I fear not the beasts of fang and claw,

The serpents of stealth and poisoned maw,

Or even a hunter upon a steed,

But a desperate mother protecting her cub?

Oh her, I do truly fear indeed.

(R.L.Hammett, 1823)

 

Before she closed the curtains, Marcie Hall took a brief look through the window.

​

It was bleak, unpleasant and dark outside – even at just six o’clock in mid-October. The street lights were so far apart, and so few even worked, that the gloom was almost a living thing. What you could see wasn’t good. Cracked pavements, a pot-holed tarmac road and lurking growths of weed. Before darkness swallowed them up, you might see parts of the other wooden houses in the street, all ramshackle two-story buildings similar to Marcie’s home. Some houses were cordoned by old picket fences; around a few, just the remnants of posts stood out from the ground like rotten tusks. Numerous broken windows in the street had been boarded-up rather than replaced. Only graffiti was missing in order to give the street a genuine slum look, and this was due to the lack of local children.

​

Marcie missed the bright lights and noisy buzz of the city. Six years ago, Howard and Marcie had been newlyweds, living in the city and running a small advertising agency. They had been starting to thrive. Then the recession had hit – or, as Howard put it, the rich and powerful had stolen everyone’s money – and the couple had seen their agency dwindle and die. What savings they’d possessed had poured away, forcing them to sell their home and all their valuables, and move away to this house, willed to Marcie by her late Aunt Frida. They were lucky not to be among the thousands now living in tents, and they knew it.

​

The house was on the very outskirts of the town of Merriwich. Any anticipation of fresh country air and friendly country folk, had perished soon after they arrived. The area was practically a wasteland, and a smell of damp exuded from every wooden building. All the neighbours were between sixty and a hundred, left behind by sons and daughters who had moved elsewhere, and they blatantly ignored outsiders. The only person Marcie had ever even spoken to was the old widow opposite, Mrs Burrows, who spent most of her time spying on others from behind her curtains.

​

Howard had managed to get a job at Gideon’s Warehouse. It was a ninety-minute drive to and from work, and the wages were lousy, but it at least brought in money. Plus, there was often overtime, and that allowed the pair to save. Over the following four years they had repaired and improved their new home and even been able to get a few luxuries. Still, what they had wasn’t much. The upstairs rooms were still uncarpeted; painted walls fought losing battles against damp and mildew; and there were several birds’ nests in the attic (meaning a loathsome dawn chorus and lots of eerie scuttling above when they tried to sleep). The electricity supply was prone to losing power at random too; and switching on the tiny TV in the living room actually dimmed the lights elsewhere in the house.

​

On the positive side, every house in the street was well-detached. There was almost as large a distance between the sides of houses as there was from the front of a house to the front of the one opposite. This meant Marcie never heard her neighbours, a marked contrast to the first apartment she had rented.

​

A complication had arrived in the lives of the couple four months ago. Their first child had been born – bringing a wonderful light into their lives which overshadowed the gloom and doom of their surroundings. Baby Nicola was an angel, and her addition to the family magnified the great love Marcie and Howard had for each other. Nicola also sent the family in a new direction. Every penny they could spare was put into saving: to enable them to move to a better area before their child reached school age. Howard was pulling all the extra hours he could at the warehouse, and Marcie had found a way of working from home to add to their income...

​

Marcie straightened the shabby curtains and turned her back on them.

​

The kitchen/dining room took up half the lower floor of the house and ran from front to back, on the right-hand side of the building. The front half of the room was the kitchen area, consisting of old cupboards and fittings that had been in the house for decades, plus a range of second hand and scrounged goods. There was a gas cooker, a washing machine (which almost bounced across the floor during its spin cycle), a small fridge and, under the front window Marcie had just closed, a wide chest freezer. The rear half of the chamber held a wobbly circular dining table and three chairs. A door a few paces away from the freezer led into the small front hallway; another door in the same long inside wall led into the living room; and a well-locked third door at the back of the room exited into the rear garden. Garden? That was a joke. The great patches of dirt in front, around and behind the house only seemed willing to sustain diseased-looking brown grass; even weeds had a hard time establishing themselves.

​

Once the house was quiet at night, Marcie found herself hating the place even more than usual. She could have spent all day listing the reasons. Top of the list was it being no place to bring up a child. Coming up a close second was the overall feeling of the bloody situation. All the building’s creaks and shifts, the rattles of water-pipes, the low lighting, the smell neither bleach nor disinfectant could kill, and the damn birds above... all these aspects made the place feel creepy. A creepy old house in a creepy old street, out in the creepy boonies.

​

Marcie would never admit it to Howard, but when he was away, like now, she always felt afraid.

​

Still, she was lucky. She had Nicola, and her baby girl was everything to her.

​

 

*     *     *

 

Nicola had been cradled in Marcie’s left arm while she walked through the ground floor, checking the windows were locked and drawing the curtains. The baby slept peacefully, with a look of serenity on her perfect rounded face. She was warm and comfortable in a flowery pink romper suit and a homemade crocheted blanket. A fluffy, downy layer of dark brown hair crowned Nicola’s little head – a match in colour for the long, curly mass of her mother’s. The soother in the baby’s mouth shifted with an occasional pulsing rhythm as the baby chose to suck, perhaps dreaming of her next feed.

​

Marcie found the warmth of her child against her to be the most wonderful sensation she had ever experienced. A look down at the gentle face brought another motherly grin to her own features.

​

“You’re so gorgeous,” she enthused, probably for the thousandth time, and she strode to the other end of the room.

​

Through the doorway on her left, she stepped into the living room. It was spartanly decorated: a sagging couch, the TV, a coffee table and an ancient sideboard. Whereas the kitchen had windows in each outside wall, there was just one rear window to this room. The other door led into the hall, which in turn gave access back to the kitchen, the front door, and also the straight run of stairs leading to the upper floor.

​

Marcie was halfway to the couch when the phone on the sideboard rang. She jolted at the surprise and gripped Nicola a little tighter, for protection. Her free hand scooped up the phone’s handset from its cradle. This was her one lifeline to the outside world.

​

Predictably, it was her husband on the line, and the reason for his call was predictable too.

​

“Hey, honey, how’s the best little mom in the state?”

​

“Oh, you know,” Marcie replied. “Lazing about, sitting with my feet up. You know, the usual stuff.”

​

The truth was the opposite – she’d been as busy as her partner and would be busy for hours more.

​

“Sure, I’ll bet. Has Nicola been good?”

​

“Her usual angel self. Except she did that tidal-wave-mouth thing again when she’d had enough milk... just opened her lips and gave me a load of the stuff all over my lap.”

​

He laughed. There was an edge of tiredness to his voice – there always was. “That does seem to be becoming a regular lately.”

​

“Yup, and this time she giggled when I panicked.”

​

“I’ve trained her well, I see.”

​

She frowned, knowing what was coming next. To make it easy for Howard, she said the words: “You’ve caught another overtime shift?”

​

“Half-shift,” he replied, and he clearly felt guilty.

​

Marcie offered more enthusiasm than she felt. “Hey, it’s not a problem for me. You’re the one doing all the work. Every extra hour you do is a step closer to us getting our new home.”

​

“Yeah, I’d just like to see you more. I can hardly remember what you look like.”

​

She laughed. “Hey, you wouldn’t wanna be with me right now. I still reek of baby sick.”

​

“Well, I’ll be back around twelve. If you’re asleep—”

​

“I’ll still be working on my laptop, so don’t worry.”

​

“Alright, then.” He sighed. “Better get back to it. Love you, Marcie.”

​

“Love you, babe. And take care.”

​

As the phone was returned to its place, she scowled.

​

“Dammit.”

​

Five or six more hours alone. In this place. In this awful street.

​

She kissed Nicola’s forehead.

​

“You, you little terror, are going to continue your nap in bed. Mommy’s gotta get busy.”

​

Marcie paced over to the coffee table, where a baby monitor sat next to her closed laptop. A click of the switch activated the monitor, so that when the one upstairs was switched on, they’d transmit to each other immediately. She went out into the small, empty hallway and turned to the right. The stairs ran straight up the outside wall of the house. Marcie switched on the lights that illuminated the stairs and upper passage, and started up...

​

The woman hated every creak the old steps made. And the way the sound of her own footsteps accentuated her and Nicola’s solitude.

​

Unfortunately for the pair, they wouldn’t be alone for long.

​

 

Sample Ends

 

"If a person is faced with true, darkest horror, they have two choices. Either they accept that they are insane and that everything they are experiencing is a product of their damaged mind... Or they realise, as Marcie now did, that the insanity was not within her but around her: that she was in a hell where rationality failed and monsters truly did exist."