The House

Seconds later she woke trembling, her face wet with tears and her body damp from a cold sweat.

Her breath was coming in shallow gasps and her heart was pounding in her chest. She was so full of adrenaline she could hardly stop shaking. God that nightmare seemed so real. She was almost too frightened to go back to sleep. Looking around the room, she wondered where she was, blinking as things around her began to come into focus.

Her mind played through her last memories, trying to piece it all together. She remembered being held, bound by the air. An unseen force choking her. Inky black eyes. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and heaved herself up. Reaching for the sheet, she dried her face and went to the en-suite bathroom for a glass of water.

She examined herself closely in the mirror. She saw that there weren't any marks or bruises on her wrists and neck and felt relieved that it really was just a dream. Her emotions were all over the place. Her breathing was short and ragged, and she was flushed and sweating despite the cool draft coming through the cracks along the wooden floor.

She stared in the mirror a few seconds longer before reaching over to switch off the light and go back to bed. The bed creaked as she sat down it, and Jocelyn buried her head under the pillow, shutting her eyes. Suddenly, aware of a burning heat against her back, her eyes shot open and she jerked her head to the side to see Jason, or his silhouette. She frowned, staring at him intently. Something wasn't right.

Just then she heard a faint noise come from direction of Tucker's room. At first it sounded like the far away whistle of a tea kettle. Then it turned into a soft moan.

She sat up and put the bedside lamp on then turned towards her husband. His eyes were open wide and wild; he was looking at her but not focussing. His mouth was formed in a painfully wide cartoon smile. He looked completely and utterly insane.

"Jason." she tried to shake him. "Jason" she said again louder. "What are you doing? There's something wrong with Tucker." Still she got no answer, just a glassy eyed stare.

And then she heard a shriek.

Kicking off the covers, she sprang to her feet- fear gripping her- and ran out the room, leaving her glassy-eyed husband behind as she raced to check on their son. When she got to the corridor she didn't recognise where she was. The corridor seemed to stretch forever and when she looked back, the door she'd just come through was gone. It was just a wall now. She looked around in horror as the essence of evil pervaded the walls that now surrounded her.

All the lights were out and the frayed wallpaper seemed to slowly peel, revealing a pulsing red hue that barely allowed her to see where she was going. Her nerves nerves were stretched impossibly thin, and her eyes darted around at the dolls and mirrors now inexplicably decorating the corridor. The mirrors and dolls cast disproportionate shadows but when Jocelyn heard sobbing from the end of the corridor she moved forward, deeper into the dark garnet glow. She didn't mind the shadows, until they started to move towards her.

Her already throttling adrenaline kicked into even higher gear. There was no time to scream. She tried to run as fast as she could but suddenly felt a throbbing sensation around her left collarbone. The weight grew heavier, spreading from one shoulder to the other and down her back. Her legs felt like I was giving someone a piggyback ride as she neared the end of the everlasting corridor. There in front of her was a magnificent staircase winding its way to the top of the second floor landing.

She heard the sound again and kept moving. The screaming grew louder as she climbed the stairs. Tucker has always had a wild imagination but Jocelyn knew intuitively that her son was in trouble.

When she got to the top of the stairs the sound stopped. There was one door at the end of the hallway. She felt a weird sensation as she walked towards it almost in a trance, unable to stop her legs from moving forward. With each step she took towards the door a chill spread like liquid fire down her spine. She placed her hand against the cold, metallic doorknob. Everything was quiet. The stillness surrounding her was at war with what her intuition told her lay ahead.

She took a deep breath before leading her eye to one of the splintered cracks in the wood. It was pitch black. She stood straight and tightened her grip on the doorknob before looking through the crack again, and saw an eyeball staring back. She leapt back in terror and the door slowly creaked open. The hinges cried as the darkness from the room seemed to spread and engulf her. Before she knew it she was inside. A feeling of dread and doom hit her like a tonne of bricks. She automatically reached back, yanking the door she had been pulled through. It was locked.

When she turned back to the room the darkness was gone.

Instead there was a rocking chair in the middle of the wood paneled floor. Wisps of illumination from the light in the hallway broke through the gaps in the wooden door but did a poor job of lighting the room but she could see him. She could see her boy, he sat in the chair with his legs up and began rocking back and forth.

Jocelyn moved towards him and bent forward, he looked up at her and she noticed tears in his eyes. That's when it hit her. She froze on the spot, paralysed by horror as realisation washed over her: she didn't have a son. Immediately the figure in the chair went quiet. It looked up at her with a slight grin as it moved into the light. Jocelyn had never felt that kind of fear before.

"You found me!" It screeched wildly before bursting into a mad cackle. It's skin didn't look like skin at all, it almost looked like rubber or plastic that had been poorly sewn on. It had long, black, scraggly hair and bulging eyes. It's thin, pale frame only accentuated the balloon sized head with that hideous smile stitched onto its face.

Jocelyn fell backwards and a flash of lightning struck the sky, illuminating the whole room before plunging it into complete darkness. She tried to crawl away from the disfigured creature as the manic laugh began again. It seemed to surround her, but she knew that it was in front of her, inching closer. She fumbled for the door handle and crab walked into the hallway before turning around and bolting for the stairs.

Get out, get out, she had to get out. Run, hide, just get away from whatever that thing was. She felt it's terrifying presence behind her. She leapt from the last step and landed in the corridor, facing the bedroom door. She ran to the door and called out to her husband, hoping to be saved from the thing chasing her. It opened before she got there, light streaming out, revealing the profile of a man. She sighed with relief, expecting to see Jason. Instead stood a tall, thin, shadowy figure draped in a black suit. It's arms were unnaturally long and it had a white, featureless head. No matter how hard she focused the creature remained out-of-focus and blurry. It didn't look human.

Before she could figure out what stood in front of her, Jocelyn heard footsteps behind her. She turned back to the thing that had been chasing her. That awful grin deepened when their eyes met and Jocelyn fell to the floor. She thought that she had passed out, but the two creatures wouldn't let her.

While the figure with unusually long arms held her up, the smaller creature clawed at her flesh, ripping out her entrails, and tearing inside her. As it tore her apart the walls began to shake so hard it seemed as though they were going to crumble. Blood ran in rivulets from the corners of her lips as she faded away, all she could hear was laughter, horrible, awful, evil, laughter.

And then... nothing.

She woke up lying in an unfamiliar location, horribly disfigured and mutilated. She had cuts and sever burns all over her body. "Jocelyn?" a warm, male voice snapped her out of her trance. As she turned around, she was met by a doctor's. She nodded, not sure if she should say anything, or if she even could.

"Oh, my God. Where am I?" she screamed. A host of doctors rushed over to her, restraining her. "Who are you?" she fought against them as they babbled in a foreign language. Jocelyn started to sob uncontrollably. "I can't stop it. I don't know who I am. So I... So I need to go home."

One of the doctors came over and plunged a needle into her neck as she continued to weep. "But I... But I don't know who I am." she whimpered. "I don't know... I don't know who I am. I don't know who I am. I don't know." her voice grew weak. "Who are you? What have you done to me?"

Apparently they found Jocelyn standing in the middle of the street, barefoot in her nightgown, confused and in a daze. She babbled incoherently about being set free and attacked emergency services when they arrived on the scene. Before they put her under she looked up at the paramedics with a slight grin and screamed "You found me!" before bursting into a mad cackle.