“Ma’am, would you enjoy some tea?”“Yes, thank you.”It is 2:00 in the morning. My medications give me horrible insomnia, which keeps me awake at night. Thankfully, the kind nurses at the hospital don’t mind making me some tea every so often. It helps stimulate my nerves a little. Besides, the company is always appreciated, especially considering that I don’t have much time left. In life, I never had many friends, nor did I ever get married. Even after my health started to decline, my hands never stayed idle. It wasn’t until a few years ago that my declining health forced me to retire and move to a nursing home. Shortly after, my terminal lung cancer forced me into the hospital.Yet, before I moved to America, I lived in Germany. Berlin’s skyrise back then was miniscule compared to how it looks today, but to me, it was like I was living in the city of the gods. During the day, crowds of people walked down the narrow paved streets while I played tag with my friends, none of us caring whether the homework lying on our bedroom floors got completed that night or not.Growing up, I wasn’t yet old enough to understand the meaning behind all of the red, white, and black flags draped over the sides of buildings. As a young child, it seemed normal, and I never thought much of it. As children, my fellow classmates and I used to stare in awe at the Nazi soldiers as they marched in their pressed army jackets and sleek black boots. We would pretend we were soldiers, or navy warships, or German fighter pilots, flying proud over a contested battlefield.It was completely unbeknownst to us how the war had been affecting our minds, and it wasn’t until our teachers made our classes say, “Heil Hitler” before every period that my parents expressed their concern. They decided it was time for my younger brother, Henry, and I to take an extended vacation with my aunt and uncle in Switzerland. Of course, neither me nor my sibling understood the true reason behind this at the time. It wasn’t until many years later that I understood my parents had wanted to send us away before things inevitably got bad in Germany.As it was, my parents had decided to stay behind and tend to the house while we were gone. They hugged and patted me and my brother on the platform after the train conductor yelled for us to come aboard. I distinctly remember the tears on my mother’s face, black with wet mascara, as the train started moving out of the station. Only after a couple hours on the train did the separation anxiety begin to settle in. I realized that I was now farther away from my home than I had ever been before. My brother, on the other hand, seemed to be fascinated by our new “adventure” and was eager to see what could happen. Unfortunately for my brother and I, our train tickets didn’t permit us to use the bedroom booths, and we had to sleep on the standard train seats. After two days on the train without very much sleep at all, we were ecstatic when we woke up one morning in response to the train pulling into the station; our final stop had arrived.Upon exiting the train, I could view my aunt and uncle standing on the platform. I had only seen them once before when they came to visit us in Germany; I remembered them as being some of the kindest human beings I had ever met. With a warm smile and a long, brown beard, my uncle never failed to crack a joke at the best possible time. My aunt, on the other hand, was tall and thin. She loved to sew, and every Christmas, my aunt sent warm woolen sweaters through the mail for my brother and I.My brother and I practically leaped out of the narrow train door as we ran into our smiling uncle’s outstretched arms, right before we turned around and tenaciously hugged our grinning aunt. At first I had thought that this trip would be incredibly painful and slow, but now I wasn’t so sure. There was a shadow of a possibility that maybe I might enjoy it.The train station was many miles from the house. We would need to take some horses in order to reach the remote building; fortunately for me and my brother, we had been around horses several times at our grandparents’ farm, and we knew how to handle them. The building was on the border of a forest underneath the imposing shadow of several large mountains. If you can get past the feeling of seclusion whilst living there, it is actually quite scenic.After we finally made it to the property, a process that left very little daylight left in the sky, all four of us were exhausted. We tied the horses up in the family stables before my aunt and uncle led my brother and I through the thick cover of trees to their home. Upon reaching a clearing, my brother led out a gasp.Set in a small round clearing, the building before us was two stories tall and was far more magnificent than any structure my brother and I had seen before in Berlin. Several iron stakes formed a large rectangular palisade around the premise. Thick vines snaked between the dark bars. A worn dirt path led up and around from where we were standing to the heavy oaken door standing proud at the front of the structure. The building itself was made entirely out of gray brick and had small patches of moss growing on the walls; I concluded that this structure must have been here for a very long time.The roof of the first floor came down at a very gentle slope, and it had several decorative archways supporting its weight. In between the sides of each of the engraved arches was a petite window that had its blinds drawn aside. The second floor came out with a roof perpendicular to the first, yet kept the same beautiful design scheme. A single hexagonal tower sprouted off from one corner of the roof of the second floor and the roof tapered off to a point.The house was so obvious in its splendor that my young brother was simply overwhelmed by emotion and ran, with his arms pumping at his sides, around the yard. I was in awe; nobody had ever told me that some of my kin owned something so… worthy.The inside of the house had no less splendor. The floor was covered by a thick, woolen carpet that appeared to be expensive. The trim on the house was a dark brown color, which went perfectly with the browns and grays of the rest of the building. I learned soon that the tower was a perfect office for when one needed some alone time to read or think.That night, the four of us had dinner in the massive dining room. My brother simply could not get over how fun it would be to explore the house and seek out new places. He was absolutely ecstatic as he poured maple syrup all over his meat and peas while he talked about how excited he was to be there. We all laughed at the face he made when he took the first bite of his food.Luckily for my brother and I, there were two guest rooms in the house, and thus, both my brother and I were able to have our own room like we had in Berlin. This was a great comfort to both me and my brother, for it made us seem more and more like we were still at home. Despite this, we still both missed our parents, and it seemed like as time dragged on, the wedge in between us and the rest of our family grew larger.After a couple of weeks, we got our first letter in the mail from my mother and father. Inside, my parents had detailed that our stay would likely be prolonged, as a massive pogrom had been instigated in Germany by the Nazi soldiers, and the violence was incredibly widespread. My parents believed that it would be in our best interest to stay with our aunt and uncle for the time being.My brother and I lived with my aunt and uncle like this for almost two years. I spent the vast majority of my time reading the books from the massive shelf in the living room; there seemed to be a nearly infinite amount of knowledge contained in words and bound in leather. Never did the pages bore me; I tore into them like a lion to its prey.My brother, however, didn’t much care for books. He’d much rather explore. The day he found himself having analyzed every last inch of my aunt and uncle’s house, he took it upon himself to explore the woods surrounding the premises. This proved to be quite the challenging feat, as my brother spent months on end spending every afternoon hiking through the dense canopy of trees. My aunt and uncle became concerned for his safety as he began to journey farther and farther from the house, but after writing a letter to my parents, they were assured that this behavior was nothing to be worried about.As it was, neither me nor my aunt or uncle thought very much about my brother’s exploration. It wasn’t until he was late to dinner one night that my aunt even bothered to ask him where he was going every day. He said he had found a mysterious house in the middle of the woods. At this, my aunt just smiled.“That’s quite interesting, dear. But don’t be late for supper while playing imagination, or you might not get anything to eat!”It wasn’t until several days later that I started to become concerned about my brother’s behavior. It was late in the afternoon, and I had spent the last two hours finishing up a novel that I had been attacking with incredible vigor for the last week or so. My brother had left that day earlier in the afternoon, and he hadn’t come back yet. Only when I heard the front door open and close did I look up from my book. My mouth hung open in shock.My younger brother was positively covered in dirt and mud. His hair was matted and stuck up in tufts. Despite his soiled appearance, however, I was incredibly disturbed due to another aspect of his appearance; his shirt, which had been one of the fine woolen sweaters that our aunt had knitted him, was completely shredded. The fabric was torn, causing the wool to hang down in flaps across his torso. Six long cuts, still red with wet blood, ran across his chest from his shoulder to his hip.I was getting up from my chair to go get the attention of my uncle when my brother’s head jerked abruptly around to face me. His mouth opened to bare a set of vicious teeth while his throat emitted a guttural hiss at me. Shocked, I slowly sat back down in my chair as my brother turned and limped back to his room.For the next few days, I avoided my brother like the plague. I wouldn't talk to him out of fear. At dinner, I insisted I not sit adjacent to him. When he calmly asked me to come into the forest with him, I immediately refused and ran back into the house. My aunt and uncle couldn’t understand why I had developed such a strong aversion to my sibling in a period of only a few days, but my brother didn’t seem to care. The only thing he was interested in was getting back out into the forest the next day.It was one morning after I had just finished my breakfast that I decided it was finally time to confront my brother. After finishing the next chapter in my book, in which I had learned that the royal knight had just escaped the prison and was now headed to slay the evil dragon, I got up from my bed and walked down the massive oaken staircase to my brother’s room on the first floor. When there was no reply, I knocked again. The rap of my knuckles on the door was the only noise punctuating the eerie silence. A moment after I had knocked, the door suddenly swung inwards, and I laid my eyes upon a sickening sight.Piles of skeletons from small creatures littered the floor beside his bed. I immediately stood up and backed against the hallway wall behind me, but there was nowhere to go. In the middle of the room sat my brother on the floor; his teeth were gnashing as he ferociously consumed a living mouse. The small creature was desperately squirming to get free, but its efforts were in vain as it failed to escape my brother’s vice grip. Blood dripped down the corner’s of Henry’s mouth as his eyes darted up to meet mine. Suddenly, my brother let out a hysterical scream and leaped across the room to attack me. I could feel his sharp teeth ripping into the side of my neck when I finally woke up.It was just a dream, it was just a dream… calm down..That night, I didn’t sleep at all. Hours were spent staring at my ceiling wondering what was going on. At one point, I began crying, and I didn’t stop until I could see the morning light begin to shine through the north window, the morning dew still coating the glass.That same afternoon, I was reading in my room- with the door locked- when I heard my brother knocking on the door.“...M-marianne? Can you please help me… I can’t go any more and I’m scared. Please…”In my brother’s voice I could hear genuine fear. He was afraid for his life. My concern for my sibling outweighing my fear, I got up from my chair to open the door.When the figure standing in the hallway finally became visible I immediately started tearing up. My brother’s eyes were horribly bloodshot. Multiple sets of six long jagged cuts ran down the lengths of his arms, legs, and torso, having shredded apart his clothing… and his body. Blood dripped from his blood soaked shirt and fell onto the floor. With a glance towards the end of the hall, I noticed a set of bloody handprints on the windowsill; he had climbed in through the side of the house to avoid having my aunt and uncle see him, at least for the time being.“...It’s coming for me, Marianne.. It tried to escape but I won’t let it, I won’t let it e-escape-”Suddenly, my brother doubled over and was forced into a coughing fit. The sounds themselves, though, were far closer to desperate wheezes. My brother was dying. He visibly tried to compose himself in order to speak again.“P-pl.. please help-”As soon as he stood up, he was hunched over again. He continued hacking. Blood sprayed out of his mouth as he suddenly collapsed to the ground and started convulsing on the now dark red carpet.Immediately, I bolted downstairs. My legs moved down the stairs five at a time as I screamed desperately for help. My uncle was up from his chair in a flash as he saw me enter the living room, sobbing uncontrollably. He reached up with his hands and shook me, yelling for me to explain what happened. I could barely even get my words out.“H...henry… he’s d-dying.”Immediately, my uncle darted upstairs as my aunt rushed into the living room. When she saw my face, she immediately knew: something had happened to my brother.My aunt walked over to me and hugged me before we walked upstairs together. My uncle was frantically opening all of the upstairs doors as he tried to find Henry. The SLAM of the door closing was followed by the WHOOSH of the next door opening. Upon searching the last room, my uncle returned to the hallway and cupped his hands around his mouth.“Henry! Where are you?”My uncle’s yells were only greeted by silence. He tried again, this time even louder. The cry echoed off the quiet house. Nothing.The period following my brother’s mysterious disappearance was a week full of sadness and quiet. I was inconsolable. My aunt and uncle tried to tell me it wasn’t my fault, that there was nothing I could have done, but I felt ashamed that I had abandoned Henry when he had needed me the most. Where before the house had seemed proud, exciting, and profound, it was now only a shell of its former glory. Every time I passed my brother’s room, or saw his empty chair at the table, or the day when I had found one of my brother’s journals talking about all the adventures he had found in Berlin, I faced a brutal reminder that my brother was gone.My aunt had wanted us to write a letter to my parents explaining what had happened. I, however, had rejected this proposal. My mind refused to accept that my brother was dead. It was for this reason that, eight days after my brother’s disappearance, I left the house in the middle of the night. Armed with only a backpack, water canteen, and a kerosene lamp, I searched the woods for my brother.For hours I ran through the dense canopy, screaming my brother’s name in vain. The frigid air tugged at my lungs as my legs carried me through the dark woods. I wasn’t sure which way I was going; at one point, I saw the same tree that I was sure I had seen before on my nightly trek, but I pushed away the thought. After what felt like hours, I collapsed to the ground from over-exertion. Through my foggy breath in the nightly air, I swore to my brother that I would find him. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. Henry had always been there with me my whole life.I got back up and stumbled on, shivering from what felt like icy needles poking into my cold hands. Blood dripped down my arms and knees from the thorns pulling at my clothes. My gait was irregular, but still, I continued on. Henry couldn’t be dead.It wasn’t until my hands started to go numb that I finally noticed something in the corner of my eye. Looking up from my feet, I halfway gasped in perplexity.Standing in front of me were the ruins of a massive house. The gothic archway of the front gate was only halfway intact, the other half completely rotted away by time. The wooden walls were grayed from the elements, and much of it that had not fallen away from the structure itself was covered in mold. Of the several windows on the ominous structure, only one was fully intact when viewing the house from the front, with the others having been either cracked or shattered completely. A large, rusty brass knocker, in the shape of a wolf’s head, sat in the center of each of the front two doors.I wondered how long this strange structure had been here for. It must have been no later than the early 1800s or even the late 1700s when it was first built; the architecture and wear on the abode was indicative of this fact. I was preparing to return to my search when I remembered what my brother had said about a house in the woods.Could he be here?Staring up at the weathered mansion, I pondered this possibility. It was indeed feasible that a boy as young as my brother could be so adventurous as to not recognize the danger in wandering this far from home every day. If he had been attacked by a creature, this may perhaps reveal why he had been injured so badly.Against my better judgement, I turned and trudged on towards the rotting house. The likely once-magnificent grounds were now overgrown with weeds and trees. My feet stuck in the dark mud of the forest floor, and I almost lost my left boot in a wad of the syrupy dirt. While approaching the house, I noticed that one of the front two doors hung slightly ajar. In spite of this, I still walked up to the door and politely knocked the knocker on the door that wasn’t open. After I hadn’t heard a reply in over a minute, I resorted to calling out with my voice, yet to no avail. I wasn’t deeply surprised; after all, this house was incredibly old; the chances that someone was still living here were slim. Curiosity getting the better of me, I pushed one of the doors open as I stepped inside the decaying structure.Immediately, I was greeted by the permeating stench of the rotting walls. Wrinkling my nose, I looked around the inside of the abandoned structure. A large crystal chandelier had fallen from the ceiling and shattered in the center of the main living room, leaving glass shards scattered all around the floor. These shards let off a bright glint in the wake of the moonlight; they seemed to ripple as my eyes scanned the room. A magnificent fireplace sat against the far wall of the room, but it had long since ran cold. Only ashes and dirt now sat in the hearth. Hanging on the wall above it was a painting of a man, yet it was still a challenge to make out any identifying features, for the paint had run together and grayed. Not only this, but six long slashes ran through the fabric of the painting itself, reducing what was likely a magnificent work of art into a macabre display of sadness and pain.Looking to my right, a long wooden hallway extended outwards, with several branches off to several rooms. Upon checking, I noticed that all had locked doors. The corridor eventually led to a large room that may have once been a bedroom. Unfortunately, it seemed as if part of the upper roof had caved in, thus crushing the moth-ridden silk sheets and oaken dresser. Upon further inspection of the main living room with the broken chandelier, I noticed that a back archway led to a large spiral staircase. The stairs of the magnificent stairwell were, unlike the rest of the mansion, actually intact, and were covered in scarlet red wool.The staircase led upwards to the top of the house. Only after creeping up the winding staircase did I realize how much of the upper floor was actually destroyed. Mold hung off the walls in large splotches as water dripped from the now drooping ceiling. Quite a bit of the floor had actually caved in already, and many of the bedrooms had collapsed. I saw several more paintings on this floor, but one specific drawing on the far wall caught my attention. Slowly, I strolled over to the simple looking representation on the far wall. Only after getting close did I realize what it depicted.The painting was not hung on a tapestry. Rather, it was depicted on the door itself. Several dark red pentagrams, triangles, and other geometric shapes were sloppily etched into the fine white paint of the wooden door. The shapes surrounded a large scarlet red circle in the center of the drawing. In the center of the circle hung a hand print with six fingers. The shapes and hand looked… wrong, somehow. Like they shouldn’t exist in this world. After staring for a few seconds, it seemed like the door was swirling, like it was falling farther and farther from my body while somehow getting closer. Only after a few seconds did I realize that it wasn’t chalk.It was dried blood.A horrifying scream like none I had ever heard before echoed through the bleak mansion. The sound didn’t stop; it seemed to actually up in intensity. It seemed as if someone was in pain.My legs flew down the spiral staircase. The sounds became louder and louder as I ran down the stairwell. Taking the staircase yet further down from the main floor, I noticed that there was a large wooden door sitting at the bottom of the staircase. Upon opening it, I noticed that it led to a dark passageway in the earth. I could not make out where the passageway led, but the sounds appeared to be coming from within it. Dead roots hung down from the top of the moldy crevice. Forced to slow to a plodding creep by the narrow ceiling and steep vertical incline of the ramp, I anxiously made my way deeper and deeper into the ground. It was pitch black; my only “sight” came from my hands on the walls of the crevice while I felt my way around. At first, the screams were deafening, but they eventually became quieter and quieter, until all that was audible was a faint groan. Then nothing.Eventually, my head cleared the ceiling as I stepped into a massive dark room. I couldn’t see anything at all, and the only noise was the sound of my cold lungs breathing exhaling the cold, damp air.It was then that I remembered the kerosene lamp that I had brought with me. Cautiously, I removed the dusty old lantern. With a shaking hand, I turned up the fuel. A warm glow flooded the room as I nearly dropped the lantern and recoiled in pure horror.In the center of the room was a simple wooden chair. On the chair sat my brother.His eyes were rolled up in the back of his head and his mouth hung open at a strange angle. Blood dripped out from the corners of his lips and his nostrils. Around the chair, I could see a wide circle of teeth; each tooth laid on its side. It was like some sort of bizarre ritual. Looking back at my brother’s open mouth, I noticed that the ritualistic circle had been made out of his teeth.“Henry… please are- are you okay? Please say something...”Tears streamed down my face when I heard no reply. I knew immediately something was wrong, but I couldn’t will my legs to run away. A voice in the back of my head said I needed to run, to get out. I ignored it.It was then that I noticed my brother's mouth. It hung open wide, far too wide for a normal mouth to go. Not just that, though, but I should have seen his gums, his tongue, his throat, and the source of the blood coming from his throat; yet, all I saw was blackness. It was like his mouth was some sort of doorway into the abyss. Still unmoving, I continued staring at my brother, waiting for him to jump up and laugh. Waiting for him to say it was all a prank. Waiting for him to walk back home with me before the sun rose in the early hours of the morning.I heard another scream, but this time it wasn’t my brother letting out the sound. Like the screech of a shard of metal on a blackboard, the noise ricocheted off the confined walls of the cellar. Yet still, I did not dare move a muscle.I only ran when I saw the six long fingers reach out from the depths of my brother’s mouth.My legs and arms clawed at the dirt path back up to the surface. Lungs burning with the effort of moving so quickly, I half-ran, half-climbed out of the dark cellar. Another otherworldly screech resounded off the dirt walls right behind me, but it only made me go faster.Shoving the cellar door open, I sprinted up the spiral staircase and practically leaped onto the main floor. I was never much of a runner, but it was then that my long legs carried me across the house and soon the forest floor faster and harder than ever before. I couldn’t even feel the cold air in my throat until I collapsed, exhausted, at the front gate of my aunt and uncle’s house. I had been running all night.My worried aunt and uncle finally found me, sobbing and shivering from the frigid air, on their front doorstep. My demeanor revealed the reality of my brother’s fate. My aunt sat by me and cried alongside me, before my sorrowful uncle wrapped me up in a blanket and took me inside.The weeks that followed constituted the absolute worst time in my life. I’m not really sure when the river of tears finally ended; I think it must have been at least two weeks after I learned of the death of my parents in a bombing. My life seemed like it had fallen apart. In many ways, it had.Even though my aunt and uncle had offered for me to live with them long-term, I knew that my life needed to pick up somewhere. It was then that I decided to move to America and learn English. As a young child, I had dreamt of all the opportunities for women to join the workforce in the States. Now that the war had ended, these opportunities were ever present. Not only in America had suffrage taken hold; Germany, and many other countries, also had new opportunities for women to work. Yet with the governments of many of the Axis powers now lying in shambles, my greatest chance at getting a career was in the U.S.Fate had turned a merciful eye to me. It took many years and many sleepless nights learning how to read and write in English, but eventually, my application for citizenship was approved. I got my first job working retail, which is where I worked for my entire life.Suddenly, a tap at the door interrupted my typing.“Ma’am, your tea is ready.”I was prepared to grant my nurse permission to enter my room when I thought about the rapping of knuckles that had come at my door. There had not been five taps.There were six. via /r/nosleep https://ift.tt/31YuTfe
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