Nanoia

Chapter 3: Intruder

Tori couldn't breathe. Her fingers clenched in the material of her bedspread with enough force that the threads creaked under the strain. Her lungs burned, and it could have been seconds or hours later that she drew in a gasping, trembling breath, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

Rain. She could still hear the rain, and the occasional rumble of thunder, but her ears strained, listening for something nearer.

Nothing.

She unclenched one fist and fumbled her way across the bedspread, fingers trembling, until she found the smooth, heavy plastic of the flashlight. She pulled it into her lap, searching for the switch, but she hesitated before turning it on.

The entire house was dark. If there was someone downstairs...

Oh, god.

If there was someone downstairs... they might see the light... and...

She hugged the flashlight to her chest and tried to breathe around the tightness in her chest. A flicker of lightning outside brushed the edges of her room with pale gray light before fading. Thunder followed moments later, rattling the windowpane.

She opened her mouth, wanting to call out for Frost, desperate to know she wasn't alone, but the words stuck in her throat. Some primal instinct screamed to sit still and stay silent, some ancient part of her brain left over from days when her hunter-gatherer ancestors had to worry about other, more dangerous predators hiding in the forest.

The stairs creaked.

Tori hunched forward, the hard shape of the flashlight digging into her breastbone. She could hear herself gasping and tried to slow her breathing, tried to remember all the tricks the school nurse had taught her—breathe in for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight—but at that moment she could no more count than she could fly. All she could think about was the fifth step on the staircase, the one that always made that raspy creaking noise when stepped on, and remember every time she had stepped on it without giving second thought to the sound.

Calm down, she told herself firmly. Just calm down. It could be Dad! He could be home early.

Never mind that her father hardly ever came home.

Never mind that Frost was freaking out.

Never mind that every nerve in Tori's body screamed with one desire:

Hide.

She uncurled to slide her legs over the side of her bed. She thought vaguely about getting in the closet, or even under the bed, somewhere small and secret and safe, moving with the slow caution of the blind, but the bed-frame creaked, and the noise rang out over the sound of the rain like a shriek. She froze.

And though she couldn't see, nor hear, nor in any way explain how she knew, she knew that someone was outside her door.

The doorknob rattled.

The pulse of blood in her ears was almost deafening. She scrambled to her feet, no longer caring if anyone heard, and slammed her back against the far wall of the room, as far from the door as she could get.

"I—I know you're there!" she called, voice hoarse and trembling. "Just..."

Just what? she thought, half-hysterical. 'Just go away'? 'Get out'?

'Shoo'?

Thunder rolled. The door hinges creaked.

"Leave me alone!"

She fumbled for the flashlight switch and turned it on, the yellow light blazing to life with blinding intensity. She squinted against the glare, aiming it at the open door—

And the empty hallway beyond.

Tori made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a sob, confusion and relief and terror still swirling within her, and she sagged back against the wall. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she blinked them back. She trailed the beam of the flashlight side-to-side, searching, but there was nothing. She aimed it back at the doorway—still empty.

Gathering the tattered shreds of her courage, she leaned to one side, aiming the flashlight beam as far around the edge of the doorframe as possible, then shuffled cautiously the other way and repeated the process on the other side.

Nothing.

Just inside the doorway, the floorboards creaked.

From underneath the bed came the familiar low rasp of Frost's growl, starting low and rising swiftly into a feral, spitting snarl.

Voice trembling, Tori called out, "Frost?"

The cat emerged in a streak of gray fur, bolting from beneath the bed and launching herself toward the doorway. The snarl morphed into a feline scream, and—

Tori didn't understand.

Frost was attacking the air. 

Claws extended and fangs bared, the cat seemed to climb through empty space, swinging violently left and right, until she was higher than Tori's head, and she lunged forward and closed her jaws around... nothing?

Something shrieked, a noise like metal sliding across metal, high and raspy and utterly foreign, and an unseen force slammed into the door, slinging it back with enough power that the doorknob embedded itself in the wall, and something else scraped along the bare floorboards, leaving pale, splintered furrows.

Invisible...? she thought with the sudden quiet clarity born of an overwhelmed mind

Frost leapt free, or perhaps was tossed, and landed sliding on all fours at the foot of the bed, where she whirled about, ears flat and fur bristling and eyes wide, and let out another yowling cry before bolting forward again.

Whatever had come into the bedroom now retreated, the raspy shriek repeating as it slammed against the far wall of the hallway with force enough to rattle the entire house, and Tori could hear it as it thumped and scrabbled down the stairs, Frost in hot pursuit, and all that Tori could think was that Frost was so small and the whatever-it-was was huge, and she ran after them, flashlight beam waving erratically with each step. Crashes and thuds and bangs resounded through the house, down the stairs and toward the back of the house.

She almost fell off the stairs when her hand found open air instead of a bannister rail, and the flashlight beam played across the remnants of the wooden railing lying shattered on the floor below. A path of chaos led from the bottom of the stairs and into the kitchen—magazines scattered across the floor from the once-orderly stack by the couch, framed pictures shattered in sprays of glass shards, pieces of furniture shoved to the side, toppled over, broken...

She felt the wind and rain before the flashlight illuminated the open back door—just in time for her to see Frost vanish out into the storm-lashed night in a streak of pale fur.

"Frost! No!"

Her socks skidded in the puddles of water gathered upon the kitchen tiles, and she tumbled to her knees just across the threshold of the open door. The wind tossed spatters of freezing rain at her, half-blinding her. She swiped the water away with one hand and squinted through the storm, flashlight playing over the falling drops and making them glitter yet not penetrating past the edge of the old patio.

"Frost!" Her voice cracked with the force of her call, yet it was nearly drowned out by the rain and thunder. "Frost!"

In desperation, she scrambled to her feet and to the edge of the patio, ignoring the way the rain soaked through her clothing and stole her breath with its chill. Try as she might, she could see only a few yards into the darkness, even with the help of the flashlight. She called out again and again and until her throat closed around the sound of Frost's name, and she knew that not all of the liquid trailing down her cheeks was rain.

Suddenly realizing where she was—alone, outside, at night, during a storm, with only a flashlight between her and whatever was waiting in the dark—she backed up a step, and the flashlight beam fell upon the damp earth past the patio's edge.

Outlined in the mud, the interior already filling with water, was a mark—not a shoe-print, nor a regular footprint, but something huge and inhuman, with three thick toes and telltale furrows at the tips, such as might have been left by powerful claws.