Hide and Seek

This is my first short story written and imagined entirely in English.

It has some Irish inspirations.

 

Hide and Seek

 

“We live on a placid island of ignorance

In amidst seas of infinity

And it was not meant that we shall voyage far.”

-H. P. Lovecraft

 

It was his turn.

The five friends assembled at the end of the street, after a long and exhausting round of Piggy in the Middle. Pauline had won, there was no doubt about it. She would always win. Maybe it was the fact that she was a year older than the rest of the lads. But everyone knew that was just their excuse for losing to a girl. Stuart, living to his reputation, was piggy for most of the game, and the others couldn't stop grunting the entire time he was at the middle, aimlessly stretching his arms up in the air, where the ball passed like a lightning, and catching nothing but wind and despair.

Before the swine disaster, they made the mistake of trying a suggestion made by Cillian, the tallest and meanest lad, ugly as a witch’s cat, who would always try and sneak in some new, ill advised game. They played The Farmer Wants a Wife. It was a girls' game, they were well aware of that, but all the lads, except for Stuart, were secretly in love with Pauline, and they just couldn't miss the chance of declaring, even in disguise, that they wanted her to be their wife.

E-I-E-I-addy-oh, Pauline was betrothed four times in a row!

But now, after a brief debate, they were ready to play the good old hide and seek. It was their favorite game, after all.

All summer, all they ever did was hiding, even when their parents were seeking them after hours: behind the fat trunk of the old sycamore, under the foundations of Mrs Flaherty's house, inside the tiny castle made of painted bricks in the playground, or some stray wagon parked by the sidewalk.

Callum, the ginger lad, however, pointed out that the places were worn out, and they needed a new area for their intentions. The woods around the cul-de-sac seemed proper for the present adventure.

So they played hide and seek for some time, the hours being filled with yelling and running, until the sun swallowed the treetops and finally Stuart was too late to check himself out at the light pole.

Now, it was his turn.

They were all waiting for this moment. Stuart had a stutter, so they called him Stutterart. A mean joke, they knew. But children are good at that, and when young, they lack remorse as the keenest of criminals.

O-o-one, t-t-t-two, t-t-three... This way, they had more time to hide, as his counting lasted twice as long.

Stutterart placed his hand on the tree they were using as The Haven. After a long while, some would say hours of forced alliterations, as some sort of perverted poetry, he heard a gentle pitter-patter, as soft as a wind whisper, when he stopped counting.

Raindrops.

Instantly, he turned his back against the tree trunk and decided that it was time to end that ordeal, yelling one last 'h-h-h-ere I c-c-come!'

The raindrops were thicker now, and a somber silence hovered suddenly, as he became aware of the world again. It was like the feeling of having corks in his ears when he dove too deep into the Caragh Lake and returned rapidly to the surface. He even tried the Valsalva, as his uncle doctor taught him, but nothing would rid him of the odd sensation.

He felt like it was better to move on and get over it quickly. Nobody was at sight, naturally. But another thing felt wrong at that point. He couldn't hear them either. Every time they played hide and seek, the sounds would bloom away like toads in the swamp on a warm, rainy night, eating crickets in delight. Though they hid so diligently, they couldn't help but giggle as they peaked through cracks the confused seeker, scheming their way to salvation.

Stuart grew sicker as he stumbled his way into the woods, passing by increasingly darker spots, grabbing loose branches so not to trip and flounder into the mossy sea of leaves.

Little did he know, but everyone, including Pauline, who was the most reasonable of all, had left to their homes, without letting the poor, wet, trembling boy know that he was alone.

It was getting darker now, and an odd smell rushed through his nostrils. At first, he thought he must have stepped on some animal poo. But his sensible nose captured something rather acid, more pungent than waste. He definitely felt scared now, because the nature of the odor, although organic for certain, was something he had never felt before.

Distracted by that spiraling trial, he realized he could no longer see the end of the woods, where he had come from. Making a turn on an especially long branch, he failed to notice the prominent root of the tree, tripping and falling hands first into a hole.

The smell overcame him. He was at the source of it.

And what he saw shook his foundations, taking all the peripheral blood into his failing, hammering heart.

First, he saw the eyes, dead as glass, shining inexplicably in the dark. Then he recognized teeth jumping through rotted, pockmarked gums and lips, as if the corpse was smiling at him. There were no arms or legs, and the naked bosom was cut open. The black, swollen heart was beating in fury.

Stuart's body was weakening and he couldn't move. Something made an unworldly noise inside the hole, so he gathered all his lasting forces to leap over the edge and run into the night, aware that the thing was chasing him.

There was a slight space in time when he saw himself being ripped apart by giant claws, starting from the back, making its way down to his legs, and finally cutting him in half. But that was just the fear in its immaculacy.

When he reached the clearing where they were playing earlier, he fainted, and the last thought he remembered from that night was:

'I'm just so glad I don't have to seek anymore'.