The spooky season is over! And to celebrate the spookiest day of the year here’s my brand new flash fiction called The Lurker!
Our Brick today is a bit longer so I prepared it in a PDF version that you can download via the button below. So it’s easier to read on your phone or maybe even print for yourself if you prefer that :)
Just don’t forget to come back and leave a like or a comment it helps a lot!
In today’s Brick the prompt is: Write a story about an entity hiding in the mists. The Bricks are dealt in 300-2000 words!
The Lurker
“As the darkness of the night before Halloween sets in and the mists cover the lands, the Lurker comes. Taller than two men, dead skin hanging on thin bones. Ready to snatch all children foolish enough to get out there and dare the mists,” Joseph finished his story.
His younger sons stared at him, wide-eyed from the depths of their blankets.
They are scared, good. Better scared than sorry. He thought.
His oldest, Christopher, didn’t seem that impressed, though. He was always playing the hero before his younger brothers. Joseph knew that look—he knew it very well—the childish defiance, the boyish need to prove that you’re tough and not scared of anything.
“How can he lurk around the whole country?” Christopher asked.
Joseph frowned but quickly regained his patience. He leaned in and spoke in a deep voice. “You see. There are so many sightings and stories around the Lurker that people believe it’s a group of entities hunting for new members. They are said to drain your body until there is nothing left but a dry and withered shell of a person. This shell then transforms into another one of them, an insatiable monster looking to refill what it lost.”
As Joseph spoke, he saw Christopher’s face grow pale. His bravado from before was gone, and the child was back.
“Okay, boys,” Joseph said, “sleep tight.”
They murmured good nights, and Joseph left them. They might have nightmares tonight; his bedtime story was the darkest this year.
It’s for their safety. Joseph reminded himself as he sat in a cushioned chair. Listening to the crackling of the hearth, he pinned his eyes into the mists outside.
Just like every year, the night before Halloween was long and sleepless. Accompanied by a glass of whiskey, Joseph would spend all night watching the mists swirl around his windows and the shadows inside them lurk, waiting for someone to invite them in.
“You went extra tonight,” his wife Mary said, pouring herself a glass and sitting across from him.
Joseph nodded.
She eyed him; he knew that look, too. Everyone looked at him that way when he spoke about the Lurker. It was an old urban legend made to scare kids; at least, that’s what everyone believed.
Mary sighed, looking out the window. They sat in silence for a while, watching the fog outside engulf everything in a greyish haze. Joseph would swear he saw a figure move in there, but there was no point in mentioning it. She wouldn’t believe him.
“You’re weirder about this than usual,” she said. There was no harm in her words. She accepted his “weird obsession,” as she liked to call it, long ago.
Joseph took a sip, his stare growing distant. For a moment, he was not in their woodland cabin; he was out there in the mists, decades in the past.
“I know,” he said after a moment of silence.
She raised an eyebrow but knew him too well to press on.
“I was Christopher’s age,” he said.
“When?”
“When I met the Lurker.”
Mary blinked. She was too good of a person to laugh at him, but he could see the disbelief on her face. She thought he was going crazy.
“I never told you where my ‘weird obsession’ came from,” he said.
“No. You didn’t,”
Joseph kicked in the rest of his whiskey and poured himself another one. With a sigh, he leaned back and fixed his gaze into the darkness outside.
“It’s been thirty years today…”
It’s been thirty years today since I made the biggest mistake of my life. The night before Halloween fell upon our little town, and the dark hours brought in the mists. Like many other towns here, we had our versions of the Lurker’s stories. A creature twisted and dark lurking within the fog, awaiting people stupid enough to walk outside.
The legends varied. Some said that he was a patient who escaped from the mental ward in the nearby asylum, and eating children gave him eternal life. Others said he was a reanimated corpse of a death row inmate. Some said he was initially a possessed factory worker, and the others came from him. Ours supposedly hid at the abandoned amusement park at the edge of town, an old employee who got stuck in the Haunted House when they closed.
Whatever the truth, it was a magnet for stupid boys and stupid ideas. And truth be told, we were stupid boys.
It was Derek’s idea, the bravest one of us. With a bat on his shoulder—used to play the peak of our league, a true prodigy—he dared myself and Vince to go with him. “Every guy from the ninth grade went out there!” he said, “it’s a rite of passage to become a man!”
He was right, you know. Every older boy said he was out there and dared the mist. Back then, I had no idea how much people lie to be seen as cool.
When I looked outside that night, I could feel the dread sitting in my stomach like a heavy stone. Just the thought of stepping outside sent shivers down my spine, almost a primal fear. But stupid boys do stupid things just to be seen as brave.
And so, as the stupid boy I was, I accepted.
Vince was the smartest kid I knew, so getting him to go with us took some persuading. He laughed at us: “There are no facts that the Lurker exists; you’re going to waste your night. “At first, I thought he was scared and tried to hide that, just like I did, but looking back, I realize he probably just wanted to play on his 3DS all night since his parents weren’t home.
In the end, the good old: “Are you pissing your pants?” from Dereck worked.
In no time, the leaves shuffled under our feet as we passed the do not enter signs around the park.
Even now, I still hear their laughter—muted, haunting, swallowed by mist so thick it could be cut with a knife. The closer to the park’s entrance we were, the thicker the mist grew.
Dereck kept the morale up, swinging his bat and making the milky haze spread for a second before coming back into place. “Don’t worry, guys, I will take the Lurker’s head off if he shows up!”
“If the stories carry any resemblance of truth in them, the Lurker is seven feet tall minimum. You’ll barely reach his shoulders with that,” Vince noted calmly, that big brain of his not allowing him to be afraid.
While they joked and laughed, I would swear I had heard something growling in the mists. So I asked, my trembling voice selling me out. Which Derek noticed immediately.
“Oh, Joe, don’t shit your pants now. We haven’t seen the Haunted House yet!” Derek laughed.
I said I was not scared and that we couldn’t see shit yet because of those damn mists. I tried to play the hero and look tough, but I still heard them. Derek and Vince either didn’t hear or ignored them.
It took us about twenty minutes to reach the Haunted House. At that point, it was impossible to see our outstretched fingers. A new layer of fear began to build up in me—this one way more practical—we couldn’t find a way home from there.
“Tough luck,” I said, hoping the boarded-up windows and locked doors would discourage them from entering. But you can’t stop childish curiosity.
Derek shrugged. “We’re here, so we’re going inside.”
“The mists are getting insane; we should head back so we don’t get lost.”
I looked over at Vince, looking for a voice of reason. Instead, he took down his science fair pin and knelt by the lock. We watched him surprised, but in under a minute, the lock clicked, and he turned at us, smiling. “I saw a how-to lock-pick in a magazine,” he said with a grin as if it explained everything.
The second and third planks were gone in a moment, too, and before I knew what was happening, they were both inside, running around the dimly illuminated halls of the Haunted House.
They didn’t seem to care, but when I saw those green lights, I froze. My legs turned into jelly, and my heart beat like crazy.
One question rang through my mind: How could there be light in here?
Then I heard the first scream. It was Vince’s voice. I recognized it immediately. Then, after that, I heard Derek’s voice, deep for a teenager, bouncing in the halls.
Many people in that situation would do many things. But I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t follow them. I just stood there, watching the mist spill inside the house and its greenly lit hallways.
There I saw Derek, his young, handsome face bloodied. He ran towards me with his baseball jersey ripped and his eye hanging out of its socket.
He looked at me, begging for help. But before I could move, something snatched him and pulled him back inside the house.
Still, I didn’t move; I just listened to the horrid screams of my two best friends.
I saw it a moment later.
A figure rose in the dark, tall as two men, slender with long arms and pale skin hanging off its thin frame. It looked at me with a pair of bloodshot eyes.
At that moment, everything in my body snapped back into place, and I ran. I can’t remember much beyond that point. I don’t know how long I ran or how I got home, but I did.
The last thing I remember is hiding in my closet and waiting for my parents to come home.
Joseph took a sip of his whiskey. “The next day, I told everything I saw to the police, my parents, Vince’s mom, and Derek’s aunt. But nobody believed me. Nobody has seen them since. The police looked around the Amusement park but found nothing, not even Derek’s bat. I had to see a shrink for years after and went through dozens upon dozens of interrogations. Their families thought I did something to them and just was really good at hiding it.
My own family thought that I was crazy. As the years went by, I began to believe them. But once we had kids, I knew I couldn’t allow any of them to leave the house on the misty night before Halloween.” He looked at Mary and accepted that frightened stare. He knew it well; everyone gave it to him. If he was telling the truth, it’s the most insane story they heard. If not, then he is genuinely crazy.
“I-“Mary started, “I don’t know how to handle this,” she said frankly.
“You don’t have to. I know it’s hard to take in. But I promise, it’s all true. I–“he froze as a cold touch of the night’s air caressed his face. “The boys,” he gasped, darting from the chair to the wide open door.
The mists embraced him immediately, killing all sounds, leaving only an echo of his own heartbeat.
“You can’t stop the childish curiosity…curiosity…osity…” echoed in the mists.
That voice!
Leaves crunched behind him; he snapped and met two pairs of bloodshot eyes. Lurkers, not one but two, loomed over him. Their loose gray skin hung on thin limbs, and their bloodied mouths were spread in a satisfied snarl.
One of them wore a torn baseball jersey, and the other had a science fair pin pushed through his cheek. They spoke as one, with voices he knew so well.
“Hello, Joe.”
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and here I am again walking through this valley where the mist turns everything into a watercolor painting like the ones my mother used to hang in the kitchen except there's something wrong with this particular morning something that makes me think about all those times I've watched nature documentaries where the gazelle doesn't know it's being stalked and isn't it funny how we can sense these things how the body knows before the mind catches up like that time in third grade when I knew Tommy Williams was going to throw a spitball at me before he even reached for his straw
the fog is doing that thing again where it seems to have fingers or maybe tentacles or maybe I'm just remembering those Japanese prints I saw at the museum last spring but there's definitely something in there watching waiting and I wonder if it gets lonely being a thing in the mist if it has coffee breaks or vacation days or if it just endlessly prowls these hills like some cosmic night watchman who never gets to clock out and why am I even thinking about its coffee breaks when I should be terrified but maybe that's just how the human mind works always trying to domesticate the unknown
three days now it's been following me and I keep pretending I don't see it like we're playing some otherworldly game of peek-a-boo and I remember playing that with my niece how she always thought she was invisible when she covered her eyes and maybe that's what I'm doing now covering my eyes metaphorically speaking while this thing this shadow this whatever-it-is creeps closer and closer and isn't it strange how the mist parts like stage curtains as if it's all been choreographed just for me just for this moment when I finally turn and see what's been watching me all along and oh
oh
now I understand why people only whisper about the mist-walker why they leave offerings at the edge of town why my grandmother used to cross herself whenever the fog rolled in and why words will never be enough to describe what I'm seeing right now in this moment as the mist pulls back like a bride's veil revealing what's been here all along waiting just waiting for someone to look back
and here I am again walking through this valley where the mist turns everything into a watercolor painting like the ones my mother used to hang in the kitchen except there's something wrong with this particular morning something that makes me think about all those times I've watched nature documentaries where the gazelle doesn't know it's being stalked and isn't it funny how we can sense these things how the body knows before the mind catches up like that time in third grade when I knew Tommy Williams was going to throw a spitball at me before he even reached for his straw
the fog is doing that thing again where it seems to have fingers or maybe tentacles or maybe I'm just remembering those Japanese prints I saw at the museum last spring but there's definitely something in there watching waiting and I wonder if it gets lonely being a thing in the mist if it has coffee breaks or vacation days or if it just endlessly prowls these hills like some cosmic night watchman who never gets to clock out and why am I even thinking about its coffee breaks when I should be terrified but maybe that's just how the human mind works always trying to domesticate the unknown
three days now it's been following me and I keep pretending I don't see it like we're playing some otherworldly game of peek-a-boo and I remember playing that with my niece how she always thought she was invisible when she covered her eyes and maybe that's what I'm doing now covering my eyes metaphorically speaking while this thing this shadow this whatever-it-is creeps closer and closer and isn't it strange how the mist parts like stage curtains as if it's all been choreographed just for me just for this moment when I finally turn and see what's been watching me all along and oh
oh
now I understand why people only whisper about the mist-walker why they leave offerings at the edge of town why my grandmother used to cross herself whenever the fog rolled in and why words will never be enough to describe what I'm seeing right now in this moment as the mist pulls back like a bride's veil revealing what's been here all along waiting just waiting for someone to look back
That's a great story! very "classic" but with its own charm and I like how its his friends come back for him.