Missives from Isolation #8 – Suspense
A lesson in writing suspense was on the menu for this week’s Curtis Brown workout – tips on atmosphere, suggestion, and tension among other things. As normal, it was pick a prompt, write for 15 minutes, and polish/finish. So that’s what I did. It came out alright, I think.
He was in the cellar when the light went out, abruptly. It would have been easy to deal with, if it had only been his cellar.
He forced himself not to curse, knowing that making any noise would be unwise. Instead he pulled his thief’s lantern from his pocket and clicked it on, the narrow beam illuminating only a narrow circle of the room at a time. It would have to do. He cursed whoever’s shoddy workmanship had let a ten-year bulb like the one he’d seen ever so briefly as he’d stepped from his tunnel into the cellar go out so swiftly. Bulbs like that were supposed to dim before they died so one knew to replace them, not just wink out on a whim.
If it had been his cellar, he would have been even more annoyed. As it was, at least he’d have shadows to hide in if the occupants came downstairs. Not that they ought to, at this time of night.
If he’d been a more cautious man, he would have wondered why the cellar’s light had been on at all at this time of night. But there was no sight or sound of anyone in the underground room, nor of anyone moving around above. They’d watched the building for a long time, seeing all its other lights wink out one by one, before they’d made their move at last. There should be no-one around. There was no-one around.
Perhaps they’d just forgotten the light. He pushed it out of his mind, and stepped into the cellar proper.
It was a huge room, the sweep of the narrow lantern-beam picking out heavy beams that held up the house above, vaulted alcoves in the walls whose shadows held strangely human shapes that would have startled him if he hadn’t seen how still they stood. Statues. The crypt – for that was what it was, even now that the church above was become a house, the altars removed and all the holiness bled away – still held the vestiges of its former occupants, the solemn statues that stood vigil above graves now emptied of their bodies for coffins new at the newer, bigger church across town. He shivered as he saw them, involuntarily. Why the new owners hadn’t stripped the statues out he had no idea. Some morbid sense of humour, no doubt.
They were only statues, though. That was all.
He crept across the room slowly, careful to make no sound whatsoever, his shoes soft on the worn stone flags. It had taken them a good while to find this way into the cellar, scoping out the abandoned houses on either side, breaking in and digging a slow and careful tunnel from one cellar to the next. He had to be careful, lest their hard work go to waste. The thought of the returns, though, kept him light on his feet and light of heart. The owners, asleep upstairs, were wealthy indeed, judging by how opulently they had refurbished the old church into a princely home indeed. He was quiet and soft of step, and knew just where to find safes and jewellery-boxes and the like. Their tunnel could be sealed behind them, and by the time the house awoke they would be long gone with their gains. He simply had to slip out of the cellar and up into the house, and it would be the work of moments to come away richer than a king.
The statues loomed on either side, silent and unyielding. In another age he would have been cheerfully robbing the graves of the great and good who had been laid here to rest – but they were long gone, their statues for some reason the only trace of them remaining. He ignored them. It was harder than it should have been. They seemed to look down on him, silently judging. I’m not here for you, he thought, inexplicably irritated. Leave me be.
He was halfway across the floor when his thief’s lantern went out, as abruptly as the ten-year bulb in the ceiling. This time he cursed aloud, too loudly, shaking the tube in his hand, unable to peer at it in the sudden, crushing darkness. That had been a ten-year bulb too – a fresh ten-year bulb that he’d put in only days ago. We share a shoddy supplier, it seems. No matter. The house above would be better lit by moonlight through its windows even if its lamps were doused. He pulled a book of matches from one pocket and a stub of candle from another, lit the latter with the former and continued, flickering orange light guiding his steps towards the stairwell, so close now.
The candle went out before he’d taken three more steps – not blown out, no rush of wind from any quarter. It simply went out, all heat and light gone, not even an ember remaining.
His whispered curse seemed to echo far too loudly from the walls. He fumbled for the matches again, and in the moment of orange light he had before the flaring flame was instantly extinguished he saw that the nearest alcove was empty, where before it had been full.
He got another match lit, for a second, this one going out even quicker than the first. In the instant of amber light he saw that all the alcoves were empty now, the statues gone, stepped down from the empty tombs they had guarded.
The third match revealed that they were standing all around him.
He didn’t get the fourth one lit.
