The Thing in the Grain House
A Horror Short Story set in Antiquity: An exiled family survives by following rigid laws. The foremost rule... stay away from the grain house.
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Tales of Terror: 41 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Respect’, ‘Mind Games’, ‘The Enigmatic Skeleton’, ‘The Doll House Killer’, ‘Ain’t Nothin’ But The Blues’
Midnight Whispers: 54 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 4.’ and ‘Tales of the Macabre: Books 1-4’.
The Thing in the Grain House
By Newton Webb
An exiled family survives by following rigid laws. The foremost rule... stay away from the grain house.
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The Third Dynasty of Ur. 2052 BCE
The goose struck with the speed of a viper, forcing Enmer to jump backward to escape it’s serrated beak. He kicked out at the hateful creature. The white mass of feathers erupted into a frenzy of hisses and beating wings.
“Rot take you.” Enmer grabbed a handful of dried grain from his pouch. He scattered it at them.
The gaggle descended on the food. Their orange beaks stabbing at the dirt. Enmer watched them for a moment. The morning air reeked of river mud and wet reeds mixed with the sour stink of goat dung.
He heard cackling.
Enmer turned.
His brother Gil sat on a three legged stool beside the ewe pen. Gil pressed his forehead against the flank of a sheep and pretended he hadn’t seen the skirmish. His hands worked. The milk hit the clay pot with a steady rhythm. Splat. Splat.
“Very funny,” Enmer said.
He walked to the goat pen. The animals bleated at his approach. Their flat pupils stared at him with idiot malice.
Gil stopped milking. He wiped sweat from his brow. The heat pressed down on the flatlands between the Tigris and Euphrates.
“This one’s drying up,” Gil said.
Enmer unlatched the gate. He grabbed the nearest goat by its horns and forced it towards the trough. “Mother won’t be happy if she has to ask Father to help us.”
Gil pursed his lips.
Enmer followed Gil’s gaze. It travelled beyond the house. Beyond the low structure of mud brick lay the irrigation ditches and the date palms that lined the property. Past the mist that rolled off the Euphrates.
To the grain house.
The mud brick block stood at the far edge of their land. There were no windows to let in the light. Just a door carved from a single piece of stone. Neither the goats nor the geese would forage in its shadow.
The door to the main house opened.
Their mother Ninsun stepped out. Her hair fell in black waves over her shoulders. Her skin was a pale brown next to Enmer’s greyish tone. “The sun falls.” Her voice carried across the yard. “Inside. Now.”
Iltani followed her mother out carrying a basket of laundry.
“We were tending the animals, Mother,” Gil said. He stood up and hefted the clay pot.
Their mother walked towards them. She looked into the pot and her expression grew worried.
“You will have to clear the ditches tomorrow.” She glanced back at the windowless grain house. “You must not be outside when your father wakes.” She smiled at them. “Come inside. We will eat. Then you will all practise your cuneiform.”
Gil snorted and muttered, “I would rather shovel dung.”
#
When supplies ran low, their mother took the small reed boat and poled it downriver. She left in the grey dawn but always returned before dark. She brought back jars of oil and new linen but she clutched the clay tablets like gold. She carried them wrapped in wool and strained under their weight.
Enmer knew the city existed but he could never go there.
“We are exiles to them.” His mother set the jar down hard. “They would kill us if they knew.” She looked at the palms with disdain. “They fear you. Only I can enter because I used to live there.”
They followed her rules.
The most important rule was absolute. Never approach the grain house.
Father lived there.
Enmer and Gil stayed away during the day but curiosity has a terrible habit of eroding obedience.
They watched him while their mother slept. Spying on him as he left to hunt. Father left after the sun fell. He was a tall dark shadow striding out naked towards the hunting grounds of lions and boars. He would return long before they woke. Father kept the larder full of fresh meat and left small pouches of tradable jewellery by the front door.
Sometimes in the dead of night Enmer woke to the sound of the heavy door creaking. A gong sounded. Their mother would leave them and creep into the night. Soon after Enmer heard her. Soft cries echoed across the yard. Enmer covered his ears. Father remained silent.
Enmer once asked his mother why they lived in exile.
Ninsun glowered. Her knuckles whitened on the pestle.
“I was a girl in the court of the King of Uruk.” She pounded the stone into the grain. “The King was a cruel man. He took what he wanted. He wanted me.” She ground the barley harder. “My family had no choice. His guards seized me when I was younger than you. He would have used and discarded me.”
She stopped then. She looked out towards the windowless grain house.
“Your father came in the night. He moved silently. He took me from the palace. He carried me here. He carried me here. He gave me a home. He gave me children. For everything the world says about him remember this. He loves you. He has never raised a hand to any of us in anger. Never. That makes him more human than the animals in the city.”
#
Enmer had always wondered why his mother was darker skinned and slender yet Enmer and his siblings were grey and muscular. Her ears were rounded. Theirs were pointed. Unlike their mother none of the children grew hair on their bodies.
Even his sister Iltani had a smooth bald head. When she was not weaving with their mother she would play in the reeds. She would disappear for hours wading through the muck. She would return with waterfowl she had caught with her bare hands. Their necks were always snapped cleanly.
And Gil.
Gil was broad chested. His muscles were much larger than Enmer’s. He spent his days at the edge of the property lifting stones, smiling at the strain. Enmer remembered the day a bull had become stuck in the thick mud of the irrigation ditch. It thrashed and panicked as it sank deeper. Gil had waded in, grabbed the beast by the horns and hauled it out. He’d laughed then. The deep guttural sound made the other animals shrink away.
“Look at me,” Gil’s chest had heaved and mud slicked his skin. “I am stronger than the bull of heaven.”
Enmer was strong too. He could crush a clay brick into dust with one hand but he preferred to sit with his mother. He helped her carry the heavy tablets she brought from the city. He felt safe in her shadow even though he could have snapped her spine with a hug.
She would whisper as she stroked his bald head. “You have the soul of a scribe, Enmer.”
But beneath the quiet life their father waited.
#
Enmer remembered a night when he was fifteen. The heat was unbearable. The air sat heavy on the chest. It was wet and suffocating. Gil and Enmer were on the flat roof of the house looking at the stars.
“What is Father?” Enmer asked.
Gil did not look at him. He sharpened a piece of flint against a stone. “He’s a hunter. The greatest hunter.”
“Is he like us? Or like Mother?”
Gil stopped scraping. He looked at Enmer. “He must be like us. Look at us. We’re gods compared to Mother. He must be a king of gods.”
“Then why do we hide away from others? Do gods hide?”
Across the yard the stone door of the grain house creaked.
They were supposed to be inside. Mother insisted Father was a private man. But they had to know if he looked like them or like her. So they scrambled to the edge of the roof and peered down.
A figure emerged. His naked skin was grey in the silver light.
He stood by the door. He was perfectly still. Father did not look around. He inhaled. It was a long slow intake of breath as he tasted the air. He turned and smiled in their direction. It was a long, slow smile that crept across his face. Enmer flinched back, but he saw Iltani, who’d silently climbed onto the roof beside them, smile back at the figure in the darkness.
Then Father moved.
He had been standing by the door. A heartbeat later he was fifty paces away, disappearing into the palm grove.
“Did you see that?” Gil gripped the edge of the roof until the dried mud crumbled under his fingers. “He is fast. Faster than a leopard.”
Cold dread coiled in Enmer’s gut. He looked at his own hands. They were grey like the man below. He wished they were brown like their mother.
#
The seasons turned and the sickness came to their mother.
It started with a cough. It was a dry hacking sound that echoed in the small house. Then came the fatigue. She began to sit for longer periods. Her skin turned the colour of dried clay. Her eyes sank back into her skull.
Enmer took over the cooking. He cleaned the house. He sat by her feet as she shivered under piles of wool blankets even in the heat of the day.
“Do not worry, Enmer,” she wheezed. Her hand was cold in his. “It will pass. All things pass.”
“What if it does not?” Enmer asked. The fear made his voice thick. “What if you leave us?”
“Your father will provide,” she said. Her eyes slid away from his. “Gil is strong. Iltani is capable. You will be fine.”
“We do not know him.”
“He will come to you when it is time.” His mother squeezed his hand. Her grip felt weak. “He loves you. In his way.”
As she withered the house fell into disarray. Iltani and Gil spent less time indoors. They became wilder. They stopped washing the mud from their limbs. They ate the meat raw. They tore it from the bone with their teeth. Enmer cooked his portions. He clung to the rituals of the home and tried to maintain order.
The end came during the season of storms. The sky was a bruised purple and the wind whipped the palms into a frenzy.
His mother’s breathing slowed. Enmer listened to the rattle in her chest. She would not heal.
He fell to his knees beside her. He buried his face in her lap. He wept great heaving sobs that tore at his throat.
Gil stood by the door. He didn’t cry. His jaw set, his hands balled into white knuckled fists. He wouldn’t look at the bed.
Iltani stood and tilted her head.
The heavy door of the grain house groaned open.
“He’s coming.” Iltani’s eyes widened.
Enmer’s heart pounded in his chest. The man they had never met approached. Sweat slicked Enmer’s palms. He stood up and wiped the tears from his face. He placed himself between his mother’s body and the entrance to their home.
Their father entered the house.
Enmer saw him clearly in the light of the oil lamps for the first time. He stood as tall as Gil but lacked his brother’s heavy bulk. He was lean and wire thin. His face was angular yet handsome.
But it was his eyes. They were black from rim to rim. No white. Just void.
Father looked at his three children. He sniffed the air. He looked down at their mother and his expression softened. He stroked her hair.
She could not speak. Her eyes darted from her husband to Enmer.
Father’s finger ran down her cheek. “Now your mother gives you the greatest of gifts.”
It was the first time they had heard him speak. His voice was deep, almost hypnotic. He lifted her. She looked like a child in his arms.
“Come,” he commanded.
He turned and carried her out into the storm towards the grain house. Iltani followed immediately with a strange eagerness in her step. Gil hesitated and then followed. Enmer was left alone. Fear gripped him as he forced his legs to move, following them into the grain house.
The smell hit him first. Copper and rotting flesh.
It was a windowless tomb. The walls were high and lost in shadows above. The skeletons of gazelles and lions and boars lay in orderly piles. A pyramid of human skulls filled one corner.
His father laid his mother down onto a large stone slab in the centre of the room. He moved with practiced efficiency as he stripped her body of the linen dress.
Enmer stood transfixed by the tableau unfolding in front of him.
“She was the only one who gave me joy.” His father looked down at her. “She gave me three strong children. Now she gives you her final offering.”
He raised a finger. Extending from it was a long, wicked nail.
He dragged the nail down the vein on her neck. It sliced through the old flesh. Blood sprayed Enmer’s face.
A thick, metallic scent filled the grain house.
Pain tore through Enmer’s gums. He doubled over and clutched his mouth. It felt as if his teeth were shattering and pushing through the flesh. He groaned, tasting his own blood.
He looked up. Gil was on his knees. His head thrown back as he roared. His mouth was open and Enmer saw them. Two long white canines descended from his upper jaw.
Iltani’s face contorted and her jaw distended.
His father smiled, exposing his own fangs. They glistened in the lamplight.
“Drink.” He gestured towards her. “Absorb her body and soul. It is your birthright.”
Gil didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward and buried his face in the wound at their mother’s neck. The sound of his feeding filled the room. Wet slurping gulps. Iltani joined in. She tore at their mother’s arm and licked the blood that pooled on the stone slab.
His father watched them with pride. Then his eyes fell on Enmer.
“Enmer,” he said. “Do not deny your nature.”
Enmer was starving. A hunger like he had never known was clawing at his insides. A red haze demanded to be sated. His fangs ached to drink. The copper scent of the blood was intoxicating.
Enmer looked at his mother’s slackened face. Her eyes stared blindly at the ceiling. The woman who had taught him to read. The woman who had held him when he was afraid.
He looked at Gil. His face smeared with blood. The woman who had given them all life.
Enmer looked at his father.
“No.” Enmer backed away, shaking his head.
His father’s eyes narrowed. “Enmer. Her soul is in her blood. You’ll never truly know her unless you taste her.”
Enmer scrambled out of the grain house. He slipped on the wet mud and threw himself into the storm.
He didn’t look back.
October 31st, 1936. Berlin.
It takes a long time to learn how to live when you can’t die.
Millennia passed in a blur of hunger and hiding. Enmer had seen the Hanging Gardens rise. He had seen the legions of Rome march and fall. He learnt how to make people see him as human, clouding their minds with a glamour. He learnt how to drain blood without killing. He learnt how to identify other predators who would not be missed. After his fangs had emerged only human blood could sustain him.
But now he was in Berlin. The city pulsed with a manic energy, a new vigour. Banners of red and white and black hung from every building. They snapped in the autumn wind.
Enmer walked the streets with his collar turned up against the chill. The people were busily going about their work, but Enmer could smell the sour scent of fear upon them.
A rally was dispersing near a government building. Uniformed men poured into the street. Their black boots struck the cobblestones in unison. They wore skulls on their caps.
Enmer stopped. His heart gave a painful thud.
An officer stood by a black Mercedes. He was tall and broad-shouldered. His uniform was tailored to perfection. He was laughing with a younger soldier.
It was Gil.
He had not aged a day in four thousand years. His grey-skinned face looked back at Enmer. His cruel expression fit perfectly here. Perhaps the glamour did not work on Enmer. Or perhaps it was unnecessary with these humans.
Gil looked up as if he felt the gaze. His eyes were black as the pits of hell. They locked onto Enmer across the crowd.
Gil didn’t look surprised. He smiled and gave a small nod.
Enmer turned vanishing into the crowd. He left Germany that night.
Present Day. East Anglia, UK.
The cottage sat on the edge of the salt marshes where the land bled into the North Sea. It was quiet here. The wind howled and rattled the windowpanes. It reminded Enmer of the storms of his youth.
He had lived there for thirty years. To the locals he was known as Mr Emery. A recluse. An eccentric. He ordered his groceries online. He hung blackout curtains. He paid his taxes.
Enmer reclined in a leather chair watching the television. The news played a section on the upcoming election. A new party was gaining ground, already surpassing the two main parties that had previously led the nation.
A man stood on a podium in a coastal town not fifty miles away.
“We must not be afraid to do what is necessary,” the man said. “We must protect the people of our great nation from the perils of uncontrolled migration.”
The caption read: Sir William Kingston, MP.
The grey skin told a different story.
His brother, Gil, had appeared once more.
He had adapted and evolved. Modern monsters did not hide in grain houses. They wore suits. They got elected. They shaped the laws to ensure a constant underclass to feed upon.
“This nation.” Gil smiled. He stared down the camera lens and Enmer swore he was looking straight at him. “Is your birthright.”
Enmer sat back. The leather of the chair creaked under his weight.
He touched the tips of his canines with his tongue.
For four thousand years he had run. He had hidden in the mud and in the mountains and in the small cottages at the edge of the world. He had tried to be Ninsun’s son. The gentle scribe. The human.
He looked at the screen. He looked at the monster who shared his blood and remembered what had happened the last time he’d preached a similar gospel.
Enmer closed the laptop. He stood up. He felt the old strength flowing through his limbs. It was the power that could crush bricks and snap necks.
He went to the closet and pulled out a leather jacket. He put on his boots.
I am done running.
He retrieved his sword.
Enmer stepped out into the night and inhaled deeply.
The air smelled of salt and rain.
He would have words with his brother.
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