IT GROWLS FROM THE CORNER
My eyes open instantly to pitch darkness. My heart races, pumped with an
instinctual fear. I clutch the sheets of the bed, my breath caught tight in my
throat.
I wait. Listening. There was something. A sound. A noise.
Nothing.
It takes me a moment to even realize where I am. Then it comes back slowly
in bits. I was in my late cousin Richard’s farmhouse. He left it to me and
several days before, I had moved in, with hopes of renovating the small ranch
house.
Two days into the renovations.
The lights were off, the windows shuttered. The dead farmland was blanketed
with its night shawl. The only light source came from a light pole next to the
battered barn in the back of the house. A ring of ash trees encircled most of
the property.
Air was stale and still filled the room. Soft light rays filtered down from
one partially open window in the living room and dust floated aimlessly in its
illumination.
“Hello?” I whisper, my lips dry, my cotton tongue sticking to the
roof of my mouth.
“Hello?” I venture once more, praying I don’t get a response.
Seconds bleed into minutes, minutes grow into moments. Nothing responds.
Time lapses.
One bizarre note catches my attention. I don’t hear anything. No crickets,
no late-night songbirds, no distant cars on the I-77 highway. Even the wind is
holding its breath. What the hell?
However, I do ease my grip on the sheets and sigh in relief. Maybe it was a
nightmare with the last fragments waking me. I can’t quite yet laugh at myself
and the fear that seized me.
New place, new sounds. Just a case of heebie-jeebies.
I raise onto my elbows.
Hissssss.
The sound pierces me. It came straight out of the corner, draped in deep
shadows. A low rumbling growl follows the hiss. A distinct scrape of claws on
the wood floorboards makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.
I freeze up all over again, my breath locked in my chest.
My eyes strain to make out a form in the dark. Nothing. It’s like a gaping
hole torn into the bedroom space, swallowing up the entire corner.
It’s close. I should be able to see whatever the thing is! Dammit, why can’t
I see it? I can’t run. The corner is near the doorway.
What is it? A mountain lion? A rabid wolf? A feral stray dog? What is in my
house?
No more noises, no more clues to what it is.
I don’t try to speak again to it. It’s obvious it isn’t human so there’s no
real point. My mind floods with bad ideas, desperate ploys, nothing that will
get me away.
Moments again drag out. I pull my legs slowly up, curling my form into a better-shielded
form. Another growl, deep in its chest protests my movement.
Eyes, silvery and large open up. The space between the eyes at least five
inches apart. Then heat and a bitter stench of foul breath wafts over me.
Whatever is staring at me, just opened its jaws. I think I can hear the bare
sounds of panting.
I brace my hands at my sides against the bed and raise with my back pressed
to the wall. Standing seems like my only viable option. It gives me half a
chance if this thing rushes me.
Again, from inside the shadows, the unseen beast doesn’t like my movement
and it hisses violently, pawing aggressively at the floor. I hear its claws, I
see its eyes, smell its breath, but yet there’s no form, nothing in the corner!
At the end of the bed, I left another window open for the summer breezes. A
thin metal screen is the only thing on the window. Do I dare plunge through it
before this thing is upon me?
It somehow senses my thoughts, and it shifts subtly, the shadows moving with
it. Now a couple feet closer to the end of the bed, it sits midway between the
door, the end of the bed, and the window.
This tells me one thing. It’s intelligent, but it is also waiting on me to
make my move. Yet I feel I have already lost this game of strategy before I
even woke up.
I try to summon my dwindling courage. Sweat streams down my neck and chest.
I bend slightly, coiling my leg muscles.
The beast stands! I still can’t make out any form, but the shadow grows
taller and towers over me, the “head” touching the dusty ceiling. Oh
god!
It makes no other move. The ball has come back into my court. My plan for
the open window has been shattered.
“Wh- What are you? What do you want?” My voice shakes as violently
as my body.
s h e l t e r
The voice carries across to me but speeds through me like a gunshot. It
gores my senses and I reel in sudden dizziness and nausea. My legs give out and
I collapse in a heap by the pillows.
Shelter? What does that mean?
“I don’t understand.” I moan. “You want to stay in the
house?”
It’s useless to try and escape. My fate is in this thing’s claws. There’s no
choice but to listen to its demands.
I watch in pure terror as it slowly strides across the room, the floorboards
creaking under its weight. Shadows stretching and wrapping around my neck and
over my screaming mouth.
Lifted in the air as a smothering sensation wracks me, a burning agony
doubles me over in its grasp, and a lightning icy claw rakes across my back.
Tumbling from its hold, I hit the bed, and then tumble to the floor with the
words,
w e s h e l t e r h e r e
searing into my brain.
Hours later, as sunlight drifts in and warms my exposed legs and feet. My
eyes open and stare up at the room’s dust-covered ceiling fan. A hunger, a
need, a blood-thirsty craving howls inside me. My head rises and I study the
far wall.
s e r v e
Etched into the faded green wallpaper are symbols, plans, and demands. None
that I understand or want to comprehend.
Inside, it reads the words. It knows its purpose.
s h e l t e r a n d s e r v e
It growls again from the dark corners of my tattered soul.
The Official Website of Author Derek Barton 