Page 74 of Fallen Thorns
“What scares you the most?”Mars was still pacing a few steps in front of me.
My vision had since adjusted to the dark, so I could see their outline and the vibrant red of their coat. I spotted the moon up above, too, completely unobstructed and burning in full view.
“What scares me the most?” I repeated.
“Yeah. Like things that really make your skin crawl.”
What scares me the most? Everything. Everything terrifies me. Life.
“I’m not really sure.”
Mars slowed their pace somewhat until they finally fell back in line with me. “Nothing? Really? You can’t think of anything?”
“Not really.” I shrugged.
“Okay, I’ll go first then. Rats. Rats bloody terrify me. Thesoundthey make and the way they scurry.” They let out a giant shiver to prove it.
Oh, so we’re just talking about mundane fears?
“Okay, well I suppose I’m not the biggest fan of ghosts.”
“Ghosts? You believe in ghosts?”
Did I believe in ghosts? I wasn’t sure if it was possiblenotto believe in things anymore, not since my whole life had become a fictional story all in the space of one evening.
“I think I saw one once. Normally, I can tell if it’s just my imagination or just a trick of the light or sound but still to this day, I have no explanation for what I saw.” This was true. I’d always been one to stand by the fact that seeing was believing and that science was proved too strongly for the existence of such supernatural things to be confirmed.I say as a walking reborn immortal.But that one night when I was about twelve years old, my mother and I had just returned home from seeing my aunt. It was dark and late and cold, and I wanted nothing more than to just flop down onto my bed and drift off to sleep. And that I did, my mum sleeping in her room down the hall. But something woke me that night — a tapping noise from downstairs. Not the usual creak of pipes that came with living in an old stone chapel, nor was it a dripping tap. This was much louder, and much more present. To this day I will never comprehend what compelled me to investigate. I was such a timid child, and I had not long started secondary school: a big boy at the big boy school. I was brave and confident; I had to force myself to be, or I’d be eaten alive.
I climbed out of bed and greeted the pool of darkness as I descended the stairs. I followed the intermittent sound that was growing stronger with every step I took. The sound seemed to emanate from our small kitchen at the back of the house, directly next to the glass door that led out into the yard. My mum hadn’t had time to close the blinds, so the light of the street lamps lit up half of the room, casting a blueish glow across the countertops. I stood at the base of the stairs, hand gripping to the banister. I heard one last tap and my head jolted to the unlit part of the room where our kitchen table resided, and despite the poor lighting, I saw a figure sat there. A shadow of what I could only assume were horns silhouetted against the wall, but the shadow was out of focus andoff,so it could have showed anything. I was looking for obscurities. But thisthinghad an inhumanly long arm extended over the table, one that ended with a sharp and pointed black nail. I couldn’t make out any features, if it had any at all. But I just stood, heart thudding horribly in my chest. I hated that sound so much.
I remember my first thought being: it was my dad, finally deciding he wanted to meet me and reunite with my mummy. I expected thisthingto fully emerge from the shadows of the kitchen, and there Jerry would be, smiling that same beaming smile he wore in all of mum’s photos. He would extend his arms and say something like ‘come here, son’ or maybe apologise andexplain.But the shadow didn’t move.
After staring frozen for a while, somehow knowing it wasn’t going to move anymore, I sprinted back up the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me and dove under my duvet, curling into a foetal position and feeling my chest throb into the mattress. The sound ceased to continue, and once my heart had settled, I remember cursing myself for even caring about my dad. I had mum. She was more than enough. He didn’t deserve us. He didn’t deserve us. He didn’t deserve us.
But the shine of that white grin in the pitch dark of my kitchen will always be woven into my mind like a vine of death.
And that morning, when my mum asked me why she heard my movement that night, I lied straight to her face and said I was thirsty. She smiled at the time, but she knew I was lying. But boys don’t cry, or at least that’s what my first bully said. The second told me to stop being so soft. I was a man, after all.
Over time, I told myself the claws were a trick of the light, and the more I thought about it, the more the memory of the figure merged into something normal. A cold figure, but with an echo of humanity.
A ghost.
As I said, it was an old building.
“So,ghosts then. I get that. Maybe it was a guardian angel — my mum always goes on about them. Someone sent to watch over you.” Mars was still swinging in step beside me.
A guardian angel. Maybe.
To our left,we were coming up to the base of the cathedral, and from that angle, it was hard to really appreciate the scale of it all. But it was there, and I could feel the weight of it all. The overbearing presence.
Another snap sounded and this time I turned around. Mars noticed.
“What? You hear something?” they asked.
I stilled for a moment; head fully turned as my eyes scanned the darkness.
“Nothing. Paranoia.”
“You’ve got to tell me if you get a sense of anything though. You promised.”
