He could see the brown grip of his gun poking out from under the couch just a few feet away, the gleam of the engraving on its base shimmering out like a beacon. Grunting through gritted teeth, he thrust a hand forward, grabbing onto the coarse fibers of his carpet and pulling himself forward. Every inch was agony, each leg providing thirty pounds of dead and useless weight.
The killer stepped out from around the chair without a sound, walking over to where John crawled. The murderer lifted a heavy heel and brought it down into the center of John’s back with slow, deliberate pressure.
John tried his best to stay up but buckled quickly under the force. “Bastard,” he grunted.
There was a deep, animalistic grunt from the shadows as the killer twisted his heel quickly.
John screamed so loud his ears blocked out the sound as he felt something in his back twist and then snap. His eyes stared at the barrel on his weapon, his fingers literally touching its smooth material. Tears began to roll down his cheeks as he realized he could not close his grasp as the numbness he’d lived with for almost two decades seeped its way up from his waist and into the rest of his body, from his neck on down.
With bony fingers, the killer grabbed him by one shoulder and whipped him around, leaning in until their faces almost touched.
He wanted to scream, to close his eyes and never open them again until it was over... but found he couldn’t. Couldn’t move at all to even swallow the nervous sweat growing in his mouth. He watched with unblinking eyes as the killer went to work slicing a long gash in his right side. Saw as the cold, sharp-nailed hand sunk into him and started to rummage about his intestines, feeling nothing, not even the warm blood that came out of him in buckets.
He felt nothing for the next few minutes, until a drowsy feeling came upon him and he drifted off to sleep with his eyes still open. He was thankful for it.
Sandra pulled Cathy into the master bedroom, trying hard to ignore the sounds she heard in the living room as she slammed the door shut.
“Whatdowedowhatdowedowhatdowedo...” Cathy repeated continuously, her voice back to that low, wet moan it had been while she’d been pressed against Sandra’s flower-covered blouse. Her hands were cupped over her nose and mouth as she breathed in and out too fast to ever get a real lungful of air. She was trying not to pass out, but the top of her head had that floaty feeling that usually came a few moments before it happened and her eyelids had started becoming heavy.
Sandra grabbed her by the shoulders, giving the girl one good shake to bring her back to reality. “We’re going to get out of here and help John.” she said, not even convincing herself as tears tumbled across her withered features. “We’re going to help John and everything’s going to be okay, okay?”
Cathy sniffed, then nodded quickly.
There was a loud thud at the door to the bedroom and Sandra turned to face it, both girls backing up until they were against the far wall. The room was dark and black except for the edges of the king-size bed that Sandra and her husband had shared for more than forty years and the smooth pink wall, turned a weird eggplant color when mixed with the light from the window. There was a square panel on the wall that Cathy didn’t recognize but wasn’t even really looking at, her eyes glued to the door.
Sandra took a step forward.
There was another thud, shaking the door as well as the room.
She backed back against the wall, swallowed, then repeated the same step again. Grabbing Cathy by the wrist, she pulled her toward the square frame on the wall. “Come on, child!” she said in a hushed voice.
Cathy stepped along with her. The square looked like a picture frame at first in the low light, though there was no picture in it. There was a small knob at the bottom that Sandra grabbed now and thrust upward, revealing a small compartment with two lengths of rope coming out of the ceiling and passing through the floor. It was a laundry chute.
“Get in, Catherine,” Sandra whispered, motioning her head toward the hole.
Cathy shook her head, almost letting herself laugh. “It won’t matter,” she said in that same, dead voice as before. “Not against him.”
“Who, child?” Sandra asked, squinting as she tilted her head to one side.
“Black Womb,” Cathy answered, her eyelids rising and then falling again when she said the name. “Xander.”
Sandra shook her head in confusion, motioning towards the chute again.
Relenting and getting some of her energy back, Cathy grabbed both sides of the frame and pulled herself in. Her chin was down past her knees by the time she got herself completely inside. Sandra leaned forward and kissed her softly, then slammed the shaft shut.
For what seemed like an eternity, Cathy listened intently to the silence that surrounded her, almost surrendering herself to it. Then after a forever of eavesdropping, waiting, knowing what was coming even though it never seemed to, it happened. The heavy thuds of a large frame tossing itself against a wooden door as it gave way under the pressure. The sound of heavy feet on carpet floors.
-thump-
-thu–thump-
She could picture it, standing in the middle of the room and looking around with those opaque eyes like swamp-water, waiting for something in the room to move so that it could pounce on it.
There was a heavy thunk followed by hundreds and squeaks all in unison as the killer turned over the mattress, staring
