The Wooden Man

A man rents a house with a strange history to conduct an experiment into infrasound. When he uncovers an old carving buried in the garden, his mind begins to play tricks with him...

When I was young, I knew a man who believed all old things had memories. He told me, when I was but a child and knew not of the world, that antiquities and age-old houses held recollections of people who had seen and touched them. However, as I tell of the horror that befell me last summer, I am all too aware that I did not understand him. Yet I am not mad, as some will surely claim me to be. For that superstitious gentleman was my own grandfather, and he created in my then childish mind a desire to discover those old things that he spoke of, and to feel their residual memories for myself.

Therefore, when I found that the 'death house' I had previously read of was available for immediate rent, I began at once to pack my suitcases, and dwelt not upon the particulars of the advertisement. For many months I had wished to move from my apartment, to live in a place where my research could flourish without interruptions from the outside world. So, after sensing the opportunity had finally arrived, I did not hesitate to contact the landlord and arrange a viewing of that storied abode.

I had read about places like that house before. Places where people had mysteriously died, or where strings of people had vanished entirely, never to be seen or heard from again. They were places where old superstition was strong, where rooms in large houses were bricked up and forgotten, where old grudges were thought to still linger in time, growing wrathful and envious to those who disturbed them.

The 'death house', of which the landlord was shocked that I desired to rent from him, was home to a similar and loathsome history. It was featured in a newspaper long ago, and I dug the article from my box of cuttings to refresh myself of it's dreary story. The small house had stood empty for a number of years, before it's sale at auction to a wealthy developer. Apparently, locals had warned him that the house was unlucky, and aged rumours began once more to surface on the lips of residents on nearby streets.

Nevertheless, the developer soon had the house up for rent, and it was not long until a young family were living there. But barely a few mundane weeks had passed when the things those old locals had whispered about became a monstrous reality. The young family were found, according to the article, each laying dead within their beds, the blankets still around them as if simply sleeping. No struggle was detected within the house, and post mortems found no drugs or signs of foul play. It was said they had all suffered from collective heart failure, and were each found dead on the same spring morning, having gone to bed and never woken up.

I was unaware if any other inhabitants had lived in the house since the article was written, but when I arrived on the day of my move, it appeared to have been stood empty for years. Tall grass reached so high as to touch the old windows, and a creeping ivy had scaled the brickwork to reach the tiled, lichen stained roof. To look at, the house was peculiar and somewhat squat shaped. The windows appeared to be thin and crouching, and the roof was leaning forward towards the small garden, as if the whole place stooped with arthritic discomfort. By the front door, a wooden sign was attached to the crumbling red bricks, displaying the number and name of the house. '173. Amberlea'.

The most amazing thing about the house however, was that upon walking into it's musty hallway, I discovered it to be fully furnished. Usually, such abandoned properties were literally empty, their contents sold to house clearance firms and sold off at auction for a fraction of their worth. Yet as I walked through the house of which I'd chosen to live in, I found each room to be replete with the décor of any occupied family home. It was mouldy, of course, and a heavy scent of dampness clung to the peeling wallpaper, but each room was filled with ornaments and furniture which had stood untouched for a great many year.

An electric fireplace crouched in the centre of the living room, and above it a pair of swordfish tongues were hung on the wall at each side of a timeworn painting. There were also a number of books and vases, some of which still holding the withered remains of what were once living flowers and plants. There were even a number of children’s toys; plastic bricks and painted trains, scattered amongst thick layers of dust on the ugly carpet near to the fireplace.

Yet the thing which fascinated me the most was a dark oak cabinet in the master bedroom. Crammed with small and delicate antiques, it represented decades worth of collecting, now all but forgotten in the moth-eaten old house. I wondered if they had belonged to the family, of whom I had read about in the article, and that the house had retained it's furnishings in the exact same places that the family had left them. Indeed, although I knew not what effect the mildewed air was having upon my consciousness, there seemed to exist a hushed, somewhat anxious quality to the things in the house, as if they had frozen with baited breath in expectation of the family's return.

As I had predicted, it was the perfect place for me to work on my research. I had examined for many years the qualities of infrasound, and specifically it's effects on human cognizance and physical health. Infrasound is a word given to sounds which are below our human range of hearing, or to be specific, below that of 20hz. Such sounds often arise from natural sources, such as the murmuring of restless oceans, the cascade of a waterfall or violent storm, or from large avalanches and earthquakes. Men of science have claimed that infrasound can have profound and devastating effects on us, even though we are unable to detect the sound itself. Instead, they claim that it's effects can be 'felt' within us, with experiences ranging from the simple, such as nausea and dizziness, to the sinister, like grotesque hallucinations and sudden terror, or unknowable eyes felt to be watching from empty spaces and darkened corners.

But it was infrasound at 7hz which truly caught my imagination. Matching the frequency of certain brain rhythms, the sound is believed to cause bodily organs to resonate with it's deadly timbre, thus causing the death of anybody it touches. It was this which enthralled me about the 'death house', and I found myself wondering if it had been built on the site of a natural infrasound source. After all, I had previously researched cases of ghost ships, where silent vessels are found in the seas, their crew all dead or missing completely. Could it not be that those alien waves had released that baneful infrasound rhythm, thus driving the crew to lose their minds, or indeed, stopping each of their hearts in unison?

I dared not say if this was to blame for the house that I now lived alone within, but I will confess as to feeling something when the sun had long left the street in darkness. For the first few nights, I would wake from hideous dreams to sounds which seemed to be coming from the walls themselves, and I swear that I heard my own name being called from cold drafts which whispered beneath my door.

Furthermore, on two occasions I was woke in the night by the unmistakeable babble of people talking. When I first heard it, I dismissed it as coming from the street outside, and imagined it to be nothing more than a passing drunkard or arguing neighbours. Yet on the second night that I woke to this sound, it was clear to me that it was in fact coming from the room beneath the place where I slept. It sounded as if a whole party of people were chattering endlessly below my bedroom, although I could not make out what they were saying. Of course, when I left my bedroom and descended the steep staircase to investigate, the house was empty and the mumbling noises ceased as I approached the bottom of the stairs.

I had lived there a week when I finally removed many of the items that were furnishing the house. The landlord confirmed that he had seldom been in there, and asked me temporarily to store any unwanted things in the garage outside. Before long, I had the house decorated only in things that I had brought with me from my previous dwelling, although I admit to keeping the cabinet of antiques for my own enjoyment.

I also decided, once I had settled into the house as well as could be expected, to clean up both the small front garden and larger, muddy grass at the back. Even so, I will not pretend that I felt comfortable in the house, and it's odd shape and terrible history created about it a sensation of uncertainty. It also helped not that my night-time disturbances failed to lessen as I tried to make the house my own. Still, I had chosen to live there, and it was my duty to look after the place.

One day, whilst digging to plant some summer flowers I'd bought, I chanced to discover a metal box, rusted and buried in shallow earth beneath the grass in the rear garden. An aged padlock was holding it closed, of which a simple strike with my gardening spade was enough to break it and free the latch. Inside was an African carving of a man, cut from a dark and polished wood, holding two large jugs in each of his hands.

I felt somehow unnerved when I caught sight of it, and although nothing about the carving was shocking, I sensed in some way that the thing was unpleasant. It depicted a man in a loin cloth garment, his hair extending vertically above him in a curled and seemingly tribal fashion. The jugs in his hands, of which he held on level with his ornate face, were hollow and decorated with a indented ring pattern. To touch, the smooth wood felt heavy yet unusually silken, and although there was no way of telling it's age, it appeared to be something considerably old.

Things began to grow strange when I took it into the house. Almost at once I felt a noticeable chill, and even though the day outside was warm with sunlight, the house felt uncommonly cold when I walked in. Either way, I put the African carving beside the fireplace, and although I did not wish to keep it for long, I was compelled to understand just what it was that I found to be so repellent about it.

Later that evening, I studied the carving with my usual scrutiny, opening antique books on African art and examining the piece for any signs of it's heritage. Somehow though, whenever I held the thing in my hands, I felt an unusual urge to put it back down. Even when I placed it beside the fireplace, it seemed almost to pulse with some unseen sentience, and for the first time I experienced those things that I researched; those sensations of movement in empty places, of eyes upon me from within the house. I took this as a sign of my earlier theory, and assumed that my feelings were due to infrasound, rising through the floorboards and piercing my mind from some abysmal, hoary space below the earth.

That night, the first I'd spent in the house with that loathsome carving, was the most sleepless I had yet experienced. I had previously taken a large dose of pain killers, finding my head to be violently pounding and not letting up even as I tried to sleep. By the time the noises had begun downstairs, I had barely achieved a few minutes of sleep, for the cutting sting weighing down my head. Even when I did eventually drift off, I was woken immediately by outlandish shadows, mimicking strange forms and standing in the gloom at the foot of my bed. Aberrant blue lights danced in space beneath my door, and I felt a distinct and depressing pressure that seemed to crush the dry air in the unlit bedroom.

By morning, when I had at last fallen into unhappy sleep, I woke at a late hour with fresh memories of odd dreams regarding my own childhood. I saw my grandfather, who led me into a cellar filled with ageing artefacts of stone and marble. At the back of the room, he presented me with a grotesque sculpture, displaying an obese and naked caricature, with swollen breasts below an elongated neck, and a face which spoke of abnormal discomfort and forced me to turn away from it. My grandfather said that he had given it to my mother, and although it was now subject to rot and woodworm, it had at one time been extremely ornate. He said that it was a fertility carving, and it inhabited one of those wakeful spirits that he believed were trapped in the old things he kept.

The dream, as well as the near sleepless night before it, compelled my mind towards the African carving, and how somehow I felt there existed a mood, an uncomfortable spirit about the item. I wondered if it had been a tribal fetish; a statue believed to hold power or soul, and thus worshipped by an old and unheard of people in the dense jungles of Africa.

Even if not, the things which happened within the house seemed to grow in strength when the carving was present. On more than one occasion when I left the house, I returned to find things had been interfered with, such as ornaments having toppled from their shelves, or small things such as pens having disappeared. Twice when I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, I found that glass and china in the antique cupboard had moved, and I'm sure I saw some new items appear which were previously not in the cabinet at all. I swear that I saw the carving move as well, although it's possible that I had moved it myself, and somehow my eyes had deceived my own memory.

Either way, I was determined to find out what was happening to me. The weather forecast stated that a thunderous storm was due to hit the area at night, and I took it as the perfect catalyst to up the ante on my already faltering research. Storms, after all, produce infrasound, and if my previous theories were correct, the ground beneath the death house did also. Therefore, if the storm arrived as per the forecast, I would later be surrounded entirely in infrasound, and able to feel at last for myself the effects of that which had for so long fascinated me.

As the first drops of rain began to pelt at the windows, I began to set up a rough experiment which dealt with both the infrasound and the African carving. Daylight had already left the sky, though I had left the curtains purposely open as to catch better sights of the coming storm. In the middle of the living room, I had placed down the carving onto the carpet, and surrounded it in a circle of white candles. The reason for this was that should my mind be affected by the strong infrasound, I would notice delusions or hallucinations as well as a heightening of nervous emotion. Hence, the candles in the dark would aid my eyes into seeing strange things which were not there, and the carving, which already unsettled me for reasons unknown, would accelerate any negative sensations that the infrasound created within.

Men of simpler minds might think me mad for attempting an experiment such as I did, and I will confess that yes, I did hesitate to tempt that unpleasantness which dwelt with me in the sullen old house. My mind however pondered on endless curiosity, and although I knew that the night could have ended in madness, I was willing to experience it, if it meant that afterwards I would understand.

The rain built up and the first echoes of thunder started to make their way towards me. By this time, I had prepared myself by putting on a CD of binaural, neural rhythms. Such hypnotic sounds were thought to change the usually subconscious patterns of our brain, and thus allow me to deepen my consciousness to a level between that of waking and sleeping. I had also switched off the main light in the room, leaving only the candles surrounding the carving to cast unearthly shadows around the so called death house. Finally, to complete this strange thing of which I attempted, I had tied open the front and back doors of the house, thus allowing the thunder and rain to enter, and blow in those winds infused with infrasound.

When lightning struck, thus momentarily lighting the room in a dim blue flash of natural awe, I am sure that I saw those hideous shadows joining together in some awful dance. I sat on the sofa, staring at them and expecting them all to gather around and consume me completely. Yet my vision always returned to the carving, flickering in the bright gleam of the candles, it's fearful essence becoming animated. Merely glancing at it brought down shivers within me, and more than once I nearly abandoned the experiment, thinking I'd seen it change in shape and turn into something even more unmentionable.

Strong winds blew through the corridors of the house. Under the door they whistled and clamoured, shaking the very door frames as they tried to force their way into the living room. It sounded as if I was sharing the house with some starving and untamed animal, and as I heard things fall and smash with the wind, I could imagine it hunting out there for new prey.

Yet before I knew it, the combination of the candle light and mesmeric music had lulled me into a trance. I could see the shadows all circling the carving, as if dancing to some monotonous chant and building towards an abominable climax. The thunder became as a beating drum, and I'm certain I heard amid the music the distant mumble of tribal mantras. Outside the door things battered and knocked, and the windows rattled like hurtful creatures were scratching and clawing to burrow inside.

I am unaware of whether I fell to sleep, or whether the trance I had fallen into had taken me to untapped levels of hypnosis, but I woke with a horrible, startling jump and was sure that the house was falling around me. I then realised that the door had blown open, and the shrieking winds had forced their way inside, extinguishing the candles that I had lit. In loathsome darkness I clambered forward, feeling the bitter gusts on my skin and aware of my things blowing around in the room.

When I reached the light switch however, I turned to find the circle of candles empty. For a second I stood in what I assumed was shock, before jumping forward and frantically searching. At first I imagined it too had blown over when the door was burst open by the storm, and that I would find it below the papers and books which had also toppled from their shelves. As I calmed down however, I realised that the candles themselves were untouched, making it impossible for the damnable thing to have fallen down without breaking the circle. Somehow then, during that time of which I slipped out of consciousness, the African carving had vanished completely.

Before I had time to think of what madness had entered the house whilst I had slept, I heard some kind of unearthly calling, piercing my dull head which throbbed with the effects of the hypnosis CD. It was something carried on the raining wind, like a shuddering voice that our human ears were never supposed to understand. It called my name, the same way that the house did on my first night spent there. It's pitch was odd, and it was not a voice in the usual sense, but more of a whistling or murmuring sound that entered the ears with shiversome discomfort. Somehow however, I felt compelled to follow in the direction that the noise was coming from.

I staggered through the kitchen towards it, where rain had entered the house from the open back door, collecting in pools on the old tiled floor, amongst pots and pans that had blown from their shelves. I thought I saw those shadows beside the window too, but as I stood by the door and looked into the garden, all I could make out was a saturated nightfall. Soon though, I noticed that the garage door was open, and to my surprise the light inside was switched on. I could not remember having done this earlier, and although I was feeling strongly disoriented, I could have sworn I had not been in there all day.

Rain hammered my skin as I walked to the garage, and within mere seconds my clothing was drenched and an unkind coldness fell across my body. For some reason I felt that someone was behind me, and yet oddly I did not dare to turn around, imagining the house itself to be breathing, and it's windows ablaze with shameful eyes that stared at me as I trudged through the garden.

When I arrived at the garage door, I still do not know what really happened, or even if I was truly awake and not simply projecting my nightmares into that flickering reality. For I saw, sitting on one of the chairs I had put there, an elderly man with a carrier bag in his hands, peering at me with such an obscene smile that I felt my chest tighten in repulsion. There was something discernibly wrong about him, for his shocking face looked almost imitation, like a plastic doll or a crude waxwork. Long white hair hung and obscured his features, and his weight was of such a sickly thinness that he filled me with a nauseous sensation to look at.

For an unknown number of seconds I stood there, finding myself unable to shout or move towards the sickly figure. Rain pelted at my back, trickling through my clothes onto my skin, and wind smashed the door against the brick wall with a hideous, echoing clatter. But still I found myself frozen before him, and still he sat with that terrible smile which seemed to be superimposed on his face.

I soon realised that the look in his eyes was one I knew well from long ago. I knew then that the man resembled my grandfather, though his appearance was disfigured beyond anything that I would dare to even name as human. It looked like a cruel imitation of a man, a disgusting recreation of someone I knew, and at one time had greatly respected.

When I finally managed to convince myself into taking a step towards the figure, the sickly smile pressed onto his face dropped at once into a sombre frown. I paused again, realising that I did not know if the thing in front of me was real or imagined.

As I held onto that unsettling thought, the old man reached into the bag he was holding, and took hold of something in his hand which at first he hesitated to show to me. Eventually though, he took from the bag that repellent carving, and showed it to me as his smile returned, like he was taunting me with the very item which had brought my mind to that unknown place. I backed away, and as I did he shook and waved the thing at me, like he knew that I found it so threatening to look at, and so took a great pleasure in forcing it upon me. I remember I tried to shout out to the man, but my body had returned to some primal emotion, and all the muscles within me wanted only to run far away from that place.

Therefore, without thought I turned from that pestiferous figure and set my eyes on the distant houses and roadways. Although I'm sure as I did I heard him move behind me, approaching me with a maddening speed that was the opposite to his sickened appearance. Within seconds, I swear I could feel his cold, wet fingers touching my back, the sensation not removed from the world of nightmares. I felt at once that I could not escape from that creature who's touch was from neither man nor beast.

Apparently, a neighbour discovered me collapsed in the garden whilst passing in the late hours of the next morning. I was swiftly taken to a large hospital where my first memories were confusion and sickness. They later told me that I'd suffered from a heart attack, and the way they described it made me realise that I was lucky to have survived at all. I was soon given rather uncomfortable tests, and asked scores of questions which each resulted in the same shaking of doctor's heads. My lifestyle, they said, was in no way suggestive of such complaints, and there was no reason why I should have had such an attack without prior warning.

As soon as I was released from the hospital, I arranged a move to a new apartment far away from that awful death house. A year has now passed since my last night there, and my routine heart check ups have all came back that I am once more in a state of good health. Yet my nights have not yet returned to normality, and I still awaken with unpleasant dreams of the African carving and the old house itself. For a year I have strived to find an explanation for those unreal things which haunted me there, but I have reached a stalemate in my research. Were my experiences truly due to infrasound, or was my grandfather correct all those years ago? Perhaps old things really do have memories, and those memories can be seen by all who provoke whatever unseen consciousness lies dormant within them.

Author's Note

This story is about 10 years old, could do with a bit of tidying up, originally written as an submission for a Weird Tales competetion but I didn't submit it.

Reviews

[RainingKate]

I read the entire thing out loud to myself. I will say, I haven't done horror reading in awhile and I was very impressed at this story. The idea of infrasound has inspired my own dark-telling's. I do have to ask though, where was this story born? How did you shape it to be as amazing as it is? What was your inspiration?

[Mark Robinson]

Thank you for reading it! I actually got the idea for part of this story from an event in my old childhood when my dad brough home a carving (the one in the story) which frightended me so much he had to get rid of it right away! The rest I pretty much just imagined, but may have been reading about infrasound at the time, I can't quite remember. Thank you for leaving a review, much appreciated!