Sneaking Fingers: Part 1
A Light's Out Story
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Today’s story is part one of, “Sneaking Fingers,” the seventh in Kindling’s first ever short story collection, Lights Out. Inspired by folk horror and mythology, this collection of short stories will explore the unknown, the consequences of touching the forbidden, and the mysteries that lurk in the dark, unexplored places of the world.
Inspired by my early exposure to horror, dark sci-fi and dark fantasy through anthologies and collections such as, Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, The Illustrated Man, The Twilight Zone, and Tales From the Crypt.
The Journal
If you fall asleep,
you’ll feel them pulling at your sheets
Pulling them down
so they can find your feet
Sneaking finger shadows,
you can see them on the wall
Moving like a spider,
on your bed, you’ll feel them crawl
Never let them touch you,
that is the old man's rule
Once the dark ones find you
there is nothing you can do
“How is she related to us again?”
Syl held the leather bound journal in her hand, her brow furrowed in disgust at the poem she had just read.
“She was our great-grandmother’s sister. So—some kind of fourth cousin? An aunt?”
“Ugh,” Syl slammed the book shut. “Ames, why are we going through all this stuff anyway? Isn’t there some kind of service? A Goodwill or something that can just grab it all?”
“Syl, please,” Amy sighed. “Mom specifically asked that we do this for her.”
“Well, mom doesn’t know what day it is, or how many children she has. I don’t think she’s gonna know one way or the other.”
“I’ll know.”
“Jesus Amy.”
“What?”
“You have just—,” Syl sighed, dumping the journal in the pile marked for trash, “—always made life so hard on yourself. You don’t have to do this part perfect. With mom.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Syl was looking at her, waiting, but Amy kept sorting through a cardboard box marked KEEP.
“Hand me that journal Syl. Please?”
“Amy—”
“What?”
“This is borderline hoarder at this point. None of this stuff is going to bring mom back again.”
“I know.”
“Yeah, okay,” Syl said, standing, brushing the dust off her jeans.
“Where are you going?”
“Need some air. This shit smells like mildew.”
Amy watched her big sister disappear down the attic stairs. She waited to hear the front door close, then cracked the journal open to the first page.
VERBOTEN - NICHT LESEN!!!
Forbidden. Don’t read.
She flipped a few pages forward, and found more German, scrawled in a shaky hand that would have made the words difficult to read even if they were in English. She closed the journal and stared at it, rubbing her fingers across the cool leather. It was strange how quickly you were forgotten once you died. Your children would remember, of course. Maybe their children if you lived long enough to meet them. But beyond?
“You didn’t even have the chance,” Amy said aloud, lifting a yellowed photograph as she did. It was a woman, eyes hollow, her skin pale in the badly exposed hospital room. Greta_____ was written in the bottom corner. She examined the back, looking for an explanation. Nothing.
Her mother didn’t remember much these days, but on this point, she had been clear headed, emphatic. “Bring me Greta’s journal. I need to speak with her.”
She closed the book, and for a moment in the whoosh of air, she smelled it. The scent of broken sewer lines and peeled hard boiled eggs in the heat of summer. She brought the book close and sniffed. Not mildew, but sulfur. She plopped it into her purse, and made her way down the stairs to join Sylvia.
Their mother was destined for this place. The badly decorated room, a hospital gown that always showed your ass when you got out of bed—if you got out of bed. The doctors were confounded.
“Alzheimer’s usually takes years to progress to this point, but in her case, the decline has been rapid. She doesn’t have long.”
“That’s what you’ve got?” Syl uncrossed her legs and looked out the window. She was biting her bottom lip, the way she did when she was angry and about to say something she shouldn’t.
“It runs in the women in our family,” Amy offered. “The same thing happened to our aunt, our grandmother, our great-grandmother and her sisters.”
“Not Greta,” Syl spit. “She got out the easy way. Death by mental hospital.”
“She didn’t die because of the mental hospital Syl.”
“Yeah? Well it didn’t do her any fucking favors, did it?” Sylvia stood up. “I’m gonna grab a smoke. I’ll meet you when you’re done here.” She shot eyes at the doctor, cool and unfeeling, before disappearing behind the door.
“Sorry, she’s—,” Amy searched for the words, but couldn’t find them.
“Afraid?” the doctor offered.
“Yes. It’s a hell of a thing to watch everyone you love go through. Even worse to know it’s coming for you.”
“But your mother, she made it much longer than her sister, yes?”
“Yeah. She made it longer than any of them.”
“Genetics are not written in stone Amy.”
No, they’re etched in blood and bound in human skin.
Her hand went to the book in her purse. The leather was warm now, and for a moment, she thought she felt the low rush of blood pumping through paper veins, weak but definite.
They were just outside of their mother’s room, the smell of alcohol and cafeteria food enough to make anyone vomit, when Syl stopped and grabbed her elbow.
“I don’t think you should give it to her Amy.”
“Syl—”
“I’m not kidding. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“I thought you were the rational one. I’m not giving it to her because I believe in all this. I’m doing it because it is the one thing she asked of us Syl. The one thing.”
A portal to another world. That’s what their mother had said before they took her. It was all she could talk about in the weeks leading up to her hospitalization. Seeing Greta, talking to Greta, trapping Greta. Some old conversation she had likely witnessed in childhood.
“I have to do something, to keep her there!” Amy could picture her mother saying the words, her dresser drawers overturned, the pages of her books ripped to shreds covering the stairs. “I need the journal!”
Syl had been angry ever since. They stood opposite one another now, eyes locked, a silent battle passing between them. Syl relented.
“Fine, let’s get this over with.”
Amy took a breath before she rapped on the door and pushed it open. “Mom?”
She looked worse today, hair thinning and pressed to her scalp. The skin shone through in patches, pale and grey. Her eyes were the worst of it, large and without understanding.
“Where is Oma?” her mother asked, voice high and strange, a scared little girl in an old woman’s body.
“She isn’t coming today,” Amy smiled and rested her hand on her mother’s arm. She pulled away.
“Tell her I’m better. Tell her I lied. Tell her Greta didn’t come last night.”
Sylvia looked away, out the window. She would drink tonight. Amy would hear her stumble in late. If a guy was with her, it would be all laughter, loud jokes, even louder sex. But if she came back alone, she would sneak in to Amy’s old room, breath sour and skin salty. She would curl up and cry, and Amy would hold her until she fell asleep.
Amy tried to change the subject. “I got the book you asked for.”
Her hand hovered over the opening of her purse, waiting for her mom to acknowledge, remember.
“Just do it,” Syl said, and yanked it out. “See mom? Does this mean anything to you?” She waved it around in the old woman’s face. “See Amy? Just like I said. Fucking useless.”
She dropped the book onto the nightstand. It landed like a judge’s gavel. Amy listened to the sound of Syl’s footsteps growing faint.
“I don’t know about any book,” her mother said, eyes wide and sad.
“It’s okay mom,” she said, then put the book back into her purse. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
“Will Oma come too?”
“We’ll see.”
The attic hadn’t always smelled bad. Amy remembered a time when the place felt warm in afternoon sunlight, a haze of dust giving everything a watercolor quality. But sitting in the middle of half empty boxes, chaotic piles of clothing and small picture frames, she thought she caught something unfamiliar. Sweet like forest rot, tinged with the last bit of something long dead.
They had mucked the place up, reduced the remains of her mother’s life and memories to piles, but not just hers. Her grandmother had come as a girl from Germany, before the great wars and the ever hungry Death that nipped at the heels of European infants and soldiers writhing in trenches. All this, her family watched unfold in neat typescript and black and white photographs, read from the safety of American shores.
Gott shütze uns. God protect us.
The journal was closed in her lap. She was running her finger absentmindedly along the sewn leather bits, eyes landing on the stacks of memories being readied for sale. Death cleaning. She took a deep breath, and opened the fleshy cover. The pages were yellowed, water stained in the corners. Above the words that Greta’s hand had penned (Verboten), a strange sigil was drawn.
Amy traced the shape of the symbols, wondering at the intricate lines, the strange images drawn on opposite sides, four animals, mouths closed. In the center was the palm of a hand, strange runes etched above each outstretched finger. The air on her neck cooled, and the skin along her spine prickled.
“Amy!” A pile of papers spilled over, and Amy hurried to pick them up. “Amy you here?”
“In the attic!” she yelled down the stairs.
She shuffled them, straightening the edges, when a newspaper clipping caught her eye.
GRETA HOFFMAN, FOUND DEAD STRAPPED TO BED
The young woman had been admitted to Black Hills Asylum by her mother, after suffering a bout of hysteria. The institution that was supposed to keep her safe, ended up digging her grave.
“When we went to identify her body, she was still strapped to the bed. They didn’t even loosen the cuffs when we went to see her.”
There was a blown out, black and white picture of the asylum sign, her grandmother standing in front of it, frowning. Huge trees stood on either side of a long drive that led to the place where Greta spent her last months, tormented by visions no one else could see.
The journal was all the family had left of her. Her pictures had been taken down and stored away, many of them had the eyes blacked out. Amy imagined it was some superstitious belief on their great-grandmother’s part. Her daughter, in her mind, was not insane, but possessed.
“You coming,” Syl’s head peeked above the attic door.
“Yes,” Amy said, out of breath and caught off guard by her sister there, alive and present in this world
Amy opened the journal to the middle page. A dark sketch looked back at her, a reaching hand coming from a void opened in mid air. She thought of Greta’s hands, bound to the bed, then tucked the newspaper clipping inside the journal.
“Chinese sound good?” Syl asked, eyebrows raised in concern.
“Yeah, sounds great,” Amy smiled, and held the journal tight.
The young woman came to her in the night, face dark and lined in shadow. She couldn’t speak, but shook her head.
Nein. Verboten. Nicht Lesen.
No. Forbidden. Don’t Read.
Words materialized out of the air, and Greta—Amy recognized her now—grasped at them. They disappeared in wisps of smoke. The woman’s skin cracked, a grimace on her face as her form evaporated into darkness. Amy was alone in a dark place, screaming. Hands were on her, grabbing her, holding her down. She thrashed to break free.
And woke up to Syl’s hands gripping her shoulders, shaking her. The hard wooden floor around her was drenched in her sweat, the light of late morning turning floating dust into glitter.
“Are you okay?” Syl’s entire face was a frown. The lines in her skin reminded her of the woman in the dream.
Amy pushed up onto her hands. “Yeah, yeah. A dream—” she started, still trying to orient herself. She was in the attic, pages littering the floor around her.
“You were reading it last night?” Syl was looking at the spot next to Amy. The journal was there, open to the middle, the frantic drawing of a hand reaching from a portal of darkness etched in charcoal.
Greta.
Amy grabbed the journal protectively, closing it. “Yeah, I mean,” she tried to slow down, sound normal. “Just a little.”
She was lying. She had no memory of going into the attic, climbing the stairs with the journal in hand. She must have come in her sleep. Syl eyed her, studying her face. For a moment, Amy thought she would pounce, tell her to fess up and admit what was really going on.
“Okay,” was all Syl said as she stood. “Coffee’s ready if you want some.”
Amy nodded, the residue of the dream fading. She waited until Syl left the room, then cracked the journal open again. That first page, the words, “Verboten—Nicht Lesen!!!” scratched there in dark ink. Greta’s face, pained and cracking, begging her not to read.
“You must have added this,” Amy said to the dead woman. “But why?”
To Be Continued…
This is creepy af! 💀❤️
Great start, can't wait to read more