The Walker Family Vacation (Episode 1)

by McRory, Shane

  The third time the door cracked he knew it was over. The door cleaving with a thunderous crash from top to bottom, a rimation splitting the center, cracking open, peeling back the door’s fake wood veneer and exposing its metal skin and pale core in jagged shards.

  Ty saw flashes of colorful fabric—the man’s shorts that the creature wore; the creature that was the boyfriend of the injured girl who huddled wide-eyed at the side of his bed. He clutched Janie tight, held her close, trembling against him. Neck rigid, the crown of her head pressed to his chin.

  The creature snuffled on the other side of the door, heavy breaths whisked through the tight space drawn from floor to ceiling. The narrow, jagged gap was dark, but he swore he saw a gleam from its eye, something wet peering through, pinpointing its prey.

  “Jesus, Janie,” he whispered with surprising calm now, hoping that he could imbue her with some strength in their final moments.

  When the snuffling stopped and the gap in the door grew deadly quiet, he knew what was next. In two awful seconds, he endured the dreadful anticipation of what he was sure would come.

  The creature’s mouth pressed the gap, teeth bared and gleaming, it emitted a hoarse, rattling whisper. The word Gray, long and draggy like he would never finish, then dryly, it exhaled, Sun, extending that word like it was a curse. Hair rose on the nape of Ty’s neck, and the young girlfriend howled. It was low and ghostly, and loud; Janie clapped her hands over her ears and she cried Ty’s name. He held her tighter, blew gentle shushes in her ear like he soothed a colicky baby.

  The creature renewed its banging with assured vigor, heaving over and over; each lunge widening that gap. The door sagged in its frame, the two points in the center digging into the carpet, scraping and tearing up pile.

  Janie squealed with each crash, each time getting louder, and then the girl’s boyfriend was in their hotel room. A shoulder first then his long, strangely transformed head dipped and entered, lips pulling back, showing teeth that had grown grotesquely equine. They squeezed themselves out of a peeling bright pink gum line running red with blood.

  The mouth opened and clacked as he wiggled a shoulder further through. A long arm scissored into the room, a hand planting on the carpet well beyond the door. The muscular, knobby-knuckled claw gripped the pile hard enough to bring the carpet off the floor. Then he pulled himself through, a knee thrusting in the gap, bent sharply, folding long and ugly like an insect’s.

  The gap split completely as it forced its body through, and the door burst open in two short halves like saloon doors. His other arm gawked through, angling upwards, the palm pressing flat on the ceiling while the other one still gripped a fistful of carpet.

  Janie moaned in warbling horror, the girl yowled, and Ty babbled nonsense and couldn’t stop. While his body acted autonomously, his mind still raced—some small part of him gripping the slippery silver globe of horror that was consuming them, looking for purchase, looking for a way to get a hold of it and keep them alive.

  The creature came in, shoulders rotating, torso turning horizontal with the floor, neck craning, fearsome head oscillating from left to right, mouth snapping open and closed. Pink tinged foam dripped onto the carpet from between its teeth like a rabid dog.

  “Graaaayy-ssooonnnn,” it hissed. A sound that rattled like dry bones in a wet bag.

  Hearing its voice, the girl mumbled, “No, no, no,” and it was the first time Ty heard her say real words.

  She clutched that dangling arm to her chest like she was protecting a baby, rolled to the side, spread herself flat face-down on the floor, legs kicking. Tried slithering herself under the bed, but the creature’s arm lashed out, cutting the air with the sound of a whip, wet palm slapping around her bare, slender ankle.

  Now she screamed.

  With one easy tug, the girl snapped back, head and shoulders that had disappeared under the bed whisking out, the crown of her head thumping the metal edge of the bed frame, arms forced roughly above her head.

  Her poor slender hand that dangled by a thread came free and Ty gasped as it bounced once on the carpet and flipped over, landing palm side up. He swore the fingers moved.

  He was moving before he realized it. The boyfriend had her pulled upright, foot to the ceiling and her head and hair swung near the carpet. Good arm thrashing wildly, the other remained bent, and freshets of blood squirted in shocking volume, arcing and splashing on the pastel carpet.

  Three steps running and he was in the air, coming down on the creature’s back, one arm locking around its neck as if to choke it, assuming some strange position he’d seen in mixed martial arts fights though he himself hadn’t fought since the fifth grade.

  His arm snaked tightly around the man’s neck and its stony feel shocked him. Had he fought with this man on the pool deck at lunchtime today, caught ogling his girlfriend, he wouldn’t stand a chance and now somehow horribly mutated, transformed—he didn’t know how he thought he would fare any better. There was an instant recognition he tangled with something he would never best.

  Its neck squirmed in the crook of his elbow, bulging columns pushing against his muscle like steel cables, its back flexed against his chest, humps as hard as turtle shells. He held on for dear life, squeezing as hard as he could though he’d never cut off its air supply. Right now he just didn’t want to be face-to-face with it.

  The girl screamed and kicked, one ankle in the creature’s clutch, the other leg swinging and hacking, her heel desperately trying to strike something but missing. The blood still spurted but her free hand clutched at the empty sleeve of her sweatshirt, pinching it tightly against what must be a jagged stump.

  Ty’s back thundered in sudden pain as the creature’s other hand slammed him, ripping through the air so quickly he couldn’t anticipate it. Strong fingers gouged his flesh as it grabbed a handful of the shirt he wore. With incredible force, he was yanked from the creature, its arm pulling him sharply off its back, the shirt snapping against his chest so hard buttons popped and the air was forced out of him.

  Then he was bewildered, hurtling in an airborne cartwheel, eyes closed tightly, vision a twinkling blackness—knowing he’d been thrown, expecting collision ...

  And it came. His body slammed against a solid wall, then tumbled headfirst to the floor, striking it with his shoulder sending a shooting pain through his collarbone and he was sure it was broken. When his eyes opened he saw his Janie, robe hanging open, T-shirt and panties worn underneath. Her legs weren’t broken, thankfully, from his panicked misaction. Bluish, bruised dents pressed across her shinbone and the side of her leg. Blood splattered and smeared up to her knees, staining her robe. Arms held out from her body, she seemed to dance with the creature. Loose, back hunched, looking for an opportunity. Like a wrestler circling an opponent though her only goal was to escape through that hotel room door and find their son.

  He got to a knee, but putting his arm out to help shot a lightning bolt that flashed his vision white. It zipped from his shoulder up to his neck through his collar. He growled in pain and fell forward.

  The creature took the girl, impossibly long arm folding up all its joints to crush her against its chest. She was face down, legs up, her feet still trying to kick him. It turned and Janie darted toward the smashed door.

  The creature’s free arm lashed out, bent with stored tension, but extending its range as it curved like a scythe. Its forearm slashed the air, whistling, striking his wife of ten years like a baseball bat.

  It caught her as she lunged forward, and she ran right into it. Her body dropped; all life extinguished, turned off, lifeless as a bag of sand.

  Ty screamed, high, frightened, a lifetime with that woman zipping through his brain—experiences, and love, and shared life snapping like a razor thin wire. He crawled to her like an alligator on his thighs and hands; scratching through the carpet, the white hot electric pain that blasted him was nothing.

  The creature careened on him while he wailed and babbled his wife’s name
. Teeth gnashing, face lunging and snarling, its ferocity abated his mournful sounds. The monstrous face hovered over his and he supplicated before it, knowing nothing he could do would stop it even though the purest hate he’d ever known washed, and bubbled, and flowed, and eddied through him. Before it like worthless food, he was prey ready to be devoured. The monster’s eyes bored into his, converting his roaring agony into muffled, snotty whimpers.

  The girl still struggled in his grasp, but she was powerless to his strength, and it lowered closer to him. So close he smelled the blood in its mouth, and the cologne it wore when it was a young arrogant man. Snorts blasted through its twisted, once-human nostrils, breath cool and damp, and Ty lowered his gaze, anticipated the top of his head being chomped by those horse teeth, his skull peeled back, his brain eaten, his life over ...

  But the creature retreated, and when he lifted his head, he saw it awkwardly walking backward, arms and legs angling grotesquely, working its ass through the gap in the door, pausing to snuffle his wife like a dog. Nose going between her thighs, up smelling her under her robe, over her back, around her neck, head coming up one more time, its black, soulless eyes shooting at him once more.

  Joints clicking and popping, it worked its way out, knocking one side of the door, crashing it sideways out into the hall. Ty scrambled, one arm held up against his chest, walking on knees and one hand, blubbering, aiming for his wife, worried eyes peering through that destroyed doorway. Saw a man that had become a horrible stick insect bobbing and weaving its body, its long legs and arms making contact with the ceiling, the floor, and the walls. Back bumping along the ceiling, it lifted itself high; the girl kicking her bare feet, striking a chandelier, and then they were gone, disappearing around the corner.

  “Oh no, Janie,” he sobbed and went to her.

  The young woman he’d fallen in love with when he was in pupillage and she was studying to become a teacher was gone. She loved Quality Street, and Dexter, and hard cider, and when he turned her, taking one of those sweet shoulders and rotating her body, he saw she was dead.

  Heavy and useless, not even the slightest spark of life working in her limbs. Her neck lolled, and he took her face in both hands and blurted with horror as he felt every bone that had been inside that sweet head smashed into oblivion. The unbroken skin held the shattered fragments of her skull. Eyes open and dead, her face was unrecognizable; nose pushed into her head, teeth cracked, dangling. Blood ran in a river from her open lips.

  Ty screamed his rage and grief to the ceiling of the hotel room. Arms flexing with trembling fury, his hands remained delicate and graceful, cradling his wife’s once beautiful face. He set her down, a fresh rivulet of blood emanating from a nostril now, and he bent and kissed a clean, dry portion of her cheek.

  He sat on his heels, pressed his hands together, interdigitated the fingers, closed his eyes and snarled and cried. An angry ball of hatred and revenge swirled inside him, thrusting sudden raw strength through his arms and fingers, and he roared as he stood. Chest heaved, breath scored through his lungs. He lunged for the door, smashed away the remaining half with his left forearm, shoving the door open so he could pass and he charged down the hall.

  “Robbie!”

  He roared the name again and again as he lurched to the stairwell, looking for his son.

  Click the cover to continue reading!