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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-10-04 14:06:35+00:00.
Part I – Part II
Apologies for the delay, but there was too much to divulge in the initial post. Anyway, I’m finally ready to finish my story. Not that it’s over. It’ll never be over.
Holly’s static voice poured through the car speakers. “You and Andreas are going to get me in trouble.”
“Relax,” I said. “We didn’t discuss anything confidential.”
“Well, what did you discuss?” she asked.
I paused, absorbing the world beyond my windscreen on the way home from the hospital. Driving on the other lane, seeing the countryside in reverse, the road seemed to have a freshly-tarmacked personality. It felt different than before. Felt backwards in more than a literal sense. As I passed countless grand oaks lining the never-ending lane, I thought of Cedric’s curse. The five rules that he’d bestowed upon me, plus any others the tall crawl might add.
You’ve lost the fucking plot, I thought, clammy hands gripping the steering wheel. There is no tall crawl. I don’t know what you saw in that room, but it wasn’t real. Pull yourself together, Kai.
There was, however, no denying the scarring tissue on my left arm. The eleven curved wounds. I frantically searched my memory vault. Searched for some memory of Cedric lunging forwards, perhaps, and clawing away at my skin. But he hadn’t. The wounds had been inflicted by the air itself. By invisible strings that the patient skilfully twirled in trained fingers.
“Kai?” Holly asked. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” I answered weakly. “I, erm…”
“Kai…” she pressed. “Please tell me what you and Cedric discussed so I don’t have to worry about losing my job.”
“Yes, Officer,” I said, trying and failing to lighten the tone — lighten my own tone. “We talked about the price of breaking his rules. He told me that he didn’t want to kill his entire family. He had to kill them.”
Holly sighed. “It’s a horrible case. Are you okay?”
I swallowed my fear. “I’ve interviewed worse people than Cedric Roberts.”
“So have I,” she started, sounding unconvinced, “but he’s a different breed. You know that. I hear it in your voice.”
I did, but I wasn’t going to tell Holly that. Just as I wasn’t going to tell her about the wounds on my arm. She was my friend — more than my friend — but she was also a law enforcer. One who was never really off-duty, no matter how much she claimed otherwise. She sought justice in all areas of life, and I didn’t want her to fight my battle. Didn’t want Mr Roberts to do anything awful to her too.
Besides, I knew I’d see Holly soon enough, and she would wrench the cat out of the bag, no matter how hard I tried to keep it hidden. I just needed time before that inevitable confrontation. Time to figure out what had happened me. Time to figure out whether there might be a rational explanation for what happened in Room 307. An explanation other than it being a supernatural force with mysterious wants.
Not mysterious, I thought. It feeds on attention and control.
Its sustenance came from obedience. From asinine rituals.
- Do whatever he bids, and do it twice if you doubt yourself.
- Walk no fewer than eleven steps per hour.
- Don’t walk in the shade of a backwards tree.
- No artificial light between one and six in the morning.
- Snap the bird when it sings.
The ink on my palm had smudged from sweat, but I didn’t need the rules in writing any longer. They were floating in my thoughts. Swimmers planted either by my fearful subconscious or the long, spectral fingers that had fiddled with my brain. Had slithered through my screaming lips.
That wasn’t real, I lied to myself.
I really wanted to believe those warm, fuzzy fibs as I pulled into my driveway. Really wanted to sleep, most of all, after a half-hour drive that felt eternal. I imagined myself waking up without a single memory of that awful visit to the psychiatric ward. Perhaps waking up without any memory of the Cedric Roberts case. I thought there might be a way to go back. Unbind myself from the tall crawl.
Not real, I reminded myself once more as I unlocked the front door.
But bed would wait. I’d forgotten that my younger brother — my housemate — had invited a dozen of our closest friends over for a summer barbecue. Strangely, however, I found that I didn’t mind. There buzzed a soft, cooling frequency in my brain. Not quite a hit of dopamine. More so the release of tension, as if I’d doused my flaming mind with cold water. As if I’d finally tossed aside the hospital-grade belt restraining my thoughts.
I sighed with relief and waved gleefully at my friends as I stepped into the house. I’m such an idiot. I was just having a weird day. That’s all. I bought into Cedric’s tall tale of a tall crawl.
The temporary relief was perforated by a pang of realisation.
2. Walk no fewer than eleven steps per hour.
I’d just completed a ritual. Unknowingly, perhaps, but that didn’t matter. I’d done as instructed. That was why I felt better.
Don’t be silly, I thought whilst greeting each of my friends.
It wasn’t silly. I knew that. That foreboding feeling on the drive home had been a warning. A reminder that I was on the verge of breaking one of the crawl’s laws. I was struggling to wrestle with that notion any longer.
Then I became consumed by one of my oldest fears. The possibility that I might have inherited my late mother’s disorder.
There’s a genetic link with that illness, after all, I reminded myself.
But Cedric had been clear. Very clear. This was no illness. The crawl was tangible, though it wore different skins. To disobey it came with hauntingly real consequences, unlike my mother’s illness.
Her death was pretty fucking real, I thought.
“Hey, Kai,” Holly said, pulling me out of the trance. “You look a little pale.”
I smiled. “I just forgot about tonight. That’s all.”
She laughed. “Yeah, after you hung up, I realised I should’ve reminded you. I had a feeling you might’ve blanked. People only just got here though, so don’t worry.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I’m just tired.”
Holly frowned. “Are you really okay, Kai? You said you’d interviewed worse people than Cedric Roberts.”
“I know…” I whispered, lips twitching.
She nodded as if to say that she’d already known. I didn’t bother attempting to tell white lies in front of Holly’s face. She was a detective, after all, and she’d clearly detected something in my voice during the call, given her incessant questioning. It was even harder to shrug her off in the flesh.
I tugged at the sleeve of my jacket, hoping the wounds on my arm were concealed. That was a conversation I did not want to have, much like the Cedric-themed one I knew was coming.
“Did he threaten you?” Holly asked.
“What makes you think that?” I replied.
She said, “He threatened one of my colleagues.”
“Well, no, he didn’t threaten me,” I lied. “He just talked a lot. In great detail.”
Holly nodded, but the frown persisted. I knew she wasn’t buying it. She knew full well that I’d heard numerous horror stories from killers over the years. Heard of the awful things they’d done to other human beings. Cedric’s murderous confession was ghastly, but not the ghastliest. What made him so frightening was the intention behind his actions. The act of serving something beyond the earthly realm. That was certainly new.
I found that I actually wanted to be psychologically unwell. That would have been an easier pill to swallow. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is treatable. I didn’t know whether the curse had a cure. It was evident, however, that the tall crawl existed. A force that hungered for nothing but my servitude. It would feast on my undying loyalty.
And punish any mistake, I thought, going over the rules in my head.
The night passed in a blur, as did my thoughts. Racing, unintelligible thoughts born of fever daydreams. As hot fear coursed through my blood, I thought of Mum. Knew she’d battled something different, yet not dissimilar. And for the first time ever, I let go of the anger. The blame. She’d been tortured for years. Decades. I was simply amazed that she’d made through it as many days as she did.
“I love you,” she’d promised me only an hour before she ended it all.
A little after one in the morning, I woke in a sweat. It took me fewer than ten seconds to process what was wrong. It wasn’t simply the sound of rustling from downstairs that had woken me. It was an alarm bell ringing from a clotted compartment of my brain. A bell that, amidst all of the neural noise, I’d missed earlier.
4. No artificial light between one and six in the morning.
I’d turned off every last light in the house. I was certain of it. But the rule was vague, of course. Intentionally so. Tall crawl gives no clarity. It speaks in riddles. Deceives. Longs for us to fumble, so that it might exact its devious design.
As I tore out of bed, ears throbbing, I was acutely aware of that sensation from the evening before. The warm tension I’d felt during the journey home. The fear that I’d forgotten something.
I checked all of the lights, I thought, heart pounding as I slipped downstairs. Unless I should’ve turned off every single light on the planet. ‘No artificial light’. What does that even mean?
When I made it to the blackened lobby of my house, not daring to flick a single switch, I noticed something. A pinprick of redness spilling out from the black liv...
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