An Arrangement of Pins

Halloween Horror Flash

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

I pretend to sleep, watching through the thin slit of an eye. My wrists are bound and held against my chest on the dirt floor of the old woman’s hovel. The mushroom tea she gave us only affected Charlie, collapsing him to the floor in a heap. The woman works a mortar and pestle, smashing the stone in a rhythm of moist crunching, scraping, and grinding. Firelight paints her orange as she finishes, setting the stone down, and placing her long, thin knife in an ornate cabinet. The lock is strange; a collection of pins in a gold housing that she maneuvers in a pattern I watch closely. My life depends on memorizing this sequence.

She bends, lifting Charlie’s ankle, and drags his body into the next room. His bloody heels leave black gutters in the dirt.

The door slams and a bolt screeches. I push myself up and stand on shaky legs, stumbling over to the cabinet. The rope cuts into my wrists as I move the pins.

Nothing.

Heavy, wet slapping sounds come from the next room, a cleaver landing in wood.

I close my eyes, visualizing her hands. Years of dance. I know how to memorize movements. I adjust the pins.

Thick cracking sounds. The hollow pop of bone shoots gooseflesh across my arms. I’m freezing. My hands shake as if in begging prayer.

The final pin clicks and the cabinet opens.

Inside it shimmers with a dark miasma. The knife sits with human bones, bowls of vile pastes stuck with hair, and the black mushrooms the woman brewed while we were bound naked on her floor.

I snatch the knife and close the door. I have to reset the pins. My eyes blur with tears and dirt.

The sudden silence in the next room is worse than the sounds of the butchery.

I move the pins faster, panicking.

The lock clunks shut and I limp back to the corner, returning to a fetal curl with the blade hidden against my chest.

The bolt bangs open and the door cries on its hinges.

She moves like a bird of prey. Her shoulders hunch, pushing her head forward, and her thick hair hangs past her sagging breasts, naked beneath her gore-flecked robe. Her eyes glint like ice as she stares at me and sniffs the air. Her head snaps to the cabinet. My heart rages against the knife. I hold my breath as she traces the pins with her long fingers.

The tip of the knife draws stinging lines beneath my throat.

She stalks toward me.

A smell like raw pork wafts closer; fumes from her putrid robe. She stops and leans over me. Her oily hair tents my head as rot blows into my face. Nails pierce my shoulder as she turns me.

I think of Charlie and explode up, plunging the knife in and screaming into her ancient face. She grips my throat as the handle thuds into her sternum. Our eyes lock in mutual hate as we collapse back to the dirt, my windpipe cinched in her sticky claws.

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Special thank you to my coven sister,

Dev

, for editing and her mastery of the dark arts.