More Than Six
The wind shrieks just beyond the door, slithering its way through the smallest of cracks in the ancient wood. It hisses through as it slips along with the shadows to drape its cold arms around you. And you, tucked beneath a pile of blankets shiver at the chill that skates down your back as if someone whispered to your soul in a soft attempt to draw it out of your body. You snuggle deeper into your nest, eyes focused on the screen of your laptop, watching as words sprawl uselessly across the page.
The storm outside is unaccompanied by lightning or thunder and yet it still finds a way to distract you from your work. The rain slams itself relentlessly against your roof, sounding ever increasingly like racing children, and you’ve long since convinced yourself that the soft giggles echoing from the attic are just bygones of the wind sneaking its way through warn siding and poorly kept insulation.
“This isn’t working!” Your eyes scan the last few words on the page and in the distance something whispers your name. Your brain soothes you. It was only the creaking of the old bathroom door; you’d forgotten to shut it fifteen minutes ago and it was prone to closing itself. Your mug sits empty and slightly to the side of your laptop, but its no use refilling it, you’ve run out of every conceivable ingredient to make a warm drink.
Abandoning your project, you open up your favorite streaming app and as your show starts playing the shadows inch closer to the back of your couch. Your mind, ever aware and protective, insists that you draw the blankets up over your head. The shadows spill around your shoulders and pressure like hands pushes on your back. You lean forward, it is after all just the human urge to stretch out sore muscles. And, honestly, how long have you been sitting on this couch?
The rain increases its tempo until you’re sure its spilling down your staircase and you glance over your shoulder despite the screaming of your mind. You jolt, but your brain is faster than you could even guess. It explains away the lanky, all white figure on all fours scurrying up your wall. It was just an impression from the show you’d been watching, your imagination is running wild again, why can’t you put that imagination to work, huh?
The shadows drift closer while your back is turned and one of them drags itself along your lower leg. Goosebumps break out across your skin, but you rub them away, your eyes returning to the screen of your laptop. The black screen of your very much dead laptop. Your brain springs to action once again. It died while you were looking at the very not real thing by the staircase. Just get your charger and you can go back to the show.
“Maybe not,” you say it out loud, your voice strong and unaffected by the circling feeling of being watched. “Maybe a book in bed is the better option.”
You stand, the blanket nest becoming a blanket cloak to protect you on your short journey from living room to bedroom. You leave the lights on, though with the way the shadows are building you barely notice. It seems barley noticing is the option of choice as you stroll towards the stairs, eyes forward, definitely not noticing the claw marks on the wall. Or the scraping sound the follows your footsteps, the clatter of something sharp and made of bone dragging along the oak floors beneath your bare feet.
“This storm.” It’s all the defense you have. The stairs tremble beneath your certainty of safety, and the weight of the Beast behind you. It stalks you, fangs bared and saliva dripping onto your exposed shoulder. Your blankets have failed you for a brief moment and you tug them back into position. Ignore the burning on your skin as the poison seeps into the muscles beneath.
Your bedroom door stands wide open. Well, except for the peering torso of some disembodied figure peeking around the edge of the frame. The Beast at your back slinks back down the stairs, its dominance robbed. You take a step back, your brain not fast enough to explain away this new creature. It sees you see it. It smiles, if that’s what the gruesome stretching of its lower jaw can be called. Even the shadows slide away from it.
Somewhere in the house something screams, its distant and your pounding heart nearly covers it. You blink once. The creature moves to fill out the entire doorway, long body taller than the frame, head bent at an angle so unnatural your own neck twinges in frightened sympathy. Your breath catches in your throat. The creature hunches so that its clawed hands dig into the carpet of the hallway, its head twitching up to reveal eyes. Oh. Oh.
You’ve seen those eyes before. The reddish tinge around the rim, the hollowness barely concealed by the lowered lids. The creature moves forward, its arm bending outward at a perfect angle that on anything else the bones would snap, something does break, but it’s not the creature. It moves again, it has no sound. You step backwards, heel sinking into carpet that is soaked with something you dare not identify. The wind howls outside, though maybe it’s the Beast, baying for the moon. Is it still raining?
The creature surges forward, moving so fast the shadows don’t have time to change, and remain entirely the same. You trip, the blankets betraying you when you need them most. Your body thudding on the floor and your lungs releasing every ounce of oxygen. The creature hovers over you, claws scraping against your exposed throat.
“But I buried you,” you choke out, the eyes of your most recent victim peering out from the grotesque maw of the creature. Eyes you gouged out yourself, just to see what it took.
“Not deep enough.”
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