Sneaking Fingers: Part 3
A Lights Out Story
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Today’s story is part three 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 Asylum
Grandview unfolded before them like so many small American towns. The streets were mostly empty, shops closed in spite of the early afternoon hour. The neighborhoods slumped, fences worn and siding paint chipped. There were old bikes and dirty slides, a rusted swing in a dirty yard, but no children anywhere.
“It’s like a ghost town,” said Syl, staring out the window, arms wrapped around her body.
Amy nodded. It had cost her to pull the archived newspaper records, but in the end she had found what she was looking for. Black Hills closed down after the great escape. The residents of the East Wing were never found. Stories grew up from the unanswered questions and wrapped around the little town of Grandview like vines. There were reports of voices echoing in the school gymnasium after basketball practice, crying in the surrounding fields at night. The town was spooked.
Amy couldn’t say all that to Syl—she would never believe it—so instead she answered, “It is.”
Syl laughed without taking her eyes off the thinning buildings. Sprawling land gave way to forest, the trees overtaking the road. Sunlight shrunk to pinholes and lines that pierced through the canopy above, and Amy couldn’t help but feel they had entered some dark tunnel from which they would not escape.
“Did you bring any snacks?” Syl pulled the seat belt loose and turned, moving sweatshirts, then patting the ground to feel for food.
No only the key. The key and—
Amy glanced frantically between Syl and the road, willing her to stop searching—“Sylvia, no”—but it was too late.
Syl came back with the journal in her hands.
“Jesus Amy.”
Amy gripped the steering wheel.
“Why did you bring this?”
Because it wants me to.
Amy’s knuckles went white, and she held in a cry when Syl tossed the journal into the back seat. She could feel the thud against the leather like a punch in her gut.
Like it is my own flesh.
“There, turn there,” Syl said, pointing to the letters, obscured by bushes that had grown up over years and decades of neglect.
Black Hills Asylum
Amy hadn’t expected to see the sign in spite of the newspaper clippings. The letters were faded, but perfectly legible. Only nature had dared to come close to Black Hills. There was no spray paint, no sign of vandalism. Nothing.
“Are we even allowed to be here?” Syl asked.
“Who’s gonna know?” Amy smiled.
“Look at you rule breaker.”
“Hardly,” said Amy.
They made eye contact, smirked a little, then burst into laughter. For a minute the pressure in Amy’s chest lifted. The numb buzzing feeling in her limbs receded. She could feel herself in the world again.
Where have I been.
(Down)
She shook off the thought and watched as Syl laid her head back against the seat, eyeing the brick building. “It’s been so long since we’ve laughed like that.”
“Not that long.”
“Since before mom,” Syl said, turning to look at Amy. “Before you found that thing.” She nodded sharply in the direction of the journal.
Amy’s skin prickled.
“What do you expect? Shit’s hard.”
She felt herself harden, and couldn’t meet Syl’s eyes.
“Not just for you though, you know?”
Syl was pleading. It made Amy feel sick. She shifted and stared at the building. Ivy had grown up along the red brick. Bird nests dotted the overflowing gutters. Tall grass grew wild around it, tangled and ever moving in the afternoon breeze.
“Syl—”
Amy put her hand on her sister’s arm and dug her fingers in, just enough to feel the resistance of tendon and muscle. Syl looked back at her, her face a question.
“I know this doesn’t make sense to you Syl, but I have to do this.”
Syl laid her own hand over Amy’s.
“I know. Why do you think I’m here dummy?” They smiled at each other, then Syl opened her door and stepped out. “Let’s get this over with.”
Amy watched her start towards the building, waited to be sure she wasn’t looking. Heart pounding, she reached behind the passenger seat, and grabbed the journal. The leather was sun warm (blood warm), and Amy thought for a second she could feel that familiar pulse—duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh—against her palms.
Syl turned and put her hands on her hips. “I’m not gonna do this all day Amy! Let’s go!”
“I know! Just grabbing my sweatshirt!”
She snatched the black hoodie from the back seat. It was too warm for it, but she had grabbed it anyways.
(For hiding).
No, just because.
She wrapped the journal up before getting out. She couldn’t risk Syl wanting to leave it behind. She needed both of them here.
For Greta.
The door was open.
“Why wouldn’t they lock it?” Syl asked as they waited for it to close behind them.
“It’s almost like—” Amy trailed off, gazing up at the high ceilings, rows of delicate chandeliers hanging over round tables. Some of the chairs had been knocked over. The great rugs that covered the dark wooden floor of what must have been a sitting room were buckling, like the chairs had been pulled out hard and fast.
“Like they were in a hurry,” Syl finished.
The door thudded, then hissed closed behind them.
“Lead the way,” Syl held out an upturned hand, and Amy walked ahead into the bowels of the asylum.
The door was heavy, but unlocked. Behind it lay a long hallway, with mint green walls and doors on either side. Little windows with thick panes of glass gave a view of neat offices. Amy went from one to the other, looking until she found it. A row of cabinets, large enough to cover half of one wall.
“Files Syl. They might have something about Greta here.”
“Still?”
“Yes. The state shut it down a few years after the escape. No one felt like Black Hills was safe. It will be here. I know it will.”
Syl shrugged, and Amy pushed the door open. A heavy oak desk sat in the center of the room. The doctor it belonged to had left everything behind. It was like any moment a bespectacled man would open the door, come in and sit. A pen lay next to a leather planner. Files lay waiting to be read.
“Come on Syl. Help me look.”
Amy pulled heaps of folders and papers out of the metal drawers and stacked them in piles on the floor.
“They aren’t in alphabetical order,” Syl said, opening them to see the names typed neatly on yellow cards.
“But there are pictures,” Amy held up a photograph. An old woman stared back. Her lips curled around her toothless gums. Her eyes were empty and sad. “Look for Greta.”
It didn’t take long for Syl to find her.
The tile floor was cold against Amy’s thighs. Her black sweatshirt (the journal) lay balled up in her lap. In front of them, notes from weekly sessions. Statements from the family. Intake papers. Weight, height, sex. Her personhood stripped down to those most basic identifiers.
Insane.
(Special).
And then, the patient notes. Written in an unsteady hand, Amy read the mix of German and English in Greta’s handwriting. Little scrawled hands drawn in dark ink. The doctor had organized his observations, some of them typed, some of them thrown on paper slapdash during weekly sessions, chronologically.
“Patient asks for her mother often. Mrs. Hoffman does come to visits, always with a cross around her neck. She never touches patient. In our sessions, Mrs. Hoffman seems afraid of her daughter, and performs the sign of the cross when I mention the hands. It is possible patient’s hallucinations were exacerbated by religious superstition in the home.”
“Patient has not slept in four days in spite of tranquilizers. Patient states that when she closes her eyes, the hands come and pull on her feet.”
“Overnight observation. Patient is sleeping after two doses of Phenobarbital. It would seem her tolerance for the drug is naturally higher, something I have observed in others with her complexion. I have made a note in her chart.”
At the bottom of the doctor’s notes, Amy made out the coarse outline of a hand. She could picture the doctor behind a pane of glass, watching Greta as she slept. A cigarette in his mouth, his hand moving without intention.
“Patient’s mother brought a gift during visitation. The item has had a calming effect. It is a leather journal, tattered, brought over on a ship and passed down through the family. A strange drawing of a sigil marks the first page, but the rest is blank. Patient seems eager to write in it, and claims to be able to make out words in the first half. Three days now, nurses have noted she spends her time in the rec room reading. I have given her instructions to record her thoughts and even her hallucinations.”
“Patient feels hands pulling on her throughout the day now. I have attempted to reframe her view of them. Hands as helping, rather than groping. Hands as lifting, rather than pulling. Hands as love. Noting the lack of affection I have observed within the family unit, it is possible that patient’s vision of these hands is an attempt to cope. The hands do not harm her in psychotic states. Patient, on recognizing this, seems to have relaxed. In spite of increased hallucinatory events, phenobarbital has not been needed for one week. It is important to note that her improvement in sleep coincided with the delivery of the journal.”
She flipped the paper, and saw the grey back of the file folder. “That’s it?”
“Amy,” Syl stood at the desk, flipping through the doctor’s planner pages. Her mouth was turned down.
“What is it?”
“Look.”
Amy stood and stared down at the page. The doctor’s handwriting skewed across the middle. The date, March 21st, 1952. Hands, reaching out of dark holes were drawn haphazardly around the border.
“It seems my obsession has gone too far. Each night this week, I have experienced a waking nightmare. A hole in the very fabric of reality opens at the end of my bed, and two hands come forth from that pit. Fingers, sneaking along my sheets. I can not pull my legs up. I can not move. They are coming for me. I have read of rare cases of shared psychosis. I have grown too close to the patient. To Greta.”
Syl flipped the page.
“The journal is filled! I read it, and oh to my destruction! The words are written in blood, and blood pours forth. Greta doesn’t write. The hands do! The hands! Out! Get it out!
FORBIDDEN!!! DON’T READ!!!”
“February 2nd, 1952. The day before Greta disappeared.”
“Amy, I don’t want to do this.” Syl looked afraid.
Amy thought her features were strange that way, other worldly. She was always so sure, so confident. Something about that helpless look made Amy smile. She felt the key heavy in her pocket. The journal throbbed, swaddled in her hoodie. There was no going back now.
(Come and see)
“Syl, we came all this way. Let’s go and pay our respects. Say goodbye to Greta.”
Amy held out her free hand, and Syl, her little sister again, grabbed it. Together, they made their way to the room.
Past the neat hallway of offices, the asylum gave way to neglect. The walls in the East Wing were white. Paint curled on the doors and around slits of windows, revealing shining metal underneath. Rust had gathered at the corners, and dripped down in dark brown streaks.
Blood.
“No,” Amy whispered, laughing at the thought.
“What did you say?” Syl asked.
Amy shook her head. Syl, the little eager beaver, was ahead of her. She stopped. Amy knew that she had found the room.
203
She peered in, and saw the words were written on the wall, still preserved all these years later.
Waiting.
VERBOTEN!!! NICHT LESEN!!!
Over and over again. Scrawled on the ceiling, across the wall, written tiny in the corners, barely legible print in ornate frantic handwriting, and of course, the hands. Amy unwrapped the journal, and pulled the key from her pocket.
“What are you doing?” Syl looked at the book.
“The words, the drawings,” Amy opened the journal and held it up against the window pane. The walls vibrated when she touched the spine to the door. “Don’t you see? They’re the same. She put this here for us to see! For all of them to see!”
I read it, and oh to my destruction!
“What are you talking about?”
Syl looked at the journal, then at the walls through the pane of glass.
“Can’t you see it?” Amy asked.
“See what?” Syl’s voice came out high and trembling.
Amy took the key, and unlocked the door. The journal pulsed violently as she opened it. She held the pages open to one of Greta’s drawings, gripped until her fingers went white. A metal bed with a white mattress was shoved against the wall. A poem, written in Greta’s beautiful, vibrating handwriting, was scrawled above the sleek rails of headboard.
“Syl! It’s the poem. Same as the beginning of the journal!”
Amy read the words aloud.
“If you fall asleep, you’ll feel them pulling at your sheets”
“Amy!” Syl screamed from behind her. A dark shadow appeared in the middle of the white bed.
"Pulling them down so they can find your feet"
The shadow gave way to a tearing darkness, as the center of the mattress caved. A sulphur breeze blew Amy’s hair and tickled her neck. She laughed.
"Sneaking finger shadows, you can see them on the wall Moving like a spider, on your bed, you’ll feel them crawl"
Fingers, Amy could see them now, pushed up through the swirling hole, grabbing at either side of the white mattress. Dark streaks marked the fabric whereever the slick skin touched.
"Settle, let them touch you, after all, there is no rule Once the dark ones find you--"
“No!” Syl ran and knocked the journal to the floor. The cover slammed shut.
The hands retreated, as if injured, back into the mattress. The hole started to shrink. Amy bared her teeth.
“You bitch!”
“That isn’t how the poem goes Amy. Don’t you get it? This is what it wants!”
“Greta is our family. Don’t you get that Syl? Can you understand the reality of who we are? How special we all are?”
“We aren’t special Amy! Look around you for god’s sake!” Her face softened, and for a moment, Amy wanted to reach out, to cling to her. “We are sick.”
Pain bloomed around Amy’s heart, flooding her with warmth. Then something else, a fiery rage, pulsed through her.
“You’re jealous, because you can’t see. Just like mom couldn’t see. Oma couldn’t see. Greta,” Amy smiled, and shoved Syl to the ground. “Greta could see. And the seeing set her free.”
She finished the last line of the poem.
"There is nothing you can do."
The journal opened. The charcoal drawing began to swirl, breaking from the page. Black protruded, and Amy could see a tunnel.
(DOWN)
She remembered digging holes in the sandpit in the back of their childhood home.
Digging to Hell, Syl! I’m digging to Hell!
Cool hands rested on her shoulders. Amy could hear Syl screaming from somewhere far away. The fingers rubbed against her bare skin, leaving streaks of black oil behind.
Finger marks. Sneaking fingers.
“Good job darling,” Greta’s voice was just like the dream. She could feel breath on her neck. “Our blood helps it sleep.”
Greta’s fingers dug into Amy’s shoulders.
“You’re hurting me.”
Her grip held. Amy squirmed, and smelled rotting flesh, felt the sticky wet on her arms. It wasn’t oil Greta left behind when she touched her.
It’s skin.
Before she could scream, she was falling.
To Be Continued…
This was great! Confession: didn’t read parts 1-2 first lol. But now I will!
Scary, creepy as HELL! I wouldn't go into a abandoned hospital if you paid me!!! Bring on #4...