The Eclipse p.2
Before Jack Uhrmacher could even begin to process what the hell he was looking at, it was already there.
No warning. No flicker of light, no burst of sound or blur of movement. One second the air was empty—the next, the thing stood in front of him like it had always been there. As if the world had just remembered to render it.
The figure towered over him—an eclipse in the shape of a man, outlined in searing corona-fire and framed by the consuming void of its body. It didn't shimmer. It didn't glow. It *devoured* light, pulling the world into its center like gravity given sentience. Every inch of it radiated impossible contradictions: heat that seared and cold that froze marrow, both crashing into Jack in relentless, invisible waves.
He couldn't move. Could barely think.
At six foot one and a solid 170 pounds, Jack Uhrmacher cut a striking figure back home—a jock's build wrapped in a hoodie and attitude. But now? He was small. Insignificant. A child made of skin and bone staring up at a god-shaped hole in the world.
And the thing was reaching for him.
Its "hand" stretched outward—not quite smoke, not quite fire, not quite anything that should have existed. It drew closer. Slowly. Inevitably. Jack's breath froze in his throat as a sharp, instinctive truth pierced his mind:
*This is it.*
He was going to die here.
Right here. Right now.
He wouldn't see his mom again. Wouldn't hear his dad's old records playing on Sunday mornings, or argue with his grandfather over fixing busted pocket watches in the back of the workshop. There would be no more workouts with Tank, no shared smokes behind the gym, no more lobbing pens at mouth-breathing idiots in math with Elle, no late-night, nerded-out gadget talk with Mason.
All of it—*gone*.
He could feel the future unraveling, strand by strand, each step the creature took stripping away another piece of what might have been. Jack understood, with gut-deep certainty, that the moment that hand touched him… it was over.
And he wasn't the only one.
Tank understood too.
It happened fast. Too fast for Jack to react. One moment, the creature's fingers—or what passed for them—were inches from his face. The next, a blur of muscle and motion crashed into him.
Tank.
The sheer force of the throw knocked the air from Jack's lungs as he was hurled backward like a ragdoll. He slammed into the gravel rooftop, skidding until his back hit the chain-link fence with a *clang*. His vision swam, the sky spinning in broken circles above.
Tank stood between him and the creature now—immovable, defiant.
If Jack had always been strong *enough*, Tank had been born with *too much* of it. Six-foot-six and built like a linebacker out of myth, Tank looked like someone had compressed a freight train into human form. He'd been scouted for college teams while still fifteen, already quarterbacking like a man among boys.
Saving Jack had barely cost him a breath.
"*RUN!! RUN, YOU FUCKS!!*" Tank roared.
The sound tore through the paralysis like a hammer through glass. The words didn't just hit Jack—they hit *all* of them. Mason flinched like he'd been slapped. Elle's breath caught, eyes wide. Even the air itself seemed to shudder under the weight of that scream.
And in that heartbeat of clarity, Jack *moved*.
Not because he wanted to—but because Tank had told him to. Because something ancient and terrified inside him remembered what it meant to run *before* the world ended.
But even as his feet scrambled for traction, as his heartbeat roared in his ears, Jack twisted back toward the figure—toward Tank—and the creature that was still reaching, still moving, still *coming*.
And in the space between them, a decision had been made.
Tank wasn't running.
He'd never planned to.
And the eclipse was still watching.
With no eyes… but somehow, seeing everything.
*skip*
Jack was on his feet in an instant. Adrenaline had burned the panic right out of his body, replacing it with the kind of wired clarity only fear could deliver.
From where he stood—third closest to the stairwell door—he clocked everyone's positions in a glance. Mason and Elle were just behind him. Tank was up front. And between Tank and the exit?
That *thing*.
The weird, eclipse-shaped fuck that looked like death had dressed up for prom.
Tank had already peeled off his jacket and dropped into a stance—feet wide, knees bent, arms loose at his sides. The kind of stance Jack had seen a thousand times, right before Tank bulldozed some poor linebacker off the field.
He was ready to move.
*Always* ready to move.
"We're splitting up!" Tank barked, voice cutting through the tension like a slap. "Knucklehead, go right! Four-Eyes, left!"
Jack's eyes widened. *Smart.* No names. Just nicknames. Enough to keep them coordinated—without feeding the thing any more info than it needed.
*Damn smart, Tank,* Jack thought. *You big beautiful bastard.*
"One!"
Jack planted his foot, coiled like a spring, eyes locked on the right-hand corner of the roof. No hesitation.
"Two!"
To his left, Mason and Elle tensed up, mirroring him—ready to scatter. They were moving as one now. A pack. No time to think, just *trust*.
"Three!"
Tank threw his jacket—fast and high, a perfect spiral—straight into the creature's face.
And then he *moved*.
A blur of motion, Tank dashed in low and tight, weaving around the eclipse-thing with fluid, almost impossible footwork. For a guy built like a war god, he was fast—*too* fast.
The rest of them broke out at once. The moment the jacket left Tank's hand, the whole rooftop exploded into motion.
Jack sprinted hard to the right, legs burning, lungs fighting to keep up. No looking back. Just get clear. Just *run*.
The jacket hit the creature's face—and froze.
Literally froze.
A flash of searing white light consumed the cloth midair. The second it touched the creature's not-skin, the fabric went stiff and brittle, cracking like glass. When it hit the ground, it shattered into a cloud of glittering silver ash.
No impact. No resistance. Just *obliteration*.
And then the thing *moved*.
No roar. No warning. It didn't chase Tank—it *chose* him.
It turned with deliberate, eerie precision and lunged after the boy who had dared to touch it. Its presence, its impossible heat and cold, surged like a tidal wave in its wake.
"THE FUCK YOU DOIN'?!" Tank bellowed, spinning on his heel.
He threw a haymaker so hard it probably could've folded a car in half.
But the creature wasn't there.
It ducked. No—*moved*—in a way that felt wrong. Like it rewound a frame of time to dodge, then stepped forward into Tank's space.
And then it mirrored him.
Legs planted.
Squared up.
Tank versus the man-shaped eclipse.
Jack *stopped*.
Instinct warred with sense, but friendship screamed louder. He turned on a dime, ready to charge back into the fray. Tank couldn't take that thing alone. No one could. If they were gonna go down, they were going down swinging. *Together*.
But then—*yank*.
His hoodie cinched back tight around his throat as Elle grabbed the back of it and *dragged* him mid-run, heels scraping the rooftop like brakes.
"*Tank can take care of himself!!*" she shouted, voice hoarse from panic and fury. "He told us to RUN, YOU FUCKING DIMWIT!"
Jack stumbled but didn't fight her grip. Not really.
His eyes stayed locked on Tank, who was still standing. Still fighting.
But in that moment—just for a second—Jack understood something horrible:
Tank hadn't expected to make it.
*skip*
Jack's boots pounded the metal steps like thunder, every breath ragged, harsh, scraping against his throat. Elle was right behind him, hand still clutching the back of his hoodie like a leash, dragging him out of the war zone one frantic step at a time. Mason clattered along just behind her, his telescope banging awkwardly against the stair rail with every wild bounce.
They didn't speak. No one dared.
The stairwell twisted in tight turns, the air growing thicker with each floor they descended. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like insects, a cold flickering strobe that made the shadows writhe against the walls. Jack barely noticed the pain in his knees, or the growing cramp in his side. He was running like something was chewing at his heels—because it might've been.
They burst out onto the third-floor landing, slammed shoulder-first into the push-bar door, and spilled into the corridor beyond.
Silence.
No students. No voices. No teachers yelling for hall passes. Just a long stretch of lockers and classroom doors standing ajar like cracked mouths, light bleeding out into an otherwise dead hallway.
Jack slowed just a step. His boots squeaked against the tile. He looked over his shoulder.
Nothing behind them. No sound. No sign of that thing.
Just that creeping, awful *stillness*.
"What the hell—?" Mason wheezed. He bent over, clutching his side. "Where is everyone?"
Jack shook his head. "Maybe they evacuated. Maybe—maybe it scared 'em off."
"Scared them off?" Elle's voice was sharp, but it trembled at the edges. "There were hundreds of kids here ten minutes ago. *Hundreds.* And now...?"
She stopped walking. Jack skidded to a halt beside her.
And yeah.
Now it was obvious.
No locker slams. No gossiping kids. No one shouting down the hall. Not even the usual low hum of the building systems—no vents rattling, no distant chatter from classrooms. It was like someone had taken the school and scraped all the life out of it, leaving just the bones behind.
The fluorescent lights above them buzzed, dimmer now. The far end of the hallway flickered with a sick, stuttering glow, and shadows seemed to pool in the corners like they were waiting for something.
Elle's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Something's wrong."
Jack didn't respond.
He didn't need to.
Every hair on his body had already risen. His chest felt tight—not from running, but from something *else*. Something heavier. As if the walls around them were breathing. Watching. Holding their breath for the next awful thing.
He thought about Tank. About how still the monster had looked when it squared up to him. How it hadn't *chased*. How it didn't *need* to.
Jack's stomach turned.
"This isn't right," Mason said quietly, his voice small in the echoing silence.
Elle nodded. Her hands had curled into fists at her sides, white-knuckled and shaking. "This... this isn't just a lockdown. This is something else."
Jack took a step toward the next stairwell, and paused.
There, scrawled across the tile floor at the corner where the hallway turned—something dark. Thin. A streak of ash, like the trail of a cigarette burned out too fast.
No footprints.
No smudges.
Just a line.
Like something had *passed through*.
His mouth went dry.
"We keep moving," he said finally, voice low. "We find an exit. Then we figure out what the hell is going on."
Mason gave a weak nod.
Elle didn't answer, but her eyes were fixed dead ahead. And her grip on Jack's sleeve hadn't loosened.
Together, they kept walking.
And behind them, far above—somewhere near the roof—something breathed. Slow. Deep. Cold as the void between stars.
And it knew they were still alive.
*skip*
The school, once silent as a grave, now rang with the shrieking wail of the fire alarm—an artificial scream echoing down the hallways like a mechanical banshee. It wasn't much, but it was the only sign of resistance they could offer. Manson had triggered it—somewhere between dashing down a hallway and splitting from the group—in a desperate attempt to alert anyone else who might still be trapped inside. Assuming, of course, *anyone* was left.
Jack leaned against the cinderblock wall of the chemistry room, his chest heaving as he took a drag from the cigarette trembling between his fingers. The end glowed faintly in the gloom, the smoke curling up past his eyes. It was stale. Weak. He was on his last stick, and his nerves were fraying like a live wire.
The nicotine hit barely registered anymore—his system was too used to it, too calloused by years of stress and bad habits. Still, the ritual grounded him. Just a breath. Just a moment to feel something other than the panic bubbling beneath his ribs.
They had run for what felt like hours, vaulted over stair rails, kicked through fire doors, even doubled back at one point when the third-floor hallway had *shifted*—as if the school itself was rearranging its bones behind their backs.
And yet… there had been no exit.
No windows to the outside world. No fire doors that led to daylight. The emergency exit on the gym floor had just opened into another hallway—a hallway that hadn't existed when they'd played dodgeball there last week. It was as if the school had been swallowed whole, stretched into some *other place*, and left to rot behind reality.
Elle was on the far side of the lab, crouched behind a desk, her fingers clutched white around her phone. She'd been redialing every number she knew, over and over again, as if *sheer willpower* could punch through the dead signal. Every time, the same result—no bars. No tone. Just the mocking silence of a world that had left them behind.
She looked up suddenly, her eyes sharp, cheeks flushed. "It's like the whole network's gone," she whispered. "No signal. No WiFi. Not even emergency bands."
Jack exhaled smoke through his nose. "You think that thing gives a damn about cell towers?"
Elle flinched. Then she pulled her knees tighter to her chest and said nothing.
Jack turned his back to her and shoved another metal lab table against the door. The barricade wasn't exactly military-grade—just a stack of furniture and lockers they'd managed to wedge against the frame—but it was all they had. They were cornered. Trapped in a goddamned science classroom with a half-scorched periodic table and a vending machine full of expired Gatorade.
Somewhere behind the walls, the fire alarm kept screaming.
And somewhere *beneath* that, in the bones of the building…
Something moved.
It was slow. Subtle. A vibration more than a sound. Like a heartbeat—no, *a pulse*—that didn't belong to anything human. Jack felt it through the soles of his shoes, a rhythm that didn't sync with his own.
Elle whispered, "Do you think Manson made it to the intercom?"
Jack didn't answer right away. He ground the butt of his cigarette into a scorched beaker tray, watched the ember die out.
"I think…" he muttered, voice flat, "he better be somewhere we *ain't*."
The shriek of the alarm faltered for a moment, catching mid-sound like a scratched record.
Elle's head snapped up.
Jack turned toward the door, muscles tensing.
The sound resumed—but quieter now. Fainter. As if something were muffling it. As if it were getting farther away. Or the *school itself* was pulling them deeper in.
Jack stepped back from the door, hand reaching instinctively for the multi-tool on his belt loop. It wasn't a weapon—but right now, a screwdriver felt better than bare fists.
"I hate this," Elle whispered.
Jack gave a humorless laugh. "Yeah. Same."
A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft ticking of a broken wall clock that no longer moved.
Then came the sound they'd been dreading.
A *knock*.
Not a banging. Not a crash. Just a soft, polite *tap*.
Right at the edge of the doorframe.
Three times.
And Jack knew, without needing to check the peephole, that whoever—or whatever—stood on the other side wasn't lost.
It *knew* where they were.
The knock echoed, unnatural in its restraint. Not a demand—an invitation.
And then… the door moved.
Not with a creak, but with a subtle shudder, like something breathing against it. The fire alarm faltered again, then died completely. Silence took its place like a hand over the mouth of the world.
Jack backed up slowly, glancing at Elle—who was already rising, pale and silent, phone still clenched in her fingers. Her lips were parted, but no sound came out. There was nothing to say.
The barricade shifted.
Not from force. From *decay*.
The metal table nearest the door began to oxidize in fast-forward, rust spiderwebbing across its surface as the legs buckled with a metallic groan. Plastic warped and cracked, the smell of melted laminate thick in the air. One by one, the pieces of their makeshift barricade *dissolved*—not broken or smashed, but unraveled at the seams of their very being.
The handle turned.
No rush. No panic.
Just inevitability.
Then the door opened.
And *it* stepped through.
Like a god had reached into the concept of "human" and *unwritten* it. A man-shaped silhouette, blacker than shadow, darker than void, with a corona of seething white-gold light blazing around its edges. A solar eclipse in the shape of a man. Its presence burned and froze the air simultaneously, a contradiction made flesh.
Jack moved.
He didn't think. Didn't plan. Just *charged*, a broken lab stool clenched in his fists like a makeshift bat. His throat tore open with a roar, and for a second, he felt something like courage. Like purpose.
The figure didn't move.
But something *flew* at him—too fast to dodge.
Jack didn't register what it was until it hit him full in the chest, shattering into a mess of splintered carbon fiber and glass.
Manson's telescope.
The custom scope he'd carried since freshman year. Jack had helped him build it.
The impact knocked Jack backward, sending him crashing over a desk and pinning him beneath the twisted remains of a collapsed lab shelf. Pain shot through his leg—something was wrong, *very* wrong. He tried to scream, but it came out as a gasp.
And then he saw Elle.
She stood paralyzed in front of the creature, trembling, her wide eyes locked with the nothingness where its face should have been. Her phone slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.
The thing didn't touch her.
It *raised a hand.*
A single, slow motion—like brushing dust from a sleeve.
And she ignited.
Not in flame. In *light.*
A beacon of impossible radiance flared from her chest—black at its core, crowned with a searing corona of gold and white, a perfect eclipse pulsing from within her ribs. Her scream was a choked, luminous sound, cut off by the pressure of the light exploding out from her.
The room cracked.
Tiles split. Glass shattered. The ceiling buckled under the weight of that unholy brilliance.
Then she was gone.
No body. No trace.
Jack writhed beneath the collapsed shelf, half-conscious and drowning in pain, every breath a shallow gasp that scraped down his throat like broken glass. The twisted wreckage pinned his legs, sharp edges biting into his thigh and side, ribs pulsing with fire. Blood smeared his chest—warm, thick, and too much. Something had ruptured. Something deep.
He wasn't sure if the trembling was his or the world's.
Then he felt it—*the shift*. A presence turning toward him like the closing of a door.
The eclipse-thing moved, not with sound, but with the weightless grace of a thought made real. No footsteps. No sound. Not even the scrape of air displaced by motion. It simply was—there—drawing closer, the air around it bending with quiet reverence, as though the world itself dared not resist.
It crouched.
No flare of threat. No sudden attack. Just a slow, deliberate folding of knees, bringing it face-to-face with the broken boy on the floor.
And Jack could finally *see* it.
Up close, its form wasn't darkness—it was light consumed. Its edges pulsed with wraithlike flames, not of color but of *absence*, tongues of solar fire rippling outward like the petals of an inverted sun. White-hot arcs shimmered alongside veins of violet and strands of pure, seething black—each flickering like the last desperate seconds before a star's death. The air around it shimmered with cold that hurt to breathe.
It reached toward him.
Jack could only stare.
The hand it extended wasn't a hand, not truly—just the *idea* of one, outlined in light so pale it threatened blindness, so dark it stripped the meaning from shadow.
Then—
It touched him.
The moment contact was made, Jack's body *seized*. Flame—if it could be called that—exploded across his chest in total silence, monochrome and hollow. It didn't burn. It *froze*.
Not the still, peaceful cold of snow or ice—but the cruel, searing cold of exposed bone in deep vacuum, of absolute zero licking across nerve endings. His scream never made it past his lips—it shattered inside him, frozen solid.
The flames licked across his torso, hungrily devouring his hoodie, peeling back layers of cloth and skin, eating into flesh, curling over ribs—and yet… he didn't die.
He *should* have.
He felt the memory of it—of his body tearing earlier when he hit the desk, of something punching through muscle, of blood rising like oil in his lungs.
And yet, as the fire tore him open… it *restored* him.
Excruciatingly.
The pain wasn't gone—it was transformed. Rewritten into something worse and stranger, like being dipped into molten glass and then frozen solid in liquid nitrogen. His leg, twisted beneath the shelf, jerked violently—and then, with a sickening *crack*, it snapped back into place.
He convulsed, sobbing without air.
The fire didn't stop.
It danced across his frame with an alien grace, branding him with threads of light and void, drawing constellations of agony that refused to fade. And with each lick of that impossible flame, some part of him mended—too fast, too wrong, just enough to *keep* him.
Not heal. Not save.
Preserve.
Then the figure drew back.
No word. No gesture. Just a slow, deliberate withdrawal—like an artist finishing a signature stroke.
It stood again.
Majestic. Silent.
And vanished.
No flicker. No distortion. No swirl of smoke or flash of power. One moment it was there. The next… it simply *wasn't*.
Jack lay alone in the shattered chemistry lab, surrounded by melted tile and twisted steel, the acrid scent of ozone in the air and his body steaming with a frost that refused to melt. His chest still glowed faintly, threads of soft white etched like scars into his skin—reminders of what had touched him.
His breath caught.
He looked around.
Elle was gone. Vaporized in a burst of light he could still feel behind his eyes.
Tank… gone.
Manson… missing.
His friends were *gone*.
And he… was *alive*.
Alone in the wreckage.
Marked.