Fungal Forest Terrors,
I have another tragic and horrifying story for you under my writing updates. It’s the conclusion to “The Devouring House”, a Japanese folk horror that hurt me to write.
Enjoy ;)
I’m currently on Golden Week holiday in Japan, where most people get a week off. I’ve just been cutting down bamboo trees that are trying to invade my land and will spend the rest of my time hiking, reading, and falling asleep in saunas.
In writing news, my next book “The Way is Narrow” is currently with my editor and my cover artist will have a cover within the next week or so! I’m on track to release it mid-June. I’ll share a story synopsis along with the cover reveal either next week, or the one after.
My short story collection of 17 stories, “Under the Floorboards”, is done! All I need is a cover, but I will need to wait on funds for that, so expect a July or August release.
Lastly, I will begin writing my first dark fantasy “River of Bone and Ice” tomorrow! If attempting such a massive task doesn’t kill me, it should be out by December of this year.
That’s all for now,
Stay safe out there and enjoy reading,
The Devouring House (pt 2)
Four
I stood there gaping, open mouthed, at the image on the wall for a solid minute before Alice’s panicked pleas brought me back to reality.
“Sorry, what?” I murmured.
“I said let’s get the hell out of here.”
Before I tore my eyes away from the mold on the wall, I absorbed every detail of the outline.
A curve that could have been the top of a head. A set of shoulders. Torso. The legs were vague and bled into one another, almost as if it were wearing a dress. The fingers, stretching out like gnarled tree branches, extending from where the hands stopped at its waist, going all the way down to where the knees should’ve been.
If it were a human outline, that is. I refused to believe what I was seeing. It was a trick of the mind, imposing meaning on the meaningless to sort out the chaos of the world around us.
One last detail before I faced my wife and left the room.
If it were a person I was seeing, it was easily eight feet tall.
That evening Alice practically begged for us to move back to Tokyo.
“It was just mold,” I said hotly, causing her to recoil at my words.
I had never been a superstitious or religious person before, and I wasn’t going to start now.
“But there’s something in that room, don’t you feel it?” she said in a defeated whisper. “And I don’t just mean the mold. I mean that every night that I’ve tried to relax in there or get some work done, I don’t know, I feel like somebody’s watching me. No matter where I sit, I feel eyes staring at me, all coming from the same source.”
“Let me guess, all coming from where the mold monster is?” I laughed, though my heart wasn’t in it.
Tears rimmed her perfect eyes and threatened to undo all the healing of the past few weeks.
“You asshole. There’s something in that room. It’s not just watching me. I feel like, like, it wants me. Like it’s hungry for me.”
Now the tears were running down her face and scarring our love.
I wasn’t as scared as she was, but to be honest, it did freak me out. We had all the old boards in that room ripped out. There was nothing left of the original house in that section that could be causing the same mold to return; no soggy and rotten layers were left to infect the healthy wood anywhere. Not to mention the disturbing implication of the mold’s human-like shape.
“I’m sorry,” I said, tripping over my words and pressing her hand into my own.
She bit her lower lip and looked away from me, though she didn’t pull her hand back.
My stomach froze, the ice eating its way up to my heart.
I took a deep breath and squeezed her hand tighter.
“Okay. Fuck it, we’ll move.”
She looked back at me and smiled, though her eyes betrayed doubt.
“When?”
“We poured most of our money into fixing the mold damage, so there’s nothing left to get a new place right away.”
“I’ll take on more clients. It won’t take long if you can sell some stories too? And then we can sell this place fast.”
I smiled, though I wasn’t convinced it’d be so easy. “In the meantime, we can stay at a hotel or something from tomorrow.”
Now Alice smiled, truly smiled, and I saw a future with her reflected back at me.
Five
The next morning, I drove down the hill into town to see if there were any inns or hostels we could move into right away. There were none listed online, but as is the case with rural villages like this, you’re better off just asking the locals where one is. Alice stayed home to start packing, despite my offering her to come with me.
“The sooner we pack, the sooner we leave,” she said with a smirk. “Besides, it’s not so scary in the day, and I’m sure as hell not going back into that room without you.”
I laughed and kissed her. For years our marriage had been slowly unraveling, but in that embrace I felt it all coming together at last.
We were a team through thick and thin.
The rain had stopped, but the clouds were gunmetal, loaded and ready to fire off another storm. The humidity was as strong as a kind of gravity I needed to wade through. I went to the same small shop run by that elderly woman, bought some snacks and asked her if there was any place we could stay for the night. Despite her thick accent, I made out that there was one ryokan just a few blocks down. She gave me the number; I called and booked a room for the next week.
On the drive back, I was in high spirits. Sure, our dream house had turned out to be a mold-infested nightmare, but I was optimistic about everything turning out for the best.
The skies parted and revealed that the sun indeed existed. When I got home and climbed out of the car, golden sunlight warmed my skin. Some cool ocean breeze had even diluted some of the humidity.
“Alice,” I called out, taking off my shoes and entering the house.
No response.
I figured she must have been in one of the rooms packing, her headphones blocking out any sound.
I checked the downstairs kitchen and saw two cardboard boxes on the table, half-filled with food and dishes.
But no Alice.
I didn’t think she’d be upstairs, since the room with mold freaked her out and she’d not be going near it without me. Wondering if she had gone outside, I glanced at the entrance but saw her shoes still on the rack.
“Alice?”
I walked up the stairs, expecting to hear her moving around, assuming she’d been brave enough to possibly begin packing up there.
Then why were those boxes left half-empty in the kitchen?
I went into our bedroom. No boxes. Nothing was removed from the closet.
And no Alice.
A muffled whimper down the hall.
I moved towards the sound, my breathing growing fast and heavy, my stomach dropping into my knees.
The door to the mold room was wide open.
The sound had come from there, but another one never came.
She would never have opened that door on her own.
I walked down the hall, feeling my heartbeat in the soles of my feet.
Entered the room.
An overpowering acidic rot filled my nostrils. It almost made me pass out. I coughed and covered my mouth; the stench felt corrosive to my eyes and extricated the tears against my will.
When my vision cleared, I let out a weak gasp as I stared at the wall.
The human outline from last night was gone. A clean and mold-free wall left in its place.
But to the left of where it had been.
Was a new outline.
This one was shorter than me; the head coming up to my shoulders. Black mold carved the figure of flowing hair waving in the wind. Of petite hands stretched out, almost as if they were trying to reach for me from behind the wall. And if I looked really close, I could make out fungal spores that looked like facial features.
The curve of a nose.
The wrenched-open mouth of a scream.
A face that I knew.
Alice.
I’m sitting here now, in that same room, typing all of this out.
I never found Alice.
The police came by, but by then the outline of my wife had grown to a blotchy wave of mold that took up half the wall. They assured me they’d do everything they could to help her, all the while insinuating that maybe she had just gone back to America without me.
But I know the truth.
Something took her.
Something wanted to devour her.
The wall is completely blackened with mold now, with something that resembles a deep hole right in the center of it. When I look down its darkened throat, I see something standing there amidst the fungi.
A tall figure. Hands with gnarled fingers that almost reach the floor.
A fattened and bulging stomach.
I’m not going anywhere.
The house is still hungry.
And I need to see my wife again.
Through thick and thin.
I’d been waiting for Part 2 and it absolutely delivered. So many striking lines, and that ending caught me completely off guard. I thought he’d burn the house down. Can’t wait for Under the Floorboards.