The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

What Was Still Moving
by Kathleen McCluskey

The hinge bleeds when the door opens.

It does not drip cleanly. The fluid clings, thick and dark stretching into strings between iron and wood before snapping free and spotting the floor. The smell comes with it – hot metal, rancid fat and something coppery that coats the back of my tongue and refuses to leave.

The locals would not step inside of the cottage. They lingered at the threshold, eyes darting past the door as if something should be watching them. One local told me that the house had survived the famine because it learned faster than most. He would not explain what he meant, just crossed himself and backed away. The Irish and their superstitions, it made me smile.

The door opens inward, heavy, resistant. When I push on it, the hinge fights me. There is a wet drag beneath the iron resistance, a sensation like pulling cartilage apart. The hinge clicks as it moves, as if counting. It’s a slow deliberate sound that repeats itself even when the door stops moving.

On the third night, the sound changed. Chewing.

It began inside the hinge. Inside. Steady and methodical, accompanied by a faint grinding, like bone on bone. The door was closed. I am certain of that because my shoulder was braced against it. Heat began to build through the door, soaking into my skin. My mouth watered and filled with saliva. It was difficult to swallow.

I pushed the door open to see if there was a fire inside.

  The hinge flexed as the door moved, splitting along a seam that should not exist. Something dropped free and struck the floor with a wet crack. It was a piece of human bone, blackened and polished smooth. The edges were worn down like it had been wiggled and worked side to side for years.

The smell surged outward next, a stank, overwhelming stench. I nearly gagged. It was warm, like standing over a boiling pot that had the wrong meat in it. A pot that should have never been filled.

I try to slam the door shut. The hinge resisted, tightening and a strange pressure bloomed behind my eyes making my head swim. When the door finally closed. The hinge screamed, it was a sharp, choking scream that ended with a satisfying click.

I looked closer at the doorframe, the marks there explain the rest.

Hundreds of notches were carved into the wood, steady and careful. They looked like counting marks worn smooth from hands that had returned often. Beneath those are older gouges, frantic and uneven, torn into the grain by, dare I say, fingernails. The wood is black there, saturated with blood that has soaked in too deeply to ever disappear.

The famine taught them efficiency. I shudder at the thought.

When the door opened again, it did so without my help.

The hinge parted wider now, revealing its interior. Iron rods run through it, pinning together lengths of human bone, packed tight with grey, fibrous meat. The flesh twitched when the hinge moved. It was as if it was reacting to friction. To heat. To hunger. The chewing grew louder, faster and the smell was unbearable.

Beyond the door there was no room. There was only a close, wet darkness pressing forward, breathing heavily. I cannot explain the level of horror I was feeling.

The hinge locked in place, holding the door open. Pressure built in my skull causing my ears to ring. My hands trembled violently, my fingers curled against my will. Hunger tore through me, likes that I have never known. It was sharp and focused, it stripped away my panic and replaced it with need.

I understood that the hinge did not take indiscriminately, it taught. I cut myself, without even knowing I was doing it.

The knife slid into my forearm with less resistance than I expected. Blood welled immediately, thick and hot and the hinge responded at once. The chewing sound accelerated and the door vibrated. I pressed my arm against the exposed seam, it gripped me, flexing as meat and bone clamped down. 

The hinge pulled. Not hard enough to tear, just hard enough to measure. Teeth that are worn sharp from centuries of use scraped against my muscle, learning the texture. Blood poured into the hinge and down the rods, coating the grey flesh inside.

By the time the hinge released me my arm was slick and mangled, and now the door moves easily again. The seam closed. The chewing faded to a contented grind.

I bound my wounds poorly. It does not matter. The hunger lingers, low and constant. It curls comfortably around my gut.

The hinge weeps blood when the door moves. Thick and dark. It knows me now and it knows that I understand what it requires to keep the house standing.

The famine never ended here. It just learned how to make the living continue it.

Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!