The Hours of Creeping Night - a Collection of Dark Speculative Short Fiction Read Free

with a ball of fear and regret lodged in her stomach. She won’t have a job to return to. She won’t be able to earn a wage. She won’t be able to buy food, or pay for shelter. Her hand reaches unconsciously into the pocket of her dress and she clinks five shillings together.
    But she does not turn back. Instead, she continues to walk towards the woodland. The branch tips entwine with one another, knitting a dark canopy. She thinks of the terrifying legend of the great metal spider that lives in the woods and eats children – burns them in its furnace-belly and uses their melted fat to oil its hinges. The forgotten nightmare comes to life in the shifting shadows. The quiver of a crow’s wing shimmers like oil. Its caw crackles the air. A branch falls and she gasps, thinking for a split second that it is a metal leg crashing down.
    Once she becomes used to the strange noises and motions of the woods, a wave of tiredness washes over her. Unused to the fresh air, her head becomes light and dizzy. Just a moment’s rest, she thinks, as she sinks into a cushion of fallen leaves.
    Her eyes snap open and dusk has fallen. The nightmare flutters at the edges of her consciousness, then is gone. She curses herself for falling asleep, but becomes afraid when she realises that she is lost. Hansel would have left a path to follow back, she thought. He was clever like that. She lifts her mud-stained skirts and hurries through the trees, heels sinking into the soft earth and causing her to stumble. The sun is merciless in its descent and darkness slides its long fingers through the spaces between the tree trunks.
    Hope flutters in her chest when she glimpses a hut in a small clearing. As she draws nearer, she sees that the little house is made of dark metal tainted by shimmering rust, the colour of congealed blood. Its angles are all bent and odd, rivets holding its beams together like knee-joints. The windows are empty gaping holes and the wind is sucked and expelled from the hut in breathy sighs. The air is tinged with the taste of metal.
    Gretel hesitates for the second time that day. This does not look like a friendly place. Whoever might live inside does not seem the type who would welcome visitors – that is, if anyone even lives in there at all. She takes a tentative step forward and tries to peer into one of the hollow windows. Dry twigs snap under her boot. But they aren’t twigs. They are tiny bones, charred black. Hundreds of them.
    A wave of horrific familiarity overcomes her. She has seen this place before, in the sleeping recesses of her mind. Disbelief paralyses her as she watches the motions of her nightmare unfold. Metal screeches as the hut inhales and expands, unfurling the pillars of its construction outwards into eight long legs. The plinths of the doorway split into quivering pincer-fangs. It rises up and up, its eight empty window-eyes pinching closer together as it shifts, burning orange with the growing furnace in its belly, the fire roaring and causing the expanding metal to boom.
    Gretel falls to the ground, her legs useless. She claws her way backwards, mouth open in a terrible silent scream. Her dress snags and tears on the animal bones. The spider takes a few grinding steps towards her. It opens its mouth and closes in. Gretel can see the white-hot flames inside it burning crunched-up trees and licking the inside of its metal belly, scorched black and smoking. The heat burns Gretel’s face and the smoke blinds her, her eyes watering and stinging. She breathes in a lungful and coughs. The cough uncorks her lungs and she screams.
    The scream seems to startle the spider, and it shunts backwards, perplexed. Perhaps it has been a long time since it was able to feast on a young girl, and had grown unaccustomed to the power of their lungs.
    Gretel, seeing her chance, scrambles to her feet and runs. She runs towards the densest part of the woodland, hoping the great thing will become caught in the thicket. But