Chapter Ten #2
She didn’t dare look behind her, instead focusing on the pinprick of light ahead, illuminated only by unending flashes of lightning, and making sure that every one of her limbs stepped one in front of the other.
Behind her was a gurgling roar and the scrape of claws against stone in pursuit of her.
Hot breath moistened her ankles just as she threw herself onto the kitchen floor.
Half standing, half on her knees, she slammed the door shut.
The force of something ramming against the other side was enough to knock her back to the ground.
Mind locked purely on survival, cunning abandoned Jane as she scrambled to her feet and ran toward the first door she saw, leaving the threshold to Hell unlocked and unobstructed.
She pushed through the door as she heard the splintering of wood coming undone from its hinges and was met by a blustering downpour. Blinded by rain, and deafened by thunder, Jane continued to run despite the storm; from somewhere too close behind the beast howled.
She didn’t get very far before her foot caught on stone and was catapulted forward until she splashed down in mud.
Pain ricocheted from her ankle and seething a breath between her teeth only resulted in her inhaling a mouthful of slimy earth.
Looming above her were two stone angels, one with outstretched wings while the other drooped over its grave.
The cemetery. She turned to glare at the headstone that tripped her but was instead met with a bloodshot gaze and a flash of teeth as the beast tore into her leg.
Jane screamed as the saber-teeth sank deep into her calf and yanked her back through a slurry of mud and blood.
Even as a delirium of pain washed over her, she grappled to hold onto the headstone nearest to her with a free hand, but her fingers slipped as the beast rattled her with a great shake of its head.
Her blood foamed from its mouth and its growl pealed through her, just beneath the surface of her skin.
The world momentarily fell into a haze of oblivion as teeth grated across bone.
Any semblance of time and place was lost beneath the blazing pain, even when the beast released her leg with a final shake of its jaws and pinned her beneath its broad body.
She couldn’t feel hardly anything below her knee.
Would a limb even be attached there anymore if she dared to look?
Hot breath reeking of blood—Jane’s blood—drowned her, even in her daze, as a claw pressed against her shoulder and pushed her deeper into the mud.
Air rushed from her lungs and she couldn’t breathe.
The other claw caressed her face. Not to smother, but rather in an uncanny gesture that cupped her chin and canted her head to the side—offering it a perfect view of her throat.
No longer was she its prey, but rather its plaything, she decided with a dread laced with red-hot pain.
The beast continued to idly toy with her face, lolling it limply from side to side as though she were nothing more than a ragdoll.
Rude to play with your food, Jane would have muttered if she weren’t drowning beneath rainfall, mud, her own blood, and the beast’s assertive presence.
All she could manage to think of was to beg for death, and to have such a death not be as horrid as being rendered a sloppish mound of blood and skin and clothing left to spoil in the cellar.
No.
She couldn’t allow herself to meet that fate. She refused to die at the hands of a monster. Not yet, at least.
The beast pressed down onto her mouth, a claw tickling her nostril, when the dormant animalistic core of her brain suddenly took hold and she sank her teeth with a snarl into the taut, gray flesh.
Rank blood flooded her mouth, then splattered all across the front of her as the beast howled and ripped itself away.
She spat out the small bit of meat and a congealed residue remained on her tongue, bathing it in a taste and texture not too unlike mud.
A cold, piercing sensation resonated from her palm as the beast howled, and her fingers curled into an even tighter fist around the knife still held there.
She screamed her own howl as she drew the knife upward and stabbed into the other paw that held her down.
She pierced the beast’s claw and forearm again and again until the whole limb, and her torso, were bathed in its rotted blood; she only dared to pause her assault when the skin seemed to sizzle beneath every puncture of her pin.
The odor of singed flesh permeated through the rain.
A great weight heaved itself off of Jane, and she could suddenly breathe again. Desperately she inhaled gulps of air but paused to gag when she tasted the blood on her tongue and felt a sharp pain flare in her leg.
Through the rain, she could hear the beast whimpering as it mewled over wounds that steamed as it licked them.
Jane seized that moment to stagger back to her feet, grateful she still had both limbs—and run.
Or at least run as fast as her ruined leg and slick mud would allow, toward the looming shadow of the Drowning House.
She nearly wept with relief when her feet met wooden steps and the sturdiness of a front door.
She had never been so grateful to feel wallpaper beneath her fingertips as she rushed inside and slammed the door shut behind her.
Her fingers, glistening red, slipped and fumbled to lock the door just as the weight of the beast pummeled against the other side.
Unlike the cellar door, the wood stayed.
Jane didn’t wait another moment before stumbling further into the house, seeking sanctuary as another howl rang through the storm outside.
She did not know where she was in the house when she at last collapsed in a heap. Her fall was cushioned by ornate, plush rugs. Numerous Tiffany lamps illuminated by strikes of lightning bathed Jane in a multi-colored delirium as her blood seeped into the conservatory’s rugs.
So much blood…
Through the pain humming across her body, she listened to the beast’s assault on the front door, felt it through vibrations in the house’s very foundations, until it gave way to silence, the drone of thunder, and Jane’s dull heartbeat.
She hoped that the beast retreated out of frustration and defeat like a pouting child so that it could continue mewling over its festering wounds, but she found her fingers curling into a feeble fist around the knife in preparation for another attack.
If the beast attacked again, Jane was unsure how well she could fend for herself as the periphery of her vision started to haze and she could no longer will her limbs to move.
Beneath the floorboards, just as Jane was beginning to slip away, was a low, deep thump, like that of a heartbeat, resounding from the resting place of Old Man Hayes’ book.
Jaaaane…
A horrible whisper, caressing her with a cold, unseen hand, was what coaxed her into a numb oblivion.
Blood.
So, so much blood…