Mike stopped running again.
“Mike, are you alright?” Cathy asked, remembering the horrors of the last time this had happened.
“The last time we crossed this corner, he almost killed me,” he replied grimly.
They both stared silently at it. It was only stone and mortar, but it held so many beastly memories for the both of them. All at once, Mike could feel it again. That sharp pain as something long and jagged punctured his skin and ripped through his body. He could feel the redness trickling down his side and into a little pool on the bench next to Cathy’s house. He could see the blood and saliva being hurled from his mouth, staining the cold stone sidewalks. All at once, he was there again. He was dying again.
-click-
This time, the sound felt like it had been coming from both the front and the behind, and he shivered in raw, primal fear. This night, these circumstances, they were all too familiar; too familiar to be a coincidence. Someone had planned this. Planned it perfectly.
-click-
The sound was right next to them, but it still came from all directions. The two lovers stood perfectly still for a moment. She looked at him, her eyes blurred by tears of fear. She tried to say the word ‘go’ to him, but her throat was too parched and it ended up just being the silent moving of her lips. Still, he got the message. He grabbed her arm and they ran around the corner.
There was nothing there and Cathy’s home was now in sight.
They ran before their brains could even process what had happened, their legs moving of their own fruition rather than by choice. The arches of their feet ached with every step they made, the calloused flesh turning a light red from the pressure. Cathy felt the back of her heel rub raw against her shoe, tiny trickles of blood seeping out into her sock.
She tripped a hundred feet into the sprint to her house, falling to her knees. They both bounced off the pavement in awkward, misshapen half-circles, her flesh tearing away as though it were silk to let the crimson cascade into her jeans. She felt her kneecap bend out of place and then snap itself back in. She opened her mouth to curse, but her jaw slammed against the ground before she could, twisting sharply to the right without the rest of her head following. A tooth in the back of her mouth came loose and flushed down her throat when she gasped for air, ripping and tearing at her esophagus as blood washed it down. “Fuck,” she swore finally, spitting blood onto the curb.
Mike grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her to her feet, her legs already moving to run before her soles were even touching the ground. When he thought she was balanced enough, he let her go, turning briefly to glance at the windows they were passing. There were no lights on, not even the faint blue flicker of televisions glowing. It was like Coral Beach had turned into a ghost town in an Old West movie, the streets deserted and awaiting a visceral showdown. When he turned around, he thought he saw something behind him duck behind a light pole, its lanky frame completely obscured by the wooden shaft. Still, he knew what it was. Could almost see the opaque aquamarine eyes as they glared at him with their pupil-less stare. The sharp row of yellowed, germ-ridden teeth that came down over the normal ones, rendering them obsolete. The claws that danced about gracefully on the air around the creature until it chose to use them in movements so quick you wouldn’t even know that they had occurred until you felt your own intestines splatter against your feet. He could see the Black Womb, even if he couldn’t. In fact the invisibility of whatever was behind them only added to his certainty of what was coming.
Cathy turned in front of him, making him spin his head back around to the front and pulled him onto the concrete stairs of her house.
He slipped once on the smooth cement, then steadied himself against the black metal guardrail as they both caught their breath. “Made it,” he said between gasps, almost laughing a little as he kept an eye trained over one shoulder.
Cathy did not respond, but he heard a soft plop from in front of him as a small drop of salt water fell from her round chin onto her porch step.
Mike turned, finally pulling his vision away from the street as he felt his heart skip several beats, the color draining quickly from his face.
The lock on the door had been kicked in, with enough ferocity to splinter the frame.
They both stood staring for a moment, feeling their salvation slip away.
-click-
The door creaked in the wind, but did not open.
“Come on Cathy,” Mike whispered. “Let’s get to a neighbour’s house and call the cops.”
Cathy’s eyes darted from the door to Mike. “But Mike,” she stammered, “What about my parents?”
Mike froze in his tracks. The Kennessy’s had always been good to him. They’d supported him and Cathy’s relationship from the very beginning, even when his own parents did not. Her father had been the one to help him the night that Xander had first attacked him and Cathy. He couldn’t just leave them to the Black Womb. As he considered the force that must have gone into kicking a hole into the Kennessy’s metal door, Mike didn’t figure it could be anybody else. “Go to your neighbour’s, Cathy.”
“What? We can’t just leave...” she started.
Mike cut her off, touching the side of her face. “We aren’t. Just you.”
“I
