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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Horror
- Subject: Ghost Stories / Paranormal
- Published: 12/08/2024
Grassland
Born 2006, F, from Budapest, HungaryIt was a sunny day when I first returned to my mother’s house. I remember it was exactly one month after her passing; for that one month the old house stood empty. When I parked my car by the fence I noticed the dead branches of the sycamore tree: it was a dry summer, and without proper care the plant couldn’t maintain itself. I leaned over the fence like I used to when I visited my mother, to call out her name. For a second my mouth opened, I tasted the light summer breeze, the scent of someone burning wood in the distance. I stood motionless, watching the old house; its windows seemed dusty, the wall tainted with dirt. As I unlocked the gate and stepped through the overgrown grass I watched for small insects; there were none. The dry leaves rustled in the wind.
I stopped in front of the door; the inside of the house stared at me through the window, its abyss swallowing the warm sunlight in whole. I felt a tingling force in my chest, gently pulling me in. I unlocked the door, it hit the small bells above its frame and I froze from the flood of memories. Birthdays. Christmases. Sunday lunch. All accompanied by the quiet twinkle of the bells when someone entered the house.
The living room still smelled of her perfume; the blinds were open so it was bright inside, dust particles floating in the air, refracting the rays of the sun. I sat down on the couch and stared at the wall for a few minutes; apart from the slow ticking of the clock it was utterly silent in there. So silent I could almost hear the reminiscence of my memories; the laughter of a family, the happy screams of children, my nieces, running around the house. The sounds seemed haunting at this moment so I reached into my pocket and took out a small note that my mother left me. It said: “Go on our walk for one last time.” In my mind, I promised her I would. The only thing we had for ourselves was that walk; the only thing we both knew perfectly well. You could take me to this house blind, and I would still know the way, every turn, every step of that walk.
I sat there for a while. The sound of the clock seemed unnaturally loud.
When I stood up, finally, it was darker outside. I slowly walked back to the car and drove down to a small passing in the field behind my mother’s house. The narrow road was surrounded by tall grass and I could hear its rustles under the dark pink horizon. Lilac clouds lingered low in the air. I looked, for a long time, ahead of me on the narrow road before I turned to the left and walked straight into the grass. I could see something in the distance. Was it a tree? Or a bush? I touched the buds of a flower. There were still no insects around. As I started walking the lilac clouds drifted smoothly across the horizon; I watched the sky for birds, but it was empty, like some sort of organ with moving lilac muscles. The lights seemed raw and the air carried a familiar scent, the smell of wheat and milk.
By the time it started raining I couldn’t see the narrow road. I stopped, looking up at the sky; I wondered if sadness birthed a sort of horror. I wondered if sadness was the child of horror itself. I pretended that the fat raindrops flowing down on my face were tears and I whimpered like a hungry child. But no tears came. When I lowered my empty expression I saw something in the distance: was it a long bundle of weed, a strange abomination of my mind and the endless grassland? No; it swayed with the grass, but it was taller. It was thin, but not thin enough to be grass. It was looking at me and I saw something that could’ve been a face; my whines echoed from its body, merging with the all consuming sound of the rain, but they were true, agonising. I stood, frozen; I closed and rubbed my eyes, but when I opened them again… Was it closer now? Was it swaying more slowly, more gently? Its cries reverberating, muffled amidst the whispers of the grass and the rain. I looked around me: grass everywhere, the infinity of moss green wasteland rocking me and the thing. I panicked, looking back, and I knew it was closer but I wasn’t sure.
‘Mom?’ I called, my voice sounded surreal. Was it my voice? ‘Mom? Can you come back?’
I stumbled ahead and fell on the muddy ground. I closed my eyes, curling up in a foetal position.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left. I should’ve stayed with you’ I whined into my palms. Slowly, I could hear the rustles of the grass touching me; I knew that the thing was next to me now, sewing its dark green whispers into my skin. I was alone. I wondered if she was alone too, wandering lost in this grassland; the only place we shared. The only memory that was purely ours.
As I laid there I realised that grief was its own kind of horror..
The rain quietened and I cried; it felt like time had stopped moving, but I knew it didn’t because the clouds drifted through the sky, and the sound of crickets returned once again.
And the grass kept swaying.
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