Allure

I don’t know what it is, but I know it shouldn’t be there. Adrenaline throws my heart into overdrive, giving me the strength to heave onto my side and try to find a way to stop it. Wincing, I stretch my hand and fumble in the dim light, searching for something to throw. Gripping a handful of hardwood bark, I pull back my throbbing arm and lob.

Most of the hardwood chips miss their target. Only a few pieces graze the creature’s feet.

Undeterred, it continues its climb.

Frantic, I suck up the pain and crawl on my hands and knees, searching for something more substantial. Scraping the ground with my nails, I unearth a handful of dirt and tiny rocks. Heaving for breath, I scramble to my knees and launch the dirt bomb. It lands just where I’d hoped, spraying the creature’s back.

It swings its slender, hairless head in my direction. Hissing again, this time it spews a mouthful of slimy, viscous spit. I pull back but not quick enough to miss the incoming assault. The monster’s slobber splats squarely on my stomach, sliming my peasant shirt. I shriek and instinctively reach for my midsection, planting my hand in the goop. It’s hot and sludgy and reeks of rotting garbage and week-old decomposition. Wiping the muck on a tuft of grass, a sudden realization hits me. This is the same stinky stuff I saw on Cooper’s window a couple weeks ago. There’s a reason it doesn’t care about me, my mulch chips, or pebbles. It wants Cooper and will stop at nothing to get him.

“Cooper!” I scream, splitting my headache even further, hoping it’ll be enough to warn him.

The creature continues to suction cup its way up the wall making that revolting, sloshy sound. Panicked, I search for anything substantial I can throw at the hideous monster. Finally, I spy a nice round rock. Still on my knees, I clamber toward it, yank it from the earth, and hurl it at the back of the monster’s head.

It lands with a satisfying thunk.

Which is a giant mistake because the creature launches itself off the wall, landing in front of me in one smooth leap.

I shriek, rattling my eardrums.

“Shut up!” it hisses as it advances toward me. With its long, lanky body and slender rectangular head, it almost looks like a giant stick bug wrapped in inverted human flesh. Its putrid stench, like some kind of trash and manure-propelled tear gas, burns my throat and causes my eyes to water.

I should run, bolt out of here as fast as my pummeled body will take me, but my knees are frozen as if I’m literally planted in the soil. All I can do is stare up at the creature’s red, mushy flesh that shines like raw meat.

“Get away!” I force the words from my constricted throat. “Leave us alone.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” It laughs, sounding like it’s choking on curled cottage cheese. “Silly girl. This is my destiny,” it lisps, and then reaches its gangly arms toward me, extending its horrible three-fingered hands. I gawk at the meaty suction cups at their tips.

“Help!” I call, not sure to who since it’s clear Cooper is indisposed. And I came here alone without so much as leaving a note in my room. How stupid could I be?

“Emma?” Jack’s voice echoes from the somewhere near the front of the Big House.

My heart leaps with joy. I’ve never been so relieved to hear his voice. “Jack! Help!” I scream just as the creature lunges forward and seizes my throat with its clammy, fetid hands. My voice cuts off as it lifts me off my knees and suspends me in the air.

I stare at my reflection in its bulging, lidless, bloodred gaze. My eyes are stretched wide, my jaw agape, and my skin’s pulled taut in a perfect picture of abject horror. Yet the image doesn’t come close to conveying the actual terror that has filled my mind and engorged every cell of my body.

“Silence! I don’t wish to hurt you, but I will if I must,” it says, lingering on each s sound. “You see, the smart ones are my least favorite. Not very tasty. Though it’s never stopped me in a pinch.” Its long, lizard-like tongue shoots from its mouth and licks the length of my jaw, leaving a thick layer of slime.

I gag as an idea forms of what this thing is. No! Clawing at its lean arms, I try in vain to make it release me. Its skin is tacky and feels exactly like an uncooked piece of steak that’s been left out on the counter for the afternoon.

It laughs again as it tightens its grasp. “So very feisty. Though I should thank you for breaking the Gullah hag’s curse. Now I don’t have to wait for the boy’s birthday to claim his body. His intact soul will make it harder to separate his life force from his flesh, but it’s nothing I haven’t done before.”

Jack’s footfalls pound toward us.

I call to him, but the creature still has my throat in its vise grip so the sound comes out garbled, though loud.

“You asked for it.” The creature opens its toothless mouth. Thick white sludge drips over its fine, red lips. It leans in, extending its jaw wide enough to swallow my whole head.

An invisible force flicks on, sucking the life from my body. More than my energy, it feels as if the monster is inhaling both my spirit and soul. My vision blinks white as memories literally unspool from my mind and whoosh toward the monster’s throat. Distorted images from when Jack and I were babies, sharing the same crib, and playing on our hobbyhorse yank from my brain. I know they’re real and depict actual events, but stolen this way, they’re pulled and stretched, a fun house version of my life. Next, my mother and father whiz by as they were one Christmas morning more than a decade ago, in our old house in DC, followed by scenes from preschool and kindergarten and our first trip to St. Helena to see our dad. But rather than reliving the joyous, happy times they were, the pictures are contorted, dark, and frightening. And worst of all, this alternative, warped version of reality feels so real it’s enough to make me question my sanity.

“Emma!” Jack’s voice, filled with dread, fear, and alarm, is the only thing that breaks through the unfurling events of my fourteen-year-old existence. “Let go of my sister!” he screams.

His arrival must distract the creature because the force field breaks and my early memories snap back into my head like one of those vinyl window shades that retract on a roller. But rather than bouncing back to their former, happy shapes, the images remain buckled and deformed, leaving me terribly unsettled.

The creature glances over its scarlet shoulder. “Go away! This doesn’t concern you,” it hisses.

“Like hell it doesn’t.” Jack darts into the woods on the side of the house.

The creature jerks back toward me and tilts its bizarre, thin head. “Now, where were we?” A thin slash of a smile splits its lips. “Oh, yes. Just a tiny nibble more.” Its jaw gapes once again and the vacuum-like force switches on.

Just as my brain starts to slip back into that disoriented whirl of disfigured images, I catch a glimpse of Jack running toward the creature, his hands gripped around something long and pointy. He screams just as the creature starts to Hoover my brain again.

White light flashes. Memories flicker. Then everything stops as I’m jostled, then dropped to the ground. Propping myself up on my elbows, I blink up at the red, fleshy creature looming above me. Its hands are wrapped around the end of a tree branch that Jack must have impaled through its midsection.

Cooper’s window opens. He pries his face against the screen. “What the—”

The creature stumbles back a few feet. Then, like a magician pulling handkerchiefs from his sleeve, the creature yanks the bough clear through its midsection, leaves and all. When the limb is free, the wound spews a sludgy, black substance, spattering everything within a six-foot radius, including me. It stinks like raw sewage. I shriek as the fetid glop gushes on my legs, stinging my skin, and soiling my clothes.

Slapping its three-fingered hands over its gaping wound, the creature looks up at Cooper. “This isn’t over. Your soul may be safe, but your body has always been marked as mine. I won’t relinquish my destiny, and you won’t escape yours.”

The creature vaults over me, clutching its abdomen as it dodges around Jack, then dashes into the woods and fades into the night.

“Emma! Jack!” Cooper yells, then disappears from his window.

I slump to the ground and cough as I heave for air through my crushed throat. Every breath draws in the awful stench that covers my skin and clothes, but I’ve got bigger problems, starting with the disturbing images that haunt my mind’s eye. I tell myself those screwed-up pictures aren’t real, that my real memories represent blissful times. But even though I know that to be the truth, fear and anxiety linger in my chest anyway. Maybe if I keep reassuring myself, eventually, I’ll believe it. But my still-pounding headache isn’t making things any easier. Staring up at the moonlit sky, I attempt to will away the pain.