with his own viscous filling. He stared down at the red, rubber- coated handles, the blackened, dust- covered cutting blade of the garden shears dripping in red. Slipping his fingers into the prefabricated loops, he held it out in front of him as the bloodspawn floated above the ground straight towards him, its toes barely an inch from the ground.
Scott’s fear widened eyes, stained by lightening- like red streaks, fixed on those of the bloodspawn, pinched tightly beneath the lowered brow as the face curled into a snarl. Swinging the clippers through the dank air, he succeeded in slicing through nothing but air, caught in his backswing by a hooked claw that grabbed him by the center of his chest, seizing hold of a handful of shirt and cleaving him into the air. Raising its bloody fist into the air, the curled fingers dripping with the dark blood from Harry’s core, it prepared to drive that same hand straight through Scott as well.
There was a sudden shift of the thin breeze in the room, growing in ferocity as it swept from one side to the other, circling the center of the room as though on the verge of creating a cyclone. There was a whispering on the wind, quiet at first, but growing in intensity as it whistled across the breeze. It wasn’t a single voice, more like a combination of several that all spoke at the same time, not one standing out above the others.
The bloodspawn turned frantically in the direction of the blowing wind, cocking its head so that its ear was directly in the path of the growing breeze. A look of confusion dripped down his face as his cracked lips mouthed words that Scott could no more decipher than the words that whispered through the cellar.
Seeing his opportunity, Scott capitalized as the breeze had provided the distraction that he needed, opening the shears as wide as he could get them and clamping them down on the exposed wrist of the bloodspawn at the end of the hand that held him in the air. With all of the strength that he could summon, Scott squeezed his hand together, the sharp blades slicing straight through the dried, yellow skin that extended from the frayed edges of the decomposing shroud, crunching audibly into the brittle bone beneath.
With a howl of pain, the bloodspawn dropped Scott to the ground before he was able to complete the cut. The hand dangled limply from the wrist, which pumped out blood in spurting arcs. The wrist was visibly bent; giving no support to the hand that twitched and fidgeted as nothing more than bone fragments and the few tendons that hadn’t been completely severed held it to the rest of the body.
His lips peeled back from his yellowed, jagged teeth, his head snapping away from the wind so that he could stare directly through Scott as he scurried backwards along the floor, kicking up a cloud of dust in his wake. That intense, cold stare knifed right through him, chilling him to the very bone as he scrambled to his feet behind the furnace, trying to use the giant metal box as a shield between them.
“I’m going to rip you in two!” the bloodspawn growled as he suddenly shot through the air at Scott with a speed and ferocity never before witnessed.
Lunging backwards, Scott slammed into the wall behind him, banging his already stinging scalp against something hard projecting from the earthen wall. The bloodspawn ripped through the furnace with its bare hand, shredding the metal casing on the front as though it were nothing more than tissue paper.
Taking his eyes from the bloodspawn only long enough to turn to face the wall, to see what had jabbed him in the back of the head, his heart began to race so quickly that everything else seemed to be in slow motion. Scanning the darkened wall, he caught the briefest of reflections from the powerful steel blade that was buried in the wall. The white, ivory handle was coated gray with dust. Without a single thought as to how or why there was a knife sticking out of the wall, Scott grabbed the handle. Squeezing it tightly in his right hand, he leaned a shoulder against the wall to use as leverage to pull the wide blade out of the wall that had apparently encased the blade for quite some time.
He fell backwards as he finally pried the knife free from the wall, slamming into the furnace with a loud bang. Whirling, tears bursting from his eyes as the pain in his back blossomed from the tear in his flesh from the corner of the unit. Scanning the dimly lit room, he tried to find the bloodspawn, who had apparently just vanished.
There was nothing there but the settling dust and the thin breeze as Scott stepped out from behind the furnace, his vision frantically tracing the room from one side to the next and then back again, but there was absolutely no one there. He stepped slowly towards the center of the room, the sound of his footsteps as the raked the sandy floor echoing throughout the hollow cellar. His pulse exploded through his body, beating so loud that he could hear it throbbing in his temples, could feel his heart in his chest, pounding so fiercely that he feared his ribcage may no longer contain it.
His rapidly panting breath plumed in white clouds from his parched mouth, dissolving into the dust that hovered in the room like a thick fog, masking the shadows that clung to the corners of the room. Reaching the center of the room, he stopped and spun in a circle, trying to see anything that resembled a human form hiding in the blackened corners.
With a thin crackle, the light bulb that dangled nearly directly overhead slowly faded, the filament glowing orange momentarily before fading into the darkness that swelled from all sides.
As his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, there was absolutely no way that he could see anything, other than the faint impression of the glowing filament that scarred his vision no matter where he looked. Holding the knife straight out in front of him, he tried to compensate with his other senses, listening as intently as he possibly could to the muffled sound of the breeze that filtered in from around the window, hoping to discern even the slightest sound from the dim whistling.
Pressing forward, he inched across the floor, his right foot colliding with something lying on the floor. Kneeling, he kept his head facing forward in case any movement were to somehow catch his eye. With his left hand he felt at the floor, his fingertips running over the soft, fleshy surface of the object that had nearly sent him sprawling to the ground. As his fingers rifled through the dampened, sticky hair, he knew right away what he had encountered and leapt into the air to get to his feet. Panicking, he wiped the wetness from his hands on his jeans, trying hard to fight back the wave of nausea that gurgled from his stomach, the sudden smell of the disemboweled innards that coated the floor rising up, accosting his senses with its putrid stench.
Cackling laughter filled the air all around him as he choked back his body’s inherent, automatic response.
Cringing, he stood perfectly still, his frightened eyes flashing through the darkness praying for something, anything to stand out from the blackness.
The laughter continued, mercilessly booming from everywhere at the same time until it seemed to surround him, closing in on him as he flashed the blade from side to side, trying desperately to slash through anything that may come close.
“Don’t have the stomach for this, I see,” a deep voice said from the darkness that surrounded him.
“Why are you doing this?” Scott whispered through the tears that poured down his cheeks.
More laughter echoed through the room.
The sound of raking gravel came from the side of the room just to his right. Whirling, he stared into the darkness trying to peel it back if only for a moment as he held the shaking blade out in front of him in his trembling hand.
The light sound of falling sand landing on the ground was barely audible over the hum of the wind, but Scott could tell it was coming from the same direction. Focusing on nothing but that side of the room, he eased forward, the sound of the cascading sand trickling down the face of the wall still in his ears. Slowly the sound changed. The falling sand was still there, but it no longer bounced down the face of the wall, it just fell straight to the floor as the sound came closer to him, growing louder and louder in his ears until finally and without warning… it stopped.
Scott stood there towards the middle of the room, his head cocked towards the wall where the sound had come from.
He could feel someone in the room with him, could sense the heat from their body in the cold room. Opening his mouth, he tried to quiet his own breathing in an attempt to silence everything that he possibly could. Trying to calm the heavy rising and falling of his pounding heart in his chest, he breathed very slowly and deliberately, becoming in tune with each of the waves of shadows that rolled from the walls, swirling like the onset of a fog all around him.
The knife quivered at the end of his outstretched arm, reflecting the small line of light that crept into the basement from the cracked seam of the window, flashing as he jerked the blade slightly from side to side.
