This is exactly the kind of place her mother never would have let her explore. “That house be havin’ ghosts! Or zombies! Or Dracula!” Qeisha can imagine her mother’s voice clearly, warning her to stay away.
But this is where Stardust, her little black cat, ran off, so she has to go in.
Her legs quiver already as she walks towards the house, alone among the field of faded corn and wheat. The good old internet has made Qeisha feel like being in Ohio alone in a wheat field is the best place to be—if you’re looking to get moidored. And the field here don’t look too hot either. Obviously, no one has lived here, so it hasn’t been taken care of. But the crops don’t look dead…more diseased. Poisoned. Undead.
She watches too many horror movies.
Qeisha opens the rickety front door—which either wasn’t locked or the lock rusted off long ago—and steps in. The house smells awful, musty and dusty, sending her into a coughing fit straight away.
“Stardust…?” she tries to call, but ends up choking instead. Of all places, why did that dang cat have to run here?
A sizzle sounds, and if Qeisha didn’t know any better, she’d swear somebody is cooking. She looks around before turning her attention to the floor, where several lines burn into the wood, forming a rectangle. Smoke floats up, a deep black, smelling of burnt orange peels, and making Qeisha cough all the more. She waves the smoke away to find that, somehow, a trapdoor got burned into the floor.
“The hell?” Qeisha mutters as she approaches it, crouching down to flip the door open.
Nothing shows. Just pure, deep darkness. Qeisha feels around and can’t even make out a ladder or steps.
“Hell nah,” she says, about to close the door back when she hears a “Meow!”
A black cat—Stardust!—appears from around the corner and, before she can catch him, hops into the trapdoor.
“No!” Qeisha gasps and, without thinking, dives in after him.
She doesn’t fall. No. She floats down, deeper and deeper, Stardust’s meows keeping her company. Qeisha feels for him, wanting to grab him, to keep him close, if only she can see.
And just like that, something like stars light up all around her, illuminating her area. Qeisha takes advantage of it and spots Stardust below her, diving for the dear cat and clutching him close.
As she looks around for a way out, she takes another notice of the stars, for they’re not only stars, but a constellation.
She recognizes this one. Hannah, the multieyed goddess. She was fated to see everything before her, know every detail of the future, but once it came to past, she was blind to it. Qeisha favorite story with her was with Hannah and her daughter. Hannah had enjoyed looking forward to every day she spent time with her little girl, but one day, the daughter was no longer in her future and Hannah promptly forgot all about her—never knew there was a girl she once loved so much.
It’s unknown what happened to the daughter.
Qeisha feels a pull and looks up. She’s getting sucked up, back through the opening she had come through. She grips onto Stardust tighter as they both are shot out and land on the splintered wood. Qeisha looks behind her. The trapdoor is gone.
Now…it’s far time to leave. And have a drink.
Qeisha stands, gripping Stardust, ready to turn and leave out the front door. But she stops when she notices, in what seems to be the kitchen, a light flickers. One that wasn’t on before.
Is someone here?
In the back of her mind, Qeisha imagines her mother scolding her as she approaches the light.
Sure enough, it’s in the kitchen. An empty kitchen. There’s no one in the room, and barely any furniture. Just an old table and two chairs, one of them turned over.
She looks back to the lamp. It’s an old lamp, something her grandmother or great grandmother would have owned. Bulky and heavy, with intricate designs on the shade and base. What was it? Art deco, Qeisha thinks it’s called.
And…now that she’s really looking, the lamp doesn’t seem to be flickering for the hell of it. There’s a sort of regularity to it.
Could it be Morse Code?
Qeisha counts, having a hard time, but eventually able to make up the sentence in her head. The lamps flickers, over and over again: bit me.
Bit who? And, more importantly, who bit them?
The house shakes, bringing Qeisha out of her thoughts. She ends up falling over, dropping Stardust, who scurries into a gutted cupboard.
The lamp, still flickering, wobbles off of the counter. It shatters on the counter, releasing dozens, dozens, dozens of bugs. They all scurry, crawling up the walls, burrowing into the rotten holes of the wood. They move in such a way that—the dust has likely been rattling her brain—but it seems to have a purpose. And for a moment, they resemble a vertical rectangle with random splats inside of it.
Some of the bugs flutter and fly up together, bunched like a school of fish, before hurling themselves to the wall, creating another artificial splat. It happens over and over again. Some splats don’t seem satisfied with themselves, so the bugs forming them fly again and hurl themselves harder. Faster. Desperate.
Stardust mrrps! as he scurries from under the counter, unable to hold his excitement in any longer, as he hops and jumps in an attempt to bat at as many of the insects as he can.
Qeisha shakes her head, walking forward to gather her cat and leave this place. It’s haunted. Truly haunted.
The minute she takes a step, as if the house can tell she’s trying to leave, air hisses from the floor. Steam shoots out from one hole, then another, then two more, and as Qeisha listens, it sounds like a sort of a song. Like a lullaby. One a mother may sing to her child.
As Qeisha listens, she finds herself singing along:
Day ends
Moon wakes
Come with me
to the roof
and we will
watch until the
dawn of another
new good morning
It will be a beautiful day
Qeisha blinks, covering her mouth with her hand to force herself to stop, but she ends up still humming along. She doesn’t know this song. Never heard it in her life. Yet…it’s familiar to her.
“Stop it…STOP IT!” Qeisha screams. The hissing stops. The bugs disappear. Even Stardust looks up at her, confused.
It’s over. It’s over. She can leave.
Qeisha stomps over to Stardust, ready to scoop him up and run from this wretched, wretched place. She crouches, holds her arms out for him to jump into
Something collapses from the ceiling.
It looks like a mechanical box, almost like some weird robot from a steampunk setting, with skinny, silver, insect-like legs. It’s still for a moment, before a leg waves. Then
It darts, directly at Stardust, taking the cat and gobbling him up.
“NO!” Qeisha shrieks, grabbing for the contraption to make it cough or barf or something.
But the little box won’t even let her do that. It snatches its legs away and folds into itself, over and over, until it reshapes itself into
a letter.
Qeisha stares at it, unable to believe what she just saw. So that’s it? Her cat is gone? Just like that?
Slowly, she reaches out, taking the letter and opening it:
I want to make her see me again
But the future prohibits it
Even if he hates me
At least let me have him
A sniffling. Qeisha stands and turns around.
There’s someone here.
Crouched and hiding in a dark corner.
Slowly, Qeisha approaches. “Where is my cat?”
The figure doesn’t answer, sniffing, crying, sobbing, wailing.
Qeisha gets closer, wondering if aggression is the right approach here, when she realizes the figure isn’t in the corner alone.
There is a knife in their hand.
“I thought—it’d make her—see me.”
The figure screams before dissipating into the air. Where steam had once hissed, water now flows, coming from the holes in the floor and hitting the ceiling, as if the house itself was crying. The floor reddens, the house moans, like it’s wailing for it’s mother.
A mother who no longer sees her.
A mother who once saw her every day.
“Why do you punish me, then?” Qeisha screams into the wailing home. “Why take my cat away? Why curse me the same way your mother was? Take away my loved one so that we may never see each other again? I’m sorry you lost her! But that’s no reason to make others suffer!”
Everything stops.
The house is silent. The water collapses to the ground.
And a girl sits on the upright kitchen chair, holding a little black cat.
Stardust is hissing and clawing as the girl has her face buried within his fur.
“It’s not fair…” the girl whispers. “She loved me. How could they blame me for that? How could they blame me for not being in her future?”
Qeisha stares at her, scanning the girl for the bloody knife she had seen earlier.
“What did you do?” she asks.
The girl is silent.
“Did you kill her?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Qeisha shakes and she balls her fist, trying to steel herself.
“I just wanted to cure her of her curse. The eyes. If I could have just taken away the eyes…”
That’s more than Qeisha wanted to know and she holds her hands out.
“Give me my cat,” Qeisha says slowly.
The girl is silent at first, as Stardust continues to claw into her skin, so hard and deep that she should be bleeding. Should be.
“You’re a selfish bitch,” the girl mutters.
Qeisha walks up slowly, gently taking Stardust from the girl’s hands. Stardust immediately relaxes once he’s in Qeisha’s arms, but Qeisha’s eyes go wide as she gets a look of the girl’s face.
No, actually, it’s impossible for her to look at, for it’s gone. Carved or scooped out, leaving nothing but a hollow inside.
“I tried to make new ones,” the girl whispers, though she has no mouth. “I tried to paint pretty ones that she would like, again and again. But she won’t take them. She won’t take them. She won’T TAKE THEM! SHE WON’T TAKE THEM! SHE WON’T TAKE THEM!”
The girl grabs at her hair, screaming louder and louder. It’s far past time to leave, and this time, Qeisha doesn’t hesitate. She spins on her heel and darts out, Stardust clutched tight to her chest.
It’s not midnight quite yet here in the States, but happy new year! I played Whispers in the Walls again yesterday and decided to post the results as one final story for this year X3
It’s not at ALL edited, so hope it’s not too much of a pain to read, haha. I broke the rules just a teeny bit to allow myself more creative freedom. I really like the idea of a goddess who can see the future, but forgets anything in the past, so I may finetune it for an idea in the future!
Also, this isn’t really important, but I used my new Hazbin Hotel cards for this. They’re so pretty! (not sure if I have to say this, but, uh, not sponsored, I just love these cards)
Thank you for reading! See you in the new year! I’ll have a bit of an update on how I’ll be handling this site coming up next week :3c