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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/puredreadful on 2024-09-25 18:58:17+00:00.
Part 1 Here
Day 5
I had spent most of the night before crying and confused. I texted a few people that I thought were my friends and most either ignored me or had blocked me completely. Only one replied. To put it briefly, there was a rumour going around that I had done something highly inappropriate with the food I had prepared for one of my previous clients’ children. There was also a photo circulating of me wearing nothing but an apron while I worked a barbeque in a small garden.
Needless to say, the rumours are completely false. The picture, while genuine, is one that was taken while I was in the army. I was at a garden party with a few of my squad mates and things got a little silly. You know how it is. For some reason, the picture is being circulated along with the rumour, and apparently, most people are simply accepting it as a fact. To make matters worse, the family I have apparently committed this crime against have moved away, so I have no way of defending myself or rebutting the claims.
It seemed that whoever was spreading these lies was either trying to get me killed, arrested, or thrown out of town. No one would hire me. No one wanted to even speak to me. Frankly, I was lucky that not everyone was adept at social media, and was still able to buy my food and household supplies from people that the rumour hadn’t quite reached. I couldn’t afford to leave town just yet, and there was nowhere for me to turn.
I had only one choice.
I returned to the Ismay house as requested, and was met with Elizabeth at the doorway. She did not smile, but welcomed me into the house nonetheless, closing the door behind me.
Days 6-14
As I had in the days previous, I prepared, cooked and served Professor Ismay’s bowls of meat three times a day. Elizabeth never mentioned the rumour about me, nor did she seem to care if she knew. Agnes never said anything about it either. She was always nearby it seemed, always watching and listening. I could never tell if she was there to watch over me or spy on me for Elizabeth. The camera in the kitchen would follow me as I moved around, when I was filling the Professor’s bowl or scrubbing the pots and pans afterwards. Its gaze was fixed.
The Professor seemed to walk around his room less and less as the days went on. Sometimes when I would deliver the trolley, he wouldn’t move at all, and on a few occasions, I would retrieve the trolley with the bowl either untouched or only partially disturbed. Elizabeth told me to simply toss the scraps into the lake for the wildlife. The fish and the freshwater eels never left any scraps.
On the third Monday, everything changed.
Day 15
That morning as I was walking towards the house, I noticed that one of the windows in the Professor’s room was cracked. The glass was still in the frame, but there was a circular break in the pane as though it had been struck by a rock or a ball, somewhere in the middle. What surprised me, however, was that the glass was broken outward, meaning that the impact had come from the inside.
When I asked Agnes what had happened, she simply shook her head and said she didn’t know.
I didn’t believe her.
I didn’t see Elizabeth the whole morning, and began my duties as I had done every day for the previous two weeks. The first meal was especially sordid. Chicken livers, fresh crab, pheasant, pork tongue and black pudding. The crabs were to be served in their shells.
I lubricated the hinges to the Professor’s door and unbolted it, and then paused for a second to listen for any movement. I couldn’t hear anything, so I pushed open the door. As it swung into the room, I heard the loud clicking sound that he had been making more and more. It was slightly different this time though. It was a little higher pitch, and a little quicker. I peered into the room, scanning for any sign of the Professor. There was no movement that I could see, so I wheeled the trolley inside.
I decided to take a moment before I rang the bell. I thought I might steal another look at him. I hadn’t alerted him yet. At least, I didn’t think so anyway. If I needed to, I could get out before he was off the bed. He was old after all and I was pretty fit. I glanced around, squinting in the darkness, trying to make sense of any shape that might be there. I couldn’t see much. After an uncomfortable thirty seconds or so, I rang the bell, and then slowly backed out of the room, still glancing around for any sign that he was there. I closed the door, bolted it and listened.
Absolute silence.
I waited for a minute or so, listening with my ear pressed against the door. I couldn’t hear anything at all. I figured that he was probably asleep. Before long, I gave up waiting and set off down the stairs. When I was about halfway down, I heard the loudest crash I’d ever heard up until that point come from inside his room. I fell against the bannister in shock, expecting the wall to have come down behind me. Agnes came trotting as fast as she could from the front sitting room, and she looked on in disgust as we heard the terrible animalistic feeding of the Professor upstairs.
I’d bumped my head a little when I fell against the bannister, and when I rubbed it my hand was wet. At first I thought it was blood, but it wasn’t. A shiver ran down my spine. It was a semi-transparent white mucus.
He had been above me in that room, he must have. A few feet? or a few inches? I wasn’t sure, but he’d been there. Right above my head.
“Are you alright?” Agnes asked.
I don’t remember what I’d said to her. I was in shock. I stumbled into the kitchen and washed my hair in the sink. The mucus was revolting. It stunk like you wouldn’t believe, and it was difficult to remove. It clung to me like glue.
An hour passed, and then another. I sat in the kitchen scrubbing the pans slowly, prolonging the inevitable. The camera never left me, and eventually, Agnes came into the kitchen.
“It’s time, my love.” she said softly.
“What is wrong with Professor Ismay, Agnes?” I asked.
“He is… unwell.”
“Tell me the truth.”
She looked uncomfortable. She interlocked her fingers and I could see her lip wavering.
“I don’t know.” she said softly.
As I finished washing the knife I’d used to cut the chicken livers, I wrapped it in a dish cloth to dry it and slipped it into my apron as stealthily as I could manage. I don’t think Agnes noticed, although I was unsure about the camera. I didn’t care though. I wasn’t going back into that room without it.
Agnes followed me up the stairs and stood with me as I lubricated the hinges of the door. I unbolted it, and allowed it to swing open. I felt my heart sink. For the first time, the trolley was not where I had left it. It was further into the room, and it was lying on its side. The bowl was nowhere to be seen.
“What do I do now?” I whispered.
“Your job, my love.” Agnes whispered back.
In any other circumstance, I might have taken her reply as a snarky remark, or an attempt to belittle me with sarcasm. But there was a sadness in her voice and her eyes, and I knew that she was not telling me what to do, but asking me to help with what she could not. The faint hush of rain on the manor house’s many rooves began above us, like ever-present TV static in the air. I could hear it on the windows as I stepped inside.
The first thing I did was check above the door. I heard Agnes stifle a whimper as I looked, and at that moment I’d like to think that we both understood not only the gravity of the situation, but that we were on the same page regarding the Professor’s condition.
Professor Ismay didn’t seem to be there, nor was he on his bed when I looked. There was a foul stench emanating from the back corners of the room as I stepped further and further in. It was sour in the air and struck the back of my throat like hot needles. I glanced behind, there was about twenty feet of open space behind me at this point. I’d never been this far in before. The carpet beneath my feet was wet and sticky, and every footstep felt as though I was walking on a thick layer of mud.
I reached the trolley and knelt down to grab it. As quietly as I could manage, I stood it upright and gave it a slight pull. It moved well enough, the wheels weren’t damaged or seized in any way, but there was no sign of the bowl. As I started to walk backwards I heard the clicking of the Professor from somewhere beside me.
From behind the curtains to my right, a huge black shape lunged at me, clicking and trilling as though in ecstasy at the success of its trap.
I could only scream.
I fell backwards as the slimy filth-ridden body of the professor slammed into me. He was groaning and screeching, producing sounds that humans simply should not be able to make. The curtain that had hidden him was now on the floor, the rod having been pulled from the wall. In what little light that broke through the grime-covered windows, I could see that the professor’s skin was black all over. The texture of which was now more crocodilian than toad, but still coated in that same mucus-like slime I had seen last time I had caught a glimpse of him.
I screamed and tried to claw away, but he was monstrously strong and held me in place. His nails dug into my skin as he lunged for my neck. In the scuffle, I saw his face. It was contorted and stretched, as though his skull was too large for the s…
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