Hey guys, it's E. J. Miller, writer, creator and producer
here at Fast Food Horror. Unfortunately, igorre Froedrick is off visiting family in
Transylvania, which leaves me to do the honors to introduce this episode. So
here we go. Welcome to Fast Food Horror. This is episode two of
our story entitled The Tale of the House on Morrow Hill. The second night,
as the summer sun rose the next morning, so thankfully to the temperature
in the room like a curtain on a stage for the second act of a
show, the ominous sounds that once echoed throughout the house had subsided some time
earlier. So, sensing that whatever threat there was or might be was no
longer that normalcy had returned, I left my wife asleep in bed and made
my way down to the kitchen for what would surely be the first of many
a cup of coffee. Not long thereafter, Steph joined me in the kitchen
and took in my bleary eyed presence sitting there in the morning silence. Unperturbed,
she poured herself a cup of coffee and settled in across from me at
the breakfast Noot took her first delicate sip and asked how I slept. With
an exhausted chuckle, I went into my now well rehearsed account of what had
happened that night, awaking with the temperature drop of the chilled room, the
banging that echoed throughout the house all night while she soundly slept unable to be
awakened. She never interrupted. She let me talk and took in every detail
and concern I had, sipping her coffee as I went, and when I
was finished, she took her last gulp and placed her mug on the table
and laughed and applauded. She thought this was my initial attempt at writing my
novel, and I was using her as a sounding board. It took me
a while to get in a word edgewise over her enthusiastic suggestions and questions of
where I was going with it with the story. But when I did,
when she really saw how tired and concerned I was, she chalked it up
to the ancient furnace and my exhaustion and stress over the move. Steph said
when she went into town for supplies, she would inquire at the hardware store
about furnace or heater repair companies in town that made me feel better sorta.
Steph came home a few hours later, groceries and cleaning supplies in multiple bags,
as I had continued to move the rest of the boxes into our new
home. She reported that she found a handyman that agreed to come out at
the end of the week, but he couldn't make it any sooner due to
his backlog of work from the holiday. That would have to do since one
of the locals told her none of the big fancy name heating places would come
all the way out here without it costing us a pretty penny, and that
was just for the consult, not even the repair. So the handyman waiting
game was on. That second night, though I awoke from a dead sleep
physically shaking. The chill in the air was more so than first night.
I found myself lying there in bed without a blanket or a sheet. I
searched in the dim light of the room on the bed for either or both
of them. I searched the foot of the bed to see if her or
I or both of us had kicked them down there, but they were not
there. My wife hadn't pulled or rolled with them either, so not there.
I rolled to my right to my bedside night stand and activated the flashlight,
trying to control my shivering. Now sitting up in bed, my exiled
puffs illuminated by the flashlight's beam. I scanned the room, arms clutched around
my chest, knees drawn in, searching for the sheets and blanket with the
tiny foam flashlight, and found them not on the floor on the sides of
the bed. The sheets in the blanket were clear across the room in a
piled heap, like they had been ripped from the bed and thrown across the
room. I whispered my wife's name to try and wake her, before reaching
across and gently rocking her awake. She did not respond. I became more
insistent with my voice, and my rocking became more of a gentle shaking nothing.
She was warm to the touch and in a deep sleep. My eyes
drifted to the screen of my phone, clutched in my hand. Two thirty
three a m. There had to be a reasonable explanation as I watched the
puffs of white escape my mouth with each exhalation, this unnatural temperature drop,
and now the sheets being ripped from the bed, not kicked off by one
of us, but thrown clear across the room. The master bedroom wasn't exactly
small either. The opposite wall was more than fifteen feet away. I would
have to ask Steph in the morning about that last bird. I walked across
the room, scooped up the sheets and laid them across the bed, and
opened a window to let in the July warmth, then climbed back in bed
next to my wife. Just before I closed my eyes, it started.
That metallic thud from the other night echoed throughout the house, repeating again and
again. The whack, the whack, the whack. Steff didn't stir the
whack, the whack, the whack. It was going to be another long
night, ditt