Cabin
When Elias woke up, it was to the feeling of breath on his face. He opened his eyes. A child was staring at him from less than a centimeter away. Her brown hair fell about his cheeks as she scrutinized him.
“You look like a quilt, all over in patches,” she remarked sharply.
“Agatha!” A horrified voice. “Get away from him.”
Elias turned to see a woman with dark hair, eyes, and skin peeking in the doorway. She waved Agatha over to her.
“Do not bother him,” she hissed.
Elias closed his eyes.
“It is all right. She is my youngest sister’s age. When she grows, you’ll miss the mischief,” he murmured.
But when he opened his eyes, she was gone. It was strange, though. He was alone in this room but still felt as though someone was listening to him. Or watching him.
Elias lay very still.
There were noises coming from the front of the house, the sounds of a younger man and the woman he’d seen.
The old man, too. After a while, he heard the girl shrieking in play as well, all too far to be at his bedside.
Elias looked at the light from beneath the door and did not see the shadow of feet.
There was a wrongness to this feeling.
His head had been pounding for days, and the pain of his every movement had been his companion since his rebirth, so he wouldn’t have been able to notice such a subtle feeling until he was safe, clean, dry, and healing.
Now that Elias was aware of it, the hairs raised on his entire body. He forced himself to get up and search the room, but it was empty. He crept to the door and peered through the crack, but there was no one lurking behind it.
Then he went and sat on the bed.
He looked at the ceiling. “Can you hear me?” Elias whispered.
The feeling persisted but did not grow stronger. Nothing changed: the candles nearby did not even flicker more than usual.
Elias lay down, carefully covering his back.
“I see you,” he said to Victor. “You are a beast in the skin of a man. There is nowhere you can run where I shall not give chase. I swear on the power of my own hands, I will bury you in your grave.”