Work Text:
The crow offers me a smoke
He says "It'll help you kill the third eye"
My my, do you think this is a joke?
"I swear, it's fine!"
He's in a web of lies-A Crow's Trial, Vane
Statement of William Gold, regarding his experiences living in a haunted house. Statement taken directly from subject, August 19th 2020.
Statement begins.
It's sort of strange, really, knowing that whatever's happening to you can't be normal.
That sudden feeling of dread creeping up on you when you finally realize that you're not imagining things. That it's all real.
I- uh, should probably start at the beginning though, so-
I've been living in London for the better part of the last few years. I've never… particularly liked it, but it also wasn't the worst - I shared my flat with another university student so the rent was cheaper, and we mostly got along quite well, even if we didn't talk much.
I had one single, small room for myself - a table, bed and wardrobe were the only things to actually fit into there, so it was… cozy, if you want to be euphemistic.
Living in London was- well, dreadful, I'd say and it made my asthma act up quite a bit. All the smog, and masses of warm bodies pressing into each other like some sort of strange, squirming hive each morning in the underground was claustrophobic. The city is… gray, I think. Lifeless in a way a lot of metropolitan areas are, so full of life yet lacking passion. The colour of the ocean and clouded sky fades into each other perfectly.
[quiet laughter]
Needless to say, I felt trapped here. So when my friend David said he'd heard from a friend that an old house was being sold in Brighton for a relatively small price, I was overjoyed.
You see, I've always loved Brighton! Grew up there as well, which only seems to add to it. The ocean, and the beach promenade are things I remember fondly from my childhood - screaming seagulls and waves crashing into the shore are the melodies of my memories more often than not.
David agreed to buy the house with me; we were quite close at the time, and living with one of your best friends seemed fun, more enjoyable than the uncaring kindness of an unfamiliar flatmate at least.
So we bought the house.
For the first few weeks it wasn't obvious that anything was wrong at all: The house was old, and the floorboards shifted and creaked with every step but surprisingly, not much needed to be done inside at all. A new kitchen, and a bit of fresh paint on the walls and the place looked good as new! I was happier, and David seemed to indulge my sudden giddiness more often than not.
It… I think it started with…. heh, as absurd as it may sound - I think it started with a bag of crisps. I found them in one of the old cabinets in our storage room, right next to our renovated kitchen. They lay on the top cabinet, covered in dust and spider webs. As I carefully tried to get them off the shelf, a few spiders scurried away from my searching hands. I was about to call out to David and tell him that he needn't hide his snacks from me and that I wouldn't steal from him, until I saw the expiration date. 2018.
The crisps were the kettle ones, some sort of cheap brand I didn't recognize the name of, but I knew those things last long. A few years at least.
So for them to be already two years expired…. The house must've been empty for a long while.
When I asked David about it the next morning, he told me he didn't know who the last person in the house had been or how long they had stayed here, and I realized with a sudden start that we were never told why the house was abandoned in the first place. I knew nothing about this place at all.
David didn't seem too worried about it at all, so I decided to try and relax a bit as well - it was probably just a freaky coincidence, or just nothing to worry about in general.
The next thing was the cold.
There was this… sort of chill in the house, something that tore through your skin and clung to your bones until everything felt numb, and even the warm spring sunlight couldn't warm your blue lips.
I was so, so cold. Constantly. I shivered and shivered, dropping cups and plates from shaking hands because the chill would not let up.
I asked David about it, but he only shrugged and said that old houses are built in a way that keeps them cold, even during the warmth of spring.
But the thing is, I knew that. I've been in my fair share of old houses, from my grandparents place to my friends houses, and they're never, ever that cold.
I would've written it off as me being overdramatic, if it weren't getting colder.
I couldn't be inside without wearing a jacket, and whenever I exhaled, my breath left behind a puffy, white cloud of smoke, almost like a twisted signal.
Soon I noticed that the cold had different stages of severity depending on where in the house you were - I tried following it once, but it only led me to one of the exterior walls of the building.
I didn't think there was anything there.
We should've left then, I know that now, but… well, we couldn't afford it. So we stayed.
Sometimes, the cold made it feel hard to think. Or to feel, but I would much rather not talk about that.
And then, there were the insects.
I went out into the alley to take out the trash when I saw them - a small cluster of woodlice, pressed into a small corner. A writhing, disgusting hive of small, long-legged creatures, all squirming on top of each other on that house wall, tiny black bodies shining under the artificial lightning.
I was disgusted by them.
So I- This is gonna sound barbaric but I-
I sprayed battery acid on them. Almost immediately, they stopped moving, the whole writhing mass suddenly still as if frozen with apprehension-
But they didn't fall off the wall, just clung on with their dead legs, one lifeless black spot on our white wall. No longer writhing. No longer singing.
Oh- I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. It just seemed… fitting.
Anyways, I got a broom and swatted the whole mess off our wall and decided to just not think of it again.
Needless to say, the woodlice returned soon after that.
It was when I was putting back a few of David's clothes into his closet after washing them that I noticed the small, wooden door hidden behind his hoodies. It looked like the entrance to a small crawl space, or maybe the extension of the closet itself?
Well, curiosity got the better of me and I crawled through that whole into a black room.
I was disoriented for a second - the black walls seemed to pulse around me and I was so, so close to touching them-
But then I recognized the telltale scuttling sound of thousands of tiny legs moving against concrete and I could see the writhing woodlice on the walls, thousands of tiny bodies scurrying all around me, with a sort of distant melody, like a song you know but have forgotten the words to.
The music didn't last very long though, as suddenly I was filled with a disgust so monumental that I might have screamed. I'm not sure though - all I know is that I woke up in my room, David nowhere to be seen.
And that is where things started to get… truly strange.
The house changed.
I know I sound insane, but I need you to believe me when I say that when I woke up that morning I did not recognize the floors I was traversing at all.
Everything was winding and corridors seemed to stretch on for way longer than they possibly could, with nothing but mirrors and hundreds upon hundreds of doors on either side, all mockingly changing and parodying the doors in my actual house.
I walked and walked and walked but there seemed to be no end to these winding corridors, no exit or any sign of life at all, no sign of David.
So I opened one of the doors. Suddenly, I was standing in… David's weird closet room but the walls were bare now, no woodlice, only the faintest memory of a song, somewhere far off.
And a single, bright red bloodstain on the grimy mattress on the floor.
I felt sick.
When I left the room I didn't find myself back in the winding corridors, no, I was standing in a bathroom.
The walls were painted a deep black, almost dark enough for me to see the shadows of tiny legs scurrying away, but ultimately there was no writhing, no pulsing. No woodlice.
Behind the toilet was a window - a single, big thing showing the dark colours of a night sky.
Nothing could've prepared me for the sudden nausea I felt when looking out of it though - the drop from that window must've been at least twenty feet, and the pit at the bottom was shrouded in a darkness so thick I couldn't see what it held.
I almost thought about jumping, before discarding the thought violently. I couldn't leave David behind.
Across the street, the lights of the Korean bar shone brightly; I remember, because I distantly thought that I had never seen anyone enter or leave that building and wondered if the street itself was… hah, cursed or something.
I entered the corridor for one last time, and suddenly felt myself being pushed to the floor.
I was in some kind of… crawl space, I think, and above me, where my eyes were forced to stare, hung two pictures of little girls.
Well, I say pictures but I don't know if they actually were pictures, they could've been paintings or… I don't know, something else infinitely more sinister.
Their eyes were locked on me, gazes so jarringly emotionless and exact that I couldn't help but flinch back a little.
Under their unwavering stares, that…. unsettling feeling of being watched increased tenfold, and I could feel the afterthought of staring eyes burn into my back.
It was so cold in that room. Sometimes I think that it must've been the cause of the cold, in some twisted way, but I don't know if I was just imagining the cold increasing because I was scared.
The little girls both looked… grey, sort of barely there, as if the paint with which their portraits was done had been mixed with water and spread too thin across the canvas.
One was holding a pinwheel, and the other sat on a rocking horse.
Neither were smiling.
It took me a while, but I recognized the room those pictures were taken in - it was unmistakably our living room, with the big fireplace in the background; but I couldn't help but notice that on both pictures, there was a window next to the fireplace. There was no window in our living room.
In that moment, I heard David call out my name, and I almost would've responded if it weren't for that… melody in his voice, almost as if he were singing. It was the same song the woodlice sang, something beautiful yet so uniquely terrifying that it froze me to the spot - something about belonging, and being home. It made me itch.
I don't know how I escaped. I think I must've… smashed a window and jumped or something. I can't really remember. All I know is that-
Wait. You.
Can't you hear it? The song… It's here, I can hear it, that soft voice singing of belonging and peace-
I'm sorry, Archivist. But I think you have an infestation.
Statement ends.