As if someone or some people were slowly climbing the stairs. The sound neither decreased nor increased, it meddled right at the position from where she heard it.
As if the persons were only climbing up and down a portion of the stairs repeatedly.
•••
The sound continued for about 30 mins while she stayed very still in the position she'd been since it'd started.
This had been the routine ever since her insomnia started. Every night at exactly 12, that noise would start.
The noise started to move downwards then but with an uncommon speed, it moved downwards as if it were floating through the floors and gradually climbing down down the stairs.
It moved downwards, towards her floor.
It stopped at her floor, when it did the candle's light, the only thing which separated her world from the world of the dark, that shone through the space under the door into her room was blown off and a sudden cold hush rested upon the seventh floor. The cold bit harder than usual once they entered the seventh floor.
Elliam could see the white puffs her breaths left in air when she breathed, she shivered and shrunk into her blanket which did nothing to alleviate the looming cold.
Although this has happened many nights before she still could not get used to the sudden wicked and biting cold that spread whenever the hour came, her nerves that became so jittery she feared they would snap under the frozen air, chills spreading into her spine and goosebumps infesting her skin like a fear manifesting its full power. She woul breath so haphazardly that her lungs felt squeezed.
Then it started, a deliberate and continuous clawing on the wall, a slow steady heavy footstep at first, the flooring creaking under its weight, a series of clinking by heavy sounding chains, as if the thing which was out there had multiple chain on it.
The heavy footsteps would continue, the floor creaking, amplifying the intense suspense that froze her entire body in place. With the footsteps, a disgusting and gruesome odor would spread across the floor, furiously attacking her nostrils and she would double over.
Her heart rate would spike with every footstep the creature made and she would, like she was now stay still, squeeze her pillow and hope and pray every night that the monster would pass by her room. That it wouldn't stop at her door.
The footsteps along the passage would continue, she would hear deep otherworldly growls from the creature.
Suddenly the footsteps stopped, Elliam whom couldn't have been more panicked than she was now, panicked still, her worst imaginations was about to come true.
She tried taking deep breaths, a futile attempt to calm herself, so as not to die of hypertension.
Maybe it would be the suspense that would kill her as all was silent. She didn't move, she knew the monster was at her door, she could feel it there.
Then releasing her of the tension, she heard a slow ear splitting clawing sound, on her door, it seemed like whatever was out there was doing something to her door, but it didn't seem to have any intentions of entering into her room as it stopped and continued it's sepulchral and heavy walk beyond the darkness.
She waited, she knew it wasn't there any longer but she waited, she could here it growls and steps in the distance.
Soon she couldn't hear the sound anymore.
She stayed still, for the cold to reduce, for the smell to subside and for the fear to lessen.
Soon all returned to calm and her breathing returned to normal.
She relaxed on her bed, the blanket soaked with her sweat, her limbs shaking with remnants of fear; fatigue. The terror has halted her body, and knotted her insides with it, leaving her breathless and heavily exhausted.
Every other night this strange phenomenon took place, and every morning she looked to find proof that what she'd heard and experienced wasn't a dream. But couldn't find the claw marks it'd made the night before.
But that couldn't have been a dream, she'd heard and felt it.
She took deep breaths while staring at the ceiling, wondering where the creature could have gone, then thought suddenly, if she went out now, she night be able to see what was that or just the claw marks.
Elliam shook her her head immediately at the idea, she wouldn't want to go, out there...
Where the monster might have laid in wait for her. Yet today, right now seemed like the perfect moment to go.
Against her beating, against her common sense, she stood up from the bed and ambled slowly and carefully across the floor towards the door.
When she got there, she first bent down and looked through the space below the door at the cold wooden flooring of the long passage.
There was nothing there, thankfully.
Then standing up, she gently turned the knob of the door. She opened the door a crack and peeked at the passage, it was cold and empty. She pushed I open, it responded, creaking open to it's full extent.
She stared at the large cold forlorn and empty passage, filled at every corner with despicable faces, now devoid of it's last light.
The candle stood on top of it's stand with it's wax melted to a clumpy mass on and around it, devoid of it's flame. She could still smell a wisp of it's smoke.
She closed the door behind her and first moved closer the the adjacent wall and touched, she felt the deep claw marks at least 5 inches into the wall and shivered. She treaded lightly down the hall and her limbs still shaking from cold and from fear, went down the stairs and out of the seventh hall.
When she eventually walked those long stairs down and got to the first floor, as she sneaked towards the main hall, she saw a scene unexpected. She saw great shadows made conspicuous by a bright orange light.
And from the way the shadows moved, it seemed like they were moving around the light. She moved a bit further to take a closer look.
In the middle of the hall, there was about 20 figures wearing dark long robes, their heads were covered with dark heavy hoods, that their faces even when exposed to the eerie orange light, could not be seen.
Elliam walked closer but not too close for safety, she peered under the lights to see what they all surrounded more closely.
Floating at least 5 ft above the floor, right in the middle were two bright twirling orbs of orange.
They seemed to be some kind of device as, as they twirled they emitted a low humming sound, the sound produced physical vibrations in the air that even she could feel where she stood. It wasn't necessarily loud enough to disturb her yet despite how low it was, it made her feel very uncomfortable.
Arranged in a square around the twirling orbs were large black bags, large enough to fit a grown up woman.
On closer look, it seemed to be multiple bags stacked on top of each other then arranged in a square around the orbs. To Elliam though, the bags looked a little familiar but she couldn't recall where she'd seen it.
The figures continued to move in a ritualistic clockwise motion while the orbs twirled in an anti clockwise motion, the scene before her, gave off an off aura, it made her feel an uncanny qualm, like this was a historical story that included her, that she was the main character somehow, but in some manner she was still the alien in it.
After watching for a little while, just as she'd climbed down, Elliam quietly made her way through the cold dry darkness up the stairs and towards the seventh floor.
On the seventh floor just as she stepped onto the hallway, she met with Mother Moth, whom had been becoming more absent since two weeks ago.
She was holding a lamp holder, in it was a single candle the flame which illuminated her face, her face was as usual; a dark calmness.
She took the candle and placed it on the candle stand attached to the wall, then turned towards Elliam again and nodded, as if passing off a mutual knowledge and turned to walk down the hall, past the statues and up the stairs.
Elliam stared after her, confused and surprised then slowly made her way through the now illuminated passage to her room and when she laid down on her bed, she thought about the monster and where it had gone, she had always heard it go down, never up.
She thought about the figures and the orange lights, she thought about Mother Moth then thought about what all these could mean and how they interconnected one another.