Moving Wallpaper.
Title: Moving Wallpaper: Three- Ghost Stories.
Pairing: Noelian
Disclaimer: Please dont sue me i've got so little to give!
Warnings: Nothing yet.
Summary: New house, old ghosts.
A/N: Another horrorz! YAY there's no boosh. Just gaydom. Noels an artist, Juliannie's an author (cos he'd clearly be brilliant, have you read A Trumpet Full Of Memories?)
Previous: ( One- The Move. ) ( Two- Bulletproof. )
It was late, their second night in the house.
It was at that precise moment, 5 hours after seeing his own wife die, he heard the scream. It wasnt the children playing outside like before, this time it was pain. A scream of pain, and it echoed, all around the dusty gamesroom as though it was completely hollow in the house, like walking under a tunnel and hearing the joys of your own voice being carried on without you moving your lips. Only Conrad felt no joy, only anguish.
The pained scream was followed by a baby cry, a newborn baby cry, that first breath followed by the 'Ack ack ack!'. A sound which Conrad found particulary haunting, he always imagined thats how a child would sound if it was in distress.. Severe, unorthadox distress, things only people with terrible fetishes do. Snapping tiny bones and tiny minds.
The woman had given birth to a little girl in a dirty back alley, on her own with no assistance, she wasnt sure how long it had taken her, but she had cut the umbilical cord with a rust blade, wrapped the child in her coat and ran away, leaving it. She never planned to, but after-
"Con'?!"
He hadn't realised Isobel shouting his name, too engrossed in the story Martha-May had once told him, but he was young and it was probably just an old wives tale.
He only glanced at his wife, still with the image in his head of her mangled corpse on the railway tracks, and the man in the hooded coat picking up the pieces and running away with them. "I hadn't heard you call." Conrad explained quietly. "Sorry."
"I figured. I was shoutin you for 10 f uckin' minutes, what are you doing in here?"
The crying stopped, and Conrad looked up at the woman he had agreed to spend the rest of his life with, with wide open eyes. It never crossed his mind to blink. "Nothing sweetie.. Nothing at all."
Noel closed the book and widened his eyes, looking at Julian's sleeping corpse beside him. "Yikes." He whispered, convinced Julian had a couple of 3 screws loose.
After reading a few chapters in one of Julian's books, Noel couldnt sleep straight away, he found a drink of milk and a couple of spoonfulls of coleslaw made him forget the bad things Julian would write about. So thats exactly what he did, He wandered to the other side of the house and into the kitchen. As he retrieved a spoon from the kitchen he noticed a little girl on the beach at the back of the house, after looking at the clock he decided a girl of her age must be lost, so he went out to her.
"Excuse me?" He called, softly.
The girl turned and walked to him as he sat down on the step. She studied his face, as though she'd never seen one before.
Noel smiled. "Hello."
The girls eyes studied his mouth as he spoke. "H-Hello." She stammered, but the way she said it was like a first word 'Heh-low'.
Noel's smile faded a bit. "Do you speak?"
She tried to find something in her head, he could see that in her face, 10 years with Julian he knew what a mind trying to look for something looked like. "Heh-low." She said again.
"You dont speak." Noel answered for her. "Where's your Mummy?" She was around 4 or 5 years old so he assumed 'Mummy' was acceptable.
The girl didnt answer him.
"You dont got no Mummy?" He shook his head. The girl copied his actions. "You have a name?"
"Noel?"
Noel jumped and turned, seeing Julian stood on the terrace of their bedroom, in naught but his boxers. "Who you talkin too?"
"Oh I was talking to-" Noel turned to point to the girl. But the girl wasnt there. He looked left and right to see if she had run, she hadnt. "No one."