The Haunted House (pt. 12)

I had left the lights off in hopes of better enticement for the phenomenon sought yet the strong moonlight above the clouds had prevented me from being lost in complete darkness.  I'm not really sure how it was that I lasted from sunset to the hour of midnight, it was all somewhat like a dream, though I must assure the reader that what came next was by no means a dream.

Shortly after I had verified the time it began.  First was a sudden and very odd breeze upon my person, as if the windows had disappeared altogether, a breeze that smelled of the ocean beyond and was weirdly warm like some attempted comfort from a long dead sanctuary.  I had barely been able to absorb this change when I noticed that upon that wind I heard something which became louder as I focused upon it, a type of clomping upon the earth which turned my gaze to the southwest corner of the living room from which it seemed to emanate.  The volume continued to rise until through the wall emerged a white, glowing mass that resolved itself into the head of a horse which continued into the room to reveal its entirety of form:  a large horse, saddled, moving unflinchingly through the corner of the house.  Though amazed and terrified I was able to note that in one of the stirrups was a foot, leading to a leg, and eventually revealed as the full body of a person being dragged along the ground, just as white and luminant as the animal.  Slowly the horse pulled its burden first through the westward wall and then exited through the southern when only the body was seen until it too eventually disappeared beyond the wall.

At the very moment that it was gone another white and glowing form suddenly appeared at the top of the loft and fell to the floor.  Though stunned I was struggling to rise to see what it was when I was beset by the knowledge that it was a small child in a long nightshirt, the type that would be worn to bed in times past.  A sickness was added to my terror, yet this was not the last of it. Another, identical form appeared in the same spot at the top of the steps and also fell as the first, this one atop that other prostrate body, and as soon as it had another and another came until there was a mound of bodies piled nearly five feet into the air of countless small forms all simulating a fatal fall from the loft above.

My terror giving way to more fascination, this is when I was able to finally rise from where I had sat rigid on that couch, attempting to move closer to what I was seeing to try to reach out and test its veracity when something that had been happening finally caught my attention, the increasing roar from the ocean and the breeze still blowing upon me.  My head turned with my realization and I saw beyond the windows, beyond the cliff edge at the back of the property a massive wall of water, still far off but moving rapidly inland, so high that the top was hidden behind the ceiling of the living room.  Again I was frozen as I watched and heard the unbelievable approach of what had to be my doom.