From Between Worlds by Brendon Nutt (best ereader under 100 txt) 📕

“Fuck you, you stupid brain…” I turned around and scanned the area. It was weirdly quiet, well, almost quiet. There were faint sounds coming from up ahead in the living room, they sounded muffled, muted, as if they were further off in the distance than just a couple of feet away. Something else was in the background, it was this low rhythmic *whump…. whump….whump*

This slow, bassy heartbeat sound that surrounded and followed me. As I concentrated on it, it got louder, started to creep into the back of my head and thudding its way forward. It felt like it was trying to pound through my skull and reach my eyes.

I gave a shake of my head and moved forward, taking note that the sound drifted away as I did so. The noise from the living room became clearer as I got closer. I could hear voices, a few of them, I couldn’t make out words, they were distorted and twisted. I took in a breath and peeked around the wall where the room opened up and the light and shape of a tube set TV stared back, the light from it was bright, but the overpowering blue glow in the air kept it from projecting far. I couldn’t make out was on the television, just the light and various colored moving shapes. In the corner of my view there was sudden movement. I looked toward it and sitting on the recliner facing the screen was a familiar presence. My mother.

She was much younger looking than I ever remember her. She was in a baby blue bathrobe and her light brown hair was wet from a recent shower. She looked tired and sad. To be honest, she probably was… My Dad was rarely around, so she spent a lot of time alone taking care of me and my sister. When he was around, she would still be taking care of us and our sudden increase in injuries. That dark pit in the depths of my stomach, that foreboding, it now had a sudden mixture of sadness.

“When this is over, I should call Mom…” I said in a whisper, knowing she wouldn’t be able to hear me anyway. Then suddenly there was a loud creak of the floor above me that broke my train of thought, it was followed by another, as if something heavy was slowly walking up there. I stared up toward it and after three steps, it stopped. Then a door creaked open and the steps turned direction. Those sounds were so clear and amplified over everything else. I pushed myself away from the wall and walked towards the stairs, stopping at the foot of them with one hand on the banister.

I didn’t want to go up there, but I had to, “This isn’t real, you are safe at Brad’s house, this is in your head.” I started up the stairs, taking slow and deliberate steps, trying to be quiet as I listened. The stairs stopped halfway up and then turned the other direction to go up, as I turned the corner and put my foot on the first step, I had to stop instantly when I heard a loud noise heading toward me.

*thump thump thump thump*

It was coming from the hallway just up the stairs, quicker and more erratic.

A quick and blurred figure of a young girl popped into view in the hallway above me, her entire body silhouetted in blue. She was running towards me quickly, her eyes intense, fearful, and determined. Our eyes met and her body flinched. What little warmth in the area got sucked out of the environment, and I suddenly became very cold. She turned and ran directly through the open door on the left of the hallway, the door slamming behind her without anyone touching it.

My mother’s voice entered into my mind “When I had the house to myself, I would stay up late at night after you two went to bed. I liked to take advantage of that time when I could. Every now and then though, I’d hear the sudden running of little feet before a door would slam. I had thought it was you guys messing about, but I always found you sleeping soundly. One day, you were all staying at your Grandparents and I was in the house alone. Then it happened again, the running of little feet and suddenly a slam of a door. That’s when I knew…”

She had told us that story quite a few times, it was one of a good little number of them. She is a pragmatic woman, but when it came to ghosts and hauntings, she didn’t question the legitimacy of them. However, those footsteps earlier, those were different, they were not made by little feet, they were bigger, slower, more purposeful. I pushed the thoughts out of my head and continued up the stairs, trying the door the child had gone through, slowly turning the knob before a faint sound of singing from down the hall caught my ear. Three doors total that way, one at the center, and one on each side.

I let the doorknob go as I focused on the voice. It was a soothing tone, motherly in a way, but no other female adults lived in this home.

*Slam*

I jumped away as the door I was just opening slammed back shut.

“You little shit,” I whispered under my breath, taking in a deep breath and putting my hand to my chest. My heart was pounding. I let the air out slowly, trying to steady myself. Why did this all feel so fucking real?

I slowly approached the singing, the voice becoming more and more clear, it was an old song I recognized.

Rest tired eyes a while

Sweet is thy baby’s smile

Angels are guarding and they watch over the

I continued to walk towards it, transfixed by the soothing sound of it. It enveloped my surroundings, breaking through the thick air that muffled it earlier.

Sleep, sleep, grah mo chree *

Here on you mamma’s knee

Angels are guarding

And they watch over the

I reached out to the doorknob of my sister’s room and slowly turned it open. Inside the small figure of my older sister laid in her bed, sleeping calmly as an elderly woman in a rose patterned dress that came down to just above her ankles and a white apron stood over her, tucking the covers around my sister as she sung the lullaby. There was that same blue glow about her and she was translucent, an apparition. I looked down at my hand for the first time since coming to this place, seeing that I was the same.

My mother’s voice again entered my head, “When you two were younger, you once asked me why I didn’t tuck you in anymore. I didn’t quite understand the question since I hadn’t tucked you all in since you were babies. You told me someone had tucked you in every night in that house and she would sing a song to you. One I had never heard. I asked if you ever felt scared with her, like you did with the other one, you said no. I started tucking you all in after that, until you got to be older and asked me to stop babying you.”

The elderly woman turned her head to look at me, her face wrinkled but soft. She smiled as she sang.

Sleep, sleep, grah mo chree

My vision went black and the house disappeared. I felt myself getting pulled out of the room, then through the next door to my own childhood room before suddenly being forced down. There was the soft firmness of a pillow under my head, softness at my back, covers on my body.

My mother’s voice broke through the darkness, “You had a lot of frightful experiences in that house too. They terrified you. Always the same… you would wake up in your bed.”

My eyes shot open, and the roof of the home and the tops of the walls in front of me were there to greet me. I felt smaller in my own body, I traced over the sensations from before. I was in my old bed, I had been sleeping, I was a child again.

“You talked about how you would be unable to move, said your body was paralyzed.”

I tried to move my head to look around but I couldn’t. I could dart my eyes back and forth but that could only let me see so far. The door, I couldn’t see the door.

I tried to lift my arm, my leg... nothing.

I tried to wiggle my fingers, my toes… nothing.

“You’d see shadows on the wall, shapes of people all around you but with no actual bodies to accompany them.”

All around me in my frame of vision, the shadows of people reflected off the moonlight that slipped through the closed curtains. They were on the wall, their figures pointed towards the bed as if staring down at me. I could not see who or what was projecting them.

“You would want to scream but you couldn’t.”

I tried to shout, to say anything, to tell them to fuck off, to let me go. I couldn’t. No words, no sounds, my mouth was firmly closed and unable to speak. I wanted to cry, to kick, to shout. This helplessness, this fear, it was intense and overwhelming. No matter how many times I woke up in this paralyzed and haunted state, I never got used to it.

“You would feel something climb on to the bed at your feet”

At the foot of my bed, the mattress compressed under my body, shaking as a weight was placed down on it, it moved up and shook my body, my vision blurring as my head whipped side to side. One hand at a time gripped on the mattress at either side of my body as it made its way up. I tried to lift my head and peek at what it was, but I couldn’t, I was stuck and unable to move, but I could feel it, I could feel the weight of it, I could feel its breath on my body.  

“It would slowly come into view and stare you in the eyes.”

The shapes of black deer antlers rose into my peripheral, followed by black fur upon a black as night human shaped head. The air was distorted around it, it moved and throbbed. These reddish, dark crimson eyes on a face with no skin and patches of bone showing through pieces of black muscle looked down at me. A mouth like a snakes unhinged jaw opened and came towards my face, looking to take a clean bite of flesh. I never wanted to scream more in my entire life.

“That’s when you would wake up.”

I screamed.

The world melted away and suddenly I was staring directly at a shocked and afraid looking Ninja Brad. I quickly shot back away from him, using my arms and legs to push myself until I felt the wall behind me. I breathed heavily, my heart thudding hard against my chest, the thump of it reverberating in the back of my head.

“Jonathan, you’re back, nothing can hurt you,” Brad said calmly, slowly shuffling toward me on his knees, keeping low and trying to be as unthreatening as possible. It was clear he knew I was panicked, “are you okay?”

I couldn’t answer him, I was breathing too heavily. I looked around at everything but him trying to find the shadows or any other presences in the room, but the light glow of the painted stars on the black walls were all I could find.

“Hey! Look at me!” He exclaimed, my attention snapping to him, and his voice immediately calmed when