L. Maynard: Black Cathedral

She knew from her reading of the file on the house that there had been a number of physical manifestations, and an alarming amount of damage to both the property and the residents, culminating with old Mr. Fleming being pushed down the stairs. The fall had broken his hip, and a prolonged stay in hospital had precipitated their moving out. He flatly refused to set foot in the house again until it was ‘ sorted out!’

Carter reached the doorway and glanced round. Sian was shifting from foot to foot, pretending to read from her notebook. ‘Coming?’ he said. He knew she was frightened, and probably with good reason. This house was different, he was sure of that.

The tone of his voice jerked her out of her inertia, and she followed him reluctantly. By the time she entered the kitchen Carter was standing in the center of the split and cracked vinyl floor, turning slowly in a circle, the meter extended at arm’s length.

‘There,’ he said as the needle on the dial twitched again.

He was pointing at a door. Sian stared at it. It was probably nothing more than a broom cupboard and she knew Carter was expecting her to open it, but she really didn’t want to. Crazy and macabre images were flashing through her mind; all sorts of gruesome tableaux were waiting for her behind that rather bland, cream-colored door. She started to back away.

Sensing her fear Carter laid the meter down on the kitchen table and stepped forward, grabbing the handle of the door and twisting it sharply. He yanked the door open and a nightmare of teeth, claws and fur flew out at him. He yelled a warning to Sian, turned, and tripped on a torn piece of vinyl, tumbling to the floor, landing sharply on his knee. He hissed with pain and shock, glancing round as the cat skidded across the kitchen floor to the back door. Without even checking its stride, it shot out through the cat flap. Sian ran to the door but only just managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of tortoise shell fur as the animal dived into the overgrown shrubbery at the end of the garden.

She looked back at Carter, who was struggling to get to his feet. Pain had etched lines across his face and colored it an ashen gray. She ran across to help him. Pulling a chair away from the table, she helped him into it.

‘Shit!’ he said, rubbing his knee, a rueful smile hovering on his lips. ‘And I’ve got a league match to night.’

She smiled sympathetically, and absently stroked his hair. ‘How long do you think the cat was in there?’ she said, approaching the broom cupboard cautiously. ‘The house has been empty for weeks, but there’s no sign that it’s been shut in there for any more than a few hours. No mess, and it certainly couldn’t have survived that long without food and water.’

‘It wasn’t real,’ Carter said. ‘It didn’t actually exist. Check your file again. The Flemings had a cat matching the description of that one, but they found it with its throat cut six months ago. Besides,’ he added as almost an afterthought, ‘it passed straight though me, and the cat flap didn’t open as it went through.’ Gingerly he got to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look upstairs.’ Sian wasn’t surprised at his casual acceptance of the supernatural. She didn’t understand it, or share it, but she found it reassuring. It made her feel safe, well, safer.

The master bedroom was dead, cold and empty, and caused not so much as a flutter on Carter’s meter. ‘There’s nothing here,’ he said, and closed the door, shutting in the memories and the dust.

It was the same story in the other bedrooms and the bathroom. Even the smells that the Flemings had described so eloquently in their report were subdued. There was a faint trace of an odor in some of the rooms, but nothing as strong as they had described.

‘What do you think?’ Sian said when they had checked all the rooms.

Carter leaned against the banister, looking down the stairwell. There was something here. He could feel it. The incident with the cat proved it. But what? ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Let’s check downstairs again.’

He was halfway down the stairs when he heard china smashing. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his knee, he ran down the last few steps, pausing only to point his meter at the kitchen door again. The needle was swinging wildly, arcing backwards and forwards across the dial. He shivered and took a breath. What ever was in there was giving off a huge electromagnetic charge, more powerful than anything he had encountered before.

They entered the kitchen together this time. The source of the noise was obvious straightaway. Plates were lifting from the dresser as if grasped by invisible hands. One after another the plates were being destroyed, smashing down on the floor with such force that pieces of china were embedding themselves in the vinyl.

What ever was causing the damage was instantly aware of them as soon as they entered the room. There was a momentary pause, and one of the willow pattern plates floated from the dresser, hung in the air for a second, and then, with frightening force, flew across the room towards them. Carter ducked and pushed Sian out of the way. The plate sailed through the gap between them and smashed on the wall behind, showering them with sharp shards of broken china. Sian cried out as a large fragment of crockery sliced through the sleeve of her shirt, then gasped with relief as she realized it had missed her flesh by millimeters.

Starting as a low rumble, a sound started to fill the room. It developed quickly into a chorus of whoops and squeals, underpinned by a deep guttural growling. As another plate was lifted from the dresser Carter grabbed Sian by the arm and propelled her out of the kitchen, yanking the door closed behind him. He heard the crash and felt the wood shudder as the plate smashed into it.

They were in the dining room. He turned to speak to Sian, but her attention was focused on the wall ahead. He followed her gaze.

There was a bulge underneath the wallpaper, about the size of a large walnut, and it was moving slowly across the wall at eye level. As it moved it formed a hump in the paper, but behind it the wallpaper was smooth, flattened down as if the hump had never been there.

What ever was beneath the wallpaper was picking up speed. The paper made a soft hissing sound as it lifted away from the wall. Carter jerked his head round as he heard the same sound coming from behind him. There were three humps, moving parallel to each other diagonally across the wall, and more of the things were creeping up from the skirting board.

‘We’d better get out of here,’ he said, but Sian wasn’t listening. She’d moved across the room and was staring at the first hump as it zigzagged back and forth, her face inches away from it.

Carter felt a spear of apprehension skewer him. ‘Sian, get back!’ he shouted, but as the words left his lips the wallpaper split and a large beetle emerged, black and glistening, with a hard iridescent carapace. The creature scuttled across the wall, and then the carapace opened and it took flight, launching itself at Sian and attaching itself to the soft skin of her neck. She turned to Carter, too shocked to cry out, a look of absolute terror on her face, her fingers fluttering at her throat, anxious to pull the thing off but far too terrified to actually touch it.

Underneath the wallpaper the rest of the creatures were moving in frenzy, sensing the attack. As the paper lifted and fell in their path it whispered and hissed, filling the room with a soft susurration. Carter was across the room in two strides. ‘Keep still,’ he said as he grabbed the hard shell and squeezed, but the beetle’s head was burrowing into her flesh, its legs forming sharp hooks, anchoring it to her skin. Sian was silent, but huge tears were forming in her beseeching eyes and rolling down her cheeks.