Voices Unkind.

It starts as a dare. On Halloween night in my house basement. A storm set in outside which means no trick or treating, and, besides, we’d gotten too old for it, anyway. 

Jake, Junior, Matt, Chuck and I sit huddled around a table playing a boring game of cards. Not how I envisioned Halloween night at all.

I can’t recall who starts it. Or where the idea even comes from, but somehow Jake and I walk down the lonely highway to spend the night in a graveyard. 

Barbed wires sit at the top of the fences and the walls are so high besides that we can't just climb. There's a hole in the fence somewhere. It takes a while to find. 

Once, some kid decided it'd be funny to dig up graves and had opened a hole through the wall of the fence. Took a few days, I hear, but he managed it. Then, like an amateur, got caught.

In a town as small as ours, excitement is something far apart from our daily lives. It isn't infrequent that someone, somewhere, was doing something especially stupid. Kinda like now.

The hole cuts through the wall near the east entrance, on the opposite side of the chapel where the orderlies live. Jake knows where it is better than I do, so I let him lead.

As we crawl through the bushes, under brambles and thorns, I can’t help but find what we are doing funny. Breaking into a graveyard for a dare on Halloween night. Seems like the start of some cliché horror movie.

We nestle under the broken roof above one of those rare crypts you can sometimes find close to the centre of the yard. The walls of this one have something written on them in black graffiti. HERE LIES THE PATH TO HELL, BEWARE. Pretty cool.

The tree here is tall and offers enough shade that it breaks the drizzle that persists through the holes in the roof.

Despite the rain, the sky is clear, and the stars seem brighter than usual. Not that bad, sleeping in a graveyard in the dead of night. No zombies like Jake feared. No creepy things or demons lurking in the shadows. Cool wind blows against my face. I like the soothing quiet.

I find myself drifting off in a few minutes. My lids heavy and my head cloudy, I slip into a dreamless sleep. 

Then I feel the wind tighten, as if become tangible, and grips me in rigid hands.

I wake up to see the ground swallowing me, sinking. Jake screams from somewhere, but it sounds so far away. My heart pounding, I flail and struggle until the cold compress of the ground squeezes and I can no longer move. Not even to breathe. I am sure I will die. My mind fades slowly, black spots widening behind my eyelids. The world turns dark.

I wake again. This time, I lie in a house with walls as black as pitch and gnarled wood and walls so high I can't see their ends. My body itches. It feels like I'm wearing a different body. Like my skin stretched too tight over my bones, and every sense heightened because of it. My limbs are stiff and glued together. I can't move. 

There are people here. Strange people with necks twisted all the way around and people who walk on their hands and heads and drag their faces on the floor. They whisper, though I can see they have no lips. They haven’t seen me and I want to keep it that way. I keep silent and cast desperate eyes around the room. Where is Jake? What is this place? How did we get here?

The questions flit in and out of my mind, my heart beating so hard against my chest I am sure the room can hear it.

My breaths struggle to leave my throat and a headache blossoms behind my eyes with sudden ferocity. 

Something moves somewhere beside me. A sharp shing sounds out. Like metal scraping against metal. The people in the room disappear.

Too bright. The lights are too bright; I think. Curtains have been drawn up and sunshine rains in. 

It's killing me. Frying my brain.

"Wake up, sunshine," someone says and the pain in my skull disappears.

My limbs unglue and suddenly I can move again.

I make to get away, off the bed and out the door to my left, before I realise I'm in my room. At home.

"What's got your knickers in a twist?" my mother says, green eyes glinting.

I consider her for a moment. Was that all just a dream? Where —

"Where's Jake?"

"He's downstairs. Came in just now. Says he's got something important to tell you."

I look up at her — really look and see. "You're not my mother," I say after a long moment. It isn't a question. Dad always said he had fallen in love with her eyes. Eyes the colour of honey and chocolate. Not green that glinted.

The woman grins, lips stretching past its normal limits. "You're a smart one, aren't you? The other one took much longer to figure it out."

"Where's Jake?" I ask again, panicking.

"I just told you, sweetheart. He's downstairs. Can't say much for the state of him though."

I flee the room before she finishes, and stumble on weak legs near the stairs. And then I recover. But it is too late. My head snaps back and my feet fly out from under me. The woman pushed me. I fall painfully down the tiled steps, smacking, tumbling, crashing and, with a jerk, I come to a stop at the bottom. A bone in my chest breaks with a sickening crunch and breathing becomes even harder.

The feeling that I'm not in my own body intensifies. The pain more horrible than I can stand.

I look up. Jake lies on the table, several knives through his chest and something that looks like black slime dripping from his ears. Blood and spittle writhe down his open lips like worms. The smell of excreta pervades the tiny kitchen and I can see the stains in his trousers. I turn my face away to avoid the smell.

The woman stands in front of me. I hadn't seen her approach. She takes my head in her hands and slime inches forth from her fingers. It crawls down into me. It touches me. I feel it in my head; twisting, stretching, breaking. My thoughts become things I can neither hear nor understand. 

A moan sounds out then, and suddenly my limbs are mine again. The people are back, though I cannot see them. They had distracted her.

My skin itches so bad. As though things are under it, squirming, slithering.

Something whispers in my head. No. Not something. Many. They were many.

They shout, scream. Inside my head.

No. STOP! LEAVE ME ALONE. PLEASE! LEAVE —

The woman laughs and contorts, her body twists and blackens till only a pillar of sooty skin and disfigured, pumping, throbbing organs stands in her place. She makes a croaking sound from somewhere inside her, such as a mating toad might do in rainy seasons.

She reaches for me with a quickness I almost can't see. But the voices tell me — yes, they whisper! — I must make haste to leave. I flee through the kitchen door into the mists and the fog outside. 

I can feel my brain quiver in my skull. Too many inside. Too many. My head feels ripe to burst.

I can't say where I went, but soon I see a house from a long distance. I come upon it quickly. So quick I decide the house must be chasing me. I realise with a start and a shudder: It is the same house I just left.

The woman bursts through the door. She reaches for me again. This time she is swifter. She catches me in putrid arms of slime. 

It crawls over me — the slime. Everywhere. It goes in through my mouth and my eyes, my ears and through my nostrils until it reaches my brain. I could feel it creeping inside. My head is exploding. Slamming!

The pain hammers into every inch of my body as though every cell had been set alight. I scream and scream and —

I wake up. The graveyard is cool and silent. A light mist had descended over the grounds, the hewn stones of the graves obscured. 

A dream, I think. Just a dream. 

My head itches, and not on the skin where I can reach, but deep inside. Somewhere far in. I scratch with ferocity at my scalp.

A movement to my right catches my eye. Jake stands, wiping the front of his clothes. I gaze at him. Jake, who I had seen dead on a table. Jake, who had brought me here and forced me to live through a hellish nightmare.

Just a dream.

Jake stares at me. I can see him. Judging me. Casting critical eyes upon me as though he's better than me.

A memory flashes behind my eyes. It is the worms. The worms of blood and spit inching their way down his chin. Disgusting things. LEAVE ME!

His eyes are green, I glimpse. He tries to hide them from me, but it is too late! I have seen! This is not Jake. Jake's eyes are bright and blue. The colour of the noon sky.

His eyes drive me to fury. My heart trembles in my chest. Ever louder. Ever shouting. 

The whispers urge me on. Do it! Stand up! KILL HIM!

I shriek, grab a stone from beside me and leap at this imposter Jake.

He has no time to scream, for I am clever and quick. The stone comes down. Once. Twice. Three times. And it is done. The imposter Jake is dead. 

He is stone. Dead as stone.

I sit next to the dead thing and weep and laugh. Now, there is no one left.

Only me and my whispers.