Or if it’s starving.
“How did it get in there?” I asked, taking up a wary stance just a few feet from the old woman’s chair.
“My brother trapped him,” she replied. The scratching stopped for a few seconds, and a vicious snorting sound came from the other side of the door. A cloud of curled wood shavings puffed up from beneath the door and settled in the little room like dust.
The creature was clawing its way out.
Sooner or later, it would break through the door.
“Your brother?” I asked. I looked around the little cabin, but there was no sign of another soul. “Where is he now?”
“Gone,” was all she said. But she inclined her head just a small degree toward the rear corner of the room, behind my feet…or was I just imagining that she did? Either way, my eyes followed the invisible path and lit upon a small, untidy pile of thin, brown, leathery scraps. They looked as if they’d been kicked into place rather than neatly swept. I inspected the strips more closely, and I gasped in horror at what I saw.
Small, bristly hairs still clung to the thin bits of skin. Sinews and veins, withered and dried with time, clung yet to the human remains.
This was what remained of the old woman’s brother. He had been torn to bits, and what was left of him had been unceremoniously kicked to the corner of the room. From the hard, gnarled look of the meat, and because there was no stench of rot, it seemed that he’d been dead for quite some time.
“What is this?” I cried, stumbling backward. The volume of my shriek seemed to agitate the thing behind the door; it slammed into the wood with a loud, blunt THUD that rattled the door in its jamb. The creature snarled, an unearthly, demonic rasp of anger and hunger that made my blood curdle; it was so unlike any animal noise I had ever heard.
The old woman gritted her teeth and raised the shotgun from her lap to her shoulder. “Pipe down,” she mumbled. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to the creature. Either way, we both followed her instructions. I fell silent, holding my mouth closed with my hand, and the animal ceased its snarling, though it resumed its long, loud scratching against the wood, and that scratching was somehow worse than the growling.
Scraaaatch. Scraaaatch. Scraaaaaatch.
I decided right then to flee. It was not the bravest decision, I know, and I am ashamed that I was so easily willing to escape, even if it meant that this old woman would be left alone to succumb to whatever rabid thing was slowly clawing its way through the door. But the constant, grating sound of the unseen claws against wood, the disquieting silence of the woman with the gun, the collection of human skin strips at my feet, even the eerie bluish-white light that filtered in through the cabin’s windows—it all served a horrifying end, and I knew I either had to leave right then or risk going mad from the sick terror of it all.
“Leave it,” I said, backing away toward the front door and motioning for her with my hand. “Come with me. We’ll find someone to come back and take care of it.”
But the old woman shook her head. “It’s almost through,” she croaked.
“And if it is? Let it be through! Come away, let the creature break free, and it will leave the cabin on its own.”
“It won’t leave until it’s fed,” she replied, her voice wet with sadness. She hadn’t so much as blinked her eyes the entire time I’d been inside the cabin.
“Then we’ll leave something out for it,” I cried, “or surely it will find something in the woods!” I suddenly felt desperate. I didn’t know what I was saying. “Let’s just go, please!”
The corners of the woman’s mouth set themselves into a line of iron. “It feeds on vengeance,” she whispered.
“What?” I cried, inching ever closer to the front door. “What does that even mean?”
“This devil will eat any who have seen it. It will hunt you to the ends of the earth and beyond. And I have seen it.”
All moisture evaporated from my mouth, leaving my tongue sandy and thick. “A faeligo,” I whispered, feeling a chill of horror crackle up my spine. The old woman nodded.
But the creature couldn’t be a faeligo.
It simply could not be.
The faeligo was fiction; a supernatural creature more horrific, a monster of unmatched brutality and wickedness, more terrifying than any vampire or demon. It was a story we told around campfires, a tale that set the children of Anomaly Flats screaming awake from endless nightmares. Part man, part beast, it is said to have the razor-sharp teeth of a bull shark. It spits a paralyzing venom on its victims, then slowly tears them apart while they still live. It has the claws of a grizzly and the head of a wolf, all stitched with thick steel wire onto a stunted, twisted humanoid body. And the most horrible thing about the supernatural creature is that it does not leave witnesses of its ghastliness behind. Once you’ve seen the faeligo, the demon will come for you, and it will never stop coming until it has slashed you to ribbons, eaten its fill, and left the rest of you to rot.
The faeligo. A fiction. A story.
I didn’t know what the creature behind the door truly was...but I know it wasn’t a faeligo.
Because faeligo don’t exist.
Still. The very thought set me shivering in the gloom.
“Come with me,” I pleaded once more. “We’ll find the sheriff, he’ll come and put the thing down. Look, the snow is letting up,” I added, even though I hadn’t chanced a look out the window. I, too, seemed unable to take my eyes from the trembling, weakening door.
Scraaaatch...scraaaatch...scraaaatch...
“I’ll be right here when it breaks through,” the woman said. “Blast its face clean off.” She spat onto the wooden floor.
“If you won’t come away, then shoot it now,” I begged, wiping drops of sweat from my forehead. The constant scratching was fraying the edges of my nerves and setting them crackling like the fire. “Shoot it now, through the door. You’re plenty close.”
The woman shook her head. “Only one shot,” she said, jiggling the shotgun. “Have to be sure.” She sneered cruelly. “And I’ll see its eyes before I blast the light out of them.”
“Please,” I said, trying one last time as my feet slid their way along the wall, “come with me.”
The old woman’s face remained hard. “No point,” she said. “I saw it when it mangled my brother. Do you understand? I saw it. I saw the faeligo. It will track me down. There’s no point in running.”
Suddenly, the scratching stopped, and there was a loud SLAM as the creature rammed the door. A sharp, hollow crack shot through the air, and the door buckled right in the middle.
The thing was breaking through.
“If you ain’t gonna help, you best get,” the woman said, her hand twisting anxiously on the stock of the gun. “Won’t be long now.”
The creature in the closet blew another cloud of shavings beneath the door, and several of the curled strips of wood brushed across my feet. I reached down with a shaking hand and plucked one from the floor. It was smeared with crimson red. The animal was clawing straight through its own skin, so desperate was it to escape.
Then the scratching came faster.
Scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch-scratch.
“I’m leaving! I am!” I warned the old woman, horrified that I was still standing witness to this unnatural terror, and equally horrified that I might actually abandon a frail, elderly woman to her small chances of survival against the unseen thing. She didn’t respond; she just kept that shotgun trained on the door. “I’ll go get help!” I cried. I didn’t know if I meant it. I told myself that I did, to have a reason for abandoning her to whatever fate would reveal its cruel face.
I turned to flee, but I tripped over a stack of logs that had been cut for the fire. I hit the floor hard, and the world swam in a sea of exploding stars for
several seconds. As I collected myself and struggled to climb back to my feet, there was another gut-twisting crack from the door to my right, and it exploded out into the room. I think I screamed—I must have screamed—and I propelled myself forward, scrabbling along the floor, as the creature from inside the closet flew into the room, snarling its grating, demon shriek. I lunged for the front door and pulled myself through just as I heard the blast of the shotgun. The scream of the animal mingled with the cry of the old woman, and God help me, I don’t know if she yelled out in pain or in victory; I did not go back into the cabin. I sprinted forward, back out into the snow, hardly flinching at the pain of the tiny razors. I was fueled by fear, I freely admit it, and I could feel nothing but the primal desire to be free of the cabin, free of the woods, and free of the creature that had clawed and shredded and bled its way through the door.
I ran. I ran longer and farther than I have ever run before. My lungs swelled with fire, but still I pushed on, sure that at any second, the creature would be upon me, its bloody claws sinking into my back, its teeth plunging into my neck. I did not look back, not once. I ran until I reached the edge of the woods, and my legs could support me no more. I skidded to the ground, but still I fled, grabbing fistfuls of grass and pulling myself forward, desperate to get away. After a time, my legs found themselves once more, and I limped painfully away from the forest, only then chancing a look over my shoulder. My heart caught, and my stomach crusted over with the rime of ice, but I saw no creature prowling through the woods. Nor did I hear its telltale snarl. Reassured, if not relieved, I hurried back to my house, ran inside, locked the door, and retreated to the safety and comfort of my rooms.
I have only just now, after three days, managed the courage to rouse myself from my bed. I haven’t eaten, I haven’t had anything to drink since I returned from the cabin in the woods. I want to keep myself safe, to keep myself wrapped in my sheets, to be buried inside a cocoon where that grating, chilling scraaatch that I still hear in the recesses of my mind can be muffled by the cotton. But it has been three days, and I cannot stay locked away forever. I need not go outside. Not quite yet, but soon. I will go mad if I stay in this house. And I must eat something. I must have water. I must resume life.
Three days is enough.
I heard the shotgun blast. I heard the monster’s vengeful squeal. The old woman must have shot it dead. She must have. I should not fear.
But I do fear. I fear because of what happened in that cabin...because of what occurred when the creature broke free of its wooden prison.
Because of what I saw.
I tried to shut my eyes. I tried desperately not to look. But terror overtook me, or some other sort of madness, and I opened my eyes—God help me, as I lay on that floor in the old woman’s cabin, fool that I am, I opened my eyes! And I saw the creature as it burst through the broken door and leapt across the room. It moved like a flicker of light, but in the flash, I saw it.
I saw it.
A twisted, stunted body, ropy with sinews, the skin drawn tight over the muscle. Gleaming claws, outstretched and thirsty for blood. The gray and white fur of a wolf’s head, its shark teeth lining the mouth in bleeding rows of thin knifepoints, a dripping string of black venom oozing from the corners of its mouth. Thick wire looped around the throat and the wrists where the animal pieces were sewn onto the human body.
It was a faeligo the old woman’s brother had trapped in the closet. I swear on my life, it was. I know how it sounds. I know the creature is a monster of myth. Yet I am as strong as steel in what I saw, and there may be a faeligo loose in Anomaly Flats.
It may be loose...and I saw it.
I pray the old woman put it down with her one shot. She seemed strong in her resolve, and I must believe that she succeeded. The alternative is too horrifying to comprehend. If I think on it for too long, my mind will mutiny, I am sure of it; the sheer terror will send me over the edge of madness.
Because I saw the faeligo, and the faeligo does not forget.
If the old woman did not kill it, the creature will come for me next.
But it has been three days, and I’ve seen no sign. Surely the woman hit her mark. Didn’t I hear the blast of the shotgun with my own ears? She could not have missed, not with that gun, not at that range. It would be impossible.
The faeligo has been killed.
Surely, the faeligo has been killed.
Now I pry open the door to my bedroom, and the fading light of dusk plays a trick on my eyes for just a quick second, and I think I see scratch marks dug into the other side of my door. My heart seizes, and I’ve never felt such a pain, but the light clears, and I can see that the door is whole, unblemished, and that the marks were a momentary imagination.
I shuffle toward the kitchen, sapped of my strength. I know what I must do. I must restore myself with whatever I can find in the cupboard, and then I must fetch the sheriff and tell him everything that happened in the cabin in the woods. He will venture out into the forest and make a proper investigation.
God willing, he will find the faeligo’s corpse.
I am not sure what he will find of the old woman.
I place my hand on the wall and lean for support as I cross the living room. I’m about to step into the kitchen when I hear it. My spine freezes like an icicle; my insides turn to water, and in the pit of my stomach, I am falling, falling…plunging into an endless pit. I think I am screaming, but I cannot tell, I cannot hear anything else over the sound of something scratch-scratch-scratching at my front door, cannot see anything but the pile of bloody wood shavings that already litter my entryway floor.
The legends are true. The monster is real.
The faeligo is alive.
Scratch...scratch...scraaaatch...
And it has come for me.
Microbes
Alison awoke in a strange, dark place.
She sat bolt upright, fear clutching at her chest, gripping her heart and shoving it over a cliff. Then a dim, dishwater light filtered in through a small window near the ceiling of the cold, wet room, and she remembered—or at least began to remember—and her heart found its footing once more.
She slowed her breathing. She put her hand to her head. She tousled her hair. She laughed.
“What is it?” said a voice in the darkness.
“It’s nothing,” she said. Then, shaking her head, she corrected herself: “It’s all of this.”
Bits of the night before scattered themselves across her memory like an upturned jigsaw puzzle. The Dive Inn. The jukebox. Tequila. Tequila. Dancing. Falling. Tequila. Something not tequila. Getting sick. Rallying. Tequila. The sidewalk. A scraped knee. Laughing.
And Toby.
“Where are we?” Alison yawned, stretching her arms overhead, then wincing at the way her head pounded when she moved. “Your mom’s basement?” She snorted.
Toby rustled in the sheets beside her. “A special place,” he said, his voice a cracking pane of glass in the darkness.
“You call your bedroom your special place?” Alison said, burying her eyes in the heels of her hands. “Oh my God, you’re such a dweeb.”
Silence filled the room. Then the mattress creaked as Toby stood, and she could hear the soft padding of his feet as he began pacing the floor.
Toby had always been odd. The kind of person who’d been made quiet by time and by scorn. In middle school, he would show up to the schoolhouse an hour early and hang sheets over the windows. He wore heavy jeans, thick boots, long sleeves, and leather work gloves year-round, even in the wet, humid, stifling Missouri summers, so he always smelled like sweat and body odor and, inexplicably, onions. In high school, he kept a collection of air fresheners dangling from his locker, the expensive kind, the kind with little air filters built right into them, rotating the fresheners out as they lost their usefulness. T
he smell of cheap pine and clinical cherry hung thickly in the hallway and clung to his books, his homework, his jackets. He never went to Homecoming, never went to prom. He didn’t have any friends to speak of, and as far as anyone could tell, he spent his weekends in his parents’ basement, pulling the legs off crickets and building traps for the neighborhood dogs.
That was what people said, anyway.
“Can I have some water?” Alison asked, making a sour face. Her throat was dry as kindling, and her mouth tasted like it had been holding cotton balls soaked through with spoiled milk.
“No.” Toby continued his pacing.
Alison sat up and scraped her tongue against her teeth. The flimsy sheet fell away, exposing her bare breasts to the darkness, and she instinctively clutched the sheet back to her chest, though it hardly mattered, since it was so dark in the room, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen them already anyway. “I can’t have any water?”
“There is no water.”
Alison shook her head in slow wonder. What a fucking weirdo, she thought. “You don’t have, like...a faucet?”
“No,” came the voice from the darkness. “Water pipes carry mold spores and bacteria. Dangerous microbes. Sometimes lead. You shouldn’t drink the water from faucets.”
“Jesus, Toby, settle down. It’s just water.”
“There are microbes,” he said again, more softly this time, and his voice was tied down by a deep, sudden sadness.
“Oooookay,” Alison said, rolling her eyes and throwing off the sheets, modesty be damned. “I’m gonna go.”
It Came from Anomaly Flats Page 4