Ronelle was smitten with it the minute she and Leonard pulled up into its driveway. Because the house was nestled snugly between two towering, thriving oaks covered in shiny, green leaves, set slightly back from the road, the couple hadn’t been able to get a full view of its façade until then. Another aspect that made the three-bedroom house so appealing was the fact that it sat at the top of a street that ended in a cul-de-sac on a hill. The view it offered of the neighbourhood was an unexpected bonus.
Leonard turned from admiring the sprawling suburb stretching away from the base of the house to look back at Ronelle and his investment.
“Jennifer certainly wasn’t exaggerating when she said it’s a dream house,” Ronelle said, barely able to control her elation. Leonard smiled at his wife’s unbridled delight; he pulled her into a warm embrace as they started walking towards the front door.
“Look at that door,” Leonard said in admiration. The door was a wide wooden one that featured an elaborately carved design. Leonard attempted to make sense of all the whorls and whirls chiselled into the door, but his mind couldn’t unravel the pattern, if it had any. The hinges were bright silver, allowing the door to swing silently open, pivoting neatly inwards when Leonard pushed the large horizontal bar that served as the door handle.
The foyer left both homeowners speechless. It was marbled in soft, creamy tiles that lent the interior a distinctive warmth. The frosted window panels on either side of the door offered natural light to be filtered into the entrance, splashing playfully across the walls and floors.
“I love it!” Ronelle gushed. Leonard only smiled broadly at their good fortune.
“I still can’t believe we bagged this house at such a ridiculously low price,” he now admitted as they stepped further inside, moving towards a wide staircase that swept up to the first floor.
“My mother insists there must be something wrong with this place,” Ronelle said as she strolled over to the left, where she knew the kitchen was located.
“Trust your mom to always be so negative about something so positive,” Leonard joked. “My mom told me to change the alarm code as soon as we moved in.”
“And trust your mom to be so paranoid about everything,” Ronelle threw back at him. They laughed at the idiosyncrasies of their mothers.
Two minutes later, the moving truck pulled up outside. It took nearly the rest of the afternoon to unload all their belongings, but by seven-thirty that night they finally settled down for a supper of ordered-in pizza.
“Do you remember how huge the shower stall in the master bedroom en-suite is,” Ronelle asked Leonard coquettishly. “What do you say to us having an indulging shower together to wash off the grime of the day?”
“I say why are we still here, talking about it?” Leonard responded as he scooped Ronelle into his arms and carried her upstairs.
Their lovemaking had depleted whatever energy they had had left after such an industrious day, but Leonard was brought to awareness in seconds when an icy finger traced itself down his spine. Initially, his mind still slightly wrapped in foggy layers of sleep, Leonard thought it was Ronelle touching him, but his haze lifted completely when he turned over to his right to see that she wasn’t in bed with him.
“What the fuck?!” he cursed, sitting upright, urgently searching for the bedside lamp. The room was smothered in darkness so thick it felt to Leonard as if he were trapped in some deeply buried underground bunker. He clicked the lamp switch, but the light didn’t go on.
Once again, he felt a coldness. This time it was a freezing hand that stroked down his bare chest towards his groin. Before the phantom hand could travel any further, Leonard leapt with a shout of horror out of the bed.
“Who’s here? Show yourself!” he demanded.
Slowly, very slowly, as if teasing the moment out, the blanket moved upwards out of its own accord, outlining the shape of a figure under the bedding. By chance or fortune, a thin sliver of moonlight penetrated the drawn curtains, allowing Leonard to see the still rising, hidden figure. It loomed menacingly over him.
Leonard stood like a man petrified by his sight of Death come to collect payment. He tried to will himself to run for the bedroom door, but his feet felt cemented to the floor. All he could manage was a hoarse moan that sounded like a mixture of a howl and a grunt.
Unexpectedly, the bedroom door opened as Ronelle entered. Instantly, Leonard felt himself being released from his grip of terror. Simultaneously, the blanket fell down as the bedside lamp switched on.
“Leonard, what are you doing, standing here like this? You nearly stopped my heart, I swear,” Ronelle chided her husband, unaware of what had just transpired. Before Leonard could reply though, they heard a thunderous crash coming from downstairs. Ronelle screamed while Leonard jumped a few feet of the floor.
Neither one was especially keen on going to investigate the origin of the noise, but Leonard said, “Babe, if we stick together, we should be safe.”
“Should be?” Ronelle asked, arching an eyebrow, but she followed Leonard out of the bedroom to descend down the stairway. Midway down, they both stopped dead in their tracks. The rest of the staircase was no longer there.
“Oh dear God,” Ronelle exclaimed. “This can’t be happening!
“Ronelle, quick! We have to go back before the rest of the stairs tumble down,” Leonard instructed her, not waiting for her to do as he said but instead, grabbing her hand and pulling her after him back to the first floor landing.
No sooner had they reached the landing than the rest of the staircase dropped away, landing with a tremendous clamour.
“Honey, what do we do now? How the hell do we get down?” Ronelle asked in a panic.
“Babe, don’t you remember? There’s another, smaller staircase at the end of this passage that leads to the kitchen,” Leonard reminded Ronelle. Both immediately sprinted for it.
They descended the spiral staircase swiftly, not caring about tripping. When they pushed open the door that led into the kitchen, they were shocked at what they beheld.
“What in the name of heaven is going on here?” Leonard asked.
“Leonard,” Ronelle said, grabbing hold of his arm, “where did we end up?”
They were not in the kitchen where they had had a pizza dinner earlier. Instead, they found themselves in a basement covered in cobwebs. There were many crates and boxes stacked in the room, all festooned by thick, pale-grey webs.
“Fuck this. We’re going back upstairs,” Leonard declared.
“Hell, yes,” Ronelle agreed.
As one, they turned around to the door through which they had entered … only to find a blank wall staring at them. The door had vanished.
“Leonard, I don’t like this at all! We need to get out of here now!” Ronelle shouted, grabbing hold of her husband and pulling her towards him.
“Ronelle, please calm down. If we want to survive whatever this is, we can’t afford to panic,” Leonard advised her. “Let’s just go further into the basement to explore it,” he suggested, “to see if there’s perhaps another exit.”
Reluctantly, Ronelle followed the still bare-chested Leonard as he started to pull down the strings of cobwebs in their way. Spiders as large as the palms of his hands dropped down from their nests every time he pulled a web apart. Fortunately, all of them scampered away from the humans.
Halfway through the room, some of the boxes and crates started suddenly to shake.
“Leonard? Do you see what I’m seeing?” Ronelle asked, her eyes huge in her head.
Leonard simply nodded and continued further. After another ten steps, one of the crates on his left exploded abruptly. Wooden splinters slashed the air, some of them passing inches from the two traversing the room. In rapid succession, three boxes erupted. This time, some of the sharp slivers of wood found their mark.
Leonard and Ronelle could do nothing but scream in pain as they were bombarded by the splinters, bleeding from numerous flesh wounds. They refused to stop though and plunged further into the basement, looking for an exit.
“There!” Ronelle shouted and pointed at a window just above arm’s reach. A thin shaft of moonlight speared the pane, creating a perfect circle on the floor. In the middle of the circle sat a bronze key, looking for all the world like the most prized treasure ever.
“A key,” Leonard said as he wiped away some of the blood trailing across his chest. “That means there must be a door for it, isn’t it?” he asked his wife.
They had been walking so far into the basement that it felt like they must have crossed the entire length of it, but still it stretched on into the gloom. Looking forlornly at Ronelle, Leonard took her hand in his and said, “I guess we just carry on until we find a door, honey. At least the boxes and crates have stopped exploding,” he said, trying to dispel some of the tension.
“No, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Ronelle contradicted him. “What if the key is a trick? A trick to make us walk further into this impossibly long basement to God knows where. I think we should try to reach that window, smash it and get out that way.”
“We can use one of the intact crates to stand on!” Leonard said.
Putting action to words, Leonard grabbed the closest crate and with Ronelle’s help, dragged it over to the window. Stepping on to the crate, Leonard looked out through the window.
“What do you see, honey? Are we still in our house or not?”
“I can see the outside, but I don’t think we’re in our house anymore.”
“What do you mean? That’s impossible!”
“As if all the things that just happened to us are possible? Babe, we can argue about what’s outside later when we’re outside. For now, hand me that large piece of timber, please.”
Taking hold carefully of the piece of wood, Leonard brought his hand back and swung the plank hard at the window. Expecting the window to smash, Leonard was unprepared when his hand rebounded as if he had hit a trampoline. He toppled unceremoniously off the crate in surprise.
“No! This can’t be happening! For the love of God, what’s going on?!” Ronelle shrieked, having finally reached her limit.
She was pulling at her hair when Leonard regained his feet. He went over to her hastily, grabbing hold of her to stop her from shouting and raking her hands through her hair.
“There’s neither love nor God here. Here, you will only find pain, suffering … and ME!” said someone in the gloom beyond them.
Husband and wife froze in fright; the voice sounded beastly, but what had petrified them was the stench that now wafted out of the darkness to envelop them, making them retch miserably. It was riddled with the stink of rotten eggs, fresh faeces and decomposing matter. Ronelle turned her head to the side and vomited uncontrollably.
What stepped out of the murk was something born out of nightmares.
The thing was definitely a man, but only in its outline. It walked on legs thick as tree trunks, muscular and powerful, which ended in a pair of cloven hooves. Its torso rippled with what Leonard and Ronelle assumed were muscles, until a host of slugs, maggots, earthworms and numerous bugs were expelled, to be sucked back into the creature’s body. His entire upper body writhed with the constant movement of his living insides. His shoulders sported thick, menacing bony spurs that curved wickedly up to encircle his head like a crown. His sinewy arms flowed down to hands that had lengthy, cracked, dirty fingernails dripping with some dark, viscous liquid. The nightmare man’s face was devoid of any humanity.
Its eyes were black orbs above a blob of a nose with flaring nostrils. Its mouth was a cavern filled with black, sharp teeth that looked remarkably like stalactites and stalagmites. When the monster snapped close his maw, his teeth made an unwholesome grinding sound.
“Leonard, Leonard! If this is a nightmare, I want to wake up now, please!” Ronelle begged, sinking her nails unconsciously into her husband’s arm.
“Ronelle, stay behind me. I’ll try to distract this fucker so that you can make a run for it,” Leonard said bravely.
The brute approaching them laughed mirthlessly. “You will warm my bed for many a delicious romp, until I’ve ravaged your body to shreds. I can already taste the delight I will gain from our repeated copulation!”
Ronelle screamed her horror at the beast’s declaration. “I would rather kill myself first!” she shouted defiantly at the thing.
It looked askance at her, amusement clear on its brutish features. “I wasn’t talking about you, woman. I was talking about him,” it said, pointing at Leonard, who dropped to the floor in a dead swoon.
Ronelle opened the front door of the house, feeling a frisson of pleasure run through her body as her hand touched the door handle. The house was undeniably happy to see her again.
“Lloyd, honey, come have a look at the interior,” she gushed at her husband who was admiring the view of the sprawling suburb stretching away from the base of the house.
“Coming, babe,” Lloyd said and stepped into the foyer. He was enchanted by the wide staircase leading up to the first floor. “I really like these frosted panels,” he told Ronelle.
“You should see how the light plays around in here when it’s sunny. But come on, let’s have a look at the rest of the house,” she invited him, leading him excitedly to the kitchen.
Outside, a moving van pulled up into the driveway. In one of the upstairs window, a shadowy form materialised. It moved slowly forward, its massive bulk completely covering the window, a strange circle of spurs faintly visible behind its head. It placed a hand with long, cracked and dirty fingernails upon the window sill, sending the slightest ripple through the house. The curse carved into the front door came alive, the whorls and whirls in the wood animatedly reshaping themselves to ensnare the victim with no hope of escape.
Its next lover had arrived…
Image: Nathan Dumlao (www.unsplash.com)
