Wretched Things: Chapter 1

Guests at The Unknowable House

CONTENT WARNING:

Some of the material in this piece of writing may disturb some readers.

This piece includes: blood, eldritch horror, body horror, general creepy crawlies.

You have been warned.

CHAPTER ONE: GUESTS AT UNKNOWABLE HOUSE

The night was quiet. Although it was never truly night here, nor was it quiet. The faint yellow-orange light that shrouded the edge of the horizon was ever present, and the faint noise of city hubbub could always be heard in the distance.

A figure wandered through the half dark. Their movements were sharp, punctual. Each step towards the leering form of the manor house was precise and with a definite, calculated purpose, as if any mistaken act or action would disturb the flow of reality.

The figure then stumbled over a rock hidden in the bracken, tripping them over and causing them to get indignantly tangled in the train of their cloak. Then, awkwardly, they stood up, brushing off the unwanted leaves and bracken that now adorned their finely tailored suit.

 The figure stopped to take the time to glare at the stone from beneath their hood and mutter a few curses before setting back upon their way.

There was a faint tang of something in the air. Its scent was of brimstone, blood and bad memories and the closer the figure got to the house, the stronger this scent became, till it could rightly be known as a stench. Too familiar they thought, promptly deciding to dismiss it for the time being, hoping that whatever it was coming from would not bother them.

They came to the entrance, a grand and detailed affair of plaster and worn sandstone, with two gargoyles perched glaringly at the sides of the lavishly carved oaken door. The figure paused to scrape the mud off of their well shined shoes. It would not pay to be filthy here.

Ringing the ornately sculpted doorbell, the figure stood, vaguely observing the sudden formation of mist and drizzle that swarmed across the sodden landscape.

How fitting.

The door opened. In the warmly lit doorway stood the tall figure of a butler of sorts. The butler wore a navy waistcoat with matching trousers, with well worn shoes polished to the brink of collapse, and an elegant neckerchief the same colour as their eyes. Which were orange. And numerous. The butler’s face was immemorable, along with any other features about them past the suit, the eyes and the fact that they now said with a vaguely posh accent  ” Ah! Mister Croval Manse I presume? I mean who else would you be. Please come in “

And Croval did so.

He hung his cloak on a hook near the door, careful not to disturb the infinitely more expensively looking garments that adorned its other hooks. He glanced at the shoe rack underneath, wondering if he should remove his boots. He decided against it, as he didn’t trust his host not to pepper the floor with nails. It wouldn’t be the first time after all.

The butler beckoned him through the luxuriantly decorated hallway, making sure to enforce the fact that Croval was not, in fact, allowed to touch anything in it under any circumstances. These things included the gold bordered mirrors that coated the walls, each one perfectly polished and completely useless to both Croval and the butler, along with the hideously quantiful amounts of painted porcelain figures that were perched on aged wooden tables that lined the huge space. The wallpaper made him feel queasy.

Finally getting to his intended room, Croval nervously straightened his tie and brushed off the remaining foliage and burs that had decided that his waistcoat was free real estate. He did not want to appear unscrupulous in the presence of his host. Finally, he stepped in, making his way towards an extravagantly upholstered armchair that sat opposite to his host’s desk. The antique clock on the wall ticked with an annoying irregularity. Croval was sure it was intentional.

” We meet again Mr Manse “

Each word was laced with a warm regularity that thinly hid the malice behind them.

” Unfortunately it would seem that is the case “

Croval could see the contempt that he felt reflected in his host’s eyes. He wondered if accepting his host’s invitation was a horrible mistake. Of course it was, but there’s not much I can do about it now, is there?

” I assume this visit is not just a gesture of conviviality, is it?”

” Foolish to assume there is even a chance of that. Are you wondering why you have been summoned here? “

” Foolish to think I would do anything but “

Croval knew that small talk was a bad sign from a being such as his host. It meant that something bad was going to happen, most likely to himself.

There was a long, distasteful silence. Croval felt himself being studied by all eight eyes of his host.

Sweat began to bead on his forehead. 

The tick tick tock tick of the clock started to seem louder, every irregular second marked by it stretching out. The clock read that it was some time past one in the morning, although the darkness visible through the large, arched windows suggested otherwise. His skin began to crawl, and the room’s temperature seemed to increase without any particular reason. Croval started to feel hollow.

The host smiled thinly. ” Something wrong? “

Croval smiled too, although it was a difficult feat to accomplish. His voice shook. ” N-No, nothing! Now if I might excuse myself for a second- ” he started to fumble around in the pocket of his waistcoat for the needle he desperately needed. 

The room started to close in, copious wall ornaments and furniture forming shadowy features that seemed to breathe in rhythm to him. Just as he was about to leave the chair to take his injection somewhere less hostile his host hoarsely whispered ” no you may NOT.” 

And grabbed him with a slightly too long, scaled arm, forcing Croval to drop the needle with the much needed dark red liquid. The host dragged him across the desk, knocking over an ink fountain and several folders marked ‘secret’.

The host’s smile grew into a grin not of teeth, but four sharp edged mandibles that extended from what could be mistaken for a mouth. ” You know, I firmly believe that people are so much more agreeable when they are forced into uncomfortable situations! They are always so amusingly desperate to end their own suffering, even at the cost of themselves later on down the line! “

The host’s grip dug into the flesh of Croval’s arm, the familiar yet unwanted sight of maggots pouring out of his disrupted veins and spilling onto the desk made bile rise in his throat. He spat. More maggots.

“So,” said the host, leaning in close to his face. He could barely think through the sheer rancid stench of congealed blood coming from the host’s mandibles ” how much would you give to end your suffering?”

Darkness clouded at the edge of Croval’s vision, vague larva like shapes squirming behind his eyes. His lungs were full. He no longer needed to breathe. He felt himself loosening form.

Suddenly, the host let him go. Croval stumbled to the floor, blindly feeling for the needle hidden in the thick woollen carpet. After what seemed like an eternity, he found it, grabbing it like an addict, rolling down his already loose collar and stabbing it into his neck. His skin writhed. He was barely conscious when the overbearingly loud noise of motorcycle engines seemed to fill the room. The void swallowed him.

—––——————––——————––——————–

Croval woke up on a comfortable, if slightly scratchy mattress. He didn’t want to open his eyes at first. He was scared that in the act of opening them, he would lose more of himself. He already felt like there wasn’t enough of him, and so for several minutes, he was content to lie on the bed, silently imagining that his most recent memories were all just the bad dream of a human, who would go on from this to live their life, forgetful and free. He always felt worse off after letting his mind wander like that.

He opened his eyes.

It was still dark outside, the large windows of his makeshift room filled with the same half dark that civilization was so fond of. Getting up, he found that his brief unconsciousness had taken place in what looked like it may once have been a four poster bed, although three of the posts were missing, along with the obligatory overhang. The drapes hung limply from atop a wardrobe in the corner. There was no light in the room, but that suited Croval nicely.

Making a half-hearted attempt to neaten himself up before leaving, Croval noticed that a small brooch had been placed in his pocket, that on further inspection revealed it bore a small spider pattern on the front, and the phrase ” soon ” carved roughly in the back. The spider had a fly in its web. Croval grimaced, his captors sense of humour was grotesque, but it could not be said that it had none. The cold form of the paperweight became heavier in his pocket.

He left the room, its overwhelming smell of bleach finally becoming too much. He had placed the brooch on the lapel of his jacket, deciding that a bad omen like that might as well be put to good use. Croval started to make his way down the spiral staircase that he noted had not been there last night and the vague terror of wandering down the slightly unstable flight of steps was a nice break from the hollowness. He could pretend then.

Making it to the bottom, he found that the dimensions of the room his most recent altercation had taken place in, had been altered. The roof was steeper, with large beams supporting its pinnacle in a desperate mockery of a religious setting. The room was also more spaced out, perhaps to allow for the passageway to the previously inaccessible extra floor to take centre stage. Another new thing was the fact that, sat in front of the now flamboyantly large, cathedral-like windows were three oversized armchairs. And two of them were occupied.

In one (which had an eye wateringly bright beach pattern more fitting of a Hawaiian shirt) sat the Host, who’s funereal apparel was in stark contrast with its seating choice. Another one, which had the look and texture of a poorly maintained fleece jumper, sat empty. The third one which had an amusing repeating pattern of a cat hunting a mouse, bore the form of somebody Croval would much rather forget about.

James S. Albicore was not the kind of person one would like to casually bump into, or even encounter at all. Under a threadbare cloth cap, he had greasy red hair, with the stubble of somebody who very much wanted to grow a beard, and wore overalls on his broad frame more fitting of a fishing trawler than this posh, pseudo antiquarian manor house. His face was worn, not old but just tired, and around his neck he wore a tarnished silver cross engraved with a swirling, twisting dragon. Along the entire length of his left arm was a poorly healed scar, the skin around the edges dry and uncared for. 

Croval felt a pang of regret with seeing it, but quickly banished it from his mind. This man had tried to kill him, after all. Despite this, Croval still missed his ex.

He sat down quietly, so as not to disturb the others, who seemed to be heavily engrossed in some form of legal conversation. They seemed to exchange small, yellowed pieces of paper before roughly shaking hands. Around twenty minutes had passed before Croval decided to tap the Host on the shoulder for attention. It turned round with a sudden, jolting start, each of its eight eyes searching around the room independently before centering in on Croval unsettlingly. 

” So, you’re awake. Sleep well? “

The question was rhetorical, and laced with a sarcastic malice that was becoming a little too familiar. This question had also caused James to  sharply turn round in his seat, and cause his eyes to widen in a similar manner to his apparent benefactor, albeit with much less eyes. It seemed to take him a minute to process the information, go through all five stages of grief and then several more (as yet undiscovered) before he finally came to the decision of taking an overly large knife from somewhere inside his overalls, rush over, and point it directly at Croval’s face. The scarred hand in which he held it shook in unison with his voice.

“You ruined me. You injured me and left me and if I hadn’t had the sense to give myself a tourniquet I would have died!” His rough, cockney accent was exasperated with pent up, unaddressed trauma. He didn’t even notice himself scratching the scar, or the slight, involuntary twitch of his arm around where he scratched. Croval felt sorry, but he knew he shouldn’t. Every pang of guilt was easier than what would have transpired if he had not protected himself that godsforsaken night. So his reply was curt, and although he felt threatened by his apparent situation, he stood his ground.

“Very simply, you tried to kill me, and quite frankly, you almost succeeded. But it’s not just the fact that you tried to kill me that hurts, it’s the fact that you wanted to kill me for what I am”

“You are a monster!”

“That is an extremely hurtful comment and I should think that you will regret it later down along the line.”

“I- you what?”

James looked dumbfounded. It was almost as if he had planned some form of revenge scenario within the smooth folds of his mind, and this was completely and entirely not what he had expected. His hand shook to the point of dropping the knife. It fell on the floor with a definite twang, and the aged handle snapped off. Croval swept them under his chair before James could do something silly with the knife’s remains.

“And on top of that, I believe that your,” Croval took on a more sarcastic tone with the phrase “demon hunting escapades are rather outdated don’t you believe?”

James seemed to be struggling to regain his composure. “You- your- I… you drink blood“

He pointed his finger at the middle of Croval’s face, hovering it there as if he might explode Croval with the sheer power of his frustration. He continued his rant “and you sacrifice people, and do evil rituals and- and- and you’re made of maggots!”

“Aren’t we all in the end?”

“But you don’t! Because you don’t die!”

“Rather prude of you to say that, don’t you think?”

James then visibly slumped, and returned to his armchair, eyes glossy, breathing becoming slow. He seemed to be quite soundly asleep although attached to his back was a large, scaled spider’s leg that appeared to extend from the host’s chest.

Croval turned to look at the host with an expression of mild annoyance “You could have just interrupted us”.

The host looked at him with a feigned, sarcastic surprise, and then retracted the leg with a fleshy pop as it’s ribs made way for a new addition to the family. The host didn’t even flinch. 

When James awoke with a shuddering jolt, as if he had awoken from a particularly monstrous nightmare in which something had forcibly shut down his entire nervous system with monstrous, eldritch spellcraft, which was in fact the case. His realisation of this made him apparently reevaluate the Host, as he now tried to stumble over the back of his overly large armchair, and make an escape toward the window. Unfortunately, before he was able to cause some irreparable damage to the ever-shifting household, the host reached out and caught him by the back of his collar. James tussled against the improbably long, improbably strong grip of the hosts arm, before deciding that whatever he was trying to escape to was not worth the effort.

“I’m guessing there’s no way out of this without being cursed, maimed or forcibly removed from this timeline, is there?” He said with an almost practiced detachment which did not fit his current situation of being held aloft by the inexorably strong grip of the host. He swung obstinately.

Putting him down, the host idly picked something out of its gruesome mandibles, before answering with the decidedly vague but threatening statement of “Nothing that you won’t be able to recover from with exceeding quantities of expensive mental and physical therapy.”  

“Ri-ight”

“No matter, you two seem to have gotten through most of your curious little agitations. You seem ready enough for what is to come, the butler will lead you to the answers you seek, I have other matters to attend to”

The host stood up, and with no effort in the slightest, picked up by the collar Croval and held him at arms length next to James. Which was to say that arm’s length was two metres and extending.

The host then pointed it’s rapidly elongating limbs towards the door, each new joint forming with a deafening crackle of pops. The end result was the ornate, mid 1700s door being slammed in the faces of the newly dropped duo, who (although they would be horrified to find out) were both thinking that if they got out of whatever this was, they would take a nice, long, normal trip to the Alps.

James crossed his arms and turned to Croval “so what happens no-“

“I do, sir”

Behind them soo the Butler, whose suit was so crisp, clean and finely ironed, that you could almost ignore the blood. They adjusted their ascot and gestured for them to follow, with a hand that nearly wasn’t there. 

“If you expect me to coddle you through your debriefing, prepare to be disappointed”

They added, before setting off at a near unmatchable pace, at least, unmatchable for James.