The Instrument of Thorns

In the autumn of 1994, I finally moved out of my parents’ house into a tiny, run-down cottage on the outskirts of a town called Blackwood. My best friend, Lena, and her boyfriend, Marcus, moved in with me to split the rent. The cottage was old, with creaking wooden floors and drafty windows, but it was cheap and we were excited to be independent.

We settled in slowly, buying mismatched furniture from thrift stores and hanging posters over the stained walls. The first few weeks were fine, just the awkward adjusting to living with each other. But then, about a month in, the trouble started.

It was a crisp October evening. We had a few friends over, sitting in the living room with the lights low, playing a card game. Suddenly, a loud crash came from the hallway that led to the only bathroom. The sound was like a heavy metal tray being thrown against the wall, repeated three times in quick succession. We all froze. The crash was so violent that the pictures on the walls rattled. I volunteered to check, my heart hammering. I walked down the narrow hallway, the floorboards groaning under my feet. The bathroom door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open, flicking the light switch, but the bulb flickered and died. In the darkness, I smelled something like burnt hair and old pennies. I fumbled for the string to the attic access above the toilet, and when I pulled it, a ladder unfolded and a shower of dust and dead leaves fell at my feet. There was nothing else. I climbed back down, shaken, and told the others it must have been the pipes.

But it wasn’t the pipes. Over the next weeks, we experienced more. At night, we’d hear a faint, rhythmic tapping from the attic, like someone drumming their fingers. Once, I woke up to find all the kitchen drawers open, the silverware scattered in a star pattern on the floor. Lena said she saw a woman in a long dress standing at the foot of her bed, but she dismissed it as a dream. Marcus started having nosebleeds, always at 3:33 in the morning.

Then, one night, I was alone. Lena and Marcus had gone to a concert. I was reading in the living room when I heard a low, guttural hum coming from the attic. It was like a chant, but not in any language I knew. I grabbed a flashlight and decided to confront it. I opened the attic ladder and climbed up. The attic was cluttered with old furniture and trinkets left by previous tenants. In the far corner, there was a music box, covered in dust and cobwebs. The lid was open, and a tiny ballerina was twirling, but the music was distorted, slow and mournful. And standing next to it was a figure — a gaunt, pale man with hollow eyes, dressed in a black suit. He pointed a long, skeletal finger at me and said, ‘You should not have come here.’ Then he vanished, leaving just the music box, still playing its broken tune.

I scrambled down the ladder, my legs shaking. I told Lena and Marcus when they returned, but they thought I was joking. That night, I had a nightmare: I saw myself from above, lying in my bed, while a shadowy figure with thorns growing from its shoulders stood over me, whispering, ‘This is my home now.’

We wanted to move, but our lease was up in six months, and we had no money. We tried to cope, to ignore the increasingly bold manifestations. But then things escalated. The attic door would swing open on its own. Objects would fly across rooms. Lena started sleepwalking, often waking up in the garden, covered in scratches. Marcus began to hear voices telling him to burn the house down.

We finally contacted a local priest, Father Maloney, who was known for dealing with the supernatural. He came to the cottage with holy water and a bible. After speaking with us, he went into the attic alone. He emerged pale, and said, ‘This is not a ghost. It’s a demon, bound to an ancient thorned relic hidden somewhere in this house. It feeds on your fear. You must find the relic and destroy it, or it will consume you.’

We searched the entire house, feeling its malevolent presence watching us. In the basement, we found a hidden compartment behind a loose brick. Inside was a small, dark wooden box. When we opened it, we found a crown made of twisted, blackened thorns. As soon as it was exposed, the temperature dropped, and we heard an enraged howl from all around. Father Maloney quickly wrapped his hands in his vestment, took the crown, and said a prayer. Then he drove to the church.

He tried to destroy the crown, but every attempt — fire, acid, crushing — failed. The thorns seemed to absorb damage. In desperation, he buried it in the church’s consecrated ground, and for a while, things quieted down.

But the demon wasn’t gone. It was just dormant. And it wanted us. Three weeks later, on a full moon, we woke up to find the house covered in thorny vines that had grown through the floorboards and walls, piercing the windows and doors. We were trapped. The vines were sharp, and they moved, slithering like snakes. Through the chaos, we saw the man in the black suit again, standing by the fireplace, his face not pale but black, like charred wood. He laughed, a dry, cracking sound, and said, ‘You cannot escape me. I am part of this land now.’

We managed to break through a window and fled to Father Maloney’s church. We spent the night in the sanctuary, shivering in our blankets, listening to the howling wind outside. In the morning, we found the crown on the church’s altar, its thorns dripping with dark sap. And the priest was gone.

We never went back to that cottage. We packed what we could and left town, carrying with us the lingering fear that the demon might follow. To this day, whenever I see a rose bush, I shudder, because I know that beyond the beauty of the flower lies the instrument of thorns, waiting to reclaim its home.