The Punished

by Peter Meredith

  It wasn't a fear for himself that he held within his breast, but rather for Amber and he hurried to her room, his fingers trailing the wall as he went. The feeling that the house was aware grew beneath them as he closed on her doorway, and his hands went numb at what he saw there.

  On the floor near the closet, Matt knelt on one knee, half-straddling Amber's chest. His left hand, he had entwined in the silk of her platinum blonde hair, while in his right, he held a large shard of wood. It was maybe a foot long and looked as if had once belonged on the underside of a bed. Its edges were jagged and nasty and it tapered to a sharp point, which was only inches from the blue of Amber's right eye.

  Chapter 18

  The Thief's Punishment

  1

  "Come in, asshole," Matt whispered.

  Curt stood in the doorway, as if he had grown roots, "What's going..."

  Matt interrupted, "I said get in here...go stand in that corner." He nodded towards the corner furthest from the door and when Curt hesitated the older boy growled low like a dangerous animal, "I said go, or she loses an eye."

  The large sliver of wood, a veritable stake, sat poised just above Amber's face and the poor girl fixated upon it as if nothing else in the room mattered. At the words, or she loses an eye, she whimpered pathetically. Curt had noticed that his hands had gone numb just as he had entered, but he didn't realize that the rest of him had as well until he started walking in a queer jerking motion toward the corner. The floor could have been strewn with glass and he wouldn't have known.

  "Matt, what are you doing?" Curt asked in a little kids quavering voice. Like Amber, he couldn't take his eyes off the tip of the stake.

  "You're going to call the monster," the older boy replied, still speaking barely above a whisper. Despite this, the energy of the room began to intensify. "You're going to call it or she loses an eye."

  "No...please no," Amber moaned the words. Her blue eyes were practically crossed, staring at the tip of the stake. Matt's grip in her hair tightened and he gave her shake, bringing the shard dangerously close to her eyes, so that now she finally shut them, grimacing.

  "Shut up!" Matt snarled savagely into her ear. He said it loud and this made him pause for a second, realizing that he could inadvertently bring the creature down on himself. After a few moments his head came back up at Curt and he wore a black look, "Call it now or else."

  Curt, who had unknowingly turned thirteen the day before, had always thought of himself as smart, mentally agile and quick on his feet, but at that moment he was none of these things.

  "Matt...I...I...Matt," he stammered. The enormity of what was being asked of him, coupled with a chest tightening fear that there was no way out of this, froze up the gears of his mind.

  "That's not what I want to hear," Matt said, smiling incongruously, as if hearing Curt spluttering was exactly what he wanted to hear. "Now call it in three seconds or else." Amber's face, looking as if it had been glazed in tears by a potter, turned toward him and she pleaded with fearful eyes.

  "I..." This was all Curt could force out of his mouth. He wanted desperately to help her, but the dying screams of Darla the caseworker and the tortured ones of Paul filled his mind and cowardice held his throat closed. Three seconds came and went quickly.

  "Fine," Matt muttered.

  Screwing up his features into a grimace, he stabbed Amber in the face.

  Curt's vision spun for a heartbeat at what he had seen and he fell to his knees, unable to breath. Deep within him, he hadn't truly expected Matt to carry through with his threat, since the two of them had practically lived as brother and sister for over three years. But despite that fact, Matt had with terrific malice, aimed the stake directly for Amber's right eye.

  At the last second, she squirmed and the stake drove a gaping red furrow in the side of her head.

  "AAiighhh..." Her scream of pain had started loudly, but somehow she had been able to bite it back. Now she cried in near silent misery as Matt looked with fury on the smaller boy.

  "Coward. That was your fault. Call it or I'll take her eye, I swear!" He gave her head another violent little shake.

  "Mmmhh," Amber managed to hold back a second cry and now the room was on the verge of bursting with what felt like a furious electrical charge. The house was very aware of what was happening and it wasn't pleased that its perfection was being marred by tears and blood and screams not of its own making.

  'Call it,' Matt mouthed the words and slowly raised the stake for a second time.

  There was no choice. His heart had felt the pain of the gash in Amber's head and her tears were his tears. He hadn't known it before this last minute, but now he knew, he was in love.

  "AAAaahhh," his yell warbled up and down a little bit, as if he were unsure exactly how he was supposed to call the creature. Still it was enough. The air in the room felt black with anger and beneath his knees the floor came alive, seeming to twitch and heat up oddly. A second later, a familiar vibration came up through the wood. The creature was on its way.

  A span of unnumbered heartbeats went by as Curt and Matt stared at each other, both aghast at what they had unleashed and then Matt jumped up running for the door. Foolishly, Curt held out his hand to the older boy in supplication, hoping Matt would wait for him. But Matt wasn't looking and was gone even before Curt had gotten to his feet.

  Through his white socks, Curt could feel the thrumming heavy tread of the creature making its way from the basement. It wasn't running as it had been with Darla, but it was moving quickly with determination. There were other vibrations in the floor as well, frantic ones and he could envision Miss Feanor running like mad up the stairs.

  Terror drove a bolt right through him and without thinking, he charged to the door, desperate to make it back to his bed, hoping there was yet a chance that he'd get lucky and the creature would bypass him once again. Turning into the hall, he paused, looking back for fraction of a second and saw Amber motionless on the ground where Matt had left her.

  The horror of the situation had thrown her into one of her trances and she lay upon the living wood of the floor, staring out at him with beautiful china blue eyes. But her eyes were vacant and unseeing and would remain that way until the creature was at her with its teeth and its horrendous desire.

  Curt was in ghastly luck. He saw that he could make it back to his bed, if he hurried and knowing the creature as he did, there was good chance that if he remained perfectly still under his covers it would go on to the other rooms before coming back to his. And it would certainly attack Amber if it found her lying on the floor. Sudden hope like a lighting strike went through him and he took off for his bed. But, he stopped after only two steps.

  "Jeeeez," he whined low and tears sprang up in his eyes.

  He couldn't leave her like that

  Turning back, he ran to her limp form and attempted to wrestle her back into the bed. He had picked her up with ease once before when she had been like this, but now with absolutely not a second to spare, she was like a plate of noodles. Twice she slipped out of his grasp, but finally he grabbed her by the pockets of her jeans and threw her onto his shoulder. Heaving her onto the bed, unmindful of any injury he might have caused, he yanked the blanket over her and dashed out of the room.

  Again, he stopped after only two steps.

  Crreik...crreik...crreik...

  The creature was already practically to the top of the stairs and now Curt was trapped.

  2

  The white walls with its fancy crown molding, the gleaming hardwood floors and the polished railing with its hand carved leaf pattern all disappeared as Curt's world tunneled in on the creature.

  Seeing it so clearly for the first time, he couldn't call it a monster, since obviously it wasn't alive, it was more what he would consider a ghost. It had all the hallmarks of one. It was translucent and Curt could almost see the stairs through its grey form. Its body seemed amorphous and appeared ragged, with the edges of it shifting constantly as
if it was being subjugated by an unfelt wind.

  But the greatest reason that he saw it as a ghost was the terror it induced in his young mind. His fear became all-encompassing, superimposing itself over every aspect of his personality until there was nothing left to him, but his fear. And except for the shaking of his limbs, he stood unmoving as the ghost drifted up the stairs.

  Though there seemed nothing physical to the thing, it made sounds on the stairs as if it were a live being, and interacted with the house as a person would. If it had a back, it was to Curt and didn't seem to notice him standing frozen in place, caught far from the ridiculous safety of his bed. Curt's bedroom door hung partially open and instead of floating through the gap, it reached out an appendage, what looked like an arm, and pushed the door back. It then moved in, 'stepping' quietly.

  Once the thing was out of sight, Curt's mind threw off a good deal of the fear that had practically paralyzed him and he dashed across the hall to the attic door. It was locked. He turned and was just about to race down the hall, hoping to get to the back stairs, but saw the grey shadow loom in his doorway.

  In a flash, he zipped back into Amber's room. There were only three choices there: under the bed, in the bed, or in the closet. Despite his entire being desperate to get in the bed with Amber, he chose the closet. If he went to the bed, they might both be punished.

  The closet door had barely shut when Curt heard the soft sly sounds of the ghost walking into Amber's room. There was little preamble to what occurred next, the ghost was there to inflict punishment and it was Curt's turn; he could sense the thing just on the other side of the door and the thing sensed him. His heart raced, pounding adrenaline through his body and Curt came to the decision that he would run if he could, but if not, he'd fight.

  The door of the closet flew open and the creature floated there seeming huge, filling the doorway with its ragged body. Curt tried to dive past it, but it shot out one of its long arms and pinned him face first to the floor. The hand at the end of the arm felt terribly real and he cried out in pain as the fingernails dug into his flesh; the arm was strong as well and flipped him over as if he were more of a child than he was. Now Curt could look upon the full horror of the ghost and the madness of the thing staggered his mind and froze his joints.

  It half floated, half swarmed over his numb body and as it did something happened to the misty nature of the ghost's form. Parts of it started to solidify.

  To his horror, he saw a face forming on the grey and within the face, there were teeth, which began to look more and more substantial. Now the mouth opened and stretched toward him and as it did, the mouth took on color and texture in horrifying reality. The lips were blackened and rotting, but protruding from them and sticking out further than possible, were the great yellowed teeth and as the mouth opened, a stench blasted out of it. It smelled like the rotting filth from a sewer.

  The half-formed face and its fully formed mouth hovered over him for only a second and then it struck, biting down onto the flesh of Curt's stomach. The pain was intense and he screamed. It was the highest scream that his throat could endure and in an instant, his vocal cords seemed to tear and then no sound came out but a high keen rush of air.

  In a frenzy, Curt tried to fight back, swinging his small fists with all his might at the slowly materializing head of the ghost. The half-formed flesh and thin limp hair of the thing's head hung off of it in long strips and as Curt swung at it with desperate strength, great wet clumps of it fell upon him.

  Due to his panic and terror, Curt only barely saw this and kept swinging, fighting with instinctual savagery, covering himself in grey half-rotted flesh.

  Finally, the ghost, which had begun to take on the condition of a living corpse, released its jaws. But this wasn't due to the blows that struck it so feebly, it wanted to taste new flesh and pain, it bit down again. And now the huge teeth dug into him, penetrating his skin and Curt could feel the teeth grate horribly against the hardness of one of his ribs. Unexpectedly, he found his voice again and he cried out loud with tremendous anguish. The pain was excruciating and he didn't care what the thing was or how disgusting it smelled or felt, all he cared about was getting it off of him and Curt dug his fingers into the putrefied flesh of the creatures jaw and frantically began to work the teeth loose from its rotting gums.

  In a moment, he felt the jaws come open slightly and he pulled his body back. The ghost thing reared up again and Curt knew it he was about to be bitten, but some part of his mind was still operating at a basic level and had already noted this pattern of the creature. It would rear up, animal like, before it bit down.

  When it did, Curt's body came alive and without needing any real commands from his mind, it acted instinctually. Bringing his legs up, he kicked out at the solidifying mass of the thing's face, not in any hope of hurting something so clearly and horribly dead, but rather to push himself back away from it. His hard strike and its momentum allowed him to turn a small back summersault and then he was up and running with absolutely no idea where he was going.

  But it hardly mattered.

  Behind him, the ghost thundered after and Curt only had time to let out a long terrified scream as he ran, before it was on him once more. He went down in a jumbled heap of rotting arms and grey mist. Squirming mightily, he kicked and punched as the ghost re-formed parts of itself and for a second, he pulled himself clear again but could only backup to the nearest wall. There he was cornered.

  A scabbed over blackened hand came out of the grey mist of the ghost, it had yellowed claws where its fingernails should have been and it smelled of long fermenting death. The rancid odor was enough to tip him over the edge of madness he had been flirting with and now Curt could no longer fight back even at an instinctual level.

  He could only scream.

  His screams echoed, reverberating throughout the entire house, bouncing off the walls, unanswered and unattended. But they weren't entirely useless. There is a purpose to screams in these sorts of situations. They occupy the mind, filling it with sound, focusing it away, if only partially from the pain and horror.

  But the ghost ended Curt's screams very quickly.

  The blackened hand pinned him to the wall by his throat and squeezed, sending its talons deep into Curt's flesh. Now there was no screaming, or breathing for that matter. His lungs were shut off from air and his face went red in a second, yet he barely even noticed this or the pain for that matter, for now the face of the ghost began to form again.

  The blackened burnt looking lips and the large yellowed teeth grew out of it. But worse, behind the teeth, a tongue black and cracked slithered out and when the thing bit Curt on the shoulder there was the unmistakable sound of sucking and slurping.

  However, in all this, there was a single mercy. The creature had held onto Curt's throat too long and his pain and horror became muted and distant, until finally he slumped over and knew no more.

  Chapter 19

  Pain

  1

  Within the boundaries of the house, time had no meaning.

  How long he lay there before he came awake, Curt had no idea. And he didn't come awake all at once, in a start, but rather slowly, one sluggish blink at a time.

  For a while, he couldn't feel his body, and the only one of his five senses that seemed in order was his eyesight and that was blurry at best. He could see the lines that made up the individual boards of the polished hardwood floors and were amazed at how they had been placed so neatly, so seamlessly together. They started off straight and true, but they trailed off into a distant hazy brown horizon.

  It seemed far away and that struck his dull witted mind as not right, he attempted to sit up to see how far the boards really went. That was when the pain began. It flared first in his neck, then his shoulder, then his right arm and so on, until he felt it all over his body. The pain brought with it the horrific memory of what had caused it and Curt cried.

  Because of his pain, he cried weakly but the tears came w
ithout much effort and he saw them splash heavily onto the wood. They began to form a tiny puddle beneath his face and Curt tried to concentrate on that instead of the horrible memories. This worked, for a time, but then he saw that within the puddle there was a tinge of pink.

  It was the smallest amount of blood.

  There should have been more. Curt wagged his head this way and that, looking for the spattering of blood that logically he knew should have been there. Before he had passed out, he had felt it draining down his neck where the creature had laid a hold of him with its foul talons and he had felt it coming from the wound in his shoulder where he had been bitten.

  He touched these spots and the pain burned at him, but strangely the wounds, instead of being wet or tacky with blood, were crusted over with fresh scabs. There should have been blood. There should have been quite a bit of blood in fact and he puzzled over this briefly, but a rational part of him, one that seemed very adult spoke into his mind, 'The creature drank your blood, lapping it up with its huge black tongue.'

  It was a horrendous thought, yet likely, a correct one and he envisioned the tongue and the mouth, it gave him the shivers. But then he remembered the smell of the creature and foolishly, he sniffed at his torn shirt. The smell was there. The rot. The horrible stench of a decomposing body.

  Curt knew he was about to be sick, yet he lacked the strength to make it past a kneeling position and he vomited up a great gout of spam and rice. The pain and effort to vomit left him even weaker than before, but he couldn't stand the smell of the creature for another second and crawled toward the bathroom.

  Blessedly it was only a few feet away.

  The bathroom still hadn't been cleaned. It made him wonder, in a groggy sort of way what time it was and how long he had lain upon the floor. For a second he worried that he should be in bed, lest the creature come again. This thought made him want to puke, but he fought the urge and felt the floor instead. The house only had a vague awareness of him and if it was angry or annoyed, it was focused on something else. And what was more, the creature drowsed, its lust satiated, at least for the time being.