Craven Manor(48)

Many roofs had partially or fully collapsed, disguising the house’s contents, but what he could see was broken by age. Tables, chairs, even support beams were collapsing under the weight of time.

Daniel stopped by one of the more intact houses and rested his fingertips on a windowsill. The moss was spongy under his touch, and flakes crumbled away. He stretched to see over the remaining glass fragments and caught a glimpse of a lumpy blue shape in the room’s darkest corner. It felt out of place in the derelict room. The object was large—maybe as large as he was—and propped against the wall at a strange angle.

He couldn’t see it properly from the window, so he skirted around the building. A stone step led to the front door, which hung at an angle, supported by one hinge. A quick yank wrenched it free.

A musty, bitter smell assaulted Daniel as soon as he entered the room. It was like inhaling the aftermath of a fire, but instead of soot, he tasted age. He gagged and bent over until the nausea faded, then pressed deeper into the house, towards where the strange shape had been.

Remnants of life were buried among the decay. What might have once been a doll had become a grey lump, half sunk into the floor. Teacups lay broken on the wood, fallen from their shelf, which had cracked. The curtains had fused to the walls.

He found the blue shape in the dining room’s corner. The room was dim, and Daniel had to squint as he approached the object. It was some kind of mould-smothered cloth, covering…

“Oh—oh no—”

Fingers curled out of folds in the fabric. Strands of dry brown hair poked free. As Daniel circled the shape, he saw the face. Skin had turned back and sunken into the bones. The eye sockets were empty, but their shadowed pits seemed to stare at him.

Black fungus spilled out of the body, exploding from any nick or tear in the skin, to give it a horrific bulging shape. The fungal growth held a bizarre bubbled texture, like freshly poured tar or over-whipped cream.

Daniel pressed a hand across his mouth and backed away. His thighs hit the corner of a chair, and the structure broke apart. With a yelp, he leapt around it, then he ran for the door.

He didn’t breathe deeply until he was back outside, panting and gasping in the cool air. The image of the dead woman being swallowed in billows of black mould was still clear in his mind.

She was just left there. No funeral. No burial. She hasn’t even decayed properly. Kyle was right. Something unnatural happened in this town. Something evil.

Every building was crumbling with age. Daniel hadn’t thought it was strange before, but as he straightened, he realised the decay wasn’t as far advanced as he would have expected from two centuries of neglect.

Morbid obsession drew him deeper into the network of buildings. He kept a forearm covering his mouth and nose any time he leaned through a window or open door. Two houses on, he found another cluster of bodies. A woman lay in bed, two child-like shapes cradled in her arms, and a figure wearing men’s clothing sat in a chair beside her. He’d inclined his head to rest it next to hers, as though the family had been embracing one final time.

Their skin was darkened and stretched tight, but it still bulged strangely in places. A watermelon-sized lump had grown on the man’s back then ruptured, and the sticky fungus spilled out and ran in a tendril to the floor. Where it touched the stone, it seemed to absorb into the building and spread through its structure.

The buildings aren’t covered in moss. They’ve been infected. Daniel felt sickened that he’d touched it. He scrubbed his fingers on his jeans, although he knew the paranoia was likely coming too late. If the black substance was still infectious, he’d been thoroughly exposed to it.

The farther he went, the more bodies he found. Some had perished in bed. Some sat in chairs or collapsed across the floor. Daniel found a human-sized lump of the ichor in the street. Weeds had grown around and through it, and their stems had been distorted into a grisly mottled colour.

These deaths weren’t natural. The fungus has preserved them, somehow. He stumbled on, simultaneously not wanting to see any more and unable to look away. Larger buildings marked where the main street ran. Daniel recognised what he thought would have to be a bank, a general store, a farrier, and a church. Signs of death were more common there. Clumps of the black gunk collected in doorways, on steps, and in the street. A strip of leather cord ran from a large mass to the railing beside the bar, and Daniel suspected it had once been used to harness a horse. Animals apparently hadn’t been immune, either.

The church was affected worse than other buildings. The fungal growth spread up its sides and across its peaked roof, almost like a blanket. Only the cross poked free. Daniel approached cautiously. His nerves were wound tight, and sweat beaded over his skin despite the cold day.

The church was one of the largest buildings in the town. He thought it must have once had stained-glass windows, but they had long been broken out of their frames. Its doors were missing, and the interior was a nest of shadow. Daniel crept closer, past the rusted metal bars that had marked the church’s fence, and up the two steps to see inside the building.

Bodies had littered the rest of the town, but it was nothing compared to the church’s insides. Everywhere he looked were white teeth, bony hands, and matted hair. Daniel keeled over and clutched his hands around his chest to shield against the shock and nausea. There had to be more than a hundred corpses inside the building. Some seemed to be reaching for the windows, as though trying to crawl through. Others were grouped at the back of the building, at the altar, and behind the pulpit. Still others had died in the pews and become permanently affixed to the decayed wood.