Shred - Cuts of Flesh #1 Read online

The video started – as the others had – with Jacqueline's face, this time in a relatively calm state compared to the other accounts. The total duration of the video was shown at the bottom, a little over four hours, which immediately struck Aleister as odd. If the video included his own appearance in the house, which was supposedly two days after the house's occupants had died, then it should be considerably longer. The reason for this soon became clear.

  “Well, I've sent the email... no reply yet. It's only been a few hours I suppose, I know I should be a bit more patient. Lucas is back now, it's nice... nice to have someone else in this cold house...”

  She started to recount her week, looking livelier, even chatty, as if getting back to some sort of semblance of normality. It was disarming, lulling Aleister into a relaxed state so much so that when the words stopped and her eyes went wide with fear, it was all the more alarming.

  “...Lucas?”

  Aleister sat up in his chair, scrutinising the screen carefully. She was calling downstairs, reacting to a sound that the web cam wasn't sensitive enough to pick up. The next sound was loud enough though... a hideous bellowing, a roar as if the house had suddenly been thrown through a waterfall, rushing, thunderous, deadly. Jacqueline almost fell out of her chair as she scrambled to the door that was visible behind her, calling out instinctively for her son. The only movement left was the slowing spin of the office chair that she had been sitting in, which eventually stopped amidst indistinct screams and yells from downstairs. After barely a heartbeat the door started to open again, though the light in the room was different, darker. It seemed that the web cam had a motion sensor which let it know when to record, which explained the shorter run time.

  Such a realisation meant little in the face of the horror that pushed through the door though, the swollen beast that staggered in on legs that seemed ready to collapse at any minute. Aleister’s eyes went wide as he saw a face that was virtually black from fluid but was just about recognisable as Thomas Webb. His eyes were blood shot to the point where no white was visible and were pushing out of his bloated features as he moved forwards. He seemed to be frantically searching for something, muttering sparse words and syllables in what sounded an alien language, apart from one word, one that cut through all the others...

  “Dying...”

  The screen splashed with red so suddenly that Aleister almost fell out of his chair, as blood sprayed across the lens of the web cam, obscuring everything except some horrifying juddering movement in the tiny portion of the room still visible, a briefest glimpse of strange ruddy cones... before it was gone as suddenly as it had been there.

  The screen suddenly changed to show almost complete darkness, as the camera reactivated in what must have been the middle of the night, with the only light coming from the computer screen as it illuminated the blood stained room with a ghostly blue tinged light. At first he couldn’t see what had activated the camera’s motion sensor, but gradually a shadow appeared across the floor at an obscure angle to the screen, undulating as if underwater. The movement seemed at odds to anything he had ever seen, as if it were swaying backwards, subverting the laws of physics. There was also the sound... a rough vibration as if he were hearing a cloth that was being rubbed across his own face, smothering him with its intonations.

  The movement continued for five minutes, ten, twenty... as Aleister watched with eyes fixed on the movement he felt as if a wave of shame were washing over him. He had never felt so grubby, as if his soul were being tarnished by watching the silhouette of this ghoulish dance by someone he couldn’t see. It was as if he knew that he shouldn’t see whoever was casting the shadow, as if he were not worthy...

  A sickening shiver of nausea started to run through him and he instinctively moved the time line of the video forwards in an act of self-preservation, until suddenly a darkness filled the screen, obscuring the light. For some reason he felt compelled to let it play again and as he did so the sound almost deafened him, a dark humming punctuated by a regular, ponderous clicking that made him feel as if his centre of gravity had slipped into a fourth dimension that he was slipping across under an inexorable inertia, throwing images of pain experienced and pain imagined through his mind, forcing him to wrench the headphones from his head and fall of his chair onto the hardwood floor. He managed to get to his feet, before staggering out into the hallway and across into the bathroom. He slumped to his knees and vomited aggressively into the toilet bowl, his back arching with the effort of expulsion. When the sickness finally started to subside he slid down the wall and grabbed for some toilet paper to wipe the bile from his lips, whilst breathing so heavily that he was at risk of hyperventilating.

  For a few minutes he was scared to even look out of the door towards the room, towards the screen that had displayed... something... nothing... he had no idea. Was it some trick of science? He was sure he had read somewhere about specific sounds or vibrations that could induce nausea, so if someone had placed those on the recording... but no, that made no sense. The recording had still been running when he had arrived, there had been no chance for post-production. What would have been the point anyway? Whatever had made that noise had been in that house...

  He pulled himself unsteadily to his feet and ran his hands under the cold water tap, splashing some on his face to help pull him back into the here and now. When he felt ready he went back into the study, his feet feeling heavy as he moved closer to the screen as if his body were reacting to the proximity of the shadow, like two polar magnetic opposites being forced together.

  The video was still running but as he watched the darkness was gone in the blink of an eye to be replaced by bleak morning light. The next movement that activated the camera was his own appearance, awkwardly creeping across the blood stains on the floor. Aleister reached forwards with a shaking hand and paused the video, freezing the picture on his own face, staring out of the screen with the same confusion that he felt now, as if it were a mirror.