Free A Cry From Beyond by WR Armstrong Page A

agitated state, and with no sign of Terry. I
tried switching on the lights, but without success. We called
Terry’s name, but got nothing back. Panic started to break out with
everyone speaking at once.
    “Where
the hell is he?”
    “He’s
gone! Something’s taken him!”
    “Not
again. Please, not again.”
    David’s
voice suddenly rose above the others, pleading for calm to be
restored.
    Everyone
fell silent, and listened for some tell tale sound suggesting Terry
was still in the house.
    “He’s not
here,” Rick finally declared from the darkness.
    “He has
to be.” Irish argued back.
    Suddenly
H shouted Terry’s name, his booming voice shaking with
frustration.
    Once
again, nothing...
    In the
corner of the kitchen Lennon’s silhouette gave out a distressed
whine. I tried the lights again. Still they refused to
work.
    “Check
the fuse box,” someone said, I think it was David.
    “Where is
it?” H asked.
    “Just
inside the cellar,” I said, training the torch beam in that
direction.
    Irish
went over and opened the door. “Jesus fucking Christ!” he said
recoiling. “Stinks like a fucking bitch in here.” He fumbled about
for a moment, flicked a switch, and the lights suddenly sparked to
life.
    “Fucking
Hallelujah!” he declared, voicing everyone’s sense of
relief.
    All we
had to do now was find Terry.
    We turned
on every single light in the place and searched high and low, but
he was nowhere to be found. Either he was playing a joke at our
expense—and a pretty poor one at that—or he’d gone the same way as
the ill-fated Mary-Louise, and simply vanished off the face of the
earth.
    “ He’s got to be somewhere,” David said as we drifted into the
living room, deeply bewildered by events. In the brief time we’d
been absent from the cottage, it seemed Terry had ceased to exist.
Nothing in the house was disturbed, and nothing had been taken. For
a short while we sat around feeling numb, whilst discussing the
situation in hushed tones, trying to find some kind of logical
explanation for what had happened.
    “It’s
almost as if the cottage has started feeding on people,” Rick said
thinking aloud. H turned on him, accused him of crazy talk, but he
was unrepentant. “Got any better ideas Sherlock?”
    “The
house that ate people,” David said picking up on the theme.
“Nice.”
    “Sounds
like a movie title,” Rick said.
    “Pack it
in, Irish growled, “Terry’s missing so stop making light of
it.”
    “I
wasn’t,” Rick argued, but Irish wasn’t finished.
    “Unless
you’ve got something useful to say, keep it shut. Got
it?”
    “So what
do we do now?” H asked, following a tense silence.
    “We make
a further search,” I suggested, “This time to include the cottage
grounds. Go even further if we’re of a mind.”
    So that’s
what we did, venturing as far as the abandoned farmhouse, but there
was still no sign of him. As the night bore on we grew increasingly
concerned. High Bank was suddenly as mysterious, and as sinister,
as the Bermuda triangle. Finally, and with great reluctance, I
suggested we call the police.
    “And tell
‘em what exactly?” H asked.
    “The
truth I guess,” I said.
    “You mean
report him as a missing person, like Mary Louise,” David
asked.
    Just then
a large and extremely ugly beetle scuttled from beneath the
potbelly. It was promptly flattened by Irish’s boot.
    Suddenly
two more of the creatures emerged, almost identical in size and
appearance to the first. Irish got them too.
    “Jesus;
did you have to do that,” Rick asked grimacing.
    Irish was
indignant. “What do you suggest I do, take the fuckers for a
walk?”
    I stared
at my feet, unable to look. Those beetles made me uncomfortable. A
few had been in evidence scuttling around in the hall on the night
Mary-Louise disappeared. I said nothing of this to the others
however; primarily because it didn’t seem that important. They were
just beetles, after all.
    Once the
excitement of the