Claws In The Rain
1826 Words
Claws In The Rain
Rain came first.
Not the gentle silver rain
that kisses rooftops
and sings old lullabies to sleeping towns,
but a hard and hungry rain,
a rain with teeth,
a rain that struck the earth
like a thousand whispered curses.
The village of Black Hollow
hid beneath the storm.
Windows shuttered.
Lanterns dimmed.
Doors bolted with trembling hands.
Because the elders knew.
When rain fell on the last night of autumn,
something walked the forest.
Something with claws.
Not beast.
Not man.
Not spirit entirely.
Children were warned never to look
beyond the tree line
when thunder dragged itself across the sky.
But children are born curious.
And curiosity is a candle
the darkness loves to swallow.
—
Elias stood at his bedroom window,
counting lightning veins across the heavens.
One.
Two.
Three.
Then came the scream.
Sharp.
Brief.
Cut short
like thread beneath a knife.
The boy froze.
Below, his mother whispered prayers
over a dying hearth.
“Stay away from the woods tonight,”
she had warned him.
“The rain wakes old things.”
But Elias was fifteen,
an age where fear feels like challenge,
where legends become ladders
boys climb to prove themselves immortal.
Another scream echoed.
Closer.
The rain battered the roof harder.
Elias grabbed his lantern.
His mother slept in exhausted silence,
never hearing the back door creak open,
never hearing the storm swallow her son whole.
—
Outside, the village drowned beneath darkness.
Mud clung to Elias’ boots
as he crossed narrow paths
between leaning cottages.
No soul stirred.
Only rain.
Only thunder.
Only the strange sound beneath it—
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Like nails dragged slowly across bark.
The forest waited ahead.
Tall black trees stood like ancient judges,
their branches twisting against the storm.
Elias lifted the lantern higher.
“Who’s there?” he called.
No answer.
Only wind.
Then lightning cracked the sky apart.
And for one terrible second
he saw it.
A figure crouched among the trees.
Huge.
Long-limbed.
Eyes pale as drowned moons.
Claws glinting silver in the rain.
The lantern slipped from Elias’ fingers.
Darkness swallowed him instantly.
His breath caught.
Silence.
Then—
Crunch.
A footstep behind him.
Slow.
Heavy.
Wet.
Elias turned carefully.
Nothing.
But the smell arrived first.
Rot.
Wet fur.
Blood.
The storm seemed suddenly alive,
every raindrop a heartbeat.
Another step echoed nearby.
Then another.
Circling him.
Hunting.
“Please…” Elias whispered.
A growl answered.
Low enough
to shake his bones.
He ran.
—
Branches whipped his face
as the forest devoured him.
Roots clawed at his ankles.
Mud dragged him downward.
Behind him came the beast.
Not running.
Stalking.
Confident.
Like death with endless patience.
Elias could hear its breathing now—
deep and ragged,
almost human.
Lightning flashed again.
The creature appeared beside him.
Towering.
Its skin stretched thin over monstrous bones,
veins black beneath gray flesh.
Antlers erupted from its skull
like dead trees.
Its claws were impossibly long,
curved like sickles forged for war.
But its eyes—
Its eyes held sorrow.
Ancient sorrow.
The beast lunged.
Elias stumbled backward down a hill,
rolling through mud and stone
until his body slammed against a ruined shrine.
The creature stopped at the hilltop.
Rain poured down its body.
It stared silently.
Then something impossible happened.
It spoke.
“Run… before… it finds you…”
Its voice cracked
like rotting wood.
Elias stared in horror.
“You’re the monster,” he gasped.
The creature twitched violently.
“No…”
A scream tore from its throat then—
not rage,
but agony.
The forest answered.
Hundreds of whispers hissed through the trees.
Find him.
Feed.
Bring him to us.
Elias looked around wildly.
Shapes moved between trunks.
Not one creature.
Many.
Tall silhouettes creeping closer.
The beast atop the hill turned toward them,
snarling with sudden fury.
And Elias realized the truth too late.
The thing chasing him
had never been hunting.
It had been protecting him.
—
The shadows descended.
They came crawling from darkness
like nightmares escaping old graves.
Their bodies bent wrong,
limbs snapping and reforming
with horrible cracking sounds.
Eyes burned blue in hollow sockets.
Claws scraped bark and stone.
The rain became deafening.
The antlered creature roared
and charged them.
The forest exploded into violence.
Silver claws tore through black flesh.
Monsters shrieked.
Trees split apart.
Elias crawled backward against the shrine,
unable to breathe.
One shadow turned toward him.
Its jaw unhinged too wide.
Rows of needle teeth glistened.
“You carry the mark,” it hissed.
Elias frowned.
“The mark?”
The creature smiled.
Then Elias felt it.
Burning beneath his collarbone.
He tore open his shirt.
A symbol glowed faint red upon his skin—
a crooked circle surrounded by claw marks.
The shadows recoiled reverently.
“The heir,” they whispered.
“The gate-born child.”
Fear flooded Elias colder than rain.
“What are you talking about?”
Lightning crashed.
The shrine behind him split open.
Stone crumbled inward.
And beneath it—
deep underground—
something ancient breathed.
The entire forest shuddered.
The shadows fell to their knees.
Even the antlered beast froze.
From the pit below came a voice
older than storms.
“Bring him to me.”
Elias’ blood turned to ice.
Hands burst from the earth around him—
gray skeletal hands
pulling themselves from muddy graves.
The dead clawed upward,
mouths opening in silent screams.
The shadows seized Elias.
He fought wildly,
but their grip felt like iron.
The antlered beast tore through them savagely,
ripping one apart,
then another.
But there were too many.
Rain mixed with blood.
Thunder drowned screams.
The creature reached Elias at last.
Its pale eyes met his.
And suddenly Elias saw memories
not his own.
A kingdom burning.
A black crown.
A doorway between worlds.
Creatures pouring through endless darkness.
And a man—
A man with Elias’ face.
The vision vanished instantly.
The beast spoke urgently.
“You must close the gate.”
“What gate?”
“The one inside you.”
The shadows attacked again.
Claws pierced the beast’s side.
It roared in pain.
Elias grabbed a fallen spear beside the shrine.
For the first time in his life,
terror transformed into fury.
He drove the spear into a shadow’s throat.
Black blood spilled steaming onto the rain-soaked earth.
The creature shrieked.
The others hesitated.
The antlered guardian stared at Elias strangely.
As though remembering someone long dead.
“You are stronger than he was,” it murmured.
The ground split wider.
Below, darkness churned endlessly.
Something massive moved within it.
A single gigantic eye opened beneath the earth.
Watching.
Waiting.
Hungry.
The shadows screamed in worship.
“The Hollow King rises!”
The eye focused on Elias.
And the voice returned.
“My son.”
The world stopped.
Rain hung frozen for one impossible second.
Elias trembled.
“No…”
But truth already slithered through him.
The mark burned brighter.
Memories surfaced like drowning corpses.
Dreams he had forgotten.
Voices from childhood.
The night his father vanished into the woods.
The whispers beneath the floorboards.
The strange storms that followed him always.
The Hollow King laughed below.
A sound vast enough
to shake mountains.
“You were born from the gate,” it said.
“Human flesh wrapped around darkness.”
The shadows bowed before Elias now.
Not as prey.
As prince.
The antlered creature stepped protectively between them.
“You will not take him.”
The King’s eye narrowed.
“You failed once, guardian.”
The creature’s body trembled.
And Elias suddenly understood.
This monster before him
had once been human too.
Cursed for guarding the gate.
Condemned for centuries.
“Who are you?” Elias whispered.
Lightning illuminated the creature’s scarred face.
And beneath the horror,
beneath fur and antlers and monstrous bone,
a fragment of humanity remained.
“I was your father.”
Silence consumed the forest.
Elias staggered backward.
“No…”
But he saw it now.
The familiar eyes.
The sorrow.
The unbearable love buried beneath the beast.
His father continued softly:
“I chose the curse to stop the King from using you.”
The shadows closed in again.
Rain became violent chaos.
“You cannot stop destiny,” they hissed.
The pit widened.
Dark tendrils rose from below,
wrapping around trees,
rotting them instantly.
The Hollow King began climbing upward.
A gigantic shape emerging slowly
from endless black.
Elias looked at his father.
At the creatures surrounding them.
At the mark burning on his chest.
And he understood.
The gate was never beneath the shrine.
It was him.
His father gripped his shoulders with trembling claws.
“You must choose,” he said.
“Open the gate… or destroy it forever.”
“How?”
Pain crossed the creature’s face.
“Death.”
The word shattered Elias completely.
Thunder exploded overhead.
The Hollow King rose higher.
Its body resembled living darkness,
covered in countless staring eyes.
The shadows shrieked joyfully.
Rain turned black around them.
Elias closed his eyes.
He was only fifteen.
He wanted mornings.
Laughter.
Warm bread by the hearth.
A life untouched by monsters.
But fate is cruelest
to those born near darkness.
He opened his eyes again.
And smiled sadly at his father.
“You protected me all this time?”
The beast nodded once.
Even monsters can weep.
Elias picked up the fallen spear.
The mark on his chest glowed like fire.
The Hollow King reached toward him.
“My son, come home.”
Instead, Elias turned the spear toward himself.
The shadows screamed.
His father lunged forward.
But Elias whispered:
“If I’m the gate…
then let me be the lock.”
And drove the spear through his heart.
—
The world erupted.
Light burst from Elias’ body
like a newborn sun.
The storm screamed.
The shadows burned instantly into ash.
The Hollow King roared in fury
as cracks spread across its enormous form.
The forest shook violently.
Rain became silver once more.
Elias fell into his father’s arms.
Human arms now.
The curse was breaking.
The antlers crumbled away.
Claws became trembling hands.
His father held him tightly beneath the rain.
“No… please…”
Elias smiled weakly.
The darkness beneath the shrine collapsed inward,
sealing forever.
Thunder faded slowly into silence.
And for the first time in centuries,
Black Hollow heard only rain.
Gentle rain.
Peaceful rain.
Elias touched his father’s face.
“You came back…”
Tears mixed with rainwater.
“I never left,” his father whispered.
The boy’s eyes closed.
The storm ended.
And dawn finally rose beyond the trees.
But sometimes,
when autumn rain falls hard against the village roofs,
the elders still whisper old warnings.
Because deep within the forest,
near the broken shrine,
fresh claw marks sometimes appear in the mud.
And on nights when thunder walks the sky,
some swear they glimpse a shadow with silver eyes
watching silently through the rain.
Not hunting.
Guarding.
- Writer
