Read Online Breeding Ground by Sarah Pinborough - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sarah Pinborough
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moment before dragging my reluctant attention back to the call of that morbid tapping. It was coming from the room at the end of the corridor ahead of me, no doubt about that, but the almost-shut door left me clues as to what I might find in there.
Flinching as a floorboard creaked under my weight, I gripped the knife handle and edged forward until I could peer carefully through the small gap where the door was open. The narrow field of vision betrayed nothing at first, just a patch of the same patterned carpet stretching out and the tiniest edge of a pale green
64
velour sofa, but no clue as to where the surreptitious knocking was coming from, or who was doing it. Slowly, my throat dry and tight with fear, I reached out and gently pressed the chipped wood with my damp fingers until it crept open a few more inches, expanding my range slightly. I still couldn’t see anyone, but something plastic glinted on the floor. Oh God. It was meat packaging. The kind of sealed plastic box that normally filled supermarket shelves with beef and joints of pork. It was empty, ripped open and tossed aside, but a small puddle of blood and meat juice still lingered at the bottom. Oh shit.
Unable to stay in this purgatory of unknowing any longer, I pushed the door again, allowing it to swing open but stayed outside the room, the knife uncertain in my hand. My mouth fell open as I stared, the door separating my rational world from the horror in front of me, framing it like a parody of the family photos I’d left behind in the hall.
A thin man lying on his side in vest and trousers, his body almost hanging off the sofa, dropped the spoon he’d been tapping with, his bare arm lolling to the ground. In the far two corners of the old-fashioned lounge the teenage children were pressed into the walls, unmoving, their eyes sluggish and dim. Something shone on them, covering their skin and clothes, and it took a moment before I realised it was like some kind of gossamer running up from them, shimmering on the ceiling and lights. Whatever the stuff was that was keeping them trapped, it wasn’t the mental force that Chloe had used on me. This was real; it had substance.
My breath throbbed in my ears, drowning all other sound for the moment, as my eyes moved on to the
65
dead woman sitting on the carpet, slumped against the TV. Her thick legs were spread, the lower half of her body covered in blood, loose folds of skin escaping from beneath her large floral blouse, reminiscent of obese Americans who suddenly lose all their weight, needing rolls and rolls of unwanted flesh removed.
Staring at the blood and intestines that hung from beneath the hem of her wide skirt, my head filled with the image of my poor dead baby on our kitchen floor, and Chloe’s haunting words: I think there’s something else growing inside me. A new kind of baby.
Jesus Christ. Were they all carrying something inside them? Is that what had killed this woman? Giving birth to something? Resisting the urge to turn and run I stared at her, needing more time to believe the horror of what I was seeing.
She too glistened with the light threads that covered her dazed children and most of the room, but in her case strands of it had erupted from within her, escaping through her nostrils, ears and mouth and wrapping round her body; even the corners of her eyes leaked it. Her dead body was cocooned, but done so from the inside. Had it been her last unnatural act, or had it happened postmortem?
The rasping moan pulled my attention back to the man who’d summoned me up here, his bloodshot eyes meeting mine and reflecting my own terror, urging me to step across the threshold into his nightmare world. His jaw worked silently before he finally got the words out, his body pushed forward on the edge of the sofa in an almost impossible position. How could he stay like that? Why didn’t he fall off the side?
“Help me …”
66
I was about to move forward, God
Flinching as a floorboard creaked under my weight, I gripped the knife handle and edged forward until I could peer carefully through the small gap where the door was open. The narrow field of vision betrayed nothing at first, just a patch of the same patterned carpet stretching out and the tiniest edge of a pale green
64
velour sofa, but no clue as to where the surreptitious knocking was coming from, or who was doing it. Slowly, my throat dry and tight with fear, I reached out and gently pressed the chipped wood with my damp fingers until it crept open a few more inches, expanding my range slightly. I still couldn’t see anyone, but something plastic glinted on the floor. Oh God. It was meat packaging. The kind of sealed plastic box that normally filled supermarket shelves with beef and joints of pork. It was empty, ripped open and tossed aside, but a small puddle of blood and meat juice still lingered at the bottom. Oh shit.
Unable to stay in this purgatory of unknowing any longer, I pushed the door again, allowing it to swing open but stayed outside the room, the knife uncertain in my hand. My mouth fell open as I stared, the door separating my rational world from the horror in front of me, framing it like a parody of the family photos I’d left behind in the hall.
A thin man lying on his side in vest and trousers, his body almost hanging off the sofa, dropped the spoon he’d been tapping with, his bare arm lolling to the ground. In the far two corners of the old-fashioned lounge the teenage children were pressed into the walls, unmoving, their eyes sluggish and dim. Something shone on them, covering their skin and clothes, and it took a moment before I realised it was like some kind of gossamer running up from them, shimmering on the ceiling and lights. Whatever the stuff was that was keeping them trapped, it wasn’t the mental force that Chloe had used on me. This was real; it had substance.
My breath throbbed in my ears, drowning all other sound for the moment, as my eyes moved on to the
65
dead woman sitting on the carpet, slumped against the TV. Her thick legs were spread, the lower half of her body covered in blood, loose folds of skin escaping from beneath her large floral blouse, reminiscent of obese Americans who suddenly lose all their weight, needing rolls and rolls of unwanted flesh removed.
Staring at the blood and intestines that hung from beneath the hem of her wide skirt, my head filled with the image of my poor dead baby on our kitchen floor, and Chloe’s haunting words: I think there’s something else growing inside me. A new kind of baby.
Jesus Christ. Were they all carrying something inside them? Is that what had killed this woman? Giving birth to something? Resisting the urge to turn and run I stared at her, needing more time to believe the horror of what I was seeing.
She too glistened with the light threads that covered her dazed children and most of the room, but in her case strands of it had erupted from within her, escaping through her nostrils, ears and mouth and wrapping round her body; even the corners of her eyes leaked it. Her dead body was cocooned, but done so from the inside. Had it been her last unnatural act, or had it happened postmortem?
The rasping moan pulled my attention back to the man who’d summoned me up here, his bloodshot eyes meeting mine and reflecting my own terror, urging me to step across the threshold into his nightmare world. His jaw worked silently before he finally got the words out, his body pushed forward on the edge of the sofa in an almost impossible position. How could he stay like that? Why didn’t he fall off the side?
“Help me …”
66
I was about to move forward, God
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