Sneaking Fingers: Part 4
A Lights Out Story
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Today’s story is part four 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.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
It was morning.
The old woman’s spine was bent, a clenched hand shoved under her chin. Her white hair was smoothed back, freshly combed after an evening shower. She hadn’t been able to do that on her own for months. She had never gone home, had been by Amy’s side all night.
Syl leaned on the door jamb and watched her mother breathing, the rhythm in time with the beep of Amy’s heart monitor. She waited, as the first orange rays of sunlight peeked slanted through the window blinds. Her mother’s eyelids fluttered.
“Morning, mom,” Syl said, uncrossing her arms and making her way across the room and into the chair next to her mother.
“Morning?”
“Did you get any rest?”
She looked around, blinking away dark sleep, then said, “Not much.”
They both sat and looked at Amy.
“Has she woken up?”
Her mother shook her head, eyes moving to the floor to stop tears. Syl put a hand on her back and rubbed at the knotted muscle.
“She will mom.”
“I hope so,” her mother met her eyes, and the tears started to fall.
“You did,” said Syl, and they both smiled.
“Did they find it?”
Syl moved her hand back, and shifted away. She wasn’t good at lying. If their eyes met, she knew she would crack.
“No.”
In her periphery, Syl could see her mother nodding slowly, mouth turned down.
“I wish she wouldn’t have taken it all that way. It was supposed to be a family heirloom.”
Syl finally looked at her face, the oh-well expression etched there as her mother set her eyes back on Amy’s heart monitor.
“Sometimes it’s better mom.”
“What is?”
Syl looked at Amy. Her face was scabbed and bloody from the fall. The asylum floor had crumbled, opened to a wide cavern in front of her. And then Amy had fallen.
Down.
“To let the dead bury the dead,” Syl said, and smiled.
Amy’s heart monitor picked up, the beeps coming in rapid succession. Syl and her mother turned just in time to see her eyes open.
A Portal To Hell!
The strange town of Grandview grows stranger, after a sinkhole opened up in the middle of the abandoned Black Hills Asylum. A place of legend, where residents went missing decades ago, has long been at the center of scandal and mystery.
“I think the place is evil,” local resident Marsha Hazard told our reporter. “Ever since it opened, this place ain’t been the same.”
But authorities and experts have other explanations.
“Sinkholes occur because of natural erosion in the bedrock beneath the soil. They can be catastrophic. Grandview is lucky that it happened where it did. Only one person was injured.”
The mayor refused to comment on who was injured, or why they were in the abandoned insane asylum.
The attic stood empty save for a few boxes lined against the far wall. Amy was at the window, staring out when Syl got to the top of the steps. She watched her sister for a moment, waiting for her to speak. She hadn’t been herself since the fall, but the doctors said that was to be expected. Traumatic brain injuries took time to heal. Syl made her way to the window, and looked out over Amy’s shoulder, trying to see what she was looking at.
“Mom made lunch,” she offered, placing a hand on Amy’s. She recoiled, and Syl fought to clear the lump that formed in her throat.
Since she had woken in the hospital, her memories had been hazy. At night, in her sleep, Syl heard her whisper. The phrase was always the same. Below. On her third night home, Amy finally slept through the night, and that meant Syl did too. Until the dream.
They were back at the asylum. The walls were melting, Greta’s writing dripping like buckets of water had been tossed against the white brick. Through the smudges Syl could still see the phrase, “Sneaking fingers.” Amy called to her from the pit, and when Syl looked, she was down (below). It wasn’t like the real life sinkhole that had ripped through the earth and sent her sister tumbling. No, the pit was deeper than that, the walls moving, a slowly stirring whirlpool of dark earth and ash.
In real life, Syl had called for help. First responders had rescued Amy, pulled her out from that cavernous mouth, and carried her to safety. The journal had survived. Syl had grabbed it, stuffed it into her bag on her way to the car, not knowing why but going through the motions as if pulled.
(Let the dead bury the dead).
She wished she had resisted the trip to Black Hills, felt responsible for Amy’s dive into the darkness (To hell Syl! We’re digging to Hell!). But then, her mother’s doctor had called. Just as her sister had slipped into a coma, her mother had come out of her delirium. Syl didn’t understand it, but she knew deep inside that the two were tied.
Greta.
Behind her, Syl heard a voice, sing-song, rhyming words pouring out. The poem. Amy’s screams were a backdrop. Help me.
The whisper woke her. Amy’s face, shrouded in shadow, begging. Syl watched in horror as it faded into the darkness of early morning. A dream.
“Help me,” it was Amy in the bed next to her. Her voice was strange. It croaked out, tired and not her own.
Syl sat up, and watched her, wondering if she should wake her from the whimpering nightmare. But Amy’s limbs started to settle, and soon she was peaceful again. Syl stared at the ceiling, mulling things over in her head. When Amy recovered, she would go home, leave this all behind her. Until then? She had unfinished business.
Amy didn’t come downstairs until nearly ten. Syl watched her come to the table, eyes distant.
“Mom made your favorite,” she offered, nodding to the stack of french toast on the table.
Amy didn’t smile exactly, but her eyes got big. That had to be a sign of something. Yeah right. Even a dog knows a treat when he sees one. Syl pushed that evil thought away.
“You sleep well?”
Amy sat down and folded her hands, like praying, like deciding something. Syl could see the bubblegum pink nail polish she had painted while Amy slept (died) was flecking off. The nails underneath were streaked white, damaged from where she tried to catch herself as she tumbled down beneath the asylum’s foundation. Amy reached out, put a hand on Syl’s arm.
“I had a dream last night Syl.”
Syl didn’t dare move, afraid to wake Amy out of this sisterly gesture and back into the brain damaged haze she had been existing in. Didn’t the doctor say it would take time? That the recovery would not be linear? Syl held her breath, waited.
“We have to go back.”
She exhaled then, fought the urge to chuckle. “Ames, go back where?”
“To Black Hills.”
Syl put her right hand over Amy’s. Her skin was so cold. Had it always been that way?
“Why?” she asked, but already knew the answer. It had come to her hours before, when the house was still draped in night’s fleeing shadow, while Amy and her mother slept.
“The journal. We have to destroy it.”
“I don’t have it,” Syl lied, pulling back from Amy. There was something in her sister’s eyes that Syl couldn’t trust. That light’s on, nobody’s home stare. She’s hurt you idiot. She might never be the same. Get used to it.
Amy cocked her head to the side, curious, and reached for Syl again. In the white hot sunlight of late morning, her fingers looked elongated, like claws.
“I know you do Sylvia. I can hear the heart beating at night. I can feel it calling to me. Trying to pull me back down. Below.”
Sylvia? She never calls me that.
Amy’s eyes brimmed with tears. Syl reached and met her grasping hands. She saw something beyond fear, and remembered her sister at a bible school summer camp. The fire and brimstone preacher who had come as a guest speaker to tell the children about his visions.
“In Hell, the dead never rest! Demons tore at me with clawed fingers, with fire blackened weapons forged from the bones of the wicked! I wanted water, but I could not drink! The fires never go out!”
She had looked like that then, at nine years old. She had been terrified.
(Let the dead bury the dead)
Syl squeezed Amy’s slick, cool hands. “Let’s finish this.”
For the first time since coming home, Amy smiled.
She didn’t feel relieved when the journal tumbled down into that black hole. She had scanned it, remembered the dream (Help me), and waited for some sign that Amy would come back to her.
“We have to burn it Sylvia. If we don’t, this will keep happening. Again, and again.”
There was that name again. Sylvia.
“I don’t have anything to light it with. It’s already down the damn hole Ames.”
Amy reached into the pocket of her pajama pants and pulled out a matchbook.
“Where the hell did you get that,” Syl laughed, and Amy smiled back.
“Found it in the attic.”
She lit a match, watched the flame for a moment, then said, “Stand back.”
Syl took a step back, nearly knocking the orange caution sign over. She looked at it, and for a moment the words KEEP OUT looked like VERBOTEN. Yellow caution tape littered the ground around her feet. She hoped the place wouldn’t blow when Amy dropped the match into the hole.
“I don’t know what you think that’s going to do Ames. It’s not like you can aim it at the journal.”
“Watch,” Amy whispered, and Syl shut up.
Amy dropped the match into the hole, past where Syl could see it. It didn’t matter. She heard it. A tiny combustion, then the flicker of warm light against the dark cavern walls. Syl went to the edge and peered over. The bottom of the sinkhole was burning. The journal curled and blackened, like a writhing man covered in napalm. A high pitched squeal rose before a pop sent Syl back. She couldn’t explain, but she didn’t want to see this.
She looked around at the ruins of Black Hills, waiting for the glow of the flames to quiet. When Amy looked at her, Syl saw that she was really here, really looking. Relief flooded her, and they both smiled at one another.
“Syl, let’s go home.”
Syl.
They locked arms, and left the asylum together.
She was in the dream again, but it was different this time. The night sky stretched on above her. Instead of melting walls and dripping words, the stars were rippling, like she was seeing them from under the ocean. She looked down, and the sinkhole had widened. The tired houses and old swing sets that dotted Grandview were slipping in, falling into a black abyss. People held onto tree roots and tried to escape in cars. The hole grew into a mouth and swallowed them up. The air was thick with their screams.
Syl stumbled backwards.
(To Hell Syl! We’re digging to Hell!)
Amy was there. (Below). Head back, mouth open to the sky in a never ending scream. A fire was burning below her. (The fires never go out).
She turned to run, and saw her sister there, blocking the way.
The other Amy smiled and said, “Let the dead bury the dead.”
The words ripped her from sleep. She grabbed her phone and looked at the time. 2:32. Still nighttime. Early morning. She let her head fall back on her pillow and waited for her heart to stop pounding. It took a few minutes before she realized that something wasn’t right. The room was too quiet. Syl sat up again and looked to Amy’s bed. The covers were pulled down. The bed was empty.
Syl put her feet on the floor, wanting to run, to see her sister alive and well. Some inner voice spoke louder. Quiet. Don’t let her see. Syl listened, and stepped carefully onto the floor. She had grown up in this house, played a zillion games of hide and seek. She knew where the creaks were. She breathed in deep, and stepped over them on tippy toes.
The house was dark. If Amy had wandered to the bathroom, she had done it without the use of a light. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, and the door stood open and black. Like a cavern. (Like a mouth). Her mom’s room was just to the right of it. Syl decided she would peek in, make sure the old woman was alright.
She took a step, and heard a low moan. Syl held her breath, confused for a moment by the timing. At first, she thought it was the floorboard, and froze. But it came again, the words.
“Help me.”
Syl crept forward, recognizing her mother’s troubled dream voice. They were all having nightmares tonight. Was that why Amy wasn’t in her bed? Had she gone downstairs after a night terror? Syl imagined a cup of tea on the round dining table. The light above the stove a comforting glow in the dark night. She would wake her mom from whatever hell she was confronting in her unconscious state. Then, she would find Amy. They would hold hands. Sigh in relief that things were finally getting back to normal.
She reached the door jam, and let her feet fall flat on the wood floor slowly, carefully.
“No Greta,” her mother moaned, “just as Syl peeked around the corner.”
Her breath sucked in all at once, making her dizzy. White hands caressed her mother’s feet, pulled at the sheets gently, wanting to grab, to take her somewhere.
(To Hell Syl! We’re digging to Hell!)
Syl stepped out into the doorway, turned on her phone flashlight, and shined it on her mother’s face. Her eyes were open, her mouth a frown. She turned the beam of light on the hands. The fingers were smaller than what they had seemed in the dark, not white claws, but a woman’s hands. The nails were bubblegum pink at the beds, but most of the polish was worn off now, replaced by black earth. Like she had been digging. The other Amy, with her sneaking fingers.
Shaina, this is unnerving. I would never ever read this in my bed after dark!