Sneaking Fingers: Part 2
A Lights Out Story
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Today’s story is part two 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 Box
The call came that morning. Amy was eating breakfast in her mother’s kitchen, the pages of the open journal obscured by the steam rising off a bowl of instant oatmeal.
“Your mother is not well. We had to sedate her last night.”
She kept to the speed limit as she drove, fighting the sick feeling in her stomach that worsened as she got closer to the hospital. Syl was out grabbing coffee. It was up to Amy. It always was. The journal, her constant companion it seemed, lay in the passenger seat.
She had barely had time to think before pulling on jeans, grabbing her purse. And then the book. Yes, she had gone back in just before locking the door, and plucked it from the kitchen table where it sat open, a notebook next to it, scribbled with English translations of what little text she was able to make out inside.
Was it a thought that urged her back? She couldn’t recall words, only a compulsion to bring the journal back to her mother. The warning inscribed in the front, enunciated by the ashen Greta from her dream—Verboten-Nicht Lesen!!!—was far from her conscious mind. She acted as a sleepwalker, going through the motions of a dream inspired motivation, moving without thought.
The receptionist at the check-in sat sideways, talking to a young man leaned on her desk, arms crossed and body cocked to one side in exaggerated coolness. Amy had to clear her throat to get her attention.
“Can I help you?” the woman’s voice was too sweet, the definition of phony.
“Yes, I’m here to see my mom.” Amy didn’t know if she was being paranoid, but she thought she caught a glint of recognition, some knowing in the woman’s eyes.
“Name?”
“Amy Schmidt.”
“Yes, you can go back.”
She pushed a button under her desk, and Amy heard the click of the heavy aluminum door unlocking. She nodded, and headed toward her mother’s room. When she walked in, she was shocked to see her mother standing at the window, hands pressed to the glass. Her gray hair stood on end, eyes wild, like a cornered feral cat looking for an escape.
“Mom,” Amy said.
Her mother’s eyes darted, bared teeth flashing when she turned to look at her. Her eyes bounced to the journal, the tattered book tucked neatly in Amy’s arms. Amy couldn’t help but look down herself. Had she been carrying it the whole time? She thought back to the car, the brisk walk into the lobby, the woman at the desk. Somehow in the stress of it all, she hadn’t even noticed the book, warm and tucked close to her own beating heart.
Because the leather feels like warm skin.
She pushed that wicked thought away.
“You brought it. Greta said you would.” Her voice was dreamy, a tinge of a German accent on the w so it came out vould. She took a small step towards Amy, one hand outstretched, her finger pointing reverently
The mention of Greta after the dream—VERBOTEN—made Amy’s stomach roil, but outwardly she only felt her eye twitch in response.
“The nurses called and said you haven’t gone to sleep. It isn’t good for you, especially not now. You need your rest.” Amy went to the little couch and sat down. She patted the seat next to her, and her mother came, obedient like a scolded child. She eyed the custodian as he checked trash cans. Only when they were alone did her mother speak.
“If I sleep, the hands come.”
Amy had her own fingers clutched around the spine of the journal. That strange, faint pulse thrummed just under the web between forefinger and thumb. Her mom leaned in and whispered. She could feel her breath against her neck, hot and sour, like something fermented.
“What do they do?” Amy asked.
“They grab my feet, and pull.”
“One pair of hands?”
Her mom nodded.
“Who do they belong to?”
Her eyes were saucers. The light seemed to sink into them.
“Greta,” she said. “She comes to me at night. Every night since she disappeared.”
“What do you mean mom? Greta died. A long time ago.”
“No, no, no.” Her tone was sing song, and Amy bristled, fighting the urge to push her away. “She never left the hospital.” Her eyes shifted to objects around the room, the medical waste bin fixed to the wall, the slick uncomfortable furniture.
She held her head in her hands. “Tell Oma to come and get me. Please.”
Amy put her hand on her mother’s back and rubbed. The woman who had nursed her through stomach flus and strep throat was becoming a child again.
“Where did she go?” Amy leaned her head down as she asked it, trying to see her mother’s eyes through the slits of her cupped hands.
Her mother’s forehead crinkled, her eyes turned down in pain. She pointed at the journal sitting in Amy’s lap. Her hands were held close to her chest, like she was hiding the gesture from someone just outside her periphery.
“Down.”
Amy pictured Greta’s frantic drawing of a hand, reaching out of what looked like an endless black hole.
Many boxes in the attic were still untouched, labeled, and relabeled from various moves. “Bathroom” or “kitchen” crossed out, and her mother’s hurried writing below stating, “dishes,” or “bedroom.” Except one. It was plain, black and sturdy, kept away from the others in the far corner of the attic.
A memory rose unbidden. Amy, a small girl, with her father. He was looking for something, a trinket for his office, or one of the extra legal pads he was so fond of writing on when he worked. His hands feeling around the edges of the lid, pulling. It wouldn’t budge.
Amy walked, stepping around and over piles and discarded empty boxes. She wondered if there was a lock on it, one for which no key existed. Or maybe it had been sealed, long before her mother became sick, before her mother inherited it from her grandmother.
She stood in front of it, examining it for something extraordinary. It was an ugly thing, hidden in shadow and covered in decades of dust. Only, there were marks on one side of the lid. Amy leaned forward, examining the streaks of black drawn in the dust. Finger shadows, dragged along the top and side, leaving trails on the otherwise untouched box.
A little voice jingled from somewhere (below), pulling her away, back to sanity and safety. Something else drove her on. Amy picked up the box, expecting it to be heavy, strong enough to keep her capable father’s hands from prying it open. It was light in her hands.
It wants to be carried, wants to be opened. Not by daddy all those years ago. No, not him. Me.
“Stop it,” she forced a chuckle so she could hear herself not believing the strange little girl thoughts that flooded her mind.
She placed the box in the sunlight. The fingerprints were undeniable, exposed by the light. Someone had been in here. Someone had touched the box. Amy’s mind went to Syl. That didn’t make sense. Syl hated the attic, hated mommy’s things. She wouldn’t have been in here alone.
And the box wouldn’t have let her find it.
Amy felt around the edge of the lid, replaying her father in her memory. He had pulled hard, worked up a sweat in the hot attic that afternoon, trying to open it. She pushed a little from below the lip, and heard a hiss of air. An image of a bulging can that sputtered and spit tomato sauce all over her great-grandmother’s kitchen came to mind, the lesson that unfolded after. The words spoken in her Oma’s German accent. Toxic. Poison.
She hesitated, then pushed the lid off the box.
CORPSE MISSING FROM BLACK HILLS ASYLUM
Where has Greta Hoffman gone? That’s what police and family are asking, after the body of a young woman disappeared from the hospital morgue. The story of Ms. Hoffman, the subject of an investigation launched by local police after she was found dead, tied to her hospital bed, has taken another strange turn.
Amy looked at the article, another picture of the young Greta, this one an unsmiling school photo, stared back at her from the newspaper clipping. Underneath it another story.
ESCAPE FROM BLACK HILLS ASYLUM
Police are advising residents to lock doors and windows, after a reported mass escape from the now scandal entrenched Black Hills Insane Asylum. The streets of downtown Grandview were like something from a horror film on Saturday night, after an emergency announcement from the sheriff’s office.
“Ever since that girl turned up dead, that place hasn’t been right. It was the reason we didn’t want them opening the place to begin with,” Sheryl Priest gave comment regarding the asylum, opened just three miles from town almost five years ago. “We always thought a worst case scenario was someone escaping. We never imagined it would be half of them.”
Stranger still, doctors and nurses found no security breach. Windows and doors were all secured, but the residents in the East Wing? Missing.
More articles lay piled, photos of Greta, some of them with the eyes scratched out, lay in the box. Sunlight reflected off something metal in the bottom. Amy pulled clippings and photos out to get a better look at it. An old brass key lay in the bottom corner of the box. She picked it up and felt its weight, heavy in her hand. It was like something from out of time, rusted in parts, and inscribed with a number, 203.
Recognition flooded her chest, and Amy grabbed the old papers and clippings, flipping through them to find the image. Oma, standing in front of a white door. A tiny sliver of window that, if you could peer through would reveal an empty room, and an emptier bed, where Greta had died (disappeared). The black letters had been painted on with a careful hand. 203.
“Amy?” Syl spoke quietly from the top of the ladder steps.
How long had she been there, watching?
“What are you doing?” Syl was walking towards her, eyeing the mess of photos and newspaper articles strewn across the floor. She bent down and picked up one of the photos of Greta, holes where her eyes should be.
“Syl, we have to go there.”
Syl’s eyes went to Amy’s hand, the ornate key in her open palm.
“Go where?”
Amy held up the photo of the room. “To Black Hills.”
To Be Continued…
But do we have to go…
Greta didn’t die…she went below. Ack!