{"id":1123,"date":"2018-04-16T18:00:04","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T18:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/?page_id=1123"},"modified":"2022-10-28T08:34:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T08:34:37","slug":"worm-food-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/worm-food-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Worm Food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">by Joe Stanley<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><span style=\"font-family: book\\ antiqua, palatino, serif; font-size: 24pt;\">4<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Stephens lead the team, with the warrant in his hand, he pounded on the door. There was no answer, and there was no sign of life inside. Some of the team had tried looking into the windows, but they saw and heard nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">James\u2019 car was still in the driveway, and Stephens walked around it to the high door in the fence. He pushed it and found it was locked. He started to turn, but instead pulled out his pocket knife, sliding it up until he felt the latch. He wiggled the blade until the hook that held it shut came free.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The gate opened and he stepped into the back yard. His mouth fell open.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The beautiful garden was gone. Each and every plant had withered and died. Even the grass was yellow-gray and sickly. There was what appeared to be a trail of thin, clear plastic, fading out in all directions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">He poked it with his knife and found that it was a sheet of mucus-like slime. It was thickest in the middle of the yard and lead directly to the backdoor. At the bottom of the door, dozens of tiny holes had nearly splintered it. He braced himself against the door to have a closer look, and to his surprise the door swung open.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Inside was the kitchen, the refrigerator door was open. The slime was thick, and there was a blood covered slipper coated with it. Smears of blood lead back into the dining room, where the other slipper lay beneath an overturned chair. The blood was visible beneath the slime.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Taking care where he stepped, Stephens took a small camera from his pocket and began to follow the trail, taking pictures.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">It lead around to the staircase, where about half-way up a puddle of blood congealed below a step marked with a bloody edge. Here the trail of slime stopped. He found himself thinking \u201cShe fell and hit her head here and was briefly unconscious.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Then there were more bloody footprints, each in a thick smear of slime. There were bloody handprints on the railing and on the upstairs wall. A gruesome handprint waited on the white bedroom door, which was slightly ajar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">For the first time in his career, Stephens was afraid to go closer and called out, \u201cMs. James?\u201d There was no answer. Now he forced himself to move, and slowly he pushed the door open.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">James was seated on the floor with her back against the wall. Her bare feet were spotted with countless tiny red specks. \u201cMs. James!\u201d he called again, and noticed, despite her blank expression, a small muscle twitch.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">She was alive!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cJust hang on, we\u2019ll get you an ambulance\u2026\u201d he began, as he felt for a pulse. Her skin felt strange, like something was moving beneath it. She was cold, he noticed, too cold to be alive, but somehow\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Her mouth fell open and a bloody fountain spewed. Mixed in the blood were countless wriggling worms. He stumbled backwards, and watched as he plump body began to deflate. Worms spewed from her mouth, nose and eyes, and then her skin began to burst open. He found himself thinking that she looked like a caterpillar nest, the way her skin was draped across the bones in bloody ribbons. Around her, the puddle of worms began to slow and then, like James, was still and lifeless.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/worm-food-4\/\"><em><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;\">next part<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-86 size-full\" style=\"border: 0px solid #ffffff;\" src=\"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/scroll.png\" alt=\"The Ghostly World Fictional Ghost Stories\" width=\"1000\" height=\"67\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/scroll.png 1000w, https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/scroll-300x20.png 300w, https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/scroll-768x51.png 768w, https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/scroll-945x63.png 945w, https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/scroll-600x40.png 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/worm-food-2\/\">back to previous episode<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/\">back to list of stories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Joe Stanley 4 Stephens lead the team, with the warrant in his hand, he pounded on the door. There was no answer, and there was no sign of life inside. Some of the team had tried looking into the windows, but they saw and heard nothing. James\u2019 car was still in the driveway, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1123","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1123"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3056,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1123\/revisions\/3056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanharker.co.uk\/theghostlyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}