The Flash of '93

Part One

    
     In the late afternoon haze we made our way down the road, walking beside those ancient and gnarled trees of antiquity. The orange light warmed the face of each of our number and it felt good to be among the living. There were no cars in sight, the rarely used path being through with labor for the day, when we came upon the house. Of course, it wasn't a house, it was just a structure, a building of unknown purpose with the outward aspect of a domicile.

     There was a door set into the fence, a door of sturdy wood and steel. Augmenting this, there was a tarp-like sheet hooked through key locations on the door proper. The curious nature of this aperture was made even more curious with the knowledge that not only was it unlocked but it appeared as though it could only be sealed from the outside. It was clearly designed to forcibly enclose, not to ward off trespassers.

     This much we had already known, for we had come to this place in order to study it. More than that, we had come to study it at night, when it is said to be a terrible realm to behold. Purely the tales of fearful nobodies, of course, as we could find no evidence that anyone in recent days had even attempted to spend a stay here.

     There were seven of us, including myself. Dr. Harold Aldridge, a grey but spirited old man, was the driving force of the group, having come upon this site in his studies of supernatural phenomenon. In over fifty years of work he had found absolutely nothing noteworthy to science. His assistant, Ms. Sarah Cyanth, was a subdued woman in her mid-thirties and appeared to be only passingly engaged in the work of her employer.

     Our financial backbone of the expedition, if it could be honored with such a name, was Mr. Ronald Desmond. He had brought two individuals with him; his assistant Mr. Crane and the reporter Mr. Sinclair. Gerry Crane was a sad husk of what once may have been a man, a slumped golem of the modern era. His sole purpose in our group was to hold a camera. Tom Sinclair was a freelance reporter of some small notoriety, the subject with Mr. Crane would be filming. He was to verbally document our accounts in the off chance that something was uncovered so that Mr. Desmond could profit.

      A friend of his, one held I held in common, was Ms. Lydia Wellington. Sinclair had invited her along on the grounds of friendship and she had invited me along by the same token, though I couldn't mistake the scent of apprehension in his air whenever I drew too near.

      Thus we were as the panels of that great door were pushed aside, the great beast of a structure looming up in the background. All manner of vines roped this mass to the earth, clinging to it with restless, mindless abandon. Lydia commented that they seemed almost unnaturally drawn to the building, some travelling considerable distance just to lay touch upon the weathered stone.

      We made our way down a brief slope and drew up to the door, or rather gate as the case turned out to be for the sole entryway into this behemoth. It too was unlocked, though unlike the previous passage we couldn't discern any sort of locking mechanism on either side of this hinged grate. The light dying, we made our way inside.

Interlude

     It was a dark and hated night when my father last spoke to me. We were the only two still awake in all the house and I had just finished a book, though I cannot recall neither title nor author. What I do recall is that though I was looking for her, I couldn't find the dog.

     It was in the dimly lit kitchen that I found him, crouched in the distant corner. He heard my arrival and rose to meet me, beginning to speak in a slow and slurred fashion. "Hello, boy."

     "You wouldn't turn today, and now the dog is missing. Where is the dog?"

     "Do you remember the flash of '93?"

      I didn't and confusedly confessed as such.

      "It was a solid night, the darkest I have ever known. It was... I was sleeping, in my room, and a great shrieking awoke me. I can't remember if it was the fire alarm or some other thing entirely, I don't even know if I've ever known." He looked to the window and saw nothing.

      "I awoke and I was terrified, the most fearful I have ever been in my entire existence. I don't know what it was about that night, but I believe I did know. I knew what was wrong with that dark, dark night. I awoke screaming, you see, shouting like someone had torn my very leg from my torso. My shouts didn't awake your mother, I don't think, they didn't awake any of you, not immediately." His gaze briefly touched mine and I went cold.

      "After a while, though it was likely just a moment, my scream was joined with that of another... but it was also my own. My voice echoed twofold through the wailing night, both streams seperate but somehow aligned. Then, my own screams stopped, but there was a moment, a millisecond, where that other screaming voice of mine hung over, long enough for me to hear." He chuckled slightly and from a distant chamber of our shrouded house the same chuckle sounded, coinciding nearly perfectly.

      His eyes were dark and heavy, and he swayed lightly from side to side. However, in this drunken-esque demeanor I saw a stronger persona, a determined resolve towards some unknowable fate. Though I had seen everywhere, I couldn't find the dog.

Part Two

     Inside, the building wasn't the least bit welcoming. The walls were rotted slabs of abrasive stone and the floors were caked with dust, littered with debris. Oddly, there were few windows and those we did find were barely wide enough to allow even the thinest sliver of waning light to pierce this interior world. Luckily Ms. Cyanth had thought to bring a flashlight and the dull illumination of the camera helped fuel our eyesight.

     There stairs nearly everywhere, with no consistent use of vertical dimension that we could find. There was no telling which floor one was on because the very idea of floors in this place seemed nearly absurd unless a decimal point system was incorporated.

     Passages fell away to deeper passages and we struck ever higher ground in the lightless maze, eventually coming upon a flight of extremely steep stairs. By this point the sun had most certainly set below vision even though we couldn't see it either way and I was struck with the queer notion that we were upon the brink of a disasterous discovery. We ascended.

     From what follows, I can only promise to be faithful to my recollections. If they seem impossible to the extreme, all I can say is that this was exactly what I experienced. Perhaps I suffered a breakdown of some sort, and I would greatly prefer this knowledge to the alternative, but given the state of the others in my company, I cannot help but think this unlikely.

     I was the last to reach the summit and the frenzy of activity had already begun by the time I arrived with the others who stood in a room just down a short hall a few feet long. They were wailing with both fear and wonder, the ululations of those who have come to know the things they had pretended to know all along, safe in the comfort that no such things can be known.

     They stood spread across the room, a room littered with rotten fragments of wood benches and chairs. In the far corner was a flame, the object of their raving excitement, but it wasn't a flame, no, not at all. I soon realized that of all of us Sinclair was the most frantic and I soon came to realize, as well, that the flame-thing in the corner appeared in the quivering form of his upper torso, its mouth open in agony.

     All about us, throughout the structure, we heard the moaning arise.

     Ronald Desmond was the first to go, eager to demonstrate that this thing was merely a fire that should be extinguished and not an entity in the least. He walked towards the image, turning towards us all the while and frantically attempting to explain the situation in an incoherent babble of pseudoscience. When he had come no closer than 3 feet, the thing lashed out with a wickedly enlongating arm had scorched through his chest. Mr. Desmond died in mere moments.

     The rest of us turned to run from the nightmarish chamber but a dark figure blocked our path. Being the closest, I was soon knocked unconscious.

     When I awoke, it was in dank and moldy cellar, lying in a tiny cage-like prison. Oddly, the door was ajar for me, so I stepped out and glaced around. Above me, I could still hear moaning chants and the wailing screams of those being killed.

     I wasn't alone down here though, no. From off to my side I could hear a faint shuffling noise emanating from a low-lying passage in the wall, no bigger than a door a dog might use. Something tempted me to peer into that recess but I resisted, unwilling to face the fungoid entity that oozed longingly towards my flesh. No, not's not correct, Lydia grabbed me. I was going to peer afterall, and she came and swept me out of the room and back towards the towering heights and moaning voids above.

    We ran upwards, past horrible black rooms of unknown aspect, upwards, upwards, upwards. We eventually reached the roof and found ourselves in the prescence of Sincliar and Crane. The doctor and his assistant had both been lost to the madness below. At this point, I realized that it was day again and that there was a truck parked just outside the gate. If we could reach the truck, we might be able to escape.

     The problem, of course, was that we were far too high above to ground to risk leaping off and the only other way down was to go back inside. We were stranded, alone except for the vines and miscellaneous scraps of rusted metal.

     To be honest, I must admit that I don't recall how we got down from that place or how we arrived at the base of the slope in front of the building. I do know that Tom was no longer with us, lost to some wretched fate or another. We rushed frantically up that incline, now steeper than we could ever have known in the past, hounded by the horrors behind us. Gerry Crane reached the door first and, finding it locked, began to claw and smash at the ancient wood. I joined him in this and somehow we managed to get the aperture open one last time, long enough to exit and then seal it again.

    Lydia went to start the truck and found that the keys had been left conveniently lying in the driver's side seat. I was walking towards the vehicle when Gerry turned to me, pale, and told me that the door wouldn't lock. Somehow the locks had been moved to the other side. On cue, the left panel flung open and Mr. Crane was sucked inside.

    I cannot tell you of the things that emerged then, my mind has blocked them out. I cannot tell you of what happened to Lydia, nor can I tell you where the truck came from. I cannot even tell you how I escaped the fate that the others suffered. All I can say is that I am certainly not a murderer.

Reviews

[ICE]

This story wasn't bad at all! It was really good. I wish that you would've gone into more detail about what was happening upstairs and the creatures inside. I wanted it to be way longer than it was. This story reminds me of a dream that you told me about a while ago...involving zombies and a truck. Anyways I really liked this story.