The Darker Realms

Renovations

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Helen

Image credit: Kuraback Evgeny/Shutterstock.com

I told them it was pointless to renovate. Renovations never take in this house I said. Many have tried and all have failed. The house likes its shadows and its dark corners and its decay.

I told them they were mad to buy the place. ‘A renovator’s delight’ the real estate agent said but I knew this house because I lived in this part of town my whole life. Even as children we talked about this place. We’d play in it. Because, you know, it wasn’t scary or anything. I don’t think it was haunted either. It just liked being the way it was.

When you are a child you don’t question things like that. And it seems when you are an adult bent on becoming a landlord you don’t question much either. But it didn’t matter what we did or didn’t query as children. Whereas adults playing here, expecting to make it better, expecting a good investment return, were doomed to failure. They should have asked more. They should have asked why. And then they should have run away fast, but not from ghosts, just from a bad investment.

But they didn’t ask and they didn’t listen and they poured money into renovations and at first it seemed to work. They painted and they cleaned and they re-modelled. They turned the old staircase into a modern one and hung new art on the walls. They changed the furniture and chose a minimalist design. And it took for about three days, and then…and then….

And then it changed back. Quietly, without fanfare, but resolutely. It changed back. Paint gone, staircase reformed, dust and dishevelment returned.

I remember their faces, and I couldn’t resist saying I told them so. They weren’t listening. Shock does that to you, or so I’ve heard. It certainly seemed so then.

“Why are you surprised?” I asked them. “Would you want to change on the whim of a new owner?”

“It’s a house,” they said, looking to me like I could be blamed somehow for their incredulity now. If I was mad, then perhaps when they turned and looked at the house again it wouldn’t have changed back.

“It’s a house that likes being what it is,” I replied, when they turned back and saw it still clung to its former, dubious glory.

“It’s a house that never changes.”

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged adults, children, horror flash fiction, house, investment, renovations, unchanging | 3 Comments

The Children

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Helen

Image credit: Joe Prachatree/Shutterstock.com

I’m frightened of the children. They say I have nothing to fear, they are only kids. Kids do silly things. They dress up, play havoc a bit. It’s just being young. That;s what they say,when they say anything about it at all.

But I don’t think they are young. I don’t think there is anything youthful about these children. I think they’ve seen and done things in their early years that made them grow, way beyond their years.

And I think they liked it. They liked it all.

It’s just trick or treat, they say, but it isn’t Halloween. It’s March, and there’s no reason for the masks. But when try to argue that the others laugh at me and tell me I’m imagining things.

I’m not.

I take photos of the children when I see them. Like this one, this one here. But no-one believes me. They say I’ve staged it all. I know they see them too. They just pay no mind to it all.

They are fools.

People are disappearing. Adults are disappearing. They also say I’m imagining that. People just leave town they say, that’s all.

But I know that’s not all. It’s the children. And they’ll come for me one day, one day soon, because they know I know.

So I’m frightened of the children. I hide when I see them pray they won’t find me. But I know it’s all in vain, really. It has to be.

For who is better at hide and seek than children?

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged children, death, disappearance, fear, halloween, masks | 4 Comments

Cemetary

Posted on March 2, 2017 by Helen

Image credit: Pavel Chayochkin/Shutterstock.com

The dead are restless
Behind the steel grey gates
Left too long
Neglected and alone
They turn in their graves
Finding no comfort or sleep
And when they dream
It is dark, it is cold
It is deep

Their ghosts might whisper
If you pass this shadowed way
If you might hear them
And have something to say
I guess they’re just lonely
In just the company of shades
A dark procession
Black celebrations
Death’s parade

This inky night I sense them
On a merciless wind
Crying and forgotten
As the living pass by
You can’t really blame us
They’re broken and gone
No hope and no dream
No star to wish upon

Posted in Poetry | Tagged cemetary, dead, forgotten, ghosts, living, lonely, lost | 3 Comments

Chimeras

Posted on February 23, 2017 by Helen

Image credit: Sergei Aleshin/Shutterstock.com

When the science was advanced enough for the chimeras to grow and survive and even thrive, they said we had a choice. Just remaining human would not be enough, that was an outmoded model, and did not reflect the glories of transhumanist science. Bu we could be amalgamated – that was the term they used – into other species. Man’s scientists were now gods, they said, and we would be their new creations. It was an honour, they said, and they were generous. We had choice.

My friend chose to be ‘reconstituted’ as they called it as part human and pat cat. She owned a cat as a child, a little tough stray that she’d loved fiercely. She thought the cat had been the very best thing of all, so aloof, so free.

“And it and nine lives,” she told me, “as will I if I am part cat.”

“Or at least four and a half,” I agreed, “if you are only half cat.”

“Yes, but that’s better than only one,” she opined, happy enough with her fate.

I hadn’t decided yet what I would be. I waited to se show her procedure went. I’d choose to be a dragon if I could, but they said they have no DNA for that. So perhaps a cat would be good even though it doesn’t have wings.

“You probably couldn’t fly even if you did,” they said, “as you will likely still be too heavy.”

So a cat it might be if it suited her, it might well suit me.

I saw her a week after the procedure. She was rather beautiful and very happy with the work. She said it was uncomfortable at times but she would get used to it. She preened and let me stroke her soft fur, then lazily scratched me with her new claws, just because she could.

Yes, I thought, as I saw her stalk the woods and paddle happy in the stream, a mystery and a glory: yes, a cat would do.

I’ll be half a cat too, and together we’ll have those nine lives. She and I.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged cat, chimeras, friendship, medical, procedures, science, transhumanist | 4 Comments

Witch

Posted on February 16, 2017 by Helen

Image credit: Petrenko Andriy/Shutterstock.com

The witch will rise three nights from now. She will traverse the sky, born on spiritual wings given her by her master. She will be glorious, she will be free, and she will drive the enemy from our town like an avenging sword, an avenging fire.

This she has promised so long ago. One town accepted her, one town did not fear or decry her beliefs. One town thought her glory was a shared thing, a talent and a beauty beyond compare. While her kind was shunned, burned, drowned, across the Inquisition’s scarred lands, she was kept safe, kept hidden in one town. Our town.

For we understood the value of difference and of power. Our town is situated on the border of two great nations, and as a passageway it acts also as a mirror from one to the other. In this we knew neither side to be greater, or more good, or more pure. All power in all their citadels rested on grabbing an ignominious sanctity at the demonization of the other. We see that, so we do not judge.

So in her life we did not judge her and in her peaceful, aged death she made a promise. Now, a century later, our folk tales tell us to be confident, to be calm, to have no fear. She promised to arise, to return, at our hour of need.

And that is now, as battles wage across both borders, and each greedy kingship wants to claim us, obliterate us, drag us into them. We stand on the brink of oblivion, but we will withstand it all, for she will come. We can feel her return, coming not he wind, crying her victory call.

The witch will rise, she will return, and take even heaven in her wake to keep us safe, to keep us free.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged kingdoms, promise, protection, vengeance, war, witch | 3 Comments

Assassin

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Helen

Image credit: kpgs/Shutterstock.com

He was an assassin in his youth. A keen eye and a resolute constitution, paired with a distinct lack of empathy or morality, made him the perfect vessel for contract killing. It paid well and he saw no reason not to use his skill. If he did not kill his targets another in his profession would. Each was already marked for death, the means of their passage was materially and spiritually unimportant. And he was good at what he did.

They would die quickly and cleanly. He was not, I must admit, a cruel man. When I knew him he was growing into a creature of some refinement, and while he did not value life he did not de-value it either. He saw no sense in hurting others in their deaths. It was just a job.

He grew wealthy, and for many years relinquished his bloody pursuits. I remember seeing him once in Venice when my family and I vacationed there. We sipped expensive wine on his tab and watched the gondolas float by us. He would casually point to someone at the helm, or even lazing at the back of one of the boats, and discuss the best rifle to take down such a mark. I found it entertaining, but I was glad he did not choose to demonstrate his point. I never had any reason to doubt him, so he never had any need.

Then one day someone did irreparable harm to me. Took my wife’s life casually and negligently in a drunken driving spree. It was the first time death had touched me directly, or indeed that the world had been unkind. I had considered myself blessed and protected in some way, though I didn’t consciously think about that. Not till the chimera was exposed to me and I realised I was as vulnerable as any.

That’s when I called my friend out of his retirement. One more mark, one more mission.

“And this time there must be pain,” he said, hearing my tale. “This time it must be intimate, personal, painful and precise. I promise you, this one last death, will be an art form in itself. Your wife’s careless killer will not die carelessly, or easily. I promise you this, my friend.”

He was an assassin in his youth, and just once in his aged years. He kept his promise, asked no payment from me and then I never saw him again. But he was precise, he was a man of his word. And he was my friend.

And that is all that you, or I, need to know of the matter. That is all.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged assassin, death, favour, friendship, precision, revenge, truth | 6 Comments

Lost Girl

Posted on February 2, 2017 by Helen

Image credit: frankie’s/Shutterstock.com

The forest swallows up
The little lost girl
Hungry for life
To replenish its aching soil

Parents will grieve
The little lost girl
Wandering the pathways
Where her little feet have trod

She’s just one of many
The little lost girl
Faces on posters
Withering in the wind

No-one really knows
The little lost girl
Too quickly forgotten
As the forest feeds

Sometimes you might see her
The little lost girl
Playing with her friends
On death’s canopied floor

Then gone in an instant
The little lost girl
Her laughter ringing
On the dying wind

Posted in Poetry | Tagged children, companions, death, feeding, forest, grief, loss, lost girl | 3 Comments

That Place

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Helen

Image credit: Iancu Cristian/Shutterstock.com

We never go to that place. It is just on the outskirts of town, and was far grander in its day I’m told, but it has fallen to decay.

“A castle in our little town!” some would say in wonder, but never enough wonder to open its doors or go inside.

I thought it looked more like an abandoned church than a castle, but I am no architect. I am not that visual or that precise.

I don’t believe in ghosts either, not really, but I’m not willing to take the chance. They say a whole household – family and servants – died there one night without blood loss, without sign of illness, without any reason that any could tell.

“It’s a portal to hell,” the doctor apparently said, crossing himself and backing out having taken in the view. I wouldn’t have thought a doctor would think that way, being a man of science. I suspect he didn’t really believe that, but like me, he wasn’t taking any chances.

I’ve heard no funeral directors would attend, and no grave diggers ever tilled soil to lay the unfortunates to rest. I suspect, therefore, that their skeletons still linger there, sitting in their chairs at the dining table, or slumped across the benches of the serving quarters below. Of course, none of us know, we dare not enter, in case the mysterious captures us also. For who can know how long a time the hand of death may linger in such a place?

That place, that place of death and mystery, that castle on the outskirts of a town which is aptly named Redemption. I hope the inhabitants found some comfort in the name, but for me it speaks of an irony too sharp to contemplate for long.

“We’ll burn it down!” they sometimes say, late in the night when they are in their cups and too drunk to be wary. But by morning they are sobered and more careful.

Fire might purify or it may spread the contagion across the town entire. Better to keep it contained. Keep it quiet and let its ghosts alone. That place.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged castle, death, fear, mystery, redemption, township | 3 Comments

Tempest Rising

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Helen

Image Credit:Captblack76/Shutterstock.com

They took it all from her. Everything she loved, everything she even stopped a moment to care for, to value. The townsfolk barred her from her home, chased her from the streets.

It was too long ago for me to know her crimes, if she had any. In those days it could be as little as not saying the right words in church, or following the right leaders. Dissent was not just frowned upon, it was forbidden. The town’s masters would say the only true freedom was the freedom from choice. Perhaps she just chose to disagree and that was enough. Who can say? There was no court in our town, no jury to weigh the gravity of a crime. All judgements were singular and without question. Just like the one against her.

I guess out of great loss great hatred grows. She might have died on banishment. Perhaps she did and what returned was from the other place, the other realm. Or perhaps she survived and grew on anger and revenge. In any case she became wise, as only pain and loss will provide.

And she returned. She returned not as she was, or even as one they could recognise. I was but a sick child when she came, swirling into town, the tempest rising.

She saw me, and somehow I knew her and she knew me. We communed in some form of shared loss, but I was too young to understand. I just knew in that moment I loved her fiercely, more deeply and profoundly than even my own parents. And far more genuinely than anything I could ever feel for our godforsaken little town.

So when she called the ravens of despair to the town and set them flying, when all around me were fallen and dying, I survived. I watched the conflagration from my window ledge,shuddering and wondering, seeing her in her glory. I think I wept for my family, but I do not remember for sure, do not know. I just let it all go.

No-one was left after the storm but me. And then she came to my room, quieter and content, more human than alien. She touched my fevered brow and the vexation broke. And she took my hand and led me from our wasted lands.

My new mother, my new home. My everything. The tempest rising and me.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged hatred, home, judgement, jury, loss, mercy, mother, revenge, tempest | 5 Comments

My Friend

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Helen

Image Credit: Evgeny Atananenko/Shutterstock.com

My friend I have been very studious. You think me but a child perhaps but I am older than old. I’ve been watching mommy and daddy at their work. They think I do not see, that I lie quiet in my bed when at the midnight hour they meet the others to dance, to kill, to sing, to do pure magick. They think I sleep oblivious to all. But my friend I heard the call, from the moment I was born. It is what I am.

I have their books. I understand the requirements. I have studied every step. And yes my friend, I’ve practiced so, I’ve killed. Such small creatures that you may pay no mind. Their little lives are better used for my purpose here. Everything has its meaning, even them. Even them.

It will be wonderful, my friend, when you are a thing alive, not stuffing and material. I yearn to hear your voice and to embrace you when you may embrace me back. They gave me toys and thought this was enough. But then, they gave me you, and you will be more, so much more than a toy.

The books tell me I must be strong, my friend. To birth a life from stuff such as you comes at such a price. But then I’ve never thought my father was very nice. I’ve seem what he will do to other children, real children – not hidden adults like me. I think therefore he will do very well.

I’m sending daddy to hell. It’s where he came from and where he belongs. But on his blood tide, my friend, you can rise. And we will laugh and dance upon his grave. And if mother cries we’ll collect her tears in a little jar. I’ll keep it on my shelf so she can see it every day and remember. Remember what I am. Remember what we are.

My friend such fun we’ll have, so soon, so soon. I promise you. So soon.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged child, death, life, Magick, ritual, sacrifice, teddy bear, toy | 3 Comments