The Creeper, page 26
Alec returned to the locked door. He hammered on it, alternating between fists, calling for Lara, his voice becoming faster and louder with every passing second of no response. The control panel for the security system was in the corridor, mere feet from where Alec stood, driving his frail shoulder into a door that ten men would fail to budge.
If only Lara would activate the shutters, then all would be forgiven. He would double her salary. She could choose her own reward.
Alec froze at the sound of smashed glass. The curtain was seen to move; its languor disturbed by whatever had broken through the pane and landed with a thud where particles now tinkled on the floor. He watched in horror as the curtain waved gently inward from the night’s breeze.
‘Who’s there?’ he cried out.
Another window was heard to shatter, and then another. Every pane of glass in Alec’s study – his sanctum from the world – was being deliberately and systematically destroyed. He turned his back on them and clenched his eyes shut.
‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘I have money. I can give you more than you’ll ever need. Just, please, leave me be.’
Feet crunched on broken glass; a succession of slow, measured steps. Someone had entered through the empty frame. A curtain swished open. Alec couldn’t contain his shriek when he heard it being wrenched down to the floor. The cold was fast to enter. He felt it like a hand caressing his neck, primed to strangle. The next curtain was torn from the wall. One by one, every broken window was exposed, and Alec stood trembling, visualising the horror behind him – the night in all its moonlit glory, unseen for so many years.
‘Please,’ Alec repeated. ‘I’ll give you whatever you want.’
Their step was quieter now. They had passed into the room, treading across its rug, making Alec’s home their own. His fortress had been breached, and with such ease. He listened to the scrape of steel as the fire poker was drawn from its holder, like a brass blade unsheathed. Whoever it was, they were scratching at the grate, stirring its embers back to life. A log was heard to tumble onto the floor before the poker was dropped with a padded clamour. Still, Alec refused to turn, to even loosen his eyelids. Something was burning. The fire that he had abandoned had found a means to survive. The Persian rug touched everything that was Alec’s; his chair and desk, the tables and fittings, all those treasured things that would burn so easily.
‘What do you want?’ he called out.
Alec could hear the fragile crick and crack of bone, as though the intruder crossed a frozen lake thawing to fracture. It had to be a man. He was breathing heavily through his mouth, drawing ominously closer; ubiquitous in the blind darkness that Alec clung to.
He couldn’t risk opening his eyes. He could have caught a glimpse of the creeper in a framed reflection or in the polished belly of a silver bowl. His father had warned him of the eye. It wants to see. Even the strongest mind cannot quell its curiosity.
The man came to stand in front of Alec. An arm’s reach away. Even over the rising smoke his breath was noxious. Few knew of Alec’s existence. Even fewer knew where he lived. Was he the victim of an indiscriminate misdeed or was this some vengeful ghost from his past?
‘Is that you, Barry?’ he asked, unable to steady his voice.
No reply came, only that deep, drawn-out panting and the growl of the hot flames now chewing through his father’s rug.
‘Mr French,’ he whispered, ‘is it you? Please, tell me who you are.’
He could feel the fire’s warmth feeding greedily on the floor, climbing the legs of his chair, and cooking the contents of each drawer in his desk like an oven. The curtains had caught fire. Alec could smell their ancient mustiness. All those odours hoarded over the years were finally released as one. He imagined the windows barricaded by a wall of the blackest smoke.
It couldn’t have been the creeper. Alec hadn’t seen him three times. It was by these rules that the man had survived. Then why was the creeper’s face all that he could envisage in the timeless horror of that moment? Every description he had ever known was forced into his mind, ever-changing and yet smiling throughout each terrible guise.
‘You can’t do this,’ he said, every fibre of his being aquiver. ‘I haven’t seen you!’
His throat was suddenly seized by the coldest fingers, so long that they choked him like a collar. Alec grabbed the man’s wrists. They were as bone; fleshless, but extraordinarily strong. He couldn’t pry himself free. And this futile fight for air relinquished the rules of a lifetime.
Alec opened his eyes.
It was nothing like he had imagined, not in his most haunting of nightmares. The creeper was more terrifying than he could have ever thought possible.
Flames brushed the grandfather clock as it rang in the ninth hour; fated to burn like everything else in Alec’s home – his prison and his tomb.
About the Author
A.M. SHINE writes in the Gothic horror tradition. Born in Galway, Ireland, he received his Master’s Degree in History there before sharpening his quill and pursuing all things literary and macabre. His stories have won the Word Hut and Bookers Corner prizes and he is a member of the Irish Writers Centre. His debut novel, The Watchers, has been critically acclaimed. The Creeper is his second full-length novel.
Follow him on @AMShineWriter and
www.amshinewriter.com
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A.M. Shine, The Creeper
