Red Thread

by J. Nathan

Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:

Bex threw herself out the window yesterday. I think it was yesterday. There’s no telling in these gaslit rooms that groan, stretch, and change.

I have to work backwards. Remember how I got here to this second floor sitting room. It all comes down to logic. The house had a way in; it must have a way out.

I wish I’d stayed home. I miss home.

Claret, crimson, carmine.

Work the thread; follow it back to the start. I have to go back exactly as I came. Reason. Any change, and I add another loop, another knot. I’ll have to start again.

I found a small wicker basket of embroidery floss on the floor by the overstuffed chair in front of the fireplace. A pen would be better, but I’ll make this work. I’ll make it make sense. I grab at the rainbow bundles of thread, each time coming up with a different shade of glossy red.

Red it is.

The first stitch—the sitting room. Where before that? Ah yes, the window in the hallway that looks to the west. My heart slows, calms. Thoughts focus. The walls of the sitting room creak and push in. Ravenous.

Remember Carrie, the windows are weird. What do you remember? What can you learn?

The north windows are dark and battered by rain and wind. The south looks out onto the past, what the neighborhood looked like a hundred years ago. Stone mansions lined the street with enough elbow room between them for vast manicured lawns. They’re all gone now, but they look so real sitting under a sepia-toned sky that never changes. I’ve only found one window to the east so far—bricked up.

And then there’s the west…

“Carrie, this one opens,” Bex shouted as I ran down the hall towards her. Bex grunted as she forced the window open, hitting the bottom of the frame with her palm. She put her right leg through, balancing there. “I’m going for help.”

“We’re on the second floor. You can’t just jump. Besides, I don’t think it’ll work. We have to go back the way we came.” I grabbed her arm to pull her back in, but she wouldn’t let me, stubborn as ever. Bex was rough and tumble, as evidenced by her scabby shins that looked out of place on a twenty-five-year-old. She thought nothing of jumping out a window. Hell, it probably wasn’t the first time this week.

“Someone has to go for help. You go back and find Sam. We shouldn’t have left her alone.”

And with that, Bex was gone.

I reached through the window, but no one was there to grab. No one falling. No broken Bex on the ground far below—which seemed much farther away than two floors. Nothing and no one. Bex wasn’t free. The house swallowed her. She was now deeper inside it.

And I’m alone. Can’t think of that now. Got to get back to the start. Get out. Get home.

Garnet, ruby, carnelian.

Stitch the line between the sitting room and the window. Must remember. Must retrace my steps exactly. Pull the thread taut. No loops, no knots. The fireplace has vanished. The gaslight sconces throw hungry shadows. Stay out of the shadows.

What came before the window?

Before the window, the staircase disappeared. Before the window was running in circles, panicked. The same floor over and over but different hallways in a big loop—this time wallpaper, this time paint and elaborate moldings, this time completely white with silver doorknobs and gray industrial carpeting. Now decayed with rot-swollen hardwood floors that gave a little with each step.

Back and back and back. Logic. Stitch the map. Reason. Remember the path. Sense. Back to when there was a grand staircase running up the spine of the house.

And Sam was lying at the bottom of it.

An ugly, hollow sound like a growling stomach echoed through the halls, the rooms, the house. Esurient.

“Sam!” Bex bounded down the stairs, two at a time. I was close behind.

“The lights eat hearts…” Sam mumbled as blood trickled out the side of her mouth and pooled in her honey blonde hair. She stared up at the ceiling as if something was above her, watching her. She gurgled, turned her head to the side, and was still. Her china blue eyes no longer saw anything.

We should have stayed with her. Should have stayed in sight of the front door. Called for help. But off to the left of the foyer was a long dark hallway. And in that hallway appeared the green lights. I froze. Bex grabbed my arm and pulled me up the staircase.

My last glimpse of Sam was bathed in nauseating green light. She sunk into the floor as the polished hardwood planks rippled like a body of water and went still.

Bex pushed me ahead of her. I dug my heels in to stop us. “We have to go back. We can’t leave Sam.”

I broke free and raced back to the stairs as Bex shouted, “They’re not lights, they’re eyes! Glowing green eyes, Carrie!”

I rushed along the corridor and… the stairs were gone. No stairs. No exit. Where had they gone? Where had Sam gone?

Maroon, Mahogany, Merlot.

Stitch it all together. Get back to the staircase. I know I’m on the right track if I can find it again… but finding it means the green lights can get me like they got Sam. Can’t think about that now. Find the staircase first.

The house cries out again. Impatient and famished. How long had it been starved of its prey? Since the fence went up, I’d reason.

The map is almost complete. Now stitch the first floor. The floor of plush rugs over polished hardwood and velvet curtains. Of dark wallpaper and even darker wood paneling. Of a fireplace so massive I could stand in it upright. Portraits of the Ames family, dour and disapproving, graced the landing at the top of the grand staircase. Ornate gaslight fixtures sprung to life as the three of us entered.

The front door had swung open, inviting us to enter as guests and not climb through a boarded up window like vandals. The tall chainlink fence surrounding the property had collapsed in at one corner during last week’s windstorm, enticing to any curious adventurers.

Sam was that adventurer. She was obsessed with the house, with the history. How the Ames House was left empty after the Spanish Flu wiped out the family back in 1916. Then it became a funeral home up through World War II, which was the only thing that saved it from being demolished like all the other mansions on the block. It was finally abandoned in the late seventies.

“The fence went up in the early aughts when urban explorers started going missing. Lillian Rose Mae lived right across the street and wrote about the lights in her journal before going missing on June 20th, 1932. She was supposed to get married the next day. Some say she ran off, but she wrote that the lights were calling to her.” Sam spun her tale as she turned off her flashlight.

Bex and I stood behind her in the foyer, gobsmacked. It shouldn’t look like this. There should be graffiti on the walls and pentagrams drawn in chalk on the floor. The carpets should be rotting away and the curtains ripped down, decomposing beneath the windows.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” I whispered.

“It’s freakin’ awesome is what it is,” Bex laughed, ready to explore.

“Look!” Sam approached the monstrous fireplace. Standing on tiptoes, she took a cut-glass bowl off the mantel. It sparkled and gleamed in the firelight. The bowl was full of cashews.

“Don’t–” I tried to warn her as she popped one into her mouth.

“Calm down, Carrie,” Sam suppressed a giggle as she chewed. “This isn’t the underworld.”

Bex inspected the bowl and sniffed a handful of nuts before trying them herself.

“They’re fresh,” Bex stated. “Someone’s just messing with us. Here.”

Bex threw a cashew in my direction. It hit my cheek and bounced off onto the thick, ornate rug.

“Spoil sport,” Sam snorted.

“This place isn’t right.” I crossed my arms, ready to split. How I wish I had left right then.

“Relax, I’ve been here before,” Sam grinned, waiting for an opening to launch into her tale. “I was fourteen. I came with a bunch of my friends. We were too chicken to even climb the staircase, but it looked just like this. We had to bail—heard some older kids outside—but as I turned to go, I saw the lights appear,” she pointed to the left of the foyer, down a dark hallway, “down there.”

“I don’t think we should be here.” My voice shook. It didn’t matter. They ignored me.

Bex grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the door, “Where should we explore first?”

Cinnabar, oxblood, sanguine.

The map is silky. I close my eyes and run my fingers over the rooms, the hallways, the vanishing staircase. So soothing, my plan. My thumb finds the front door and my heart fills with hope. I am not lost. I can find the way out.

Resolved, I stand and raise my arm to the gaslight. My map, my work, it shines. Curious, there’s not a drop of blood in sight. You would think there would be some, just a little, if I was still alive, if there was still a chance, if all was not lost…

Walk the map. Follow it back to the beginning.

Back to the window where the house swallowed Bex. Circle the hall as it changes. Find the stairs, find Sam and the lights, get to the door.

To the door… to the door… to the door.

The house creaks and pops in excitement. It wants me on the move. It longs for a good chase.

As I approach the window, the corresponding threads on the map begin to burn. My fingers splay out in pain. I can still feel pain. That’s something.

Back to the hallway. I circle; it changes. It changes and changes—but wait, that’s not the right order. I have to go back. Undo the loop. My arm is on fire, and the threads tighten. I start to hear voices in the walls. Murmurs at first, then words. Oh! How I wish I couldn’t understand them!

“Find the door… I’m not lost… how do I know that’s the same staircase I went up… how long has it been? I miss my mommy… that’s not the front door, it’s just a front door. Stay away from the lights… the lights eat hearts… the lights eat hearts…”

I realize I can’t go back. My arm is burning. I don’t have Bex with me; that’s why the hall won’t change right. I can’t go back without her. I can’t go back. Can’t go back.

The house knows it won’t be long now.

My arm! Make the pain stop. Rip the map out. I dig my fingernails in, grit my teeth, and pull. It takes the skin with it. No blood. No pain. It pulls apart like wet paper, feathered at the edges. What lies beneath is textured and dry. Currant with a cardinal design—same as the hallway’s current wallpaper. Am I becoming part of the house? I peel away more skin. It separates from the wallpaper easily, like tender meat from the bone.

Now, I am a wallpaper’d girl. Where has Carrie gone?

“Hide… hide… hide! The lights eat hearts.”

Two green growing eyes appear at the far end of the hall in front of Bex’s window. I can’t see anything else about it. No shape or size. The eyes see me and squint slightly, like a sinister smile.

The eyes rush towards me. How can they move so fast? I touch the wall and am pulled inside just in time. It is all darkness and silence inside the wall, but it is safe here.

Whispers in the dark surround me.

“The lights are the house. The lights eat hearts. Trapt, trapt, trapt.”

I don’t believe them. Reason tells me that if a trap has a way in, it has a way out. I just need time to figure it out. To become Carrie again. To get Bex back. To help Sam. To leave.

The darkness hangs heavy on me. When was the last time I slept? Rest is what I need. Fresh mind, fresh thoughts. One day we will find our way out of this horrible house. All of us, together.

A deep, resonant, wet whisper answers my delirious thoughts.

“But how will you ever know if you are truly free and not trapt in my cavernous depths?”

SPECIAL EXHIBIT FIVE: Return to “Darcy’s Docks”

Finish the Gallery and the Exhibit with “Fisher of Men”