- Created By NoxRequiem
Red Handed
A father tries to comfort his son against irrational nightmares, but he may need more comforting than the child.
I’m awake, but it feels like a dream. Light creeps in from the hallway, and there’s a small voice making unintelligable noises. But I left the light on, I think. Why’s he still scared?
Did I imagine it? Did the light just flicker?
My son’s voice gets louder, and I hear the terror. I feel it. My wife’s warmth is a tether; I cling to it because I know what will happen if I get up to check on our boy.
The light from his room flickers again, no mistaking it this time. His chanting turns desperate, and I recognize the lullaby he sings to himself. It won’t do him any good. Tears ride his voice, corrupting the melody’s soothing purpose. He doesn’t need lullabies; he needs a firm shoulder to curl against, a strong arm to ward off his nightmares. He needs his father.
I relinquish my wife’s warmth and cross the hall. My son’s door is halfway open, as I left it, and I can see the child in his bed. The lamp on his dresser buzzes like a fly in its struggle to stay alive. The strobe effect deceives my eyes and causes the blackness to creep in at the edges, and my son sits at the center, staring across the room at something I can’t see as he sings pitifully to himself.
He hears my footstep, turns to face me. “Daddy—”
The light goes out.
Read the rest here: http://www.thenoctrium.com/ghost-stories/red-handed
Boxes
Two night guards investigate a security camera anomaly. Then one of them goes missing, and the other is hunted by an invisible horror.
“What is it, Tom?” I radioed.
No answer.
On the monitor, he continued to look at the corner. Whatever held his attention was behind the crates, so I couldn’t see it. Then, slowly, Tom turned around. He looked straight into the camera, and my heart crept into my throat.
He was crying.
Read the whole thing here: http://www.thenoctrium.com/ghost-stories/boxes
Help Me
The sounds became clearer as I progressed. At first I’d thought the thumping was footsteps, but it was too hollow and didn’t have the right rhythm. I followed the glowing circle carved by my flashlight as it led me through the house, revealing just a tiny slice at a time. Around that circle, the darkness looked solid. The illusion took hold of my body, and I felt like I was swimming through thick, black water. I could feel it filling my nose with each breath and trickling into my ears.
The thumping got louder, and I found myself before a door. I remembered what Jake and his dad had said. This was definitely the door they’d been talking about. But as I mentioned, I was never very good at obeying orders. I tried the knob, which resisted me at first, then turned with more noise than I’d have liked. The door fell open to reveal—
Read the rest here: http://www.thenoctrium.com/ghost-stories/help-me
Dead Hand
This is probably the closest thing to a fanfic I'll ever write. Zelda fans, enjoy:
He saw it a second before it struck. Another of those ghastly hands shot out of the darkness. Luke tried to dodge it, but he’d seen it too late. The thing latched onto his face, and he nearly passed out as his nose was buried in its spongy palm. Luke had never actually smelled rotten meat before, but he guessed this was what it was like. His screams were muffled by the thing’s putrid skin.
“Luke! Luke!” Nivia was carrying on. Then she stopped. Luke also stopped struggling, because he heard it too. The scrape of dirt, the rattle of stones. Something else was moving in the cave.
Read the whole thing here: http://www.thenoctrium.com/ghost-stories/dead-hand
Don't Look
“What do you think’s in there?”
The shed rose crookedly from the leaves, its walls twisted crazily so that none of them leaned in quite the same direction. The forest grew close around the decayed structure, wrapping it in a tangle of vines rendered leafless by the autumn weather. The brown foliage rooted the building firmly in the dirt, binding its worm-eaten siding together and preventing it from caving in.
I shrugged as I stared into its obscure opening, warped by the shed’s protracted, interminable collapse. The feeble fingers of light that reached fading into the darkness revealed, barely, the edge of something—it was impossible to tell what by such inadequate illumination. “I’ve never looked.”
“Why not? Scared?”
I nodded, unashamed. Of course I was scared. He would be too if he had to live here. There were many dark places in and around the house—the east wing of the attic, the little closet in the bedroom, the dirt corner in the basement—and it was not good for a child to plumb their murky secrets. That was a lesson I had learned the hard way.
He laughed. I did not get angry. “Well, I’m not scared,” he announced, getting spryly to his feet and crunching through the leaves towards the shed. “I’ll tell you what I find.”
I watched him go. The trees groaned as the October wind bent them mercilessly. The vines ascending the shed’s diagonal walls shivered. He poked his head into the blackness. For what felt like ages, he stood there with his back to me, then, slowly, he turned around.
Read the rest here.
