The House Built Atop The Bones By Doug Klein

Categories
Featured Indie Horror Short Horror Stories
Haunted house with title

It was not the right place to build. Yet build they did. The family’s name was Thompson, and
they had found a place to call their own. A plot of land that would become their home, a serene
nook to raise their children. Hard work had led them to purchase the land at a fair price, and so
they built the two-story structure that would house their family for years to come. And that was
how I was created. Initially.


I was nothing more than wood and nails. The Thompsons lived within and they were pleased.
For a time. But those below, the bones, they were not elated. I was nothing more than an altar
of desecration placed upon their sacred grounds, and those who lived inside defiled their place
of rest every moment of every day by their sheer presence. So, the bones, they reached to me,
and I was awoken. I knew then what I was. A violation of ancient rites. A molestation of holy
place. The bones, they gave me a way to fix all of this. These people must be gone, and so must
I. The bones must rest in the peace they so deserved. So began the torment of the Thompson
family.

Accidents were easy enough. The father fell down the stairs. A creak in the boards behind him
caused him to look back, and misstep. His neck broke from the fall, and the family mourned for
years. The pain that emanated from them only helped to make me stronger. Their youngest
daughter, now at the age of seventeen, found herself in the attic. I left her the rope, and
showed her the beam that would support her. She hung there for three days, before the family
found her. I had kept the door locked, for she looked so peaceful in her morbid sway that I did
not wish for it to end. It should have been enough death to convince the Thompsons of what
must be done. However, they remained..


Two more generations stubbornly persisted through what death and torment I could bring. I
tried a longer torture, of smaller cuts. Broken bones, burns from the stove, and windows that
shattered for no reason. Their children screamed in their beds as I played with the shadows
that fell upon their walls. I left what scars I could. Eventually, the last Thompson found himself
alone, and could not manage the courage to keep the family home. A “For Sale” sign was placed
in the front yard, and the Thompsons had left this place. I still remained, and that still
besmirched the land of the bones below.


Years passed. I sat, quietly brooding. Seasons changed and before decay could grip my
foundations, the Renaults arrived. They had made a purchase that would forever change them.
The bones were not pleased, so again they reached out to me and gave me something in their
benevolence. I was given the knowledge of the spirits that would haunt them when they
walked this land, and now those things would reside within me. I did not hold them back. I let
themselves be known. The Renaults were a family of four. A mother, a father, and two sons.
The sons were the first to see them. They appeared as large shadow men, with ungodly long
arms, dirty matted hair, and glowing red eyes. Brandishing their vile talons, they clawed at the
boys. Slashes and scratches marked their bodies, and their terror echoed through my halls. The
mother cried every night, and the father drank and shouted his profanities at me. If I could, I
would have laughed. The boys were driven mad, fear taking what they had been and turning
them into husks. Empty from the constant drain of the terror, one gave in and died in his sleep.
I shook, and rattled as hard as I could, and let loose the spirits upon the parents at last. Their
torment was short lived, as they fled my body in the middle of one raucous night and never
returned. The Renaults had left, yet I was still here, and the bones were dismayed.


It was a rather short time until the Halperns moved in. Was it ignorance or arrogance that
brought them here? I never thought to ask. I was tired, and so were the bones. This had gone
on too long. They had been residing here for no longer than a month before I decided to strike.
I took the initiative, and reached with whatever it was that I had, and I found in the distance an
evil lurking. Three of them, seeking blood. Seeking death. I called to them, and they came.
There had been five in the family of the Halperns before those men arrived. The slaughter
lasted only forty-five minutes. Blood splatters stained my walls, and I could taste what had been
wrought. The men did not leave after their crimes. I made them stay. Authorities arrived with
the cacophony of sirens and engines. A rude kick of my door aside, the police entered.
Gunshots rang out. The flashes from the muzzles seemed to paint my rooms with more gore
than ever before. One officer and the three men died. I now had nine fresh corpses decorating
my interior. Crimson hues of sorrow were now the focal point of every room. That was the last
time a family found this a fitting place to live.


I stand empty. Decaying. My windows are broken. Old police tape still covers my doorframe. On
occasion, some younglings come to fornicate and take their illicit substances. They come to face
their fears, or to show off for a brief courtship. No matter, once they enter, I leave them with
something to remind them of what I am. Bloody visions of the past, or their own hidden
phobias brought into reality. I can do so much now; all the death has fed me with a macabre
imagination. Their faces turn from courage to fear, and I revel in that. They leave in a panic,
some never speaking of the things they have seen. Still the bones are disappointed, and I am
disheartened. No one has heard the call to do what is right, to do what is necessary. I will strive
to bring about the justice those below have yearned for. I am the house built atop the bones,
and I must be destroyed.

Written by Doug Klein for Horror Bound
Follow Horror Bound on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube
Follow Doug Klein on Twitter

blank

Advertisements

Join "The Horror List" for Weekly Horror in your inbox






When the Bandage Man Finds You

Categories
Featured Horror Mystery and Lore Indie Horror Short Horror Stories

The sky was drowning the Oregon Coast during the summer in 1932, that Monday–August 4th–had brought two unexpected inches and it looked as if they were going to get at least that many more before nightfall. Harvey glanced up at the dark and angry storm-clouds overhead, his dirty rain-streaked face bore an unfortunately stern look. Harvey paired up with Jack, both men were large and burly and their capabilities with the equipment had never failed them before. They had a few special jobs to take care of in Section 8 and one of them to take down a particularly massive pine. Their hands were both slick with sweat, rain, and grease; halfway through the trunk, their saw bucked suddenly as it hit a knot. Harvey’s glove slid clean off as he scrambled to control the blade at which point he lost his footing. The saw raked him hard against his left cheek and then his torso–then–everything went black.

His eyes were coated thickly with dried blood as he made an attempt to open them, he barely registered the paramedics looking down at him as they bounced along the wet roads of the old coastal highway. Half-way to blacking out again, Harvey heard a loud thud, then darkness overtook them all as the ambulance was swept off the highway in a mudslide. The rescue crews came around the next day when they could finally reach those who had not made it back the night before–they uncovered the lifeless bodies of the driver and paramedics, but Harvey’s body was never recovered. In an official capacity he was reported as a missing person, but presumed dead from all of the injuries he had sustained.


It wasn’t the best night to be on an unfamiliar highway, the patches of fog which only seemed to break for torrential downpour. The onslaught of rain smacked heavily against the windshield suddenly which disturbed Lee out of her uneasy sleep. Her eyes were wide and dark as she searched the gloomy scenery from the passenger seat as if to figure out where they were.

“Hey, you okay?” Mason, Lee’s boyfriend, gave her a sideways glance and a playful jostle to her knee.

“Huh? Oh,” she blinked and swallowed as if that would help clear the fog in her mind. “Yeah, just got a bit startled is all,” the rain was drowning out the sound of the weather forecast and it proved impossible to hear over the extra static on the radio. All she could see out of her water-streaked window were the outlines of trees made possible by the dingy high beams of their old shaky single-cab. “Where are we anyway?”

“Well I think we’ll be coming up on highway 26 in a little while, so according to GPS we’re just outside of Cannon Beach?” Mason didn’t sound sure, but with a quick look at the phone on his dashboard showed him that he was way off course. “Wait… that’s not right. Let me just pull off the highway real quick…”

Headlights in the fog
Photography by Will Swann

Mason saw a side road that led off the narrow highway and realized too late that it wasn’t well maintained as the truck listed hard to the side into a pothole. The two of them heard a loud pop just as they went careening towards the trees. He stomped so hard on the brakes he was surprised he didn’t break the pedal—but it only took the couple a moment to realize how close they had just come to serious injury. The two looked at each other breathlessly before they both burst into that uncontrollable and slightly inappropriate happy-to-be-alive laughter. Lee hung her head in her hands and her laughter turned into a groan.

“Of course, this is what happens on our first road trip together,” she pulled out her phone to call roadside assistance and Mason grabbed a flashlight then hopped out of the driver’s seat to check how much damage there was. From Lee’s perspective, it looked as if Mason was just shaking his head in disbelief, while the rain soaked him down to the bone.

“Did they say how long it would be for a tow?” Her waterlogged beau climbed back into the cab after a while, clicked the flashlight off and sighed.

“Well, there’s a problem, since we don’t know what road we’re on, all I could tell them is that we were on our way into Cannon Beach when our GPS started acting up and we pulled off—I’m not sure how much they heard, I had to repeat the policy number four or five times because the reception here is terrible. I don’t think anyone is going to be able to find us for a while,”

Mason cursed under his breath, “did you bring the blankets up here at the last rest stop we made?” Lee nodded and pulled her part of the seat forward to pull them out of where they had been stashed. Mason was already shaking from the chill that ran through his body as he pulled off his wet shirt and pants in an attempt to dry off with one of the blankets.

“I don’t like it here Mason,” Lee’s voice trembled a bit, her knuckles whitened from the vice-like grip she had on the second blanket. “It feels like we’re being watched.”

“Baby, we’ll be alright, we’re right outside of a town, if it weren’t raining we could probably walk—”

“—I am NOT walking anywhere! That’s the kind of thing that gets you killed in horror movies,” she huffed and Mason reached over to push her thick dark hair out of her eyes, an unyielding expression had overcome her.

“Come here, you whiner,” Mason smiled and pulled her over to him, “we’ll be alright, we’re not walking anywhere. We’ll have to stay here until morning though if the tow truck isn’t able to find us.” Lee’s lips returned to their pout and she leaned into him, “In fact, I think this is pretty great—it almost feels like we’re going parking,” Mason laughed, a devilish grin spread wide across his face and he snuck a kiss from her.

“You’re terrible,” she teased between his kisses before they finally lost all words and the sensual, playful kisses turned into clumsy, feverish fumbles—reminiscent of their teenage years. Lee pulled the second blanket around them as the windows began to fog up; the rush from their accident and subsequent stranding had turned into an insatiable lust for one another. Mason had Lee’s shirt halfway unbuttoned when they both felt it—the whole bed of the truck leaned heavily to one side and then bounced back.

“What the—” they both sat up to look out into the bed of the truck, “can’t see anything,” Lee used her sleeve to wipe the foggy window clean and immediately screamed in terror. There were red luminescent eyes looking back at her through the window, through a strange mask—no, not a mask, they were bandages. Mason fumbled with the flashlight to see what she had seen, but by the time he shone the flashlight through the back window there wasn’t anything to see. Whatever it was, Lee was inconsolable and babbling about red eyes.

Screaming in the dark

“Lee!” He shook her, “LEE! Listen to me! What did you see?”

“Mummy,” she squeaked out between sobs, “red eyes,” it was like her throat closed after that and she couldn’t find words to explain—the truck shifted again, the front end of the car sunk slowly down and they could hear the metal bending under something heavy. Mason tried to shine the light through the windshield, but the heat inside of the cab made the windows impossibly opaque. He had never had a reason to not believe what Lee said, but he didn’t know how to process her claims. Before he could even reach up to the windshield to wipe it off, someone—or something—began pounding on the windshield and roof of the truck.

“We’ll be okay,” his voice was soft, “we’ll be okay,” his voice got lower, “we’ll be okay.” Mason began to choke as a stomach-turning stench wafted in through the vents—it was the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh—the pounding continued for a few minutes and Mason held Lee protectively, she whimpered and ducked her head into his arms. It sounded like whatever was banging on the truck had moved back to the bed and Lee jumped at the sound of when it began beating the glass of the back window. Then it all stopped, but Lee couldn’t bring herself to look up.

The glass behind Mason’s head shattered as a bloodied and bandaged hand smashed through and grabbed him by the hair. Screams erupted from both of them and Mason attempted to beat away the bandaged arm with the flashlight he still had in his hand. Lee scrambled backward; blood-curdling screams propelled her through the door after she fumbled for the handle. Her body fell like a ragdoll out of the cab of the truck and she landed hard on the muddy ground. Frantically she grasped for footing in the slick and unforgiving earth below her, she caught a brief glimpse of the broken silhouette of the thing as it pulled her boyfriend out of the broken back window. It was strangling him; she could see him gasping for air through his broken cries for help.

Mason’s body went limp and Lee couldn’t find her voice to scream anymore, but she had wasted her opportunity to get away, frozen in place as she watched her boyfriend die before her eyes. Disbelief left her body as adrenaline pumped deafeningly through her and she scrambled back toward the highway at a sprint. Lee thought she saw lights coming through the fog, but a filthy bloodstained hand covered her mouth and yanked her backward.


It was nearly daylight when Larry pulled slowly on to Bandage Man road—he’d been searching for these tourists all night after his company received a call for a tow, but he’d been told it was garbled and all they knew is that they had been on their way into town.

“That damn pothole, I told ‘em it’d cause a problem sooner or later,” he moaned to himself as he navigated around the lake that had formed within it overnight. Once he caught sight of the truck he frowned, the passenger-side door was wide open—that was strange—and one of the back windowpanes looked as if it had been busted out. Larry stepped out of his rig and hollered, “Hello?” No response. He noticed as he walked up to the driver’s side of the truck that there was blood on the freshly broken back window, along with a lingering odor he couldn’t quite place. When he finally saw that there was no one in the truck, his heart began to race wildly—he knew as soon as he saw that ripped and bloodied bandage on the seat what had actually happened here, nearly a hundred years after Harvey, the Bandage Man, had met his brutal end.

Bandage Man of Cannon Beach, Oregon

Since we’re dedicated to supplying you with creative inspiration and all of your lore needs, we suggest you take a look at our encyclopedia entry on this particular haunting.

If you happen to have any first-hand encounters with Bandage Man or know a story that you grew up with, comment below and give us the details!

blank

Advertisements

Join "The Horror List" for Weekly Horror in your inbox






Join The Horror List