#wildlerwrites

She ignores me, cupping her hand and cradling a fragile flame on a match-tip as she lights the final candle.  

“There’s a reason Mum keeps this locked away.” I lift my eyes to the mirror, the dancing glow of the candles at its base seems to give the reflection more depth than is in the room. I suddenly feel dizzy, like I’m standing atop a skyscraper looking straight down.

Willow turns and grins, coming over to grab my hand. “Mum has a habit of thinking we can’t handle the bigger stuff,” she says, taking the salt and leading me over to her candles at the mirror’s foot.

Before the mirror was Mum’s, it had been our grandmother’s—and her mother’s before that. It had been passed down for generations—it had watched and reflected generations. Joys, tragedies, secrets—a silent, ever-present witness in the lives of our ancestors.

Until Mum had locked it away.

Disorientation rolls off the glass like an aura, and now that I’m closer, the vertigo intensifies. My vision swims, twisting the ornate carvings on the frame into spidery markings—while our reflections remain stable.  

I can feel its power and it scares me. The way Willow is scaring me. She’s locked eyes with her reflection and is staring at herself with a hungry intensity that makes my stomach roil.

Only, it’s not her stare that’s making me sick. I’m at the wrong angle to see her face, I can only see her reflection.

She reaches a hand out to the glass, forgetting entirely she is holding the bowl of salt—and tiny white crystals freckle the carpet.

“Willow.” I intercept her outstretched hand and curl it firmly into mine. “I know what you’re doing,” I say glaring into the reflection while I pull the real Willow a few paces back.

“What do you mean?” she replies, her head cocking to one side, eyes still fixed on the glass.  A dazed smile plays on the lips of my sister beside me, but a predatory one curves her mouth in the mirror. “I was just admiring myself.”

Dread trickles into my gut as her reflection and I stare at each other. In my peripheral I can see my own reflection holding Willow’s, embracing just as we are, but I don’t dare look at myself.

“What do you want?” I ask the Willow in the mirror. When she answers, a shiver crawls down my spine. I could swear her voice carries from both the girl in my arms and the one in the mirror—a droning harmony.

“What I’ve always wanted,” they say, pausing as their expression settles into deep concentration. Suddenly, Willow jerks out of my arms, her head snapping to attention, staring into her own eyes as though she is looking down the barrel of a gun.  

“Willow?” I reach for her hand, but she swats me away. An unnaturally sharp grin begins to bend her lips, a tiny helpless sound creeping out from between them.

My scream lodges in my throat, stuck under the ache of tears too terrified to leave my eyes. “Let her go,” I choke out around the knot. “Just tell me what you want and let her go!”

My own reflection stirs, moving with disconcerting independence. I catch my own gaze in the mirror and feel a tingling paralysis creep through my limbs. Willow’s smile widens as her pointed lips carve out her next words.

“I want you both.”

---------

Something for @alexprompts a collection of horrors :)

The Ark on Wattpad

“Where are we going?” I asked, falling in behind Zaphron as he cut a path between stalls in a busy street market.

He glanced around to check I was following and picked up his pace. “My place—” He hesitated. “Well, sort-of.”

I sighed. Another ambiguous answer.

A few blocks from the station, Zaphron took a sharp left and I followed him down a narrow street. The air pulsed with heavy bass, while disjointed riffs of multiple sources of music competed with one another. There were dozens of doorways lining the street, each set into colourfully graffitied concrete buildings. The chaotic sounds of partying and neon lights washed out onto the pavement like holo-adverts.  

“Are these all clubs?” I asked.

Zaphron rolled his eyes. “No, they’re retirement homes,” he deadpanned. “Of course they’re clubs. Have you never heard of The Valley?”

I raised an exasperated eyebrow. I had, as it happened, heard of the notorious strip. I’d just never been there because I wasn’t eighteen yet. If any security scanned my prints, they’d see I was a few days short of being allowed entry to every establishment in the street.

Zaphron made a beeline for a club at The Valley’s halfway point. The building was darker than the others, its grey exterior mostly free of the scrawl that covered the neighbouring facades. Two holographic words hovered in neon red around the doorway like a halo.  

Danse Macabre.

“There’s a queue,” I said, confused as Zaphron strode past a line of waiting patrons.

“Not for the residents.” He slipped his hand into mine, exchanging a nod with the front security guard before towing me inside.

“Residents?” My question was swallowed by noise of the club. A combination of heavy bass and shrill melody warped the air, competing with my heart for control over the thumping in my ribcage.  The club was packed tighter than a bullet carriage. People writhed and danced on top of one another under patches of red neon and blacklight.

I stared into the cauterised hole carved through his chest and glimpsed the pavement on the other side. The pulse had gone straight through, burning a grim tunnel in the exact spot Ty’s heart had just been. The smell of burning flesh filled my nostrils and I gagged.

Screams erupted from somewhere behind me, snapping me from my daze. I glanced up in time to see our attacker lurch forward. Instincts kicked in and I ducked his sweeping attempt to grab me, legging it down the path.

His heavy footsteps were right on my heels, faltering only momentarily as I led him into the thick of a nearby queue. I laced through the crowd, hoping to melt into the throng and lose him—or at least make it too difficult to use the gun. I didn’t dare turn around as I squeezed my way through the crush of bodies.

My eyes were streaming and the rushing air felt icy against my wet cheeks. I couldn’t stop myself bumping blindly into people, stumbling over my own feet in a panicked attempt to push onward.

I broke out of the crowd and, through blurry eyes, spotted another souvenir kiosk ahead. My legs felt like lead as I willed them toward it. Behind me, grunts and cries from the crowd told me my pursuer was still on my tail.

I dashed around the kiosk, catching sight of the man as I rounded the stall and created a physical barrier between us. We eyed each other wildly and I noticed he’d hidden his gun again.

He made a sudden move to the left and I countered him, keeping as much of the kiosk between us as possible. We began a tense game of cat and mouse, moving back and forth. I didn’t let him gain an inch on me, making the most of my barrier. Eventually he retrieved his gun, setting off a tirade of screams as customers scattered.

The confusion and panic spread to the nearby queue and I took the opportunity of the cover created by all the moving bodies to make a run for it. As I hit the eastern path again, a bright flash indicated another laser shot. I felt the heat of the pulse, but hadn’t been hit. Instead, a woman ahead of me fell to the ground clutching her stomach, her shirt singed away around her wound.

I sucked back a sob as I ran past her, fighting away the urge stop and help. I pushed my legs harder, repeating to myself that she was alive and I wouldn’t be if this guy caught me.

I’d end up just like Ty.

----------

I looked the woman on our porch over and frowned—even at this distance it was obvious. “That’s not Nanna.”

Rus’s step faltered out of sync with mine as he glanced up from his shoes. His copper eyebrows climbed the freckles on his forehead. “But she looks like the photos—and she told me she was.”

“The aura’s wrong,” I said, sighing as I came to a stop. My sneakers sank into the dewy plush of Dad’s prized lawn. “Rus—” I glanced at the impostor, lowering my voice. “Some spirits lie.”

His eyebrows changed direction, drawing together and dipping low like swooping birds. “But why—" His scrawny neck bobbled with a guilty swallow. “What does she want?”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Who knows? Most of them will do anything to get out.”

We looked up at the old woman—the phoney cloaked in our Nanna’s likeness. She waved and beckoned us over, patting the swing seat beside her with an almost translucent hand.  

I let go of Rus’s shoulder and started toward the porch again. “What did you bind her to?” I murmured as Rus fell into step beside me again.

He pulled a locket from his jacket pocket—Mum’s locket—and Nanna’s before that.

I winced. “Did you have to pick something so valuable? You realise we gotta break it to send this thing back?”

He handed the necklace over, his jaw tensing. “I didn’t think we’d have to break it, I thought it was her.”

I balled the locket in my fist, shooting him a look before climbing the front steps. I stopped short of the wraith in the swing seat, choosing to lean on a drying stack of firewood rather than get too close.  

“My darlings.” Nanna spread her arms wide, offering an embrace. A grin revealed rows of pointed teeth very different to the dentures we’d buried her with.

“Nanna!” I tried to look overcome with joy, compensating for the disgusted look Rus was wearing. “What are you doing here?”

“Came to see you two of-course.” She gave us another sharp grin and I glimpsed a sickening grey tongue pressed up behind her teeth.

Rus must have seen it too. “Um Nanna?”

Her head swivelled to where he stood, the rest of her body motionless. The stiff movement twisted her neck to an unnatural angle well past her shoulder. “Yes darling?”

“What’s going on here?” He gestured to his mouth—meaning hers.

As if summoned, her tongue crept out and over her teeth like a hungry slug. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from gagging.

“You worked it out?” she hissed, her gaze turning dark. Impossibly large pupils drank Rus in.  

“Oh yeah,” he replied, “pretty hard not too—especially up close.”

Nanna’s gaze turned slowly back to mine, greed welling in the bottomless pits of her pupils.  For the first time since seeing the impostor, fear replaced revulsion in my gut, gnawing at my bones.  

“What are you really doing here?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

Her lips pulled back, the full force of her needle-like teeth and rotting tongue unleashed in a disgustingly unbridled smile. “I told you already darling.”

Dread trickled through me, seeping into my marrow and making my knees weak. “You’re—”

She was out of the seat in a blink, rushing at Rus with an ethereal speed impossible to comprehend. He flinched, raising his hands to his face.

Snap.

The locket broke into two. Both halves splintering into shards of metal and glass under the piece of firewood I used to pound it.

There was an echoing shriek as Nanna disappeared, leaving a wisp of cold air to fall over Rus and me like a winter breeze.

“Thanks Hunter,” Rus said, lowering his hands.

Rae’s mother had never told her anything like that, so when the floodlights at the end of our street stopped working and the surrounding homes were evacuated, she wanted to check it out.

“Missy!” Rae called, leaning on a traffic bollard that supported a road closure sign. “Damn dog, where’d she go?”

I leaned on the bollard next to Rae’s and peered over the sign. I’d lived my whole life under the safe glow of lamps and my eyes weren’t accustomed to cutting through darkness. Which made it hard to make out anything past the curtain of shadow that met our artificially lit end of the street. “You shouldn’t have let her off the leash,” I said, trying to scan the poorly lit driveways and lawns of the furthest houses.

“I know that now, don’t I?” Rae gave me a shove in the shoulder and pressed her lips into a hard line. She was taller than me and I had to hold the sign to stop from falling over.

“There!” My gaze snagged on a yapping knee-high figure in the darkness. Missy was two houses down, on Ms Hudson’s abandoned front lawn.

“Come back girl!” Rae’s desperate voice echoed down the street. Missy’s ears pricked up as the broken floodlight flickered to life above her, bathing the evacuated end of the cul-de-sac in safe, sterile, bright white.

“How—?” I squinted into the lit bulbs. The specialised repair crew wasn’t expected for another day.

“Here.” Rae shoved the leash at me, not waiting to see if I caught it before she hoisted herself over the blockade.

“What are you doing?” I clutched the leash to my chest and tried to grab the back of her shirt in the same motion.

Her sneakers hit the road on the other side of the barrier with a slap. “Getting her while the lights are on.”

“But—”

She didn’t wait for me to finish, taking off down the path, her pony tail swinging behind her. Missy looked up from the patch of grass she was sniffing and gave an excited bark. I watched, my heart drumming in my ears as Rae scooped her up and rounded swiftly, sprinting back toward me with the fluffy bundle wriggling in her arms.

There was a flicker and my breath caught as the floodlight dimmed, dousing Rae in shadows for a moment. A scream stuck in the back of my throat, strangling me while my stomach tipped upside down. Then there was another flicker, and the lights were back. I let out a thin breath. Rae was still running, her face stricken as she closed in on me. Missy fought harder in her arms—tiny legs frantically kicking the air.

“Take her!” Rae held Missy at arm’s length out in front. She was still running, full speed, on a collision course with the barrier.  

I reached as far as I could over the road block. Missy’s weight filled my hands just as the light went out again. Rae was plunged into darkness. Her silhouette barely visible in a churn of moving shadows. She let out a scream and something tugged sharply on the dog in my grasp. I tightened my grip and Missy howled. A freezing swirl of air clasped my outstretched arms. It pulled my stomach into the sign, winding me. I let out a panicked wheeze and wrenched backwards. Icy claws tore down my arms and I fell back. Missy was still in my hands, landing on top of me with a whimper.

Rae’s scream from the darkness was cut off and I scrambled to my feet, straining my eyes and seeing nothing.  No sign of Rae, or the swirling mass of shadows that had smothered her in the dark. It was as though they hadn’t been there at all.

There was a flicker, and the broken floodlight blinked back on.

------

I shoved my door closed and hurled the notebook at the bin, knocking it over. Bits of paper and chocolate wrappers flew across the floor.

How could Dad have not told me? All the time I’d spent trying to work out why she’d left and hating her for it, he’d known, and he hadn’t said a thing.

I paced at the foot of my bed, forcing a few ragged breaths through my teeth. Mum was in danger. Her note had all but said so. How could he just sit by and do nothing—give up on the search for her?

Music started blaring next door and I glared out the window. Jet was in his open garage laying into a punching bag. I watched him for a moment—my brain in a sudden scramble. The music was like nothing I’d ever heard before. 

Each shrill beat jerked through me, setting my skin on fire and a thousand butterflies loose in my gut. I clutched my chest, panting. Adrenaline ran a tingling course from my core to my fingertips. 

My pacing picked up and my hands balled into fists at my sides. I was suddenly overcome with a need to be active—to sprint, swim or… punch something.

I glanced out the window again, Jet was still laying into the punching bag—kicking it now. His platinum hair bobbled in its bun with each strike, while the bag swung from the rafters like a stubborn pinata.

I took a deep breath and shook my head, slamming my window closed. It only muffled the sound—and the feeling. I shook out my limbs and kept circling the room, still feeling the adrenaline surging around my veins. It wasn’t until my jaw began to ache that I realised I had been grinding my teeth. 

Pushing the distracting music and neighbour out of my head brought me back to Dad and his lie. Mum had not abandoned us. She had left to keep us safe—but from what?

I stopped at my overturned bin and knelt to put it the right way up, scooping the contents with it. As I stood, my shoulder caught on the edge of my desk. 

A flare of anger shot up my neck and without thinking, I struck out—ramming my fist into the wall. My knuckles went clean through the plaster, connecting with a timber stud that let out a hollow crunch as it splintered against my fist. 

I froze, chest heaving, while my pulse thundered over the ringing in my ears—only it wasn’t ringing. It was Jet’s music. 

The shrill electronic beat had quickened, reaching a crescendo so piercing, I thought the ear-splitting sound would send me mad. 

I stared at my hand, buried in the wall, as the song relented and drifted into a beat that was less frantic, but no less unnerving. My mind flashed back to the moment my fist had connected with Taryn’s nose at school—the crunch and the blood. Had I hit her as hard as I had hit this wall?

I retracted my hand. It came away covered in powdery plaster dust and a few tiny pine splinters that popped free of my skin when I flexed my knuckles. 

I stared into the hole, a little disturbed by how mangled the solid stud behind the plaster looked. If I had hit Taryn that hard, she wouldn’t have had a nose left to break. 

What was going on with me?

☽ ☾ 

Dad was already up when I stumbled, bleary eyed, into the kitchen. 

“Coffee? He held up the jug, his brow creasing when he caught sight of me. “Jeez, you look like you could do with some.” 

I grunted, taking the offered cup and turning my back on him. The ringing of Jet’s music had continued late into the night—along with the jittery effect. I’d had almost no sleep and every muscle in my body ached as though it had been wound tight all night. 

“Look kiddo, if this is about our conversation yesterday—"

“It’s not,” I said flatly, throwing a cold glance over my shoulder. Even if I had wanted to stew on our argument, the bizarre music hadn’t let me do much other than fight to keep my body still all night. “The neighbour’s music was blaring, I couldn’t sleep.” 

The crease in his brow deepened. “I didn’t hear any music.”

A bitter huff escaped my nose. “Since when are you aware of anything going on around you these days?”

“Gracie, I—” 

I didn’t wait for him to finish, taking my mug and heading back to my bedroom before he could deliver anymore bullshit.

————

I sleep with the light on because I feel the power that grows in the darkness and sense the tendrils that wind into the minds of the unsuspecting, feeding on their greatest fears.

I sleep with the light on because there is something out there that craves eternal night and before long, it will have it.

I sleep with the light on because no innocent would suspect me of serving the darkness as they rest by my side, sharing in the golden glow.

I tried to recoil but she had a tight hold of my collar. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

Her smirk curdled and the knife dropped as she took in my confusion. “You’re not— we’ve not— oh hell! What year is it?” She let me go and whirled around, taking in the street for what seemed like the first time. A couple in the café opposite were staring at us.

“2002,” I said, trying to catch her eye, but she was fiddling with some sort of device on her wrist. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” she snapped, “you’re a clever bastard I’ll give you that. Hiding in the past where you already exist.” She eyed me for a moment. “It won’t last. No matter where you go, I will find you. Time may be your tool, but it’s my toy.” She threw the end of her scarf around her neck and sheathed her knife with dramatic flair.

I half laughed. “Excuse me?”

She ran her tongue along her teeth, letting out a heavy exhale. Her cheeks had gained more colour. “Forget it. You’ll understand one day.” She turned so quickly that the ends of her hair caught me in the face. Then she was gone.

I smiled as the faint scent of her shampoo faded. I did understand, and though she may have been the master of time travel. I was the better actor.

------

@alexprompts Prompt #8