The door thwacked as Chris smmed it behind himself. His breathing psed and it became harder to breathe through his mouth when his brain already thought they were dead as soon as he was grabbed. The eerie silence settled in his ears as he slumped behind the door, his back pushing against it to the floor. He hoped it would be enough to shield the horror he just went through; hoping it could somehow wall off the horror he just faced, the horror out there beyond the door, the horror in that photograph.
His hand, trembling like a leaf in a gale, swiped the slick sweat coating his face. It was an attempt to calm down his senses, turn off the fight-or-flight switch, and calm his mind. It was a futile attempt against the pure, unadulterated terror that had him in its grip. He attempted to erase the image and remove it from his eyes, but like sandpaper, it was stuck there on repy. The image of him screaming for help but to no avail, the decayed flesh on the arms of his attackers like they were ripped straight from a George A. Romero zombie movie, and worst of all that face, that putrid and horrifying face staring at him with its eyes, waving at him with those long skeletal fingers.
The photograph, God, that photograph, he thought. He csped both his hands to his face and began to sob. He didn’t start to cry because of what he had just seen, though that was a part of it, no it was because now he knew more than ever that it was time. Time to bring them back. He walked over to grab his phone, but he paused for a moment. Doubting he could do it himself. That is when he heard a whimper, a whimper sort of like a dying dog in the street, but it didn’t sound right. The tone of it was off. It wasn’t a sad whimper or a whimper that was a call out for help, this whimper was a happy one. Joyful in its tone the sound continued.
Chris thought the noise was in his head, the fear was making him hallucinate, that was until he saw something down the hallway. It didn’t register at first because he was afraid of sitting outside. However, when he focused on the hallway his fight or flight senses kicked right back in. Down the hallway was a pair of eyes sticking out a door frame, Chris’ bedroom. The deep saturated purple tore at Chris’ very mind. The eyes were impossibly sticking out sideways of the door like the creature was floating sideways. The thing’s long skeletal fingers poked out the frame and tapped against it, each time it raised a finger, a sticky noise, like ripping sticky notes off a wooden desk, echoed down the hallway.
It never moved a God damn muscle, it only stood and watched like a corpse hanging on a coat rack. A coat rack facing sideways. Then it whispered. The voice, a greasy, low rumble that slithered down the hallway, like a snake slithering in the grass, and made its way inside Chris’ ears. The voice drew a tear from his mind like ripping a page from a book. “Ohhhh, so many…so little time…”, each word it spoke came with a wet, sucking sound as if it was sucking its teeth with excitement.
“You’ll bring them here won’t ya, Chrissie? Bring them here like mbs are brought to sughter. A little favor for wittle ol’ me?” It gurgled then, a sound like thick soup bubbling in a blocked drain, it let out a sickly giggle that sent out a fresh wave of cold sweat prickling Chris’s skin as those eyes continued to stare with anticipation, waiting for a response.
“No”, Chris choked out, the word a dry, pathetic rasp. “I won’t do it, I won’t.” He tried for defiance, tried to puff up that tiny spark of courage that still flickered inside, but his mind locked up, his breath locked deep inside the depth of his lungs unwilling to leave and be in the same air as this thing.
It giggled again, a wet, clicking sound this time. “Huhuhu, don’t you fret your little head, Chrissy-boy. I’ll do youuu a favor, I’ll bring them here. I’ll visit them all and bring them here so we can settle this matter once and for all, yes, once and for all.”
Before Chris could even manage a wheeze, the creature-the thing - seemed to melt back into the bck maw of the bedroom. Gone from sight, but not from sound. A new noise now drifted out, a wet, tearing sound like a canvas being ripped apart, followed by the sickening crunch of bone, a sound that made Chris’s stomach clench and heave. Then, terrifying silence.
A moment stretched into an eternity, then something shuffled back into view. Chris’s eyes strained, useless in the oppressive darkness. He barely even saw it. The only thing he could truly see were those eyes. Those God damn eyes. They burned with an inner, malevolent light, twin pools of violet fire in the gloom. A low growl rumbled up from its chest, a primal sound that vibrated on the floorboards and sent shivers crawling up Chris’s spine. It stalked towards him, a predator savoring its moment. Just for a heartbeat, the instant before he reached in the darkness for the doorknob, before his legs screamed in protest and finally obeyed, he saw it clearly in the sliver of moonlight that knifed through the window in the hallway.
Purple, a deep color like a fresh bruise, coated its fur. Deep silver fangs, wickedly sharp, glistened with a wet sheen – not just wet, but slick. Sharp silver cws, like polished shards of ice, flexed at the ends of its paws. And the drool… it wasn’t normal spittle. It was thick, vicious, and carried a faint, sickly sweet odor as it dripped from those lethal fangs, a disturbing shade of violet itself. It hunched low, coiled, and ready to spring at him, swiping those enormous silver cws at his throat.
Maybe it was blind luck, maybe it was an instinct long forgotten by man, whatever it was it saved his life in that split moment. The creature lunged at him and before Chris even knew it, he was already halfway out the door. He could hear the creature snarling behind him and he felt a stinging sensation on his right leg below the knee. Even with the pain surging, he never stopped sprinting. He kept going and going until he reached a pce, somewhere he considered safe. The Wespin Police Department.
He sat on the bench just outside the building near the front door. He sat there for a while with the occasional person walking by, some staring at him with worried looks. He rubbed his face free of the sweat that was still clinging to his face. “I’ll bring them here”, the voice echoed. It, alongside the photograph, was on repeat. Now he had no choice. He had to warn them that the creature was coming. He had to. Chris hauled himself upright, a grunt escaping his lips, but the moment his weight nded on his right leg, it buckled. A scream, raw and involuntary, cwed its way up his throat, choked off by the white-hot agony that suddenly bloomed below his knee. It wasn’t just pain; it was searing, ravenous fire, the kind that licked at bone and sinew. The adrenaline, that fickle friend in times of terror, had packed its bags and left him to face the brutal reality of what just happened.
He looked down, his breath catching in his chest. The denim of his jeans was ripped in four distinct pces, ragged tears that hinted at the violence of the encounter. Beneath the shredded fabric, the truth was far uglier. Four angry red lines, like the gouges of some monstrous garden tool, marred his flesh just below the kneecap. They weren’t neat cuts; they were ragged, uneven, as if something wickedly sharp had raked him. The wound didn’t stop there. It lengthened, a sickening trail of torn skin and oozing blood that snaked down his shin, disappearing into the sock bunched around his ankle. He knew where it came from.
Guess I didn’t get away totally unscathed, the thought drifted through the fog of pain, a pathetic, almost comical understatement. It was the kind of thought that flickered at the edges of sanity, the kind you had right before you were swallowed whole by madness. With a groan that was half-sob, half-surrender, he let his head fall back against the rough wood of the bench. The pain was still there, a relentless gnawing, but a strange, heavy weariness was creeping in, a seductive pull toward oblivion. Soon enough, his eyes smmed shut against his will and his consciousness faded away, he fell into slumber.
