He could hear their footsteps behind him landing on the wooden stoop as he leapt over the steps, the ground rising to meet him too quickly. He stumbled, losing his balance. Rolling onto his left side so as not to crush the child beneath his weight, he absorbed the brunt of the impact, his eyes closing in pain.
He heard footsteps on the steps coming down to the lawn.
Forcing his eyes open, he could see the shadow of a figure, kneeling just to the side of the small house, crouching like an animal ready to pounce.
Leaping to his feet, he staggered away from the house, waiting for his body to find its sense of equilibrium so that he could sprint toward the forest. Behind him, he could hear their anguished voices, calling after him, but there was no way he could even turn to look. He was fixed intently on the line of the trees ahead, and the salvation that lie within. If he could just get to those trees, he could disappear into the undergrowth and there was no way they were going to find him. He had grown up in woods just like these, playing hide and seek, hunting large game. It was his home field. If only he could just make it there…
The pleading voices behind him turned to screams, not shouting as though trying to be heard, but screams of terror.
There was no way he was going to turn around until he hit that wall of trees that grew closer with every second. His legs burned from the strain. He had used up the oxygen in his lungs long ago and was urging himself on with pure fear and determination. The snow burned his eyes, falling directly into the open lids, but he managed to keep them open.
Hurdling the first layers of sage, he leapt into the wall of branches, finally having the courage to glance back as he shoved through the sharp needles of the cluster of spruces.
There was no one in the field behind him, only the glimmering snow and the line of tracks that he had left. He could still hear the screams riding along the wind from the house, but there was only one shadowed figure, slowly easing up the steps and onto the front porch. It was large—inhumanly large—and not so much walking, as it was floating up onto the porch and into the house.
The screams intensified, filling the night like sirens, drowning out the whistling wind, before finally fading back into the silence of the night.
Harry watched the front of the house; unable to draw his gaze from it as the large shadow finally reappeared on the porch, standing motionless… staring directly at him.
Whirling, he threw his body through the endless masses of tangled branches. He tucked his head and raised his left arm in front of his face in an attempt to block the rows of razor sharp needles that ripped at the skin on his face, trying frantically to find his way back to the road.
Breaking through the last row of trees, he burst into the open, stumbling over the edge of the pavement, barely able to keep his balance as he staggered down the center of the road. He could no longer feel any part of his body, the pain had rubbed the nerves raw and he had reached the point where the body wanted to shut down. Every inch of flesh grew increasingly heavy, his inertia petering to nothing more than a limping lurch. His chest would allow no more oxygen to enter, the air within growing stagnant, his vision darkening.
His car appeared around the next bend, right on the side of the road as he had left it. He had been running for as long as he could, his brain on the verge of shutting down. Without even thinking, he pulled his hand off of the child’s head and shoved it into his pocket, producing the car keys. Stopping beside the door, he yanked it open, his body suddenly wanting to collapse into a heap. Jamming the key into the ignition, he cranked it, pinning his foot straight through the gas pedal and into the floorboard.
The engine roared to life immediately, and he threw it into gear, the back end sliding back and forth as the spinning wheels grabbed for traction. With a loud squeal and a sudden jolt the car rocketed forward, racing straight down the center of the road as he drove on nothing more than reflex, trying with all his might to just keep that car in the center of the road.
It wasn’t until that precise moment that the reality of the situation set in. There was no way that his vehicle should have started, let alone driven him out of those woods. He would have been lucky if the insurance company hadn’t totaled it. The undercarriage of the car had been shredded by the antlers from that buck, draining every ounce of fluid from the engine. There was no way he could have driven the car, yet here he was…
A flash of light caught his eye and he looked over in time to see a large stag standing motionless at the side of the road, the headlights reflecting in golden orbs from the wide eyes beneath the enormous rack of antlers. The buck watched the car as it raced by. By the time Harry looked up in the rearview mirror, the stag was gone, leaving nothing but the darkness from which he had just escaped.
The year had been 1972, but still the images were as clear as though it had just happened that morning, burning themselves into the backs of his eyelids so that they were all that he saw every time he closed his eyes. It was what woke him, covered in sweat, every night. It was the first thing he saw in the morning when he arose and the last images to cross his brain as he fell into sleep. And here he was, standing in the entranceway to hell as he had seventeen years prior, staring into the darkness of the house that resonated with all of his fears.
His responsibility.
The thin rays of moonlight that dripped through the thick, cloud-covered sky filtered into the room from the open door behind him. He stood in the entranceway, his hands trembling, reaching into the darkness in front of him. Slowly, Harry inched into the room, the hardwood floor squeaking beneath his damp boots.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the furniture stacked in piles at the left side of the room, the fabric slashed and torn, the filling pouring through the gaping holes. Plaster fragments, which had fallen in chunks from the walls, littered the floor, adding to the overwhelming stench of dust and stagnation. The red velvet curtains were shredded, hanging in strands from the thick wooden curtain rods above the boarded windows.
Vandals had completely had their way with the place. There was a pentagram drawn in red spray paint right in the center of the floor, the blood of some cat or other oblivious animal spilled in the center, dried and cracking. Initials and other random messages were spray painted across the walls: everything from “Class of ’86 Rules!” to “Praise Hail Satan.” A pile of smashed beer bottles sat in the corner, the brown glass sparkling in the dim light.
The molding around the door in front of him was ripped from the plaster. Stepping over the trim, careful of the nails the jutted upward, he entered the kitchen, the waning light barely following him from the living room. All of the appliances had left years prior, and there was nothing left to show that they had ever been there, save for the small pipes that protruded from the walls, and the cracks along the plaster where the countertops had been. The linoleum had been ripped up, exposing the bare plywood floor, which echoed loudly with his hollow footsteps. Cobwebs hung from one side of the room to the other, bouncing from the stir he created with his movements.
There were only a few sayings scrawled across the walls in here, but in the darkness, he could only tell that they were there, not what they said. The smell of dampened earth, a cross between ozone and brimstone crept up from the stairs at the back of the kitchen, leading down into the blackness of the cellar.
There was a small scratching sound, like fingernails trying to claw through wood, coming from the doorway to his right. He heart leapt up in his throat. He fought physically to make his shaking legs carry him through the doorway. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and his head began to pound, throbbing as it bore the pressure of his now overwhelming fear. His breath came in short, loud bursts from his heavy chest.
Stepping carefully into the room, there was an almost sickening crunch beneath his boot, and then another as he slipped his whole body into the room. Something covered the floor, but in the darkness he couldn’t make it out. Crouching, he set his hand atop whatever it was that carpeted the floor, and recoiled suddenly in pain.
His left hand trembling, he pulled a handful of small, sharp stickers from his palm. They felt like needles from a cactus or like the stingers from…
Harry’s jaw dropped and he knelt once again, very carefully pulling a credit card from his wallet and dragging it slowly across the floor, producing a handful of the hollowed out exoskeletons of… bees. Every inch of the floor, from the entranceway through the open closet was covered with a half-inch layer of dead bees. Turning, he scanned the kitchen, but there wasn’t a single carcass on the floor in there, yet this room was carpeted without a single gap.
In the open closet, he could see a large glass bottle containing a dark fluid on the top shelf, a cork wedged halfway down the long neck of the jug. But there was absolutely nothing else in the room: no furniture, no shredded curtains or debris, just the bees.
Rising, he turned to face the kitchen, just as the dark shape of a man walked straight through the kitchen
