The old abode (standard:horror, 2178 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Jun 23 2005	Views/Reads: 3797/2786	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
When an old house appears from nowhere, Peter can't help but explore.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

sockets undoubtedly watching Peter, wary of the strange human near the 
door, its liberator.  It came out and stopped, and it was when Peter 
noticed the corpse of a young boy standing behind the dog that his 
world began to spin, as though he had suddenly acquired the effects of 
a strong hallucinogenic drug. The floor came rushing to him, and the 
ceiling kaleidoscopically turned, as did the two faces above him. That 
was when everything went black, and oblivion engulfed him, but didn't 
give him rest, instead put him back exactly where he had fallen, only 
34 years ago. 

He was stood in the hall as it used to be when it was occupied. It was
as though he was in a dream, yet acutely aware, but here, there was 
nothing bizarre about it, rather like he was intruding on somebody 
else's memory. A voice came from the back room: “Stupid mutt, get it 
out of my sight. Damn things got the pox. I don't want it here”. A man 
appeared from the room, dragging the dog behind him. He didn't have to 
drag very hard, as the dog did look ill. Its eyes looked sunken, and 
white discharge was streaming from its mouth. The man opened the door 
beneath the stairs and literally threw the dog inside. It hit the wall 
and Peter heard a crack. One of its ribs had probably broken. Suddenly 
a small boy came running out of the room from where the man had came, 
crying and reaching for the dog. The man caught him and lifted him up 
to face level. “You care for that mutt more than me!,” he bellowed. He 
then dropped him, gave him a hard smack on the side of his head, and 
shoved him in with the dog and locked the door. “You show me some 
damned respect!” the man shouted, then to himself: “I'm going the pub”. 
He walked along the hall, grabbed a jacket hanging on a nail in the 
wall, then walked through Peter, opened the door, slammed it behind him 
and stalked away to what could effectively be called his other home. 
Peter could smell that he had already started drinking when he had 
walked through him. The vision didn't end there, instead it continued 
for a while with Peter simply standing where he was, staring at locked 
door. He was unable to move, unable to look anywhere else. In the 
vision, he had a thought. He guessed what the picture was beneath the 
stairs. The dog was lying there, dying of a disease, too weak to move, 
while the boy was curled up by it, crying, but Peter couldn't hear any 
crying, so he was probably sniffling, or sobbing quietly into the fur 
of his pet. 

The man never returned home. Nobody knew who he was, or where he lived.
He had ingested far too much in the pub, and what instinctive radar 
pointed the way home to a drunk who clearly did not possess the ability 
to think straight, or even think at all, was none existent. He had 
collapsed whilst crossing a road on his way home, cracked his head 
against a pavement, and never woke. Through sheer hunger and 
frustration, the boy scratched the door trying to get out, but in the 
end had to face the inevitable. With the dog's rotting corpse beside 
him, he had sampled a few of the less repulsive parts, even attempting 
the shrivelled heart, but all the while, whatever disease the dog had, 
was affecting him, and instinct also told him that his father was not 
returning. He had laid down beside his pet, and died. 

Everything went black for Peter, and when consciousness returned, he
found he was not back in reality, but in a graveyard, near an 
overhanging tree that had obviously been there many years. Perhaps the 
cemetery had been built around it. It was night-time in the vision, a 
half-moon casting a muted hue over his surroundings. He saw a dog 
emerge from behind him to his right. Peter guessed that it was same dog 
he'd seen earlier. It stopped, sniffed the air, and looked to follow a 
scent across to the nearest grave to where Peter was stood. It began to 
dig franticly at the grave of a Sheila Morgan. The grave looked fresh, 
so the soil came away easily. After a few minutes, it stopped, half in 
and half out of the hole, then came out, shook itself as though it was 
wet, then ran away into the darkness. 

Peter then awoke, back where he had fallen, only to find the boy corpse
and his pet still looking down at him. Suddenly a pain in his chest 
made him want to cry aloud, but he found he could not. Then he realised 
that the boy had his skeletal hand inside his chest, clutching his 
heart so it could not beat, could not pump blood around his system. The 
dog had fresh blood on its teeth and jawbone. Obviously while Peter had 
been having the vision, the dog had torn a hole in his chest so the boy 
could place his hand inside. “What a lovely disease we have”, the boy 
said. He then removed his hand, and it wasn't long before Peter's 
consciousness began slipping away. Light headedness made his vision 
blur, followed by darkness black as pitch. 

After around five minutes, Peter stood up, stretched, then looked down
at the hole in his chest. He then looked at the boy, who said: “Just 
making sure you got infected, and hastening your arrival”. “Infected? 
Don't say that,” Peter said, smiling. “Okay, that's enough for the time 
being. Time to die for a while before we spread again. It's a pity I 
can't stop the process of decay, but I'll have to work on that, I'll 
have to mutate, evolve a progression of development that means we don't 
age. After incubation I'll have to work on that”. “Shall we rest back 
beneath the stairs?” asked the boy. Peter nodded. “Yes, I'll stay 
upstairs on the bed. See you in a couple of years”. Peter walked up the 
stairs and lay down on the bed. The boy and dog went back beneath the 
stairs, the lock clicking behind them. Soon afterwards, in conjunction 
with their slumbering, or indeed, their dying, the house itself slowly 
faded away, vanishing into thin air, having as much substance as an 
airborne virus, a virus that had adapted itself to possessing human and 
non-physical form, in accordance with the requirements it needed in 
order to spread, and since viruses are technically neither dead nor 
alive, it slipped through death's door because it needed to. It 
recharged it batteries like a hibernating mammal, like humans need 
sleep, and emerged back through the door into an existence in which it 
had maybe mutated as required for its survival, akin to animals 
adapting to their environment, or rats familiarizing themselves with 
poison, so it is no longer effective. Years later it would emerge back 
to where the house used to be, in order to spread. It did not spread 
fast, like other diseases, but it did not need to, it could not die, so 
had all the time in the world. 

Twenty-two years later, George Clemence was stood scratching his head in
confusion. For the past eighteen years he had been walking his dog 
every day along the same route, and not once had he seen the house that 
was so prominent, so obvious, he wondered how on earth he'd missed it. 


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