The Wind Chime Monster

Suspense Stories | Aug 4, 2014 | 4 min read
96 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Suspense Stories

The Wind Chime Monster

The Wind Chime Monster
By Luke Mepham

‘Oh, this is nice' thought Sarah Hickman when she picked up a necklace from the table. The table belonged to an old Asian looking man at the car boot sale.
"How much is it?"
"£8.50"
"That's a bit too much for it isn't it?"
"You wannit?"
She places it down shaking her head. Her brown eyes scan the table for other things. She wanted to make it her mission to get at least one thing from every person selling items that day. This was the last person and she was adamant to get something from him. The other things weren't exactly the most ideal things. A funny looking eraser, a DVD, a cup for her pens and pencils that had a great looking design on it, a handmade anklet and other pieces of brick a brack that she felt she couldn't live without.
Her eyes stop on something shiny. The sun had come out from behind the clouds and illuminated the object in front of her. It was in a plastic folder. She reached for it and looked at it; a wind chime. It had a brass chain with two blue butterflies each side at two balls, one red and the other blue, being held between two folded brass bands. There was a bigger blue ball weighing down the brass chain where the tubes rested.
"How much is it for this?"
The old man looked up to what she was talking about, chomping the end of his cigarette, that didn't quite smell of tobacco. His face straightened out and he looked at the wind chime and then back at Sarah.
"I can't put price on it."
"£2.00?"
The man looked at the wind chime longer before finally giving her a response.
"Sure." He reaches out his hand and waits for the coin to scrape his crusty, wrinkled hand. Sarah gives him the coin but he pushes it back to her.
"I can't take from you. You have for free."
"That's very kind of you. I need it for relaxing to when I do my work or when I need to get to sleep. I loved these since I was –"
"Don't put up tonight."
Sarah stops and is puzzled.
"Why?"
"Wind tonight will come from north. It mustn't chime."
"Well then what's the point in having it up?"
"Not at night!"
Sarah puts the wind chime into her bag and shoots the elderly man a confused look.
"Well thanks anyway."
She walks off from the site as the elderly man watches her go through the mistiness of his cigarette smoke.
Sarah began to think that if she turned around the old man and his car would be gone. She didn't look but she was right.

That night in her room, Sarah has just had a shower and is wearing Phil, her boyfriend's, football shirt. The shirt is baggy and she usually goes to bed in it. She brushes her hair in front of the floor to ceiling mirror on her wardrobe and lies on her stomach on her bed. She reaches into a bag beside her and brings out a book she's in the middle of. As she pulls it out she knocks over the bag from the car boot sale. The wind chime makes a clump as it falls out of the bag. She reaches over and picks it up then unravels it from the plastic wrapping.
It bongs and clangs as she dangles it from her pinched finger and thumb. She looks to her window and hangs it up in the middle of the frame.
She taps the weight and lets it tap out a relaxing selection of sounds. She opens her window a crack and listens out. There's no sound at all. A few crickets from the field opposite her house but that's it.
‘Perfect' she thought.
She turns her light off, lies down on her bed and secures the new home made anklet she bought before settling down and watching the T.V. slowly she begins to doze off.

A few hours later, her T.V, now just screening a mass of static that has conquered the airwaves, shuts itself off. The click it makes disturbs her from her sleep. She sits up and rubs her eyes then puts her lamp on – suddenly the bulb breaks, scattering glass all over the wooden floor boards.
She lets out a shriek but covers her mouth before she wakes her roommates up.
"Shit."
She thinks about how she can go to her wardrobe to get a new bulb out without cutting her foot on the glass in the dark.
She looks at her phone and finds the torch on it to illuminate the rug of glass mere centimeters from where she's sat.
She scans the floor and looks for a place to step on to safely. A huge gust of wind screams though the crack in the window which scares her and makes her lose track of what she's doing.
The wind chime throws itself violently left and right, echoing out a tune then hangs completely still and silent.
Sarah sits on her bed looking at the wind chime and then gets up quickly to the wardrobe. She forgets the glass on the floor and treads on it but she carries on. She turns to her bed from the other side of the room and shines her torch to see she's wiped a trail of blood from her bed to where she is now.
She opens the door to the wardrobe and feels for the box she needs. Not there. Instead she gets a strange odor from inside. That was when the wind chime began rocking from side to side, very gently.
Sarah looks at it but ignores it to concentrate on getting the new bulb.
A strange noise comes from inside the cupboard; a croaky, whisper that screeches her name.
She looks inside and shines the torch to see a pair of red eyes glaring at her. Arms the size of twigs reach out and grab her by the legs and slowly pulls her in.
The door slams shut on them and the wind chime rattles strongly for a while. The door rattles and then stops, the same time as the wind chime falls silent.

The End

Tags:

  
Report This Story
Notice (8): Undefined index: User [APP/View/stories/story.ctp, line 227]
Notice (8): Trying to access array offset on value of type null [APP/View/stories/story.ctp, line 227]

Recommendations

Reviews

Download the Short Story Lovers App

Read and write stories anytime, anywhere with the Short Story Lovers app