Chapter Fourteen
Declan
“Ouch,” I shout, suddenly waking in the night. “What the hell was that?” A sharp pain scrapes across the bottom of my left foot. “Ah, dammit!” I wail aloud, feeling the same pain along my right, and I swear someone is dragging a razor blade along the soles of my feet.
I’ve been cut.
Sprawling from my bed, I nearly fall from the excruciating pain in my feet.
With little to no grace, I lunge toward the wall and manage to flick on the light.
Immediately, I scan the room before looking down at my feet, searching for an answer.
But nobody is here. I’m not bleeding. My feet are fine.
It’s quiet. The only thing out of sorts is me.
“Great,” I declare with sarcastic frustration. My shoulders sag with relief at the realization I’m not being murdered, and I wipe at the exhaustion in my eyes. But then I hear it, his sinister laugh echoing, as if blasting in theater-quality surround sound.
“It’s going to be another one of those nights,” I say to nobody and nothing, shaking my head.
I slap the light switch off again and climb back into bed, despite the feeling of blood gushing from my soles and dripping from the ends of my toes.
I know it isn’t real, but my body believes it is.
That doesn’t matter right now. I need to sleep. I have to let it go.
It doesn’t last long, my rest. A little less than an hour.
Then I’m waking to my body twitching and trembling.
Quaking as though I’m caught in the middle of an intense dream.
But that’s not it. My body’s reacting to that presence.
The blanket and sheet I tucked around me slowly sliding off the bed.
But, they don’t fall to the floor. Nothing so plausible ever happens with me.
There, in my cozy bedroom at the back of 7068, suspended in weightlessness, my bedding flows with oceanic waves overhead.
My twitching intensifies, until I can finally focus my attention. The blanket and sheet rearrange themselves to form a wall of fluid cloth between the end of my bed and the doorway up. I sit up and rub my eyes, still unable to comprehend what’s going on.
WHOOOOSH!
The covers swirl obnoxiously then stiffen with a snap, still standing tall—a partition in my own room. My sight slowly comes back into focus, and I try to get up to turn on the lights. But before I can so much as gain my footing, I’m knocked back by an invisible ballistic blow to the gut.
“Hngh!” I cry out as the air ejects itself from my lungs.
Again, I try to rise, and again a powerful thump hits me. Only this time I see the sheet forming a fist before pummeling my center.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” I yell through fright and annoyance.
This sort of thing is happening with greater frequency, but I’ll never be used to it.
The fear has dulled over time and mixed with annoyance, like a mosquito that vanishes when I turn on the light but keeps buzzing by my ear every time I try to sleep.
Determined to put an end to whatever this is, I leap to my feet, my spirit fueled by the willpower of a mother bear rescuing her cub.
I charge toward the light switch, getting within an inch of my goal when suddenly, the covers wrap themselves around me and contract with brute force, mummifying me in a flash.
A second later the sadly familiar sensation of being heaved across the room.
Gravity does its thing and when I bounce off the wall where my curtains are taped down, my body clunks to ground.
“Okay,” I say, conceding through considerable pain and a lack of oxygen. “I give up. What do you want?”
There is no reply at first. Rather, I bound shoulder over shoulder on my side as the covers unravel like yarn from a spool until they, and ultimately I, fall to the floor next to the bed.
Hurt but not incapacitated, I push myself to at least get to my hands and knees. And that’s when I spot it—the black mass sitting in the darkness of the corner by my bedroom door.
“You,” it whispers with a raspy tone reminiscent of a fifty-year smoker. “You know what I want.”
“Well then,” I reply stupidly, “what are you waiting for?”
“Ha – ha – ha – ha – ha,” it laughs again, and shivers shoot down my spine.
It takes a moment to catch my breath and muster some courage, but I get back to my feet and exhale before pausing to convince myself to act.
“C'mon,” I say, planting my feet firmly into the floor, raising my fists to the level of my eyes. “I’m right here.”
What the fuck am I doing?
“AAAAHHHH!” It yells out, and the house shakes at the foundation. The entire neighborhood rumbles as the figure leaps from its dim perch, throwing itself at me from across the room. The scream still ringing in my ears.
All I see is a giant shadow—the creature from my nightmares—flying toward me. I hold my arms up in preparation for what could be my last dance when it swiftly bursts into a vapor before clamping itself to my body. It’s black and sticky, like used oil on a dipstick. And when I blink, it's gone.
Having no idea what the fuck just happened, I look around the room for a sign of the mass. All my fears attacked me, and then poof. My breath labors to the point I may vomit. I reach for my nebulizer and see the hairs on my arms are standing at attention.
WHACK!
I slap myself across the face.
“Damn,” I say, realizing I’m not dreaming.
When the thing from your darkest dream attacks you in reality, there’s no going back to sleep.
Maybe ever. My alarm isn’t due to go off for a couple of hours.
I think about sitting in my house, alone, in the dark, until I would have otherwise gotten out of bed, but I can’t stay in here.
Hell, I may not be able to live here anymore.
I grab my chair from under the closet door handles, carry it outside to the bottom of the driveway and slam it in place where I sit and wait for the sun to rise.
“Howdy neighbor.” A voice jostles me from somewhere out of sight, spurring me to reflexively wrench my head.
“Jesus Christ,” I say, finding my next-door neighbor strutting my way. “I didn’t see you there.”
Billybob Fishwright, a used-to-be hillbilly from the great state of Tennessee, won a large sum of money last year playing poker online and decided to move out west. Lucky for me, the house next to mine was repossessed through foreclosure, and Mr. Fishwright got the deal of a lifetime.
I don’t mind him, thought I have one hell of a time understanding what he means when he speaks.
“Oh, sorry,” says Billybob. “Didn’t mean to scare ya. Was a big’n huh?”
“Excuse me,” I say. “A big what?”
“What?” Billybob asks. “Well, why else’d ya be out here in the middle o' the morn’n? The quake, of course. Ain’t it what woke ya?”
Still thinking about the unexplainable events inside, I have trouble putting two and two together.
“What quake, Billybob?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”
“Declan, you josh’n me?” Billybob slaps me on the back, thinking it’s all a joke. “The quake that dun did shook the whole street’s what I’m talk’n ‘bout. Was kinda like back home when the tornadoes come sweep’n through, ‘cept my house didn’t go nowhere. All I got's a busted windor in the kitchen.”
The thought eventually connects in my mind, causing my heart to start racing. I hadn’t noticed when I first walked outside, but now that I’m paying attention, all I hear are car alarms blaring and dogs barking up and down the block. That’s why Billybob’s in the middle of the street.
“Oh, yeah,” I say, trying to recover. “The earthquake. It was something, wasn’t it? Knocked me right out of bed.”
“I know, me too,” says Billybob. “It’s my first real quake since I dun moved in last year.” An odd look of excitement fills his face. “Say, y’all get lots o’ these?”
“Huh?” I mutter with a puzzled look, thinking back to what actually happened. “Oh, no. That was probably the biggest one I’ve been in yet.” I want to change the subject. “You alright, Billybob? Everything okay inside? Should we call the paramedics?”
“Yer a funny guy, Declan.” Billybob laughs. “Why’d I call the likes of them? I can tape myself up just as good as they can.”
“Ha.” I fake a laugh to avoid seeming rude. “You’re probably right. Well, if everything’s okay out here, I’m going to head back inside. I have to get ready to go.” I wave to Billybob, who decides to follow suit.
The doctor’s never going to believe this.