Page 66 of Marked By Feral Monsters
I stood outside the house while salted air blew in from the gulf, seeping into my skin and bones like an estuary. The Victorian, I knew, was mine from the moment I saw it. I wasn't giving it up for anything.
It was the middle of a sunny afternoon. Using an obnoxiously out-of-date ornate key, I spun it in the lock, and stepped inside. The first thing I noticed was the darkness.
There was no light switch. Only a push-button that made a heavyclickwhen I pressed my thumb into it. And as the bulb slowly sang to life, equipped with a loud buzz, flickering until it reached full blast—which wasn't very bright at all—the shadows seemed to swallow all the light, as if it were being sucked into the depths of the house.
I made a mental note to replace the bulbs when I realized they weren't imitation Edison LEDs. They were real. Original.They buzzed and threw off heat, and I'd likely have to replace the entire fixture, and at that moment, my parents' pleas to sell the house began to feed the cracks of this new dream. This house was going to be expensive. I'd have to replace everything to modernize it.
Even more unsettling, the deeper I ventured into the house, the more mirrors I found—they covered nearly every square inch of the walls. I clicked every light switch along the way, scaring myself with my reflection.
I dropped my bags in the hallway and kept walking, in abject horror, through a funhouse of fucking mirrors—they wereeverywhere. Hundreds.Thousands.
At the end of each floor's hallway, and in every single bedroom, there was only one window. Paired with the old electrical and weak lighting, a single sunray from those lone windows bounced along the mirrors, decorating the halls in a disorienting glow, while making the bedrooms feel small and suffocating.
The entire house, massive as it was, felt small and suffocating.
The Victorian was old, unique, beautiful, horrifying, and much like my great aunt, held many secrets.
Determined to keep going, not to let the setback of the mirrors and the darkness scare me away on day one, I carried my things in from the car, and explored.
Every single room was full of Greta's things. Piles, boxes, chests and closets, full to the brim, of clothes and other strange items. Photographs of people I didn't recognize, newspaper clippings, mostly of missing persons. An old vacuum, vintage, from the 70s but in pristine condition, completely unused. Packages of unopened makeup that looked older than I was. Out-of-style clothes in all sizes, which was odd, since Greta hadno children, and few friends. All I'd ever heard about the woman was that she was a recluse.
Greta had many secrets, and maybe that's what gripped me so tight those first few days. Because I had none of my own.
The house itself had a presence, a sort of sentient awareness, like you could feel it breathing as you walked the halls. It tensed and held its breath when I discovered something new, and so did I. We were in sync, and I wondered if Greta felt a similar bond. Maybe it was that pull that kept her there and apart from her family all her life.
Though I'd never met her, I knew at a young age that Greta had certain proclivities. It was an unspoken thing, yet heavily threaded into conversations and side-comments at family barbecues. No one would say exactly what made her different, but the knowledge was always there, lingering between the lines. They described her as having a cold indifference, her words soul-piercing barbs in conversation, as if she enjoyed inflicting pain.
Strange as the house was, taking custody wasn't even a question. And so I flew home, packed up a U-Haul, and moved myself into Greta's Victorian. I spent the following days sifting through the remnants; cleaning, organizing, throwing things away, driven by this need to understand the woman who had lived and died within the shadowy walls, which, as each day passed, felt less like a house and more like a living archive of her existence. And the mirrors, always there, always watching, reflected the memories, like the house could not let them go.
I'd suspected the house was haunted. But that's just something people say about old houses. Especially dark ones perched on the edge of an ancient, rocky coast, witness to generations of death and tragedy.Hauntedhelps explain away creaky floors and dim, flickering lights, strange sounds at all hours.
I'd heard and seen all these things since moving in. But I'd neverfeltit.
Until one night, I'd been living at Greta's for over a month, asleep in bed, when I awoke to a hand crawling up my leg.
My breath hitched in my throat. The air was heavy, thick with the scent I'd grown accustomed to—something distinctly old and stale, salt and briny wood, dried herbs, and Greta's rose perfume. A faint, almost imperceptible chill danced across my skin beneath the covers, forcing me to rip off the blanket.
A creak in the floorboards, like someone stepped across them, had me springing up and out of bed. I scrambled to the wall, flattened my back, and sucked in a shuddering breath, pressing my lips firmly together, so I could listen. I knew I'd felt a hand, but the noise I heard must have been the house settling.
But then a sigh breathed into the darkness. And it wasn't mine. I strained my eyes trying to make out something, any kind of shape. My skin prickled, each hair rising from the root. I was being watched.
I turned on all the lights, but saw nothing. Bed, dresser, chair. I felt brave enough only to peer out my bedroom door before slamming it shut and locking it. It took me ages to crawl back into bed after checking every hidden nook.
Certain the room was empty, deciding to investigate further in the morning, perhaps find traces of an intruder, I attempted to go back to sleep. Pulling the covers up to my neck, I stared into the darkness, with only the faintest sliver of moonlight slicing through the gaps in the curtains.
I'd removed all the mirrors from this room—from most of the house, actually, stacked them in one of the sitting rooms, unsure what to do with them all—but as I stared at the small sliver of light reflected on the wall, I decided that was a good place for a mirror. Bring a little more natural light back into the space. I had plenty to choose from, after all.
I was just starting to calm down, making plans in my head for tomorrow, when I felt it.
A hand this time, on my thigh. Slapping my palm over it did nothing but sting my bare skin. The sensation remained, though, heavy and cool, yet non-corporeal. I curled my fingers into it. It felt like quicksand, a sinking, squeezing crispness pulling at my skin. I withdrew, and the sensation disappeared. But the weight was still there, on my leg. My hand returned, fingers sinking into the cold, ghostly grip.
I must have been losing my mind, was my first thought. Or I was having some sort of fit. My nervous system was reacting to all the change. Or maybe it was a muscle cramp.
And when the hand crawled higher, I thought,I must be dreaming.
My heart raced so fast it could have beat right out of my chest. And, god help me, I inched my legs further apart. The hand crawled higher, shimmering with a ghostly coolness across my thigh, spreading like a burst of snowflakes the more confident the touch became.
It stayed like that, rubbing, like a lover's caress, and I just lied there and let it. My mind warred between thoughts of ghosts, alternate dimensions, bizarre dreams and insanity. But I was always so alone, and it felt so good that I almost didn't care if it wasn't real, and the hand squeezed and rubbed, almost in tune with my internal tug-of-war. It feltsofucking good. And strange. Weird and wild and unreal.
