Held Barely at Bay

Flash Fiction by

Russell Epp-Leppel (Architect) & C. C. Rayne (Haunter)

This piece is the product of our Tiny Hauntings pop-up sub call. First, we asked you to become Architects, creating stunning, spooky, spine-chilling settings. Next, we gathered Haunters and unleashed them into our favorite Architect-designed landscapes. The results are to die for.

Q: Have you ever been somewhere haunted?

A: The correct answer is “yes,” because everywhere is haunted. You see, approximately 118 billion humans have ever lived, and only 8 billion of them are alive right now, give or take a few. This leaves 110 billion ghosts, and they’ve all got to go somewhere. Actually, they go everywhere.

(Everywhere except the old Schwarztier house, that is. Even ghosts won’t dare to tangle with the Thing that lurks there.)

Q: What is the Thing that lurks in the old Schwarztier house?

A: The correct answer is “alive.” Unlike the ghosts, it’s got flesh and bones and lots of blood. It’s a curious amount of bodily matter. Far too much for one old house. Almost enough for 110 billion people, if you counted.

(But that’s just an estimate. No one’s ever gotten close enough to count.)

Q: Why are ghosts so afraid of the Thing?

A: The correct answer is “it’s familiar,” because nothing’s more frightening than the things you used to know. All the humans that have ever lived are wandering around everywhere: spiritual, ethereal, confined to the wild and the wind, missing the tingle of the nerves in their skin.

But the scary part is: that skin still exists. Those tree-branch muscle systems and joints of bone, they’re still out there. They’re part of the Thing. Everyone’s body is part of the Thing.

(Soon, yours will be too. You don’t have a choice in the matter.)

All the windows of the old Schwarztier house are shuttered up, but blood still leaks from the old wooden boards. Rumor has it that the Thing is always moving inside, held barely at bay by the thrice-locked door.

If it was ever opened, the ghosts fear that all the pieces of those 110 billion people they used to be would go everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Unavoidable.

So, they stay away. They’d rather not be haunted by themselves.

Russell Epp-Leppel is always exploring his love of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. With a background in engineering, he enjoys deconstructing narrative systems to see how they work, then reassembling them in new ways. His short horror stories "The Daylight Horror," "The Tooth Fairy," and "The Chimera" have been accepted by Lovecraftiana, 96th of October, and the Creepy podcast, respectively. He lives with his partner and their small menagerie in the Philadelphia area, where he can be found haunting the local woods, and on Twitter @leppeppel.

C. C. Rayne is an author of all things spooky, strange, and silly, who’s work has been published recently in places like Crow & Cross Keys, The Razor, Bowery Gothic, and Fish Gather To Listen: An Anthology of Underwater Horror. Rayne’s work is also upcoming in publications like The Dread Machine, Demons & Death Drops, and The Deeps. Rayne has a deep love for all things horror and all things ghostly - while scary stories aren't the only genre Rayne writes, a lot of Rayne’s works have a haunting somewhere inside, whether figurative or literal. C. C. Rayne is on Twitter at @cc_rayne.