Hunger (a horror shortstory)

It was the day of Tommy’s disappearance that Magda first met Mr. Vaulkner. Or more precisely the anniversary of a day that had passed four years previously. She knew this because, as always, Mother had started this particular day sitting at the kitchen counter, her face long and haggard with crying through the night. As always, on ’Tommy’s day’ she had given Magda a most harrowing look and hugged her tightly, and tried to get to her feet to accompany her daughter to school.

Her mother’s breath had smelled of gin and the woman had stumbled to the door beside her and then fallen to her knees. She was unable to make it out into the world, into the morning light, on the anniversary of this day that had robbed her of her own. She'd held her daughter awkwardly, sobbed into her hair a little and then shouted at her to go, all of it coming as waves over the placid little girl’s demeanor. Magda had left quickly then, happy to avoid the embarrassment of her alcoholic mother accompanying her to school. She was nine now, old enough to take herself and the trips with her mother were becoming mercifully less frequent.

This particular morning, as she walked, she became aware of a presence at her elbow, keeping perfect time with her steps and looked up to see the face of a kindly older gentleman with wisps of white hair floating softly about his gnarled face. She smiled, uncertainly.
‘Mother tells me I cannot speak with strangers,’ the girl pre-empted, staring up at the mans twinkling green eyes with her own bright blue ones.
‘It seems to me your mother is an imminently sensible woman,’ the man said carefully, still matching her steps, ‘Yet here you are, defying her instructions.’

‘I've seen you before,’ she quipped, ‘on this road when I walk to school. You walk this way often in the mornings. But never when I am with Mama.’ She added that last thoughtfully as it occurred to her.
The old man nodded, a slight smile touching his lips. ‘I've seen you too, young Magda. You're a sharp one, that's true. Your mother has asked me to watch for you passing my garden and to ensure you are safe on the days she cannot manage to be with you. She asked me not to tell you but it seems the game is up!’
‘I do not need watching,’ the girl replied haughtily. ‘I can watch for myself.’
‘That’s true,’ the man agreed, ‘from what I've seen. Your mother will be most angry with me when you tell her you've uncovered her deception.’ At the last, a tremulous note crept into his voice and looking up, Magda was surprised to see a look of trepidation on his face.

‘I won't tell,’ the little girl said chivalrously. ‘Your secret is safe. I know Mama is only trying to protect me.’
At this the man looked relieved. ‘You are wise beyond your years my dear,’ he said. ‘My name is Mr. Vaulkner. I am honored to finally make your acquaintance, Magda. May I walk you anyway?’
She nodded quickly. ‘Yes, you may. And then you can tell me how you know Mama.’

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In this manner it became the custom for Vaulkner and Magda to walk together most mornings that she went to school. Some days the old man would have a carrier from the shops and on these days Magda knew there would be a packet of biscuits to share as they chatted about any and everything on their companionable amble. On the days when her mother was beside her Vaulkner stayed in his house. Sometimes on these days she would see him peering from the window of the dilapidated beige two story with its sprawling, low-walled garden. She never returned his small, furtive smiles for fear of exposing Vaulkner's secret to her mother but looked for them all the same as they passed. It was a month after she first encountered him that Vaulkner came to Magda in the night.

The window of the girl’s room though always closed against the night air and her mother's fears never had the shutters drawn. Since she was young, Magda had feared the dark to a terrible extent and would only sleep with the light from the outside, swan-necked street lamp pouring through the window. Beyond it lay bushes, then woods across the road, but the girl focused on the pool of white light around the lamp itself until her eyes grew too heavy to keep open and then fell, always, into a deep and usually undisturbed slumber.

Some nights however, Magda would wake and listening in the half-dark she would be able to hear breathing from the bunk above hers. The sound always filled her with a strange melancholy because it meant that Tommy had come home to visit. Usually she would then go back to sleep, but on the odd occasion she could not resist creeping to the edge of the bed to peer over into Tommy’s bunk. There his sad face would be waiting to greet hers and then he would slip away, somehow swallowed by darkness.

It was therefore not too unusual for her to wake in the middle of the night, though this time her heart was hammering in her ears and for a moment she experienced a strange confusion as to where she was. In the back of her throat, an odd taste, as of damp and mold, lodged uncomfortably. Then, looking out the window to her lamp, Magda experienced a creeping feeling of dread as she noticed a figure standing across the street at the edge of the streetlight. As the figure began moving silently closer, seeming to glide across the road she tried to call out for her mother but could not seem to make the words leave her throat.

Instead, she watched in increasing terror as the thing closed the gap to under her street lamp, then came a moments confusion when she saw the familiar wisps of white hair. The elbow-patched tweed coat and slightly hunched shape that so closely matched Vaulkner’s daytime aspect. With a lurch, the figure started towards the window, and Magda could see now that instead of Vaulkner’s merrily twinkling green eyes this apparition had orbs of pure white, staring blindly from a sunken, sallow face. The skin around them seemed to glow a sickly, lemon yellow as it approached, intensifying as the creature moved away from the lamp-light.

The thing was by her window now but deathly silent as before and simply staring through the glass, somehow aware she was awake and watching it. A strange smile, hauntingly familiar as Vaulkner’s playing across the tight face. Despite the hammering of her heart, the girl closed her eyes, certain now this was a dream. It was only with the feel of the cool night breeze, playing with her hair that she dared to open them again.

Her room had turned to darkness, the lamp beyond the window extinguished. In the faint moonlight, Magda could however see that the window was open wide to the night. Nothing moved beyond it now and despite the breeze there was no trace of a sound. It was in fact, this preternatural silence that most disturbed her. Nothing, no crickets or dogs barking or sound from the wind. She peered past the posts of her bunk, past the dark overhang that had been Tommy’s bunk into the room, locked in shadow. It was only the slightest flicker of light and movement that caught her gaze. She looked left, behind her pillow, to where the figure now stood, it's pale eyes boring straight into her. A scream forced itself from her then, seeming to rip free from the soundless world in which she found herself and shattering its hold over her.

When the girl’s mother found her she had wet the sheets and this fact, combined with the open window sent the woman into a drunken rage. With blows to the girl’s head and body Magda’s mother screamed of the danger. That the window could never be opened and that Magda, if she refused to listen, would end just as Tommy had. Did she want to end up like Tommy? Did she want to break her mother’s heart, be taken, the way he had been?

Blow after blow fell until the girl’s mother collapsed, weeping to the floor. And Magda, staring out the window, was wracked with sobs of her own. Not even about the beating, of which she’d experienced many. But at the ruin of the light which see could see now had exploded into a thousand pieces that seemed embedded into the thousand aching places newly made in her frail, little body.

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The morning after Magda had seen the apparition of Vaulkner in the night was another in which the old man came to walk her to school. As he had all the days before, Vaulkner seemed calm and cheerful and the girl felt a strange mixture of recalcitrance to be near him and guilt that she should feel this way towards the kindly man that watched over her so attentively.

As if sensing her nervousness, Vaulkner reached out and placed one gnarled hand on her small shoulder as they walked, asking in a most kindly tone:
‘What is it, Magda? Did something happen?’
The question put her immediately on guard as the details of the previous night’s events rushed back into memory.
‘No, it is nothing,’ she said softly, far more subdued than Vaulkner had ever seen her.

They walked in silence a while before the old man asked again gently:
‘Was it a dream or something else that occurred? Your mother told me you have not been sleeping well…’
The idea that her mother and Vaulkner had regular conversations about her irked the girl somewhat and she spoke next with a little of her usual fire:
‘It was not a dream, it was… The light, street-lamp outside my window. It shattered in the night. I need it to sleep is all,’ she finished lamely.
‘Well, I know some people Magda,’ Vaulkner said with a bright smile. ‘I will call my friends on the council and have them come to fix that light of yours before the day is up.’
With this, he left her at the school gate and true to his word, by the time Magda returned home that afternoon, there were already workmen replacing the shattered lamp bulb outside her window.

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It was a full two weeks later that Magda again had a strange visitation in the night. This time however, she also saw Tommy. At first, she checked his bunk, though she could not hear any breathing. Despite this the sense her twin was close persisted, even as she came fully awake. The girl’s eyes strayed automatically to the street lamp for comfort. In the pool of light beneath it she saw Tommy standing, only unlike her usual imaginings, he was no longer a five year old boy but grown like her.
‘Tommy?’ she whispered, incredulous at the figure. Leaving her bed, the girl crept to the window and could see now the expression on the boy’s gaunt face.
There was a dull horror in her twin’s eyes that chilled Magda immediately to her core. His whole appearance in fact was one of skeletal unwell-ness, the skin that had been so robust in life now yellowed and stretched paper thin over bones that seemed too big for it.

She held this apparition’s gaze for a moment before the eyes suddenly widened in pure terror and a second figure, the thing that looked like Vaulkner, appeared in the light behind him. With a motion as of a fish gasping, this other figure began to sip at the air around the boy. The wisps of pale hair around its face seemed to float in the moonlight as if in water and the round, sightless eyes somehow still conveyed a fathomless hunger. At this, Tommy’s look of anguish deepened and the boy sank heavily to his knees, too weak now it seemed to even scream. In terror, Magda raced back to her bed, pulling the covers over herself and weeping, as silently as she could to avoid rousing her mother. For how long this spectacle beyond her window continued, Magda did not know. But she knew now, in a way she had never been certain of before, that though Tommy was still alive his days among the living were numbered.

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The following morning, when Vaulkner fell into step beside her it was all the girl could do not to run the rest of the way to school. When he pulled a packet of biscuits from his carrier to share with her, Magda declined, instead asking abruptly:
‘Why did my mother ask you to watch me? It does not seem necessary. I can walk myself to school now.’
‘It is because of Tommy, of course,’ the old man said giving her a sad glance. ‘Even when she cannot walk you, your mother worries for your safety.’
‘And why did you agree?’ Magda pressed. ‘Surely you have better things to do?’
If he was taken aback by her questions, the old man didn't show it. Rather his air of sadness seemed to deepen instead and a lost look crept over his face. They walked in silence a few steps before he stated simply:
‘I had a boy once. When I was a younger man. A boy like Tommy.’
Though Vaulkner seemed disinclined to continue, Magda pressed him:
‘And what happened to this boy?’
‘He disappeared, into the woods behind your house in fact. I never found him. They,’ now the old man’s voice cracked. ‘They never found the body.’

At this last a strange look crept over Vaulkner’s face. Some mixture of fear and anguish and instantly, Magda pitied him.
‘How old was he?’ She asked, subdued now.
‘Younger than you, seven years of age. He was a good boy, Magda. A very good boy.’
At this last, the old man’s voice cracked and suddenly there were tears streaming down his old face, followed by wracking sobs. It was a grief Magda herself had felt countless times after Tommy’s disappearance.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply.
‘Me too,’ Vaulkner said quietly. ‘Still, we must focus on the good in life, no? You are still here. As am I. And at least I can protect you. Here.’
He held out the packet of biscuits again and this time Magda took one, carefully watching to ensure he did the same before biting into hers. It took, perhaps half of it before her steps turned to stumbling and her eyes grew unbearably heavy.

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When she awoke, Magda found herself on an unfamiliar couch, surrounded by unfamiliar antique furnishings. Her vision swimming, the girl tried to stand, stumbled and sank slowly back to the couch.
‘It will be a while before that wears off,’ Vaulkner's familiar voice informed her. The same strange hint of sadness that had pervaded it was still present as he continued:
‘I wanted to tell you that I am sorry Magda. I am sorry that it had to be you. But your mother…,’ he trailed off heavily. ‘It is well known she is a drunk. That she beats you. Who could blame you for running away really?’

The old man’s words fell into her ears like the droning of bees, lacking in sense or function.
‘Run away? I did not… Did he…?’
‘Tommy?,’ Vaulkner asked, ‘Or my Gregor? No, Gregor wouldn't have run away. He was a happy boy, Magda. Something took him in those woods and by the time he came home my Gregor was no longer the same. It changed him.’

As he said this, Vaulkner led her by the hand towards the old stone kitchen. In the floor, Magda could see a weathered, wooden cellar door. Reaching past her, Vaulkner opened the door and a draft of dank air shot through, along with a stench of faeces and sweat that made the girl gag. With a desperate tug to free her arm, Magda whirled round and attempted to run, barely making it three steps before crashing to the floor. Behind her, a heavy sigh as Vaulkner retrieved her by one leg.
‘There is nowhere to go now Magda,’ he said, then added mournfully: ‘He was a good boy once, my Gregor.’

With this he shoved her roughly down the cellar steps and into the darkness. As the door closed behind her, the girl’s heart lurched through her drugged haze. With a scream, Magda tried to climb back up the stairs, falling hard against the cold stone. The panic at the dark that had plagued her since Tommy’s disappearance flared up as she realised she was in almost total blackness. Almost, and yet, from one corner of the old cellar a faint glow found her eyes.

There, in that farthest corner, she could just make out the outline of the light’s source. Not Vaulkner then, the apparition with the white floating hair, despite the uncanny resemblance. A sinking feeling settled into her chest as the thing, chained to one wall, moved slowly across the stone squares of the floor, not towards her however, but rather to what she now saw was a second figure huddled into the cellar’s other back corner.

As the thing approached, the figure lifted its head, staring blankly at its encroaching death. She saw him then, his face, older and harrowed now but unmistakeably his, just as it had been in her dreams. With a voice weary with years in this cellar, years with the thing Magda now realised was Gregor, Tommy stated sadly:
‘If only you’d run, my sister.’

(Images from wikimedia commons: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Child_ghost.jp)

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