Fingers Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
They were twisted and gnarly old fingers – thin and wiry,
distorted by disease and arthritis, discolored with liver spots, gaunt with the
veins protruding. They were an awful sight to behold, a painful reminder of the
death that waits.
Corey gasped in fear and disgust.
She coughed out a horribly disturbing cackle of a laugh.
It was an old house. Corey didn’t know how old. It was at least a
hundred years old. Maybe older. Corey was fourteen. Anything old seemed ancient
to him. He and his friends had no perspective on age. They were all so young,
how could they know any better?
The house was on a hill at the end of the block. The walkway to the
door was made of broken brick with weeds growing though. There was a dead tree
in the front yard and the bushes surrounding the house weren’t maintained. The
grass was in clumps mixed with weeds, along with patches of dirt and rocks.
Roots from several trees protruded from the earth. The shingles were broken on
the roof. Window shutters were cracked and hanging loose. Everywhere, the paint
was worn and flaking away. It was as if everything was falling apart and
nothing was sustained. The house looked like the slow crawl towards death.
The neighborhood kids used to make fun of her and the house. They
were cruel and loud and uncaring. They threw rocks at the upper windows. They
rang the doorbell and ran away as a prank. Sometimes a light would turn on in
one of the windows, but not often. The neighborhood kids didn’t know the woman
that lived there. They just knew she was old and alone and was without means to
prevent their nastiness.
The lights were always on low, like the bulbs were out or lamps
were set to low. Sometimes her shadow would move from window to window. Other
times her silhouette could be made out sitting at an upstairs window for hours
on end. She never appeared in the outside world. Food and supplies were
delivered once a week and the delivery man always went inside the house. No one
ever saw her come outside.
As the years passed the neighborhood kids grew up and grew bored
with their simple pranks. As young men their sense of humor and sensibilities
grew more wicked and destructive. It was hard to remember who first suggested
it, but someone had joked that they should break into the house. No one knew
what to expect. Maybe there would be money. Maybe it would be like a museum
inside or perhaps a hoarder’s nightmare. One of Corey’s friends suggested she
was dead. No one had seen her shadows in the windows for months. Perhaps she
had died and no one had found the body yet. Corey didn’t want to see a dead
body and he wasn’t sure why his friends wanted to. Somehow the breaking and
entering and vandalism didn’t seem to bother him so much.
It was the middle of the night when they approached the house.
They were dressed in black, because that seemed like the logical thing to do.
Corey swore he saw a shadow move in an upstairs window, but when he looked
again there was nothing there.
They tore some of the screen on the back porch and made their way
in. The house smelled of mildew and rot. There was dust everywhere and the air
was stale and hardly breathable. They spread out as they explored the downstairs
of the house. It was like a museum – everything archaic, looking pristine and
fragile at the same time. Corey thought it all looked distinctly like an old
person – the patterns on the plates, the collectable porcelain dolls,
everything made from handcrafted wood. Corey had no appreciation for anything
old and had no way of telling if any of it was a worthwhile antique or it just
happened to be old.
Somehow when they reached the stairs, Corey had ended up in the
front of the group. Corey was no leader, but he wasn’t going to back down now.
He looked up the stairs towards the pitch black second story. Rob nudged him
from behind. “Come on already. What are you? Scared?” Corey nudged back. He
hated peer pressure, but he was a sucker for it all the same. He wasn’t going
to look like a chicken in front of his friends.
The stairs creaked under their feet as they ascended them. Corey
led the way. He kept his mouth shut and took slow deep breaths through his
nose. No way was he going to let his friends hear him getting nervous.
Corey wanted to turn and run. He wanted to get out of there.
Instead he continued to the top of the stairs and began walking towards the
first door in the hall. He had no plan. He thought maybe they would get to the
old woman’s bedroom and see her sleeping and that would be the end of things.
It would be proof that she wasn’t dead. It would be enough of a reason to
justify everything they had done before, and enough of an excuse to get out of
there. If she were still alive and breathing they would have to leave lest they
get caught. If she were a goner, then they were doing the whole neighborhood a
favor by finding her.
Corey opened the door and stepped into the room.
The bed was empty. The room contained no scent of death.
Corey began to sigh in relief, but quickly gasped in shock. There
she was. Alive. Awake. She sat in a chair on the other side of the room,
looking out the window. Her back was to them as they walked in.
No one said anything. Not the woman. Not the kids. Everything was
silent and still.
Finally Rob nudged Corey again. Corey almost turned and hit Rob in
the face. Instead he took a step forward and tried to speak.
“We thought… we thought you might not be alright… We were only
trying to help. Honest…”
For a moment it seemed like she was going to cough herself to
death. But then it turned into a laugh of sorts. It was a broken and garbled
mess, like her throat was full of phlegm and other things and she could hardly
clear her throat.
“You boys have wanted to see me for a very long time. You came
here to take a look. Might as well be men about it and come over here.”
Corey looked back at his friends. They were all confused and
unsure. None of them moved either way.
“Ma’am, we didn’t mean anything, I swear—”
She turned in her chair so Corey caught a glimpse of the side of
her face. He wished he hadn’t.
“Scared little boys shouldn’t make so much noise all these years.
Shouldn’t pretend to be men when they aren’t.”
This pissed Rob off and he pushed forward into the room. Corey and
the others agreed. No strange old woman was going to challenge them. Corey
didn’t know what they were going to do, but they were sure as hell going to
take a look at her.
They walked across the room towards her. Corey saw them first –
the fingers. The fingers were not normal. They were wrong, old and broken, haunted,
or deadly or something. He wanted to vomit.
The old woman saw his disgust.
“Touchy touchy, feely feely – old people are creep creep creepy.”
She cackled and laughed while saying it.
They were close. Too close to her. In a flash of motion she was up
and charging them, fingers stretched out before her. There was no avoiding her.
Corey’s final thought was that no one so old should move so fast.
Her fingers were poison and she was death.
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