The Hours of Creeping Night - a Collection of Dark Speculative Short Fiction (2 page)

Her eyes slipped sideways, staring at the pile of dry, splintered bodies by the side of the hut. The discarded bodies juttered and creaked in pain, moaning in low despairing voices.

~*~

Dante brought her to bed. He ran his fingers over her curves and felt her tiny movements. Every so often, her fingers twitched, the wood creaking.

But she kept her eyes closed, and prayed silently to her family.

Eventually, Dante’s breathing became heavy and steady. A name played across his sleeping lips. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead. The blankets were in a tangled heap on the floor. A gnat sang through the dry, still air.

There was no breeze. Yet the trees swayed gently, whispering. The swaying became thrashing. Until their wooden limbs slid against one another, becoming hotter and hotter in the dry night.

The forest filled with smoke. The smoke filled Dante’s lungs and dulled his brain. The flames did not awaken him. Nor did the screaming of the carved women, and the crying of the trees.

Gretel’s
Nightmare

T
he morning light is trapped by the London smog so that it hangs lifelessly in the thick air. Down a narrow alley, Gretel runs from the confines of a crowded rented room, the slam of the door ricocheting off the bricks. The city opens up around her as she makes her way through its capillary streets; people bustle on foot or on horseback, hackneys and omnibuses clatter down cobbled roads. The stench of condensed life burns the back of her throat and, as she passes a grated vent, she thinks about the sewers that weave below the surface of the city like the veins of a dying thing. Ships chug through the brown waters of the river; ropes tinker against the hollow steel masts of the swell of moored boats at the jetties while seagulls scream overhead.

The factory comes into sight and Gretel is relieved that she is not late again. The looming building runs purple dye into the river and pulses with animation as people, mostly children, make their way through its open mouth, the chittering of mechanical looms already vibrating the air. Faces, grey as the dirt-encrusted walls. Eyes, sunken from lack of sleep and overwork, yellowed by malnutrition. Gretel's relief extinguishes like a candle in the rain.

She hesitates at the street corner. The nightmare she had last night – the one that haunts her every night – wisps around her, intangible and lost, nothing more than a dulling sense of horror she is unable to articulate. Instead, she imagines the hard day of labour ahead: the shrill roar of a hundred machines in an unstoppable frenzy, with their metal teeth that snap at her fingers as she struggles to tie broken threads in the moving looms, pistons threatening to crush her. Thread-dust filling her lungs until she coughs blood into her hands, and is then whipped by the strappers for staining the cloth. Gretel thinks about this, about the raw lashes on her forearms from yesterday's mistakes.  She thinks about the wage that will buy her gruel tonight, and the rent that she owes. Then Mister Pike, the factory owner, appears at the factory door, dressed in his usual black suit peppered with cotton dust. His top hat is pressed low on his head, appearing almost to be the cause of his permanent, deep-set frown. Before she knows it, the last of the workers have entered the building – the last, small boy receiving a whack from Pike's cane as he darts through the doorway – and once again Gretel is late. In a moment’s decision, she turns her back on the factory and slips into the street.

The churchyard is cold, and she pulls her shawl tighter against the wind. She makes her way through the crooked gravestones, staring up at the gargoyles that watch her from their high perches. Even the church is stained black.

Flowers stolen from graves make up her mismatched bouquet. The scent of half-wilted chrysanthemums is both sweet and acidic. The earth dampens her knees as she kneels. Sweeping aside dead stalks, she places the new ones at the head of her brother’s grave. All thoughts of the factory pushed aside, she finds herself realising that they would be celebrating their fourteenth birthday next week. She wonders how he would have looked – whether he would have the shadow of manhood at his jaw, whether he would have grown taller than her... She lets her tears fall freely for a few moments before rubbing her face on her sleeves. Emotions swell and teeter within her, and sadness quickly turns to anger. Anger at her mother for dying in childbirth. Anger at her stepmother for hating them. Anger at her father for striking Hansel. Anger at Hansel for not getting back up.

The treetops whisper to each other. Beech leaves fall like confetti, small and crisp, stunted by the suffocating city smog, and land in her knotted hair. The trees bend on weak spines in the wind.

So many crossroads in her life have led to this moment. And suddenly she feels it: the city rejects her, spits her out. As though she were a fly clogged in its throat. She runs through the streets until cobbles turn to iron, and she runs over train tracks until iron turns to grass. The horizons open up around her and she feels free under the dizzying expanse of the sky, amidst the bright greens and oranges and warm earthy browns of nature.

The wind lifts all her dark thoughts into the air and leaves her vacant and carefree. The afternoon sun plays hide and seek with the clouds. But eventually she becomes bored with watching the grass shimmer with the invisible touch of the wind while she tries to catch grasshoppers in her cupped hands.  The excitement of her adventure ebbs away, and she is left with a ball of fear and regret lodged in her stomach. She won’t have a job to return to. She won’t be able to earn a wage. She won’t be able to buy food, or pay for shelter. Her hand reaches unconsciously into the pocket of her dress and she clinks five shillings together.

But she does not turn back. Instead, she continues to walk towards the woodland. The branch tips entwine with one another, knitting a dark canopy. She thinks of the terrifying legend of the great metal spider that lives in the woods and eats children – burns them in its furnace-belly and uses their melted fat to oil its hinges. The forgotten nightmare comes to life in the shifting shadows. The quiver of a crow’s wing shimmers like oil. Its caw crackles the air. A branch falls and she gasps, thinking for a split second that it is a metal leg crashing down.

Once she becomes used to the strange noises and motions of the woods, a wave of tiredness washes over her. Unused to the fresh air, her head becomes light and dizzy. Just a moment’s rest, she thinks, as she sinks into a cushion of fallen leaves.

Her eyes snap open and dusk has fallen. The nightmare flutters at the edges of her consciousness, then is gone. She curses herself for falling asleep, but becomes afraid when she realises that she is lost. Hansel would have left a path to follow back, she thought. He was clever like that. She lifts her mud-stained skirts and hurries through the trees, heels sinking into the soft earth and causing her to stumble. The sun is merciless in its descent and darkness slides its long fingers through the spaces between the tree trunks.

Hope flutters in her chest when she glimpses a hut in a small clearing. As she draws nearer, she sees that the little house is made of dark metal tainted by shimmering rust, the colour of congealed blood. Its angles are all bent and odd, rivets holding its beams together like knee-joints. The windows are empty gaping holes and the wind is sucked and expelled from the hut in breathy sighs. The air is tinged with the taste of metal.

Gretel hesitates for the second time that day. This does not look like a friendly place. Whoever might live inside does not seem the type who would welcome visitors – that is, if anyone even lives in there at all. She takes a tentative step forward and tries to peer into one of the hollow windows. Dry twigs snap under her boot. But they aren’t twigs. They are tiny bones, charred black. Hundreds of them.

A wave of horrific familiarity overcomes her. She has seen this place before, in the sleeping recesses of her mind. Disbelief paralyses her as she watches the motions of her nightmare unfold. Metal screeches as the hut inhales and expands, unfurling the pillars of its construction outwards into eight long legs. The plinths of the doorway split into quivering pincer-fangs. It rises up and up, its eight empty window-eyes pinching closer together as it shifts, burning orange with the growing furnace in its belly, the fire roaring and causing the expanding metal to boom.

Gretel falls to the ground, her legs useless. She claws her way backwards, mouth open in a terrible silent scream. Her dress snags and tears on the animal bones. The spider takes a few grinding steps towards her. It opens its mouth and closes in. Gretel can see the white-hot flames inside it burning crunched-up trees and licking the inside of its metal belly, scorched black and smoking. The heat burns Gretel’s face and the smoke blinds her, her eyes watering and stinging. She breathes in a lungful and coughs. The cough uncorks her lungs and she screams.

The scream seems to startle the spider, and it shunts backwards, perplexed. Perhaps it has been a long time since it was able to feast on a young girl, and had grown unaccustomed to the power of their lungs.

Gretel, seeing her chance, scrambles to her feet and runs. She runs towards the densest part of the woodland, hoping the great thing will become caught in the thicket. But instead it powers through the underbrush as though it were soft carpet, and splinters through thick trees as though pushing aside curtains. Its front legs flail as it lurches, gathering up broken wood and cramming it into its gnashing mouth. The furnace inside it roars with vigour.

Darkness falls and Gretel stumbles blindly. Her dress is torn to shreds, and her flesh fares no better, long red gashes burn her limbs as she claws through the forest. Exhausted, she slows. This is the part of the nightmare when she realises there is no hope, and wakes up. Moments pass. A strange and absurd calm overcomes her as she realises that she will not awaken. The moment of her death is upon her, and her mind cannot accept her impending fate.

A long metal leg wraps around her torso. It lifts her from the earth. The pinch of its hinge breaks her spine. Pain shoots, reality amplified in punishing retaliation against her disbelief. The spider swallows her whole, pushing the fleshy bundle into its mouth with its pincer-fangs.

The rabbits in the nearby field twitch their noses. They can smell the reek of burning hair and melted fat. With it, the wind carries the human stench of the city, and the thrum of the factories. They lay their ears flat and dart into their warm comforting burrows, deep in the cradle of the earth.

The
Fallen Safat

T
he Safat live in the sky. Unlike other birds, they never set foot on land and never rest; they spend their lives soaring above the clouds, riding high thermals and feasting on stars. Every year, the females lay their eggs in flight. As the eggs plummet towards earth, they hatch and tiny birds dart into the air before the shells smash to pieces on the ground.

One year, a little Safat did not break free from his shell and landed painfully against the crashing ocean. His shell shattered open and he was thrown into the waves, which twisted and broke his tiny wings as he shrieked for help. 

For three days and nights, he was tossed upon the reckless waves before washing to shore, exhausted. His soft white feathers were tattered and salt-encrusted; his wings dragged limply by his side. Crawling beneath the shelter of a rock, he looked up at the sky and the distant shimmer of bright feathers reflecting the sun as the Safat glided into the heavens. He cried himself to sleep.

The next morning, the little Safat awoke with an idea, as though it had been planted there in a dream: he would climb to the sky. The bird set off, limp wings dragging behind him, upwards and into the mountains. As he climbed, many animals with jaws of jagged teeth slinked past with curious eyes, but strangely nothing ever ventured close to the weak little creature. His stomach burned with hunger and longing, knowing that he could not reach the sky to gorge on burning stars. Nevertheless, he ventured on.

Soon, the trees became dense and leafless, their branches like ink spilt against the sky. The little Safat found his forked feet sinking into numbing snow. He shivered, willing himself forward in the lifeless land. Ice froze between his feathers. Only his fast-beating heart was still warm, until a scream stopped him in his tracks.

Turning fearfully, the Safat saw a huge dog devouring the bowels of a wriggling human. The human’s eyes rolled madly in their sockets, then went dull. Catching sight of the bird, the dog barked – deep as gravel - and galloped towards him, blood and saliva dripping from its fanged mouth.

The Safat’s eyes bulged as he flapped broken wings in a desperate attempt to escape. Just as the beast was upon him, it seemed to melt, its matter dripping upwards as it shifted into a figure as tall as the barren trees. The Safat blinked in shock at the Wendigo, a giant monster of ice and mud.

The Wendigo stopped short of the infant Safat and cocked the upper part of its mass, which could only be considered the head, tilting the dead branches entangled through its body like great antlers. Slowly, it gargled and creaked as it stooped down upon the Safat, widened a gaping hole lined with rows of uneven teeth, and swallowed the tiny bird.