CHAPTER 24 MONSTERS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN #2
“No… no… no…” Savannah's knuckles whitened as she crammed her fists against her mouth, teeth cutting into skin.
Her eyes bulged, hot tears streaking down her dirt-smudged cheeks.
She scrambled backward, toenails scraping as she clawed herself away from those yellowed fingers reaching through the bars. “P-Please go away… go away… go away…”
The figure withdrew its arm with an animal-like hiss, dropping to all fours.
It prowled around the perimeter of the cage, fingernails—overgrown and filed to points—clicking methodically against each rust-flaked bar like a clock ticking down her remaining seconds.
Savannah clamped her hands over her ears, lungs spasming as her breath caught in stuttering gasps.
The scrape-scrape-scrape of those nails followed her pulse, quickening as the creature circled toward the door.
“No... no...” She kicked wildly, heels drumming against concrete, the skin of her bare feet splitting on the rough surface. The figure's nostrils flared, inhaling deeply, pupils dilating. This couldn't be real. It had to be a hallucination born of terror and trauma—a nightmare within a nightmare.
The thing rattled the latch, its knuckles bulging white beneath papery skin.
The padlock held. It dropped to a feral squat, head cocked at an unnatural angle, and studied the mechanism with predatory focus.
From somewhere in its oversized ratty coat, it extracted a thin metal implement, inserting it with the delicate precision of a surgeon, and began to pick the lock.
Savannah's lungs seized as the creature's tongue darted between filed teeth, licking cracked lips in concentration—a flash of horrifying humanity in this otherwise bestial form.
When the lock surrendered with a triumphant snap, her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird.
The cage door swung open on rusted hinges that wailed like a dying animal.
The creature dropped to all fours and slithered inside, shoulder blades jutting beneath its tattered coat, nostrils flaring as it scented her fear.
Savannah's throat closed around a whimper, black spots dancing at the edges of her vision as she hyperventilated.
Her kidnapper had been a monster wearing human skin, but this.
.. this was something worse—a human who had surrendered to something primal and ravenous that lived in the darkest corners of evolution.
Savannah squeezed her eyes shut until starbursts exploded behind her eyelids.
“Please... go away... go away...” Her fingernails dug into her scalp as she covered her head.
A strangled scream tore from her throat when the figure's talon-like nails raked across her ankle.
She kicked backward, her heel connecting with something solid. “No— No! Please—Go Away! GO AWAY!!”
In the gloom, huddled beneath her trembling arms, Savannah felt hot, moist breath seeping through her hair to her scalp. The creature's stale breath flooded her nostrils as yellowed teeth clicked inches from her ear. Its weight shifted, knuckles scraping concrete as it crouched beside her.
“No… no… no…” she whispered, each word fracturing into sobs that convulsed through her chest. “Please go away… please… please…”
The intruder's nose pressed against her scalp, inhaling deeply with a wet, snuffling sound. Its jagged fingernails raked lightly across her shoulder, raising goosebumps in their wake. “Pretty… baby,” it cooed, shocking Savannah with an almost childlike tone, yet still made her shudder in horror.
Savannah's stomach lurched at this horrifying collision of childlike human speech and bestial behavior—this thing that understood language but moved like something that had forgotten civilization.
“Please don't... hurt me,” she pleaded, voice cracking. Deep in her gut, despair bloomed—why fight? If Cole and Gabe didn't return… the killer would rape, torture, and butcher her.
But they will come for you. They’ll save you!
That tiny shred of hope made her plead for her life.
Savannah cringed when the figure stroked her hair, almost as if it were a child stroking a doll’s hair. Who was this… person? What was it? She understood it was human, but its behavior almost felt like that of an animal.
The intruder backed out of the cage, but remained crouched at the threshold. “Come...”
She raised her head through molasses-thick terror. The creature's hand extended—fingers curling and uncurling in a hypnotic, spider-like beckoning.
“Come... come...” It rocked slightly on its haunches.
Her muscles had solidified into stone, terror crystallizing in her joints.
“Come with us…”
Us? Savannah jerked hard, her spine slamming against the cage bars when a massive silhouette eclipsed the doorway—a hulking figure that dwarfed even her kidnapper, its shoulders nearly scraping both sides of the frame.
The smaller figure slinked back a couple of feet, yellowed fingernails still curling in that hypnotic beckoning motion.
What if Cole and Gabe didn't come back? She would be trapped in the cage, defenseless against the rapist. This feral creature terrified her to her marrow, its inhuman movements sending electric jolts of primal fear through her limbs.
And that mountainous shadow behind it—broad as a doorframe with hands that could crush her skull like an eggshell—might harbor even darker intentions.
But she knew with bone-deep certainty that her kidnapper meant her grave harm.
If she stayed here... and Cole and Gabe didn't return.
.. she would die with her screams echoing off concrete walls, her blood seeping into cracks where no one would ever find it.
Savannah wiped her eyes with trembling fingers, salt stinging the raw scratches on her face, and moved shakily toward the cage door.
The hinges shrieked as she pushed it wider, making her flinch.
The slinking figure's breathing quickened, its head twitching at an odd angle as she crawled out, knees scraping against the rough concrete.
“Come... come...” it called, voice almost that of an excited child, and scurried over to the hulking figure with a noticeable limp, one ankle slightly kinked as if it had been broken and improperly healed.
The giant reached out and grasped his small companion’s hand as he leaped with unsettling agility onto the huge man's back, thin arms—corded with wiry muscle—snaking around his thick neck. “Come...”
Feeling naked and exposed in only her dirt-smudged underwear, goosebumps rising on her flesh in the damp chill, Savannah walked uncertainly toward the two strange figures, each step a gamble between monsters known and unknown, wondering if she was walking away from—or toward—her death.