Screamscapes: Tales of Terror Read Online Free

couldn’t breathe.
    He was held immobile between the house and the earth, his body wedged like a hatchet in a piece of dried kindling. Every attempt he made to free himself only served to ensnare him further. He visualized in fast forward what would happen next – his futile struggle, reaching the point of exhaustion while his strength and hope faded.
    Fear sent his imagination into overdrive. In his mind’s eye, Tom pictured rats creeping from their dens in the darkness beneath his house, one at first, timidly – then others, emboldened by his helplessness. He imagined the vermin gathering by the dozens around his face, curious darting black eyes observing him calmly, before they charged him and devoured the skin from his face.
    Tom closed his eyes and became still, his body locked in a half-crawling, half-lying position on his knees and elbows.
    There are no rats, he reassured himself. An exterminator had thoroughly inspected the property before he purchased it, and it had been given a clean bill of health, as far as pests were concerned. He tried to remind himself of this fact, although in his current state it brought him little comfort.
    After a few minutes, the paralyzing panic that had gripped him passed. His breath began to come more easily, and soon he was once again drawing in the sour air freely.
    “Fuck.” Tom muttered, once he realized that the absence of pain meant that it was only his shirt that was stuck, not his actual body.
    He unbuttoned his shirt and wriggled out of it, left arm first, then the other.
    Once out of it, he was free. He was now naked from the waist up, and the cold air bit at his exposed flesh as viciously as the pack of rats he had imagined seconds before.
    Tom saw that his shirt had snagged on a rusty nail sticking out from a crossbeam. He realized how lucky it was that the nail had only hooked his shirt, and not dug deep into the meat of his back. He pushed the offending nail out of the way with his thumb and made a mental note to keep a closer look out for hazards.
    He squirmed his way back into his shirt and got down to business, rolling his way towards the light bulb like a man possessed, as though at any moment the ground beneath him might give way and swallow him whole if he dared linger too long in any one spot.
    Then, there it was: the light bulb, only inches in front of his face. He turned his body awkwardly to the left, head to the side to look back towards from where he had come.
    The crawlspace entrance looked a lot smaller from here, and it seemed further away than he knew it really was. It occurred to him that his feelings about that opening had completely changed, now that it had become an exit, now that he was on the inside.
    When he had looked at the entrance from the outside, it had been foreboding, threatening in its dark gloom; but from his new vantage point, deep in the belly of the beast, that same opening had assumed a different meaning entirely. It now shone with radiant light, beckoning him to hurry to it, to thrust himself into the glorious sunlit wonders that lay beyond.
    It’s all a matter of perspective , Tom thought, and smiled.
    His fingers found the light’s drawstring; as he grasped the small ball-bearing-like beads, he suddenly realized he should have brought a spare bulb along, in case this one was burned out.
    He rolled onto his back underneath the bulb, the clearance so low that he could barely roll over. He gave the chain a gentle tug, and the light popped on with a scratchy but reassuring “click”.
    Thank God.
    For the better part of two minutes Tom lay flat on his back underneath the increasingly warm bulb, eyes closed against its hot brilliance. The exertion required to get the plastic rolled out even this far had been a lot more than he had anticipated.
    Eyes closed, he imagined himself back in his comfy bed, with his goose down comforter pulled up to his neck, warm sunshine streaming through the window onto his face and the soft warmth of