THE WRITING ON THE WALL
All stories copyright Julie Lewthwaite (writing as Julie Morrigan) 2011
Except for Frigid Air copyright Steven Miscandlon 2011
Cover design copyright Steven Miscandlon 2011
Smashwords Edition
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Author’s note
I owe a massive debt of thanks to Steven Miscandlon for his invaluable assistance with this book. Not only did he provide insightful editing and eagle-eyed proofreading, he carried out the graphic design work to create the cover and has also provided a bonus story, the superbly chilling Frigid Air. Thank you, Steven!
Introduction
The Writing on the Wall is a collection of what might loosely be described as ‘weird fiction’: strange happenings, dangerous artefacts, curses, cannibals, and witches. The stories tell of a world where no one is quite who you think they are and nothing is quite what it seems.
The novelette-length title story describes just how badly wrong things can go if you meddle with forces you don’t understand. In other stories, the truth is a lie; a book has gone bad; a woman has a hunger that must be satisfied; a father grieves for his lost child; a young man is being manipulated by forces unseen; and a woman is hell-bent on getting her hands on the right man.
Finally, there is a bonus story, Steven Miscandlon’s Frigid Air, which might have you checking the contents of your refrigerator every half hour. Or possibly never opening the door again.
I hope you enjoy reading. Light the lamps. Lock the door. And whatever you do, don’t look behind you.
Julie Morrigan
October 2011
‘It’s a sleeping disorder.’
‘What?’
‘That thing that’s been happening. You know, your shadow man thing. It’s a sleeping disorder.’
Jenny gave Michael a blank look. ‘It happened again last night,’ she said. ‘It didn’t feel like a sleeping disorder.’
‘Describe it.’
‘It was about two in the morning. I was wide awake, but the only thing I could move was my eyes. I was lying on my side and I knew there was someone behind me. Someone evil. I ... I could sense him.’
The fear had been intense. Jenny strained to move her body, desperate to see who — or what — it was that stood behind her. She sensed a brooding presence, eyes watching her as she lay in bed, paralysed and terrified, able only to blink.
There was a tall mirror on the wall at the foot of the bed. If she could just tip her head a little, the light from the bedside lamp should show her who, what, was there. Assuming it had a reflection. She struggled and fought, all to no avail. She sensed movement, detected a shifting of the air, felt a hand stroke her hair where it lay fanned out over her pillow, a dark stain on virgin snow.
Unable even to blink now, goggle-eyed with fear, she stared at the wall opposite while her hair was stroked by the shadow man, her heart leaping in her ribcage, thudding in her ears.
No matter what it was, no matter how terrifying, knowing could not be worse than this. She mustered all her strength for one last effort, willed her body to move, roared as she fought against the paralysis, the fear, the not knowing.
Suddenly, as if someone had flicked a switch, her body was once more under her control. It responded immediately and she flew out of bed, landing on the floor with a thump.
No one was there. No dark, menacing figure stood at her bedside, looking down at her with dead eyes and a black heart.
Stunned, Jenny had taken a minute to collect herself, then got to her feet. She turned on all the lights as she went through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea; ordinary tea, not the special blend Michael had given her to help her sleep when she had complained to him of insomnia. She ought to be fine now. It had never before happened more than once in one night.
‘It’s called “sleep paralysis”,’ Michael was saying. ‘I’ve been reading about it, it’s well-documented. Google it, you’ll see.’
‘Maybe.’ Jenny wasn’t convinced.
‘Honestly, Jen, there’s nothing to fear. We all experience sleep paralysis, it’s just that most people don’t know because we don’t wake up. You do, that’s why it’s scary.’
‘What about the shadow man?’
‘All in your mind. It’s all part of it.’
That night, Jenny made herself a cup of Michael’s special tea. ‘Just one cup per night,’ he’d instructed. ‘About an hour before bedtime.’ She smiled. She had looked up sleep paralysis on the web and it was exactly as he had described. He was so kind, helping her to understand her problem, taking away the fear. She would invite him round and cook him dinner, she decided. Very, very soon.
She went to bed, drifted off to sleep, his face in her mind’s eye.
At about two in the morning, Jenny awoke. Once again, she was paralysed, her eyes the only thing able to move. She felt panic start to rise and fought to quell it. She chanted silently: Nothing to fear, nothing to fear ... She breathed deeply, calming herself, grateful to Michael for what he had told her.
A shadow slid across the tall mirror as the dark figure behind her moved towards her bed. Jenny sensed movement, detected a shifting of the air, felt a hand stroke her hair where it lay across her pillow. She closed her eyes and pictured Michael’s face, kept on chanting: nothing to fear. It was sleep paralysis, it was normal, the shadow man wasn’t real.
Michael loved the silky feel of Jenny’s hair. He breathed in deeply, as if he were trying to inhale her, then crept out of her flat as silently as he had entered, aware that the effects of his special blend of tea would quickly wear off.
Soon, he thought to himself. Very, very soon.
I knew there was something wrong as soon as I opened the door, even before I saw the note. It just felt wrong, smelled wrong. I remember I paused to listen before I pulled my key out of the latch and stepped inside so I could close the door behind me. I had a bag of groceries, I'd called at the Tesco in town on my way home, and I put it down in the hall when I spotted the yellow Post-it note stuck to the sitting room door. I shivered, then moved forward to read it.
Ruth — don't come in. Call the police. I'm sorry. Michael x
Of course I did go in. I opened the door and went into the sitting room, which was exactly as it should have been. I poked my head into the kitchen: everything was fine. Then I went into the bathroom.
Nothing could ever have prepared me for so much blood. The bath Michael lay in looked to be full of it. Eight pints, that's what they say we have in us. I've got a bucket with marks on the inside so you know how full it is. I know what eight pints looks like, how long it takes to drain away down a plughole.
Had I been in a certain type of film, I would have screamed at the sight, long and shrill and loud. But most of us don't scream; that kind of intense shock robs us of the ability. The noise I made was more like a whimper: wretched, miserable, horrified.
I thought of the note Michael had written before he climbed into the bath and did that to himself, the note with that ridiculous little 'x' at the end, as if a symbolic kiss could ever have made this better, and I sank to my knees and wept.
The next few weeks passed in a daze. I have no idea how I got through them, but it seems I did. Afterwards, things quietened down. People stopped popping round so often and called less frequently on the phone. I suppose for them, things got back to normal.
As for me, I went to work and came home again. I cooked meals and cleared up afterwards. I wandered around the flat picking things up and putting them down. I took Michael's clothes out of the wardrobe and sorted them into piles to throw out or to give to charity, then I hung them all up again. I found his diary and slept with it under my pillow for a week before I read it.
Reading it felt wrong, and yet it helped. Reading the words he had written meant I heard his voice speaking them in my head. It was a comfort. He chatted to me about his work, about us, how much he was looking forward to our holidays, what he planned to buy me for my birthday. It made me smile and it made me cry, him looking forward, me looking back. Then, suddenly, the tone of the entries changed. He started talking about a black dog, or more accurately, The Black Dog. I had no idea what he meant. The entries stopped altogether about a week before … about a week before. I flipped through the blank pages, trying to make sense of it, trying to understand. Then I found a last entry, scrawled across the page in an unsteady hand. All it said was: 'They're coming.'
I had no idea what it meant, but it chilled me.
The next day it was still preying on my mind: the Black Dog; 'They're coming'. Seeking some sort of explanation I rang Bobby, a friend of Michael's from way back who knew him better than anyone, perhaps even better than I did. I figured if anyone could shed light on it, he could.
'The Black Dog?' he said, when I asked him. 'It's a myth. Supposedly an old, cursed book.'
'Did Michael talk to you about it?'
'Oh, yes.' I sensed him nodding. 'He found out about it when we were at university. He was convinced he would find it one day.'
'What does it look like?'
Bobby took a breath and let it out. 'Very ordinary, I think is the best way to describe it.' I heard him shift in his chair, take a drink of something. 'The Black Dog is said to hide in plain sight. You might expect a powerful book to look powerful: big, weighty, bound with something fancy, maybe with iron hinges.' He paused. 'Or chained up so that it could do no harm, you know the sort of thing, a grimoire struggling desperately to be free.'
'But it isn't?'
'No, the Black Dog is just an ordinary book to look at. Average size, nothing fancy, nothing you'd look twice at. Michael always expected it would turn up in a charity shop or on a market stall.'
Both places were favourite haunts of Michael's. He loved nothing better than to rummage through old things, picking out the odd book or trinket. I thought of the things I'd spent the past several weeks picking up and putting down, remembered a book with a plain cover, no title or author's name on it, but which felt … heavy, different.
'I think he found it,' I told Bobby.
'Ruth, it isn't real. It's a myth.'
'No, it's here.' I was suddenly sure that book was the Black Dog.
'Can you bring it over? I'd like to see it.'
Later that day I set off on the Metro to Whitley Bay, where Bobby lived in a top floor flat on the seafront.