Thank you for this!!! I've had this idea for a little while and this prompt was the perfect one for it!!
For the prompt: “Can you stop breathing down my neck?” “Dude, I’m over here."
Send me Halloween prompts! 👻🎃🕷️
At the end of his shift, Adam cracks his back, gets up from the table, and crosses to the door. It’s the way that the guests come into his séance room in the haunted house, and it’s the quickest way out. Or it would be the quickest way out, if the door wasn’t locked.
“For fuck’s sake,” Adam mutters. The lights overhead flicker, just the first part of the sequence. Adam finds the closed circuit camera in the corner and stares up at it, unimpressed, as voices whisper in the shadows around him and a metal vase tumbles from a shelf. The lights flicker again, and just for a second, Adam catches sight of a screaming woman reflected in the mirror next to him. He rests his palms on the table behind him, and waits for the rest. Floorboards creak, shadows grow and change around him, and then Adam is plunged into the total darkness that he finds himself in every fifteen minutes from the hours of six to eleven pm every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening.
The darkness is supposed to feel heavy. The sound effects make it atmospheric; the house is a good one, as haunted houses go, and even though Adam knows that this time he’s alone in the room, he doesn’t feel it.
Three more seconds until the door opens. The hairs prickle on the back of Adam’s neck. There’s no one else in here, he tells himself. The door creaks open. At the end of the hallway, a single candle flickers, but none of the light reaches Adam’s room.
The door is open. Adam knows the fire escape door is just on the left, just on the other side, but he doesn’t move.
He can’t shake the feeling that he’s not alone in here.
It feels like breath on the back of his neck. It feels like eyes on the side of his face. It feels like a warm spot, just out of his reach, like if he stepped forward, he’d be able to feel a presence…
Adam shakes his head. He’s being ridiculous, he needs to leave, wants to go home. He steps towards the door and—
A hand wraps around his upper arm. Adam screams.
Ronan laughs.
“Lynch!” Adam shouts. “For fuck’s sake!”
“Jesus, Parrish, relax.” Ronan slaps his back. “You spend every fucking day in here, man, don’t tell me the haunted house scared you.”
Adam jerks away from him. “You scared me, you asshole.” He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s not about to let Ronan think he’s scared of the house. This isn’t the first time Lynch has pulled this kind of shit, and now it’s Adam’s turn to plan his revenge. “Come on,” he says.
Ronan snorts, and Adam feels him slide past him in the dark towards the door.
The door slams.
“Ronan,” Adam hisses.
“Are you gonna believe me if I say that wasn’t me?” he replies.
“No.”
“It wasn’t me,” Ronan says, anyway.
“The door doesn’t close by itself,” Adam points out. He knows this house, knows the pattern of traps and tricks. He knows when the—
A series of books tumble from the shelf. The wrong shelf. No. The right shelf—And then it’s the clock chimes—Or—He can’t focus like this. Goosebumps race down his spine again, and Ronan is standing too close to him, shuffling around between Adam and the mirror on the wall.
“Can you stop breathing down my neck?” he snaps at Ronan.
“Dude, I’m over here,” Ronan replies. And he is, Adam realises. He’s away across the room, Adam hears Ronan’s footsteps as he crosses to the door. The magnets holding it shut have locked in place, and when Ronan tries the handle, it doesn’t move.
“It won’t open,” Adam says. “We have to find the emergency escape controls, or we have to start the cycle again.”
“Start the cycle. The cycle never stopped,” a voice whispers in Adam’s ear. His deaf ear.
There’s crash as Ronan trips on Adam’s abandoned chair. “Shit! Motherfucker! Did you hear that?”
“I did,” Adam whispers. He shuffles through the dark, hands skimming along the warm wood of the table he sits at every evening. “Somewhere… There’s a…” His fingers skim over a tiny control panel and Adam finds the button for the emergency lights. He sighs in relief as the emergency lights come on and all the doors in the room release with soft pops.
Soft pops, that are lost beneath Ronan’s yelp.
“Parrish,” he says, and Adam has never, ever heard him sound afraid before. “Look.”
Adam looks. Ronan is pointing at the mirror behind him, the one that shows visual effects; twisted faces, strange shadows, all predictable horror tropes. That’s not what Adam sees when he looks at the mirror. His own gaunt, pale face stares back at him, through a word, written on in a rough, shaky hand.
DAVID DAVIS & THE WARRIOR RIVER BOYS
Didn’t He Ramble: Songs of Charlie Poole
Label: Rounder Records
Released: June 1, 2018
1. He Rambled
2. One Moonlight Night
3. Ramblin’ Blues
4. May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister?
5. Girl I Left In Sunny Tennessee
6. The Highwayman
7. Leaving Home
8. Goodbye Mary Dear
9. Milwaukee Blues
10. Old And Only In The Way
11. White House Blues
12. If The River Was Whiskey
13. Where The Whippoorwill Is Whispering Goodnight
14. Sweet Sunny South
this video was taken from a gig that I had attended over the thanksgiving holiday... may you ever get the chance to see this man, you must for it is truly an experience on all levels... this was my second chance to catch his performance live and normally I am not always too keen on the fact of seeing an artist more than once especially after you are so moved by the first encounter... however, I must admit this show may have eclipsed the first show... with doveman aka thomas bartlett on the keys it show was a moment that will be forever etched in minds landscape... hope you enjoy this phenomenal and truly seismic performance by a man who continues to create great music that comes straight from the core of his very being...
