Short Story for  Wattpad Paranormal

This was an Image Prompt
(Of a girl dragging an ax behind her.)

A supernatural thriller. A Mother brings a haunted warriors helmet home from an auction and strange things start to happen to her little boy.

☠︎✩.･*:｡•───── ⋆𓅛⋆ ─────•*:｡✩☠︎

KHUNBISH
Ghost of Mongol

I paid a pretty penny for the helmet.

It wasn't in the millions but it did set me back thousands. It came with a battle ax, but I couldn't afford both. Hell, I couldn't afford the helmet either, but I have a problem.

Online auctions.

When the notification popped up for the luxury auction, a ten year tradition of the museum to raise money for the explicit purpose of purchasing new antiquities well, I jumped on it. Every ten years for them was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. If I spent the money now, I reasoned with myself, maybe it would pay off later for my young son. A kind of inheritance he could one day sell for those millions I didn't have.

The bidding war was intense. The museum needed lots of money and didn't hide the fact, using tactics like selling former displays separately and using the art of greed to make people spend as much as possible to obtain the whole display. I was way out of my league, I knew this but I jumped in full force and soon found myself yelling at my laptop as the tapping battle ensued.

"Mommmmmmmy?"

"Not now Charley, please honey. Mommy is busy," I grit my teeth as I missed a bid.

He was only four, none of this was his fault, I scolded myself, trying to tone down the urgency in my voice.

"Dammit! I lost the battle ax," I muttered wiping droplets of sweat from my forehead.

"Mommy I'm hungry!" Charley yelled.

"Okay, okay," I chirped lightly with a heavy sigh.

The next item was being presented now and it was magnificent. The thirteenth century war helmet shone darkly on the screen as they began the description.

From a warrior tribe of Mongols, the Eagle Tribe, the helmut and its battle ax, which I lost, would have been a million dollar inheritance to give my Charley. Regret bile spilled into my mouth and I swallowed hard as I handed Charley the box of flavored crackers beside me on the table. Thankfully, he happily took them and sat on the floor nearby to continue his little cartoon show.

I prepared myself for the battle and this time, I took home the prize, which I would proudly display in my grand entry hall.

∆∆∆

Charley's night terrors began just three days after I placed the helmet in its mahogany and glass display pedestal in the cavernous front hall just where I had imagined placing it.

God, it was menacing. Exquisite, but dark looking.

I shrugged it off, as I added it to the menagerie of other priceless antiques I had spent my grandad's inheritance on for Charley's future. One day, he would appreciate all of this, I reassured myself.

Still, night after night, the blood curdling screams would awaken me with a sucker punch to the gut.

Fear crippled me, freezing my blood in my veins hard as a rock. He told me something was in his closet. A bad man, he described. With no head. Trying to help him come to terms with it I cleaned out the entire closet. Emptied it.

Three weeks later I moved Charley into my bedroom, because now the screams had transformed into horrible dreams.

Three weeks after that I was desperately researching night terrors and nightmares in children when I ran across an article I didn't want to read but forced myself to, for Charley's sake.

∆∆∆

I could not see the shadowy figure Charley had described to me day after day. The one in his closet, in the room he refused to enter any longer, day or night. He told me it was twenty feet tall. A scary shadow man with no head. Going to bed was an every night struggle now.

My mind wandered aimlessly, completely consumed with this problem Charley had when a loud slam hit the front door and echoed through the house.

Charley screamed.

Moments later another slam. And another. And yet another.

Charley was hyperventilating, gasping for breath. I stood up and grabbed his arm lifting him off the floor running with him in my arms to the hall. The slam resounded through the hall like a battering ram, shaking the walls when Charley suddenly caught his breath and a sound erupted from his tiny lungs I will never forget. His little body shook uncontrollably in my arms. His arms were around my neck like a vice grip.

I held my breath as my shaking hand reached for the door knob, but I jerked back as Charley went ballistic in my arms.

The ramming thuds continued every single night after that. Shadowy figures darted through our hallways and stood in darkened corners of the room like evil sentinels waiting to strike.

∆∆∆

I had finally gotten Charley to sleep which was almost impossible anymore and I snuck off to have a hot bath hoping to relieve the tension I lived in constantly now. I quietly closed the bathroom door just reaching for the faucet when I heard the screams.

I ran from the bathroom all the way downstairs to the little TV room where I found Charley sitting on the floor in a heap of fear gasping for breath. A slamming impact cracked against the front door and fear incited wrath in my heart and I stomped toward the hall with fury grabbing the front door and jerking it open with a raging scream.

"ENOUGHHHH!" I screamed into the night. I slammed the door shut and the next crash knocked me back several steps and I screeched with hateful vengeance. I whirled around grabbing Charley in my arms and headed to the library.

∆∆∆

Four days later I had what I wanted. It took hours of tearful begging to get it and a promise bordering on death if it wasn't returned. I didn't care. I had to stop this evil, this tormenting invisible threat.

I paced the floor that day waiting.

I was going to have my home back. My peace. My child's sanity.

When it began I was ready. I calmly picked up Charley and took him to the TV room. I sat him on the couch but he refused and followed me to stand in the arched doorway. He stood there in silent fear.

I walked back to the library, jerking violently with every battering slam against the door. With shaking hands I opened the heavy wooden box sitting in the middle of the floor and grabbed the ancient weapon inside with both hands, struggling to lift it, so I drug it behind me.

Past Charley who still stood in the doorway of the TV room whimpering. The iron head of the four foot battle ax sliced a jagged scratch along the fine Italian marble in the long hallway behind me, screeching like fingernails along a chalkboard.

When I came to the mahogany and glass display case I stopped and with one hand I pushed the glass over and it crashed to the floor breaking into a billion little shards around my feet. I grabbed the helmet from it's stand and slowly headed to the door as the bangs still echoed through my bones like a battering ram. I sat the helmet down and watched my hand reaching for the door handle. It creaked as it slowly swung open revealing a dark emptiness before me and with a bellow of fury I picked up the helmet and tossed it out the door where it landed with a solid metal clatter on the drive.

I followed it out with a fury induced scream from somewhere deep in my soul and finding the raw strength from weeks of seeing my son tormented beyond reality I screamed again, a gutteral animalistic howl lifting the battle ax over my head I crashed it down on the helmet over and over and over, screaming with every bash I made until my fury was spent and my trembling arms could no longer hold up, to watch as a shadow darker than any night materialized in a threatening rush of swirling anger. I watched in horrified awe as it morphed taking on the shape of a giant headless monster, undulating and roaring with wind rushing fury.

I fell to my knees in abject terror as it came at me and I laid my hand on the ax. With a hollowed scream from some other dimension it blew around me whipping my hair all around my face and suddenly it snapped, changing shape, becoming a hollow burning spectre which took flight straight up into the sky like a rocket and disappeared. 

"Mooooommmmmy?"

The questioning endearment startled me and I turned to see Charley standing there on the porch.

His image raced away from me and I saw him as if hundreds of miles away at the end of a tunnel with a small circle of light surrounding him.

I ran towards him screaming his name but like a puff of smoke he disappeared and I fell on the steps in a crumpled mass of trembly exhaustion screaming his name into the dark night.

THE END