Harvest Moon

~*~

Well, this is a really lame story, my first attempt on horror. It was made after my English class had read ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe. We were told to ‘write a gothic story, try to get in the mood (not all that easy when you don’t have English as your mother tongue) and use some of these ingredients: Haunted Mansion, Ghosts, Mysterious Deaths, Graveyard, etc.’

Obviously none of us are any good at writing gothic stories... And I don’t even know why I submit this to fictionpress even...

Well, flame, spew, cheer, do whatever you like, I don’t really care.

Ps: the title was made by my brother; the moon wasn’t even there in the first draft...

~*~

The old man was lying in his bed. It was dark, for it was night and the moon was only occasionally visible behind the dark clouds. The room was filled with shadows; the only source of light was an oil lamp on the bedside table. The old man was holding a book, and his eyes were frantically scanning the words, but his mind was not set on reading.

He was an old man, and had lived a long life, though not a very good one. He was rich, but had always been unwilling to share with others. Therefore he had also lived a lonely life. He had had a lot of worries during the years, but it had been a long time since he worried much about anything. That had changed. Suddenly this morning, he had felt queasy and hot. The queasiness had given way to a terrible coughing, which had only gotten worse as the day proceeded. With the awful headache following, he had called for the doctor.

Suddenly there was a creak from the door.

‘My Lord, the doctor is here.’

The manservant stepped away from the door, revealing a hunched shadow on the threshold.

The dark figure took a step forward, his face still in shadows.

‘Leave us!’ the old man commanded the servant. The manservant bowed his way out the door, and shut it with another unpleasant creak.

Abruptly the old man bent over in his bed in a fit of coughs.

Still the man was standing in the shadows and did not move.

‘Doctor, you must tell me what is wrong with me!’ the old man gasped, scarcely having any breath left after the fit.

There was a rustling in the man’s dark cloak as he moved closer to the bed.

As the light fell upon his face, illuminating the emaciated features, the old man gasped again, this time in revulsion.

Never before had the old man seen such a face! Never before had he seen such a horrid imitation of the human features! If he had not known better, the old man could easily have thought it a mask, but what doctor would assume disguise when visiting a patient?

The man was very pale, even paler than the old man himself, much like the unhealthy colour of lifetime prisoners who had not seen daylight for years. His face was gaunt and sunken, and the skin was tightly fitted around the cranium, which gave his whole face a close resemblance to a human skull. His eyes were hidden underneath the hood.

‘I can tell you what is wrong with you,’ the man said. He had a deep voice, calm, almost pleasant, and yet bone-chilling at the same time.

‘You are dying.’

The man sat bolt upright, but was yet again overcome with a fit of coughs.

‘Dying?’ he asked, a hand on his chest. His breath was heavy and wheezy.

The man gave a single nod.

‘How can you tell? You have not even examined me!’

‘I do not need to,’ the dark figure answered.

The old man wanted to protest, but another cough interrupted him instead. The old man was coughing and coughing, and it felt like he was going to cough up his own lungs if it did not stop soon! As he removed the blanket he had covered his mouth with, he could see blood stains on the fabric, shiny in the glow from the oil lamp.

‘Doctor, you must help me!’ cried the old man hoarsely. ‘I will give you all you want! All I have! I cannot die just yet!’

‘I cannot help you,’ the man answered calmly. ‘Not in the sense you want. No one can. No money can cure you now. It is too late for you.’

‘What kind of a doctor are you?!’ cried the old man, clutching his chest, heaving for breath.

The man gave a wide grin, revealing two rows of yellowish teeth, looking more like a human skull than a human face.

‘I have never said that I am a doctor,’ the man said, his invisible stare fixed upon the old man.

‘Who are you?!’ the old man whispered, his voice and breath failing him.

The man pulled down his hood. His head was hairless. The old man could now see that the eyes were only two deep sockets, and that deep, deep inside were two small dancing flames distinguishable in the hollows. At first he thought they were the reflections of the oil lamp, but then he noticed that they flickered, although there was no wind or breeze that could disturb the oil lamp.

Then, with slow determination, the dark figure pulled out an hourglass from a chain around his neck. The sand was flowing through the centre quickly, but the upper bulb’s sand level was clearly near to empty.

The old man stared at the hourglass, unable to move, unable to speak, even unable to breathe, for welling up in his chest he could feel pure terror as revelation dawned upon him.

‘Yes,’ said the man who was still wearing that mad grin. ‘I have come for you at last, and when the last grain falls, you will draw your last breath.’

In silent horror the old man was shaking his head, trying to deny what he was seeing. But the vision would not go away. The dark enshrouded man was no longer a man. Where the man had stood, was now a dark figure with black robes draped over his white bones. The face, which had looked so much like a skull before, was now really a skull, with dark hollow sockets in which two blue flames danced; the nose had vanished and now a great dark hole had replaced it, and the mouth was only a wide grin of yellowing teeth. In one hand Death held the hourglass. In the other was a scythe.

Transfixed the old man watched as the last grain of sand fell down from the top bulb to the bottom bulb, placing itself neatly on top of the little sand heap, leaving the upper bulb empty.

The old man opened his mouth to scream, but he had no breath left to make any sound with.

Through the window he could see the moon emerging from a cloud.

And then...darkness.