Forgotten

Forgotten

A mournful drone echoes across the cobbled streets.

It has no end. On every close that awful, screeching sound is there. Hanging thick in the air, hugging desperatly around me, and every footstep of my own makes me start and I wish that I could see the kerb before me.

I keep walking, my head is down, and I begin to pick up my pace, skipping gently up onto the kerbs. Ahead of me I can see something. Maybe, it is white however I can not say for certain, it is almost as though it is not there at all. My breath catches in my throat as I c**k my head to one side. 

Now I can see the them. There is a large group of ghostly figures, all standing, with an surreal stillness. Their faces are agonisingly beautiful,yet still daunting. Watery hands beckon to me to me, pulling me in. Closer to them. I want to stop walking, but I can’t! All I know is that it is too hard to stop walking, even though I can see them laughing at me, mocking me. And as I draw closer I can see the disturbing blank and sorrowful look in their milky irises.

I cautiously  tip-toe towards them, dazed, but they keep walking backwards. Why won't they stay still?

I let out a cry. I want to know them. I need to know their secrets!

A blur.

In front of me a young girl stands, a solemn look on her bruised face. Her arm reaches forward and she places a hand on my Superdry hoodie to reveal a light mark. It takes me a few moments to realise that it is in fact a brand. I look up at her, shocked, but she takes no notice of my astonished façade , she only whispers, barely audible:

“H-h-help s” the voice produced  is a scared, parched tone that betrays the mask of coolness she wears. And her words ring in my ears as the crowd of ghostly watchers lead me towards St.Giles.

 

I don’t know why, but I am following willingly. Up ahead I can see the cathedral looming up out of the mist that has been wounded by the the daunting crown of the tower. The cobwebed windows cast a luminous light onto the slippery steps below. 

Still their faces are impassive but I can hear their groans growing more and more hopeful by the minute.

Mesmerised I enter the cathedral. Rising above me I can see the incaranatley carved stone archways, each one a masterpiece. 

I am still following this strange phantom cult. I am not really sure why but I feel like I belong. 

My skin is covered in goose bumps as I drag my heavy feet towards the alter. The alter once so ordinary- has an oppressive aura and the usually heart-warming pictures of saints and the Virgin Mary are banging desperately against their glass cages , screaming their S.O.S’s. Their innocent faces, I notice, seem to be twisted by something. As though they are watching a dark presence before them, and being immersed by its power. 

 

A shiver sprints up my spine as a man, about forty, breaths on my neck, “ Help them or join them.”  He laughs slowly, although faintly, as though he pleased with himself.  Somehow  it spreads across the hall, like a winter’s breeze.  A zephyr peels of the ceiling revealing thousands of rotting bodies and skeletons gazing dreamily into some unknown space.

I let out a stifling scream as my stomach lurches and I fall to the cold, hard ground before scrabbling to cower behind the benches.

When finally I look up the ghosts that seemed to have previously mocked me are no longer there, there are no bodies making upt the ceiling and the saints are once again smiling sweetly.

All I can see now are two feet and a scythe. 

Reviews

[TLK]

I find it hard to be invested in the horror here with a first-person narrator. What is happening is so beyond normal experience that the usefulness of first-person -- inhabiting the character's psychology -- is not needed.

The impersonal nature of the terror would be heightened if it was third-person.


A writer who really managed illogical first-person horror was Lovecraft. Your first few lines made me think of the terrifying noises in the story The Music of Erich Zann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Music_of_Erich_Zann).
Lovecraft managed this kind of horror because the true horror ends up inside the character all along. Some kind of insanity, or kinship with insanity, that makes them forever marked as alienated from normal life. It's like old horror movies, where you don't see the monster until the end. But Lovecraft often makes people the monsters. The human world is always fabricating its own insanity in his best stories.

[Miss. Smith]

Thank you again, this was also written in my English class at school and unfortunately we were told to write a horror story in first person that was set in Edinburgh. I'll take this into consideration the next time i write a horror story. Really you are being such a great help.