The Silence of Whraithsbourg

 I’ve lived my whole life next to a ghost town. I had no idea why it became such. Nobody did. The story goes that over a hundred years ago, the whole population just vanished in the course of a few days.

It wasn’t a big town. It used to house a handful of families as evidenced by the ten houses currently standing in the abandoned remains.

There was also a church. The building has a massive cross attached just below the roof, along with the fact that it looks exactly like a church on the inside.

Oh yeah, I’ve been to each and every building inside the ghost town. When I was a child, I used to explore the remains of the town. I’d tell ghost stories with my friends about the ghosts of the missing residents. The fact that there’s a graveyard in the churchyard is the probable cause of these stories. A couple dozen gravestones mark the site.

The town must’ve been relatively new or just very tiny by the time its residents disappeared.

Nowadays, I use the town, Whraithsbourg, as an escape. I occasionally make my way there to escape from the storm inside my own head. Sometimes in the middle of the night, when the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions gets too much to handle. My wife, Elina, she’s already used to this weird quirk of mine. There’s just something serene and calming about the empty town at the beginning of nowhere. I think the idea of abandoned places having an ominous aura is somewhat wrong – they just tend to be depressing. Whraithsbourg has a very relaxing atmosphere. It’s completely different from my hometown or anywhere else I’ve ever been, but in a good way. There’s a deafening silence in this place. The notion that it was once full of life but no more is also a little heavy, but I don’t mind. In fact, I like it that way. The silence of Whraithsbourg penetrates so deep, it silences the screaming voices inside my head. In a way, it completely crushes my spirit. But when my spirit is trying to break free out of my body, in the most violent way possible, having it broken is good, I’d argue.

I have a problem, and I’ve tried everything conventional to deal with it and nothing has helped. Therapy has done nothing but act as a temporary pain relief; then again, I never expected a therapist who’s never hurt a fly to understand my pain. It’s good to talk about what’s eating at you to someone else. Medication hasn’t done any good either. It just turns me into a zombie-like beast, and the drawbacks are just not worth the silence. I used to walk around like an autonomic organic husk; a robot made up of flesh and blood. It just sucked and didn’t do much against the worst parts of my problem.

I’ve tried various alternative treatments too; a bunch of compounds and drugs; at best I’d get a high, at worst; I’d feel even worse. I’m one of those few who don’t do well with cannabis – it makes the horses run faster for me. I get even more anxious. CBD and other relaxants are, again, very momentary relaxants. Mediation? Hah… last time I’ve tried that, I ended revisiting my old friend, the bone-winged right hand of God, Samael. So that’s a no to that, too. I did it right, by the way, it’s just my head is just going too fast and too hard in a conventional setting. I avoid sensory deprivation because, well, at night my problem gets worse. I imagine that if that’s the case with decreased sensory input, completely deprivation will have me seeing corpses being spit roasted by demonic entities. I want none of that.

I did find out that those so-called depressing places and settings help me calm down. As I’ve said, if it can make me feel like I want to die on a good day, it’s probably going to make me feel a lot less like trying to yank my brain out on a bad day. Going to Whraithsbourg helps by being this sort of gloomy.

Unfortunately, I think I might not be able to go there anymore.

The last time I was there was two weeks ago; I couldn’t sleep that night. Elina was fast asleep, cuddled up to me, well, part of the time anyway. I just kept tossing and turning like an anxious man with needles pricking at every inch of his body. I couldn’t shut my mind off, and it seemed like Hypnos wasn’t coming after me that night. So, I did the best thing I could; I got out of bed, washed my face, and headed towards my fortress of solitude.

It’s five minutes away from where I live, so that was a quick drive.

Once I’ve arrived there, the whole place felt kind of off. It usually felt off, but this time it was something else. Something wasn’t quite right; I can only describe it as something being out of place. The moment I passed the “Welcome to Whraithsbourg” sign, a cold chill washed over my body. It was as if the temperature dropped all of a sudden. A significant drop, that is. It was suddenly cold, even though it was the middle of the summer. I walked around for a bit, hoping the atmosphere there would calm me down. That didn’t happen. Instead, I was dumbfounded and further mentally stimulated by the weird tint of the night’s sky. It was somewhere between dark blue and dark purple. I just stood there and stared at the sky for a few minutes before I even noticed the fact that the moon was also weird. There were waves upon its surface. I can’t say the oddness of it all freaked me out, but it did not help me relax either. I kept staring at the night sky for a while until I felt something brushing against my back.

Startled, I turned around only to see nothing.

I thought I was just tired and stressed out; I was sure I was imagining things. Opting to call it a night and get back home, I was making my way to the car when I heard footsteps. I could clearly make out the sound of someone walking around. Some gears turned in my head, and I went looking for the source of the noise.

A part of me kept screaming at me that there’s nothing there, while another part urged me to find whoever was interrupting my isolation therapy in my self-designated temple. I ran around all the buildings in the ghost town, to find unsurprisingly – nothing.

That’s when I thought I was getting too drowsy for sure and headed back to my car, telling myself I was going home no matter what, and I even yawned loudly confirming my exhaustion.

A light suddenly flickered inside the church building, it was a bright white flash of light that just appeared and disappeared again. That was all it took for my primal brain to take over. Irritability and the resulting impulsiveness are a huge part of my problem. Without much thought, I ran to the church; I slammed the already fragile doors and dust came falling on top of my head. However, there was nothing there. The building was dead silent and empty. I stood there for a few moments, trying to relax. My heart was beating violently against my rib cage, and my breath had gone shallow.

I turned and looked through the church window, that’s when I saw it.

There was something or someone… I don’t even know, some half-transparent thing moving around there, slowly, sluggishly…. It had a human enough form but its shape was also broken and bent in weird angles. It just moved about awkwardly, producing these odd moaning and creaking sounds with each movement. I just stood there, completely lost in what I was seeing.

The thing must’ve noticed me because it stopped and turned itself towards me, revealing a partially molten face. My eyes were locked with its shape. I was completely lost in that moment.

The thing let out an awful wet yet hoarse scream that shook my whole body.

Before I knew it, I found myself about to fly off the roof of the church. I have no idea how I got there. I must’ve fallen asleep or something, I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that handle I caught the edges of that roof soon enough; I’d be dead now. I just sat there as my blood was boiling under my skin, fueled by an adrenaline rush, my breathing awfully shallow. I felt like I was submerged in cold water; I closed my eyes and tried breathing deeply but didn’t do any good. I just ended up revisiting one of my least pleasant memories, while my mind kept running the probabilities of what would’ve happened if I fell from the roof on repeat.

In my head, I saw myself looking through the scope directly at another man; he was completely covered head to toe as we were in the middle of the desert with the winds picking up. He hadn’t suspected a thing, and before he knew it, I pulled my finger backward. The next thing I saw was his body recoiling backward and tumbling down the metal stairs behind him like a rag doll violently thrown during a vehicular crash. I could vaguely hear the sound of his body tumbling down over the constant banging all around me. That’s when the corporeal skeletal shape of Samael nodded at me in approval before flying into nothingness once more. How I hated these moments.

Oh, how I hate myself for doing these things.

I was pulled out of my memories by the meowing of a cat in the distance.

Very labored meowing, in fact.

I opened my eyes and looked around the sky and moon were back to normal, thank God for my still perfect eyesight. Anyhow, I saw this cat strolling about in front of the church building, but its movements were a little odd. Like it was struggling to walk. I made my way down from the building and headed towards the cat.

The closer I got to it, the worse it sounded. It had gotten to the point where it sounded like it was meowing with a crushed larynx. The poor thing sounded like it was suffering tremendously and I wanted to help it.

By the time I was close enough to make out the details, it had sounded like it was barely uttering a sound. Its movements weren’t so much of a walking cat as they were its body being dragged across the dirt.

In fact, and thinking about this makes my stomach turn even now. The poor thing had no lower half.

There was a sort of slimy green tentacle sticking out of its back, pushing it along the dirt towards me it seems. I just stood there, watching the poor thing being moved around by some sadistic force like it was nothing but a toy. The stench of blood was definitely strong, and my insides were turning. The poor feline stared at me, and I saw it had no eyes, they were gone…. Nothing but two holes with maggots crawling in them.

The moment our eyes or actually, its sockets and my eyes locked, the tentacle scurried away, dragging the half-cat body with it, leaving a trail of guts and other feline bits behind it.

That’s all it took to make my primal brain take over again; I ran after the trail of gore and iridescent green slime left by the tentacle. I followed the trail of slime until I came across a cavity in a mound not far from Whraithsbourg. I never even knew that was there. Throughout my whole life, I’ve never noticed this cavern or even the mound. Driven by sheer adrenaline and curiosity, I peeked inside the cavity and saw a light. It was something similar to the light you’d see cast by a sea of stars in a desert’s night sky, but also green. I moved into the hole, slowly, quietly. I was hoping to find the source of the light.

I ended up stepping on something that crunched beneath my weight. Looking down, I saw a bone; one that was attached to what appeared to be the blackened skeletal remains of someone. The crunching noise caught the attention of whatever was the thing inside the mound. The light moved closer to me, getting brighter in a matter of nanoseconds until it was about a foot away from me.

It was painfully bright, like a little sun thrown at my face, forcing me to close my eyes.

I heard sloshing and the movement of a gelatinous mass, then I felt it on my face; something wet. I forced my eyes open to a painfully luminescent thing. It looked like some sort of barely coherent physical thing. It looked like a mass of slime trying to maintain a steady form. For all I could tell, it was a blob trying its darnedest to not turn into a puddle of slime. I don’t even know what that was, but I could clearly see a dismembered cat and a bunch of maggots floating inside that thing.

I was so caught up in the lights and the colors that I almost ended up as the cat. Luckily when the slimy tendrils touched my face, the part of my brain responsible for fight or flight took over and I bolted out of the mount; straight towards my car. I know that thing was after me; I could see its light emanating behind me, and I could most definitely hear the sloshing sounds its tendrils produced.

I swear to God, the moment I reached my car I heard a meow, a very dry and labored meow.

I hesitated for a moment; turning only my head around, there was only a withering mass of slime behind me.

Seeing that, I turned back to my car and drove off.

As long as this semi-conscious blob is still there, I can’t go back to Whraithsbourg.

I don’t know what the hell that was, quite frankly I’m not sure I want to know. I hope I’m wrong about this, but I think this slime-formed beast, this abomination, could be the reason this town is a ghost town.