Come On Up to the House: An Excerpt

That night, Darran woke with a start, sitting up suddenly in bed and sweating and gasping for breath. He’d had a nightmare, a bad one – visions of the shed, of blood and death and pestilence. Fucking you ‘til your bones break.

It was like a breath on the wind, the faint, subtle sound of a piece of music, tinny and distorted but clearly audible. Suddenly, a poster peeled from the wall, whispering its way to the floor in the darkness.

“What the fuck?” Darran shouted. In the darkness, he had no way of knowing what had happened, but he’d heard movement and movement was enough to scare the shit out of him after a nightmare like that.

Then there was a knock at the window, and Darran’s room was up a flight of stairs, so who the hell was out there? He climbed out of bed to investigate, the floorboards creaking as he shifted his weight across the room. He yanked back the curtain and discovered the source of the noise – the branches of the old oak tree were rattling in the wind, and tapping at his window like an uninvited guest at a house party.

Darran breathed a sigh of relief and turned around; as he did so, the lights flicked on by themselves, and his nightmare was back, only this time he was living it. The walls were spattered with blood, and a deep, scarlet stain covered the carpet. Darran didn’t know it, but he was looking at the room as it was left by its previous inhabitant, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

He ran to the door and tried to open it, but the bolt was jammed fast and refused to budge, no matter how heavily he hammered at it. He tried to call for help, but his throat had dried up and he couldn’t get the words out; then, the light went back out again, leaving the moonlight to filter in through the window to light the room in an eerie glow.

A shadow passed before it, a quick, blurry movement. Nothing can take me higher. Darran passed out as the music in his ears grew louder.

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