Horror Sensation

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@ DEEPDAY # By Andrew Campbell 1994 Heather was dreaming about Tom when the tiny voice of her frightened daughter intruded her fantasy. The two were passionately embraced and on the brink of kissing when the dream was shattered by a squealing noise. "Oh Lucy," Heather protested weakly, aware she was no longer in wonderland even before she opened her eyes. "You have to learn to sleep in your own bed, darling." "But Mum!" the girl desperately pleaded. "Wake up Mummy!" "Mmmm." Heather groaned, rolling onto her side, not daring to open up in case she lost a magical image of Tom she had somehow managed to salvage from her dream. Once she came round, Tom would be in London, and she didn't want to be given back that heart-breaking knowledge. Not yet, anyway. "Mummy! You've gotta get up Mummy!" Lucy went on, this time she proved her determination: the quilt began to slide off the bed. "Oh Lucy please..." Heather whimpered, battling for warmth. Tom was fading now. She was losing him. "It's ten o'clock Mum. It's ten o'clock!" Lucy exclaimed, almost drowning herself in the stolen quilt. "What's happenin'? What's happenin'?" Heather knew her daughter was easily excited these days - what with Christmas just around the corner - but this type of trick was just not on. At last, painfully accepting the fact that Tom was away and wouldn't be coming back for anther two days, Heather released a final sleepy groan, then opened her eyes. There was complete blackness. She sat up. "Lucy? What've you done?" The girl scrambled frantically onto her mum's bed for a hug. "Mummy," she gasped. "It's all dark. I can't see. I thought you weren't gonna wake up. What's happenin' Mum? How come it's dark?" Despite her initial surprise, Heather managed to grasp the situation quite calmly. There had to be a simple explanation. # Logical fact: it was pitch dark. # Logical answer: the sun wasn't up yet. # Simple. All the same she felt a little bit guilty for ignoring Lucy as she had. After all, the girl was only five, hardly the age of global understanding. The poor kid must have been terrified, waking up and wandering around the house in complete darkness. "It's alright lovey." Heather hugged Lucy tightly. The girl's skin was icey cold and she was shivering, badly. "S'okay sweetie, nothing to worry about. It must still be early morning or something, that's all. You woke up too soon, silly girl." "No, Mum." Lucy insisted, her voice a tiny whisper. "My clock says it's ten o'clock. It should be mornin'." Even at five, Lucy was a good time-teller. She had her own huge, Mickey-Mouse bedside clock and every night after reading her a story Tom would ask her to tell the time. Lucy would always get it right. She was a very clever girl. "Your clock must have stopped," Heather whispered and kissed her daughter's forehead. It was hot and damp. "Don't you worry about it, darling. We'll fix it in the morning." Lucy sat up, hands resting on Heather's shoulders. "But it IS morning Mum. It IS morning." --- They ended up sat shivering on the livingroom floor - still dressed in their pyjamas - surrounded by clocks and watches from all over the house, and old, flickering candles balanced in egg-cups. Lucy was cuddled up to Mum, still scared, still confused. She was especially frightened now, because Mum didn't know what had made everything go dark. Mum had seen the clocks - which all indicated it should be morning - and had simply gone silent. Lucy knew this wasn't a good sign: if Mum didn't know what was going on, then only Dad did, but Dad was away in London, and wasn't due back for two days. # Two whole DAYS. While Lucy was thinking about her father, Heather was trying to come up with a logical explanation to the darkness. She was mid-way through convincing herself that all the clocks in the house had somehow wound themselves forward, when a frightening thought ploughed into her mind, stopped dead, and refused to budge. Pulling back the curtains was usually a very simple affair. Now however, it threatened to reveal to her not a garden of frozen flowers and weeds, but a multitude of nightmares... a sky of atomic dust, a total eclipse, a freezing world with a sun no more. She stood up. "Mum?" Lucy inquired weakly. She was clinging on to her mother very tightly indeed and had no intentions of ever letting go. "Where we goin'?" "To the window sweetheart," Heather said, trying to keep her voice steady. "I'm going to pull back the curtains and have a look outside. I want you to hold me tight, sweetie. Do you understand?" "What's gonna be there?" the girl whimpered. "What's gonna be outside?" "I don't know." Heather whispered, stepping boldly towards the flower-patterned curtains she had pulled back without a care so many times in the past. Captured by the eerie orange glow from the burning candles, the material seemed alive. Holding Lucy to her body with just one hand, Heather reached out, took hold of one of the curtains and slid it back. She screamed. Behind the window was a gruesome network of horrific, glistening faces, smiling and grinning insanely: # HAAAAAAAA! We gotcha Heather! We scared ya! We scared ya real good! "Mummieee!" Lucy cried. Heather released a sharp breath. "Oh! It's... it's alright darling. Mummy just got scared for a moment there... oh Jesus." she closed her eyes for a brief second, allowing colourful explosions of shock to disappear from her vision. When she opened her eyes again the faces behind the glass were false and lifeless. Best of all, they were explained. "I know what's happened," Heather whispered, releaved, but not completely satisfied: the final truth she had discovered was still way beyond reality. "It's been snowing, that's all honey. It's been snowing an awful lot." Outside, the faces in the thick, buried snow watched her, grinning ever more broadly. # We gotcha Heather! We gotcha! --- "Damn it God why couldn't you have waited until Tuesday to bury the world in snow?" Heather hissed to herself whilst rumaging through her husband's tool box in search of a torch. "Mum?" Lucy called from the livingroom. "Have you found one yet?" "Ouch!" Heather whispered as hot wax from the candle she was holding trickled over her fingers. "No, darling. Not yet." she replied to Lucy, then blew out the flame. "Jesus, Tom. What am I gonna-" A loud crack echoed through the house. "Muuuum!" Lucy screamed. "What was thaaaat?" "I'm coming darling!" Heather shouted and skipped blindly out of the kitchen. She stood still for a moment in the hallway. Another crack rumbled the walls, this time Heather realised where it was coming from: # The roof. She ran into the livingroom and scooped Lucy into her arms. "Don't cry honey. It's alright." she said softly. "It's just the snow pressing down on the roof, it'll be alright." But the girl cried, no matter what Heather said. She wasn't stupid. She knew nothing was alright: she and Mum were in terrible danger. Another splintering crack, this time followed by a slow, menacing moan and a variety of frightening thumps. Heather secured her grip around Lucy's waist and ran out of the livingroom. She paused for a moment in the black hallway, listening to the house wail and cry. Her arms were coated in goosepimples and her teeth were chattering. "Tuh-Tom..." she wept. "Oh Tom huh-help us. Puh-please help us..." The house roared with anger. Heather looked up, just as the ceiling split open above her head. Freezing cold snow crashed into her face, and she screamed, turning away immediately and staggering back. Wet, frightened and clutching Lucy, who was no longer crying, Heather sprinted towards the front door whilst snow splattered onto the carpet behind her. Moments later, she was fumbling with the security bolt and listening to her daughter's trembling whispers - "the house is fillin' up with snow Mum, the house is fillin' up" - and thinking about Tom and how much she was going to miss him when she went to heaven, and how deeply she wanted him to come back and hold her, and how much she wished she could stay and see the beautiful woman Lucy was going to grow up to be and- Heather unfastened the lock, released the chain and opened the door. A wall of solid snow greeted her with a thousand smiles. # Hiya Heather! Remember us? We're back again to GETCHA! --- "Lucy listen to me, the dark is nothing to be scared of-" #"I want Dad. It's too dark." "We're gonna have to dig our way out now Lucy, do you think you can help me do that? Hey, sweetheart? You huh-have to help Mummy, cos she can't do it o-on her own, you nuh-know." #"I want Dad!" "Lucy please," # "Dad! DAD!" "PLEASE!" Lucy stopped crying and sniffed up. "Don't shout at me." "Darling I'm sorry." Heather whispered, teeth rattling. "But we're stuck in the snow and we've got to dig. I'm right here, see?" she found her daughter's face and stroked it gently. "There I am, you see? Now be a clever girl and help me dig. Come on, lets start up at the top and see if we can reach daylight. Wouldn't that be great? To see some daylight?" "Uhuh..." Lucy said softly, but didn't move an inch. Heather dug her hands into the "roof" of the dark prison in which they were buried. The snow was cold and hard and stung her fingers so badly she had to suck them to ease the pain. "What's matter Mum?" Lucy inquired. Heather sighed. "The snow. It's rock hard." "Couldn't we melt it?" Lucy suggested. "I wish we could," Heather said. "Shame we haven't got any matches." "Here Mum," Lucy said and planted a small, cardboard box in her mother's hand. Voice soft with guilt, she said, "I know you said never to touch them, but..." Heather struck a match. The tiny cavity illuminated. "Are you gonna smack me now?" Lucy whispered, face glowing, eyes dark and twinkling. --- An hour later, they'd used up all the matches except one. Heather had bashed away at the roof of their cave until her bruised hands had split open and bled. Now, freezing cold, tired and cut to pieces, she was hardly even capable of speaking to her daughter. They were both still in complete darkness. "One match left." Lucy whispered. "Uhuh..." Heather gasped, eyes closed. "Honey... I'm so sorry... my hands are broken... I can't do anymore... not anymore..." Lucy struck the match. Her face, caught in the light from the tiny, dancing flame, looked ethereal. Heather started to cry. "Shhh..." Lucy said softly. "Don't cry Mum. Listen. Can you hear that noise?" Heather sealed her mouth and remained silent for a few moments, tears pouring down her cheeks. Then she heard it: voices. # Human voices. "Lucy!" she cried joyously. "Lucy we've got to shout so they can hear us! We've got to shout! Come on!" Lucy blew out the match, shuffled onto her Mum's lap and yelled, "HEEEEY! HEEEY WE'RE STUCK DOWN HERE!" Heather joined in, though nowhere near as loud: "Help us! Please help us! We're stuck! We're trapped..." she stopped briefly to releave herself of sobs, then resumed. "You've got to dig us out! Pleeeease! You've got to dig us out!" --- They simply held each other when the first beams of daylight punctured the roof of their cave. At first only a small crack appeared, then it widened into a hole, big enough for a head to fit through. The resulting explosion of day light almost blinded Heather and Lucy. "Jesus Christ..." a man exclaimed, peering down through the hole he had made. His body dimmed the light, allowing Heather to take a look at the silhoutte of her rescuer, several feet above where she lay. "I guess it's gonna be a white Christmas," she croaked. "Jesus lady you're bleedin' like hell," the man said. "I'm going to have to get some help, okay?" "Okay!" Lucy cried impatiently. "Just hurry up mister! I'm cold." "Yes, honey." he looked slightly bewildered, as though unable to grasp the fact that he had just been ordered around by a five-year-old kid. "Just keep calm, I won't be a minute." "Are you from the rescue service?" Heather asked. "Rescue service?" the man chuckled. "Lady, I'm just your next-door neighbour." --- Wrapped together in a blanket, cups of warm cocoa in their hands and dark shades over their eyes, Lucy and Heather stared out across the snow-buried world. It ran flat for miles in every direction, the only signs of human colonisation being the tops of pilons, now battered and infunctional. Helicopters buzzed distantly, just black marks in the sky. Hungry Birds gathered, not in the tops of trees, but on the glaring surface of this new, barren planet. The sky was alive with early scuds of clouds that seemed much closer to the earth than they should be. Their alien shadows drifted across the snow like whales swimming below thin ice, and the bright warm sun shone radiantly down from it's safe abode in the heavens. "Do you think Dad will be alright?" Lucy wondered. Heather smiled at the thought of Tom. He wasn't the type of man to be defeated by a freak snowstorm. No, Tom was alright. Tom was fine. "Dad will be on his way home now," she said, watching one of the distant helicopters turn and head in their direction. "In fact, I bet that's him right now. You just wait and see." Lucy lifted a weak, hopeful smile.