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You cringe at each creak on the old warped stairs but that doesn’t sway your determination to reach the second floor. Your gaze is fixed on the top rotten step as you endure the climb. The walls watch. Things crawl under your skin.

The servant’s door shrieks on its hinges as an endless corridor empties into a dark master bedroom, occupied by a moth-eaten canopy bed dripping with cobwebs. Sallow peeling wallpaper sheds from the walls like dead snakeskin and flutters to the floorboards as you brush past. In the corner on a tattered rug sits a child’s wooden rocking horse, the seat worn smooth, the corded mane and tail coated in dirt. A mahogany chest of drawers stands lifeless with the top drawer still pulled out as if someone left in a hurry; a cracked mirror clings to the wall just above it, but you know better than to catch a glimpse of yourself in it.

The air is thick and heavy and it seems you inhale the shadows around the room as they cower and shrink back from the light of your candle. Their twisted silhouettes and outlines bottleneck in your throat like dead leaves circling a drain, and during this moment it becomes obvious that the quiver of a gentle candle flame may not be enough to keep the ghosts under the stairs… from coming out.

Slipping back the way you came, you creep down the hall like a thief and peer over the broken banister. Below lies a sad arrangement of disarray… sheets draped over furniture, tattered curtains hanging by mere threads, a cold stone fireplace, wet rotten holes in the plaster walls, a chandelier with broken strings of crystals, a man’s derby hat still hanging from a coat rack, and all manner of papers and debris strewn about the room.

THE WALLS LEAN IN.

Your blood suddenly stirs. Someone is crying in the room above you. Behind you are the attic stairs.

Your body’s reaction to the sudden drop in temperature sends an icy chill down your spine like a razor blade. A window is open somewhere. A dead breeze wafts the scent of mold and decay over you as the orange pinch of flame atop your stump of candle flickers once, twice, and then is gone. The darkness settles over your head and shoulders like a deathly bridal veil as your heartbeat quickens and goosebumps spread across your flesh. A foul dust in the air coats your tongue with a stale film and turns your throat to dry cotton. Now directly in front of you, like a tomb in a mausoleum, the attic door stands wide open, hanging by one hinge. There is movement in the walls.

Each stair screams out in pain as you ascend into the pitch darkness and both hands grip the wooden banister for fear of stumbling and falling backwards. At the summit, a few paces into the room, a lightbulb chain hangs in the blackness and you hold your breath as you give it a sharp tug. Nothing. Instead of flooding the room with light it seems to deepen the shadows even more, stirring up darkness like a diver stirring up soot in the belly of a shipwreck. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. Sweat soaks through your clothes, a hammer pounds at the insides of your chest and hot shivers cascade down your backbone. The silence is deafening.

Suddenly something moves in the room. You want to scream but you can’t. The sound of fingernails tear and claw at a chalkboard. A door slams somewhere downstairs. Hot tears spill down your cheeks. The mirror in the master bedroom crashes to the floor. Something moves toward you in the darkness. Your body commands you to make a break for the staircase but you’re far too paralyzed to move. Someone is screaming downstairs, shrieking with murderous ferocity, wailing with misery like a lamenting sailor’s widow. Footsteps pound down the second story hall from the master bedroom and pause at the foot of the attic stairs. Your vision blurs.

They know you’re here...

Just some random thoughts on a gloomy overcast rainy day...maybe..but i ask myself, 'Is real life much different from this?'