Little Nell felt like she had been walking for hours, groping blindly through the sticky-floored house. The darkness played tricks on her. Noises tried to draw her off the path. Voices whispering promises. The tone of which suggested anything but a happy ending.
A scurry to her left froze her in an instant, one foot hovering mid-air. Tilting her head to the right she tried to focus all her senses. Straining them to the point that the answering silence was deafening. Nell's eyes, although useless in the all encompassing black, darted frantically around trying to find the source of the sound. Her little heart pounded within the confines of her chest.
The rational part of her brain told her she'd made the noise and there was nothing to fear. Slowly lowering her raised foot, hating the way it sank into the soft ground, she took in a calming breath, willing her heart to stop its frightened gallop, and continued her journey into the house with only the whispers to keep her company.
She didn't know when the whispers disappeared but now the only sound was the squelch of her feet and beat of her heart, which seemed to be getting louder. The soft whumpf, whumpf, whumpf rose in volume until Nell realised it was not the beat of her heart. Lifting her head she stared into the darkness only to see a light racing towards her. Wall mounted candles burst into flame, one after the other, flooding the house with an eerie cold light. She stood for a second, her eyes blinded by the sudden onslaught to her senses.
When the spots before her eyes finally cleared, Nell could see the hallway in which she stood, and how she wished she could not. The walls were formed from the same muscle and sinew that the houses' exterior was made from with white cartilage interspersed at almost regular intervals. She slowly lowered her eyes to the floor, her stomach convulsing when she finally glimpsed the ground on which she stood. She was standing on the houses tongue. Saliva coating her toes, soaking the cloth and stuffing alike. Hoping this would be the worst it had to offer, she had no other option but to make her way deeper into the house, bile rising in her throat with every squishy step. She could see that the hall changed further ahead, and quickened her steps, hoping to get away from the horror that currently surrounded her.
Relief flooded through her as she finally stepped off the tongue and onto a solid wooden floor. The brown boards as worn and dirty as the cream plastered walls, her sodden feet leaving prints in the dust. But before she could even sigh, the sound from the woods returned. This time it was not alone, it was accompanied by a rumbling much like the trembling in the ground that thunder brings. It was this that caused her flight. After the night poor Little Nell had had so far there was no way she was waiting around to find out was behind the noises echoing through the house.
Breathing hard, legs failing fast, she could not keep this pace up for much longer but she knew she could not stop. Yet as with everything else, the decision was not in Nell's hands. Her left foot came down on the floor only to have the wood give way beneath it. Crashing to the ground, she hit hard, the rotten wood splintering around her. She managed to grab hold of the splintered plank halting her descent, a cry of terror escaping her mouth. She hung there for what seemed like forever, trying to gather her wits, listening as the rumbling grew nearer with each passing moment.
Her legs kicked wildly in the air as she tried to haul herself back up onto solid ground. Each attempt only made her arms ache all the more. Closing her eyes Nell dropped her head to her chest, fighting down the fear clenching her stomach, and opened her eyes, only to screw them shut with a squeak. She had seen nothing. An unending abyss stretching beneath her. Nell was left with only one option if she wanted to survive this night. Filling her lungs she took the chance and yelled as loud, and as long, as she could, not knowing if anyone would hear her plea.
The rumbling drew ever nearer. The plank, that was her lifeline, shook and rattled. Her heart pounded painfully within her chest keeping time with her ragged breathing. What she felt next almost caused her to fall into the black pit below, her heart making the jump from her chest to her throat. A furry paw had wrapped itself around her wrist and was tugging her up, slowly but surely.
Once her heart settled back into it's assigned position, Nell forced her eyes to move from staring at the paw to take a look at the owner. She looked up into the face of the pink bear, which gritted its teeth in more of a sneer than a smile, as it dragged her up onto her feet. Her brain seemed to have shut down, no words seem to be able to bridge the gap from thoughts to sounds. Even if she had managed to come up with something, there was no way she could have said it, as in the next moment he yanked her arm so hard she swore she heard the stitching shriek. Her legs worked overtime to keep up as he pulled her along the corridor.
As quick as the bear started his run, he stopped. Opening a door on the right, and hurling them both inside, closing the door behind them. They listened as the rumble passed by the door, shaking the wood within its frame, as it carried on up the hallway away from them. Both collapsed on the floor panting in relief. No noise but the rumble growing ever more distant as it continued its journey unhindered, deeper into the house.
The room, in which Little Nell now found herself, was much like the corridor, wooden floors, dirty walls, eerie candlelight. There were differences however. The main one being the bone framed window. The room was furnished with a small bed in the corner, a window and not much else.
Nell took all this in at a glance. Her attention drawn back to the bear as she heard movement beside her. Turning to look, she saw the bear making his way to his feet.
“Thank you.” She said breathlessly, in a voice that seemed too loud, yet it was barely above a whisper, as her brain finally caught up. “You saved my life!”
The bear looked at her for a moment, his big black eyes boring into her. Seeming to size her up.
“No problem. Couldn’t let the Baruss getcha, could I?”
“Baruss?” She asked. The strange word sending a cold chill racing down her spine that had little to do with the temperature of the room.
“The Baruss...It runs through the halls of the house, making sure no one's in the halls. If it finds you....well, you saw the pit.”
She remembered the dead air in which her feet had swung when she had fallen through the floor and the brief glimpse of an eternal fall. Her stomach clenched once more. What an apt name, she thought.
“We're not allowed in the halls?”
“Not after night's fallen, no. The House is very particular about when its hallways should be empty.”
She watched as the bear walked over to the window and stared out, a sad, lonely look on his features. “My name is Nell. I...I don’t know how I got here. Where is here? What is here?”
The bear left the window and came over to sit opposite her, legs crossing beneath him. He stared at the floor as if trying to find the nicest way to break the news. “I don’t really know what this place is to be honest,” he started hesitantly. “I know I have been here for a long time, so long my mind doesn't remember anything before this place, or how I got here.” That sad look covered his face again, his eyes seeming to gloss over as he lost himself in memories. He shook his head after a moment and put a big friendly smile on his face.
“My name is Beeble.” He said, offering his paw. “Nice to meet you Nell.” She took the big paw and shook it, wondering when talking to a teddy bear or having cloth skin became normal.
“I saw you in the window, didn’t I? You were waving to me.” He nodded his head, his big paw rubbing one of his ears in a comical imitation of the way a dog tries to rid itself of a flea. “What about the others I saw in the windows?” She continued, watching the pink bear as he got to his feet and dusted off his fur.
“The others, you will meet tomorrow. Tonight, you sleep. From what I can understand, it is a long journey here, you will need to rest. I will come by again in the morning, show you the house and introduce you to some of the others.”
“Where will I stay? Where will I sleep?”
“This is your room Nell, this is where you will stay. One thing I will say, do not open the door at night. There are more things beside the Baruss wandering the corridors after dark.” He said ominously.
“Stay here on...on my own?” She whispered, her button eyes seeming to grow larger.
“This is the safest place to be Nell, we each have our own room, and nothing from the hallways can enter them, as long as that candle is burning.” He said as he reached for the door handle. She watched as he poked his head out the door, looked right and left, then with a wink thrown over his shoulder, he ran out. The door closed behind him, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
She sat there, her legs huddled beneath her, staring at the door for the longest time. The nights events replaying in her minds eye. Since she woke up in the dark forest, time had run away from her, leaving her more tired than she'd ever known before. Even now, after all she had seen, she still believed this to be a dream.
A house that lived, a dark pink teddy bear that talked. And she was a rag doll. None of these things should exist in any form of reality. But what was her reality before?...before what? Before she woke in the woods? Before she became a doll? Perhaps she had always been a doll.
Her tired mind could no longer focus, throwing more questions out than answers, she began to cry. Great heaving sobs shook her little body. Drawing her knees up from under her and wrapping her arms around them. She began to rock, to and fro, in time to the beat within her chest, in the cold sparse room.
A sob caught in her throat as she heard a tapping noise at the window. Drying her eyes on her soft cloth hands, she rose slowly to her feet, and walked quietly towards the bare window. Through the window the dark forest stood, so cold, black and foreboding, that it made her shiver. Dragging her eyes from the trees, she began to look for the source of the tapping.
Then she saw it, skittering across the window. It was lizard-like, a thick sickly looking thing with orange mottled skin, four thin legs and four large feet tipped with razor sharp claws. It was those claws that were creating the noise as it scratched at the window, trying to climb the glass.
As Nell had approached the lizard had stilled, unsure if friend or foe was coming. Settling on the idea the ragdoll posed no threat, it resumed its movements, slowly trying against the laws of physics to climb the glass. The tap, tap, tap, splat, as each time the lizard fell back to the window ledge brought a genuine smile to Nell's face. The first since this whole nightmare began.
As she continued to watch the lizards efforts she heard a small voice, crying out for help. She looked around but could see nothing, only the slimy lizard thing, running in circles, trying to climb the glass. It stopped and all of a sudden a long green tongue fired out of its mouth in the direction of a small figure that dangled from the centre of the window.
On closer inspection Nell realised the little figure was a spider, not even as big as her mittened hand, dangling from a single strand of silk. It's web laid in ruin, from the wind or the lizard the doll didn't know. But the spider was definitely the source of the shout.
Without a second thought Little Nell swung the window open and reached round to rescue the spider. The Lizard didn't stop trying to get to the spider until the window was back snug in its frame. With a flick of its tongue and a hiss of anger the lizard disappeared from view, off to search for another meal. Nell turned away and made her way to the bed, still chuckling to herself at the lizards behaviour, she sat, opened her hand and took a long hard look at the spider.
The spider had curled into a ball, a defence mechanism that Nell had wanted to adopt more than once tonight. Unable to leave the spider thinking it was still in danger though, she begun to speak gently, trying to coax it out of its fear. Not trying for a conversation, just offering words of reassurance. Her persistence was rewarded when one by one, the spiders long hairy legs unfolded, setting its small feet onto her hand. She stared at the spider for the longest time, wondering if the screams for help had been a figment of her imagination.
“Th..thank you. I really thought that thing was going to eat me.” It said in its small whisper of a voice.
“How did you get here?” Nell asked, still in shock that she was speaking to a spider, and even more surprised at the fact she was not scared.
“I don’t know. I woke up a little while ago, on a web. A freaking web!” The little spider cried.
“Well, you are a spider.” Nell smiled.
“I'm a spider?” She said, shocked, and seemed to see her long legs for the first time. “Wow, I am a spider. How can I be a spider? What is this place? How'd I get here?” She said in a voice growing more hysterical with each question. Sighing Nell knew the spider had arrived the same way she had. Lost, alone and scared beyond belief.
“My name is Nell, what's yours?” she said in an attempt to calm the spider.
“My name is Chiyo.” the spider said, looking away from her legs and back towards Nell.
“Well Chiyo, looks like you and I are in the same boat. I only got here tonight, and from what I've seen, I know it's not a very nice place.”
Chiyo fell silent, folding her legs under herself in what appeared to be her way of sitting.
“Do you remember anything before waking up Nell? Tonight I mean, when you got here?”
“I can't remember a thing before I woke up in the dark forest. But I do know that things are not as they appear here.”
“Why? What makes you think that?”
“Well, for one thing, I don't think I'm supposed to be a doll and surely if I had always been one, it would not come as a shock.”
“Yeah. I don’t remember a thing either. Only waking on the web and that...that...thing trying to eat me.” Chiyo replied, trying to suppress a shudder of revulsion.
They sat for a while in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Although they were both scared and curious as to where and what they were, neither could deny the weariness that weighed down on them.
“It's been one long night,” Nell said around a yawn she could no longer suppress, setting the spider down on the pillow and climbing into the bed beside Chiyo. As she pulled the musty covers up to her chin she rolled on to her side the sight of Chiyo, all curled up in a ball on the other side of the pillow caused her to smile despite her circumstances. Thinking herself lucky to have found a friend she finally let her eyes close. As sleep drifted in, a small whisper came to Nell's ear.
“Thank you Nell.”
Little Nell smiled, she was no longer alone.
.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment