Moonlight On Rotten Skin
1663 Words
Moonlight On Rotten Skin
The moon came crawling through the broken blinds,
thin and pale as a dying widow’s grin,
dragging silver fingers across the walls
of the house that remembered every scream.
Dust floated like dead moths in the air.
The clock in the hallway coughed midnight twice.
And somewhere beneath the rotting floorboards,
something wet shifted in the dark.
Mara stood still beside the staircase,
her candle trembling in her hand.
Wax dripped like melting bone
onto the skin of her wrist.
The house smelled of mildew, rust,
and meat forgotten too long in summer heat.
Every room breathed with slow decay.
Every shadow looked alive.
She should have left before sunset.
The villagers warned her in whispers,
crossing themselves behind trembling fingers.
“Black Hollow House eats the living.”
But grief is a stubborn disease.
And grief had dragged Mara back
to the place where her brother vanished
twenty years before.
No body.
No blood.
Only one open window
and muddy footprints leading nowhere.
Tonight she came searching for answers.
Tonight the moon watched everything.
Outside, the forest stood frozen, listening.
Crooked trees clawed at the clouds.
The wind hissed through dead branches
like voices arguing beneath water.
Mara climbed the staircase slowly.
Each step groaned beneath her weight
as though the wood begged her not to continue.
At the top of the stairs
hung portraits coated in dust.
Eyeless ancestors stared from cracked frames.
Their painted mouths seemed wider now.
She passed the portrait of Eleanor Vane,
the woman accused of witchcraft,
the woman burned alive behind the house
one winter long ago.
Legend claimed her skin refused to burn.
Legend claimed the moon kissed her wounds
and brought her back wrong.
Mara never believed legends.
Until tonight.
A sound came from the bedroom ahead.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Her candlelight shook violently.
“Who’s there?” she whispered.
Silence answered first.
Then breathing.
Low.
Slow.
Hungry.
The bedroom door stood half open.
Something moved behind it.
Not fast.
Not human.
Mara pushed the door carefully.
The room inside was rotten with darkness.
Rain stains spread across the ceiling
like giant bruises.
The bed sagged inward
as if a corpse still slept beneath the blankets.
And on the far wall—
Words.
Carved deep into the wood.
HE NEVER LEFT.
Mara’s stomach tightened.
She stepped closer.
Beneath the message
were fingernail scratches,
hundreds of them,
layered over one another.
Then she heard it again.
Scratch.
This time beneath her feet.
The floorboards moved.
A sudden thud erupted below her.
Dust exploded upward through the cracks.
Mara stumbled backward.
The candle went out.
Darkness swallowed the room whole.
Something underneath the floor began crawling.
Not walking.
Crawling.
Its limbs scraped wood like knives.
Its breathing rattled like a dying engine.
Mara ran for the door,
but it slammed shut by itself.
The walls shuddered.
A voice rose beneath her.
“Mara…”
Her blood froze solid.
It was her brother’s voice.
Soft. Weak. Broken.
“Mara… help me…”
Tears burned her eyes instantly.
“Daniel?”
A rotten laugh answered her.
The floor burst upward.
Hands exploded through the boards—
gray hands, slick with black slime,
fingers bent backward at impossible angles.
Mara screamed.
The thing dragged itself upward slowly,
wood splintering around its body.
Moonlight spilled through the window
and touched its skin.
Rotten skin.
Skin peeling in strips from muscle.
Skin crawling with pale insects.
Skin stretched over bones
that cracked with every movement.
But the face—
Dear God.
The face was Daniel’s.
Or what remained of him.
His eyes glowed silver-white,
reflecting moonlight like an animal’s.
His jaw hung crooked.
His lips were stitched together
with rusty wire.
Yet somehow he smiled.
“Mara…”
The voice came from inside his throat
like something drowning underground.
“You left me here.”
She backed against the wall, shaking violently.
“No… no… you died…”
His head twitched sharply sideways.
“Not dead.”
Another laugh bubbled from him,
wet and thick.
“Never dead.”
Then more hands erupted from the floor.
Dozens.
Pale arms clawing upward blindly.
Children’s hands.
Old hands.
Hands with missing fingers.
The room filled with whispering.
So many voices.
So many hungry voices.
Mara covered her ears.
But the whispers crawled inside her anyway.
Stay.
Stay with us.
Stay forever.
Daniel pulled himself fully from the hole.
His body bent unnaturally,
spine arching like a spider’s.
Moonlight poured over him lovingly.
And beneath that silver glow,
his rotten skin began moving.
Not decaying—
Breathing.
Tiny mouths opened across his flesh,
whispering in unison.
Mara nearly vomited.
The mouths spoke her name.
“Mara… Mara… Mara…”
The walls pulsed.
The ceiling dripped black water.
The entire house seemed alive now,
stretching awake around her terror.
Daniel tilted his head slowly.
“She lives in the basement,” he whispered.
The candle suddenly reignited by itself.
Its flame turned blue.
And every whisper stopped at once.
Silence crashed over the room.
Then came footsteps downstairs.
Heavy.
Measured.
Slow.
Mara stared at the bedroom door.
Something was climbing the staircase.
Daniel began trembling violently.
Fear entered his ruined face.
“She’s hungry,” he whispered.
The footsteps grew closer.
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
A smell flooded the room—
burned flesh and wet soil.
The door handle turned slowly.
Mara couldn’t breathe.
Daniel collapsed to the floor, whimpering.
The door creaked open.
A woman stood there.
Tall. Thin. Silent.
Her dress hung in charred ribbons.
Burned skin cracked across her body
like cooling ash after wildfire.
And where her eyes should have been
there was only moonlight.
Pure silver moonlight pouring endlessly
from empty sockets.
Eleanor Vane.
The witch from the portrait.
Her feet never touched the floor.
She floated inward slowly,
bringing cold with her.
The whispers inside Daniel’s flesh screamed.
Eleanor raised one blackened hand.
Every candle in the hallway exploded.
Darkness swallowed everything again
except the moon.
Only the moon remained bright.
It painted Eleanor in ghostly silver.
Painted Daniel’s rotten skin.
Painted Mara’s horrified tears.
Eleanor spoke softly.
“The moon keeps what it touches.”
Her voice sounded ancient.
Like dry leaves dragged through graves.
Mara forced herself backward.
“What do you want from me?”
Eleanor smiled.
Her burned lips split wider than humanly possible.
“You came home.”
The floor beneath Mara softened suddenly.
Not wood anymore.
Flesh.
The house exhaled beneath her feet.
She screamed and stumbled away,
but hands rose from the walls now,
grabbing at her clothes, her hair, her skin.
Daniel crawled toward her slowly.
“I was lonely,” he sobbed.
Mouths opened across his chest again.
“So lonely.”
Eleanor lifted both arms.
Outside, the forest began screaming.
Not wind.
Not animals.
Human screams.
Thousands of them.
The moonlight intensified through the windows,
thick as liquid silver.
Mara’s skin burned where it touched her.
She looked down.
Gray patches spread across her arms.
Rotting.
Peeling.
Moonlight on rotten skin.
“No…” she gasped.
Eleanor drifted closer.
“You belong to the house now.”
Daniel reached her ankle.
His fingers dug into her flesh.
Cold spread instantly through her veins.
Memories invaded her mind—
Children screaming underground.
Bodies stitched into walls.
Villagers dragged into the cellar at night.
Eleanor whispering prayers to the moon
while skin peeled from living faces.
Mara shrieked and kicked Daniel away.
She ran toward the hallway.
The house changed around her instantly.
The staircase stretched impossibly long.
Doors appeared where none existed before.
The wallpaper pulsed like infected veins.
Behind her came crawling sounds.
Fast now.
Daniel was chasing her.
She sprinted downstairs.
The walls dripped blood beside her.
Every portrait turned its eyes to follow her.
At the bottom of the staircase
stood the basement door.
Open.
Darkness waited below.
And from beneath came singing.
A woman’s lullaby.
Soft. Sweet. Horribly wrong.
Mara turned to flee another way—
But Daniel dropped from the ceiling above her.
His bones shattered on impact.
Still he crawled forward smiling.
“You can’t leave,”
the mouths in his skin whispered together.
Eleanor appeared at the top of the stairs.
Moonlight poured from her empty eyes
like waterfalls of silver fire.
The house groaned hungrily.
Mara realized then:
The house was not haunted.
The house itself was the monster.
Eleanor was merely its heart.
Daniel lunged at her.
Mara grabbed a rusted lantern nearby
and smashed it across his face.
Flames erupted instantly.
Daniel screamed.
But beneath the fire,
his rotten skin bubbled and healed again.
The moonlight protected him.
Eleanor descended slowly.
“One soul must remain,” she whispered.
Mara backed toward the basement stairs.
Then she saw it—
A gas pipe running along the cellar wall.
Old. Rusted. Leaking.
An idea struck her through the terror.
Daniel crawled closer.
Eleanor floated downward silently.
Mara grabbed the lantern’s broken flame
and hurled it into the basement.
For one heartbeat,
nothing happened.
Then—
The world exploded.
Fire tore through the cellar violently.
The staircase shattered apart.
Walls burst outward in screaming splinters.
Daniel’s howl became inhuman.
Eleanor shrieked for the first time,
a sound so sharp it split glass.
Moonlight flickered wildly.
The house convulsed around them.
Mara ran through smoke and falling beams,
throwing herself toward the front door.
Behind her, the entire mansion screamed alive.
Faces emerged briefly in the walls—
crying, begging, burning.
Then flames consumed everything.
Mara burst outside into cold night air
and collapsed onto the dead grass.
The house burned furiously behind her.
Windows glowed like furious eyes.
Inside the fire,
she saw Eleanor standing motionless.
Watching.
Smiling.
Then the roof collapsed inward.
Silence followed slowly.
Only crackling embers remained.
Mara lay trembling beneath the sky.
The moon stared down at her quietly.
Too quietly.
She looked at her hands.
Gray patches still spread across her skin.
Rotten.
Breathing.
And somewhere beneath her flesh,
tiny mouths began to whisper.
- Writer
