Page 18 of Grotesque

T he shadow expanded as it eased into the manor, looming far larger than any man had the right to be.

Whatever it was didn’t walk, but slunk through the house, pooling from one patch of darkness to the next.

My stomach curled as the image on the screen fluttered, before the shadow spilled up the stairs, disappearing from view.

The bright light of the computer screen wasn’t doing my raging headache any favors. It felt like I’d been hit by a truck when I woke up this morning. But as the hours ticked by, bits and pieces of the previous evening had trickled to the forefront of my mind.

The shadow on the screen wrapped around the banister, coiling and writhing like a snake. That’s when the screen froze, right before it leeched out of frame.

“Got you,” I breathed.

I finally had something. It had to be him. Unless there was another dark entity in the house.

Chills burst across my skin. “One thing at a time,” I muttered to myself, clicking on the next file, the one belonging to the camera in my bedroom. I skipped the feed forward to a few seconds after the shadow in the hallway had disappeared.

There was a jump in the feed and then the shadow (I assumed it was the same shadow) was looming over me in the shape of a man.

Dread leeched into my stomach as I finally saw just how large the thing was.

I’d described the stranger as being six foot five, but looking at whatever it was on the screen, he had to be bigger than that.

The light on my nightstand highlighted his silhouette, the lanky form and broad shoulders.

But there were no obvious features. I knew his hair was dark, but not if it was black or brown.

And his skin, that I swore had been pale, was as dark as the rest of him.

As if he wasn’t a vampire at all, but a phantom made entirely of shadow.

I felt the ghost of claws trailing down my cheek, my neck. A memory?

He was saying something, but the camera hadn’t been rated highly for its audio quality. I turned the volume up and pressed my ear to the speaker.

“Will you let me give you pleasure?” His voice came across as clear as day despite how muffled it had been previously.

There was another sound, more words exchanged, and then: “You can sleep. Allow me to please you in your dreams.”

Holy fuck.

The image blurred before freezing. The timer ticked another five seconds before the picture moved again. My stomach twisted into a thousand knots as the shadow repositioned my body near the edge of the bed, slid down my thighs and very clearly pulled off my underwear.

I could do nothing but watch as he knelt before me while my body writhed lazily beneath him. The image of a dark-haired man looking up at me with glowing red eyes flashed across my mind.

Even with his distorted image I could tell he was eating me out, fucking me with his mouth the way he had the other night.

Slick, wet sounds slipped through the crackled audio every now and then.

I must have moaned because the sound he made was deeper, almost a growl, when his shadowy hand moved beneath my shirt.

That’s where it froze again. The image remained the same until it skipped, to reveal him standing between my legs. And that’s when the distorted memory revealed itself, of what he had asked me.

“Will you let me give you pleasure?” The words spoken last night came back clear as day.

I’d thought I was dreaming, drunk and needy when I’d answered him.

That knowledge did not alleviate the chill rushing down my arms, however, when I watched his body jerk between my legs.

Nor did it quiet my racing heart when he moved his fingers inside of me before sliding my underwear back into place.

The shadow hovered over me and then slunk across my body.

The shape of the man morphed into something larger before it coiled into a dark mass at my side.

The image froze. Five, ten, thirteen seconds went by, and it didn’t change.

It remained that way until I skipped it forward an hour and saw only myself in bed. He didn’t return after that.

I refreshed the app but every time I tried to rewatch the video it cut out in the same spot, with him curled next to me. I clamped my shaking hands together and fisted them in my lap. I don’t know how long I stared at that image of him frozen beside me.

I trailed my hand between my thighs and carefully slid my fingers beneath my underwear. Wet and tacky. I slipped my fingers inside myself, finding the new wetness that coated me after watching what should have been a living nightmare.

I restarted the video from the moment he entered my bedroom.

I shouldn’t be excited by this. This was the monster that had chased me through my home, blindfolded me, and eaten out my pussy. And I was watching him do it again. While I slept.

Another memory flashed, of a shadowy figure scooping something up and putting it inside of me. I wasn’t brave enough to look for evidence of what that might have been.

“Will you let me give you pleasure?”

I closed my eyes as his voice trickled through the audio.

“You can sleep. Allow me to please you in your dreams.”

I slumped back in my chair as I watched him do exactly that, actively fingering myself now, chasing that same dark thrill.

Again, I replayed the video and watched as he brought me to climax.

On the fourth watch I was coming along with us, my fingers pressing hard into my clit as I circled it and came undone right there in the middle of the kitchen, gripping the arm of the dining room chair.

No sooner did my orgasm start to fade than my anxiety spiked. I shot up from the chair and slammed my laptop closed.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

The buzz of my phone snapped me back into the sane part of reality.

Quint: Can we talk?

Another buzz came seconds later.

Mom: Call me as soon as you get this.

This was too much to deal with. I scooped my phone and laptop up and headed back upstairs. The crawling sensation of roving eyes didn’t bother me as much as it had the first couple of days.

I tossed my phone on the counter before running the shower.

Once it was hot enough to melt my skin off, I hopped beneath the stream.

I let the blistering water droplets paint my skin red.

I scrubbed every inch of myself until I was sure I was rid of the stranger’s scent and then washed again for good measure.

The footage was useless when I appeared to be a willing accomplice.

I needed to read more of Rosaline’s diary and see how she managed to deal with him. But before that, I needed to look for anything Macky might have left behind. If she had left her rules out for me to find, then surely, she had documentation of the creature somewhere.

That’s it!

The sketchbook.

I dried off and padded down to the library, hunting through the shelves until I found it again. I didn’t remember there being a man in any of the images, but perhaps I would find his face among the monsters.

The first couple of pages were as I remembered, creatures bearing armored scales and curling horns.

Headshots of snarling beasts with dagger-long teeth roared to life on the parchment.

I flipped through one page at a time, until I came to a sketch of three tall silhouettes.

Their limbs and forms were lithe, with long hair that covered what appeared to be naked bodies.

The next page was filled with sketches of eyes. Some were humanoid, while others had pupils in the shape of a diamond. Others had even smaller pupils that reminded me of reptiles, and horned eyebrows.

On a later page, Glamis Manor rose off the paper. I was about to flip past it, but paused when I noticed one of the tall spindly creatures standing in a window.

“Oh, please don’t be another creepy creature,” I whispered.

Whatever this was, it didn’t look like a vampire.

In fact, it reminded me of a horrible fairytale my mother told me once as a girl, of a tall willowy woman with a blank face, who would take children away and gobble them up if they were bad.

I don’t think there was a day after that I ever disobeyed her.

The story had stuck with me all the way to adulthood.

A twisted and deformed dragon hugged the frame of a mirror on another page. A gaping mouth full of fangs was on the backside of it. Strange plants and flying creatures were pieced together like a muddied collage.

In a swirl of darker charcoal was written: Things cannot gain power unless you believe in them.

My phone buzzed again.

Mom: Hello??

“Fuck’s sake,” I mumbled. I dialed her number and shoved the phone between my cheek and shoulder as I continued flipping through the book.

“Finally!” Mom practically shouted. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

“It’s only two, Mom. I slept in a little late.”

I could practically hear the roll of her eyes. “Well anyways, I wanted to check in and see how you’re doing. How’s the place look? Anything worth selling?”

I raised my fingers from the sketchbook, clutching the phone before I dropped it. Vultures come in all forms, but sadly they most often wear the face of family members. “I don’t want to sell anything.”

Truthfully, it hadn’t even crossed my mind to sell any of the antiques that filled the manor. But if Mom wanted to use me to make some quick cash, then I definitely wasn’t going to sell anything.

“Oh, Sorcha, come on. If the furniture is anything like it was in Manchester then that’s a couple of thousand right there.”

“I said I don’t want to sell any of it. Grandma Macky gave me the house and, well,” I paused, looking around at all the books waiting to be read.

If I didn’t think too much about the stranger, or Glamis’s history, it was actually quite charming.

I liked the gothic décor and filtered, golden daylight all of the windows offered.

Glamis Manor had fallen into my lap by chance.

It was a lifeline I didn’t know I’d needed until I was finally far away, and out from under my mother’s judgment.

“Well, what? You’re just going to keep it all to yourself?”

“Yes actually,” I snapped. “You and Uncle Ken and Uncle Hank already got your share. Macky left this place to me, and I like it the way it is.”

The line was silent for a moment.

“Are you serious? After everything I’ve done for you, you’re just going to take all that money and keep it to yourself? I raised you Sorcha, all by myself. I gave you food, I gave you shelter, I took care of you!"

“That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“Excuse me?” Mom’s voice had gone colder than the Arctic.

I knew I had overstepped, but the grave had been dug so I might as well crawl in.

“That’s what you’re supposed to do when you have a kid.

You take care of them. I’m grateful for everything you gave to me, but I don’t owe you my share of Macky’s home when you got your own inheritance. Y’all each got two million.”

“You’re unbelievable,” she growled.

“Why? Why am I not allowed to have this?”

There was a pregnant pause of fuming energy before she finally answered. “Do whatever you want, Sorcha. It’s clear I don’t mean jack shit to you.” There was a loud bang and then the line went silent.

My hand was shaking as I pulled the phone away from my ear. She’d either thrown hers across the room or hard enough on the ground that it’d ended the call.

I shut the sketchbook and held it close to my chest.

I didn’t think I would ever be able to escape my mother’s judgment.

I’d moved out of her place a long time ago, but even living in my own apartment she had managed to force herself into my space, inviting herself over, critiquing the way I decorated, the food I kept in the fridge, the clothes that hung in my closet.

I didn’t know what Mom and her brother’s childhoods had been like, but it was clear something had rotten them, somehow.

Mom definitely had the worst relationship with Macky, and that negativity had trickled down into our relationship.

I believed that mothers did the best they could with what life gave them, but I’d spent twenty-six years feeling like I owed my Mom something, simply for existing.

Like I’d had any say in the fact she’d brought me into this world.

It was toxic.

I’d hoped that putting distance between Mom and I would help heal the wounds that gaped between us.

Instead, she was acting as I’d known she would.

I was sorry I’d hurt her feelings, but I wasn’t upset that I’d stood my ground.

At least the call had ended without her screaming at me, until I was the one apologizing for whatever mess she had instigated.

I carried the sketchbook with me into the kitchen and flipped through it as I started the oven for a frozen lasagna. I loved my mom despite her flaws, but she wasn’t the most pressing thing I had to deal with right now.

I ran my finger over the charcoal drawing of a male figure with horns curling out from the top of his head.

Over the blurred, flaming eyes that glared up at the viewer.

Whatever issues my mother and I had could wait.

Solving the mystery of my shadowy stalker and the history of Glamis Manor was my top priority.

I swiped the clock app open on my phone and began setting a series of alarms to start after 9 o’clock. One every thirty minutes, in the event I dozed off. I tucked a kitchen knife beneath my pillow, pointing the blade away from my head.

The next time the stranger showed up, I would be ready. If he could only come out when the sun had set, then so would I. I wasn’t going to let any one , or any thing take Glamis Manor away from me.