Claws Across The Windows
1714 Words
Claws Across The Windows
The rain arrived before the warning came,
A silver hiss upon the crooked streets,
A swarm of shadows drowning out the lamps
That flickered weakly in the midnight heat.
The town of Briar Hollow locked its doors,
Pulled curtains shut with trembling, hurried hands,
For every child and elder knew the tale
That slithered softly through the rotting lands.
They spoke of claws that scraped on glass at night,
Long fingers dragging slowly through the dark,
A patient scratching meant to wake the soul
And carve its terror deep beneath the heart.
No man who heard it ever slept again.
No woman kept her sanity for long.
The sound remained inside their shaking skulls,
Like broken choirs chanting wicked songs.
Yet Marcus Vale laughed loudly at the fear.
A traveler hardened by the years of war,
A man who claimed no ghost could touch his mind,
No devil dared approach his battered door.
He came one storming evening drenched in mud,
His boots like thunder on the tavern floor.
The patrons fell to silence at his grin,
While lightning cracked beyond the fragile walls.
“Another room,” he barked, “and something strong.”
The keeper’s face grew pale as candle smoke.
“You should not stay the night,” the old man warned,
His crooked voice unsteady as he spoke.
“The scratching comes whenever rain arrives.
Three nights this month it hunted through the town.
We hear it first upon the northern homes…
Then silence falls before the dead are found.”
The traveler drank and scoffed into his cup.
“I’ve crossed through trenches painted black with blood.
I’ve seen men torn apart by starving wolves.
No scratching hand will drag me through the mud.”
The tavern watched him with exhausted eyes.
No further soul attempted to persuade.
Outside, the storm grew violent and alive,
Like something ancient waking in the rain.
The room they gave him leaned beneath the roof,
Its single window facing twisted pines.
The shutters rattled wildly in the wind
Like prison chains disturbed by unseen crimes.
He placed his rifle gently by the bed,
Removed his coat, and settled with a sigh.
Yet somewhere in the distant choking dark
A strange uneasiness began to rise.
Perhaps it was the way the hallway groaned.
Perhaps the house itself seemed cold as death.
Or maybe it was silence growing thick,
As though the town no longer dared to breathe.
Midnight arrived upon reluctant feet.
The thunder faded to a low lament.
The traveler closed his eyes against the storm
And drifted slowly toward exhaustion’s end.
Then came the scratching.
Soft.
Deliberate.
A single nail drawn slowly over glass.
Marcus awoke and sat upright at once,
His pulse exploding hard and sharp and fast.
Again it came—
A jagged scraping sound
That crawled like insects underneath his skin.
Not wind.
Not branches brushing by the pane.
But something reaching desperately within.
He seized the lantern trembling near the bed
And raised its glow toward the shaking wall.
The scratching stopped.
The silence deepened then
Until he feared the silence most of all.
He moved toward the window carefully,
Each wooden board beneath him crying out.
The rain had turned the world to liquid ash,
A blur of shadows twisting all about.
Nothing was there.
Only the storming woods,
The ancient trees bent low beneath the gale.
He cursed himself for listening to fools
And turned away with irritated breath.
Scratch.
This time above him.
Right across the glass.
Four dragging lines, impossibly distinct.
He spun around so violently the lamp
Slipped from his hand and nearly struck the floor.
Outside the window something moved away—
Too tall for any ordinary man.
A silhouette stretched thin against the rain,
Its limbs unnaturally long and bent,
Its head hanging crooked like a broken branch,
Its body jerking with uneven steps.
Marcus flung the shutters open wide
And pointed out his rifle through the storm.
“Show yourself!” he roared into the dark.
The forest answered only with the wind.
Then laughter echoed softly through the trees.
Not human laughter.
Something cracked and wet.
A choking sound like lungs half-filled with blood,
Like corpses learning how to breathe again.
The traveler fired blindly toward the noise.
The rifle split the night with blazing fire.
Birds erupted screaming from the woods,
And silence swallowed every sound once more.
Below, the tavern candles flickered out.
One by one the windows darkened black.
No soul emerged to question what they heard.
The town had learned to never answer back.
Marcus remained awake until near dawn,
His rifle clenched against his sweating chest.
Yet nothing else approached the windowpane,
And eventually the storm began to rest.
Morning revealed exhausted, colorless skies.
The traveler stumbled wearily downstairs.
The tavern keeper stared into his face
And paled at what he saw waiting there.
“You heard it,” whispered he.
Marcus gave a nod.
“Something walked outside my room last night.”
The keeper crossed himself with trembling hands.
“You should leave before returning night.”
“What is it?” Marcus demanded through clenched teeth.
“Some beast? Some murderer in the woods?”
The old man’s eyes drifted toward the rain.
“No name survives for what once wore a face.”
Years ago, he said, before the wars,
A family lived beyond the northern hill.
A father, mother, and their little son
Who vanished when the autumn air turned still.
The searchers found the cabin after weeks.
Its walls were painted black with rotting mold.
The mother hanging lifeless from the stairs.
The father frozen stiff and gray with cold.
But no one found the child.
Only the marks.
Long clawing scratches cut through every room,
Across the tables, ceilings, doors, and floors,
As though some beast had paced within the gloom.
Then people started hearing sounds at night—
Soft scratching on their windows in the rain.
At first it seemed a harmless, passing thing.
Then villagers began to disappear.
Those who survived were never truly whole.
They spoke of eyes reflecting in the dark,
Of skeletal hands gripping at the glass,
Of whispers crawling underneath their thoughts.
Marcus listened, grim and unconvinced,
Though deep inside unease had started growing.
He told himself the tale was village fear,
A sickness born from isolation’s poison.
Yet all throughout the weary afternoon
He noticed something dreadful in the town:
Every window covered thick with nails,
Every child refusing to look out.
As evening bled across the hollow streets,
The villagers barricaded every door.
No laughter drifted from the narrow homes.
No footsteps crossed the muddy roads anymore.
And then the rain returned.
Heavy.
Violent.
A flood of blackness drowning out the light.
Marcus loaded every round he had
And waited in his room to face the night.
Hours passed.
The scratching did not come.
Instead there came a distant, awful scream.
A woman’s voice erupting through the storm
Before it vanished suddenly mid-breath.
The traveler rushed downstairs into the rain
Despite the keeper begging him to stay.
Across the town a single house stood open,
Its lantern swinging wildly in the gale.
Inside he found destruction smeared with blood.
The walls were gashed by deep and crooked slashes.
Furniture overturned like shattered bones.
The silence there was heavier than death.
Then came the sound behind him.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Slow claws dragging gently down the door.
Marcus turned.
And saw it standing there.
Its body thin as famine, soaked with rain,
Its skin hanging loose in strips of gray,
Its arms too long, its fingers ending sharp.
But worst of all—its face.
The face of a child.
Twisted horribly with age and rot,
Eyes black as wells where no reflection lived,
A grin stretched far beyond what flesh allowed.
The creature tilted slowly toward his gaze.
Its mouth unhinged with cracking, splintered sounds.
And from its throat emerged a broken voice:
“Why… won’t… you… let… me… in?”
Marcus fired.
The bullet tore through half its skull.
Yet still it crawled across the shattered floor.
Its claws shrieked wildly against splintered wood
As it lunged toward him with impossible speed.
He fled into the storming streets at once,
The monster bounding somewhere close behind.
Windows slammed shut as villagers heard the chase,
Their candles vanishing one by one in fear.
Marcus stumbled toward the chapel hill,
His breath ragged, his heartbeat deafening.
Behind him came those scraping, frantic claws
Against the stones, the doors, the shattered fences.
He reached the church and forced himself inside,
Barricading trembling doors with broken pews.
The thunder shook the stained-glass overhead
While darkness pooled like ink around the room.
Then silence fell.
No scratching.
Nothing moved.
The traveler gasped and wiped the rain away.
Perhaps the thing had finally retreated.
Perhaps the walls of God still held some power.
Then slowly, from above the chapel rafters,
Came the dragging sound of nails on wood.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Marcus looked upward in frozen horror.
The creature clung upside down upon the beams,
Its limbs bent backward like a spider’s legs.
Its dead black eyes stared deep into his own,
Its grin now stretching ear to rotted ear.
“You heard me,” it whispered softly then.
“Now I hear you.”
The lantern died.
Darkness swallowed everything alive.
Outside, the storm raged on until the dawn.
But no one dared approach the chapel doors.
The villagers remained behind locked walls,
Praying quietly against the scratching rain.
When morning finally crawled across the town,
A group of men climbed trembling up the hill.
The chapel stood completely silent there,
Its windows shattered outward from within.
No sign of Marcus Vale was ever found.
No blood.
No rifle.
Nothing left behind.
Only four claw marks cut across the glass,
Still fresh despite the drying morning light.
And every year when heavy storms return,
The people lock their doors before the night.
They smother every candle, close each blind,
And warn their children never to look out.
For somewhere in the forests drenched with rain
A scratching hand still wanders through the dark.
Searching.
Patient.
Hungry.
Waiting for the sound of human breath
Behind the trembling windows of the world.
- Writer
