Finding Winter

Chapter 9

No. Not again.

Not needing a second warning, I rushed down the hill, passed the trees, and skirted the turn that led to my street. The cracked pavement beneath my feet ground and popped, and the quaint houses lined along the hill served as a good indicator for how fast I was going. But I needed to go faster.

This wasn't fast enough. Not when the door to my house was bust wide open.

Grinding my teeth, I pushed forward by throwing everything I had in front of me, leaping across the cracked rubble of pavement and tree roots.

This couldn't be happening.

Hurdling up the steps to my house, I gaped in horror at the black tar that clung around the knob of my front door in sickening clumps. My face paled, all the blood draining out from my body at the realization of what this meant, and the fear swept across my skin in a wave of prickles that rendered me paralyzed.

Unlike animals, they knew how to hunt us down- understood our human nature, and if they already were familiar with how to use doors and hell knows what there was no place we could hide. Wasn't it enough that they could travel across any flat surface without being damaged and be able to swipe through anything with their lanky but unnervingly sharp fingers?

We would never be able to hide- the unsettling reality twirled my stomach into a thousand knots.

Time after time we would have to fight, and in every fight there would always be the possibility of failure. And after every fight our odds of dying would be stacked high and higher against us.

Every fight has an end; we were walking graves. 

Cries and screams of terror echoed out from the basement, ripping me away from paralysis, yanking me through the door, and flying down the stairs to come to their aid. 

Already in their third-dimensional form, like rattlesnakes poised ready for the attack, the shadows stood high off the ground and cornered Autumn and Sarah into an impossible position. Although their backs were against the wall, they were balancing on top ridge of the couch- a compromising position that would make the slightest slip the end of it.

They would fall right into the shadows, no doubt be sliced apart by their tendrils.

Obviously, the knew what would happen if hey fell. Tears wet their red faces, and while Sarah screamed at the faces that screamed back Autumn did her best to bat them away with a pillow. 

"Get the hell away!" Autumn screamed in terror while swiping at the shadows away like they were small dogs.

The three of them snarled at the fruitless attempt. And just to play around with their prey before they went in for the kill, one grabbed the pillow, and it screamed maniacally in cackling hysteria when my sister tried to pull the pillow back- desperate to keep her only weapon.

"Autumn!" I bellowed out to her.

All went silent when the attention of both my sister, her friend, and the shadows shifted to me.

An elated and relieved grin graced Autumn and Sarah's face, but they quickly paled into concern when the three shadows turned from them to me, no doubt familiar with who I was and what I did with their friends in the forest. Hisses and sporadic clicks tumbled out from their lips in an aggravated frenzy, looking at one another like they were communicating. 

They probably were. Whatever the hell these things were, they were intelligent. When they realized they couldn't kill me to avenge their dead, they wanted to take whatever was closest to me instead, my sister. To let them communicate and formulate an attack would lead us to certain death, so I had to find some way to divert their attention.