Horror Story

[Gildarts]

Kill or be killed, she’d been saved by a monster that should’ve killed her, from someone who should’ve been by her side the whole time. Johnson? What had gone wrong with him? Her mind looked back, replaying the memories, his teeth had enlarged to fangs, and he wasn’t just turning into one creature, but many. Trisha blinked as she thought about the way he’d shaken her like a pair of maracas. As though waiting for the sound of her scream. Sure, she would have liked to help him, she would’ve been in the same position, but she suspected that there was nothing she could have done.

Yet why hadn’t she run? Had she been paralyzed by fear or the devil’s all too seductive mistress, curiosity? In all honestly, it was hard for Trisha to put forth what she had seen, she had to have been hallucinating, dreaming, living in anything but reality. And yet…

Maybe Emily hadn’t made it up. Maybe this woods was full of monsters and demons, but that realization simply made Trisha more afraid of the dark she was already bathed in. What lay unknown behind the unending forest of trees, behind every corner or swirl of the path she’d chosen to take? Johnson was dead, and she was all alone and this mission had been christened with a horrible death. And she had been witness to it all.

And Johnson? He’d found booze, to kill the pain of Claire, but something told her that the booze were laced with something else, admitting it however, would be admitting magic and witchcraft was real. She wasn’t a child, this wasn’t the wonderful world of Harry Potter from a children’s book, this was real, she’d seen it herself and she was begging her mind to take away the memory, after this was all over and she was safe, she’d get drunk as Johnson had, on liquor that didn’t change her into what she’d seen. Johnson. The horror of him becoming what he feared was inside him all along, sometimes, we become the very monsters we have hiding within.

However, now was not the time to be looking back. Trisha had sprinted and sprinted as far as she could to get away from the outhouse, as fast as she could without burning out the flame. She had thought she liked having the torch at first, the power of fire and light at her hands, but that was before she saw the many creatures that leapt from shadow to shadow, hiding behind the dark night that she could not see past. The horror had set in. She was stranded, lost, and alone without a clue of what to do to survive the night.

Meanwhile

“Who’s that knocking at the door?” Kat whispered and no one dared move.

“We have two choices, run, or hide up here and hope he doesn’t find us. Our best option is here, because we are armed and if anyone tried to come up here we’d be on higher ground,” Emily surmised and the knocking became more rapid.

“We can’t un-turn off all the lights, we’ll be sitting ducks up here if he finds us,” Mitch’s face etched with a frown full of fear.

“But why would he knock at the door if it’s his own house? It could be some of the others, the trail leads right to the house,” Jamal stated and the four college students looked at one another. Fear flickered in their eyes.

“Hey! Guys it’s us, Alex and Merrel, but he’s hurt pretty bad, are you guys in there?” Alex’s familiar voice was loud enough to drill through the muffling walls.

“Alex!?” Kat jumped up and down, “Let’s go help them!”

Emily paused for a moment, no one moved. “What? What is it?” Kat asked as she hesitated at the ladder.

“It… could be a trick,” Jamal said.

“What? Are you kidding? This is the best news we’ve had all day and you think we shouldn’t let them know we’re here?” Kat protested, finding the other three party members to be acting ridiculously. “Well, I’m going down there, you should see yourselves, this is pathetic.”

The girl started down the ladder and Emily shrugged before ushering Mitch toward the ladder, “Well, we can’t let her go alone.”

To their relief it really was Merrel and Alex, they’d already entered and were loitering in the That 70’s Show living room, completely covered in flaking layers of scummy dirt. Merrel was hobbling over to the paisley couch, taking a seat there in his wide girth. The mud was everywhere but the buzz of his blond hair and his blue eyes radiated with the dark backdrop of dirty clay, he hadn’t said too much yet. Alex on the other hand was smiling, he looked intensely thankful for all the familiar faces, it must have been maddening, and who knew how long he’d been out there alone? Alex’s black hair was clumped together with dried mud, and his clothes were completely ruined with dark stains, but everything felt a little better now that they were united.

Emily sighed a breath of relief as the terrible trepidation evaporated from her body, “It really is you.”

“See? I told you.” Kat nudged and like a family reunion, everyone, despite the gross layers of dried mud and scent of terror-fueled sweat, hugged each other in greeting.

Alex held on to Emily for a little too long, she was perplexed until, he whispered in her ear, “My sister’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered back, and the two had a moment of silence before they pulled apart, “At least you made it back safe.”

Alex nodded and everyone in the room found a place to sit. Merrel was on the couch with Alex and Mitch, Kat sat in the singular chair, Jamal sat on the end table next to the lamp, and Emily sat on a cushioned ottoman.

“So, you guys look like shit,” Jamal said, and the smiles were passed around the room once more.

“Quite literally, unfortunately,” Alex began, Merrel’s body was going into shock, he had a fever and looked as though he couldn’t quite keep himself awake, “It looks like the swamp didn’t even scathe you guys, maybe you don’t even know what I’m talking about, it came alive and nearly killed us, I can’t even begin to fathom it. But uh, Merrel’s hurt really bad. A rock crushed his shin and it is likely something’s broken. There was bleeding but it has stopped since then, it has been about three hours since the wound occurred, and uh, we were chest deep in stagnant swampy mud, which means he has a high risk of infection, if it isn’t already.”

“Shit,” Mitch said, looking down at Merrel’s leg, you couldn’t tell all that because the pant leg covered it, as well as the stain of mud and dirt.

Emily looked at the blood that had dried on his sock and was also on his boot. Blood. Hopefully none of these monsters dwelling outside were sharks, sniffing them from a mile away. Alex had left out the death of his sister, and for good reason, Merrel was their priority. Hearing Linny was dead could start panic.

“Isn’t like, walking through a swamp with an injury something that causes gangrene? We’ve gotta get you guys sterilized,” Kat stood up, and Mitch did too. They’d do a second sweep through, then, they might look for a booze cellar in the basement.

“Listen, we’ll do our best for Merrel right now, but we can’t stay here, this house might look abandoned, but the lights turned on, and you can’t see it from here, but the back yard… Has a much of unmarked graves buried in it,” Emily told the news to Alex, she wasn’t sure it would register to Merrel, nor that it applied.

“He’s gotta rest, we can’t not stay here. Plus, have you even been outside? The swamp came alive and nearly swallowed us whole. We were lucky we came out of it alive,” Alex spoke darkly, knowing what that would translate to Emily, who he’d told about his dead sister, “Something is going on here, you were right Emily, but now we’ve got to deal with this, with what is out there!” Alex stood up and pointed past the window with the long curtains strung up at the borders of the vertical panes, “You really want to be wandering out there at night, waiting for something to eat you when you can’t even see it?”

“He’s right, we don’t even have a flashlight,” Jamal sighed, he didn’t like the idea at all but this was the group’s best option. Emily remained silent gulping down her worst fears and walking over to Merrel who had propped up his legs rightfully on some pillows. The couch was a good spot for him, now it was time for the reveal, just how bad was his injury? And would it hold them back in the morning?

Emily was all about staying in one spot and waiting for help, but in the hours they’d traversed the swamp and forest, she hadn’t seen a single helicopter or plane. Something told her, it wasn’t that kind of world. The redhead slowly walked over to him and said, “This might hurt a bit, but the pant will likely hurt your leg if it is swelling,” then she tugged along the edge of his pants at his ankle, noticed his wince and how full his leg was to the fabric and used her blade to cut through anything below his knee. The scraps of wilted, brown-stained jeans fell to the cushion of the couch and revealed his injury. Blood from a thick looking gash had oozed to his ankle and dried there, his shin was swelled three times the size it normally would be, there was some discoloration of green and purple along the skin but no real bruise had accumulated yet.

She gulped down her fear and continued checking the wound, mainly the gash, because it looked as though it had been ripped from the inside out, which meant that the bone was broken and now nearly sticking out of his leg, now, there was no need to announce that or cause panic at this time, but from what she could see of his swollen leg, Merrel was in really bad shape.

Her wrist met his forehead and she pulled back immediately, high fever, infection had set in. “Do we have any water?” She asked over her shoulder and someone, Jamal’s voice, said they’d go get some.

“How bad is it?” Alex asked and noticed that Merrel was fighting just to keep his eyes open.

“How did you walk him here, and did you rest at all in the woods?” Three hours was a lot for an injured person to be on their feet, er, foot. But it didn’t necessarily surprise her, if they were going at a slow pace. Her gaze bore through Alex with grave seriousness, and he didn’t feel the need to ask that question again.

“We rested pretty frequently, every fifteen minutes, but there weren’t a lot of places to rest, we were still running from…” Alex got quiet as Kat and Mitch came back in the room. They’d raided the kitchen for booze and it was Kat who held the winning trophies, she’d looked where her mom hid them behind a photograph when her dad had reached the worst part of his drinking problem.

“We found some,” she set them on the end table, “Do you know what to do Em? You’re standing there looking a lot like a doctor.”

“Not really,” she said, “Anyone going to school for their medical degree?”

“No, and I don’t think Jamal is either,” Mitch said and he room grew quiet.

“Obviously we need to sterilize the wound, he needs to stay hydrated too,” Em stated, not bothering to say why. If they didn’t treat him properly, he wouldn’t live past a few days and his state would deteriorate even further.

“Uh, is it just me, or does he not look too good,” Kat was looking at Merrel, who’d awoken to bend over off the edge of the sofa and let go of the bile his stomach was holding onto.

Vomiting, in his case, was never a good sign.