Night Creepers

by David Irons

  'Mr Blitzer wouldn't do…' Alison began.

  'What do you know?' Kristi screamed, her wail longer and more piercing with rage than Kelly's in terror.

  'Is she alive?' the priest queried in a quivering, low timbre.

  Jennifer placed the projector on the floor, using one of the less-bloodied books to prop up its front, keeping its beam stabilized upwards on the bound woman.

  She turned to Matt, 'We have to check if she's okay, get her down and...' He held a hand up to Jennifer, silencing her. She resented this action, him acting like the dominant alpha male, but as he did this, a part of her hesitated on her own reaction. Her instinct of wanting to walk straight over to the seemingly dying woman hanging from the wall suddenly became apprehensive; another instinct — one shared by the rest of the room slithered through her body — cold hard fear.

  'I think we found our smell,' Kristi whispered with repulsion.

  Now slightly calmed, stepping forward, Kelly did not want to believe what she was seeing and uttered a simpering moan, 'Hello? Are you okay?' Kristi put her hand on her shoulder.

  'Don't go near her.'

  'But... But mom.'

  Kristi's grip tightened, 'Stay right there,' she hissed through gritted teeth.

  Kelly looked beseechingly at her mom as Kristi's eyes burned like twin suns in her face, ready to spew outwards like two side by side flamethrowers if the child didn't do as she was told.

  'What is this?' The priest cried out. 'What is this place being used for?'

  'Blitzer, you sick fuck, what have you done?' Alex said under his breath.

  'You don't know the half of it,' Kristi said in a whisper, making Alex snap round to stare at her.

  'Are you all going to just stare at her?' The priest nervously screamed out, 'Let's get her down.'

  He walked forward, confidently, his leather-bottomed shoes cracking and popping on the dirt floor as he did, their sounds reverberating around the room.

  The subterranean smell of damp entered his nostrils. As he came closer to the suspended woman, another smell entered the air. It was a rancid, unwashed death smell. The dead did indeed have a smell to them — rotting food mixed with an almost library-like aroma of something old and unused.

  Somehow this smell was the same, yet different; it was more pungent, almost sickly, and ripe. The musky smell of an unwashed woman, he thought; a smell he himself had no real experience with.

  The clocks behind them ticked, ticked, ticked.

  He stepped closer, a confidence in his stride again, halting immediately with a glance at her skin. Her flesh covered with streaks from the muddy dirt walls of the tunnels, probably from whatever brute had rough housed her unwillingly down into this underground chamber. But beneath this added texture, her actual skin itself looked as though it had another consistency to it. It looked patterned — not like tattooed sleeves — but more of a natural feathered pattern; a decorative formation, seemingly a part of this person, rather than a man-inked addition.

  Hairs, he thought, moving closer, small, brown, almost transparent hairs that ran down her arms and exposed legs. Not human, but furry. Their pattern when studying them as fur was an ornamentation almost like moth wings. He stared down at her exposed feet and hands, dirtied, bloodied things whose nails were worn and long, not with time, but twisted into almost talon like yellowed claws. He paused, this woman, hanging from the wall, her face concealed by her long lank hair, at this close proximity seemed abstractly different in parts of her design. Her overall form representing a female human, but each exposed part of her related to something else...

  Tick, tick, tick.

  His own instinct now flooded with apprehension, wanting to lift the woman's head to satisfy his curiosity, to know the others were wrong in their apprehension and fear. He should be strong; he should be setting the example. But instead he found himself unable to do so.

  Watching the lifeless human form, seeing beneath her rattail hair… seeing her face, he let out a long hard breath, whispering within it 'Dear God in Heaven give the strength I nee...' He gasped, holding his breath in again as if it was steam rising from a pipe that was suddenly shut off by the valve of his throat. His eyes bulged in their sockets as there on the woman's clamped arm she dangled from, a thick pulsating vein pushed from beneath her skin like a long pulsing fork.

  The priest gasped, 'She's alive!' But with that face… it was impossible…

  CHAPTER 14

  'Get her down!' Alex demanded.

  'Oh my…' Alison cried out, stepping backwards.

  Jennifer and Matt rushed forward. 'Mom let me go!' Kelly wailed, with empathy in her voice that overcame the fear in her heart; Kristi continued to hold her with an unflinching death grip.

  The priest, not believing his own eyes, reached out to grab the girl's head to pull it upright to look into… that face. Touching her lank greasy blonde mop, his fingers slid up through it, grasping at congealing grease. Suddenly, his fingers stopped, feeling the girl's head, a bulbous bone dome, which was colder than the dank earth walls that surrounded them.

  A realization came over him in that quick second, a relief — Dead, he thought. Then as if in contradictory reply to him, the girl raised her head up, pushing his hand backwards down the length of her icy neck, sliding down to embrace her bony xylophone spine.

  As if in slow motion, the parting of her hair drew back like blonde centre curtains of a stage, revealing the features of her face in the soft spotlight of the projector and the filter of damp mists around them.

  Looking beneath the clammy hair, he did a double take, realizing her visage held its own filter: that of death but powered by life. Not rot from the grave, but soft fur covered her entire face, the moth winged pattern of her arms drawing across her visage in thick brush strokes of small hairs.

  Her closed lids popped open. Underneath them, glowing nocturnal cat eyes burned out, empty pupil-less things that stared endlessly without any way of knowing what they fixed upon. Then, turning her head fully upwards, the centre of the yellow-mooned eyeballs gazed directly at him — right at him —almost burning through him like lasers. He drew backwards, almost falling over his own feet in fear. The pink, furless cracking lips of the girl turned upwards into an endless grin, one that never seemed to stop; one that was filled with sabre-toothed fangs.

  His horror filled eyes transfixed on her, at the wide maniac's grin that wrinkled her nose up into two almost pig slit nostrils; turning her face into a terrifying transmogrified, animal-like death's head.

  'She's alive mom!' Kelly cried, not seeing the woman's visage, 'We gotta help her!' Twisting herself free of Kristi's grasp, she ran towards the priest and the wall bound woman.

  'Kelly!' Kristi screamed, frozen and watching in disbelief as her daughter lunged forward, running straight towards the creature on the wall, seeing her vicious, ravenous face.

  The priest tried to turn, tried to shout to everyone else to keep away, to step back, that he was wrong and their instincts to be afraid were right. 'Step ba...' he managed in a quick shout, words that ended half way. The free hand of the glowing eyed creature reached up and with a quick swipe of its sharpened fingers, dug deep into his throat, and swiftly and easily ripped out his voice box in dangling red threads of gore.

  It tugged his pulpy red Adam's apple free from his throat as simply as plucking fruit from a tree. His vocal cords disconnected, the back end of his cry became a high-pitched cat wail. He pulled away, tearing the last strands of his throat's mechanisms free with a disgusting rip, his cry extinguished.

  Falling to the floor, trying to recapture some life-giving breath, with gurgles and wheezes, he understood it was a futile attempt. His last sight was of the glowing eyed woman holding the remains of his bloody throat as vision faded out to a small pin point of light, like the shrinking black circle at the end of a Warner Bros cartoon in his dying eyes.

  That's all folks.

  The thing chained on the wall quickly rubbed the redness in its
hand to the open wound of its sharp-toothed mouth, then wrenched forward, extending itself outwards and lunging towards the nearest living thing it could grab.

  Skidding to a halt in the few seconds it took to kill the priest, Kelly stopped. Those wide Disney eyes as big as a pair of stop signs and as dark as lidless manholes. She stood agape at the sight of the furry-faced, glowing-eyed, red-mouthed woman's oncoming claw. Then, with a ripping sound, the back of the woman's jacket erupted as eight giant arachnid legs exploded around her like a peacock’s fanning tail. The hideous limbs created an arching crescent of thin pointed, stick-like spider legs all reaching, trying to wrap its grasp on the frozen girl.

  Kelly stumbled in her smart black shoes: tried to turn, to run, to take one long stride away; but the reaching twig like fingers of the woman-thing's free human hand grabbed a clump of Kelly's thick brown hair. The little girl screamed, the clutching thing attached to her hair wrenched her backwards to its now salivating widening mouth, as gloopy spittle rolled downward in dripping stalagmites. A gut wrenching, pained roar erupted from its mouth.

  Pulling Kelly with such violent velocity, a quick, sickening, pop echoed through the innards of Kelly's head; she scrambled at thin air as the closing grip of its insect legs drew around to engulf her.

  The frozen crowd came to life, running towards the girl. But before anyone could get near, Kristi swiped past all of them, dropping her high heels and lunging straight towards the demon-faced woman. Forgetting her candelabra as it fell to the floor, she pulled the wooden post away from Alex's hands. Quickly swinging it backwards then trusting it forward, like a medieval joust. Propelled by a huge leap, she soared towards the salivating creature and impaled it straight through its crunching chest.

  Pure pain hit the thing's face as it threw its head back and howled in pain. The arachnid legs thrown back against the wall in shock, as its eyes propelled one last blast of yellow light. A sickening dullness rushed through them, extinguishing them like a blown out candle losing any of the burning radiance they had.

  The twisting grip it had on her daughter's hair loosened and Kelly fell forward, face first, bringing her hands up to save herself as she slapped against the chamber floor. The dangling woman became just that again, all eight legs deflated of life. Her head dropped, suspended by her own weight, this time with the added benefit of the three-foot stake hanging from her chest, a thing that finally put her where she belonged: firmly inside the bony hand of death.

  CHAPTER 15

  'Kristi!' Alison screamed, as everyone else pulled themselves from their frozen tableau and rushed over.

  Jennifer grabbed Kelly, the two spinning around for a second like a dark carousel of funeral clothes before she broke free, running back next to her mother. She didn't embrace Kelly, but instead stood staring emptily, the creature's blood on her hands. 'Are you okay?' Kristi screamed; her eyes peeled back, skin trembling white, making the girl nod then begin to cry as she ran into her mother and held her. Kristi wiped her blood-stained hands on her dress, then hugged the small girl back, Kelly's eyes darting back with quick peeks at the staked creature's body on the wall.

  Everyone flocked around them. 'Wha— what was that thing?' Alex exclaimed.

  Matt was kneeling by the priest, examining his claw-torn throat; he closed his eyes and breathed out. He could only think that he should have known better than to have accepted an invitation here; coming to the funeral of a man who he knew had an axe to grind with him. Was he as bad as the others, just in it for the cash? Or was it really just genuine morbid curiosity that he was here? He considered the woman thing hanging from the wall, the splintered piece of wood implanted in her chest he himself had kicked from the pews, read the blood-writing smeared on the wall to the body's left: 'THEY ARE WHAT THEY EAT.'

  Alex approached the creature; close enough to see it but far enough away to be well out of its grasp. 'Did you see its eyes?' he trembled. 'The legs? What the hell is it?'

  'I don't know,' Alison sobbed, 'but the priest…'

  'He's dead,' Matt stated, looking at her sternly.

  Jennifer walked towards the thing on the wall confidently, reached out, grabbed its slick hair and pulled its head backwards revealing its fur-covered face again and those now dead, bulbous eyes.

  'Don't touch it!' Kelly screamed, as a gasp was drawn between them all as they saw the repugnant face of the now dead-eyed thing. Its mouth frozen in death, drooling red from the half-chewed handful of undigested throat from the priest.

  Jennifer let the thing’s head slump down again and stepped backwards. 'Did you see its eyes?' Matt asked, calmly.

  'They were brighter than the damn flashlights on our phones,' Alex said, beginning to sweat at the surreal sight of the arachnid-like girl, her legs curling in death.

  'What's wrong with her?' Kelly muttered through a face full of tears, lifting her head from her mother's hug. 'Where did all those legs come from?'

  'I don't know,' said Matt, spying the black handbag at the woman's feet. He reached down and grabbed it.

  'Be careful!' Alison cried out.

  Opening the bag, he rattled it around a few times, stirring up its contents: two mobile phones, breath mints, a pair of panties, condoms, birth control. All things individually that held no real meaning of character, but from his line of work painted a broader, bigger picture. 'I think she's a call girl,' he said.

  'She's a hooker?' Alex exclaimed. 'How desperate you gotta be to wanna stick it in that?'

  'Why would a whore be down here?' Alison spat in a disdainful tone.

  'You tell me,' Matt offered. 'He's your boss.'

  'You and her have said all this before. That Gregory was using prostitutes. Why would you think that's true?'

  'Because it’s my job!' Matt snapped back. 'He was crawling the streets for hookers. Kristi paid me to keep tabs on that asshole and that's what he was doing. It's not like we put two and two together and came up with five. Blitzer's M.O. was hookers, Blitzer's M.O. was dodgy property deals, Blitzer's M.O. was somehow dipping his toe in a drug cartel for funds. You marched to the beat of his drum; you telling me you didn't know what he did? Here we are, God knows how far underground, he's missing from his box. It's looking like his old pal Traxler is responsible, and then this… thing pops up. You're telling me, somehow you think your Mr. Blitzer doesn't have something to do with this?’

  Alison shuddered, unaware of how to respond.

  'So what the hell is wrong with her?' Jennifer demanded.

  They gazed at the beastly-faced woman hanging from her rusted chain. Just then, Alex recalled stumbling over something as he entered this chamber. Reaching for his phone he flipped the flashlight on, fired its small luminosity to the floor, finding the scattered blood drenched books and a brown satchel next to them.

  'Look,' he said, bending down to touch them, each one a dirtied, paperback sized, leather-skinned journal. He flipped through them, endless hand written pages turning from speckled bone white to soiled bloody pages with each turn. Jennifer took another one, flapping its pages like a flipbook. Pausing at what she thought was a bookmark, what in actuality was a small selection of processed black and white photos. The first a picture of the girl, her face human, held against the wall by rough male hands — the mosaic walls that surrounded them now. There was fear in her eyes, over-exposed by the camera's popping flash bulb,"8pm" was scratchily engraved into the photo's emulsion.

  Turning the pictures, she realized they chronicled the cycle of change: the woman's features cocooning, and then re-emerging as something else. It was like stage-by-stage makeup FX from an old horror movie. Her eyes expanded, her teeth seemingly popped out, replaced with razor tusks. Her skin grew the mould-like layer of thin, fuzzy, patterned hair; and her eyes lost their colour, iris and pupils both bleached eternally white, then replaced by glowing balls of light. The candid photos of her transformation spanned just five images, but with the carved in time stamps on each one, it was apparent that in just over three hours
the woman in the first photo had become the thing that was now hanging from the wall.

  Jennifer passed the pictures to Matt. 'Look at this.'

  Using his phone light, he looked through them. Alex peered over his shoulder. Then everyone was looking over Matt's shoulder. Kelly reached her head up like a giraffe to see. Matt momentarily pulled them back glancing at Kristi, who gave him a quick nod of approval that her daughter should see. He dropped the pictures down towards her level.

  As he turned through them the group made small, uncomfortable noises as each new portrait revealed the transmutation of the woman.

  'Look at the times,' Jennifer noted.

  Matt flipped from the first to last. 'Three hours?'

  'To turn into that?' Kelly exclaimed, moving her gaze from the photo of the grotesque creature to it dead and drooling on the wall.

  'What the fuck did he do to her to turn her into that?' Alex yelped.

  Jennifer was still fingering through the hand-written journal. She noticed something. 'This is Blitzer's handwriting, I've seen it a million times.'

  'How could he do such a thing?' Alison muttered softly, her eyes wide and amplified through her oversized glasses. 'I don't understand.' Alison marched over to her, grabbing the book and stared at the pages. She paused, speed-reading. Her tightened, hard face dropped. She wanted Jennifer to be wrong, to know that this wasn't his doing. But there it was in black and white: the man's handwriting who signed the checks, dotted the I's and crossed the T's.

  'Happy?' Jennifer snapped. Alison looked at her, sorrow in her eyes then walked back to the others. 'Listen to this.' She began to read aloud from the book. 'Traxler and I today found their main chamber. As predicted, during daylight they slept. We pulled one free from its box. It was weak, probably from years of being sealed down here, probably from the years of living off what it could find. The walls are alive with insects, grubs, spiders, moths, worms, and beetles. Anything that can live in these subterranean conditions, they absorb not just as food, but also seemingly being able to adopt the physical look and capabilities of what they devour.'