Creepy (not so) Short Story: The Oubliette

[w3nch]

My friend used to write these very creepy short stories, he does surrealist paintings now-a-days. I loved reading these stories and found they really stuck with me for long time. Something in one of the comments here reminded me of this one in particular so I asked if I could share and he agreed so here it is:



The Oubliette

Cathleen and Edith plunged into the trap door’s black mouth and felt their hands slap
painfully onto the cold, stone floor of the dungeon. A small gob of white phlegm,
discharged from the maw of the fat silhouette above, dribbled down Cathleen’s cheek as
she watched her mother’s wound re-awaken and ooze from the fall’s impact.
‘That’ll teach you both!’ retched the hoarse man above.

Without closing the trap door, the man walked away. His boots’ creaking on the
floorboards eventually ceased after the slam of a distant door, though the sensations of his
laughter remained in the swirls of dust hanging inside the shaft of yellow light that, at least,
kept visibility levels decent.
Considering the oubliette’s obvious age, the women figured a search of it would be
fruitless, and Edith suspected that discovering fragments of the deceased in the dungeon’s
deepest corners would do little to raise her beloved daughter’s spirits, or her own. She
decided they could do little but wait and hope the fat, greasy man or his superiors will
return, if only to provide sustenance or water. Indeed, she remained optimistic of this, for
the act of closing the trap door is surely too habitual and obvious to be consciously
disregarded; someone must intend on coming back. But the silence started to unsettle
them, and they took comfort in each other’s warmth.
Hours passed, and they could hear little activity in the rooms above. Edith started to
worry that they would be forgotten. Indeed, why were they in the oubliette in the first
place? They had certainly committed no great crime, least of all one against any of the
people in the ancient complex high above. But the more Edith and Cathleen thought
about this fundamental and logical question, the more they realised that over thinking – in
general – has a tendency to encourage or exhume pessimism and paranoia, so they
decided to suspend thinking altogether. Instead, they cheered each other up with
conversations about Cathleen’s childhood, all the while keeping their ears erect for
stirrings high above.
‘You were always a quiet child,’ Edith told Cathleen. Her face bore few of the creases
that come with age and motherhood. ‘In fact, the crying of other children seemed to
irritate you more that it did their carers. Always sociable though! You never played by
yourself – a born leader, the mothers used to tell me!’
Like most daughters, Cathleen sat and listened attentively as her mother continued.
Edith’s soft voice always found a way of injecting a new vitality into oft-repeated
recollections, and with the darkened walls around her offering little of the warmth she
found in those maternal lips, seldom turned away from them.
However, the thought of her being a quiet child always shamed her, for she thought
that quiet children are plagued with two paradoxical desires: a desire to lurk in the
background, and remain unheard, and the desire to completely distance themselves from
their introversion and effortlessly bring many others into their life. Such a dichotomy
must bring only misery and self-loathing, Cathleen though. But now was no time to
express such beliefs out loud!
‘You had an obsession with water as a toddler,’ Edith continued, ‘and you made me
stop the pushchair at every puddle we passed so you could poke your fingers into the
water. Ah, you always smiled at the ripples! But your greatest fascination was with
fountains, big city ones. I can’t remember where, but we saw the most beautiful fountain
at night. It was brilliantly decorated with hanging lights, their colours – how can I say –
their colours reflected onto the streaks of water, you wanted to sleep beside it but I told
you the night wouldn’t last forever.’ The two women shared an affectionate smile, though
Edith’s demonstrated a higher degree of remembrance.
‘What was my father like?’ Cathleen eventually asked, after a lengthy silence
gradually restrained the possibility of the previous topic from re-emerging. It was the first
time she had spoken in hours and her voice, it seemed, had relaxed too much since its last
exercise; the four words were spoken in detached syllables, the final bearing little relation
to the first in tone or melody, and all were wrapped messily in an undecided volume.
Edith did not seem to notice.
‘I suppose you cannot remember much of him,’ she replied. ‘He was a large man,
with a husky voice and thick, black hair. He wasn’t fond of people, least of all children.
He wanted to put you up for adoption, and when I disapproved he left us.’ She sighed,
regained the breath the gesture had taken from her and continued speaking, ‘Ugh, he was
such a vile man! He always wore his boots around the house, which spread dirt across the
floors and then demanded that I clean it up...always arguing...always spending our
savings on alcohol, always – ’
Edith aborted her crescendo when she saw her daughter turn towards the darkness.
For a moment she hoped Cathleen would apologise for introducing the topic, but instead
they hugged and, still lingering in the shaft of light, stared longingly into the freedom
framed by the trap door’s rim, many metres above. Edith’s hope that someone would
come started to wane. More and more hours seemed to pass, and silence reigned once
again. Cathleen contemplated weeping, if only to non-verbally emphasise her growing
misery and strike pity in an unseen sensor.
Suddenly a pleasant light, provided by two naked bulbs the gloom once shrouded,
filled the dungeon and burned the women’s eyes with its intensity. Even the smallest and
most mischievous of concavities harboured no shade, so comprehensive was the
illumination.
Did this mean that someone was coming to collect them? They could hear no
creaking above, but continued to keep their ears erect long after they’d realised no-one
would. Eventually, their attentions shifted to the barrenness surrounding them. The
skeletal remains Edith feared were lurking in the shadows proved to be non-existent, and
the jagged stone walls and floor showed little of the erosion and wear one might expect
from an ancient structure. Indeed, the only feature in the oubliette worth noting was a
raised platform, a pedestal carved of rock, facing the women from the opposite side.
Cathleen left the warmth of her mother’s arms and cautiously approached it as though
it were a cowering savage. If she had a stick she would have probed it for signs of life.
‘What are you looking at?’ Edith asked her.
Edith joined her daughter and, kneeling beside the pedestal, traced its stony rim with
her fingers. She quietly muttered something and then, after softly pushing her daughter
aside, hopped onto it.
Normally of equal height to Cathleen, Edith’s immediate elevation positioned her
slightly above her daughter and she savoured the temporary renovation of power, which
was to her a psychological echo back to when Cathleen was a growing adolescent who
looked up, as all children must, to their elders. For although Cathleen’s recent
submissiveness was undoubtedly the result of her youthfulness’s inability to comfortably
address their present predicament like an experienced adult, she was free-thinking girl
whose sturdy independence quietly scared her mother.
Edith’s thoughts burst when she spied a decent-sized ladder hanging firmly from the
oubliette’s trap door, as if someone had lowered it down when neither woman were
looking. Suspicion and confusion instantly overcame both women, for they had heard no
creaking floorboard or slamming doors during their time around the pedestal, and as such
they hesitated to approach it. Furthermore, Cathleen, who possessed the better eyesight,
noticed a considerable peculiarity in the ladder’s formation; it was shaped like a woman!
Disregarding her mother’s hand-signalled caution, Cathleen stepped closer to the
ladder and marvelled at its curious design. From the top, two semi-circled members
formed a head filled with three wooden rungs, which rested on a torso comprised of three
parallel members – the arms and spine. The latter member was lined with small rungs that
resembled ribs, which softly rose and fell as if respiring. Comprising the overall ladder’s
lower third section were two traditional-shaped ladders – legs – that ended long before
they reached the ground. Both women would have to stretch, even jump, to reach even
the lowest rungs. Regardless, it seemed serviceable as an exit, and, despite its
questionable existence, no one appeared to be lurking above waiting to seize the women;
now was their chance to escape!
‘Let’s climb up!’ Cathleen said to Edith, and grabbed onto one of the lowest rungs.
But after Edith had left the pedestal to follow her, the ladder disappeared with a sudden
flash. Her fall from the ladder felt even more painful than her fall into the oubliette, and it
was difficult to determine which of the two elicited in her a greater disarray; the former
defied justice and the latter defied logic, and invariably neither system hesitated to blame
its rival for her scars and maintain its personal innocence.
‘What happened?’ Edith cried, rushing to her daughter.
Cathleen picked herself up and allowed her faculties to fully recover. It was not long
before both women realised that there was an obvious link between the ladder’s
existence, and the pedestal on which Edith had earlier stood. Consequently, Edith stepped
onto the pedestal again, and the ladder re-materialised in the exact same place as before.
Further intrigue arose when Edith, still on the pedestal, moved her right hand around
her head in an attempt to satisfy an itch. The women noticed that the ladder-woman
mirrored the action with uncanny synchronicity; its right arm rubbed its head’s middle
rung with a splintered finger.
This sight brought much hilarity to the women, and Cathleen was unable to control
her laughter as she alternated between watching her mother dance manically on the
pedestal, and the ladder mimic such movements under the spotlight of the light shaft. Its
mimicry was not perfect, however, and it had difficulty with jumps due to its inability to
detach itself from the beyond the trap door. So when Edith did a star jump – she did many
during this frenzied eruption of vigour - the ladder simply reflected her limb movements.
When Cathleen replaced Edith on the pedestal, a thinner, lighter coloured ladder
materialised, which had less splinters in its immature wood and more rungs in its head. It
looked harder to climb than Edith’s wider, more spatially refined model.
They continued to laugh, still amused by the situation’s absurdity. However, in time,
Cathleen’s laugh regressed into a smile, which in turn transformed into a look of great
worry. She turned to her mother, who was still panting from the jumping.
‘What’s wrong, dear?’ Edith asked.
Though it took time for Edith to process Cathleen’s explanation, she gradually came
to realise that only one of the two could escape the oubliette, for the other had to remain
on the pedestal to provide a ladder. Neither could think of a way of compromising this
reality, despite considerable thought on the matter.
Edith suggested that she remain in the oubliette and provide a ladder for her daughter
to escape, but the stubborn Cathleen refused to leave her mother alone in the darkness.
After much debate and emotional concern, Cathleen was victorious. However, Edith
repeatedly made it clear that if she found no method of helping them both escape within
ten minutes of leaving the dungeon, she would rejoin her and they would think of another
plan, or try again after resting.
Edith kissed Cathleen’s cheek and presented her a smile radiant in confidence. When
their hands gently parted, Cathleen replaced Edith on the pedestal and Edith made her
way towards the thin, light coloured ladder. Cathleen stood upright and closed her legs so
as to increase her ladder’s verticality and make it easier for her mother to ascend.
Once Edith was in a secure, comfortable position on the ladder, she began to climb up
slowly. She resisted the temptation to turn back towards her daughter for fear of creating
an atmosphere rich in unrealistic optimism and sentiment, though her heart truly desired a
final look. She cleared the last few rungs with great haste (Cathleen felt her head tingle as
she did so) and, when she had reached the top, gleefully pulled herself out of the trap
door’s yellow mouth.
At that moment the bulbs in the oubliette turned off and it plunged into its earlier
state of darkness. Cathleen went into a panic and momentarily waited for her mother to
reassure her. No reassurance came. When she called her name, no voice replied. She
contemplated what to do, but the panic completely overcame her and she sprinted off the
pedestal. Standing in the shaft of light, she called for her mother louder. She jumped as
high as she could to make noise, to make her presence remembered, to make her eyes see
what they presently couldn’t. Nobody was there, nobody replied. In desperation she even
tried to reach for her own long-vanished ladder, but her sweating claws groped only nonexistence.
She begged for a reply, if only her own echo. Silence still.
As Cathleen dropped to her knees, she heard footsteps above. She looked upwards to
see a silhouetted head – Edith’s – gazing down at her. She was about to smile and laugh
with joy but Edith, with a one-sided smirk, slammed the trap door shut and fastened its
lock tight. An insentient isolation consumed her, and she started to sob, and call out
‘Mother-!’ loudly, repeatedly, brokenly.
When all her hopes had left, and even the darkness had turned its back on her,
Cathleen heard the loud footsteps once more, and the sound of laughter too volatile, too
layered, to be committed by one alone.

Michael O’Gorman
www.michaelogorman.co.uk

Here is the direct link to the stories page if you want to read the others http://michaelogorman.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=27
But have a look at his paintings too, I'm sure he won't mind me saying that some of them are creepy, even if it's unintentional creepy.