MechaPig

A spooky little tale.

This is a short story I wrote back in the far-flung year of 2018. I was experimenting with different styles and decided to write a brief tale of terror. I’m quite proud of it looking back. It’s a simple, but flowery exercise in horror writing, and one that was rejected from multiple magazines! I did receive emails from a few of those magazines that it was, in fact, good; It just didn’t fit the style, or themes they wanted to focus on at the time, and I should continue writing.

You know what they say! If at first you don’t publish, do it yourself! Without further ado, here is The Perfect Home for a Family.

A PERFECT HOME FOR A FAMILY

By Michael Guaderrama

Mr. Galloway arrived at the old house at a quarter to ten. The driveway was very bumpy, but the drive proceeding it had been pleasant enough, so he maintained in good spirits. He, and his wife Dr. Galloway had purchased the home almost a week prior to his arrival. The house was a large white cottage nestled in the warm folds of the countryside. The air entered his lungs with a refreshing hug, untainted by the pollution that so marked the atmosphere back home.

“Back home? I need to stop talking like that.” Mr. Galloway said aloud, sure that no one was around to hear his musings. “This is home now!”
He would often speak to himself when he thought he was alone.

First, he toured the grounds, walking past all manner of overgrown weeds and ivy that had taken the west flank of the house. “Nothing a good groundskeeper can’t handle.” He said; He watched some pigeons fly out from the old shed, door hanging from its hinges, gaps in the wood paneling. “I can fix that well before the children arrive.” He said, confidently, hands on his hips. Once inside the home, his luck improved. All the doors where on sturdy hinges, and all windows uncracked and firmly set, save for one, with a peculiar scar across its center grilles. “Hmm. A house this age, it’s a wonder I only have one window to replace!”
Still in high spirits, Mr. Galloway continued his inspection. It was a very welcoming space, wide with and open floorplan, high ceilings and a well-looked-after cottage aesthetic. Save for the master hallway on the second floor. The one that connects the bedrooms and master bath to the staircase. That part of the house was… odd. Out of place. The kind of hall you’d find in a Manor, or a university, only at half the size. On one end, the staircase, at the other was the window with the crack across its center. If you stood with the window to your back, you’d swear you were in some old British abbey that was built at the tail-end of the 16th century. He’d only then become cautiously aware that he hadn’t been told in what year the old house was built. Soon, however, his trepidation melted away as the sun dipped, with a saunter lit by evening haze through the four bedrooms and one bath that flanked the odd hall on either side. Hours pass easily.

“Good bones!” He declared. He had spent time putting the house through it’s paces. Slamming the doors, searching the empty cupboards and jumping up and down onto the house’s light stained hardwood floors. He noted the ample shelf space, well suited for displaying youth athletics trophies and expensive vases. He checked the reasonably spacious closets for mold, of which he found none. Lastly, he dragged his heavy reclining chair through the living room, up the stairs and into the master bedroom to sit beside the pale empty space that was to carry his and his wife’s queen-sized bed. His wife, Dr. Galloway, was a light sleeper and so Mr. Galloway would often read to himself in the chair as she fell into deep sleep before joining her in their dreams.

“This will do. This will be perfect!” He bellowed proudly, and quite it was. He could nearly hear the foot falls of his little children failing to pace themselves down the stairs on Christmas morning; Smell the cookies baking the oven downstairs! With those pleasant thoughts, smile in tow, Mr. Galloway retired to the master bedroom, sinking into his nice leather chair for a refreshing night of well-earned rest.

#

It was then, submerged in bright moonlight that Mr. Galloway awoke with a gentle prodding from his bladder. Making him aware that he had to relieve himself. Even now, the room had a warm, loving quality to it. The exposed wood ceiling melted into a tranquil sea of shimming starlight when coated in the rippled light refracted by the leaves of the tree outside the master bedroom window. With a long, deep breath, he slid on his fuzzy slippers and made his way to the door.

It felt like the start of something. The first of many midnight journeys to the restroom. Entering the great hall, on the other hand, was off, doubly so in the dark of night. Not quite frightening, or wrong just, off. Still, he made his way down the hall with ease, following the moonlight and successfully ignoring the pitch-black staircase and the shape that lies within. In fact, the whole process was so smooth it wasn’t until he had returned from his successful mission that he became a touch put off. He crinkled his noise and shrugged off the thought.

“No, it’s just the dark playing tricks on me. Nothing more.” He spoke. So, Mr. Galloway returned to his chair and closed his eyes, but it did not sit well. He found his thoughts had become infected with a lingering doubt that there was something standing at the end of the hall. The thought that it might be some squatter, or crazed fugitive, or ghost. The thought that it might still be there, even now. In only moments, his apprehension consumes him. His eyes smack open and he stamps over to the door, annoyed more than anything.

“This is stupid. I need sleep. It’s nothing!” He mutters while turning the doorknob and giving no mind to the increased speed of his heart. It opens slowly, he surveys each slice of new information as the doorway gradually reaches full breath. Nothing in view from the door. He turns left, nothing but the crack in the window. His eyes struggle to adjust to the hazy twilight. Then he turns to his right and stares into the curious dark. The stairs are completely obscured in shadow. This would be normal. There are no windows in the stairwell, and he wasn’t one to waste energy on lights he didn’t need, however, this felt different. The shadow hung there like a wall of fog moving quietly over the ocean. He squinted his eyes, then widened them, but nothing peered through. He then followed the outer line of the hall until he saw it: A simple shape sitting on the ground, among the haze.

It barley stuck out past the shadows, almost a shadow itself, it took his mind a few moments to grasp it. At first, he thinks it may be nothing more than an eccentric shadow. But of what?

“A foot!?” His heart races, but the shape doesn’t move. He steps back, slams the door shut and locks it, stumbling over his luggage in a race to get his phone, which was laying on the ground next to his chair, plugged into an outlet next to the would-be bed. He frantically picks it up. His finger misses the power button a few times before his face becomes engulfed in horror. It reads “15% battery.” He might as well have sunk into mud. “15% might as well be 5%.” He rumbled. The outlet, not properly connected, the phone, one of poor design and confusing energy saving functions. The contraption might have turned itself off at any moment. His mind shuffles through the options. Should he call the police? And tell them what? That there’s a disturbing shape out in the hallway, one that seems reticent to move? “Imagine that?” said a little voice in the back of his mind. “Calling the cops on a trick of the light? Ridiculous!” “Perhaps?” He thought. “I could take my chances with the flashlight?” Provided the shape was still there, waiting. “Maybe an animal, at worst? Or an old piece of drywall, come loose from the ceiling? It’s nothing. It has to be.” Mr. Galloway considered himself a sensible man, and so turned around to enact this sensible plan.

#

The room felt twice its size. The dancing lights now flickering a malevolent tango across the ceiling. The walk across squeaking boards like screaming mice and under the dark wood beams like the rib cage of a massive carcass, felt a mile long. The crackle of the doorknob mechanism gritted like sand. He turned his head, then his body. It remained still, the barely a shape. One moment’s hesitation later, he clumsily activates the light! It comes on! Piercing the fog and giving contrast to the area! The shape retreats entirely, as though it was never there, but the light is weaker than he had hoped, not fully reaching the stairs, and before his eyes can adjust to the brisk change of photon placement, the phone beeps, and shuts off. Silence.

“No!” Mr. Galloway shouted, hushed but urgent. Racking his short-term memory to find the source of his cursed shape. In his mind, he follows the arc of the steps, what little of them he could see.

“It’s not a man.” This he knew. “No one can move that quickly, definitely not without making a sound.” But the memory was still fuzzy, painful even. The shock of the bright white over the once cold, buzzing blackness. It was easier then, to adjust back to the dark. Though not instant. In the brief moment he was blinded, he held up his arms, in a curious way. Protecting himself from anything that might be there. He didn’t have to. But he did. Over his eyes, like a child, about to be attacked by a dog. Nothing happened. After about thirty seconds he adjusted, and there it was once more. That shape, at the end of vision. Right where it was last time. This was, in a way, comforting to Mr. Galloway. It’s easier to see the thing that terrifies you, than not to know where it is, but know that it is.

Then he stood there one foot still hiding in the perceived safety of the master bedroom. With his mind trained on it. Staring at it. Waiting for it. Waiting for it to do something. To do anything. “Move.” He thought. “Tell me what you are.” Movement betrays figure. Figure betrays identity. Identification is key to understanding. Understanding is the enemy of fear. At that moment, Mr. Galloway did not understand, at all.

#

For minutes on end, whatever it was remained there, he didn’t know how many, though his eyes started to burn. Still, it remained, just barely peeking out from obscurity.

“Round?” He mutters. “Is it round? Is that what you would call, round? Like a tail? No. It’s thick. It’s fat. What is thick, and round. And what moves faster than a flash of light?” Sweat reaches out from the sleeves of his robe, dusting the cool air with the scent of adrenaline and work. He still clutched the dead phone in his right hand. It too, shallow with sweat. Then it returned, the little voice in the back of his head, and said “You have to know. Screw it! Stupid thing! It isn’t anything! RIGHT!?” His thoughts screamed out, tired of creeping fear and insecurity. “It hasn’t moved. Still. It’s not alive then. It can’t be. It’s a shadow! Nothing but a silly shadow.” He didn’t believe this. Not really. His mind, absent of light, fell backward through time and into a long-forgotten fear that’s always there, right behind the logic and reason and sense that so foregrounds itself in day-to-day life.

“Please god. It’s nothing. Please.” Whispers the atheist Mr. Galloway. “Please. Make it nothing.” And so, words melt into steps. Steps, melt into stride, and Mr. Galloway runs head long into the blur. Until his eyes fail him and his feet, unsure of where hardwood ends and steep incline begin, stamp carefully around the umbral dance floor, trying to find their way down.

“Just get out. No need to see it. Out!”

“No! I have to…” Mr. Galloway turns. Looking for the window to orient himself. One full turn. No starlight. Two full turns. The large window, far away now, a pale moon.

He felt it first, a figure, then, just kissed by moonlight, he saw it. In silhouette by the crack in the pale moon. Rising, then standing still, until it doesn’t. Shifting around, if not turning in the human sense. A gnarled form, with scattered silhouette imparting the look of fur. Coating it. Out from the shadow, a pair of eyes forwards, pale and glossy, large and open, themselves akin to the lunar surface. Beautiful. They turn, looking back at his. Their eyes meet, his heart stops, if only for a moment. He steps back, that voice in his head now screaming so loudly it’s indistinguishable from a jazz band falling down the stairs. The pale light farther and farther away, the pain stronger and stronger at his shoulders and his legs. Step after step. Impact after impact. The wind knocked from his lungs as he falls. His back, thundering onto the first-floor panels with a satisfying thunk.

#

It takes a moment, he looked dead, laying there on dusty wood. Then, mercifully, a cough, and another. Before he knew it, Mr. Galloway was on his feet, making way toward the exit with the intensity of a hobbled gazelle.

I didn’t mean to scare him. Not that soon anyway. I will admit, it gave me some measure of joy. Seeing him run, staggered, out the door and down the driveway. Funny, he didn’t even seem to notice me on the drive over. No looking over his shoulder at rest stops along the way, nor that feeling of being watched. None of it. Not a very perceptive person, Mr. Galloway.

I suppose I should thank him, however. He brought me here. I was in search of a new home for my kin. The city can be so crowded for my kind. Human dwellings are so small, not a lot of room in the shadows of a two-bedroom apartment for a growing family. We needed space. Mr. Galloway was just the man to find it. Willing or not. That night, I took a proper tour of the lovely cottage. The ample shelf space for knocking china to the ground in the middle of the night. The beams of dark wood holding up the ceiling, perfect for scurrying along and hanging from. Like one’s own private fire escape! The ample closet space, well suited for me and my beloved to sleep away the horrid sunlight in up-scale comfort. The one, oddly cracked window, drawing in attention and unnerving those in this otherwise cozy living space. Why, I could nearly hear the hushed sliding of my offspring, clambering up the walls on Christmas night! I could smell the rotting animals dragged into the roomy crawlspace!

As I stood in the driveway, watching Mr. Galloway tear down the road toward uncertain future, I turned back, and saw the beauty of the house as it glisten in the stars. Gnarled tree shadows climbing up the north face. Gorgeous! Priced perfect to never remain on the market for too long. Always filled with new, naive people seeking to spend their golden years nested in the bosom of the country. It felt like the start of something. I said, out loud, sure that no one was around to hear my musings: “Yes, this will be perfect!”

THE END