Call It by Name and It Will Follow You
A short horror by Matthew Tonks
Rain and shadow braid into something that remembers your footsteps. A woman hurries through an elongating street and finds that naming what stalks her only tightens its hold — and the things that whisper through the dark will not let her go.
Dark clouds crawl across the sky, claiming everything they touch, swallowing the afternoon light. She rushes—walking, almost jogging—clutching herself, her face screwed up, twisted, concerned. The darkness plays with the fingers of daylight as it tries to reach for her, but the grip is too strong for its trembling touch. She glances over her shoulder, her pace quickening. Her heart pounds, her breath ragged and desperate. Her flimsy, parachute-like track pants rub together, buzzing—sparks of static. She gasps, looks over her shoulder again—the streetlights flare to life, blaze brighter and brighter, then explode. She turns back—the street stretches, elongates before her like a hallucination’s wet dream—and at the end, standing in the shadows, is a figure. He laughs, his voice broken, grotesquely wet and dry at the same time, as if his mouth were filled with broken glass and nails.
“What’s the rush, toots? Surely you know by now running from me ain’t an option. I ain’t there with you—you’re here with me,” he snarls, stepping off the street—then suddenly he’s behind her, his tongue in her ear. She screams, clawing free—pushing, punching, slapping. He laughs louder. She blinks—and the street is empty. She’s alone again. The roar of a car’s horn pierces the silence—she jumps, stumbles clumsily off the road, and crashes into a row of bins stacked along the kerb. She lies in the rubbish, her heart throbbing in her chest as she gasps desperately for air, a sea of sweat pouring down her brow.
Her phone vibrates somewhere in the folds of her clothes and she jumps, squealing in fright. She fumbles through her hoodie pocket and pulls it free. The name ‘Deny’ is plastered across the screen. She grimaces, swallows—the taste of rot in her mouth—and stutters a breath as she nervously raises the phone to her ear.
“Hi, De—” Her words cut off as his voice screams through the speaker, already shouting.
“Shut the fuck up, Lola! Don’t talk, don’t offer me another stupid fucking excuse! Just listen and follow what I say—do that and maybe we get to talk about this another day,” he spits, his voice trembling with rage. “I want you to head back here and—”
“I can’t, Deny, I c—”
“I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN! Can’t is not in your vocabulary. All I want to hear is—Yes, Deny. Of course, Deny. Right away, Deny. Do you understand?”
“But Den—”
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND!” he roars.
Silence weaves the world between them until, out of the corner of her eye, she sees the thing—balancing on a street sign by one finger, juggling what she can only make out as grotesquely malformed foetuses.
“Go on—tell him. Tell him all about me and I’ll rip his fucking heart out!” it says with a maniacal grin.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND!” Deny roars again.
“Y-Yes—Deny,” she whispers softly.
“Right,” he says, calm at last. “Now, you’ve got to be honest, okay? Think you can do that?”
She nods. “Y-Yeah,” she stammers, chewing her nails.
“Good girl,” he says.
She can tell by the way he says his words that he is smiling, and she breaks into a nervous smile.
“Do you see anything unusual?”
“U-Unusual?” she repeats, her eyes falling on the figure as he presses himself behind a streetlamp pole—his body too large, his shadow spilling out on both sides.
“Yeah, like a cloud—a drop of water that shouldn’t be there—a shadow—”
“A shadow?” she whispers.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“W-W-What?”
“I said, where are you going? Why did you want me to know you were leaving?”
“I-I-I,” she says through trembling lips, then falls silent.
“You what? You wanted me to know, even though you were leaving because of me?”
“N-N-Not because of you,” she stammers, looking over at the figure as he opens and closes an umbrella—each time it snaps shut, his face grows more decayed, more deranged, more twisted—until his grin stretches wide across his face, tearing at the flesh, filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth, while his eyes sit hollow and empty.
“Why then—did you see something? Did you see it? Did you see him?”
“D-D-Do you know hi—”
“STOP IT!” it roars. It grabs her by the throat and pulls the phone from her ear.
“Lola! Are you listening—can you hear me? You need to understand—it’s the drug—the shit you stole on your way out the door, the stuff that was on the table where you left your letter. It’s called Stiltskin—you need to understand—what you’re seeing isn’t real. No one’s there.”
“You aren’t real!” Stiltskin screams down the line.
“L-L-Lola?” Deny stammers nervously.
“Lola ain’t here anymore—all that’s left is me, your sweet little designer drug—and I’m coming to get you!” Lola screams into the phone, her voice distorted and deranged. She thrusts the phone to the ground. A grin cuts across her face—her tongue lashes at her lips. She rolls her head, cracking her neck. “Tinker, tailor, shadow, lie—I’m coming to kill you, prepare to die!” she sings—her flesh tearing at the edges of her grin as it grows even wider, her eyes burst—and she begins to giggle.
💬 Did this one echo?
Tell me—before it forgets your name.
—
Written by Matthew Tonks
→ Read more nightmares at mtonks.com
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