Today’s
Prompt: Write about five things you would do to entertain yourself if you did
not see a soul for 7 days.
— Courtesy: CreativeWritingPrompts.Com
Word
Count: 1,510
“You
go ahead and survive in there for 7 days and you can walk away a free man. All
debts cancelled.”
It was a large building past its glory
days. It could have been an apartment or a hostel once. But it had long since served
its purpose and its ghost defaced the landscape like an unsightly landmark. All
the inlets and outlets had been boarded up not with wood but welded with metal.
The main entrance provided the only access into the building. My captors pushed
me inside, slammed the doors shut and reinforced it with chains. Even if there
really was another way out, I knew death alone awaited him on the other side of
the steel doors.
The
men who dropped him off had given me this odd challenge as the only alternative
besides immediate death. All I had left was a prayer—which is the direct
English interpretation of my name, Akam (/arkham/), anyway.
“Survive
7 days in there and you walk,” they told me and drove off, heading south of my
location. I had spotted one or two security cameras mounted within the
perimeter. A single path led to the house and the weeds prowled it. I stepped
into the wide corridor of the structure.
“Piece
of cake,” I said. “There’s bound to be a master bedroom in this place with a giant-sized
double bed somewhere in here. All I gatto do is find it.”
Find it, I would but I, Akam was about to
learn a vital lesson about beds; they weren’t always vacant and especially, not
always inviting even in an abandoned house. I walked along the corridors,
feeling the walls, working at my first tour of the place—my new residence.
“Since
I’m gonna be hanging around for 7 whole days, I better acquaint myself with the
settings. Wouldn’t want to get lost in the dark,” I said.
I spent the first day in that place of death
doing a tour and trying the doors which to my amazement, were mostly locked. I tried
kicking some in but they won’t budge. One however, yielded but it was stuffed
with cleaning and maintenance tools. I’d found the broom closet. Great, I thought. Now I’ll set to work and get this place cleaned out in 7 days. I
shut the door in disgust and wandered on searching for the master bedroom. By
sunset, it had become apparent I, Akam would spend the night in the corridors
on the cold floor. I never found the master bedroom that day.
The second day, I resumed my ‘touring’ as I have tagged it. Sheez, I thought. I’m not gonna spend 7 whole days sleeping in the corridors on this cold
tiles. This is not some kind of prison, is it?
While trying the locks on one of the top
floor rooms, I opened the door to a large bedroom. It was a wicked mistake
cause I spent the day entertaining myself in a most unusual way. Of course, it
was the master bedroom. I suspected it was flanked by some kind of office/study
because there was a view of the lake and yes, there was a giant-size double bed.
Big, nice, cozy and almost sparkling clean if you ignored the layer of dust,
that is. It was almost like the previous owners left in a hurry. A body lay on the
bed. It was guarded by a dog whose skin clung to its bones. The body was a
skeleton but it wasn’t my problem, the dog was. The bones probably, belonged to
a vagrant who came here to pass time and then passed on in his sleep. A thought
occurred to me which rearranged my psyche, What
if these bones once shared the same fate which have been tossed into my bosom?
But as it was, the guy wasn’t available to take questions. The gnarl of the dog
threw me out of my reverie. Suppertime,
that gnarl seemed to say and, what took
you so long?
“I’m
just gonna turn around and walk away and you can forget you ever saw me cause
I’m gonna do the same thing.” I booked for the door.
The skinniest dog I’d ever seen in my
life had other plans. It made a dash for me while I hung around. I spent the
entire day fighting off the dog and got bit several times but eventually, I put
it out of its misery. I was spent. I’d gone two days without a meal and water.
I fell on the floor beside the dog and slept off. I awoke by midnight but it
was too dark to see anything and to do much else but walk into walls so I slept
some more.
On the morning of the third day, I awoke
to a drip-drip sound. A storm raged outside. Rainwater poured in through the roof,
no surprise there. I took off my clothes and washed where the leaking was heavy
and then I found a bowl in the broom closet, rinsed out the muck and fetched a
bowlful of rainwater. That would serve me
as drinking water for a few days, I thought. But the rain wouldn’t let up.
It continued to pour through the ceiling. The water came up and there was a
little flood in that place about ankle-deep. I spent the day in bed with the
bones which I eventually pushed off into the rising water. Thank God, the power
supply to the house had been cut off or I definitely will not be writing this
story. By the fourth day, I was way too famished to do anything, I had almost
emptied the bowl which contained the rainwater. I went downstairs but couldn’t
beyond the last four steps. Everything that wasn’t under water floated. I wrote
a quick mental reminder, ‘Don’t come down
here in the dark.’ I think if I had to choose, I’d pick death by starvation
over drowning any day. I spent much of Day Four sweeping leftover flood out of
the master bedroom. It was tough. I had gone four days without a meal. But I
did it just to while away time and to keep from thinking too much about food.
There was no rain on Day 5 but there was
plenty of sunshine. Way too tired and racked out of my mind to notice, I went
around that room tapping the walls. I can’t tell what exactly I was looking for
or even if I was looking for anything at all, until I came on a hollow sound. I
thrust my weight into it and heaved. A low creaking gave way to a loud crack! and the wall ceded. A gap
appeared and as I pushed further I saw what it was; a secret portal. On the
other side was voila! The office I anticipated
earlier. There was a paraffin lamp on the study table. I found a matchbox in
the top drawer. When I lit the lamp I spotted a book lying closed on the edge
of the table. I noticed the odd hand
writing on the cover and I considered it a record book of some kind but a closer
examination threw a jump into me.
WARNING: DO
NOT GO BEYOND THIS PAGE IF PRONE TO HEART ATTACKS
I have no record of heart attacks in my family;
I didn’t think the warning applied to me. I opened the book. It didn’t take
long to see the need for the warning.
‘Night
after night, it came. At first, it came for the children, scaring
and teasing them and we thought it was the monster stories their parents told
them at bedtime that gave them a scare. We forbade those stories after the
screams which were becoming louder wouldn’t cease. It did little to improve the
situation. Then one morning, after a night session of terrible, hair-raising
shrieks, we found a child’s bed empty. We checked under his bed and there
he was whimpering with pain. “He said he’s coming for me, said he’d
take me away next time. He had claws.” We tried our best to put it out of his mind by
telling him it was a nightmare. The next day, it came and took
Danny away; ripped him to shreds, it did.’
One by one, whatever it
was took them away. It came a time they couldn’t stand the sight of the corpse and
they boarded up the rooms with the corpse inside. I can’t tell what exactly
this place used to be in its time but I, Akam have taken the liberty to bring
this book out into the open so the world may know the evil that took place here
probably, centuries before. Much of this might have been mixed into local
legend, perhaps. I don’t have much time to live much longer; the rabies from
the dog bite is taking its fatal toll with no medication and all so I remind of
the book writer’s warning: This is
not for the faint of heart.
Eneh
Akpan
June
10th, 2014
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