“They Smile”

It’s a struggle to write this. My hands are sore and the bandages are no longer enough to stop my blood from seeping onto the keys.

Each letter is stained as I use it. The letters I use the least – the z, the q, the x – are only lightly stained as my blood forms a thin film over the keys. My vowels, the letters I use the most (all the ones in my daughters name S-O-P-H-I-E) and the spacebar are saturated. Ruby pools on each key overflow then run together, the slight slant of the writing desk causing little rivers of red to run the gauntlet of the keyboard layout, each crimson streak taking the path of least resistance before dripping off the desk.

I’m sure it can’t be healthy to lose this much blood, I didn’t even know one person had so much blood to lose.

My apologies, I’m rambling. I’d better get to the point. What follows is the true account of the cause of my injuries. It may sound untrue, or even crazy, but I swear to the honesty of this document. My name is Matthew Andrew Ford and I write this in sound mind on the 24th of April 2012.

I had just relocated to the countryside after twenty years of working a dead-end office job. Finally I was able to pursue my dream of owning and running a farm. My wife Angela, and Sophie, our fourteen-year-old daughter, joined me. Sophie wasn’t thrilled at having to change schools mid-semester, but what fourteen-year-old would be.

Our first night there we were inundated by neighbours. In the country, the concept of neighbour is completely different to the one we’ve got in the city. My land, for example, stretches out for miles in each direction.

My neighbours in the country are basically anyone who: a) Lived close enough to notice new people had moved in and b) cared to call by.

My wife and I had been warned that this could happen, and so we’d bought a few cartons of beer and a few dozen sausages to offer anyone that dropped by. We’d underestimated country hospitality though – it seemed as though everyone from the nearby town had turned up! Well, almost everyone. Both my wife and I had noticed a large run down house on the property that bordered our east paddock. We asked nearly everyone at the party about it, but nobody knew who owned it.

They did tell us a few ghost stories about it, but they were just the old country standards – the wife who suspiciously killed herself and the husband who was never seen again. Apparently they were the last owners of the property, some twenty odd years ago, but both my wife and I had noticed lights on up there. Someone had to be paying the electricity bill. But, we drank more beer and forgot about it.

I woke about 3am that morning, the beer in my bladder finally outweighing my urge to remain comfortable. I threw on my robe and slippers to keep the cold out. The plumbing wasn’t quite fixed yet, so I had to piss outside. My daughter’s door was open as I went past, odd for her, but my situation had become desperate. I released myself onto a lemon tree, steam rising off the golden arch of my urine. The steam caught the moonlight – god, everything in the country is beautiful.

My eyes inadvertently drifted up to the house on the East-Paddock. The lights were on, flashing like lightning in the darkness. In one of the flashes I saw a figure outlined against the darkness. My heart caught in my throat for a second, then I laughed. They were probably doing the same thing as me! I made a mental note as I walked back down the corridor to tell Angela how quickly I’d succumbed to country superstition.

The next morning, I woke at eight. I got out of bed, and walked down the corridor to make breakfast for my family. I stopped, my heart in my throat and my mouth too dry to swallow. Not only was Sophie’s door open, her bed was empty. I ran to wake my wife, knowing that it had been Sophie I saw last night, walking towards that house.

As we got closer to the house, it became apparent just how run down it was. The grass surrounding the house was up to my knees, and smelt rotten. The closer we got, the more I noticed. Windows that were broken, walls that were rotting and a strange graffiti was scrawled all over the house in a dark, almost black red.

Upon reaching a barbed wire fence the grass stopped abruptly – the entire yard of the house was covered in gravel. The gravel was the cleanest I’d ever seen – it almost shone in the morning sunlight.

I took a step back and jumped over the fence. My jeans caught on the fence and I found myself face first in the gravel. Only it wasn’t. As I pushed my sorry ass up from the ground I felt it cut into my hand. Glass. The entire yard was covered in broken glass.

My wife was over the fence by then and she grimaced as she saw my face. She helped me to my feet and picked a shard of glass out of my cheek. “God, you’re bleeding everywhere” she said, “Let’s go call a doctor from our house”. I stopped her, grabbing her by the arm. “There’s not time,” I said gravely. She nodded somberly and turned towards the rotting house.

That was the first time I saw one of them.

It was on the back of my wife’s knee, about the length of a cigarette. I suppose if I had to liken them to anything, it would be a leech. It was thick like a leech, but less slimy. It gave off a powerful sour stench. I tried to stab it with a piece of glass, but it wouldn’t even pierce the thing’s skin. I checked the rest of her and found another two – one on her ankle and one on her shin. I tried to just pull it off, but the sides were sharp and jagged. I pulled at it until my hand bled, but it didn’t give an inch.

My wife checked me and found one on the outside of my thick jeans pocket. Grinning at my wife, I cut the pocket off and threw the thing onto to ground before stomping it into the glass.

Comforting my wife by telling her the doctor would know what to do to get them off, we continued up to the house. I knocked loudly on the door for several minutes before pushing the unlocked door open.

The inside of the house was fetid and decayed. The wood looked rotten and the air was thick and dark – you could feel the age hanging in the air. Continuing through the house, we found no sign of occupation, except a few tins of food in the cupboard and an old windows computer, next to an ancient plastic phone. A dusty package of bandages lay on top of the phone and the phone itself was cracked and yellowed with age. Dust lay thick on the receiver. A message was scratched in the wallpaper next to the phone: ”Help Yourself”.

My wife took the message and grabbed the receiver, laboriously dialing the number of the local doctor. I turned on the computer, but there was nothing on it. It ran on Windows 95 and only had Word, Internet Explorer and Paint. No saved files; bar one. The only saved file was an interesting picture of the things stuck to my wife that someone had drawn in paint. “Shoggoth Maggot” was written in italics below it. I showed my wife before shutting down the computer.

I checked the house thoroughly, finding empty rotting room after empty rotting room. I found no sign of my daughter.

Then I saw the light flickering in the shed. I heard that sound. Unnerving and unnatural. I told my wife that we had to go there. That Sophie must be there. She disagreed. She said that the only reason we had to think Sophie was even here was a figure I thought I saw at 3am. After drinking. I’m not proud of what I did next.

I leant in closely, so that my dried blood smudged against her cheek and whispered

“I am going next door to save our daughter. When I save her, I’ll tell her you were too scared, too unsure to do what was necessary. I’ll tell her you would have let her die.”

She slapped me then, and the blood started gushing from my cheek once again. We both apologized, but she came. Only because of me, she came.

A strange sound was coming from the shed. It looked shiny and new, but the air was as ancient as in the house. As we got closer the sound got louder, clearer. It was a guttural squelch, hacking, foul and thick. It came once every few seconds, and in between waves you could just make out a softer sound hidden below it. It was only as I opened the door that I realized what this softer sound was. Breathing.

The room was huge and bare with just the metal wall of the shed visible, although there were huge piles of something scattered around. Each one seemed to move, almost throb, in time with the others. I walked closer to one of the piles, almost touching one before realizing what they were.

Shoggoth Maggots, the image had labeled them. Thousands squirming on top of each other, wriggling and twisting in unison. I was horrified when I thought of how many Maggots it must have taken to create even one of the piles. The bigger ones rose up to the ceiling in massive, disgusting pillars. I tried to follow one up to the ceiling, but couldn’t see where it ended. I was sure the shed hadn’t looked that tall from outside. That’s when I heard the sound from before, squelching, haggard and raw – right behind me. I span around and saw him. I don’t know how I ever missed him. He was suspended in the right corner of the room. His arms and legs were each in a writhing pillar of Maggots, in so deep I couldn’t see past his elbows or knees. He looked up at me and he had no eyes, just bloody holes where his eyes should be. He was naked, and strange symbols were scratched all over his body.

My wife screamed at the sight of him, and went to leave, but I caught her again. “We can’t leave him”, I said, my voice cracking like I was going through puberty. She nodded, but her wide blue eyes stared at me in terror. “Kill me….” He croaked, blood spilling from his mouth as he spoke. “Please… Kill mhuuukkk!” – Maggots spewed out of his open mouth. Hundreds of them poured over his lips, and choked his scream. They poured from the holes where his eyes should have been.

I just dodged out of the way before they hit me. I walked around behind him, safely out of the way of the Maggots twisting on the floor. I tried to sound brave as I spoke, letting him hear my confidence before he began to vomit again. “I’m not going to kill you mate”, I said loudly, “But I am going to save you”. I waited for the last Maggot to fall from his lips before tugging him backwards towards me.

I wasn’t prepared for how easily he came out. I lost my balance and nearly fell backwards onto the slimy ground. I just caught myself in time. Looking up I saw the man. He was smiling, and even though he had no eyes I swear he looked at each of us and smiled. First at me, then my wife.

He moved a little closer to Angela, still smiling.

Then he opened his mouth wide, wider than I had thought possible. I went to grab her but it was too late. He vomited the Maggots into her face, point blank. I saw one latch onto each of her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream, but barely made a sound before she was muffled by the Maggots pouring into her throat.

I grabbed him off her and wrestled him to the ground. We rolled amongst the Maggots on the ground and I felt them biting me, but I didn’t care. I sat on his chest and strangled him as he expelled the Maggots out of his body and into my face, onto my body. The Maggots streamed out of his eyes and mouth, sliding over my hands which were wrapped around his neck. They only stopped when he died.

I could barely see, only one eye remained free of Maggots. I had managed to keep my mouth closed, and thanked a God I didn’t believe in that none had gotten inside me. Not that it really mattered. I felt hundreds of Maggots grasp onto my bare skin before I pushed myself up. I turned towards my wife, and almost vomited.

Her face was covered in Maggots to the extent it was no longer visible – she opened her mouth to breathe and I saw the Maggots inside her. Wearing her. I tried to grab her but she pushed me away with unnatural strength, turning quickly towards the largest pile. She walked calmly, silently into the writhing pile of Shoggoth Maggots. After she was enveloped there was no sign she’d ever existed. She was simply swallowed in their immense numbers.

I had no time to grieve. Staggering outside I could feel them biting down, their hold on me getting stronger with every passing minute. I fell to my knees in pain, screaming as the glass I’d forgotten about cut deep into my skin. The glass – was my salvation. I rolled in it for an hour, laughing and screaming as my flesh was torn away. The Maggots couldn’t be cut, that was true, but I cut my flesh away from them. The only way I could escape.

I rolled in bloody, desperate insanity, until finally, not a Maggot remained. Then I made my way, in triumphant agony, back to my house.

My daughter was there. She couldn’t stop screaming when she saw me. Then she called an ambulance. It turned out she had been tanning on the roof when we left. In my panic, I hadn’t even thought to look.

I thought, as the ambulance took me away, that I would almost have preferred to die.

Now I’m certain. If I hadn’t panicked. If I hadn’t constantly urged my wife to continue – if I hadn’t ignored her and helped that man – Angela would still be alive.

She would still be alive and I wouldn’t be a skinless freak.

My daughter can’t look at me, and I don’t blame her. I look like a horror-show villain. The pain – is immense. But I can’t take medication. The pain-killers make me drowsy. When I’m drowsy I fall asleep. When I sleep, I dream.

When I dream… When I dream I see Angela. I see Angela and the man. They do unspeakable, blasphemous things inside my dreams. The dreams always end the same way. Inside each other, twisted together like a sick pretzel, they pause their lovemaking for a second and look towards me.

Neither has eyes, but I know they can see me. They look, past the blood-stained bandages. Past my skinless frame. They look and they see me. Then they smile.