The House On Crickford Lane

 Here we are, the final day of February and the last story in my little marathon here. This was a hard one. Out of all the stories I released this month, only two were original stories I had to write within February: The Wall Between Us and this one, The House of Crickford Lane. I was concerned about both of them because I had such vague ideas. In fact, the idea for this week's story didn't even come until after I wrote The Wall Between Us. Still, with how easily that Valentine's Day story ended up coming together in the end, I was hopeful for the process on this one. Yet time kept slipping by and the words still weren't coming... 

The House on Crickford Lane is actually mined from an old story I wrote for a school project back in 10th grade. I have the original version in my old writing files and came across it while searching for inspiration in my past ideas. Upon my reread, I found that most of the story I no longer liked, but the idea of this creepy old house that lures people in was certainly usable. 

I threw a lot of ideas at the wall until I got what I have here. I felt like especially this past week, I had a vision of what I wanted, just the words weren't quite there to bring it all together. The last few days have been huge in finally seeing the whole picture. 

This is much shorter than all the other stories I've posted this month, but I'm actually really proud of that. I have a problem with stories getting away from me and keeping word count down. While that matters less when I'm writing a long form stories, short stories tend to have word count limits - limits that most stories I write can't seem to stay within. This particular story clocks in at just below 3500 words. 

With that, I give you, my last creation of the month:

Jeff only wanted a peaceful moment to himself when he escaped his visit with his parents for a walk. Yet when he passes the old house at the end of the street, his evening takes a turn for the strange. The house on Crickford Lane beckons, but what happens when one answers that call?

This contains some swearing and cannabis use.

 

            There was a face in the window.

No one lived in the old house at the end of Crickford Lane, but on the second floor there was a face in one of the windows. There were no features to be discerned through the dirty glass, only the faint outline of a figure.

It was looking at Jeff as he looked at it, he was sure of it. Then it was gone. 

Jeff shook his head. It was swimming like he had been in some sort of dream. He blinked and looked back up at the window. Empty. 

He couldn't help but chuckle at his own jumpiness. "Seeing things, Jeff. There's no one in that house, I doubt it's safe to walk around," he muttered. 

He pulled his eyes from the moldy, Victorian home, so out of place among the craftsman houses and old cabins that filled the rest of the street, and looked toward his previous course. 

Crickford Lane dead ended at the mansion, behind that was the forest, the "treeline" in Treeline Village. The forest would reach for miles, stretching as far as Goldhill and Lakewood. 

Jeff shoved his hands in his sweatshirt pocket, fiddling with the joint and lighter that were nestled there. He looked back over his shoulder toward the street. Not a soul. A good sign considering he was trying to sneak away from his visit with family to smoke. 

He had grown up in Treeline Village but had escaped to Rivergrove for the last couple years to work and get some credits from the community college. Still, he couldn't escape his mother's constant complaints that they didn't see him enough and every month (every other month if he could squeeze it) he made the two hour drive home. This didn't change the fact that his parents drove him insane. Thus his choice to make this momentary escape. 

Once he was safe under the towering Jeffrey pines, he plopped himself on the ground underneath one and lit up. The air was silent around him except for the stray sounds of some small animals, probably squirrels, moving through the treetops, jostling the branches. A crow cawed from somewhere up above. 

It was early September, but already the chill of fall was setting in. Jeff shivered as it caught up to him while he sat, watching the cloud he created float up into the pine needles. He relaxed into this spot easily, melting in with the scenery. Eventually the cold drifted away. His mind wandered lazily, not spending too much time on any one subject for him to remember what he had been thinking about. 

"Jeffrey," an unfamiliar voice sang out. It seemed to echo all around him. 

Jeff shook his head to shake away some of the stony haze. He scanned the surroundings. The forest was empty. Even the sounds of the animals had disappeared. He looked in the direction of the house. 

At the edge of the treeline was a figure. 

They were too far away for how close the voice had been; but who else was there to have spoken? 

"Jeffrey."

It still sounded too close, but the direction of the voice was clear now. The figure didn't move. They wore a dark hoodie with the hood pulled over their head, so he couldn't make out their face. Even without the sight of it, it was clear they were staring at Jeff. 

He trembled, the only movement his body seemed able to manage. The joint had gone out. He held it midair, his arm frozen. 

"Come inside, Jeffrey." The figure turned and began to walk back towards the house. Their steps were long and deliberate, making them seem to float. 

Jeff watched the figure, his mouth agape. He didn't snap out of the trance until his fingers fumbled and he dropped the half-finished joint. He reclaimed it from the pine needles and stashed it back in his pocket with the lighter for later. 

He wasn't quite sure what possessed him to stand up and walk after the stranger, but he did. The figure had disappeared, his only company now was the sound of his feet crunching over old pine needles. 

The old house loomed ahead, consuming his vision. It was taller and skinnier than any of the other houses, its windows long and rectangular. The house itself looked narrow when looking at it from the front of back, but stretched on when walking alongside it. It was two stories high, with windows high up toward the roof suggesting possible attic space. The front of the house had a covered porch that ran along the front end. The sides of the house had no porch, but were lined with windows, always with dark shades drawn. The house itself was a brownish black that was more faded paint and aging wood than any sense of what the original color of the house had been in its prime. 

Not a person living could remember a time the house hadn’t been falling apart. No one had lived there as long as any person Jeff had talked to could recall either. It had never been up for sale. Someone must have owned it, but they seemed to have no intention of doing anything with the house. 

Most people steered clear of the place. There was something about it, not just the way it was falling apart, that made people feel uncomfortable. Many individuals would cut through next to the house to get to the woods. It wasn't uncommon for them to unintentionally pick up their pace as they did so. 

Jeff had always been fascinated by the house and pestered his parents with questions until they flat out refused to talk about it anymore. When this happened, he resolved to walk past the house and stare at it as if it could answer his burning questions. Every so often he could get someone else in town to talk about it, but no one had any more answers than his parents. Most people knew of the house as the old mansion on Crickford Lane, but all they knew besides that was it had always been there, probably always would be, and it gave everyone the creeps. 

Jeff had been enthralled by the house, but never once thought about going inside. Until now. 

He was headed toward the back where like the front end of the house, there was a covered porch. This one was smaller, only expanding a couple feet to either side of the back entrance rather than the entire back end of the house and most of the covered part of it had long rotted away. The door stood open. On the floor above the door was one of those tall windows and in it stood that same hooded figure. 

"Come inside, Jeffrey," beckoned in his ear. He could feel the soft tickle of breath on his neck, but when he turned, no one was there. The figure was gone from the window. 

Jeff stopped before the decomposing steps that led to the entrance. It stood like a gaping black hole, nothing from the inside could be seen. 

"What the fuck am I doing?" Jeff whispered. 

He reached a shaking hand towards the railing on the stairs to test its strength. As he gripped the splintery wood, a feeling almost like electricity shot up his arm. His stomach somersaulted. He didn't want to go inside, shouldn't, but somehow now he felt like he truly had no choice. 

He was too calm for this. Was it the weed or… something else?

He climbed the first step. It moaned in protest but held Jeff's weight. He moved slowly, the stairs creaking more painfully with each step he took. As Jeff made it to the porch, there was a crack and a snap, as if a tree at the edge of the property had fallen. Jeff whipped around to see that the stairs had imploded.

He gawked at them, mouth hanging open. It wasn't that the wood had crumbled like he had expected when he was ascending them, but it had completely disappeared into a hole as black as the entry he faced. 

His skin went cold. Did he jump over the railing and go back or…

"Jeffrey, won't you come inside?"

He turned to face the entryway. The darkness had not changed. Jeff's heartbeat was thundering in his ears. It wasn't a conscious decision when he strode forward. He didn't breathe as he advanced. There was a tightness in the air around him, an anticipation as if the house, too, was holding its breath. 

He was a few feet inside before a squeak broke through the silence. Once again, Jeff didn't turn fast enough. He watched as the door clicked shut, and the darkness swallowed him. 

He held back a scream in his throat. He didn't want to yell out into this silence. Somehow that felt worse. He blinked his eyes but it made no difference in his sudden blindness. A weight was building up against his chest. He convinced himself to begin breathing again, taking slow deliberate breaths, counting them out until he made it to ten. 

He retraced his steps back to the door and felt around for the doorknob. He couldn't find it. Even in the dark, he couldn't have gotten that far off from the door yet… the wall was completely smooth, he couldn't find the frame of the door let alone the knob. 

Something about the wall was wrong. At first it felt like wood, but the longer he tried to feel out the door, the more he noticed how soft it was becoming, how his fingers could sink in ever so slightly, like touching a pillowed surface. It felt warm, almost sticky…

Jeff jumped back from the wall, wiping his hands on his pants. He could feel a sweat on his brow, yet he was shivering. He hadn't stopped rubbing his hands against his pants. It was all he seemed able to do. The darkness was still thick around him. He tried to wave one of his hands in front of his face, but it was no use. He was as good as blind. 

He tried to focus on his remaining senses. There were no sounds but his own. Any subtle noises the house could have been making, in fact, were drowned out by the thundering of his own heartbeat. The smell was strong. A heavy, musty stench that hung in the air. He could taste it when he breathed, making him gag. 

"I have to get out of here," he wheezed. 

A sound cut through the darkness, a hoarse chuckle that ended in a cough. 

"It's already too late. There is no out," croaked from Jeff's left. It was not the same voice that had brought him to the house. 

Jeff turned to the source even though he knew he wouldn't be able to see it. His entire body vibrated with the force of his heartbeat. He bit his tongue as he silently debated if he wanted to engage. 

From the same direction as the voice came a ripping, as if a newspaper were being torn in half. If it really was paper, it was a large continuous sheet that was being mutilated. It grated at Jeff's ears, making him cringe and he released a sigh of relief when the sound stopped a moment later. His calm was short lived as it was replaced by a slow shuffle that scraped across the old floor. It sounded almost as if that paper was now being dragged along. 

Jeff’s muscles tensed, his limbs going rigid. He wanted to back away from the advancing sound but instead was glued to the spot. 

“W-Who are you?” he choked. 

A hand clenched down on his arm, making him jump. This time he did yell out. He couldn’t help himself. The grip wasn’t firm. Jeff could have easily pulled himself out of it had he been able to move.  

“It’s been too long for me to know who I was anymore.” The voice was scratchy, barely more than a whisper. Jeff guessed it was not used to speaking. 

“What is this place?” Jeff breathed. 

There was that laugh-cough again, longer this time. “That is the better question. Much like me, it’s been here so long, that what it was before is uncertain. As for now… it is the house, and it needs to feed.”

Jeff’s mouth went dry. The flavor of that rotten air remained on his parched tongue. “...feed?” 

“It takes a long time. It doesn’t need a lot at once. A single person will do it for many years. It sucks you dry until you are no more than the layers of dust on the floor.” It had to stop as it choked, no merriment mixed in with the sound this time. “What’s left of me is little more than wallpaper stuck to the wall.” 

And you’re next, Jeff assured himself. Shit, shit, shit! Why did I come in here? It had been like a trance since the moment he saw the mysterious figure - the lure the house had sent out to reel him in. It had worked, hadn’t it? Classic horror movie move. The audience would have been screaming don’t go in there the whole time, he chided himself. For all the calm of his thoughts, his body trembled. All I wanted was to relax and smoke a joint. 

The contents of his pocket came back to his memory in a moment of inspiration and his hand shot into it and returned holding the lighter. His thumb felt for the familiar ridges of the flint wheel, pressing hard when it did and igniting the small flame. The normally weak light burned like a sudden explosion in his eyes so used to the blackness. 

When his eyes adjusted, Jeff could make out the head and torso of his companion. Barely shorter than himself, it had a human-like figure with vague features of a face, but that’s all they were. It was the same color from head to toe - an ashy gray not unlike what would be cleaned out of a fireplace. It had no hair on its head, yet the skin on it, which seemed to be flaking, made it seem as if it were covered in wispy hairs at first. In fact, all of its skin was flaking up, but it looked less like skin and more like paper. That’s what it looked like, a paper-person. The most human part about it was its eyes. In stark contrast to the rest of its body that was a sketch of a person, the eyes had detail enough to make out pupils and irises still shot with hints of blue amidst the grey. Those eyes were focused on the tiny flame in awe. 

The lighter was getting hot and as it scorched Jeff’s finger, he yelped and nearly dropped it. He managed to grasp around the plastic end of it before it slipped entirely from his hand. He gave it another moment before he tried to light it again. When he did, his companion seemed no less enthralled. 

It looked at Jeff, making eye contact. “You might be able to do it.”

“Do what?”

The paper-person pressed closer into Jeff, its mouth nearly in his ear as it gasped, “Light it all on fire.” 

“What?” Jeff snapped louder than he intended. He sucked in his breath with a hiss, looking around as if he expected something to appear out of the darkness. When nothing did, he let the lighter go out before it burned him this time. 

A minute later he was once again looking into the paper-person’s eyes, its face as earnest as the faint features could manage. 

“What?” Jeff repeated, quieter this time. 

Instead of answering, it reached out, plunging its finger’s into the flame. Jeff’s thumb slipped off the lighter and he pulled his arm back, but it was already too late. The flames were crawling up the paper-person’s arm. They backed away from Jeff, but otherwise didn’t seem to notice. 

“Run while you still can.”

“But the door is gone!” Jeff cried as the flames engulfed the paper-person’s torso. Jeff turned to his right and did a double take. The door had returned, it’s position lit up by the beacon that was the flaming entity. It was further down the wall than it should have been, but Jeff didn’t focus on that. There was a way out.

He looked back to the paper-person. Barely an outline of its former figure was left. Just as Jeff laid eyes on it, it fell backwards, and the floorboards lit up like the dry kindling they were. The room was revealed in the new light. It was nothing more than a long rectangular room with four walls, not even a stairway, no doorways to other rooms. If the second floor actually existed, there was no clear way to get there from here. 

Jeff’s eyes didn’t linger on the details - or lack of them - for long. He dashed for the door, feeling the heat of the flames as they crept up faster behind him, eating the room. The walls looked like wood at first glance, but as the light grew brighter, the brown faded into a reddish color, oozing with a sticky clear slime. The walls seemed to breathe in and out. With the roar of the fire behind him came a cracking moan that had to have been the house itself, crying out in protest. 

His hand was reaching out for the knob when he was still a foot away. He wrenched open the door without a moment's hesitation, nearly tearing it off its hinges. He didn’t bother to check if the steps were back or not but gave himself a running start before throwing himself what he hoped would be enough of a distance to clear them either way. He hit the ground hard on his hands and knees, landing unbalanced and tumbling over onto his back. His head bounced off the packed-down dirt once and everything went black. 

***

Jeff blinked open his eyes to see cotton candy clouds of light pink and orange smeared against the pale fading blue of the sky as the sunset hit its peak. He sat up, gripping at his forehead as he felt the world spin. He leaned back over on himself, waiting for his balance to return. His stomach groaned and he nearly threw up before the wave passed. 

It was then that his experience returned to him. 

The house luring him in. The blindness. The paper-person. The fire. 

The fire. 

He shot up, ignoring the new wave of spins. The world righted itself and the house swam into focus in front of him. 

It was as it had always been. Not even a tendril of smoke. No sign of anything. 

“No…”

Jeff pulled his arm to his face, giving himself a noseful of his sweatshirt. He couldn’t be imagining the bite of campfire smell that greeted him. He held out his palm and exhaled into it, smelling back his own breath. It was faint, but there was that decaying stench. When he really concentrated it was there in the back of his throat. But the house…

He pushed himself to his feet, marching up to the base of the back steps. The back door was shut tight. The window above it was empty. 

A breeze pushed past him, carrying with it a hint of smoke from the house.

Jeff’s mouth twitched and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I know what I saw.” 

“Go home, Jeffrey.” 

Jeff’s gaze cut back to the window to catch a flash of a figure before it was gone as fast as it had appeared. His eyes narrowed at the empty space. “You may still be standing, but I won this time. And I’m not finished. Don’t forget that.” 

He smirked and turned his back on the mansion. He shoved his hands in his pocket and discovered that he had managed to slip his lighter back in with the half-finished joint somehow. He smiled as he pulled the two items out and stared at them in the palm of his hand. After a moment, he laughed and turned back to the house. He walked back up to the porch and sat down against the bottom step, leaning his back against it. There was a sound, a low groan from somewhere inside the house, but he ignored it as he lit up the joint. He watched the last of the light disappear as he blew smoke rings into the sky. 

END  

***

This is only the beginning for Jeff. From here on out, he finds himself on a hunt to find the supernatural in the area and learn its secrets... His biggest triumph, of course, is his discovery regarding Cloud's Rest, the entire town that disappeared without a trace... but that's a story for another time.

And there you have it, the finale to my February Short Story Adventure!

Thanks for coming along with me and reading my words! This is only the end for now... Zone-E is still on the way, and I have some other possible ideas brewing for some more short story blasts down the line. 

Within this upcoming week, I have a special announcement in regards to this month's stories - so stay tuned for that!