trying its’ best to deceive her, to make her think she is the one to blame for everything in life. In many ways, she never escapes that completely, and in many ways Transgender Women never escape that fully either. Because there are always people who will try to make you feel like a “freak” or a “thing” both being names I have been called in the past, along with worse names still. But you can’t fight the world all you can do is prove you are strong by surviving and being yourself no matter what. So this is a horror story about survival, not really about escaping per se. So at the end of this terrible night, Allison had had to strike a balance, make a bargain for her freedom, and find happiness even in the face of torment. So those themes are very near and dear to my heart, and something I strongly identify with. My story “Scarlet Steel and Crimson Cults” has a similar type of segment before the ending, where the heroine must work within a wicked system (a cult) in order to remain free.
You know, the woods are very feminine! They are nature’s wombs… just as caves and tunnels are like wombs. When one enters the woods, one must enter with respect because there are countless ways to meet one’s end in the wild. I grew up loving to hike, and enjoying the woods. I used to go mountain climbing a lot in my teen years, too! I had some close calls, almost got killed a few times, but I came away from it with respect, adoration, and love for nature. I believe that when you respect nature, nature knows and does not destroy you because it respects you in return. Those who lose their lives in the woods, oft do so out of carelessness. Provoking wild animals, entering their territory, or taking crazy chances like trying to climb just that much higher and then falling to their doom! People can be very stupid sometimes, and so the woods and the mountains can be places of dire peril. But as you noted, it is the unknown that people fear the most… though I have found that most of what people truly fear… they bring with them. I have, in my time, actually had powerful spiritual and religious experiences in the woods, and those experiences changed me greatly in many ways. For the better! But nature is first and foremost… a living force, and so in my story I portray it as having a low cunning, a kind of sentient intelligence that is not something that can be overcome. People always try to overcome nature, but the secret is not to overcome it at all, but to strike a balance with it. And that is another meaning to what Allison has done in this story… at the end, she has struck a balance with the woods, and the woods recognize that and finally let her leave (though she must return). My spiritual beliefs contain a certain element of reverence for nature, and in fact my first spiritual path I chose was that of Druidry, back before I discovered deeper, darker secrets that opened up other paths for me far beyond that. So a lot of my poetry contains a strong sense of nature possessing magic and power. Which it truly does, since all living things have a life force, and that life force contains power! So there is that bit of occult wisdom in this story too: Allison being into the occult, as she is, though not manifesting all she knows at one time. Rather, she ekes out her power and knowledge as the story progresses. When she calls out to God as she does at times, she is showing that she believes in something more than herself. She is spiritual and religious, but her path is a dark one all the same. Just as my path. So there are a lot of metaphors, parallels and hidden symbolisms in this story that have meaning beyond the obvious. Horror is a difficult genre to do original, but this story was.
The twists, as you noted, were quite different from the typical horror tropes and indeed Allison suffers a LOT of abuse in her misadventure, before the end. The worst being at the hands of her former lover and then from the demon that had been: possessing him. I was abused several times in the past. In relationships, at the hands of the nuns when I was in Catholic school as a child… when I was in a military program when I was twelve years old… all were times when I was physically, emotionally, mentally: and in other ways, abused. I could have let myself be a victim and break down, hating myself, blaming myself, and going crazy. But I overcame it and decided to not let my abusers be the victors. There were times when I lost myself to anger because of what I went through, and I had to find a lot of serenity and inner peace in order to banish those feelings of anger… so Allison’s lashing out, that comes from a personal place too. We’ve all, I’d imagine, had times in our life when we felt like lashing out. Either at people who have hurt us, or at the world, mayhap even at ourselves. So Allison’s killing spree in this story is her moment of totally losing it! It is a metaphor for almost losing yourself to the torment you have been through in life. Most Transgender Women have been through a lot, psychologically. We are among the most abused, misunderstood, and reviled kinds of women there are. In movies, you rarely see a positive portrayal of us, and so there is a great deal of prejudice because people fear what they do not understand, and they hate what they fear because they fear it. I am open about being Transgender because I am also outspoken and a bit of an activist in my own life for my rights and by extension for the rights of others like me. Sometimes, taking positive action by simply educating people… that can be a kind of lashing out against the system, but of a very positive and peaceful kind. So there is that layer of meaning here too! I’m glad you noticed these points of order here, so we could have this deep discussion about what some might at first assume to be a simple horror story. You have a quick wit, and a mind that picks up on the hidden quite nicely!
Thanks for commenting, my friend.
You know, I did base Allison a *lot* on myself! I had in fact wondered if anyone would notice, and I am glad you did since it was very subtle the way I did it. I did a similar thing with my short story "Scarlet Steel and Crimson Cults" where I based the hermaphrodite anti-heroine of that tale on myself as well. If you enjoyed this journey into horror, you'd definitely love that one too. It is set in medieval times, as opposed to modern like this one... but it has very similar themes to this story.
The demon, and how it absorbed its' victims into itself, was in many ways representative of the whole of society and how it seeks to absorb what it wants, reject what it does not want, and preserve its' patriarchal same-ness at the cost of the individual sometimes. When Allison stood up to the demon, she was standing up to all of that. She was defying organized religion and its' patriarchy, society and its' conventional mores, and the masculine dominating principle that would subjugate what is knows it cannot fight against - free will, which in Allison's case came from not just a realization of her own inner strength but also from overcoming her own weaknesses. In being bound to the demon at the end, while still being herself and maintaining all of her strength, that was a sort of metaphor for being bound (whether we like it or not) within the system of society as it is today and having to work for change from within. In a way, we all have to make a pact with some darkness in this day and age... but whether we can remain ourselves at the end of that pact… that is what is most important. And Allison, like me, remains herself no matter what. Perhaps she has been to Hell and back, and maybe is a bit of demon herself at the end... but her strength and her will remain, and you can imagine her going on to eventually mayhaps break free of the demon and escaping the cottage once and for all. Though did her experience there mark her for life? I believe all our experiences mark us. Not just for one life bur for all eternity. Allison is not so much murdering people in this story, but in fact those people are symbols for society, for “the system” and for oppression and suppression in general. She is a trying to break free at all costs, and because she is a fighter, a warrior queen at heart, she is in mortal combat against these symbols of a society that does not care about her, only about what it wants from her and expects from her. As a Transgender Woman, I’ve had to fight against the stereotypes, the bigotry and prejudice, and even sometimes I had to stand up to members of my own immediate family who hated me for choosing to be myself, for being the woman I am today. But in standing up to all that, I grew stronger and overcame the odds. Yet I had balance that overcoming with having to live in this society…. such as it is today… and with having to make peace with even those who hate me in my family. Since you can’t pick and choose your family. In the end, they came to respect me as the woman I became and now they love me for who I am, for being Jessica, and they cannot imagine how I ever existed before. So in a parallel way, I had to make a pact with the “demons” in my own life in order to achieve the freedom I was seeking all along. Allison’s moment of self-mutilation and allowing herself to become chained have personal parallels too… I have had some self-destructive moments in the past; back when I used to hate my body and blame my soul for being different, and which led me to take things out on myself harshly. But then I had to stop and reflect, and when I did I realized I was not to blame because I was different. Rather, it was society’s oppression of people who are different, that was the true culprit. So what did I do? I came out, went full-time and fully embraced my female nature, becoming the woman you know me as now. Allison’s moment in chains, is her time to stop, reflect on everything, and discover the truth about herself and the world around her… since the demon is trying its’ best to deceive her, to make her think she is the one to blame for everything in life. In many ways, she never escapes that completely, and in many ways Transgender Women never escape that fully either. Because there are always people who will try to make you feel like a “freak” or a “thing” both being names I have been called in the past, along with worse names still. But you can’t fight the world all you can do is prove you are strong by surviving and being yourself no matter what. So this is a horror story about survival, not really about escaping per se. So at the end of this terrible night, Allison had had to strike a balance, make a bargain for her freedom, and find happiness even in the face of torment. So those themes are very near and dear to my heart, and something I strongly identify with. My story “Scarlet Steel and Crimson Cults” has a similar type of segment before the ending, where the heroine must work within a wicked system (a cult) in order to remain free.
You know, the woods are very feminine! They are nature’s wombs… just as caves and tunnels are like wombs. When one enters the woods, one must enter with respect because there are countless ways to meet one’s end in the wild. I grew up loving to hike, and enjoying the woods. I used to go mountain climbing a lot in my teen years, too! I had some close calls, almost got killed a few times, but I came away from it with respect, adoration, and love for nature. I believe that when you respect nature, nature knows and does not destroy you because it respects you in return. Those who lose their lives in the woods, oft do so out of carelessness. Provoking wild animals, entering their territory, or taking crazy chances like trying to climb just that much higher and then falling to their doom! People can be very stupid sometimes, and so the woods and the mountains can be places of dire peril. But as you noted, it is the unknown that people fear the most… though I have found that most of what people truly fear… they bring with them. I have, in my time, actually had powerful spiritual and religious experiences in the woods, and those experiences changed me greatly in many ways. For the better! But nature is first and foremost… a living force, and so in my story I portray it as having a low cunning, a kind of sentient intelligence that is not something that can be overcome. People always try to overcome nature, but the secret is not to overcome it at all, but to strike a balance with it. And that is another meaning to what Allison has done in this story… at the end, she has struck a balance with the woods, and the woods recognize that and finally let her leave (though she must return). My spiritual beliefs contain a certain element of reverence for nature, and in fact my first spiritual path I chose was that of Druidry, back before I discovered deeper, darker secrets that opened up other paths for me far beyond that. So a lot of my poetry contains a strong sense of nature possessing magic and power. Which it truly does, since all living things have a life force, and that life force contains power! So there is that bit of occult wisdom in this story too: Allison being into the occult, as she is, though not manifesting all she knows at one time. Rather, she ekes out her power and knowledge as the story progresses. When she calls out to God as she does at times, she is showing that she believes in something more than herself. She is spiritual and religious, but her path is a dark one all the same. Just as my path. So there are a lot of metaphors, parallels and hidden symbolisms in this story that have meaning beyond the obvious. Horror is a difficult genre to do original, but this story was.
The twists, as you noted, were quite different from the typical horror tropes and indeed Allison suffers a LOT of abuse in her misadventure, before the end. The worst being at the hands of her former lover and then from the demon that had been: possessing him. I was abused several times in the past. In relationships, at the hands of the nuns when I was in Catholic school as a child… when I was in a military program when I was twelve years old… all were times when I was physically, emotionally, mentally: and in other ways, abused. I could have let myself be a victim and break down, hating myself, blaming myself, and going crazy. But I overcame it and decided to not let my abusers be the victors. There were times when I lost myself to anger because of what I went through, and I had to find a lot of serenity and inner peace in order to banish those feelings of anger… so Allison’s lashing out, that comes from a personal place too. We’ve all, I’d imagine, had times in our life when we felt like lashing out. Either at people who have hurt us, or at the world, mayhap even at ourselves. So Allison’s killing spree in this story is her moment of totally losing it! It is a metaphor for almost losing yourself to the torment you have been through in life. Most Transgender Women have been through a lot, psychologically. We are among the most abused, misunderstood, and reviled kinds of women there are. In movies, you rarely see a positive portrayal of us, and so there is a great deal of prejudice because people fear what they do not understand, and they hate what they fear because they fear it. I am open about being Transgender because I am also outspoken and a bit of an activist in my own life for my rights and by extension for the rights of others like me. Sometimes, taking positive action by simply educating people… that can be a kind of lashing out against the system, but of a very positive and peaceful kind. So there is that layer of meaning here too! I’m glad you noticed these points of order here, so we could have this deep discussion about what some might at first assume to be a simple horror story. You have a quick wit, and a mind that picks up on the hidden quite nicely!
Thanks for commenting, my friend.
