Chapter 520

The maple leaves outside her window swirled, a constant red, orange, and yellow spin. Rain slicked the glass, distorting the streetlights.

Lily sat, perched on the edge of her bed. Her toy bear stared back with vacant button eyes.

She didn't like the quiet. It wasn't a calm silence; it was thick, pressing in on her.

Her window reflected a distorted version of her face, too big and wide eyed. Something felt wrong.

She'd been having bad dreams all week. Images of a tall shadow that never quite took shape.

Her mother said it was just her imagination. Mothers were usually always wrong about everything, except chores.

Lily flipped open a book with brightly colored illustrations. Knights battled dragons. None of them carried tongs.

A floorboard creaked somewhere downstairs. She went still, a mouse in hiding.

Her breath became shallow and quick. She pressed the stuffed animal close, a useless guard.

The creak sounded again, closer. The house didn't normally do this when she was alone.

A thumping sound resonated through the walls, the rhythm heavy and sickening. It was slow. Deliberate.

She got out of bed slowly, every joint protesting against the sudden stillness. She left the toy behind, his beady eyes fixated on a new world.

The wooden steps moaned as her feet pressed into each. One by one, they were telling her to return to her bedroom, and she refused.

The house seemed different, stretched out and longer. Shadows hugged corners like creatures ready to strike.

Another thump echoed from downstairs. It sounded closer. The thumping never went away.

The smell of rain grew stronger; she assumed someone was coming inside without even opening the door. Like magic.

A glint of metal appeared from beneath the kitchen doorway. Cold. Shiny. Like the top of her soup ladle, just twisted.

She peered around the frame and into the room. Something caught the light at the table. She'd never seen it before.

Tongs, the long kind her dad used when the coals needed help. These tongs, these felt different.

Her mother never left tools on the table. Something wasn't right. Not this house.

"Hello?" her soft small voice cut through the heavy quiet, more of a gasp than a word. Nothing replied.

A drop of water landed on the floor with a slight splash. She hadn't seen any pipes up here to leak.

She crept closer into the room and onto the hardwood. Each foot made no sound as they touched down and pressed into it.

A soft wet sound followed after, a liquid squelch with the slightest tug at the end. That was something she hadn't ever heard.

The air had changed. The room had a smell to it. Like pennies. That also never happened, that metal taste.

On the floor, not five feet away, sat a bright red apple, a single, precise, tong shaped hole bored straight through the center.

She didn't feel well. Her tummy was twisting and knotting up so bad she felt as if it was on fire.

"Is… is anyone there?" her quiet words almost silent, like they're scared to leave her throat. It would just invite whoever else is here closer to hear her more.

The house stood still. Quiet. There wasn't anything left. Only this dreadful sound that didn't disappear and that dreadful smell.

Then the tongs clattered onto the counter. It was loud enough to make her body jump back, hard enough to feel like the whole world moved backwards a foot.

Lily's hand went straight to her mouth, keeping a gasp from escaping her lips. The thumping started again. Now, she wasn't sure if she wanted to see who was in the house.

A shadow was on the far end of the wall, a monster created from the dim outside light, reaching into the door. This is what haunted her dreams.

Slowly, her breath turned cold and felt like a solid stone inside of her chest, threatening to crack the bone that caged it.

The figure stepped out from the edge of the kitchen into her view. It wore something strange, a heavy jacket and gloves, its head covered.

Tongs dangled from one hand, long and menacing. The thing started the terrible thumping once again. Every step getting faster and stronger.

The being tilted its head to her, its face hidden from the light. "Where is your mother?" Its voice, a growling baritone, a monster from down the hall.

She pressed her back to the fridge, her fingers tightening on a small decorative magnet. Its cold, it offered no comfort.

"I…" her throat squeezed so tight her word sounded a small wheeze in the thick, still space. She could smell blood now, she thought.

The figure made another move forward, and the awful wet sound started up again, a drag across the tiles. What did it want from her?

"Your mother," the monster growled, this time, getting closer to the line of vision of her frozen frame pressed up into the hard surface behind her. "Where is she?"

She shook her head slowly, her body shaking to tell it that she wasn't sure, a word failing her lips, frozen and tight with terror.

"Tell me." His footsteps began to come faster, a dangerous rhythm against the tiles, a quickened beat that sent chills down to her bones.

The door creaked shut, a sharp sound. The monster had gotten into the door frame, now trapping them inside together. No room left.

Tears began to build in her eyes and start dripping onto her cheeks, each one feeling heavier than before, and so hot against the pale of her skin.

He wasn't very tall but he felt big. Heavy. Each of his strides getting her back farther and harder against the fridge.

She hugged the magnet tight in her fingers, its small and harmless shape offered no safety against the unknown form before her. "She's…"

She wasn't sure, truthfully, and before she had a moment to remember if her mom had actually stepped out, the man interrupted with a hand shot out fast towards her small chest.

He did it with such terrible force her teeth bit down on her tongue. His gloved hand grabbed hold of the collar of her pajama top and pulled her off her cold perch, right to face him.

"Tell me." He lifted the tongs towards her eyes and waved the tip around to force her back to look at it, like a toy and nothing like they should.

Her eyes started to dart around the space in a pathetic attempt to find any help and a quick exit out of the tight squeeze of terror they'd found themselves trapped within. There were no doors. Only this awful beast.

Her voice shook. Her head tilted. The words felt like little sharp shards coming from the depths of her burning throat. "She, she… said she would… go… to.. the grocery.."

He threw her down hard onto the tiles and for a moment, her head spun like the whirling leaves in the window. Her sight came back into focus in time to see him take a long, sharp sniff of the air and turn around toward the back door, and she let herself close her eyes, just for a second.

"Do they always take…?" a loud thump against a kitchen cabinet cut off her thought before it was even halfway out. It didn't come from the direction of her view or her closed eyes.

Her breath hitched as her body stiffened, bracing for what was coming. For what could come. But this did not match her expectations at all.

Then the scraping began, like dragging a dead tree over a metal roof. Each new sound echoed against the others in her ear as her own heavy and rapid beat filled her ears. Her heart thundered.

He was dragging something big. Heavy. Out from beneath the table. Her vision moved across the room to see it. To take it in and feel all the terrible things about this space and the situation it held, that terrible figure now bringing it into full view.

It was her mother. Laying like an unused and unwanted rag. Not a color Lily was used to. Nothing like what was good.

He dragged her body by one hand through a red, sticky trail all the way to her, and Lily finally gave out with a high-pitched cry, and pressed herself to the far wall once again in attempts to hide herself even further away, behind her closed eyelids and tear filled eyes.

The man dropped her mother right on top of her small legs. And Lily cried harder, trying to shrink, just trying to be anything but noticed, seen or touched again. The scent of iron filling her nose so strong she felt sick and dizzy.

She peeked an eye open, watching through wet and blurry lashes at what the figure had found with so little effort under her own table and her gaze came straight up into that dark and dreadful hole in her moms forehead and, at that instant, her tummy went to a cold freeze.

The dark thing, whatever this figure was, stood silent over both their bodies, like a tall stone pillar. No move or twitch to betray anything it had done. The rain pounded hard on the windows.

He did nothing more but step towards them with that long metallic stick, slowly lifting them up once more for the first time all night, waving the silver pieces above his gloved hands in such a weird, rhythmic swaying.

Lily felt like her breath had dried and broken off in her throat and there wasn't enough room inside of her for both of them to be breathing. So the man's deep inhales made it more like a lack of her own that filled this silent space between each sharp beat.

He tilted his head in silence and reached out slowly, taking something small from one of his vest pockets. The thing was so dark it looked like a solid void. She didn't get time to see or understand what it could be.

The monster leaned down, and this time, his eyes came up to meet hers, and there it was. A tiny pinpoint, glowing like a broken sun at the depths of all that evil. "She wouldn't let go."

She felt a hot sharp pain hit through the side of her left ear and screamed. It hurt too bad, worse than the heat on her eyes from all the wet that had dried there now. The pain just never ever stopped. It came and it stayed and the only thing it cared about doing was just hurting her as badly as possible, and she didn't even know why.

His shadow fell across her and she never saw his face. Only the hot heat as it kept tearing the bone beside her ear again and again with a slow rhythm and a gentle pull as though the metal tip had been a simple toy and not something so cold and sharp.

He tugged something away. Small. Heavy. With blood smeared all across the tips of his dark and strange fingers and threw the little bloody mess away, onto her mothers pale chest where it settled into the bloody, wet space of her body, right under her empty eye socket.

Then, everything faded, not into the black that she was used to from sleep, but a soft color of dull gold, a faded version of all that used to bring warmth into the home, but now felt as empty as the body on top of her tiny crushed legs.