()%The Thing Within #ONC2023

Chapter 3

Footsteps sounded on the front steps. Peering out, I noticed a man coming up the steps.

A death-like growl invaded the night. Candy's body convulsed on the floor as she began to spasm. She crawled onto her hands and knees as she scratched like a rabid dog on the floor, a devilish grin on her face.

Someone was pounding on the front door. "Open up!" a man ordered.

Candy convulsed again, her arms spasming until I feared my eyesight betrayed me. Was I seeing right? I froze in disgust, my mouth agape, to see that she'd grown an extra limb, a hand that emerged from her shoulders and began grasping at the surrounding air.

Her hand caught onto Daniel, whom she held onto as she drove her teeth into him. They collapsed onto the floor as Rupert, James, and I looked on in repulsion.

The front door flung open suddenly, and before I knew what was happening, I ran out the door. A bullet or two grazed me, and just when I thought I was in the clear, came another one. I ran as fast as I could, hearing gunshot after gunshot in the background. The shots grew more distant the further I traversed.

I looked around then, to see what had become of Candy, stumbling outside, as the bullets ricocheted off her, making her quiver like a violin. Only she wouldn't die and kept approaching a man whom she soon pinned beneath her.

Someone emerged from the house, which suddenly went up in flames. The man approached Candy, and moments later, she too lay consumed in a fiery chasm, her wild screeching filling the night with terror.

*     *     *   

I planned to wait till the fire had died down before returning to the charred remains of the lodge house, where I could climb into the library and sleep in peace, but I was to have no such luck tonight, as the sound of barking dogs filled the air. The soldiers hadn't forgotten about me.

I hesitated at the thought of climbing a tree and stood surveying one, before deciding that the dogs might still get me. I imagined myself stuck up in a tree as the soldiers shot at me. It was an easy, self-imposed grave. My eyes skimmed the darkened forest, wondering where I could hide.

And that's when I felt someone grab me and cupped his hand over my mouth. And when I heard his voice, I lost all hope. His accent revealed him as one of those soldiers. He'd captured me and would surely take me to their reputed ship.

Within moments, he bound my hands and feet and dragged me along the soggy ground till he'd come to a van parked in a clearing. It was the same van I'd seen earlier. He dropped me like a sack of potatoes as two men emerged from the vehicle. One walked up to me, and the other took the ferocious dogs to the back of the vehicle, where he caged them.

My captor brought me to my knees and threw buckets of water upon me as the other man looked on. When he was finished dousing me, he held me up before the other. "Open your mouth," he commanded.

I stared defiantly at the man before me, as the first squeezed my mouth and forced my mouth open, before flashing inside, looking for God alone knows what.

After a while, the man before me shook his head. "Unbelievable," he said. "Not a single symptom."

The one holding me squeezed my arm harder. "Cough," he ordered.

"What?" I asked, unbelieving.

"Cough," he insisted.

"I don't have a cough," I said, shaking my head. Was he insane?

The man before me turned to the other man and laughed, before turning back to me and striking me across the face. "Cough now, you little witch," he ordered.