In a dark hallway of common wood a Grandfather clock stood, beside it a table with a simple decoration of now dead holly branches with once red berries tied in red ribbon. The clock whilst not wound, chimed a silent toll for eleven o’clock.

The child’s room was dark and dusty, a sense of memories and tears floated in the air with the tiny pieces of dust that swirled around the room. Clouds of the past caught in the moon beams through the ice covered windows that projected an age old tale to be told forever. Toys scattered the floor, made of wood, tin and rough furs. Lead soldiers in red jackets stood in uniform blocks, others scattered from the bullets, cannons and bayonets of a make believe war and innocent death. A lost teddy bear sat one-eyed under a small bed that stood in the corner. Iron bars curved and beautiful adorned the ends whilst blankets once warm now emanated loss, laying scattered and uninviting upon the worn mattress. Hung from a tarnished brass bed knob was a large sock, the red colour of the wool faintly still showing under the dust that had settled upon it’s empty presence.

Something moved in the darkest corner where a bookshelf stood, it’s overbearing form leaning into the room where the wooden floor had settled unevenly. Children’s books filled the lowest shelf, some upright and well placed, others stacked on their sides, pages worn and crumpled from small hands that held them whilst dreams of heroes and monsters were fed. The next shelf was full of collected curiosities,  the possessions of a child treasured as gifts from someone loved or found on a special day that would be remember forever. Amidst the intentionally placed small wooden chest, semi-precious stones and a carved wooden bear sat a monkey. It’s brown fur dressed in a red and gold laced waistcoat and a bellboy hat of the same design. It’s arms raised in joy enhanced by the painted excited expression of it’s face. It’s grin was eerie in the dull moonlight that barely reached it. In each outstretched fabric hand a tin symbol had been fixed with cotton, like buttons through small holes at the peaked centres of the tarnished disks.

The symbol in the monkey’s left hand shimmered slightly as it gently vibrated from the movement of the arm. It pushed at the air and against the years of dust and damp, it wanted to move. As it began to edge inwards the other arm joined in strained motion. The metal discs edged closer with agonising slow effort, it was not until they almost met that the laws of nature relented and the monkey’s arms moved with any apparent observation. The symbols gently touched, ringing out with an almost inaudible pitched clang. The long silence of the seemly unoccupied room was interrupted. The grin of ink and lead emanated the glee of changing the world around it even if only for a brief moment. With stuttering motion the monkey’s arm moved outwards as far as their creator would allow and then with a new smoothness and urgency back in again, the symbols clattering like a gun shot. Again and again the arms moved back and forth, with each inward stroke bringing the clattering sound of tin upon tin. The monkey began to jump up and down from the frantic motion of it’s upper limbs, legs unmoved in their crouching position against the body. The unnatural movement brought the toy to life, a soul behind painted eyes celebrating in the joy of breaking the silent veil.

Snow began to fall outside the window and as the large frozen flakes began to fall the monkey stopped suddenly. A curtain flinched briefly sending dust into the moon beams in a spectacular dance, specks twisted, raised and fell in a chaotic beat. A Spotlight highlighted the dust celebration as some of the moisture on a glass pane at the window was roughly wiped away like a small hand had been moved across the surface to see outside. It was magical outside, pure moonlight brought a mystic blue to the night as the land outside turned white with the heavy fall of snow flakes upon the ground, trees and hedgerows. Thoughts of snowmen, sledging and snowball fights with friends filled the room, an excited smile for the day that would not come. Before long the garden outside was completely covered, no dirt, grass or brick path showed. A fox trotted out of the hedge leaving a trail of paw prints in the fresh snow. It stopped suddenly as if it had sensed something different in the night. It looked up at the window to the dusty bedroom and cocked it’s head looking directly at one pane of glass that was a clear patch amongst the ice that filled the other panes. The fox stared as if it had made contact with another creature, both sets of eyes meeting and trying to understand one another in the silent conversation. Before long the fox looked down and then continued on with it’s journey, disappearing into the hedge that edged the garden. It’s previous tracks now lost, new tracks started as if the creature had appeared from nowhere in centre of the cottage garden. But before long even the new footprints had vanished in the continual snowfall.

***

Footsteps, small and solid ran across the room away from the window, sudden silence as a moment later the mattress compressed and more dust erupted in the air, playing in the moon light, creating patterns some random, some more recognisable to a human eye. It was Yule tomorrow and he must be asleep when Santa Claus arrives. But he was too excited, snow was falling and tomorrow would bring a wonderland for him to play in after opening presents and the glorious goose dinner. It was all too much and he smiled until his face ached with joy. As he laid there he began to notice the cold, a cold that chilled him deep inside. The house was old and full of drafts, he thought of the warmth of the fireplace with his parents sitting there after they had placed him in bed, smiling and wishing him a good night. He pushed himself under the blankets in attempt to become warm, but no matter how long he laid there, the cold always sat within him. But he was used to that, he had been cold as long as he could remember. Before long he drifted into a slumber with a small smile on his face.

He was unsure how long he had been asleep for when noises from outside disturbed him. But he woke with an excited mind and jumped from the bed running over to the window where he had stood previously. His mind raced with thoughts of Santa. As he looked out upon the snow covered ground, he saw four men, dressed in black on horses, each carrying a flaming torch, three with rifles slung across their backs. They dismounted and the sound of banging upon the wooden door echoed through the stone building. He heard shouts and the screaming of his mother, a deep booming voice cried out “Witch”. He jumped in fear as a gun shot boomed in the night, followed closely by a second that brought silence to the home.

***

Heavy footsteps not like earlier, but heavy and full of dread echoed in the hallway, coming closer and closer to the door to the dusty child’s room. Each step echoing until they stopped, heavy breathing replaced the deathly beat of foot against wooden floor. The door swung open violently, curtains moved, not from the sudden cold wind that entered the room from the door but a presence of scared innocence. Tears fell to the wooden floor, there was a moment of hesitation and the room filled with the tension of both fear and belief. The room suddenly smelled of burnt gun powder, it lingered in the cloud of dust dancing in the moon light, a final memory.

One year later.

In a dark hallway of simple wood a Grandfather clock stood, beside it a table with a simple decoration of now dead holly branches with once red berries tied in red ribbon. The clock whilst not wound, chimed a silent toll for eleven o’clock.

The boy ran into the classroom, his class friends sat at individual desks looking down at the books in front of them. No one looked up at his manic entrance, as if he was not there. The teacher leant against her desk at the front of the class, also reading from the same book as the children, but she read it aloud; or so it seemed. Her lips moved as her eyes scanned from left to right, but he could not hear the words. The noise was there, but faint and garbled –  he knew he should be able to understand, but it was as if this reality was now out of reach for him, a veil had fallen between him and them.

The boy fell to the ground, his back sliding down the wall, removing the edges of dry paint cracks, revealing dark red brickwork underneath. He looked around the room at everyone. Not one glance of acknowledgement from any of them, even those he counted as friends. Why had the teacher not seen him? She must have seen his distress, his terror, and like adults do, come to the rescue and make it all better, make the bad ‘it’ go away.

It all had become too much, the familiarity of what was his normal day no longer his to seek comfort in. The boy knew he was alone as he lowered his head into his huddled arms, tears streaming down his cheeks, his ability to act with composure gone. He was alone now; knowing only that ‘it’ was getting closer and closer.

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His eyes, his eyes could not stop staring at the girl’s face. The way her pretty face was contorted in sheer terror, her reasoning gone as she threw herself at the door again and again, her head smashing against the reinforced glass, already cracked; now even more so.  The high sun silhouetted the girl, a darkness that bled. The red left behind on the wire-crossed window became  deeper with each impact. As she moved back to run at the door again, the light of the sun projected the colour of her blood across the boy’s face, masking him with her terror that seeped into his retinas. Electrical pulses carried the terror to his brain, overloaded synaptic terror found his reasoning, and a second later he ran as he heard the final impact and something solid finally broke. He was pretty sure it was not the window or the door.

His heart was pumping fast now as he tried to leap up the stairs, as many as he could at a time.- all he knew is that he had to get away from it. His foot slipped on the edge of the step as he reached the corner and gravity took care of the rest: his shins and knees hit the stone edges, sending pain through his body. The boy screamed in pain, and he was almost thankful for the moment of distraction, but it was only a moment. He looked up as he pushed his hands down to bring his body up and carry on up the stairs. In the corner of the stairwell turn was a wicker chair, on which sat a clown doll. It was a large toy, taking up the entire seat, its white face and red suit very apparent against the dull wicker and industrial magnolia walls. The clown’s eyes lined in a solid black glared at the boy, retaining the boy’s attention in response.  Deep red lips curled upwards at the edges, creating a malevolent smile across the doll’s face, as if it knew what was coming for the boy and what ‘it’ would do to him when he was finally caught.

With the vision of the doll with its underlying evil and corruption burned into the boy’s mind, he jolted and carried on running up the stairs. At the top he almost fell through the double swing doors, his arms outstretched to let his hands take the force without thinking. As he ran down the corridor his eyes searched the windows into the classroom on his left. Frosting in the lower part of the windows prevented him from seeing with much clarity, but he could see shadows of a tall figure standing at the end of the room, with hunched figures sitting neatly in rows. He knew it was his class as he got closer to the door, reassured by the familiar silhouettes with the edges broken by the pattern of the frosted glass. Finally, the old green painted door was in reach and he grabbed the tarnished bronzed doorknob, pulling it towards him.

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From somewhere inside she resisted, using every ounce of will left in her fragile essence to force her vision away from the eyes of the children, those who no longer existed for themselves, willing slaves of the source of her terror, her ‘it’. A wave of fear flowed over her; her body reacted, wanting to get away. She found herself being thrown forward by her own muscles, commanded from somewhere beneath her terror. Clinging to the fence she dragged herself along until she fell again, the wire support moving away from her as a gate swung open from her weight. She looked up, her eyes trying to focus on the mass of swirling colour upon the brickwork and that is when she saw it.

Shapes formed in front on her, rectangular and a dull green, they wavered until they became one. A light flickered from it, stark white and almost blinding as it became constant, forming a square in the rectangle. It called to her, a desperate comfort and respite from her horrors. Then something blocked the saving light allowing her eyes to settle and that was when she realised it was door. A door into wall, an escape from all those who looked on. Their stares hitting hard into her mind from behind and maybe even escape ‘it’.

She looked further into the square window to see what was now silhouetted by the light. As she crawled closer the darkness faded and revealed a set of eyes peering through the reinforced glass. She jerked back, as she feared that them and ‘it’ were also behind the door, but then the eyes blinked and she realised that behind those eyes was life, someone else who was like her. It was enough. She got up off bruised knees and ran towards the door. She slammed against it, hoping for it to fall open and the room inside to catch her, shutting the courtyard, the other dead children and ‘it’ outside and away from her. Her shoulder ached as it slammed into the surface that did not move, her fists hitting the blistered paint upon the solid wooden door. She wrenched at the handle, blood causing her hand to slip – even when she did get grip it was with no effect, as the door was locked.

She screamed for help at the figure behind the smeared dusty glass. She saw that it was a young boy, maybe eight or nine years old. His face showed panic, his hands gripping his t-shirt with a desperateness only innocence could bring. She could see him looking at her helplessly, his eyes absorbing the terror from her own eyes, from ‘it’. Her soul shattered and she was lost.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4