Within The Walls of Darkness

[Published in Enigmatic Tales #1]


"I'm here to see Eloise," I said.
It was the small boy who answered, the one with the brown tousled hair. He appeared the picture of perfect health, but I was conscious of the truth, for Eloise had informed me that his insides had been eaten away by an evil disease. He was clutching the door handle and observing me with those mysterious eyes of his, as if daring me to cross the threshold and enter that forbidding house.
"I'll fetch her for you," he said, and left the door slightly ajar as he departed into the weird interior of that haunting place.
I could not discern a great deal through that tiny aperture, for within those boundaries was a perpetual darkness, which to me was as chilling and unholy as the blackest and most silent midnight. Also there was in the thickened air a foul and unpleasant odour. I was unable to ascertain the exact nature of such a foetid smell, it just seemed to be there, lurking within that shadowy abode.
With squinting eyes I spied various ghostly shapes, silent and unmoving, some standing and others in a sitting position. Each possessed the whitish hue of summer clouds, and therefore were evident in the noiseless dark. Suddenly a large spectre-like figure passed directly before me, mere inches from the doorway, and two hellish eyes peered my way in a sinister fashion. Immediately I recognised that dreadful form. Alfred always objected to my calling on Eloise, his motive I guessed to be an insane jealousy.
Then my love appeared and stepped from out of that dilapidated house, and I forgot all about Alfred, instead devoting the entirety of my thoughts upon her. Her long white dress was as beautiful and enchanting as always, and her skin was filled with an unhealthy paleness. I kissed her cold, ashen cheek and took her by the hand, grasping her icy palm in mine. She smiled, revealing blackened and rotting teeth surrounded by reddish blue lips.
"It's good to see you," I told her.
"You too, Daniel."
We departed from the house, leaving its crumbling brickwork and cracked windows, and walked together along the moss-infested pathway. We passed those creeping weeds and headed for our usual destination -- the nearby woods.
"It won't be long now," said Eloise as we strolled beside a dashing brook.
"I'm going to miss you."
Her eyes were black and sunken, and I detected a tremendous anxiety and weariness in them. I tried to imagine her inside the home, dwelling in that neverending darkness, sitting motionless in deepened thought. I tried to create a picture in my mind of her time spent with the others. With Alfred, raging with an awesome covetousness. His flesh was beginning to blotch badly and vanish in sumptuous helpings from his decaying body, so Eloise told me. I was morbidly pleased on hearing such news.
"I need to rest," said Eloise after only the briefest distance, "I feel so weak and tired."
I aided her in her efforts to sit upon a patch of grass beneath a huge tree, and I in turn accompanied her in that position. Overhanging branches above our heads provided a welcome shade from the overpowering rays of the afternoon sunshine, and we cast long gazes upon the majestic sight of a silent meadow before us.
"How do you feel?" I asked.
"I think it is almost time, Daniel."
A grey sadness swept through me, and I placed my arm around her, feeling the bones beneath her flaking skin. I kissed her neck, my lips touching coldness, and I spotted that her flesh was beginning to disappear in small amounts, hardly noticeable to the naked eye.
"I will always love you," I told her, suppressing a tear.
She looked into my eyes. I detected a terrible hopelessness in hers, and I had never felt as lonely and lost as I did at that precise moment of my existence. Her hair hung long and dank, just as it appeared the day they pulled her out of the lake. How I screamed and screamed upon seeing her... We remained under that tree for a while, not speaking. Eloise was shivering feverishly, and hungry crows started to appear upon those sturdy branches above our heads. The iciness of her skin was increasing by the minute, and my natural concern compelled me to suggest we return to the house.
Eloise agreed, and when she arose I observed a scattering of peeled flesh upon that grassy surface. I escorted her back to the house, and when I noticed the building in the distance it seemed to be even more tumbledown than before, as if the place itself was decaying and falling to pieces. The door was opened by the unfortunate soul known as Edgar. He was holding his head under his arm, the area around his opened neck filled with the stickiness of congealed blood. Despite his misfortune he was smiling pleasantly, and stepped to one side to allow Eloise into the home.
I kissed her once more before I departed, the dampness of my mouth touching her blanched cheek, and I left that place with a horrible empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The following afternoon I paid my daily visit to the house, and on this occasion my call was answered by the insidious Alfred. He stood in the doorway, surrounded by the gloom and murkiness, his skin bone-white and the acrid flesh melting away before my eyes. The most cunning of grins he displayed, and I felt a morbid chill of dread throughout my body.
"No doubt you are here to see Eloise," he gloated, revealing hideous molars as his mouth spread wide into that evil smirk.
"Of course I am. Will you call her for me?"
My sole thought and intention was to collect my sweetheart and depart from that cheerless place, to escape from the disturbing presence of Alfred. He appeared to be in an alarmingly buoyant mood, and yet his hateful eyes were as black as coal-dust, and his dark gaze was sufficient to crush a man's very soul.
"Call her for you?" he mocked in a churlish tone. "I doubt if she would hear my call from where she now dwells."
His remark I found both puzzling and frightful, and I began to visibly shiver as I endeavoured to comprehend his strange statement.
"I don't understand," I said, looking into those mysterious eyes, searching for some understanding of the situation.
"Eloise has been taken!" he declared in triumphant laughter. "She is now with the damned and the cursed in the infernal kingdom of the Dark One!"
I trembled upon hearing his words, and watery droplets threatened to appear from the corners of my eyes. I was utterly lost and dismayed, and overcome by a flaming anger.
"I don't believe you!" I yelled in a quivering voice. "She is still in the house. Fetch her to me. Now!"
Alfred then laughed so loudly and fervently that I experienced a burning fever within the corridors of my brain.
"Your disbelief gives me great joy," he said, "why not come in and look for yourself? You are perfectly welcome, Daniel. Enter, and search for your love."
I was tempted, make no mistake, but my self-control triumphed over my erratic impetuosity, and I remained outside that dim interior. Alfred was a most treacherous and frightening character, and I had almost succumbed to his awful trickery.
I knew that only the dead could cross that threshold.
"You show great wisdom," said Alfred, almost with regret, "yet you remain in the land of the living -- and without Eloise."
I had no desire for further conversation with that accursed fellow, and so I turned and proceeded to depart from that house of darkness. I stumbled along the fragmented pathway and passed the weeping weeds, the tears flowing in tiny rivulets over my cheeks.
It is even darker than I imagined in here, my new dwelling place. It is as though the very interior of the building is constructed from a thickening darkness. A hideous stench prevails, the stench of human decomposition. The awful quietude is almost as chilling as the surrounding blackness. Edgar is beside me on the beaten settee, sitting with his head in his lap. I await my time with an abnormal contentment. Alfred hovers close by, intimidating me with those wicked eyes, but I suffer not from his silent taunting. I miss Eloise terribly, and I feel such pain inside. My wrists are still quite sore, but they have now stopped bleeding, and I think of my darling as I stare into this savage darkness.