anderperry horror au inspired by this post :)
for @undercoverbumblebeee
takes place post-grad, they’re living together in a little house in vermont !
todd awoke at 3:13 a.m. to the sound of the wind throwing rain against the window in the room he shared with neil. he looked around in the dark, realizing he was alone in bed, and that neil was sitting in the bay window, staring out at the landscape.
“neil?” he whispered. neil turned his head slightly. “why are you up?”
“dunno,” he said in response, not looking away from the window. “something woke me up. i swear someone touched my shoulder. i thought it was you, but you were asleep.” he gestured towards the window. “look out there, do you see anything weird?” todd got out of bed and approached neil, standing next to him and peering through the dusty glass. he furrowed his eyebrows and squinted, seeing a figure standing a few yards away, its back to them.
“the man standing out there? i do,” neil said gravely. todd put a hand on his partner’s shoulder.
“come back to bed, it’s probably just a shadow,” he told neil, though he didn’t believe it himself, and neil knew this.
“you’re right,” neil sighed, his heart still beating in his ears as he followed todd back
to bed. they lay down, backs to each other, and stared into the darkness. neil felt a chill run down his spine. something wasn’t right. he turned and put his arms around todd, trying to force himself to sleep. but still, he felt that something wasn’t right, so he got back out of bed, the floorboards creaking under his feet as he walked back to the window. “it’s gone,” he whispered to himself.
“what, love?” todd asked, half asleep.
“oh, nothing. i was just looking to see if that… shadow was still there.” as he started back towards the bed, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. something was
watching. he turned, but saw only his reflection in the mirror on the wall. “todd, wake up.”
“mmm, i was just getting back to sleep,” todd groaned, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “what is it?”
“i’m going to check the house, come with me.”
“i dunno, something.” todd mumbled about being cold and tired, but went with neil anyway. they walked through the small house, dimly lit by the lamps they turned on as they went. neil didn’t see anything out of place, and todd found all the doors and windows to be locked and secure. todd looked around the room, noticing something neil had apparently missed.
“honey, you can’t leave candles burning,” he admonished. “you’ll burn the house down.”
“what?” neil asked. todd motioned to neil’s desk, where a blood red candle sat, burning strongly, dripping wax on an opened book. neil approached carefully. “i don’t even own a red candle, there’s…” he froze, seeing the title at the top of the page the book was opened to.
“the book,” neil whispered, his face ghostly white. he gripped todd’s hand. “it’s, um- it’s ‘the tell-tale heart.’ when i was a kid, i read it. father told me not to, but i did it anyway… and i- i had nightmares for weeks about hearing a heart beating under the floor in my room. it was so bad i used to sneak in and sleep on my parents’ floor.”
“well, that isn’t possibly going to happen,” todd said with a bit of a chuckle, “seeing as that’s impossible.”
“then where did the candle and book come from?”
“it’s, well… uh, i guess it’s- this is just a weird coincidence.” neil shook his head.
“i’m gonna keep looking,” he mumbled, dropping todd’s hand and walking away. todd sighed and followed, feeling his way through the dark.
“what are you looking for exactly?” todd asked. neil sighed.
“i don’t know, i’m just really on edge and-”
todd tuned him out halfway through his sentence. he felt all the color drain from his face. his heart raced faster than it ever had. he was overcome with a deep, bone chilling fear, worse than any he’d felt in his entire life. he tried to step away, but found himself frozen in fear.
there was a cold, lifeless hand on todd’s arm.
he finally came back to reality and turned around, swinging blindly at the darkness. when his fist struck cold flesh, he jumped and grabbed onto neil, nearly knocking him over.
“hey! woah,” neil exclaimed, wrapping his arms around todd. “what was that?”
“i- i dunno, it touched me and i hit it and… and-”
“hit what? there’s-” neil froze next, seeing what it was that todd had struck. his heart dropped down to his stomach. he let go of todd and turned to run, but stopped to grab todd’s arm before taking off. as they took off towards the back door, neil tripped over his feet and slammed into the doorway.
“you okay?” todd whispered.
“do i seem okay? come on!”
they took off again, running through the pouring rain towards the woods. todd could barely breathe, but his adrenaline overpowered any urge to stop and rest. still gripping todd’s wrist, neil turned and looked over his shoulder. this was a mistake - he slipped on a muddy patch and fell, taking todd down with him. the two took their chance to catch their breath.
“todd, i think-“ neil began, stopping to pant like the scared puppy he felt like, “i think i twisted my ankle, it h- it hurts like hell!”
“we can’t stop now!” todd shouted over the rain. “we have to get away from it!”
“from what?! there’s nothing there!” neil ran his muddy hands over his face.
“come on!” todd stood and tried to pull neil up with him. but when he looked down at his partner, despite the darkness, he could see that neil was completely petrified. his eyes were wide, and his face was white as a sheet. “neil…?”
“do you hear it?” he whispered, barely audible over the sound of the falling rain. “the heartbeat?”
“neil, it’s your own heartbeat, you’re scared,” todd assured him. neil shook his head, swallowing hard.
“it’s not mine.” he pointed to the house. “it’s his.” todd’s eyes widened as they both saw it - the man from the house, marching toward them, somehow graceful despite the looming darkness of his presence. neil swallowed again, the taste of vomit making him wish he hadn’t.
“oh my god.” neil looked up, pulling todd back down beside him. todd wrapped his arms around neil, the both of them beginning to cry.
“i’m fucking terrified,” neil sobbed. todd nodded.
“i know. me too, but it’s okay. we’re okay,” he said.
“no we’re not! what kind of life are we living? we’re in the middle of nowhere, lying to everyone we know and love… todd, what’s wrong with us?”
“we did what we had to do,” todd said. “we always do.”
he looked up again, making sure they were safe. he could’ve sworn he felt his heart stop for a second as the cold hand grabbed him again.
the man pulled and dragged a petrified todd, trying to get him out of neil’s grasp. neil held on as tight as he could, screaming so loud he almost hoped someone would hear and call for help. the fear in todd’s eyes as they were finally separated made neil sick to his stomach.
he pushed himself up despite his pain and lunged, tackling both todd and the horrifically cold man who had ahold of him. the man turned his attention to neil, grabbing onto him and trying to shove todd away. neil, however, didn’t let this faze him. he struck the man, his knuckles stinging as they made contact with his icy flesh. but he didn’t care. he kept hitting and hitting until todd could get away.
when he finally stopped, he looked up at todd, then down at the still-hidden face of the man he’d just beat senseless.
“i… don’t know what just happened,” he stammered, standing up and immediately remembering his injured ankle.
“it’s okay,” todd said urgently, “let’s just get back inside and lock the doors before…” neil nodded.
“should we call someone?” he asked. todd scoffed.
“…my head hurt and there was a strange sound in my ears,” a voice interrupted. “i talked more, and faster. the sound became clearer. and still they sat and talked.” neil and todd looked around. the figure was no longer lying on the ground. they very slowly crept back towards the house, the voice growing louder. “suddenly i knew that the sound was not in my ears, it was not just inside my head. at that moment i must have become quite white.”
todd opened the back door and stepped inside, neil following very close behind. he held onto todd’s hand, his heart almost drowning out the all-too familiar sound of his own father’s voice, reciting the very story he’d once forbade neil from reading.
“i talked still faster and louder,” mr. perry’s voice continued, “and the sound, too, became louder. it was a quick, low, soft sound, like the sound of a clock heard through a wall, a sound i knew well. louder it became, and louder. why did the men not go? louder, louder. i stood up and walked quickly around the room. i pushed my chair across the floor to make more noise, to cover that terrible sound. i talked even louder. and still the men sat and talked, and smiled. was it possible that they could not hear?”
the two young men approached the office, walking past todd’s empty desk and stopping directly in front of neil’s. the man sat there, flipping through the final pages of the open book, blood dripping from his darkened face and mixing with the red wax dripping from the candle.
“no! they heard! i was certain of it,” he read, “they knew! now it was they who were playing a game with me. i was suffering more than i could bear, from their smiles, and from that sound. louder, louder, louder!
suddenly i could bear it no longer. i pointed at the boards and cried, ‘yes! yes, i killed him. pull up the boards and you shall see! i killed him. but why does his heart not stop beating?! why does it not stop!?’”
“who are you?” neil cried, his eyes clouded with tears. the man closed the book and stood up, the candlelight finally catching his face. neil squeezed todd’s hand. staring back at him he found his own brown eyes, cold and dead, swollen and red as if he’d been crying.
todd gasped. he found himself looking into his own blue eyes, lifeless and pale, accusing him of every little crime he could think of.
neil and todd looked at each other, pure terror etched on their faces. when they looked back to the desk, they found themselves staring at empty space. the candle was still there, flickering and dripping blood-red wax on the reopened book.
neil wiped his eyes and leaned down to see what was scrawled on the inside cover of the book.
“todd,” he whispered, “look.” todd leaned down and squinted in the darkness, his stomach churning at the sight of the five words, scrawled in handwriting that, at least to neil, was painfully familiar:
they looked back to each other. neil glanced over todd’s shoulder and looked at himself in the mirror, his wet hair and muddy skin barely visible. he squinted and looked closer, seeing the shape of a man standing behind him. the room was so silent that the sound of the man’s blood hitting the floor was audible. the candle flickered, and the light caught the man’s face again. it wasn’t his own this time. no, it was different. and now, of course, neil understood.
“i know why this is happening,” he said. todd furrowed his eyebrows, not sure of what neil was seeing that made this clear to him. “todd, think. my father.”
“the tell-tale heart. the voice i heard reading it was my father’s voice.”
“yeah, i heard that too, why-”
“my biggest regret about what we did is that my father’s grief killed him,” neil explained, maintaining eye contact with the man he saw in the mirror. “it keeps me up at night.”
“oh.” todd nodded and looked down at his feet. “i… yeah, me too.”
“i mean, i regret lying and making our friends and keating feel bad, but they’re not dead. my father is. he thought i killed myself, todd. and that guilt and grief killed him. it’s my fault. and that haunts me every single day.” neil sighed and turned around, facing his father’s cold, lifeless eyes.
“we brought this upon ourselves,” neil said, a chill running down his body as his father gripped his shoulder. “now we have to deal with the consequences.”
