The Perdition Tales

Moonlight Dance, Part One (part one)

Carl was staring out the window when Denny appeared behind him. Denny remained quiet for a moment, simply watching the other man, as if trying to figure him out. Finally, after an interminable moment, Denny broke the silence. “Is the way clear?”

“As clear as it’s going to be,” Carl responded, still not turning his gaze from the road outside. A lone shadow stumbled along in the growing darkness, disappearing behind a nearby building.

“You need to stop torturing yourself,” Denny told him, stepping up next to him and looking out the window as well. “You’re here. Be here.”

“But she’s out there,” Carl answered him. “I know she is. If I had the chance, I could find her.”

“We need you here, Carl,” Denny said. “Everyone here needs you.”

“For now,” Carl responded. “But they have you. I’m the most expendable. If you could just let me go, then I can go and-”

“We need you,” Denny reiterated. He placed a reassuring hand on Carl’s shoulder. “Listen, if she’s out there, we’ll find her. We’re combing the town. If she survived-”

“She did,” Carl interrupted. “If anyone can make it, she can, but I don’t know for how long.”

“If…she survived,” Denny stated again. “We will find her. Eventually. But we can’t let you go out and get yourself killed trying to find her. Stick with us. Trust me, brother. There’s a plan for everything-”

“I know.” There was finality in Carl’s response, but a hint of aggravation as well. He glanced behind them, over the guardrail and into the main foyer of the dark hotel. The others waited by the doors, their packs secured and their hands twitching beside their weapons. “We should have left earlier,” he said quietly to his companion. “It’s already starting to get dark.”

“If it’s too dark for us to see, then it’ll be too dark for them as well,” Denny reasoned. “Besides, we have lights. As long as we’re careful, we should be fine.”

“I’m not so sure,” Carl answered him. He looked down as he walked down the stairs to join the others, Denny walking behind him. Almost under his breath, he whispered to the other, “There’s something bad coming our way.”

Everyone had a tight-fitting pack strapped firmly to their back. Each man carried the same supplies: a flashlight with extra batteries, a small fleece blanket pilfered from the nearby Woolworth’s, a few cans of food, some gauze (the only thing left in each of their personal first aid kits), an improvised weapon of some sort and a pack of matches. The weapons were anything from heavy bolt cutters to be used for bludgeoning to broken CDs duct-taped to the end of a broom handle. Each man carried a knife strapped to his forearm for quick access, though these were rarely used. “Is everyone safe?” Morris asked. A piece of tape held his old glasses in place. Once portly, he had, since the epidemic, lost considerable weight.

“They’re fine,” Greg answered. “Melissa and Jeanine placed the deadbar and then turned off the lights. They should be fine as long as they’re quiet.” Greg was tall and lean, bald on top but with a short moustache and beard.

“You fixed the deadbar, right?” Morris asked. His question was merited, since the large beam that had once held the main door to the survivors’ stronghold had broken during an attack two days earlier.

“I replaced it,” Denny answered them, securing a lead pipe to the improvised tool belt he wore. “I cut a pipe from out of the ceiling in the dining room and tied it to the old deadbar. It should hold a lot better than the old one, now.”

The last member of the group – Jesse – made one last check outside before motioning for the others to move. Jesse was shorter with close-cropped hair and a strong build. Carl verified that he had his weapon – an iron bar from a workout bench – and followed the group through the main doors and out into the dwindling twilight. They could hear faint sounds in the distance – a shrill moan from time to time – but little else other than the sound of the wind drifting across the dusty ground. There was a soft click of a can turning over, pushed by the wind. But the wind wasn’t strong enough to move it and the can continuously fell back to its original resting place.

The group moved slowly among the buildings, taking each turn around a bend with the utmost care. At each corner, they would stop and hide behind it while Carl would hold out a small mirror to check that the road was empty. At his motion, the group would then move as silently as possible to the next corner, then repeat. They had only traveled for ten minutes when, as Carl was checking around another corner, Jesse noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he saw someone moving slowly toward them, walking lamely on what was likely a broken – or at least sprained – ankle. Immediately, he got the attention of the others, who turned and expressed alarm. Without hesitation, Denny ran up to the person and hit him in the side of the head with a crowbar. The person crumpled to the ground, dust clouding up onto the torn and rotting business suit that he’d been wearing. “Check around the corner!” Greg commanded in a harsh whisper. At Jesse’s motion, Denny peeked his head around the corner from which the strange man had originated. He turned back to the group with wide eyes and silently shook his head and pointed in Carl’s direction.

“Carl, is it clear?” Greg asked, again whispering harshly.

“There’s a lot of them,” Carl whispered back. He pointed to a nearby alleyway and began to head down it, the group following behind him. They moved deftly between buildings, again checking corners, but by the time the highway came into sight, more and more possible directions had been verified as too dangerous to take.

“We scouted this out and the ways were clear!” Jesse said quietly to the group. “Where did they all come from?”

“They must have been inside buildings,” Carl said. “For some reason, they’re all coming out now. We need to find some cover.”

“We need to keep moving,” Denny countered. “We can’t stop or they’ll find us.”

“Unless we find refuge,” Carl said. “There’s a house not far from here, I think.”

“You mean the old Haxon place?” Morris asked. “We can’t stay there! The place is probably crawling with them!”

“It’s got boarded windows and limited entries,” Greg said. “I think Carl has a good idea.”

“Can we make it there?” Jesse asked. “Is there a clear shot there?”

“Clearer than anywhere else, as far as I can tell,” Carl answered.

Without further discussion, they began to follow as Carl and Greg took the front, with Denny taking the tail. As the Haxon place grew closer, they began to grow more and more reckless, taking less time to check around corners until, as the Haxon place loomed into view, they ultimately stopped checking around corners altogether and broke into a sprint toward the old, condemned house. They all leapt upon the porch and Denny jammed his crowbar into the crack in the front door. Some wood splintered and the door shook loose. They all tumbled inside.

Except for Greg, who stood on the porch as if transfixed. Morris stepped outside and grabbed him, but stopped when he saw what Greg was staring at: walking slowly toward the house was an old friend of theirs, a man who had succumbed to the sickness and wandered out into the dark like all the rest. “It’s him,” Greg whispered.

“I know,” Morris whispered gravelly. “But you have to let him go. Get inside now!” With a jerk, he pulled his friend through the doorway and Denny and Jesse began to block up the entrance. Greg still remained motionless, shocked at having seen the old friend he’d lost. Jesse put his hand on Greg’s back as if to comfort him. “Come on,” he told him. “Let’s go take a look upstairs and see if this place is safe.”

“But-” Greg began.

“I know,” Jesse told him. “He was my friend, too. But there’s nothing that we can do for him. Now come on.” Greg began to shake out of his stupor as he followed Jesse up the old stairs of the Haxon House.

The others waited on the ground floor. After doing a quick sweep, Denny and Carl hunkered down in the living room while Morris began to see what could be scavenged from the other rooms. Everyone moved with a silence that could barely be noticed, not wanting to draw attention to themselves from outside. The shadows were long and dark in that house, the boards on the windows allowing scarcely any light through. Morris returned a few moments later, stuffing some shadow-hidden items into his pack before retying it to his back. A few minutes later, Greg joined the group, looking stronger and more focused than earlier, having seemingly recovered from his shock. “Where’s Jesse?” the others asked as they crouched in the center of the room.

“He wanted to take a look at something,” Greg responded. “It was all clear that I saw, but he wanted to look at the last-”

Suddenly, there was a shrill cry from upstairs. Everyone stood up, frozen in place for a second before another cry emanated from the second floor. This was distinctly Jesse. The group began to run, their footsteps covering the hurried footsteps of Jesse stumbling upstairs. Greg began to run up the stairs, but Carl and Denny stayed behind, now becoming aware of the tapping sound from outside. The tapping immediately expounded into a slamming from all directions, the clear sound of countless hands banging against the outer walls of the Haxon House. Denny and Carl exchanged horrified looks.

Greg never made it to the top of the stairs. With Morris at the foot of them and Greg halfway up, Jesse burst out of the darkness at the top, a dark and monstrous form behind him. There was a strange sound, like a mechanical-yet-animalistic groan from the dark entity. Jesse sprinted away from the creature but lost his footing as he began to descend the staircase. His feet twisted and he bounced off the guardrail, tumbling into Greg. Their combined mass hit Morris in the side and they slammed to the ground in a tumbled mass.

But the ground didn’t stop their fall. Instead, the old, rotten floorboards gave away and the two tumbled down through broken beams and into the shadowy depths below, Jesse crying out in terror and Greg crying out in surprise. The boards splintered and the chasm grew rapidly, drawing in Morris before he had a chance to recover from his hit. Denny and Carl scarcely had a chance to back away before the staircase collapsed, one of the walls fell and the entire floor of the Haxon House broke away into a demolished hole. The two men fell, screaming in alarm, down into the depths beneath the condemned house while the inky dark became all that either could perceive.

Denny awoke with a start, his muscles tense and his back extremely sore. He let out a cry of pain as he first shifted and sat up. He couldn’t see anything, but he could feel boards and dust covering him. “Hello?” he croaked out into the dark, his voice hoarse and dry. There was a cough and then the sound of moving rubble, then a grunt that sounded like Greg. “Anyone there?” the voice asked.

“It’s Denny,” Denny said. “Are you okay?”

“It’s hard to say,” Greg said, his identity confirmed by his voice. “I can’t see if I’m wounded, but I don’t feel anything.”

“You could be in shock,” Morris’ voice issued from the depths. He was further away than Greg, but not by far. “Can you move?”

“Yeah, not a problem,” Greg said. “Can you?”

“I think I’m good,” Morris responded.

“My back’s killing me, but otherwise I think I’m good,” Denny said. “What about Carl and Jesse?”

“I’m fine, I think,” came Carl’s voice. “Nothing seems to hurt and I don’t feel any blood on me anywhere except a little on my cheek.”

“How can you feel blood?” Morris asked.

“Okay, I don’t know if it’s blood, but it’s wet. I assumed, given the scenario, that it must be blood. Anyone heard from Jesse?”

As if in immediate answer to Carl’s question, there was a groaning to his right. There was a shuffling sound that Denny assumed to be Carl moving to the groaning and then a short cry of alarm. “Calm down, calm down,” Carl was saying.

“Where are we?” Jesse’s voice said. He coughed hard twice and then cleared his throat. “What’s going on?”

“The floor gave out, I think,” Denny said. There was a rummaging sound and then a click. Light pierced through the darkness, confounding the shadows which were soon dispelled. The light shone first on Denny, then Greg and finally settled on Carl and Jesse. Half of Jesse’s face was covered in blood which looked to have trickled down from his scalp. “Are you okay, Jesse?” Carl was asking. Jesse didn’t answer; he just looked around as if bewildered. “Jesse,” Carl repeated. Still no response. “Jesse!” Carl cried out louder, trying to get the man’s attention.

“Wait, are you-“ Jesse began but stopped and coughed again. “Are you talking to me?”

“Your name’s Jesse, isn’t it?” Denny asked.

“I…I’m not…is it?”

“Well, s**t,” Morris said from behind the beam of the flashlight. “Do you not remember your name?”

“I’m not really getting anything up here right now,” Jesse said, motioning to his head. “It’s like there’s no memories to draw from. I’m feeling…like, blank, or something. Who are you?”

“Before we tackle this problem,” Carl began before anyone could answer. “Why don’t we tackle the problem of getting out of this dumpster. Morris, shine your light this way so I can get my own.” The others began to fumble around for a few moments and then there were numerous clicks, each followed by a new beam of light. With four of them shining their lights (Jesse’s backpack appeared to have ripped open, its contents now lost), they could see where they were: in an enormous crater about thirty feet below the Haxon House. It appeared to be a sinkhole, with hard rock surroundings except for one side, where what used to be a staircase now broke off halfway down. They were, it seemed, slightly lower than where the former basement had been. But stranger still, a look out of the crater showed the still-intact ceiling and walls (most of them) still standing around the hole. It was as if the house was nothing but a hollowed-out shell shielding an ancient crater. But Denny’s heart dropped as he noticed things along the rim of the crater, dark, humanoid shapes staring down at them. Denny didn’t dare shine his light on the forms lest such action antagonize them. “Guys,” he said quietly, rising to his feet. “We need to move. I think we’ve been discovered.”

“It was only a matter of time before the crash drew them in,” Morris said, his light wavering as he stumbled to his feet. There was the sound of footsteps across dusty, wood-strewn rock as the others began to move. “We can’t go up the sides,” Morris said.

“Even if the walls weren’t too steep,” Denny began. “They’d be waiting for us at the top.”

“Hey, guys,” Carl’s voice cut through the groans that were beginning to drift down into the crater with them. “I think there’s a tunnel over here, like a cave or something.”

“We can’t go that way if we don’t know where it goes,” Morris said.

“Is there another choice?” Greg answered. “Look, I say we follow Carl. It’s at least out of this mess. We can fill in Jesse while we walk, okay?”

“Jesse,” Jesse repeated, as if to ensure that he didn’t forget his name. He occasionally repeated it under his breath while the others filled him in on the Haxon House and their fall into the sinkhole beneath it.

“What were we doing in the house in the first place?” Jesse asked.

“Hiding,” Greg told him.

“From what?”

Greg stopped and the rest of the group followed suit. “Duh,” Carl said, pressing his hand against his temple. “If he can’t even remember his name, it only makes sense that he can’t remember what happened to the town.”

“Fill him in, then,” Denny commanded.

Carl took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, contemplating where to begin. “We live in King’s End, Indiana. It was a good place-“

“-okay place,” Greg interrupted.

“It was a decent place,” Carl finished. “At least until a few months ago. You see, when this town was first founded – I don’t know, two hundred years ago or something – there was this disease, a swamp disease. No one knows what it was, or even what it did, since there weren’t many records of it as it was happening. They say the real records of it are sealed up somewhere, maybe in the library, but no one knows.”

“You’re getting off-topic,” Denny said.

“Sorry,” Carl said. “Anyway, a few months ago, this epidemic hit the town. Most of the people died. It was only the early ones that were buried, though. Once they started coming back, people didn’t take the time for burial anymore. People didn’t really have time for anything.” Carl turned and looked Jesse square in the eyes, as if for dramatic effect. “There are dead people wandering the streets, and they’re hungry. Anything that moves is food to them, including us. For months, we’ve been hiding, along with some of our families, hauled up in protected buildings with no electricity or even running water. Every few days, we send little groups like us out to scavenge what we can.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jesse said. “The dead wandering the streets? Zombies aren’t real, except in Haiti or places like that. And there certainly aren’t any flesh-eating zombies out there.”

“Didn’t you see them at the crater?” Greg asked. “Didn’t you hear them?”

“I heard something,” Jesse said. “Like whispering, but I’m not buying this zombies thing. Besides, even if it’s true, what does that have to do with this swamp disease thing?”

“Some say that it’s the same disease that came back,” Morris said.

“After two hundred years?” Jesse said, incredulous. “And even if it came back, and even if it was some zombie virus, are you saying that people from the 1700s can figure out how to survive it but modern people can’t?”

“Maybe people were tougher back then, you don’t know,” Denny said. “Anyway, can we keep moving? I’m in the back and I don’t like the idea of one of those corpses sneaking up behind me.”

They walked for only twenty minutes before the tunnel opened up into an enormous cavern. The walls curved upward smoothly to meet a ceiling filled with stalactites about forty feet above their heads. The beams of their lights disappeared out into the depths of the cavern. The group slid and swerved among tall stalagmites with blunted tops standing like the Fallen chained beneath the Earth. The group stopped walking as they came to an enormous pit that opened up. The sides of it were purely vertical, as if this was a shaft bored down through the ground by some mighty machine. Indeed, its very shape appeared to be a nearly-perfect sphere. All four of the flashlights shone down into the pit, but, aside from the walls which disappeared about thirty feet down, nothing could be seen. The darkness in that pit seemed to be impenetrable, as if it was a solid mass immune to the rays.

Jesse backed away, but not only because he lacked a flashlight. He heard something, a sound nearly imperceptible coming from the pit, like the light breeze moving through stiff trees. It grew louder, but seemed still unintelligible. It was, however, a recognizable sound: the sound of whispering.

Morris reached into his pack and pulled out a small stick of what looked like cartoon dynamite. “I found a few of these at the house before it collapsed,” he told them. He gripped the end of it and flicked it hard. Nothing happened, but on the fourth try, it finally erupted into a pink glow billowing smoke. He walked near the edge of the pit and tossed in the flare. The others watched as it fell down, down, further down, its strong, pink fire growing smaller and more distant before being swallowed up entirely by the darkness. There was never a sound of it hitting any ground. Carl picked up a nearby rock and tossed it in after the flare. There was an initial clatter as it bounced off of the opposite wall of the pit, but then nothing, only an interminable silence. There was never a sound of any sort of landing.

With each object tossed into the pit, however, Jesse could hear the whispers growing louder, as if something inside it was agitated by the foreign entities. Jesse looked at the others, but no one seemed to acknowledge any sound. The whispers were on the border of intelligibility, like the sound of children trying to hide their hushed tones beneath blankets long after bedtime. But in the sounds from the pit, Jesse could almost sense the thing lurking beneath the bed, the monster in the closet, the ghost in the corner, the bogeyman that every child feared. “Can we go?” Jesse implored, almost begging. He wanted nothing more than to escape those interminable sounds, to get somewhere safe, beyond the grasp of their unknown secrets.

“Yeah,” Morris said quietly, his eyes still staring down into the pit. He mumbled something under his breath as he stared, transfixed.

“Did you just say ‘tartar sauce’?” Denny asked him, a quizzical look on his face.

“I don’t…I don’t know,” Morris said, tearing his eyes from the hole. “Let’s just go.”

“Okay, but it definitely sounded like you said ‘tartar sauce’.”

“There’s a tunnel going up over here,” Carl said, interrupting them as he shined his light on a nearby entryway. The others began to shuffle after him, each careful to avoid the pit. Greg shined his light so Jesse could follow it and Jesse almost ran. The sounds began to lessen as he got to the tunnel, and they trailed off into the dark as he followed his group away from that place.

They followed the passageway as it began to wind upward, gently ascending beneath their feet. As they walked, the walls began to get smoother as well, and the floor became more even and flat, as if this tunnel had been well-worn and heavily-trafficked. However, it ended abruptly at a stone wall, totally flat and perpendicular to the passage itself. Carl began to feel along the wall as if for a catch or handle or secret way through, but he found nothing. Morris came up and began to do the same thing, but he had similarly little luck. “Turn off your flashlights,” Greg commanded them, turning off his own as a light bulb went off in his mind. The others doused their lights and, in the darkness, they could barely make out a glowing perimeter around the stone wall. Greg snapped his light back on and the perimeter vanished in the intensity of Greg’s electric torch. “There’s something on the other side,” Morris said, again feeling around the stone slab. “How did you know?”

“Just a hunch,” Greg told him. “But this could lead outside.”

“If it does, then we need to be very, very quiet,” Carl said.

“In case of the zombies?” Jesse asked sarcastically.

“Yes, because of the…just…sh!” Carl responded. He flipped his light back on and handed it to Morris, then put his whole weight against the stone. There was a grinding sound as it slid back an inch. Carl shoved his shoulder into the stone and grunted. The stone moved again. Morris and Denny joined in, shoving against the rock as it slid steadily back. At last, it slid free and they stumbled out of the passageway and into a dark room. Jesse and Greg followed behind and walked around the stone, shining their lights on their surroundings. It was a cavernous room, not as big as the cave with the pit, but still substantially large. The walls were bare and dark, and up by the ceiling in a few places were barred windows. Greg peered through one and saw dirt at eye level. “We’re in a basement, I think,” he told the others.

“That would explain the stairs,” Morris said, his light shining on a rickety staircase that led up into an alcove cut out of the ceiling. At its top waited a door with a rusted knob.

“But that doesn’t explain her,” Carl said. The others turned and saw his flashlight focused on a small form laying in against one of the walls. It was a woman, or a girl, it was too dark to tell. She wore a stained dress that was ripped in a few places, and she wore no shoes. Her face was hidden behind a mask of bedraggled, unkempt hair, but it was her wrists that caught the focus of the group. Around each wrist was a heavy, iron shackle, each attached to a heavy chain that was, in turn, bolted to the wall above her head. The girl was trapped, chained in this dismal basement.

“This is just getting weirder and weirder,” Denny said as he stepped closer. “Is she alive?”

“She’s breathing,” Greg said, squatting down beside her and holding a finger under her nose. “It’s slowly, but she’s still alive.”

“Where the hell are we?” Denny asked. “Because I’m telling you that if we’re in the house of someone who keeps women chained in his basement, we want to get out!”

“Then be quiet!” Carl said. “Greg, can you see any scratches or bite marks on her?”

“You think she might be infected?” Morris asked.

“I’m just thinking that we don’t want to let her loose only to have her turn around and attack us,” Carl answered him. “We need to be careful.”

“She seems okay,” Greg said, examining her face and neck. “I don’t see any visible marks and her skin’s not rotting. I don’t think she’s infected or we’d be able to tell.”

“By the stench,” Carl said.

“Yes, thank-you for spelling that out for us,” Denny said. “So let’s cut her loose and get the hell out of here, wherever here is.”

“I think we might be under Mane Manor,” Carl said, looking around. “There was a rumor that there was a tunnel running underneath the place. But no one ever found it.”

“That’s because no one ever looked for it,” Morris said.

“True,” Carl went on. “It was just a rumor, and no one knew where it went to, if it was real.”

“Well I believe it’s safe to say it runs to the Haxon House,” Greg said. “Morris, come over here. We need to break these chains.”

“We are the chain breakers, my friend,” Morris said, drawing out his bold cutters. “Let’s hope these are strong enough. Denny and Carl, hold your flashlights so I can see. I don’t want to take a finger off instead of the chain.” Their lights stayed steady on the unmoving girl. Greg kept looking at her, clearing the hair out of her face to try and see if he recognized her. “I think she might be one of my students,” he said. “You know, back from before.”

There was a grunt and a snap as Morris snapped the link of the chain closest to her left wrist. He snapped the other side and her arm was free. He couldn’t cut the cuffs themselves because they were so thick, but if he could at least cut the chains, then they could get her out of there. “What was her name?” Morris asked, grunting as he cut another link. This one shattered with only one snip and the girl was free.

“I don’t remember. Since everything went to hell, I’ve forgotten most of my students’ names.”

“I can carry her,” Denny said, stooping down beside Greg. Jesse took his flashlight and, together, they shifted her into Denny’s arms. She didn’t move. “Do you think she’s in a coma?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” Greg said. “But we’re not leaving her down here. Let’s take her upstairs. Everyone else, get your weapons ready in case whoever chained her here comes back.”

The group began to move up the stairs, one at a time, carefully in case the stairs were old enough to collapse. They’d had enough accidents for one night. Jesse again brought up the rear, and he could hear the whispers starting to come back as he waited for the others to ascend. They seemed to slither out of the passageway, crawl around the rock and creep into his ears, echoing their same, unintelligible chatter. They seemed intent on crawling inside his mind, and when it was Jesse’s turn to climb the stairs and get out of that basement, he could not move fast enough. The voices were once again silenced as he shut the basement door behind him and he waited, holding it while he tried to catch his breath. Something seemed to be after him.

After Jesse had calmed down, he followed the sound of his companions’ footsteps. They rounded a corner out of the empty room with the door to the basement and into an adjacent room off of the central hallway. This room at least had chairs, and even a couch, on which Denny laid the still-motionless girl. He kept an eye on the hallway while some of the others sat down in the chairs to rest for a few moments. Morris, however, chose to investigate the room’s most oddly-furnished part: the coffin. On one side of the room, there was, indeed, a coffin set up on a table, pressed against the wall as if in a funeral parlor. The coffin was open and empty, to Morris’ relief, but it still looked old and weathered, as if worn down by heavy use. He didn’t want to think about the possible explanations for that.

“I’m pretty sure this is Mane Manor,” Carl said, looking around. “It’s certainly big enough to be. Plus, the tunnel we took was mostly straight, and it was in the direction of Mane Manor.”

“If that’s the case,” Denny began. “Then at least it means we shouldn’t expect anyone to come in here and attack us.”

“Mane Manor?” Jesse asked, curiously.

“Oh, yeah, you don’t remember it, do you?” Denny asked. “It’s this mansion where the founder of King’s End used to live. It’s been pretty much abandoned for like fifty years, I think, maybe more. Some say it’s haunted.”

“A haunted house in a town full of zombies,” Jesse said. “Of course, that sounds believable.” Denny just shook his head, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“Get down!” Greg whispered from the window closest to the coffin. He dropped like a stone beneath its sill. The others instinctively dropped to the ground as well, even Jesse, and they waited. Most of them stared at the ground or at each other, silently pressing themselves low in the dim light. Jesse, however, managed to catch sight of what Greg may have been reacting to: something appeared to be moving past the window, a large, amorphous tangle of hair and fur taking slow, deliberate steps just outside. Safely hidden in the shadows, Jesse could see a hideous face peering inside, with a single black eye scanning the room. Fingers seemed to end in claws and a grotesque smile was on the creature’s face. But after a moment, it had passed and Greg slowly began to rise to his feet. He stared out the window and motioned to everyone that the thing was gone. “What was that?!” Jesse cried under his breath, trying to stifle his nerves.

“I don’t know,” Greg said. “But I’m totally fine not finding out.” His last few words were nearly drowned out by a new sound, a skittering sound like something crawling quickly beneath their feet. Jesse pressed his ear to the dusty ground and heard, beneath the floorboards, a rushing sound like flowing water, or the migration of a massive swarm of insects. The others knelt down, too, except for Morris, who stared at the walls. The sound was coming from them as well.

Denny first noticed that the room was growing darker. He looked up in time to see the windows slowly clouded over with what appeared to be the silhouettes of bugs and insects, a swarm covering every square inch of the open windows. As the last bit of light vanished behind the swarm, Morris began to scream. But as the darkness became whole and pure, it was cut short, barely more than a second of sound before the darkness became silence as well. Whatever had made Morris scream had also made him stop.

After only a few seconds, light began to re-enter the room. The windows cleared, and as the last of the insectoid shadows vanished, the skittering sound became silent as well, as if the swarm were finding a safe nestling place, as if the rushing water had ceased to flow. The group looked around. The coffin was still as it was, the girl still asleep on the couch. They were safe and untouched. Except for Morris, who was nowhere to be found.