Fallen

Short story from the point of view of a young boy *this was based on a strange dream I had where I oddly died and didn’t wake up, so if it’s a bit weird or confusing that’s why :D

I used to like visiting the abbey with my master. He was always rambling about some lost fortune or something of the sort, which I never understood since it didn't concern me.
The abbey was a large building. It had several attached buildings which were where the other servants and workers lived most of the time. The main building however was an enormous room, the ruins of a medieval monastery, made entirely of crumbling stone. There was no roof on it anymore, but you could climb right the way up to where the roof would have been and walk along the arches of the window frames, so long as you were very careful and held on tight.

My master, Mr Williams, was not a particularly nice man. He was cruel to me most of the time, but as long as he kept bringing me to the abbey I did not mind. I liked climbing the walls and running around in the large open space. I liked the smell of the damp earth and crumbling rocks. I loved playing in the woods outside the abbey with my master's dog.
Mr Williams did not let many people onto the property. There was an old myth connecting to the death of a little girl, daughter of a rich family who lived nearby. The girl had fallen from the roof and died instantly, and the entire family just vanished immediately after. It was said that her tomb held hidden treasures, lots of money, Mr Williams said, and that there were clues hidden in the body of the abbey. He wouldn't tell me what they were but he was always here searching for them. He keeps me here because he needs me to get him things occasionally, and because he cannot get rid of me anyway. My family were the previous owners of the abbey and used to live in the house on the grounds, but the whole property burned down when I was a very young child, before I even knew what was happening.
Fortunately I had been outside at the time of the fire, and all I had seen when I emerged from the forest was an inferno engulfing the house. I had not known my family well anyway, so I was not too upset, but the sight of the fire terrified me and I'd started wailing. That was when I'd met Charlotte for the first time.

Charlotte was a little girl, a couple of years older than me. I didn't know who she was or where she came from, but I saw her on the grounds sometimes. Sometimes she would play hide and seek with me in the abbey, and I liked it a lot, though I could never find her when it was her turn to hide. Mr Williams had never seen Charlotte, for she always vanished before I could tell him who she was. He thinks she is my imaginary friend. I never thought to ask her about the treasure. I'm sure he'd have believed me about her if she had helped me with that.

At first I had no part whatsoever in this treasure hunting, and I did not have much of an interest in it. The thought of a little girl about my age falling and dying while climbing the roof, as I often liked to do, frightened me a little, and so I didn't like to think about it too much.

One day I was in the abbey with Mr Williams, and things just felt a little bit off. His dog, Maxwell, was acting funny. His eyes were very wide and he did not wag his tail like he usually did when I patted him. He kept glancing around as if nervous.
Mr Williams was convinced he'd found a clue. He was muttering something to himself about the north. The north of the abbey, he meant. He kept gesturing to the massive north windows at the head of the abbey, the biggest window frames in the whole building as well as the highest. He was sure that there was something hidden in the north wall, or perhaps that he would spot something from the north window that would help him find the treasure.

I was busy exploring the abbey as always. I'd found a good stick and was drawing lines in the dust with it, weaving my way in and out of the stone pillars, not looking where I was going. All of a sudden, I felt a sudden sharp gust of air that was very cold, and it sent a shiver through my whole body. I stopped, spooked, and looked up. I couldn't see anyone there, but I was standing in a room that was almost completely pitch black. I was close to the doorway so I could see fine, but I could not see any further into the darkness than a couple rows of stone arches. I got scared and left that room at once, going back into the main building to try find Maxwell again. I would feel better if I had some company.

I entered the main building, and I was surprised to find it was empty. I didn't know where Mr Williams had gone, I assumed he was fetching something from inside the habitable buildings, or calling for another servant.
I heard a giggling and looked up at once. I almost jumped out of my skin. There, directly above me in the east wall roof, was Charlotte. She was crouched on a stone in the window, grinning and staring down at me, her eyes almost glowing. She gestured for me to climb up and meet her, so I went over to the lowest stones and began to pick my way up the walls, as carefully as I could.

When I got up there she whispered something in my ear about the treasure. I didn't quite catch what it was, so I looked at her, confused, but she covered her face with her hands as if to stifle a laugh, then she pointed out of the window.
"Look" she whispered.
I looked where she was pointing, but I did not have very good eyesight and so I couldn't quite make out what she wanted me to see.

"What is it, I asked her?"
I could see the older house buildings, the ones that had been built on the old grounds, where parts of the abbey ruins had been many many years ago. The old ruins had been demolished a long time ago, before even these old buildings were built.

"Look." She simply repeated, and at once my vision became slightly clearer. My eyes followed the exact line she was pointing along, straight to a window of one of the old buildings. When I saw what she was pointing at my stomach dropped through the floor and I felt all the hairs on my body stand up.
There, in one of the tarnished old windows, there was a face. I knew the buildings were abandoned and locked up so there couldn't be anyone inside, but it was definitely there. I saw it with my own eyes, and I am not much of a dreamer. I know I saw it.
It was a little girl's face, that much was obvious. It did not look at all human, the eyes were sunken and hollow and the skin clung to the bones making it look like it were just a skull. What was mostly chilling was that it was grinning, and appeared to be floating, as I saw no body attached to it.

I felt sick with fear. I felt my whole body go weak and shake, and I felt I couldn't hold on.
I looked at Charlotte. She giggled again, still grinning herself, then all of a sudden she came very very close to me and whispered, as if threatening, right in my ear so I couldn't escape. I whimpered, terrified.
"Don't you dare tell anyone." She hissed, and I guessed she meant Mr Williams. Now I knew where the girl's tomb was, and it was not in the north side of the building as he suspected, but the east side. True North.

I looked up again, having been curled up defensively, eyes closed in fear. Charlotte was gone, which frightened me. Nobody could get down the wall and out of sight that fast. Maybe Mr Williams was right, or perhaps she herself was a ghost...
The very word chilled me to the bone, and I shook it off, making to climb down the walls again.

That was when Mr Williams strode back in.
I was there, trembling a little, wishing I could just go home and warm in front of the spitting fire with Maxwell sleeping on my lap. I wished I could go sit in some dark corner and polish boots in the cold and the damp. I just didn't want to be here anymore.
Mr Williams seemed annoyed that I'd wandered off, muttering something about him trying to find me, and insulting my petrified pallor. He then proceeded to tell me about a new clue he thought he'd found, and how I was to help him climb up into the roof and search for it, since I was small and agile and good at climbing. Too scared to refuse, I nodded shakily and we proceeded to climb the abbey's skeleton walls.

Mr Williams started climbing the west walls, so I climbed the east. I climbed quicker than usual, for I didn't dare to look around like I normally did. I was too frightened to look out of the empty window frames or into the abbey roof, in case I saw something else that made me jump and lose my footing. My mind kept replaying the thoughts of a child like me falling from the roof while climbing, and the image of the disembodied head I'd seen, and they made me keep my head down and carry on climbing.

Though my legs shook and my grip was weak, I managed to scramble to the top relatively fast, and so I just stood, right at the very top of the abbey roof, in one of the enormous window frames, trying to keep my footing on a very narrow ledge of crumbling stones, clinging on desperately, my tiny fingers gripping shallow crevices in the damp rock as I waited for Mr Williams to reach the top.

I felt one of the stones beneath my feet come loose, and quickly moved as it broke off and fell. I felt my stomach turn over uneasily as I watched the fragments fall all the way to the ground, which looked a thousand miles below now I was actually up here. As I looked around me for something better to hold onto, I caught out of the corner of my eye, a small gap seemingly cut into the stone.

Unable to look away, I peered through the gap, and on the other side, I saw it aligned perfectly with the very same window I'd seen before. I swallowed, feeling my hands shake even more, and reached out to grab the window frame to steady myself,
but a firm grip clamped down on my wrist, making me yelp in fright. I staggered, pulling on the arm to steady myself.
Mr Williams was peering at me with some kind of twisted smile.
"What's that you're looking at there, boy?" He enquirer coldly, his hard eyes boring into me.
I instinctively moved my hand to cover the small hole, hoping he wouldn't see, but he did.
"What gave you such a fright, eh? Let me see."
I swallowed.
"There's nothing there, sir." I squeaked, in the ghost of a voice.
"Move your hand." He hissed.
"There's nothing, I swear it sir."
He snorted. "Oh? Swear on your life do you?"
I nodded shakily.
"So then.." he continued. "If you move your hand, and there is something there, you deserve to slip and fall?"
I was too shaken to even blink in response.
"You still swear on your life?"
I couldn't reply, my legs were shaking so violently I was surprised I hadn't already fallen.

All of a sudden, his hand shot forwards and grabbed my other wrist, tearing it away from the wall. Melancholic daylight shot through the hole in the stone and pierced a circle of shimmering light into Mr Williams' face. I gulped. I had lost my balance completely from him pulling me away with such force, and were it not for his tight grip on my wrist, I would be dangling dangerously over the edge, at serious risk of falling.

Seeing the gap there, the older man's face darkened from a sadistic smirk to a scowl of pure outrage.
"So you were lying, you little rat." He growled. "You'll pay for this."
At that very moment, I heard Charlotte's ghastly giggle from right behind me, I gasped, my fear paralysing me, then I felt Mr Williams suddenly give me a firm push.

In my final moments, as I tipped over the edge of the abbey wall, I panicked and thought to grab onto Mr Williams' arm, but instead of using it to pull myself back up, I kicked the wall I had toppled from, and pulled him over the edge with me using all the strength of my little body. His feet slipped, and sure enough, he fell alongside me.
It would have taken mere seconds for s to hit the ground, but it felt like years. I felt nothing as I fell through the air; I was numb, frozen. All I could feel was a horrible drop in my stomach from the force of allying, and a very slight wave of triumph, knowing I'd succeeded in pulling him down with me.

All fear left my body with my last breath.

I got up what felt like mere seconds later, but from the state of the strange objects on the ground which I later determined were our bodies, I'd say it had been several days.
I stood up, but I felt no weight in my body anymore, and when I stepped back away from the bodies, I bounced, almost as if I were floating. I glanced down at my hands and saw they were so pale, almost transparent.

I looked around me, seeing the two bodies, bloodstained and mangled, and in the abbey doorway, Maxwell the dog, who had his ears pressed flat back against his head and was growling at me.
I called the dog, and the sound of my voice seemed to change him. He ran to me, and I chased him in circles, giggling and stopping to pet him, but when I touched him he whined, and ran towards the doorway again. I followed him.

I ran out of the abbey courtyard and into the open. It was raining, but I couldn't feel the droplets on my skin anymore, like I couldn't feel the soft earth beneath my feet. I knew what had happened to me without having to think about it. I laughed in delight, looking up at the sky, which was bright white in colour, and marvelled at the fact I was not blinded by the sunlight, nor by raindrops in my eyes, for I felt nothing.

Still laughing, I ran through the long grass, in and out of the trees, with Maxwell chasing me, wagging his tail again and barking when I disappeared behind a tree trunk. I felt nothing of my fear anymore, it had all been left behind with my body, my life. Now I felt trapped, but free at the same time.

Days passed, then weeks, and eventually I lost track of the months. Every day and every night I played in the grass, I climbed trees and wandered through the abbey, which was no longer dark and frightening. The bodies were found and taken away, but people continued to come. Groups of people, with enormous, flashing cameras and huge microphones, usually middle aged women with boring haircuts and wearing long, beige coloured coats. They would talk into the microphones and cameras flashed, and tell what they thought was the story of the fall, and the legend of the treasure, while I watched from a short distance away, for they couldn't see me unless I wanted them to.

Sometimes I wound wind them up. People obsessed over sightings of a vanishing little boy in the abbey grounds, and all kinds of visitors came looking for me. I always led them into the trees or behind the abbey then vanished, enjoying their confusion. I thought one day I might give away the real location of the tomb, since I had nothing to fear anymore. I hadn't seen Charlotte, or the other demonic entity since the day I died, and I had the thought that maybe my christening at birth and weekly visits to the church had saved me from becoming like them, though I really had no idea.

A priest came, wearing a flowing white robe and surrounded by a group of followers. He held a crucifix and a burning torch, which he waved around while chanting in some strange and unknown tongue. For some reason this enabled him to see me, and he chased me around in circles before I fell to the ground at his feet, grinned, and laughed my ghoulish, childlike giggle, before vanishing and running away, leaving him looking around for me desperately.

After that, I rarely got close to people without being sure they wouldn't see me. Now I always run free, playing in the grass as ever, chasing Maxwell, who never left the grounds and hides in the abbey when it rains, and watching people come and go. Their faces and their clothes changed, sometimes even their language, but they were always the same, just like I was now.

An innocent boy, always playing in the ruins of the abbey, never leaving the grounds. Unchanging, forever.

Author's Note

If it’s confusing or stupid, it’s because it was basically just a dream I had, written down. I just thought it might make a cool story


Please tell me what you think :3