13 Tales To Give You Night Terrors Read Free Page A

computer screen disappears for an instant, my eyes bulge,
and the vision goes red around the rings, the letters stay but the
page is elsewhere. I can’t remember what I’m writing as the room
goes pitch dark for a second and then the noisy little island of
computer-light flashes back in view—but wait.
    The flash gets nostalgia dripping into
places it hasn’t for years. I remember that I’m not even getting
paid much to translate this thing, and my name won’t appear
anywhere for it. I remember I should really change my plaster
because the blood is still flowing from where I cut my wrist on the
book’s ragged brass fringe. I remember the shapes of blood on the
book and the warning that followed. The smell of decay.
    I remember I don’t have a cat and
haven’t since I was six.
    I carry on typing, not
wanting to stop for a millisecond because I honestly don’t want the
silence. Tears sting my eyes and a wet patch on my neck tickles
cold down the nerves of my spine. I don’t have a cat and haven’t
for years . Again
it rubs past my leg, this time harder. I hit the keys as the thing
thumps me lightly and I notice for the first time the deadly cold
and a smell like mould. Something awful is happening. There are few
reasons to be afraid of the dark but silence is one of them because
you never know what you might hear.
    I locked the door. That much is sure.
The windows are shut tight. The room smells like the cigarette
burning in real-time off to the right. From the pitch blackness a
tiny orange light flickers, its glow trailed off in a thin strand
of smoke. I imagine the smoke up in the dark, circling my head,
dancing around something awful on the ceiling, something with too
many legs and not enough teeth. I panic and write, type viciously
and think inconclusively. I dream and I watch.
    The door is
locked—definitely locked—and the room isn’t big at all. Five by
five metres, tops. I heard nothing, so no one entered. Besides,
this doesn’t seem like a no- one. My breath catches in my throat as the silence is
barely punctuated by the tap tap
tap of the keys . This is all nonsense. There is
nothing under the desk. My tongue scrapes across the roof of my
mouth like sandpaper, so I go to grab my glass of water while
repeatedly typing something with my left hand.
    The sound is a blessing.
Press your ear to a wall, any wall, then you’ll hear the beating of
your own heart. Every time. In the dark everything is amplified and
the sounds, wishfully, become you . The alternative is too
terrifying. The rustle of feet, the beating of a pulse, whispering.
Talking is the hardest to forgive. Two people talking has the
essence of normality. One person talking aloud in the other room,
when there’s no one in, now that almost hurts to hear.
    The glass is gone. Did I even put it
there?
    I type something quick and
short with my right hand and fumble to the left. Under the noise of
the keys something sniffs . It’s nothing.
    No, not there either. I
gasp as the hairy bump comes again, only this time it feels solid,
a statement rather than a suggestion. I panic and I whimper, then
bite my lip and swear silently. Whatever it is may just leave me
alone. Maybe it doesn’t know I’m real. Of course, that’s bullshit,
because I’ve spent the past hour yawning, typing, and shuffling in
my seat. I think I even reached a hand down to stroke it earlier. Actually,
come to think, my hand feels sticky and it’s too dark to see what
colour the mess on the keyboard is.
    Who knows how long this thing has been
waiting? Waiting to be read. Still, for all my attempts at
subtlety, I type mercilessly and will for a long time because I am
dreamed and I am watched. My gran used to say I’d stick my nose
somewhere I shouldn’t have and she was too damn right. The pale
pages on the table beside me—I can just see them in the dull
light—are spattered with black lines. I reach a hand out to flip
the cursed pages.
    I just about scream when a grunt