Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

The House

“Don’t turn out the lights,” which was the only thing my grandmother told me when I first stayed at her house. Well, it wasn’t the only thing, but she made damn sure I listened to what she said. Don’t turn out the lights and everything will be fine. I was a kid at the time and didn’t understand what she meant, and honestly, I didn’t want to, and it just became a habit.

Why am I telling you this seemingly useless information? Because like everything we learn, information is never really useless; it’s just not useful at the time you learn it, as you’ll find out in this story I have to tell you.

It was a little over a year ago that my grandmother passed away. It was a heart attack, apparently, Dad, of course, said she died of old age, that her heart just couldn’t do the work it needed to do anymore and just gave out.

The house was left to Dad, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with the old place. So he left it as it was, locked up, vacant, untouched, unused. He ignored it even existed, and whenever I mentioned it, he would get a strange look on his face, then change the subject. Six weeks ago, Mum and Dad were involved in a fatal car accident; somehow, they veered off the road and ran into a telegraph pole. The detective who worked the case said it was one of the strangest crash sites he’d ever worked. From what they could piece together, it looked like Dad, who was driving at the time, didn’t even apply pressure to the brakes; he just simply drove the car off the road and into the pole.

After the funeral was over, I started sorting out their affairs, and that’s when I came across the deed to my grandmother’s house. At first, I wanted to put it up for auction, just get rid of it, but my wife, Clare, fell in love with the old place as soon as she saw a photo of it, and I, to be honest, did as well. It had been well over eighteen years since I’d laid eyes on it, maybe more, not since I moved away chasing dreams of success in the big city, where I met, fell in love with, and eventually married Clare. We’d been married for almost six years, and thought it was about time we slowed down and considered starting a family before we were too old. Our careers were solid, I was established as a writer and didn’t need to be in the city anymore, while Clare desperately wanted to be a mum. So we decided, after a few days of reflection and discussion, we would move into the house and see where it would take us.

The next day we subleased our townhouse, packed up, and just like that, made the move. It was odd, to be perfectly honest. Normally, both of us are pretty big fence sitters. But with this, we jumped and never gave it a second thought. I thought it was a good idea anyway; I’d hit a wall writing my latest novel and needed inspiration. The idea of going home again filled me with hope that somehow I might bridge that gap between who I was, when I was writing best-seller material, to who I am now, the guy writing trash that I can’t even bring myself to read.

I was six books into a series that followed a young girl called Jennifer and the strange things that happen to her and her friends. It’d weighed a lot on my shoulders for a while now; I didn’t find them overly interesting, in fact, they were boring. To tell you the truth, I’d stopped having fun, I’d stopped loving it. But my publisher was hell-bent on adding another sequel to the mix. She saw money, the chance at a movie series, stuff like that, stuff that didn’t interest me at all. What I wanted to do was write the sequel to my first book, The Widow. It was the story of a demonic beast that slithered its way through mankind in the form of a woman who’d just appear in people’s lives as if she’d always been there. Really fucking screwed up stuff. The whole story, from start to finish, was a complete mindfuck, and I had fucking enjoyed writing it. So the idea of her was always in the back of my mind.

Anyway, enough of the useless information. When we first set foot in the house, I felt it—something strange, yet familiar. Something or someone I’d known, or had known me, was watching us, following us, but whoever it was, whatever it was, I was the only one who felt it. Clare, she was blinded by the possibilities and said it was more likely my nerves about the book.

All my grandmother’s furniture was still there. My parents didn’t know what to do with any of it, so rather than deal with it, they just left it all there, which was great for us, because we didn’t need to do anything but pull back the sheets and do some dusting.

The first night we were so buggered from the trip, we grabbed some takeaway and parked ourselves on the living room floor, soaking everything up, more wine than atmosphere though. It was like stepping back in time. I’ve got to be honest, I felt like a kid again, but it wasn’t until after one and a half bottles of red that I remembered the rule. Clare thought it was a joke at first, but as the wine dwindled down, we became more and more obsessed with the story about not turning out the lights. She became more and more agitated, to the point where she refused to turn off the living room light when we finally decided it was time to get some sleep. It was about four in the morning when she woke and rushed off to the toilet. I rolled over, my back ached from sleeping on the floor, and I waited for her to come back.

After about fifteen minutes passed, I started to get a little worried and called for her, but there was no answer. I can tell you, plenty of thoughts ran through my mind, but nothing could get me ready for what I found as I rushed to the toilet.

Clare was asleep—passed out, more like it—still sitting propped up on the toilet, her mouth open, and a ball of paper in her hand ready to wipe. I roused her, guided her back to our makeshift bed, and soon she was snoring away.

That’s when it happened. I don’t know why. I mean, I was so well trained, but I guess it was partly the wine and not having been here for years that contributed to it. But I turned off the light and froze in place.

There were hundreds of them, peering out from the darkness at me. I stood there, too afraid to move—petrified would be the word I’d use—while Clare snored loudly. The only sound in the room, besides my heart beating like a heavy metal drummer banging on my chest, was that of her snoring.

They didn’t move, not once; they just floated, attached to nothing, watching me, maybe waiting for me to do something, I guess. So, I did the only thing I could do, the only bloody obvious thing to do: I turned the lights back on. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep any more that night, and when Clare finally woke up, we headed back home once I told her what I saw.

What happened to the house? Well, I still own it, and it still sits there, waiting, for the lights to be turned off…