Terror in the Shadows Vol 5

by Scare Street

  ***

  On the 27th of March, 2015, Salma Ayman Salem was born. Everyone said she looked just like her mother.

  ***

  “She’s beautiful.”

  Twelve opened her eyes slowly, still exhausted from a mix of residual anesthesia and catering to tons of family members who had come in and out of her hospital room over the past two days. Ayman’s uncle owned the hospital, and his family had the luxury of not having to abide by any rules when it came to visiting hours. She had been introduced to family members she knew she would probably never see again, a custom of the country she was still getting used to.

  When everyone had left, she had nursed Salma and had fallen into a deep sleep. She needed the rest, knowing the visits would continue the next day, and the day after that. Ayman had assured her he would try to keep them at a minimum, but his mother had a way of ignoring him and doing whatever she wanted.

  Still, her current visitor was someone she had hoped never to see again, and in the dim light, she could see him cradling her daughter. She sat up quickly, wincing at the pain, and tried to get out of bed.

  “Don’t do that, you’ll only rip open the stitches,” Karma said, walking out of the shadows and sitting on the bed next to her. Twelve reached out her hands and took her baby away from him, slowly, carefully.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I heard about your new bundle of joy and thought congratulations were in order,” Karma replied. “I know, I know, I should stick to visiting hours, but wow! You’d think they were all here to greet Jesus, right?”

  Twelve looked her former boss in the eye, knowing there was more to his visit. “Thank you for coming. Now, goodbye.”

  Karma sighed. “I expected a little more hospitality.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re family, Twelve.”

  Twelve shook her head. “No, we’re not,” she said. “And it’s Tala now.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Why are you really here?”

  Karma got up from the bed and pulled a chair to her side, slumping down. “There’s a reason why we don’t tell you about choices when we hire you. There’s always a cost, and humans aren’t very good at accepting cost.”

  “What cost?”

  Karma nodded towards Salma, and a chill ran down Twelve’s spine. She held her daughter closer. “Hiring isn’t random,” Karma said. “There’s a system to it.”

  “No.” Twelve refused to believe him, shaking her head.

  “Well, you know what they say about me. But, I do have good news,” Karma said, leaning forward and smiling. “When your daughter’s twenty and the Secretary comes for her, you’ll be given another chance to choose. You can either come back home, or let her take your place.”

  “You can’t do this,” Twelve screamed at him, her baby shuddering in her arms.

  “It’s how the balance works.” Karma was suddenly serious. “Twenty Knights, aged twenty, replaced only by blood.”

  Twelve tried to back away from him, careful not to topple over the other side of her bed. Karma got up and put a hand on her shoulder, freezing her in place.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We can’t force her. It’s a choice. It’s always a choice, just like you and your mother before you. But, we know what she’ll choose, don’t we?”

  “My mother?”

  “One of the finest Knights we ever had,” Karma nodded. “A shame really.”

  “Get out,” Twelve hissed, fighting her fear, trying to sound strong.

  “That really needs to be done with a little more conviction.”

  She was about to say something when his face changed. The strong jawline became more prominent, extending into almost a muzzle. His smile became predatory, and as his lips stretched, sharp fangs appeared between them. His eyes darkened, even in the minimal light of the hospital room, until they were so black she could have sworn they weren’t there. His skin became taut, stretching till it almost tore. A foul smell filled the room, and Karma stared at her the way a predator would contemplate how best to eat its prey.

  “There are things you can’t change,” he hissed, his voice raspy, like sandpaper, tearing through her like small nails scratching across her insides. She shivered, her heartbeat quickening, her breath held as she stared in frozen horror.

  Karma chuckled, a deep growl coming from within him as he grabbed her arm. Fingers had turned into talons, and nails dug into her skin, drawing blood.

  “Choices will be made, whether you like it or not,” he continued. “There is a balance, and that balance will be maintained. Try to stop it, and you become mine to feed on as I see fit.”

  He bent closer, black eyes boring into her, and she could hear the screams of generations of Knights ringing in her head. He licked his lips, his tongue a dark black that oozed with rot.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  She didn’t respond, and he squeezed her arm until his nails scraped bone, and she screamed.

  “Do I?”

  She nodded quickly, more in fear of what else he would do if she didn’t respond in some way. He smiled at her and returned to his former self. She stared at his handsome features, but the damage had been done. She knew the horrors that were hidden beneath the surface.

  Karma nodded and adjusted his suit. He reached over to stroke Twelve’s hair and pulled his hand back when she flinched, hiding her baby away from him. They eyed each other a moment, and when she blinked, he disappeared.

  Twelve stared at where he had stood for a long time before what he said hit her. The realization of what was going to happen, and what she would have to do, rushed through her in a torrent of emotions.

  In the darkness of her hospital room, Twelve cradled her daughter and wept.

  * * *

  Fairy Tales

  By Anna Sinjin

  From a young age, I knew fairy tales were real.

  The good ones, the bad ones… especially the bad ones. To be honest, I didn’t know if there were good fairies. As a small child, I remembered watching Disney’s Cinderella and wishing for my own fairy godmother.

  Maybe a fairy godmother could fix my heart with a wave of her wand. Bibbity bobbity boo.

  Then I grew up, and I realized the Grimms had it right, and Disney was selling fluff.

  There was no doubt in my mind wicked witches existed in this world—I saw them every day. My parents told me not to point, not to stare when I saw one. They said it was rude, but maybe they were trying to protect me. If the witch thought I didn’t know her true identity, she might leave me alone.

  My parents were always there to supervise me. They said they wanted to keep me safe.

  Keep me safe from what?

  From strangers, from getting lost, from getting hurt. There were so many reasons to watch children.

  But I knew what their real reason was.

  Witches and monsters went for the people who were alone in this world because they had no protection. When parents looked away for even a minute, that was when evil creatures made their move. That was when children disappeared.

  The peasants of Germany and the surrounding areas back then knew how to protect their children. The stories were told so they’d be prepared and watch for danger. But time and the complacency of the civilized world relegated these warnings to mere fairy tales. In this modern world with electric lights to stave off the terrors of the dark, no one believed in them.

  Except me.

  I knew the monsters were real. I heard them, I saw them. Why would no one listen?

  My whole, albeit short, life had been spent listening to my parents telling me to be careful. Don’t play too hard; make sure to rest; don’t read or watch anything that might rile me up. They said I had a bad heart.

  Growing up, my wish was to play with the other kids, but I couldn’t because I would get lightheaded and short of breath. I suppose they were right.

  I was a pale, weak child. Thin to anorexic. I had no app
etite, no strength, and the restrictions placed on me made me intensely bored. So, I spent my time reading by a window.

  My mind had gobbled up everything I could find by Hans Christian Andersen, so I moved on to the Brothers Grimm. I was reading Cinderella and was curious about the differences in the Grimm version compared to Disney’s. My mom came up, stroked my hair, and asked if I would read to her. So, I did.

  I read to her about one of Cinderella’s stepsisters cutting off the end of her heel and the other cutting off her big toe so her foot would fit into the glass slipper. As the prince rode away with his potential bride each time, the birds sang out to him to look back and see the blood trailing from her shoe.

  That’s when my parents took my books away.

  “Unsuitable material for children,” they had said.

  But the damage had been done; my eyes had been opened to what lurked in the shadows of the world.

  For the longest time I could hear them, but that was all. The patter of tiny feet along the wooden floor. The high-pitched drumming of wings beating like a hummingbird’s. Soft, incoherent voices chattering away in the corners of the room, their bodies invisible to my eyes.

  I tried to find them, but the moment I concentrated, the sounds would quiet till they were gone. Years passed, and my ears became accustomed to these noises. I stopped looking for them, stopped noticing them. It became like background noise, heard but tuned out.

  My sight was the next to develop, and I began to see glimpses from the corners of my eyes. Creatures that before had existed only in my imagination were now real. Of course, when I turned my head to look at them, they disappeared.

  When the day came, and I saw my first witch standing in front of me instead of hiding in my peripherals, I wanted to point and show my parents, prove to them the monsters were real.

  She had sparse, crooked yellow teeth and ugly black whiskers jutting out above her upper lip like a man’s mustache. My parents shushed me before my actions were noticed, and I was safe.

  Now the situation was deteriorating. The gig was up, as they say.

  It started with the goblin. It didn’t hurt me, but I wasn’t expecting it. When I went outside to walk around the backyard that afternoon, I saw it sitting in the bushes along our fence.

  It was small and bony, with two long, pointy ears sticking back from its head, and its scaly skin a decomposed grayish-green. I froze in horrified fascination when I saw it.

  The creature was hunched over something I couldn’t make out, and there was a wet, smacking noise coming from it. It lifted its head and looked at me, its eyes green and slit like a cat’s. Two black holes served as its nose and its large mouth was filled with dark jagged teeth. Blood was dripping down its chin as its thin lips peeled back, a low growl emitting from its skinny throat.

  It dropped the maimed carcass upon which it had been feeding and stood on its short legs. Its arms were too long for its small body, and its thin fingers with their wicked talons dragged along the ground.

  My paralysis broke when it took a step toward me. I ran back into the house, screaming for my mom to save me. It was a Saturday, so my dad was also home. I poured out the story of what I had just seen as they comforted me in their safe embrace.

  As my dad went outside to see what had really frightened me, my mom tried to convince me it wasn’t real, that goblins didn’t exist. When he returned, his face was grim, and I knew he had seen it, too.

  He admitted there was a dead rabbit in the bushes. A hole had been dug under the fence, and there were claw marks in the dirt and on the fence boards. He didn’t know how long it had been there, but there had been numerous sightings of foxes in the neighborhood. The most likely story was that a fox had dug under our fence, brought in its meal to eat in peace, and then I came out and saw either the remains or the fox itself.

  After that, the sightings became more and more frequent as the creatures refrained from hiding. I could feel their eyes watching me, waiting for my reaction as I pretended not to see them.

  The doctor said it was hormones—teenagers did some crazy things when their hormones changed. We would’ve been amazed at some of the cases he’d dealt with that could’ve been chalked up to hormones. He said if my parents had waited and tried to eliminate as much of the stress in my life as they could have, everything would have been fine. That I would grow out of the phase with nothing worse than some bad nightmares. And those would fade in time, too.

  But life hadn’t gotten better.

  The creatures knew they were no longer a secret, and they were coming for me.

  During the day things were quiet—they slept, or at least kept out of the light. Creatures of darkness don’t like the light.

  But I heard them at night.

  Their claws scratched at the hardwood floors, inside the walls, outside my door, under my bed. Sometimes, I saw their eyes through the windows. Yellow, red, green. Slits of color, malignant and patient.

  They hadn’t found a way in, but they will. They’ll use their razor-sharp teeth to eat a hole in the wall, or they’ll use their claws to rip through the window screen.

  I didn’t trust nightlights—they were too far away and too accessible to the creatures. Instead, I had a lamp on the nightstand by the head of my bed. It stayed on most nights. I learned to sleep without the darkness.

  After a sleepless night spent in listening for their scuttling in the attic and within the walls, and fearing they would find a way in, I went to my mom.

  It was yesterday morning, and I tried to be calm, but she wouldn’t listen. She said I was hearing mice. She would call my father and have him pick up some traps on his way home. I tried to argue, but there was no other explanation I could give. Afterward, I spent most of the day in the backyard, making sure to stay away from the tall fence surrounding the yard.

  I hadn’t forgotten the goblin.

  When my dad got home, they had a long talk behind a closed door. They seemed nervous when they came out, and their laughter at the banal chat of the day’s happenings was forced. Before I went to bed, my dad set traps for the rodents and assured me there was nothing to worry about. They’d all be caught by morning, and if they weren’t, they’d set more traps or hire a professional to take care of them.

  There was a dark fairy outside my window an hour after the house was quiet.

  I couldn’t see its transparent wings because they were beating fast like a hummingbird’s to keep the fairy aloft. Its eyes were huge and black, though, like an insect’s, and it pressed its face and hands against the screen as if impatient to get inside. A multitude of shark teeth was visible in its large, grinning mouth.

  When I flashed my LED at the window, the fairy vanished.

  Just as I was drifting off to sleep later, I heard the scurrying of tiny feet above my ceiling. Grunting drifted in from the hall. I held my breath, my eyes widening as I listened.

  My parents’ room was down that way.

  After a few minutes, the muffled grunts stopped. My ears strained to catch a sound that would alert me to the danger, if there was any. But the only thing I heard was the scratching and shuffling of the tiny feet in the attic.

  I glanced at the clock near the bed, and when ten minutes had passed with no further disturbance, I felt reasonably assured all was well.

  The next morning, I was relieved to see my mom unharmed, but not greatly surprised. She was talking on the phone and sounded tense, worried.

  I watched her over my bowl of soggy cereal as she came out of her office. My eyes darted to the questionable food in front of me when she looked my way, and I pretended to be interested but bored with what I was eating. Considering how tired I was, it wasn’t difficult to do.

  “Becka,” she addressed me, and I knew something was wrong.

  She only ever called me affectionate pet names like ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie.’ To use even my nickname was a clear sign something was wrong. I put down my spoon and waited.

  “Your father and I are,” s
he said before pausing to search for the right word, “worried. We know the doctor said your night terrors—”

  “They’re not night terrors,” I interjected.

  “Nightmares, then. We know the doctor said they were normal and that they’d go away, but we’re worried because they seem to be getting worse instead of better.”

  She was right, just not in the way she thought.

  “Is there something you’re not telling us, Becka? Did something happen that scared you? Is it still happening? Are you stressed about something? Are you lonely? Is this about wanting to go to high school and being with people your own age?”

  My neck felt like a dyslexic bobble-head as it shook my skull left and right at all her questions. Each shake brought on another suggestion in a more desperate tone than the last.

  “Rebecka, something’s wrong,” my mom stated after my last denial. “Your father and I aren’t blind or stupid. We can see something is troubling you.”

  Tears stung at my eyes. “You won’t believe me.”

  She hurried to my side to squeeze me in a tight hug. “Rebecka, oh, honey, I will believe you! Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll do what I can to fix it.”

  We swayed back and forth until my sudden tears had been calmed away.

  Before I could think better of it, I drew a shuddering breath and confessed everything I had kept hidden since the goblin incident. I told her about the creatures living in the shadows, and how they wouldn’t leave me alone. The tears came back as I unburdened my mind, but I didn’t care.

  “I tried to listen to you, I really did, but that goblin in the garden scared me so much. I couldn’t help but pay attention to it. And then they all knew I could see them for what they really were, and they’ve wanted to get rid of me ever since!”

  “You tried to listen to me?” my mom asked in a quiet, still voice.

  I nodded. “When I was a little girl, and you told me not to point and stare at the witch. You were trying to keep me safe. If she thought I didn’t know what she was, she would ignore me. I didn’t mean to disobey, I really didn’t! I just wasn’t brave enough.”