本次分享的是上海宏润博源学校九年级一班Elanor同学创作的恐怖小说。读者很难将这样一篇作品与还在念九年级的小作者起来(猜到我是谁了吗)。文章中体现的对于语言的驾驭，环境描写，人物描写以及叙事设定都会让读者认为作者是一位较年长的有多年创作经验的作家。

上海宏润博源学校

上海宏润博源学校的小作者Elanor对写作充满热情，过去一年也创作了好多作品，在网络上也已经小有名气，有很多粉丝。她喜欢创作恐怖小说，会把人们的浪漫幻想设定在一个恐怖的氛围中狠狠撕碎，让人们看清冰冷的真相。

The Humming

It was constant hum.

A hum that once noticed, seemed to blend with the dreary influx of rain that pooled from the sill and slipped to the floor. The boards would creak in the morning. They would mold and rot in mere months. It had been pouring for hours. The thunder boomed every minute to drown the howls of the winter winds.

I sat in the corner with my frozen knees to my chest, unable to take my eyes from the dying embers of the hearth. Soon, the only light would be the flickering pale gold from the manicured pine poised by the unattended window. The decorated rug wrapped at its base took on water. The presents, professionally wrapped with assorted paper of fine design, would spoil next. I had wanted them to be special this year.

The hum knocked at my ears like an eerie, unwanted visitor.

I swore and averted my gaze to the unlit hallway to my side which led through a gradient into blackness. I pulled the blanket tighter around myself and shrugged off the scratching sound. It obediently diminished into the background but continued to gnaw my exterior and beg attention, as present and foreboding as the imminent dark. My gut turned over. The floorboards echoed my shivers and chilling vibrations tickled my numb rear. I could almost feel my legs. Wind whistled past my window, and though I could hear the rustling of the evergreen forest beyond, the only glimpse of a view I found through my window was that of a lantern’s dwindling light dancing between the blinds of black trunks. The trees were naught but silhouettes, painted against the hazy gray of the clouds.

Pine needles and wood rot drifted to my nose and jarred my senses like too much cologne. My body shuddered, out of my control. I shook my head and looked back to the fireplace. I couldn’t focus on the lantern outside. I couldn’t bear to think.

Ronwyn had gone to get wood hours ago.

The shed was five minutes away.

I should have stepped outside after ten. I should have followed.

My eyes wet, because I wouldn’t have even if I could have. I knew her lantern would go out soon, but it hadn’t moved in so long that I don’t believe it would matter if it did. I don’t believe its warmth and light is needed out there any longer.

I pulled out my phone and thumbed away the cloud of cold that chilled the screen. No service. Loneliness and dread clenched my throat. The longer I sat here the louder the hum grew. The embers would lose their glow before I knew it. The temperature steadily dropped. The pool of water over the creaking floor started to freeze. Rain turned to hail. The hard ice battered the glass and screamed over the steel roof above. As it fired into my lounge, pieces hit the floor and scattered. Ice chips burned my cheek, sharp and frigid enough to break through the numbness. I flinched with each blow.

We only visited the cabin for Christmas. Every year for the past five of our holy matrimony, we had laughed here together. We’d slung boughs of holly over the rafters and dangled mistletoe from every doorway and over our pillows. Despite how the weather never quite fit the status quo, this place was our Christmas. To think, we almost hadn’t come this year.

I don’t know why I insisted. I suppose it was just to try and find some sense of normal again. The world had lost its color this year. My accident had left me grasping at straws to find the will to live. I became absent. I became meaner. I became the thorn on my rose, my Ronwyn, and turned everyone away. I wish I could talk to her, but to date, the last time we held a pleasant conversation was four months, two weeks, and three days ago. Since then it has mostly been silence. She took care of me, but I, ungrateful as I am, never felt cared for. I resigned myself to the assistance, but despised it with every muscle that still worked. I was a burden. I took to buying her things to make her happy, because I knew I couldn’t. She took to thanking me and saying little, because she learned to be cautious of me and my tendency to take my self-loathing out on others. I’m as monstrous as the thunder.

I pulled the blanket over my head and tasted its mildew on my tongue. The pitter-patter of broken hail bounced from the stretched material and splattered on the resin surface beneath me. The hum taunted me. The light that I gleaned through my red home-knit flickered out. A bead of icy sweat tickled my brow and I made myself smaller. My fingers lost all feeling and frozen tears crusted my eyes and dropped away with blinks. I squeezed my eyes shut and assured myself that the darkness was nothing to fear. Alas, my heart longed for the night-lights of my younger days, decorated with skis and scenes of snow to light my dreams with ambitions.

The piercing whistles of the wind grated at my ears. The decay of wood and mold choked my senses and left me struggling to breathe. A loud snap startled me into throwing my blanket off my head. My heart stopped, my lungs clenched. A flash of lightning lit up the Christmas tree only long enough for me to imagine something moving through its boughs. I reached for my phone and fumbled to turn on its torch. My fingers slid uselessly over the frosted screen and scrambled to find traction. I could barely see, led by a sliver of moonlight waving from the gloom. I blew on my screen to warm it, but even with the frost receded, my fingers lacked the heat to register as touch. The phone escaped my quaking grasp and clattered over the wood. Tears welled in my eyes. I let out a pitiful mewl and fell to my side to curl up as small as possible to wallow in the blackness. I dragged my limp legs to my stomach and shook beneath my blanket. My ear pressed to the resin and my eyes bulged at the symphony of marching feet. The chaotic sound of insects shuffling and bustling.

Another loud snap in the lounge stole my wits away, and I found myself muttering, my eyes flicked from side to side as though I were reading the dark of my musty blanket. The stiffness in my body was so present that I myself felt absent, as though I was only spectating. I started to hum to remind myself that I still existed. It clashed with the whispers of the trees, competed with the whistles of the wind, and blended with the unknown rasping hum already present. With every boom of thunder, Little Drummer Boy weakened. My voice grew quieter and quieter, and with each reduction in the volume, it cracked. The song became discordant with my chokes, and turned from a hapless comfort to a tuneless whimper to nothing but a soft weep.

Light rose outside the cabin, and I jolted from the blanket’s cover and lowered it to my shoulders. An evergreen burned in the forest. Lightning flared in the sky. Ronwyn’s lantern lay abandoned in the snow, barely able to be made out beneath the blaze.

A third paralyzing snap directed my skittish attention immediately to the decorated pine by the window and I recoiled. My back slammed against the wall. A figure threw branches into the hearth, where nearly half of our Christmas tree spilled out from the stone to the carpet. Roaches scampered up and down the evergreen’s trunk, glossy wings flashing with the roaring fire outside. The hum sourced from the scrambling of their feet and the flicking of their wings.

The foul insects coated the floor in a greasy black veil and ran in trails in and out of the window.

The figure snapped another branch from the tree. Red and green baubles crashed to the floor and parted the sea of black.

“R-Ronwyn?” I ask. My burning red nose runs.

With no response, I pull the red knit over my head and attempt to convince myself that I am dreaming.

“Hmm hm hm hmm hm, pa rum pum pum pum…” Her voice was a husk. It took my breath away and sent an eerie shiver through my limbs. Something tickled my waist. My abdomen tensed and it disappeared. The voice, so far from my wife’s spirited chirp and yet so similar, hummed again the eerie and guttural rendition of Little Drummer Boy.

My hip felt a tickle, and I smacked my hand to it. I felt a roach splatter over me, and shouted out. I threw my blanket off. The figure, silenced, turned to me. Swaddled in her sunset orange and pink ski suit, Ronwyn’s frozen face peered at me with no humanity behind it. Roaches swam behind an empty eye socket. I wept and pulled my hair and rocked. Her missing eyeball, with stunning blue iris, crept up the side of her arm. The six legged creeps carried it in tow. They spilled from her suit.

I felt them again on my hip and looked down, aghast. They encompassed my unfeeling legs, leaving not an inch of my own pale skin to be seen under my shorts. They flooded from my waistband and I hollered out and batted at them to get away.

“Hmm hm hm hmm hm, pa rum pum pum pum…”

In my frenzy, I fell down to the boards, and they came at me faster. Greater numbers rushed from the tree and from Ronwyn and flooded over my jacket and under my shirt and across my scrawny rib-cage beneath. I screamed and shouted and cried for help and for mercy until they filled my mouth and I choked on their reek and their pill shape and I could make no more sound. Scrambling feet and flicking wings overwhelmed my senses. The lounge hummed with the overwhelming roar or roaches that challenged even the mighty thunder outside.

In the hearth, a fire lit. It tore over the carpet and caught on the legs of a very still Ronwyn with her matches in hand. The figure dropped the matches and turned. The bugs fled from her eye sockets and crawled from her hair.

Voiceless and violated and unable to move, I watched her burn. Cockroaches scatted from her pant-legs to escape the rising flames, and her frozen, blue-skinned corpse collapsed. The ski suit quickly lit, followed by her long blonde locks. The roaches fled out the window, and soon enough, I too was free of their shuffling feet.

The raging fire thawed my frozen limbs, coughing and spitting, and I dragged myself across the floor to her. My wheelchair peeked from the fire-pit, melting in the heat. I collapsed over her thawing, lifeless body and whispered:

“I’m sorry.”

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