Ye Olde Death Trap

I held back as my sister Brooke dragged me towards the crusty, faded shop: Ye Olde Towne Gift and Thrift. It stood aloof, sandwiched between boarded-up storefronts in a tumbledown strip mall under the overpass. My heart skipped a beat, pounding harder with each step.

"You know I don't want to shop here! The owner hates me."

"Lisa, you're crazy. We've known Joe Sanders for twenty years. He likes you."

"I'm telling you, he's out to get me. Did you see the look on his face last week at the flea market?"

Brooke rolled her eyes so hard her nose wrinkled.

"I need a new blouse and some coffee mugs. This is the perfect place to find them. Just calm down and enjoy yourself in here. Maybe you'll find something nice to put on a shelf."

"Maybe I'll never be seen or heard from again." My voice trembled.

She laughed and pushed through glass doors clouded with grime. A bell jangled to announce our presence. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the thick gloom inside as wafts of damp mustiness assailed my nose. I darted glances all around me and spotted a withered hag at what passed for the checkout counter.

"Welcome!" she croaked, waving a bony hand at us as she punched in numbers on an ancient analog cash register. "I hope you find everything you're looking for."

At least Joe didn't seem to be present. I nodded feebly and tried to catch up with Brooke as she grabbed a shopping cart and scooted away down an aisle stacked high on both sides with mugs, glasses, cups, vases and all manner of dusty, haphazard bric-a-brac.

I noticed an intricately carved teakwood elephant, sitting on a glass jewelry counter in the center of the floor. I picked it up and turned it over. The outrageous price made me set it back quickly into the outline it left in the layer of dust. Its glimmering green rhinestone eyes caught the faint light, glaring at me as if to transmit ancient curses.

I stepped back from the jewelry counter without even attempting to look inside the cobwebby display. Heavy silence pressed in on me as I craned my neck, trying to look over the tops of the aisles for my sister.

"Brooke? Where are you?" My call was swallowed by nothingness. Gosh, this place doesn't even have the radio on. How unnerving.

A scratching, rolling, rasping sound echoed from one aisle over. That must be her cart. Maybe she didn't hear me. I edged delicately past a teetering life-size Santa Claus. Its arm suddenly jerked up in a mechanical movement, grabbing for my clothes.

"Ho ho ho!" It belly laughed like a haunted automaton.

I stifled a shriek and rushed around the corner towards the sound… of an office chair. Joe was sitting in it, wearing a mask, grasping three steak knives and rolling himself up and down the Tupperware aisle.

I stumbled down the next aisle before he saw me, my knees wobbly. These shelves were lined with porcelain dolls and Christmas tree topper angels, all staring blankly at me with reddened and purpled glass eyes.

Some of the dolls had smirks and grimaces supposed to make them look more "playful" or "alive." One little boy in overalls winked and waved a putrid dead fish at me on the end of his fishing pole, legs swinging mischievously off the shelf.

A particularly ethereal angel, dressed in blue chiffon and winking fiber optics, held her hands up in prayer as she rested on a high shelf. I gazed piously at the ceiling, only to cringe as my eyes met with dappled brown leak stains bleeding out from the edges of dirt-encrusted air vents.

Returning my gaze to eye level, I recoiled in cold shock at a newborn baby lying asleep between the dolls. Surely it was a doll as well, one of those rubbery, unnervingly hyper realistic collectibles marketed in Sunday newspaper ads. Yet its chest rose and fell with each tiny breath as I stared, and a half-sobbing cry came forth from a slightly parted mouth.

Panic froze my limbs as I tried to touch it, terrified it was in some distress. Mothering instincts kicked in. I took it and cradled it in my arms. No more sounds emitted from the limp, heavy thing. A price tag dangled from its crocheted blankie, displaying a handwritten three-digit price and the thin, spidery words "unbelievably real. Checked eBay for similar."

I tore myself away, shuffled to the end of the aisle and found myself nose-to-nose with an electric stove which looked like they dredged it out of the Gulf of Mexico from the decks of a sunken pirate ship. It was rusted entirely through and surely could no longer be used safely, yet it bore a label proudly proclaiming a price nearly half of what a new one costs.

Ridiculously, a plastic package of cupcakes sat on the burned-out burners, as if this were someone's kitchen. They can't keep food back here, unrefrigerated! Next thing I'll be seeing—

An enormous shadowy rodent flew past me along the base of the wall as muffled squeaking emitted from the old stove's oven. I choked down a scream and scooted away from the appliance section towards rows of bookshelves against one wall. Maybe I could buy a cheap paperback and wait for Brooke outside—that's if I could ever find the cash register again.

A lumpy, tattered Persian rug lay loosely sprawled across the cracked cement floor; I stumbled and fell against a dining table over another rug rolled up alongside it. Augh! Am I ever going to get out of here alive?

Leaving scrabbling handprints in the dust on the table, I made my way to the bookshelves and scanned for titles. Many of them looked to be over a hundred years old, but not in a good way. I pulled down a paperback, and the spine separated into several chunks of crumbling browned pages in my quivering hands as I turned back the cover. With a sigh, I stuffed it away and reached for another.

This time I chose a hefty hardcover. Its maroon leather cover was embossed with mysterious twined engravings, gold leaf trim and gilded pages. I couldn't find a title, and at this point my nerves were so jangled I don't think I could have read a sentence straight anyway, so I just let it fall open somewhere in the middle.

A flash of orange flames leaped at my face from within the book. I let out a screech and clapped it shut again with a crack like a gunshot. At that exact moment, a piano started playing, its slow, dreary notes echoing throughout the store.

"Oh, come on!" I yelled, my meager patience evaporated. "Brooke, where are you?" I hurled the book away from me and watched as it spread open and flew like a bird up to the top of a shelf. There, it became a raven, red eyes blinking down at me as if to say "what are you doing here?"

Perhaps she was testing the piano. If she was, I would march up and tell her to quit playing haunted house music… if I could find the piano. I traced the sound to an especially dingy corner of the store, behind piles of picture frames and cracked mirrors. Naturally, there wasn't a soul at the noisy piano… Well, there was probably a soul, but I wasn't about to say hello.

I shoved between the broken picture frames again to get away from the piano gleefully playing itself. The notes followed me as I meandered between moldy overstuffed sofas and filthy stained mattresses. Weariness tugged at my bones, and I collapsed into the inviting arms of a fat recliner. But the cloud of musty dust that poofed out made me quickly struggle to my feet again, fighting against cushions holding me back.

Having escaped the murderous, suffocating maze of used furniture, I worked my way down racks of clothing. A blue cable knit sweater looked like it might be a good purchase. I picked it up, releasing a pungent odor of mildew and a horde of moths which swarmed my face.

Untangling myself from that predicament, I looked up and saw Joe rolling himself towards me in the office chair, wielding a butcher knife.

"Find everything you're looking for?" His eyebrows furrowed as he peered over his mask at me.

I gulped down a lump of terror and tried to get a word out of my throat as I backed away, pushing against friction from the used clothes squeezing me on either side.

"Ha—have you seen my sister?"

"I already dealt with her," Joe laughed, his voice muffled under the mask. "She's outside waiting for you." He waved an arm to the right, where a faintly numinous yellowed glow seemed to indicate the plate glass windows at the front of the store.

Finally, directions to the way out! I shoved through the clinging, swaying clothes on their racks, slipped past a pair of grotesque, half-undressed mannequins, tripped over a row of unmatched shoes lined up in front of them, and tumbled headfirst to my knees into a pile of grinning rag dolls, chewed-up teddy bears and grumpy furball cats.

"You ok?" Joe called out from the racks.

"Yeah," I grunted, hauling myself up. "Why is there only one of each shoe?"

"Security measures, Lisa." His eyelids crinkled as he watched me. "Be careful, I know it's a bit messy here."

"Yeah… bye!" I caught sight of the checkout counter and rushed towards it.

The wrinkled, toothless employee eyed me as she adjusted the dials on a witchy humidifier, spewing out thick white fumes heavily scented of lavender.

"Leaving so soon, my dear?" she crooned. "Did you find anything to buy?"

The fuming clouds of aroma filled my lungs, setting off a coughing fit. I stumbled to the door. The jangling bell pierced my brain fog as I escaped at last into the fresh air outside.

"Lisa! You look like you've been dumpster diving. Didn't you find any bargains?" Brooke eyed me up and down, holding an armload of shopping bags.

"I barely got out alive!" I grabbed her arms and pulled her in for a frantic hug. "Joe chased me around with knives! He was trying to kill me! There was a book of fire that turned into a raven and a baby sleeping on a shelf and—and—"

"Uh-huh. Right. Come on, sis, let's go." She returned the hug quickly as well as she could with her purchases and guided me out into the blinding sunlight of the parking lot.

I sneezed at the light, swearing under my breath that I'd never be caught dead in Joe's thrift store again.

Words: 1821.
Written for "Tales Shown, Not Told Contest" 
Prompts:
• Use the words Glimmer, Ethereal and Numinous
• Must be Supernatural or Horror genre.
• Character must display traits of either dissociative or delusional disorder.