Monsoon

Oftentimes the gutter would throw up its contents, in a great tidal wave, by the front door of the house, forcing the already-damp earth to swallow more than it could hold – too much, always too much.

At the edge of the woods behind the farmhouse, young trees lost their anchor points to the mud. So they fell, in a dull, wet noise, barely noticeable through the drumming song of raindrops.

Still rain was a good thing. During monsoons, while the whole family holed up together upstairs at the first sign of a flood, the amount of noise a dozen people could make acted like a shield. Whatever happened there, under the rain, had nothing to do with them.

Everything, from ruined fields to unearthed carcasses, was the doing of the old pagan gods who once ruled those lands. Mortally offended ever since the peasants had turned their backs on their traditions, those eternal beings rose from the earth, bringing corpses and secrets with them, cursing the traitors. Rumour had it that whoever set foot outside while it rained would be devoured whole by the gods themselves.

Gerbille had been living with that story burrowed at the back of her mind for years now. Her fear should have dwindled with time, but it had only shed its skin along with the girl. As a child she feared mud-monsters crawling from under her bed, yellowed teeth at her throat. Now she feared she'd see nothing at all, would only feel the pain when it happened. After all it was pitch dark in the attic where the whole family slept, and sometimes, at night, the rain stopped falling.

Those rare moments of utter silence were the soil from which the legitimacy of her childhood terrors sprouted. She was fifteen, old enough to work the fields, sell her wool at the marketplace without supervision. Fifteen and yet there she was, lying on her straw mattress, letting the black ink of night pool over her wide-open eyes.

That same darkness blanketed the entire house, separating it from the outside world perfectly. Behind the windowless walls there was no howling wind, no creaking roof. The sound of rain had accompanied her for so long by that point, that it took Gerbille a moment before she noticed its absence.

Behind that lack was something else. First she believed someone was walking of dead leaves, but the crunch was too loud for a few leaves. Then the sound changed: now she could have sworn someone was eating soup downstairs.

"Anyone else hearing this?"

To her left, the rustling of beddings put a lid on the soup slurping noise.

"Who's eating at such an hour?" Whispered Souris as she got out of bed.

"Don't go!" Gerbille tried to grab onto her cousin's sleeve, but she couldn't see a thing and her hand only found air. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"I'll be careful going down the stairs. Stay here."

Souris's footfalls grew fainter, and before long the creaking of the stairs reached Gerbille's ears. The slurping noise went on, uninterrupted. Punctuated with Souris's slow descent and a new sound, sharp cracking, it seemed to be taking form the more Gerbille listened to it. She imagined its long hands, nails curved like talons that could easily pierce her shoulders. The sound would have teeth too, the same yellowed teeth she had so feared when she was younger.

If she stayed put, lying there with her blanket her only shield, the noise would come for her. It would push itself all the way up the stairs using its spindly arms. Then it would open the door, slowly, and Gerbille would know the exact second the nameless horror crawled inside the room. Its gurgling, its loud inhales, its ancient bones ground nearly to dust – all of this would draw closer, slowly, inexorably. At last, fear itself at the foot of her bed, Gerbille would understand what it had been slurping with such enthusiasm – but it would be too late: she would lose her eyes, lose her tongue; that vile beast, that carrion of forgotten god, would bring Gerbille's frail figners to its mouth, one by one. Its lukewarm tongue would wrap all the way around, until the very last knuckle, and its acidic saliva would turn flesh into soup. Gluttonous, the sound would suck until nothing was left but her bones, clean and smooth. Then it would break those too, snap them between its molars, holding her firmly by the arm. She wouldn't be able to cry out, to move; thus held by the undistilled purity of the hells, the only thing a peasant girl could do was pray.

Downstairs, something fell heavily. Gerbille sat up with a start, drenched in sweat. There was no way she could stay put.

"Souris?" Nothing. "'Ris? Who was eating?"

No one answered. She got up on trembling legs, staggered to the door like a young fawn. From the landing she could see a faint light coming from the kitchen, waiting, inviting. Gerbille answered its call.

A small candle flame danced without a care in the world, sitting on the large dining table, reflected by the puddles darkening the floor. Souris laid on the floor, eyes and mouth wide open. A towel was tied around her arm, probably to slow down the flow of blood rushing out of it and into a bucket. Her hand rested on top of a slice of bread on the table, next to a knife smeared with butter.

Gerbille didn't have her mouth fully open yet when a hand wrapped around the lower half of her face. A tall, ice-cold body pressed against her back, then an arm wound around her waist, keeping her still.

"Be good," her father whispered in her ear. His breath made her stomach turn. "Go back to bed, before the rain calls for me again."

He freed her slowly, ready to silence her again should he need to. But terror locked her jaw shut, then walked with her feet. Twice she stumbled, but her father didn't make a move. Near the stairs, the round door leading down to the cellar was cranked open. The stone steps had disappeared under the water. Gerbille stared at it, that lightless unknown, for a second. Just long enough, really, to hear it again, that familiar, damnable sound, the tapping fingers soon to turn into a deafening beating drum.

"It's raining."

Slowly, she turned around. Behind her, her father had tensed. His eyes were dead, the colour of milk. The shadows on his hands toyed with his raised veins, the length of his nails. In the cellar, something laughed, the sound of an emptying well. Gerbille closed her eyes, and jumped.