Enjoy my Graduate Horror Creative Project. Inspired by modern Weird Fiction/ Cosmic Horror writers like Victor LaValle, I created a horror story based on the Genre Traditions of Cosmic Horror, after studing the commonly recognised origin text; Hope Hodgeson's The House on the Borderlands, and the work of H.P. Lovecraft.
Cover Image by Keagan Henman, available at:https://unsplash.com/@henmankk
Please be aware that this story contains descriptions of Graphic Violence and Body Horror.
I blinked as Agent Majors‘s voice crunched out of the car’s coms unit. “Morrison can you still see the target?”
For around the fifth time that night, I considered just switching off the coms until I needed to get in contact with Majors but decided that would be childish. The Bakelite receiver was shockingly cold against my hand, making my fingers buzz where the ridges of the broadcast button pressed against them.
“Yes, Agent. His driving is normal, headlights are off though, and his brake lights are out.”
The road was a typewriter ribbon, the glare of the streetlights striking scratchy letters out of the cracked asphalt over and over as I trailed along behind the vehicle in front. I’d been on the road for the better part of half an hour and I could smell the burning fuel, and motor oil. Even though the voices through the coms were piercingly loud, it was still challenging to focus on them over the crunching noise of the tyres and the rattle of the windows.
“Don’t pull him over, Morrison. Just keep following.”
I replaced the receiver in its scratched chrome cradle and reached for the volume nob, turning it down just a bit and eyed the power switch. The small of my back was prickling, threatening to start to throb in earnest. The ideal way to end an eight hour day of slogging through endless paperwork, was of course, following an unknown car on and off with two other officers and listening to the fussing of Agent; ‘could turn a gorgon to stone with his patter’ Majors.
Makena’s voice came over the Coms, “She knows what she’s doing, Sir.”
Majors must have really rubbed her up the wrong way for her to interrupt her drink break. Gunfire generally couldn’t stir her attention if she’d gotten some of those British tea bags.
Suddenly the car up front’s indicator blinked, a single sickly orange flash and the car started to slow. I stabbed the brake pedal and watched closely, it cruised down at an ever-falling speed before snapping around a tight corner into a driveway.
“He’s parked up, number 35, I think”, I called out into the coms.
The house was modest like all the others along the road but looked as though it had just been constructed. The bricks, even in the low moonlight were a deep, earthy red and the picket fence was a near-blinding white. The precisely cut, square lawn had a birdbath, surrounded by a tight ring of at least twenty garish-pink plastic lawn flamingos. By the house, more birds were poking out at strange angles from behind a little bench and table. In the first-floor windows at the front, more birds could be seen peering over the windowsills and even more were scattered around a small pond, like a rush at a watering hole, their beady eyes and beaks looking out at the roadside. Every single bird, even if it meant turning it’s back completely to whatever piece of decoration it was arranged with, was staring directly at the road. As the moonlight and streetlamp glow hit their pebble-black eyes, it looked as though their uniform gaze followed me as I passed the house.
“Right, turn around, confirm the number, and head back.” The sarcastic lilt was missing from Majors’s voice now.
I pressed the accelerator gingerly, trying to gain the distance required to turn around out of view, hearing the car sputter and rock as the speed increased and the smell of petrol thickened. The subtle rattle of the windows, which suddenly seemed so much louder, was drowning out the quiet chatter from Makena and the other patrol officer on the coms.
Suddenly there was a sharp, metallic ping from the back of the car. I jolted and quickly turned to look back at the house, now vanishing in the distance. A tall man with sallow skin and hair that seemed to glow was walking away from his car. I realised with a shiver that he was still too close to his vehicle, why hadn’t he started walking until now?
“Something hit my car. The target was outside of his vehicle, but I didn’t see if he threw anything. Sounded like a small metal object.” My breathing suddenly felt laboured and rough, inhaling for each quick statement felt like struggling against a bottomless sea pressing down on my chest.
“Take the first turnoff past the house. drive until you’re out of view. Get out of your car and we’ll meet you there.”
“Understood.”
The engine gave loud protest as I flattened the accelerator, quickly shooting over the speed limit and approach a little turn off into the woodlands that had run on the left-hand side since before the Flamingo House. The road was cracked asphalt at first but then gave way to compacted earth, the car rattled violently as I haired up the road. My headlamps were the only light source as the canopy filled in and the bows of the trees grew thicker and tighter. The air felt colder and thicker, like breathing freezing gelatine. Finally, after more than one-hundred meters of the rough ground, the road swerved left and terminated in a scruffy, overgrown gravel lot. I pulled the car into the corner nearest the entrance, the wheels skidding over the gravel, I cut the motor. The handle felt heavy as I wrenched open the door and leapt out, crunching on the shale floor. The cold air nipped at me.
I pulled my hand-radio from my belt. “I’ve pulled up, it looks like a parking spot for hikers to go deeper into the forest. When can I expect you here?” The radio was colder than it should have been.
“Five minutes, don’t approach your car again or attempt to remove anything stuck to it.”
I bit down my sarcasm and holstered the radio, circling around to the back of the car to look, there was something stuck to it. The strange matter looked like dark-grey rubber set with minuscule garish-pink jewels. It dripped slowly, small droplets of viscous liquid were falling to the ground and sinking into the gravel, leaving no trace behind. It was almost totally opaque but a faint outline of something cylindrical was visible when I shone my torch on it from an angle. Whatever it was, it was stuck to the car with a small, star-shaped, fleshy protrusion. A small red light blinked on the body of the object; the light broke apart into a grotesque haze in the slime.
Satisfied, I walked to the back corner of the lot and perched on a fence post before turning away and glanced into woods. The row of houses was completely covered, smothered by an impenetrable blanket of trees that stretched around the rear side of the lot. On the opposite side, the land dropped away suddenly, there was a set of over-grown wooden stairs that headed down deeper into the woods. The slope was so severe that the entire side of the clearing was blocked abruptly by the canopy leaves from the trees that grew stunted and twisted, clinging to the bank. Even across the lot, it felt as though the leaves and branches were crushing down on me. In that wooded cloister the forest was infinite, nothing existed beyond the bows and branches and dark leaves. The sky was clouded, stripping away almost all of the light of the sickle moon, leaving just a ghostly hue that reached down to the gravel. I was sat alone, dumb to anything but the sight, silence, and earthy smell of the forest until the silence was broken by engines.
A large powder black van rolled around the corner, the two other cars in the trailing relay following behind. As they moved, they made enough noise of gravel under the tyre to silence anything around us. They pulled up in the spaces across from my sitting spot, as far from my car as possible. As the engines shut off the officers climbed out, Makena walked over to me, whilst whichever of the Johnson brothers we’d been working with started peering over at the back of my car.
“Alright?” Makena asked, it was nice to hear her voice in person for a change, crackly coms did melodic Nairobi accents no favours.
The back of the van opened and two officers, one with identical flappy, lifeless hair to his car-leering brother hopped out and headed over to us.
I sighed, “Oh god, they’re both here.”
“Oh yeah, Johnson and Johnson.” Makena smiled.
“No more tears?”
After a second’s pause, I decided it had to be Connor who’d approached us, Thomas never looked that haphazard, and certainly never smiled.
“Hello, ladies, tired?” He jammed his shirt into his waistband as he spoke and looked around at the sound of his brother talking to Majors and the other officer from the van.
“If you’re going to tell me I have bags, I’ll put your special bourbon down the crapper.” threatened Makena.
He gave her a wary look before replying “No, I’m just tired so assumed you might be as well.” He looked out around at the forest as the conversation died out.
Majors called out, walking across to my car. “We’re all staying put until I’ve got whatever this thing is into the van and analysed. Everyone keeps a close eye on the forest.”
“What’s he worried about? There are six of us here.” A breeze blew through as Makena spoke, making her shiver. “Wanna go see what’s got badge boy so worked up?” She asked
“Sure.”
We started over to towards my may, Johnson C seemed keen to come along but was quickly stuck with watching Makena’s car.
“How are you, Makena? It’s been ages since we’ve talked.” I asked.
“I’m all right, nothing much happening. One woman put a banana in a sock and tried to rob someone with it last week.”
We’d come up near enough to my car to be able to see Majors prodding the object with a black fold-out baton. He turned around and glared when I snorted, he was wearing a white shirt under an armoured vest, it looked like the bomb-proofs I’d seen in training but smaller, tighter, and black. It was strained around the gut, Major’s frame was skinny, but his belly was struggling to escape the vest and the pressure had run-up to his neck, flushing it red. The swollen neck flesh was loosely bound in the open shirt collar pulled closed with a bolo tie that shone with a strange, pale-orange oval stone in the centre. He cast a darting glance behind me and then jerked his head back at the object. He’d laid out a high walled silver tray and a small disc on the ground, the disc was throwing light up at the object, exposing the form better than my flashlight had.
“How’d that work out?”
“Well, the victim, an old man with dodgy eyesight, which is why she targeted him, turned out to be a veteran, so we had a confused old man with a handful of sock and mashed banana, feeling a bit guilty.”
“Cut the horseshit and keep an eye on the fucking woods.” Majors snapped; his eyes looked like drill bit tips as they shot between us before falling back on the object.
He prodded it with the baton, harder this time and it fell, hitting the tray and making a sound like seaweed being dumped out on a quayside. For a second it released a high pitch whine and spun rapidly, nearly skittering off the tray before just as suddenly jerking to a stop. During the explosion of movement, a portion of the slime coating had been flung away, a sizable globule had landed on the shoulder strap of Major’s vest, he swatted at it, but his hand slid over the deposit which barely even wobbled in response. Frantically he poked at it with the baton, knocking it into his cupped hand where it danced around, sliding over the palm and fingers with a rapid frictionless movement, never slowing or stopping. Each move Majors made seemed to increase the energy in the material, causing it to climb further up his fingers each time it swung, he snapped his hands together over it. As he moved to lower his hands to the plate they started to shake, finally, the globule forced its way out between his fingers, flying in a tight arc back to the device and striking it with such force that the tray skidded a few feet away under the car. A little of the material stayed clinging to the vest, which Majors quickly took off and dropped.
“What the fuck?” I asked as we looked between each other and the tray.
“Keep watch whilst I get the tray back out.”
Majors dropped to his knees, arching down to reach under the car, just as his face disappeared, a loud, perfectly clear voice sounded from all the car coms at once. “10-34 in the town centre. Major disturbance all officers please respond immediately”.
The tray skidded out and Majors emerged from the car, straightening, and turning upon us quickly. “You two watch the car.” He dashed across to the other officers, dour Johnson and the other officer from the van were grabbed, stuffed in dour Johnson’s car, and peeled off the lot as Makena and I stood by the car.
“A riot? What the hell?” I asked, looking back at the trees in the direction of the town.
“I heard something was getting the students in a fuss at the college”, her brow furrowed with worry.
“Still a riot? I can’t be just that?”
“It was just here what in the god damn?” Johnson’s voice came from other the other side of the lot. I turned around and saw that the van had gone. Behind where it had been parked, the low fence had been smashed.
“Everybody take your weapons out. Now!” Majors yelled as he approached the break in the fence. We all drew our guns and watched.
“I didn’t hear anything did you?” Makena asked as she stepped passed me, her eyes scanning over the woods.
“No. Maybe it happened when the riot call came through?”
“No, I definitely heard it from the coms in the van as well.”
Majors turned suddenly, blinking for a second as he saw three guns but shook himself and hurried over to the tray.
“The van has gone over the bank. I’m taking the sample down there to get it locked up and see if we can get the van back out. You two stay here and keep watch.” He sprinted back over to the break in the fence and waved the remaining Johnson to come down the slope with him.
“This is turning into a long day, wanna sit down?” Makena asked, gesturing to her car. We walked over and sat on the bonnet and looked out into the woods. Wherever the van had ended up it was far enough away that Majors and Johnson couldn’t be heard at all.
When we’d been sitting there chatting for what felt like five minutes, the coms came on again, crackling out Dour Johnson’s voice.
“Radio system has been damaged, the station is on night-crew and everything in town is fine, best guess someone breached the channels and broadcasted the riot call as a prank. Fortunately, it looks like it only reached the woods. We’re heading back.”
“Well, I’d best go let Agent Majors know then,” Makena said, pushing off the bonnet and trudging away before calling out over her shoulder.
“You should hop in the car, lock yourself in if you like, whatever the Agent is looking for I’d bet there’s a crazy or two in the forest”.
The bank slope swallowed her down as she stopped talking, leaving an almost total silence. I thought about splaying across the car, maybe on the roof but hopped off and climbed in my car. I turned the key and listened to the motor splutter to life, the sudden noise shocked me, my throat tightened and the heat in my face rose for just a second. I let go of the key. The leather creaked, and the seat rocked as I slumped back against it, I could see a comfy evening at home superimposed over the black bows of the forest.
To the right of the slope, past the sharp bend into the lot, there was a rolling flat of woodlands across the otherwise naked ground, trees choked each other growing in brutal, broken shapes as the branches tore their neighbours out of the way of the black-tar sky. The ground was bare dirt, feeble, pale fork moss clumps clinging to tree roots that twisted and crunched about themselves before finally, invisibly slipping into the earth. I looked out, panning across the endless legion of trunks, the space was pressed below the impenetrable canopy that stretched and squeezed on forever past the horizon. I looked until my grip on the wheel sent a ripple of pain over my knuckles and I jolted back, something about the forest had swayed me. Pulled my focus into the spaces between the branches, the hold over me had been so complete that the pressure of my fingers on the wheel had built up to a powerful throbbing pain before it pierced my focus. As I looked out, I could feel the pull, each time I glanced into the grey gaps between the branches, a pressure started behind my eyes, tugging the retina forward.
A man slipped from behind one of the bows, he was naked, cyan skin shining the colour winter-sunlight on the fog. Through a thick rough of bright hair, huge curves of white built up a rack of horns, as thick as the canopy branches they scraped up against and holding a pair of garish-pink flamingos. He turned; he was too far into the forest for me to see where he looked, but my hands tightened around the wheel on their own at the time his gaze must have reached my car. For a moment I had no control over my body, simply sitting, back rammed straight up against the seat-back and fingers clamped down on the wheel until, all at once, I broke free. The man had vanished, there was an odd smell of rotten cherries.
I sat and stared out into the forest, as I watched moss, vines, and deep blue blossoms sprouted between the trees, thickening, and reaching deeper until all the forest was cloistered in glowering bows and smothering foliage.
“Start the fucking car! Now!” Majors burst from the forest, gun drawn and looking haggard. He was beelining for the car and thrashing his head from side to side, raking his gaze over the forest.
“What’s going on? I saw someone in the woods, where’s Makena?” I reached for the key, when had the motor stopped? I turned it, the mechanism clicked, but the motor was silent.
“It’s not starting”. I wrenched the key around again, frantically trying but there was no response.
“Shit watch my back. I’ll to try this one.” Major’s yelled, gesturing to Makena’s car. I yanked the keys out of the ignition and clambered out of the car and drew my .38. I jogged across to the other car. Other than the moonlight shifting over the revolver chambers as I moved across the lot, nothing moved. Even the air was dead.
I heard Majors shut the drivers-side door behind him and as I passed the front of the car, heading for the passenger side door to join him, I heard the clicking of the key-start mechanism… and the silence that followed.
“Shit! Morrison. Pop the hood.” He yelled.
I grabbed the lip of the bonnet and wrenched it up. A wave of discomfort and the scent of rotting cherries came over me as I stared into the engine compartment.
“Majors. The car isn’t going to start.”
He jumped from the vehicle and rounded the car, looking down at the motor. He inhaled a pointed breath and cursed. The engine block, the battery and all the other components under the bonnet of the car were encased in the same glittery black slime that coated the object that had been flung at my car. In this larger quantity, it was clear that it was more than just a strange slime. It was alive, twisting itself around and heaving. Clouds of haze were concentrated around the bolts and brackets of the exposed tubes and pipes and jerked at them every few seconds. The metal was holding but the rubber tubes and electric wires were pulled taught at random angles, they looked close to snapping.
Majors reared back suddenly and plunged his hand into it. Unlike last time, the material gripped him, the hazes shambled up through the gel and wrapped around him forcing his hand and fingers back against their joints. Majors screamed like a stuck dog and bucked, thrashing around. I grabbed his shoulder and heaved but even between us, we couldn’t move him an inch.
A voice sounded from the woods, sounding like a whisper, but at an almost deafening volume that staggered me.
“You should have stayed in the south where the woods are sparse Majors.”
I looked towards the source and saw the creature from the woods, he was inhumanly tall, almost twice my height. He was extremely thin; his waist was no more than twelve inches. His arms more closely resembled knotted rope with frayed strands for long pointed fingers than they did human limbs. He was barefoot, entirely naked and what had looked to be antlers before, were stripped bleached tree branches, twisting over themselves and ending with rough snapped spikes. The lawn-flamingos that were still caught in the wooden twirls, were the only vital colour on the entire body. His skin was a translucent mix of grey-veins and sickly yellow and purple bruises.
I turned my gun on it and opened fire, the near silence of the clearing was broken apart as the blasts rocked up my arm. I lost two bullets as fast as I could but the creature moved unnaturally fast. A foot with a chipped grey-bark sole caught hard under my rib cage. I was launched back across the lot to my car. As the hit connected, I’d just cocked for a third shot and when the gun hit the gravel it barked a shot that flew a distance into the woods before splintering a tree branch.
I lurched towards the gun but found more of the slime had appeared and stuck me to the car. The creature gazed at the gun for a moment before turning back to Majors. Major’s other arm was now stuck as well, locked into place gripping the first. His face was ashen. He opened his mouth to speak but the creature merely waved its arm and he crumpled in pain again, screaming over the sound of brittle snaps. When he stilled again, his eyes were dull, and his body was hanging from the anchor of his arms in the slime in the car.
The creature flicked its wrist again, this time some of the branches on its head retreated into the body and burst from its wrist. Along with the long fingers, they jetted forward, skewering Majors, and hoisted him upwards. The slime finally retreating, revealing his arms, now shredded by bone fragments which stuck out from the skin. With a rumble the branches travelled up the creature's body, each one crawling through the creature’s skin to haul Major’s body further up until it rested, dripping, pierced on of the rack of horns.
It looked at me for a moment, flicking its wrist again. I flinched expecting limbs to fly towards me but instead, my bonds broke and my car burst into life. I hopped in drove away in a fever. The dirt road out of the woods twisted more than it had before. I pinned the accelerator down and sped through the turns, just as I saw the trees starting to thin, I hit a ridge in dirt and the car spun from the road.
My husband woke me in the morning, and I blinked up at him.
“Are you okay? You were really shaking!” I blinked at him for a moment before the memory of the forest crashed back into the front of my mind. I leapt from the bed, nearly tripping over my nightgown and ran to the phone. Trying to work out how I’d gotten home I dialled the station’s direct number, after a few rings it was picked up.
“This is Detective Morrison. We need every officer to woodlands south of the town centre. Makena, Johnson, and Agent Majors are missing.”
“Morrison. Makena, and the Johnson’s were killed in a disturbance in the town centre late last night after you went home. We tried to call for your help.” The operator responded.
“What are you talking about. I was out on an operation with them and Agent Majors minutes ago. What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know who Agent Major’s is, Morrison. But I saw Makena and the Johnson brothers get confirmed as deceased earlier this morning. I also saw you set off home at five last night. What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t have time for this I’m getting in the car, I’ll be on the coms,” I said, whacking down the phone and turning, running into my husband.
“Honey, what’s going on.” He asked, worrying down at me.
“How did I get home? What time is it? Is my car okay.” I patted down the pockets of my nightgown for my key, finding nothing and looking over to the hooks by the door. The keys were hung where I always left them at the end of the day.
“You drove home, it’s seven-thirty, the car is fine, it’s out front where you parked it.” He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, I looked out the window and saw the morning sun bouncing off the bonnet of the car.
“I was out there last night, in the woods, there was this man, he had horns, he killed Major’s!” I told him, knocking his hand free and moving over to the door to grab the keys.
“Honey you got home at five-thirty last night. We had Chinese food and watched Nashville. You said something about Makena in your sleep before I woke you up.” He’d followed me over to the door but made no move to stop me opening it.
“I’m sure I was out there. I’m just going to go and check my car.” I unlocked the door and stepped out. My car was sat on the driveway, I approached it, coming around the front and saw that any damage from the crash was gone. I looked inside; everything was in place. Just as I was beginning to think it must have been some sort of dream, I saw it. A thin film of grey slime around the ignition, set with garish-pink-jewels.
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