by Brian Harmon
Maybe he could break a window. It wasn’t ideal. He didn’t want to damage anyone’s property. And he certainly didn’t want to risk cutting himself on broken glass in his haste. But there was only so long he could play ring-around-the-cabin with the mutant bird before it finally caught him.
But as he rounded the front of the cabin, the door swung open for him. The blind woman stood inside, gesturing for him to enter.
He had to admit, he’d found himself facing easier decisions than continuing his pointless Tom and Jerry chase around the building or accepting an invitation into a dark, creepy, cabin in the woods by a scary, eyeless specter, but he supposed the choice was fairly clear.
He ran inside and closed the door behind him just as the creature rounded the corner of the building.
He fumbled for the deadbolt, found it, latched it and then pressed his back against the door. Then he remembered all those horror movie scenes just like this one where, after a brief moment of relief, an axe or a machete or some monster’s weapon-like appendage tore through the door—sometimes missing impaling the hapless victim by a hair and sometimes not—and he quickly stepped away from the door and deeper into the darkness.
He switched off his flashlight and waited.
Through the open window, he saw the monster approach. Its strange head swiveled around, searching. It opened its mouth and hissed. Then it stopped and looked through the glass. He could see it there. It had only one eye, and barely that. The remaining one looked as if a cloudy, white scar ran down the middle of it. And yet the thing seemed to be staring right at him.
Eric held his breath and remained perfectly still.
The monster glared at him. Its strange mouth hung partially open, fangs gleaming in the moonlight. It let out its breath in a long, low hiss and a curtain of steam spread across the window pane, obscuring its hideous features.
His imagination took full advantage of the situation. It insisted that the creature could see him, that it was studying him, calculating its next move. Worse still, it suggested that while he stood there, watching the bird beast watch him, any number of even more horrible things were lurking there in the darkness with him, creeping silently toward him, fangs and claws bared, ready to spring at him at any moment.
At the very least, it reminded him that he was sharing this black room with the blind woman. Where had she gone? Was she standing right beside him? Right behind him? Was she even now reaching out for him? Did she happen to be holding a bloody axe?
He had to force back a hard shudder at the thought.
The moon vanished again. The outside grew dark. The monster faded to a mere shadow.
Eric waited.
The shadow shifted. The creature moved.
When the moon came back a moment later, it was gone.
He didn’t dare move. He stood there in the darkness, waiting, listening, expecting at any moment that the thing would burst through the window or kick down the door with a triumphant, mocking hiss.
He wanted to ask Isabelle if she could still feel the thing, but he didn’t dare risk exposing himself with the glow of the phone.
Seconds passed, and then whole minutes, without a sound. The moon slipped in and out beyond the window. Nothing else stirred.
Finally, he crept to the window and peered out. He was alone. He let himself relax.
Once he was convinced that nothing would come chasing after him, he turned on his flashlight and quickly scanned the room. His imagination had been teasing him with thoughts of things even more horrible than the Ostrich-stein lurking in the darkness, just waiting for him to turn on a light and look them in the eyes before leaping out and tearing out his throat. But there were no more monsters. Even the blind woman had vanished again. Instead, he quickly realized that there was something even more terrifying about the room in which he now stood.
He’d been here before.
The furniture was different. Everything had been thoroughly cleaned. The lampshade had been changed. There was not a trace of blood. But it was the same room. It was the same cabin.
This was where the bloody woman’s end began.
Chapter Thirty
A man died in this room. Eric didn’t know his name, or what he looked like, or even how long ago it happened, but he knew that it was true. He’d seen it. He’d stood in the open doorway, the winter wind blowing at his back, and stared in horror at all the blood.
The memory wasn’t even his own, it belonged to the bloody woman, before she was bloody, before she fled into the freezing night and met her end on the ice. But it might as well have happened to him. It was burned into his brain now, impossible to forget, and it filled him now with such overwhelming emotions that he could barely stand it.
So much blood.
The shock of the scene remained with him, the dreadful realization that he was dead, that he’d been murdered while she was away. Why? And more importantly, how? What could’ve done this?
And then the noises from the hallway. Someone was here. Something was here.
Eric could barely breathe. He wanted to throw the door open and run, back out into the snow, as fast and as far as she could go…
He closed his eyes and made himself take a breath. That was a long time ago. And it wasn’t even him. He was getting confused again.
The blind woman led him here to escape the ostrich monster. She must’ve known it was safe. Or at least marginally safer than outside, he supposed. He needed to think things through. He needed to keep his head.
His cell phone rang. It was Paul again.
“What’re you doing?” he asked when Eric answered.
“You know me,” he replied. “Just screwing around, like usual.”
Paul chuckled. “Right. Because you’re the immature one.”
“Well, there’s a time to pull your pants up and be a man and there’s a time to run away and hide in a creepy cabin where you’re pretty sure a murder once took place until you’re sure the scary monster went away.”
“Better you than me, bro.”
Eric frowned. “What happened to you ditching the wedding to come help me?”
“That was when I was bored out of my mind. Now I’m at the bar. And I’m buzzed. I’m good now.”
“Lucky you.”
“I know. So what’re you hiding from?”
“Kind of looked like an ostrich, but not.”
“Oh… Did you get a picture?”
A picture would’ve been good. It hadn’t occurred to him all night to snap a picture of the monsters he kept seeing until it was too late. He’d been too busy running for his life each time he saw one. But he did like to have the pictures. It was nice to have proof that these trips were real and not simply psychotic episodes.
His first trip into the weird had been pretty laid-back. Most of the oddities had just been sitting there. It was like a zoo. He simply stopped every now and then and snapped a picture to send to Karen, proof that it was the world and not him that had gone utterly insane. But since then, most of the monsters he’d encountered had kept him on the run, rarely leaving time for pictures.
“Nope,” he replied. “No pictures yet.”
“Bummer.”
“No pictures?” asked Kevin.
“No pictures,” confirmed Paul.
“That sucks,” said Kevin.
“Sorry,” said Eric.
“You’ve got to take these things more seriously. How are the rest of us supposed to enjoy your crazy adventures if you don’t bring back pictures?”
“That’s right,” said Kevin.
“You’re right. I’m a selfish bastard.”
“It only takes a second to snap a pic.”
“It’s right there on your phone,” agreed Kevin.
Eric shook his head. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll try to kill me again later.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. What else have you seen out there?”
“What haven’t I seen out here?” He tried to recall
all that had happened that day and found it weird to think that it had all taken place in such a short amount of time. It felt like a week ago that he left home.
“Any idea yet what’s going on?”
“I think it’s starting to come together a little.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.” Eric peered out the window again. There was still no sign of the ostrich monster.
“You figure out how to get under the lake, yet?”
“Starting to.”
“Awesome. Well, I just wanted to check and see if you were still alive.”
“Very kind of you.”
“I know. But now I’ve got to piss.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “Classy.”
“Yeah. I’m a classy kind of guy.”
“Clearly.”
“Stay safe. I’ll check back in later.”
“Sure. You do that.” Eric disconnected the call and shook his head.
His cell phone chimed at him: DID I EVER TELL YOU HOW HAPPY I AM TO BE STUCK IN YOUR HEAD AND NOT YOUR BROTHER’S?
“I think you did, actually. Once or twice.” He turned and scanned the room around him. “Do you feel anything?”
THAT PLACE FEELS LIKE FETTARSETTER
Eric took a step backward, he swept the entire room with his flashlight. “Another monster?”
HARD TO TELL. IT’S STILL HARD TO FEEL ANYTHING THROUGH THE MIST
He tried to relax, but it was difficult. He was standing at the scene of a murder. The very thought made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
He seemed to be alone. He’d been standing here talking into his phone for a while. If anything was here, it reasoned that it would’ve shown itself by now. Nothing else in the triangle had been shy. Except for that little, blond-haired boy, perhaps.
But it was hard to think clearly when his eyes kept drifting to the lampshade. It was a different shade. It didn’t even look like the one from his vision. But the lamp was the same. It was so very easy to picture the other one on it, so easy to see the blood dripping… dripping…
Eric shuddered. He wished he could just leave. He’d had enough of this nightmare place. But if Holly was right, there was nowhere on earth he could hide once the rain had come and gone.
He killed his light to reduce the glare and peered out the window again. No sign of Franken-ostrich. It seemed to have moved on.
But in the silence of the cabin he heard a sound, a shuffling, scuttling noise, somewhere in the back. He turned, his breath caught in his throat, his heart hammering at his ribcage. It was coming from the short hallway at the back of the room. From behind one of those doors.
He stood there, still as stone, silent, but inside his head he was screaming the same foul word over and over and over again.
Occasionally, during extremely terrifying moments like these, he surprised himself by doing something utterly stupid, like walking toward the strange noise instead of running away from it. He couldn’t explain the phenomenon any more than he could stop it. It was as if his body began working independently of his rational brain. To his horror, he found that it was happening again.
His cell phone held out in front of him, as if the tiny device offered any kind of protection, he crept across the quiet room and switched on the flashlight.
Nothing was there. Only the two doors stood before him, both of them slightly ajar. It was enough, he realized, to hide whatever might be hiding behind them while clearly revealing his approaching light to it.
Stupid. This was so stupid.
He stepped into the hallway and reached out a trembling hand. (So stupid!) He hesitated, as if taunting himself, and then he pushed open the door…
Darkness there, and nothing more, he thought.
An empty bathroom.
No monsters.
He realized he was holding his breath and forced himself to breathe.
He turned his attention to the other door. The bedroom, no doubt. It would be empty, too. He was sure of it. And yet his heart still pounded.
He reached out again…
The door creaked open a little…before his fingers brushed the wood…
He stepped back, almost stumbling. Did he say that foul word aloud that time? He wasn’t sure, but he thought he did.
In the beam of his flashlight, a strange shape appeared, like countless spidery legs pouring into the hallway, scuttling across the carpet, seeming to grow bigger and bigger as it filled more and more of the doorway.
This was it. This was the thing that was coming down the hallway in the bloody woman’s vision. This was the thing she was fleeing when she ran out into the night.
It didn’t make any sense. What was it doing here? Surely it hadn’t been here this whole time. At least one other person had to have been here since then. Somebody cleaned this cabin, erasing the gory evidence of what happened here. Why would it be back now? Did it come and go as it pleased?
But Eric didn’t waste time trying to think up answers to these questions. His brain startled back into some semblance of sanity once more, he turned and fled.
He ran out into the cool night and tried to focus on the lake. Around the shore would likely be the shortest route back to Ned’s and Mrs. Fulrick’s houses, far faster than taking the road around, which was what had gotten him into this predicament in the first place. (Assuming, of course, that he’d be able to find either of those houses in the dark.)
He was across the small, wooded yard and heading into the forest when he remembered the hairy ostrich monster that was the reason he’d entered the cabin in the first place. He stumbled to a stop and swung the flashlight in all directions.
It wasn’t here. It’d moved on.
But when he glanced back at the cabin, he saw the thing emerging from the front door he left open in his haste.
It looked like a spider, except that it had way more than eight legs. A veritable forest of hairy, spindly legs skittered out into the moonlight, dragging behind them what looked like an enormous snake’s body behind it.
It had no eyes or nose that he could see, and yet it came straight at him, as if it could see him standing there. Behind it, more and more of that impossible serpent body slid from the doorway.
He didn’t stick around to see how big it was. He turned and fled, as fast as the forest foliage would allow. He didn’t think about where he was going. His only thought was to run fast and run far.
But it wasn’t long before he realized that he was following in the fatal footsteps of the bloody woman. If he continued on in this direction, he’d only end up at the cove where she died. Only this time, there’d be no ice. He’d plunge right into the lake itself, and probably right into the waiting jaws of the damn shallows walker.
He decided against that route and instead made a hard left.
The forest was quiet. The spirits didn’t bother him as he ran. There was no sign of the blind woman or anyone else. Neither did he catch any glimpses of the ostrich monster.
He dared a look behind him and saw nothing following him. Like the ostrich with its limp, he seemed to be outpacing the…whatever the hell that thing was… Luck seemed to be with him for the moment. But then, after just a few minutes of running through the woods, he emerged from the forest into a wide-open space and promptly cursed.
He was back at Fettarsetter’s house again, this time in the back yard.
And he wasn’t alone.
There, on the back porch, a familiar black shape lay staring at him with glowing, ember eyes.
The hellhound.
Somewhere behind him, something stirred in the brush. He turned and looked behind him. His light fell on those spidery legs as they swarmed through the forest.
And there was something else, too. Something up high. Branches snapped and fell to the ground in front of those many, skittering legs. He glanced up. A strange, fiery glow was moving toward him through the treetops.
He’d seen that strange glow before. In the dream. It was the thing that loo
med over the bloody woman as she lay in agony on the ice. It was the thing that killed her.
Eric quickly weighed his options. He didn’t have many. Making a break for the front door and asking Fettarsetter for help was an absolute last resort. Even Isabelle said that guy was bad news. And she knew about these sorts of things. He could head back into the woods and hope to find more friendly spirits like the blind woman, but he was just as likely to run afoul of something very unfriendly. He could head for the road and try again to make the four-mile trip back to Ned’s place. (Because that worked out so well the first time.) And finally, he could head for Fettarsetter’s dock, which he could see from where he stood while the moon was shining. There was a small boat waiting there, promising to carry him safely back across the lake.
Holly told him to stay out of the water, but she didn’t say anything about going on the water. (And what could possibly go wrong, he asked himself, by mincing words with a witch?)
Yes, it was a bad idea, but right now it seemed like the only one he had. It was far too dangerous to remain on foot. And Fettarsetter was bad news. That was all there was to it.
Forcing himself not to run, he made his way down the hill toward the dock, keeping one eye on the hellhound and his ears open for things moving in the woods.
The hellhound lifted its head and watched him. It made a huffing, growling sort of noise, as if agitated, but it didn’t charge him. For a moment it didn’t even stand. And when it did, it followed him at a slow pace.
It was strange. The thing almost seemed docile, like it was nothing more than an oversized and peculiarly unattractive dog. And yet it had acted hostile toward him repeatedly. Even now, as it loped down the hill toward him, it seemed to be slowly working itself up.
Maybe Jordan was right. Maybe he simply smelled like something bad.
He reached the dock without being mauled and glanced at his escape vehicle. It was only a little john boat, but it was all Eric needed. It even had a motor, although he had no idea if he’d be able to start it. Wasting no time, he climbed inside and began untying it.