Gothic Short Story

“The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate”- Jessamyn West.


He sits in a chair, thrashing about and drooling.  I tied him there; I cannot stand my son.  The woods that flank our crumbling abode are filled with God’s biting, scratching creatures, hosts to parasitic life forms set out to ruin mankind.  I warned Lucas of this and did not allow him to leave the house.  ‘Be afraid of that which you cannot understand’ I warned him.  He deserves to agonize and scream for water, when words find their way past his lips.  He deserves to suffer the rabies’ entire wrath, all of God’s wrath.  Luke ran from the safety of our home deep into the woods, only to return in a state similar to that which he exists in now.  ‘Why don’t you die?’ I think to myself.  I have always hated animals.
The townspeople are wolves.  They peer out behind yellowed eyes, searching, waiting for the opportune moment to strike the sickened animal.  I wear my large overcoat when entering town once every month; the food I purchase fills the pockets.  One needs very little when they do not leave the safety of their sanctuary.  They cannot see me beneath my protective coat, and I always trot quickly away down the dirt road back to Mabel Manor.  Shrouded in a sylvan veil of decaying cedars and pines lies the rotting heap I have named after my deceased wife.  She was not beautiful; her name suits the house.
         It is dark and damp in our home.  Lucas will die soon, be it by my hand or the disease.  I feel the rabies works too slowly.  How cruel God is to make him suffer so, when I could end it in one strike.  For now I have left him in his chair.  My son costs me time and money; he tests my patience.  He did not heed my warning, and now I wish he would die.  I have no further use for him as a son or companion.
I spat this information at him as he spit back at me, a duel of words between animals.  Pacing back and forth in front of it, just out of its reach, I taunted and teased it.  I left it then, to writhe and die a horrible death.  Good riddance animal. I have always hated you.
         Pockets full of food and supplies I ran through the forest.  Branches whipped my face, roots lunged at my feet.  Cut and bruised I arrived at the hunting lodge, a smaller, more decrepit excuse for a shelter than my home.  I am human, yet I feel nothing.
I awoke to a cold drip of water on my face; how the roof did always leak.  It was near midnight, and the moon shone through the cracks and played across the floor.  How many days had passed?  What had I done while in this place? Think. I eat and sleep, eat and sleep, but I am not an animal! No, I sit and I think and I wonder and I feel, and it is remorse I feel.  I do feel, for I am but a man.  We are all men; Lucas is a man. 
I wrestled with the thought as the wind whistled outside, passing eerily through the branches and the fissures of the hunting lodge.  Nothing could touch me in my manmade dwelling; it was safe to think.  ‘We are all men’.  The phrase sounded wild to my ears.  It would mean that the townspeople, with their yellow eyes, were men.  My wife as well, a man; I cannot argue that.  Young Luke, my only son, was more of a man than I could ever hope to be.  He tried to succeed, tried to go out and make a name for himself among the rest of the people in the world.  Yet I had held him back.  If I ever mistook dear Lucas for an animal it was simply because I had created such an image. I had caged the beast and it had tried to escape to what was proper and correct.  Dear God, what had I done?
I awoke to the sun peaking through the lodge doors.  It was time to confront the nightmare I had created.  I could not bring myself to return to Mabel Manor quickly and so took a circuitous route back to the bushes at the rear of my home.  Peering through the shrubbery I could see nothing amiss on the first floor where I had left Luke.  I crept to the backdoor and slowly turned the handle, cringing as the door hinges let out a wail of displeasure.  It was dark inside despite the glaring sun that shone down from the sky; perhaps it was the layers of dust on the windows that blocked the rays.  The little light able to filter through cast twisted shadows on the floor and the walls.  It was almost good to be home again.
He would be in the study adjacent to the living room I stood in, tied to the chair in the same place I had left him.  So sure of this was I that the lack of his presence upon entering the study nearly knocked me to the floor.  There sat the chair, and there lay the rope that had bound him.  Darkened spots on the already damp and moldy floor lay all about the chair, remnants of the saliva that had been launched in his constrained paroxysms.  Where was my son?
  I began to examine the minute enclosure I had left my son to die in.  There was the truth: I had hoped with every last inch of me that I would return to see my son slumped motionless in the chair.  From that point it would have been relatively simple to explain his death from the rabies.  Now here I was without a body, without my son.  My mind began to race.  Did he make it into town and alert someone?  Had he received medical treatment and now awaited my return, where he would drag me to court and have me prosecuted?  Further searching cleared such thoughts from my mind. 
Scratches and abrasions marked the floor in a path to the window.  The window was open no more than three inches, and the dust on the sill was scattered.  From there the scrapes led to the hall, and dust was smudged in elongated patterns on the floor.  Down the hall I followed them, as if a deformed creature had pulled itself using only its arms down the dark corridor.  It could only have been Luke.  There was a shape in the hall up ahead.  I stole cautiously towards it, the floorboards creaking with every step. Limbs lay across the hall like logs, protruding from a doorway in the dim light.  As I approached the form, I recognized an increasingly musty and rancid smell that permeated the air.  I had found Luke.
Lying halfway in the doorway to the hall closet lay my son; his body had begun to decay and the white crust of saliva was spread about his face.  Only the lower whites of his eyes were visible, now a deep and sickly yellow.  His face had twisted itself into a horrific visage of agony; I could not look away.  The corpse called to me, screaming silent words of blame and rage into my echoing ears.  It was my son who lay before me.  I knelt closer to kiss the rotting flesh of his forehead, the skin of my own flesh and blood.  It was my son who lay before me.  Suddenly, a knock at the front of the house shook me from my trance.  Startled, my head jerked up and I grabbed the door frame for support.  Confident that no one would immediately enter the house, I began piling the carcass into the closet, slamming the door as I pushed the feet inside.  I ran back down the hall and grabbed the rope so that it could be tossed into the bushes I had hid in only a short time before.  My aim was true.  I pushed the chair Luke had been tied to back with the small desk in the corner of the study and walked to the front door of Mabel Manor.
The door opened before I could push it open myself.  He was dressed in grey.  Grey like a wolf, with his yellow eyes and his glistening badge.
“Mr. Planchett, Officer Steele.  Do you mind if I take a look around the house here? Neighbors called us down after reporting screams and cries.  Horrible things they said.”
         I told him I could not care less if he searched my house.  This foul-smelling wolf sent by other members of the pack, with their yellow eyes and intrusive manners, could sniff and prowl and search every inch of my home.  He was going to ask me a few questions then as we walked.  No, I had been here for a while.  I could not remember the exact amount of time.  I live alone, thus the extensive dust and smells.  As he moved towards the hall and the study, I offered to get him a drink.  He would recognize the smell.  I told him that I was not an animal.  He did not respond.  I repeated the statement numerous times, hoping to drill the point home; I will not be joining your kind, wolf.  He did not respond.  The officer had found the closet.  I sought to rid myself of the terrible burden that suddenly weighed on my shoulders.  I had to show the rest of these creatures I was no animal.  Luke had been an animal, take him away.  Luke was in pieces.  Luke would not go quietly.  His distorted facial features would scream the same agonizing, silent pleas for help to anyone who tried to move him.
         I was headed outside now.  The officer began calling for assistance on his radio.  His weapon would be drawn.  Up the latticework I climbed, finding footholds amidst the rotted out portions of the wood.  From the lower roof I easily pulled myself to the top of Mabel Manor.  I looked out into the forest through the trees.  The hunting lodge was there somewhere.  I could have lasted longer had I stayed put, but in time the animals always catch their prey.  I heard the chirp of a bird, the yell from the officer below.  I began to run.  I could prove to them I was no animal.  They could not have me; I was no carrion bird fit to join their ranks.  The officer’s yell turned to a howl in my ears as I gained speed on the roof.  Off the chimney I launched into the air.  I flapped my wings; I would not fly.  Gravity pulled me towards the ground.  I was no animal.