The Big House- Short story Fic.

 It was a prayer-quiet night in the Big House and the only thing that could be heard was the ticking of the giant grandfather clock sitting by my window. “Tick” goes the minute hand, “tock” goes the hour. Another lifeless body lay where nobody would ever dream of looking. One more pair of gloves stained with blood. One more spirit to come back and haunt me.

  My uncle Fred was a tall, slender man, with bones for fingers. He had hair as black as midnight, and glassy smoke-grey eyes, with a devilish smirk for a smile. He didn’t want to let the world know that he was rotting from the inside out; nothing about him was healthy. He always looked clean, with a clean white shirt tucked into old, light-washed Levi jeans. 

“Nothing proves more innocence than a clean white shirt,” he used to always tell me. As far as I could tell, Uncle Fred wasn’t an innocent man. For he had packs and packs of new white shirts in his closet, waiting to be dirtied. 

  The Big House was where me and Uncle Fred lived. This house had more locked rooms that I could count and brick walls that looked like they had held up through centuries. Each floor of the house was labeled with a brass number. Uncle Fred always told me to never go past the fifth floor, so I don’t get lost. The Big House was an odd place. Some blood here, rope there, and a lamp in Uncle Fred’s office shining on a glass jar filled with teeth.

    Over the years my eyesight had gotten worse and worse. My eyes used to resemble light green grass on a summer’s day, now they show nothing more than foggy, grey clouds. It’s as if the Big House didn’t want me to see all of its secrets that it held behind all of its locked doors. Though I’m not completely blind, I can still see the outlines of people and things, with a little bit  of light and a bit of color. The only vivid pictures I could see were through my nightmares. Every night without fail, my nightmares would creep up on me and pull me in and drown me with how real they seemed. I never got the same nightmare twice. Every time was different, and every nightmare got worse. I would fall asleep and see vivid colors and new faces. Person after person, their stories were never the same. Throughout all these nightmares, not one of these people made it out alive. I would always wake up to a loud BANG! on the window in front of my bed. My Bedroom always seemed big and cold, but everytime the window opened I never felt alone. What I eventually found later in my years at the Big House, made everything fall into place. I was never alone, and my nightmares were starting to make sense. 

    Uncle Fred started out his morning the same. He would come downstairs dressed the same, white shirt and all. Brewed the same black coffee in the same mug, then he would walk to his office to read at his desk. After that, Uncle Fred would leave for the whole day and wouldn’t come back until I was in bed asleep. I was living with a stranger. Everyday was the same, I guess that’s the way Uncle Fred liked things.

The morning of July 1st, 1930 is still engraved in my brain.That was the day that everything changed.

BANG! Goes my window as it flings open. I wake up with my breath trapped in my throat. Sweat is soaked into my hair and my nightgown is stuck to my back. A cool breeze glazes over my body and with that I shiver. The deep darkness is making it impossible for my eyes to adjust, I’m completely blind. A feeling of someone’s hands gracefully holding mine and helping me up out of bed. These hands aren’t Uncle Fred’s, they feel feminine and soft with a delicacy to them. 

 “Don’t worry,” says these hands. They lead me up some stairs and into a room, without a key needed to open the door. Suddenly the hands are gone, and I’m left alone to feel around the room like a rat trying to get out of its cage. My eyes adjust to the moonlight glowing through the window. Staring so close to the wall I see pictures of a woman. I glide my way over the walls looking at maps that are also hung up, with thread pinned to it. I crouch down and find that there’s part of the wallpaper starting to peel up. Out of my own curiosity, I peel the rest up. so many names written behind the wallpaper, all crossed out. Except for one name, with a date underneath it saying “July 1st”. 

“This woman was being tracked,” I say to myself. I back up horrified, and trip over a pile of rope. I land on my back and stare up at the ceiling, something was splattered on the ceiling. I close my eyes and open them again only to find that im back in my bed, with the window shut. Every night I find myself waking up the same. Breathing hard, only to be comforted with a new set of hands, leading me to another room in the Big House. New pictures on the wall, new maps, and new string. This has to be real.

   One night it all stopped, for I wake up peacefully in the middle of the night. Someone is sitting on the bed, but the darkness makes sight impossible. Like all of the other nights, a set of hands holds mine, but this time they’re familiar. My breathes get short and stiff. These hands are Uncle Fred’s. I get up as he is leading me somewhere in the big house. I don’t trust him anymore and I bolt up a set of stairs. Running and running it’s as if I’ve been running in circles. I read a brass number, “number 5”. I go up one more flight of stairs, but again the set of stairs still reads “number 5”. I know I can’t be on the same floor because each hall smells different. I’m starting to give up and my legs can’t run anymore, so I lean against a door. Unlike all the rest, this one wasn’t locked. The door screeches open, the room being lit up with moonlight. The walls are only shadows to me. Creeping closer I see images on the walls. Stepping even closer, I see that these are pictures of me! Someone was following me around the Big House and they knew what I’ve been up to. I hit the corner of the wall, just like all the rooms, the wallpaper is peeled up a little at the corner. My fingers shake as I slowly pull at the wallpaper. There, in bold writing reads “you’re next”. The door slams shut.