Chapter 22 : I moved to the country and now I know why the roads are dangerous (Part 3)

I could feel myself begin to space out so I hit the breaks and came to a stop..... and there it was, the hill that I so desperately wanted to find. I stared at this hill for a minute or two, I was overwhelmed with paranoia at the thought of getting out to explore it. I was so worried that I decided to turn my car around. I pulled over as far as I could but more than half of my car was still in the street. I proceeded to get out but I left the engine on and the door ajar just in case I needed to leave in a hurry and made my way toward the street light. I stopped about twenty feet from the light and just stared past it.

The yellow glow of the streetlight barely penetrated the creeping darkness that shrouded the hill. I pulled my phone out to turn on the flashlight and as I was pulling up the app something caught my attention. I could smell something strange, it was like roses, ceder and honey but there was something foul about it like a tinge of rotting meat hanging in the air. I started to get a little light headed and my stomach became queasy but I tried to shake the feeling. I turned on the light from my phone and began to make my way past the faint glow of the streetlight into the darkness and toward the hill. Almost immediately after the passing the street light the dim yellow glow had faded. The darkness was so intrusive that the light on my phone was virtually useless as well.

I continued onward trying my best to take in my surroundings but I could hardly see anything further than thirty feet away without shining my phone directly on it. After walking for a bit I began to realize just how steep this hill actually was, my legs were already burning and I had only made it about two hundred feet up. I pushed forward regardless but the deeper in I went the stronger that weird odor was and the more nauseous and light headed I became. I wanted to make it to the top of the hill and check out that hut I saw as I was driving home but I don't think I can make it all the way up this thing. I gathered what little constitution I had left and kept pushing forward. I was maybe five hundred feet in now and by this point I was already spent. My legs were starting to buckle and the smell was so intense that I was choking back the urge to gag.

I was approaching a bend in the road that I was desperately hoping was the top of the hill. As I began to round the corner I could see that there was no end in sight. I couldn't keep going, I decided to stop and look around for a bit before turning back though. As I stood there taking in my surroundings I could see something move at the edge of the road not far ahead. Instantly I remembered the shop owner and how he had been watching me. Had he followed me up here, and if so how did he get ahead of me without being seen or heard? There's no way, it couldn't possibly be him. It has to be one of the animals out here just crossing the street. I turned my phone toward the edge of the road expecting to see a deer or at worst a coyote but when the light found my target It wasn't anything I had ever seen in my life.

Whatever this thing was it was MASSIVE, I stood there staring completely frozen as a cold chill ran up my spine. I could feel every hair on my body stand up all at once as my legs began to shake. My brain was telling me to run but I couldn't, I was paralyzed with fear and all I could do was stand there and stare at this thing on the side of the road. With the light from my phone I could just make out what I was looking at. Whatever it was it was kneeling down facing away from me and appeared to be eating something. It had the shape and build of a large muscular dog but it was easily 7 feet tall and about as wide as my car. There was no visible fur on it, just pale milky white skin with dark patches that I thought was dirt at first but after a moment it looked more like rotting bits of flesh.

I could hear the crack of bones and the ripping of meat from whatever it was eating. My eyes wandered down to the ground in front of this thing to see what was unlucky enough to be its meal for the night but I wish I hadn't. I could just barely see it but on the ground in front of the creature was a human body, completely mangled and lying in a pool of blood. Pure unadulterated terror enveloped me and I could feel a lump in my throat as I bent over and the entire contents of my stomach violently rushed out onto the road. I let my head hang there as the taste of vomit slowly dissipated before it dawned on me that not only had I made my presence know by loudly spewing chunks in the dead silence of night but I had also looked away from this thing that was chowing down on a body not even 40 feet away from me.

I slowly lifted my head and as I did I could see this creature was no longer preoccupied with it's previous meal and was now sitting down facing in my direction with its front side in full view. It had a long thick neck that held up a very large canine shaped head that sported long oily black human hair with no eyes or ears and it was covered in the same pale rotting flesh as the rest of its body. There was something even more odd, I could see lumps on the top of it's head near the hair but I couldn't make out what they were. As I stood there hunched over taking in this living nightmare it began to tilt its head down exposing the bumps on its skull revealing a face.... a human face. The expression on it was imprinted into my brain in an instant. I had the most haunting smile I had ever seen, it was an unchanging and almost pained expression that was being masked with a fake jovial smile with closed eyes that reflected this same sad yet joyful look.

I began to stand upright very slowly in an attempt to not antagonize this..... monster..... and as I stood fully upright I began to back away as carefully as possible but as I took my second or third step I could see the creatures blood stained canine jaws begin to snarl exposing a mouth full of razor sharp teeth. It rose to it's feet and began to lift its head back up before crouching down almost as if it were going to pounce at me. It was in this moment that I had noticed that this thing didn't have paws at the end of its front legs but instead it had human shaped hands with long slender fingers. It cocked its head back before jutting it back out and letting loose the most ghastly noise I have ever heard. It was a low deep roar at first but was almost immediately accompanied with what I could only describe as hundreds of hollow human screams.

Before it even had the chance to finish its hellish scream I dropped my phone, turned and bolted down the hill for my car. I was sprinting with everything I had in me, powered by fear and the sheer steepness of the hill I felt like I was flying. My heart was pounding harder than it ever had in my life, it was as if someone was playing a drum on my chest and all I could hear was my heart beating in my head. My mind was racing faster than my legs going over and over the shop keepers words "it's best if you just keep going" like he knew this thing was up here and thinking about my car that I had left running just in case. All I had to do was make it to my car. For a brief moment I had forgotten about what was chasing me... was it chasing me? I glanced over my shoulder for a split second to see if maybe somehow I lucked out and it didn't follow.

I was wrong... so so very wrong.