My First ‘Proper’ Horror Story

Wednesday is about books. And writing. Today it’s my writing. My first ever horror short story, written about two weeks ago. It’s supposed to be dark. Weird. And a bit creepy. How’d I do?

Hi, from holiday. Melbourne is a good time, although I’m actually – for the most part – in Mt. Eliza, a brief hoon around the Mornington shops yesterday too, that sort of thing. But so lucky to just be on holiday. I’ve been reading up a storm, and doing a tiny bit of writing. And a lot of thinking about writing. Which – let me tell you, for sure – is writing.

I’ve been thinking about writing horror short stories for the longest time. And it’s hard to then get the pen on the paper making those shapes. Such a daunting task. It’s all been covered before. Better writers absolutely nailing it. So what do you do? Well, you have a go…

And that’s what I’ve done. So I wanted to share with you my first ever ‘proper’ horror story. Which is to say this is a full length short story. I’ve written horror poems, prose poems and micro fictions. But this is an actual story. One I dreamed up a week or so ago with the assistance of finding an old photograph negative in a drawer. That was the seed. So, let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy this. And I hope to be able to write a few more. Maybe add another one to the pile while on holiday…

Stumbling In

Mark Robertson needed this holiday. He’d finished the writing project two days earlier and had been in a daze ever since. The two hour drive up the coast was just enough to start to unwind and he was thrilled about the last-minute cancellation that had seen him bumped up the waiting list for the Airbnb. The call arriving just a night earlier, telling him he was in. The instructions were all clear about where to find the key to the main house and there was a combination lock on the shed – weirdly it was the exact same set of numbers that titled his favourite Van Halen album, so he saw that as a brilliant sign. Not really a sign at all, not really anything he could even explain to anyone, just absolutely a bonus. Something he could never forget even if he tried.

As soon as he arrived, the Mid Century Modern Villa – that’s what it was called, its capital letters making the description a title – felt warm, familiar, as if he’d been there before. It reminded him of a place owned by one of his granddad’s friends, or some distant relative – you know a great uncle or third cousin to his mother or something like that. One of those people that’s connected, but not really. You meet them once, then hear about their funeral sometime down the track when you’re older, and you have to squint to recognise yourself as any connection at all.

Anyway, the place was cool – but it was starting to feel eerie how similar-seeming it all was. He walked down the corridor and got a nostalgic flash that there was probably an old gramophone in the room down the end, it would be sitting on a round table with some pink frosted tumblers out in front of it. He laughed at this weird prediction, thinking about how he was setting up a circuit-breaker; this would be wrong – obviously – and would reset the weird feeling that he’d been here before.

And then, a prickling sensation and a white-hot flash as he made it through the end door to discover a scene identical to what he’d just imagined. There on the round table, the frosted pink glasses, the gramophone, a whirring noise as the wheel of it was spinning – but no platter there for the thick needle to scratch into. Just the round and round of the wheel. Which made Mark instantly feel strange, since it was a proper gramophone. You had to hand-crank the handle. It had a run time, it couldn’t automatically stay on.

Suddenly, in this moment, he was literary detective, and myth-buster. He wasn’t a paranoid person that needed fresh air, and possibly a new place to stay. He was calmly curious. The little beads of sweat that had prickled were all cooling and he was laughing at the weirdness of this whole situation. This was obviously a replica, plugged in perhaps. So he pushed the table out just a crack and reached down to look for a plug.  

But what he found, instead, was a makeshift envelope of two pieces of thick cardboard heavily taped together. It was on the floor, as if it lived on the table and had been bumped down onto the ground. Was it knocked down there by the last guest, someone that freaked out about the gramophone too? Mark laughed a little to himself. But the fear was creeping back in as he chuckled.

He bent down, swooped up the card. And sharp prickles hit around his wrists and behind his eyes.

It had his name on it and an address from 15 years ago. A place he had lived at, a place he had owned. But not where he lived now. Caught in this moment, he took the cardboard and tried to pry it open but it was taped tight. The tape was fresh too, so he found a knife and plunged between the two pieces to tear them open.

A single photograph negative, four frames – the reversed colours hard to make out at all, even when he held it up to the light. But in the third image there was definitely a figure. A person. But who was it? And why had he been sent this? Also, when was he sent this? And why was it here, and now?

This odd discovery would have ordinarily been probably nothing. But this wasn’t just something he’d found tidying up at home. This was in a place he hadn’t been before – despite some nagging feeling of a possible and passing familiarity. So all Mark could do was fixate on the apparent here and now of it, the why and where of it, the how and when of it.

Miranda hadn’t spoken to him for years. And that surely wasn’t her in the photo anyway. Far too slight. But she had lived in that exact postcode that was there on the back piece of card. Though it definitely wasn’t her handwriting. He knew that for certain. Though to say he was certain now about anything was, well, it was off the mark.

Straight out the door, with his keys, and Mark decided to seek out a photo developer, not as easy to find as they used to be, particularly not in this tiny town. But there had to be one. And, as much as anything, it was good to be not in that house so he could try and process the weirdness of what was unfolding, the finding of something with his name and address, in a house he instantly recognised, but was also sure he had never been in – apart from anything else, his sorta-memory of the inside of that house wasn’t tied to that actual location; he was thinking of a house from his childhood. That house was four hours on from here. So. What. The. Actual. Fuck.

He found a photo place where the one-hour service was still promised, but they stretched it out to nearly three. He was nervous opening the new envelope. Three of the images were blurred, and meaningless. They looked like vague landscapes, places Mark never knew, would never know…

But that third shot in from the left on the negative was a person. Absolutely not Miranda. But who?

Mark stared and stared, his coffee gone cold and then he absently tasted it anyway and almost got a fright by how ‘off’ it was, a texture of damp socks.

Who was she?

Mark can’t stay in this place, but he can’t just drive home – to go home would be to return to everything he was wanting to get away from. His house in disarray after the focus on his work over the last two months. He decides to just sleep in his car; he’ll go back to the Airbnb for a look in the cold light of day, but it’s all darkening now, to match his mood.

Dark dreams as he wrestles for comfort against himself in the car. All weirdly told in a type of sepia that nearly matched the tonal qualities of the image in the negative. A blurry haze of a past world and Mark stumbling into frame. Now he had that bloody Suzi Quattro song in his head too, speaking of Stumbling In. He woke to find himself laughing, a silly chuckle at the reappearance in his mind of a song he almost never thought about. Well, not for years.

It’s not quite 7am but there’s enough light in the day so it’s back up the road to search through the house. He had left the door wide open when he gapped it the previous afternoon. So it’s a very careful first few steps as he walks in calling out ‘hello’ and ‘hello’ to the emptiness. All is fine, well, not fine obviously – but the weirdness remains untouched.

The gramophone has stopped spinning. But in the cold light of day the house has no spook to it at all. The only weird thing is what has happened. What is currently happening is fine. Just a guy creeping through a house that is perfectly preserved as a living artefact of the 1960s. Round tables and skinny chairs, oval picture frames and tessellations on the carpet.

Mark sinks down into a mustard couch, its cushions no longer plump at all. And he holds the negative up in that light. There’s no one in the third image at all now. She’s gone. He laughs, thinking that he’s imagined this entirely. Grabs for the developed photos and sifts through the first couple of blurred, blank images to find the third shot is also missing the figure he was sure was there yesterday.

This is weird. But weirdly somehow it is newly assuring. It wasn’t a long drive, but it had arrived at the end of a long day, which was the full stop on a long week of too much work. The end of a paragraph of months of preparation and anxiety and stress and struggle.

It is now seeming possible that some form of sleep deprivation has allowed him to imagine so much of this. Maybe the gramophone wasn’t even spinning ever? Maybe he didn’t see anyone in the frame. Just shadows. Just light. But it was still weird that his name and old address was on that card, and that he found it in a house he was in for the first time; weirder to think about how the house didn’t quite feel like a first time too.

Mark’s phone starts ringing with an unlisted number. He’s on edge and then the voice, disguised in robot slurs, tells him that they know the package has been received.

Mark shouts, What the fuck is this? Who is this?

Robot-slur says, Mark, this is Miranda’s killer. That’s right. Miranda’s killer…

The words hang. And Mark’s mind flickers and there’s an image of Miranda’s body, on a beach, cold and lifeless, naked, puncture wounds and bruises. He howls as if in pain. He screams. Throws the phone at the wall.

He curls into himself on the couch, grabs the blanket from the armchair beside him and rocks into a second sleep.

A few hours later there are police in the room in that Airbnb. They are dusting. They are photographing. They are writing notes on pads and typing into phones. They are collecting what they can.

Mark is shaking and shivering with four photographs in his hand. A detective is telling him that they’ll be able to talk this through at the station. And in the pictures he now sees no blurriness, it’s somehow all clear. There is a photo of a hammer. Blood smeared across its head and handle. And there’s a photo of the beach – its tide out, the sun shining in, glorious. There’s a photo of Miranda, never more beautiful. Her smile telling all that she is alive. She is happy. They are happy. For her smile could only really be for the photographer. Anyone might want to bask in it, but the knowledge is clear that this was only ever for one person.

And then there’s one more photo. It’s Mark. His grin sickening. An early, primitive selfie. A slight thumb-mark obscuring one corner of the frame. Blood on his thumbprint. Blood on his teeth in the smile. Blood that wasn’t his. For his own could never taste so sweet.

He is taken to the police car outside, and they have started digging up the lawn of the Airbnb. Its address the same as what is written on the card with the photos. The gramophone whirring again in the room down the hall. But the frosted pink tumblers are not there. Instead there is blood and guts and bits and pieces of the beautiful smiling person from the photograph. Her blood on the wall, her blood on the carpet, her blood on the wheel that spins and whirs. Suzi Quatro and Chris Norman singing that song.

Our love is alive/And so we begin. Foolishly laying our hearts on the table/Stumbling in…