Flash Fiction February #11: Guests sit around the antique table. Only one will be alive by dessert.
3:45 am, 11.1
Emily raced through the dimly lit streets, her feet splashing in the puddles that filled the holes in the pavement. She convinced herself that her eyes were deceiving her, that she had imagined the terrors that she had just faced. Her mind was focused solely on forcing her legs to carry her away, there was no time to think about Jeff, Leah, and Mark. Surely she would see them in the morning, after all, this was just a dream. By the time she made it home, Emily’s breathing was ragged and her heart was pounding out of her chest. There was no way she would be able to sleep tonight, so she sat down at her computer and recounted the events of the evening.
10:15 pm 10.31
“Come on Emily! We’re going to be late!” Leah called from the bottom of the stairs, eager to begin the night’s festivities.
“I’m coming! I just need to finish my hair, I want to look perfect for tonight!” Emily called back while hairspray swirled around her.
“For Jeff, you mean?” Leah teased.
Emily ran down the stairs and stopped inches from Leah’s face.
“Shut. up.” Emily warned, although she knew her secret had been exposed.
The girls grabbed the trays of food that they promised to bring tonight and ran out the door.
11:00 pm
“You’re finally here! Get inside! I think it's going to rain!” Jeff yelled to the girls as they ran up the sidewalk to an old, abandoned house.
Tonight was Halloween, and the group was going to spend the night in a house that locally, was thought to be haunted. The veil was at its thinnest on All Hallows Eve, and they were going to prove once and for all that the haunting was just an urban legend.
“Guess what I brought guys” Mark said mischievously while pulling an old Ouija board out of his sagging backpack.
“Mark! That’s not funny!” Leah complained. She was secretly terrified of the ghost that was said to haunt these walls.
“It's just a joke, calm down”
“Whatever, can we just eat? I’m starving, and I brought pumpkin pie”
“Did you bring the cool whip?” Jeff chimed in immediately.
Leah just laughed and spread out the feast the girls had assembled on the antique table. The group filled their plates eagerly and began eating.
11:25 pm
The group had eaten their fill but had found they had no room left for pie. They lounged around lazily hoping their stomachs would begin digesting so they could finally eat the one thing that they all had been waiting for.
“Well, that’s enough of that, I want to explore” Mark announced, secretly hoping that movement would create the space he needed in his stomach.
11:35 pm
“GUYS! Come look at this! I found something!” Mark screamed to the others with excitement.
The group groaned and made their way through the cobweb littered hallways to Mark, who was holding a book that looked to be about four hundred years old. The binding was fragile and the time-worn pages were beginning to fall out. The ink on the cover was almost impossible to read, but it looked like it was titled Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, or The False Monarchy of Demons.
“Oh we have GOT to read that” Jeff’s excitement was getting the better of him.
“I don’t know..I really just wanted to get back to our dinner..” Emily said with apprehension in her voice.
“Come on, Emily, it’ll be fun! You know this stuff isn't real anyway” Jeff tried to reassure her.
“Okay fine. But you’re starting”
11:45pm
Jeff and the others returned to the living room and Jeff turned his flashlight to the book. The book opened with an awful creak and dust shifted from beneath the pages as Jeff began to read. The book seemed to categorize a multitude of demons based on their characteristics and ranks within the demonic hierarchy. As Jeff described the first demon listed, a loud crash interrupted him. The group’s screams filled the room as they looked around to see where the crash had come from.
“It was just the ouija board! The wind must have knocked it down!” Mark laughed as he went to pick the board off the floor. He brought it with him as he made his way back to the group. “Go ahead, Jeff.”
Jeff continued reading about the first demon in the book, how the demon commands 66 legions of Hell and is known for teaching the art of invisibility. At the bottom of the page, there was a hastily scribbled symbol; it looked like a little bug within a circle. Jeff subconsciously traced this symbol with his finger and the air grew frigid in an instant.
The planchet on the Ouija board started swirling frantically, stopping on the same letters for only a second before it continued along its path.
“G…O…O…D…L…U…C…K…” the group read each letter aloud as the planchet passed over them, and their blood ran cold when the message had finally been delivered.
12:20 am 11.1
A large shadow loomed over the group as they ran to the front door and frantically pulled on the knob, but it would not open. The group turned around and saw an enormous figure that had seemed to appear out of nowhere. It had three heads, the first was a toad, the second was a cat, and the last was a man. Terror froze the group in their place, pushed against the door like a mouse cornered by a cat. As the figure took its first step, the group found their strength and scattered throughout the house.
1:35 am
Leah had found the perfect hiding place in a dumbwaiter and told herself she would stay there until morning.
“It can’t stay past sunrise, I just have to make it until then” She thought to herself.
In the hall she could hear the thunderous horde of the legion searching for her, but she did not dare move for fear of being discovered; but her breath had betrayed her. A few members of the hoard had heard her terrified breath as they passed by, they reached their hands through the wall and eventually found her solid figure. They grabbed her and dragged her through the floor and took her back to Hell.
2:45am
Jeff and Mark had hidden themselves beneath the stairs and held their hands over their mouths as they too tried to wait out the legions. Heavy footsteps knocked sawdust loose from the rotting stairs above them and the boys knew they had been found. Tears ran down their faces as the boys said a silent goodbye through their eyes, and in an instant two members of the horde grabbed them, holding all of their limbs apart, spread eagle.
Another demonic member of the legion made his way down the stairs and turned to Mark as he was held in the air. He reached his hand through Mark’s stomach and began pulling out his organs one by one as the boys watched and screamed in agony. Mark quickly passed out from the pain, and as the demons dropped him they turned to Jeff.
The demon that was holding Jeff used his four arms to stretch Jeff like taffy while the others laughed hysterically. Jeff’s bones crunched as they popped out of their sockets and his muscles tore. His screams filled the room until he too, passed out from shock. The demons grabbed their limp bodies and brought them back to Hell.
3:30 am
Emily had heard the screams of her friends from her hiding place in the floor and knew she was the last one left. She had found a trapdoor in one of the rooms that led to a wine cellar and it appeared that she was safe here, but she knew she had to find her way out. She quietly crept through the room until she found a place in the wall that had been worn by time and seemed to lead outside. Her movements were slow as she maneuvered her body past the wrought iron poles that had once kept the wall in place. The light from the full moon was not enough for her to make her way through easily, and one of the rusty poles sliced into her stomach, but she stifled the scream and pushed forward. Eventually she made her way out and began to run, too scared to look back.
Photo from Unsplash
I will be sleeping with lights on tonight, thank you very much. 😉 yikes!
Great! John Carpenter!