The Newborn

A loud blaring echoes throughout the entirety of our surroundings, as if a siren came to life, bellowing a low broken sound. The fog grows thicker by the minute, my eyes struggling to make sense of my surroundings. Anthony stirs, groaning as he puts a hand over his head. "We dead yet?" He pushes himself up, prying the door open beside him.

"Afraid not, which means we got to keep going. Pop the trunk." He proceeds to get the luggage open, swinging the duffel bag over his shoulder while throwing the other to me. I catch it with a thud, putting it over my shoulder as I scan the area for any sort of shelter. A blurry image of a small townhouse catches my attention and I nudge Anthony to proceed to it. "Let's take cover there!"

The blaring of the siren stops, abruptly putting everything into silence. A loud wailing fills the air, replacing the now absent blaring of the siren. A Baby? I hurry into the house, its handle frosted in the mist. "Hey, have you been feeling cold lately?" I ask, confused by the lack of the cold.

"No, why do you ask?" Anthony replies, coming up to see what I had found. His eyebrows scrunch up as he looks at the frost, confused. "That's freaky."

"Frost freaks you out?" I joke, turning the handle as I push the door, a low creak accompanying our entry. The place was dark, despite it supposedly being midday. The wailing doesn't stop as Anthony turns to shut the door, barring it with a cupboard. The cry grows louder, the walls of the building rattling in slow, spread out intervals. "What the fuck?" The rattling grows louder, more erratic as the seconds pass.

Anthony shushes me, signaling for me to drop down. I do as told, trying to stay away from any of the windows as the ground shakes. The wailing was much louder now, ear piercing as it shrieks with no sign of stopping. A large looming figure walks past the window on the opposite side of the door, obscured by the thick wispy smoke. Limbs occasionally come into view, large plump hands that seemed gigantic despite its proportions. A head peeks through the window, a massive infant with its empty, hollow eyes. It coos at it looks at the two of us, as if it was trying to figure out what we were. The skin on its face was rotten, peeling off to reveal hundreds of fleshy holes that seemed to wobble, massive worm-like creatures protruding from each one. Its mouth was sewed loosely, allowing it to scream as it claws at its mouth, fingers of varying sizes, missing fingernails that oozed with infection struggling to remove the threads. It wails again, now crawling out of sight as the cries grow distant, the thuds now disappearing.

"The missing child…" I speak, the memory of the three year old boy that has gone missing from the car accident seeps into my mind. "That was him."

Anthony stands up, taking a seat on one of the couches. I do the same, crashing into one of them as the exhaustion overtakes my entire body. A zip is heard as he rummages through his duffel bag, pulling out a roll of bandages and a bottle of water, tossing the bottle to my direction. "Drink up, you must be parched." I eye him, having second thoughts in drinking a bottle of water that he prepared for himself. "Don't worry, I have my own." He pulls out another bottle and chugs it.

"You'd think that a whole town going crazy would make headlines." I say, gratefully drinking the water Anthony gave to me. The liquid was cold as it entered my mouth, refreshing as it slithers down my throat. "Who said witches were pushovers?"

"This is honestly nothing like any witch we've encountered before." Anthony replies, now done bandaging the gash on his head. "A coven this powerful…" His voice trails off, Anthony deep in thought as his eyes stare blankly at the wall behind me. The look on his face changes as he instantly pulls out his gun and shoots at my direction, missing me by inches. A thud behind me follows, my head turning to look at the cause of the sound. A man carrying a sickle lies flat on the ground, a faint trail of smoke rising from a small puncture on his forehead. "You're welcome." Anthony snarks, putting his handgun away.

"Asshole." I get up to examine the man lying still on the floor, the floorboards creaking as I walk. Crouching, my hands gently tilt his head to the side, revealing an enormous fungus leeching on the back of his ear lobe. It throbs, as if it was alive, now detaching itself from its dead host. It falls to the ground and wilts, shriveling up as it turns into ash. "Now that… that's freaky."

"What is?" Anthony asks, now standing behind me.

I point towards the bloody hole at the back of the dead guy's ear, the insides of his head out in full view. "That." A cold runs up the back of my spine, a weird tingling sensation that forces my senses to heighten. Scrapings occur on the roof above us, as if something was being dragged on top of it. The sounds stop, instilling a dead tone of silence all over the house. "What now?"

"We get out of here, this is way more than we can handle Mike." Anthony speaks, his eyes filled with the desire to remain alive, brimming with the fear of death, of losing your life to the hunt. "I have a family waiting Mike, an unborn son I want to meet. I will not make him fatherless." He speaks, his words final.

I nod, knowing that whatever we have signed up for came at a cost. Eve. I will not watch it happen again. "Our best bet would be to go by boat, take it up north across the creek and hope that the fog thins out there." My head paints out a map for us, keeping in mind the risks that came with each possible route.

"How do you know if there are boats?" He asks, one hand on his chin.

"I don't, but it's better than taking our chances on land." The image of the newborn comes into mind, its freakish appearance as it looked at them. "You've seen the horrors in the mist outside, this minimizes our risk of meeting them." My eyes fall on the corpse on the floor, its lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. Doubts seep into my mind as I struggle to push it away, its black sluggish feeling only wearing me down. No room for it. "Get some rest. We'll leave when we're prepared." I take a deep breathe, trying to calm the racing of my heart, relentlessly pounding at my chest. Will we really make it?