Hiss . . . Bang! Thump, thump, thump . . . The girl groaned and rolled over, stuffing her pillow around her ears. She did not like these noises. In the city, there were the comforting noises of people always awake, ten stories below you. She could be lulled asleep easily to the rushing of cars down Broadway, but there was no way in Heaven or Hell, or anywhere in between for that matter, that she would be able to fall asleep to the infernal clanking and hissing of the old boiler.
She removed her head from under her pillow. She had decided that the hard floor would just leave a red mark on her cheek, and the pillow would more likely suffocate her than block out the noise. She rolled over again, this time a bit too far, and fell off the camp bed. She wasn’t badly hurt, seeing as the sorry excuse for a camp bed was just a one-inch thick layer of foam padding for soundproofing on the floor.
She sat up, her head banging against the underside of the desk, which her father put there to protect her head from chunks of the ceiling that might have fallen on her while she was sleeping. Honestly, she didn’t see the point of being a millionaire if you didn’t bother to get nice things, as she had told her parents on multiple occasions. She felt around for her phone, yanking on the cord and disconnecting it from the wall. She scrolled through her texts. Nothing new. The little digital clock at the top of the screen read 3:24 A.M. Great. The first night in her new “house” was going to be a sleepless one.
“Meow?” A tiny, fur-covered body pushed its way under her chin. She laughed softly.
“Snowflake,” she whispered, amused. “What are you doing?” The kitten flopped onto his back in response. The girl smiled and twirled her fingers in Snowflake’s long fur. He “murped” indignantly and dug his tiny claws into her hand, bringing her fingers up to his little mouth and gnawing on them with sharp teeth. The girl quickly withdrew her hand.
“What was that for? I thought you wanted to be pet!” She whisper-shouted. Snowflake twisted over onto his stomach and regarded her with sparkling blue-green eyes. They seemed to say, “Never make assumptions, Rose.”
“Do you want to eat?” She inquired. “Is that it? C’mon, let’s get you some food.” At the word “food,” Snowflake sprang up. He trotted out of her room with his head high and tail skyward, kinked to the left slightly in that funny way that only Snowflake does. Standing up cautiously, the girl made her way out of her room, watching the floor for rusty nails. She wrapped her arms around herself, freezing in her athletic shorts and spaghetti strap top. Reaching the sorry excuse for a kitchen, she opened the cooler that was serving as her family’s temporary refrigerator and took out a can of cat food. She popped it open and Snowflake mewed loudly.
“Shh!” She chided. “We don’t want to be caught awake!” She set the food down on the floor and left Snowflake alone to eat. Instead of going straight back to her room, she went to the living area. Standing in front of the glass door, she looked up at the stars. So many stars . . . She had never seen so many in her life. Her father told her stories about the stars they had seen when they went out to Colorado for a camping trip, but she had been too young at the time to remember them for herself. In Manhattan, all the air and light pollution made it impossible to see the night sky.
Something flickered at the edge of her vision. She looked down towards the ground and squinted. Surely she was seeing things. That couldn’t be right. There was no way. And yet there they were. Two lumpy shapes in the center of the yard. One long and flat, lying on the ground, and another taller one that appeared to be bending over the first. It didn’t make sense. Just six and a half hours ago, right before the sun set, there were no rocks, no giant masses in the middle of the lawn. She hadn’t heard any loud noises, except a screech that she had attributed to animals having a fight. They were surrounded by woods, so surely animal fights were heard all the time. But where had the movement come from? Anyone with even the tiniest shred of common sense knows that rocks don’t move. Maybe it was just a squirrel. They can’t be uncommon around here.
Just as she was about to turn away, she saw it again. A tiny bit of movement from the taller shape. She squinted harder. What was it? Movement again, and she saw two pinpoints of red light from where the taller shape was. She moved closer to the door, her breathing fogging up the glass. All of a sudden, the taller shape disappeared. She moved her face forward unconsciously until her nose was pressed up to the glass. Something red slammed into the glass from the other side. She stumbled back and stifled a scream. Two hands, pressed against the glass, fingers spread and drenched in a thick, dark red substance. Blood. Her pulse raced as the salty red liquid ran in streaks down the glass pane.
She slowly lifted her eyes from the hands and saw the red pinpoints she saw earlier but now much closer. A thing stood there grinning, half of its face torn away, the muscle and bone exposed. The flesh red and infected in some places and black and rotting in others. She could smell the stench from inside the house, like meat left out in the sun to go bad. The sickly sweet smell rooted her to the floor.
The other side of its face was black shadow, a swirling mass of dark fog. As she met its scarlet, glowing eyes, it grinned. Pointy teeth, hundreds jammed into that small space, stained red with gleaming blood, bits of flesh, ripped and bloody, caught in between them. She felt a wave of revulsion so strong she almost vomited. It slowly turned its head sideways, moonlight flashing on the wet flesh of its exposed face.
“Rose . . .” She could hear it hiss, although the mouth stayed fixed in that sickening grin, filled with malice. “We’ve been waiting a long time for you.” A long black tongue slid out between the teeth, licking the glass, leaving a trail of blood and foamy saliva.
Then, as quickly as it had come, it disappeared. The girl breathed a sigh of relief, only to quickly suck it back in again. Words were painting themselves across the glass in the blood that the thing’s hands had left behind.
“We’re coming for you.”