by Sara Clancy
Something barreled towards her with a whoosh. The object bounced across the ground, releasing a wet squish with each impact, before it smacked against her leg. The fridge kept her from scrambling away but she pressed her spine against it as she trained the light of her phone onto the object. Dull eyes stared up at her from a severed head, their whites transformed into a murky brown as they began to decay. It was a man, his face slack, leaving his mouth to gape open into a grotesque scream. Ruby was sure it was screaming, until she felt her throat begin to ache and realized that the sound was coming from her.
Heaving breaths of frigid air, each one tainted with the traces of rot, she whipped her phone around, trying to pinpoint where the head had come from. Her beam fell upon the swinging kitchen door. It creaked open. A childish giggle wafted into the room a split second before a shadow was lobbed towards her.
It hit the ground and spun wildly as it bounced. Thud. Thud. Ruby lurched up onto her feet just as the head rolled towards her and tapped against her foot. She leaped back, smacking into the fridge hard enough that it rattled in place. Snapping her eyes up, she didn’t allow herself to look at the face, and instead trained her eyes on the kitchen door. It now stood open, aiming the rim of the wood towards her. On one side was the complete darkness of the restaurant. On the other was Tristan. His eyes were half hooded, his shoulders slumped and his arms hung limply by his sides. He didn’t react when her light shone into his eyes and for a moment, she stared at his chest, silently begging him to take a breath.
Her flashlight glistened off of something slick and she whipped around to focus the beam on the open door. She staggered back, breath caught in her throat, when one of the children slowly began to inch their way out from behind the wall. It came at a strange angle, hovering at the same height of Tristan’s head. When the porcelain face was fully exposed, Ruby recognized that it was the oldest of the three. Gradually, the girl pulled her lips back, baring her teeth in a wide smile as she stared unblinkingly at Ruby. Careful not to cross the threshold, the girl turned her head. She knows Tristan’s there, Ruby thought. She wanted to rush forward to help him but fear kept her rooted in place, leaving her to watch as the girl cupped one hand around her mouth, as if to share a secret, and began to whisper through the wood.
The words came as a constant, unbroken stream. She couldn’t understand any of what was heard, but the effect on Tristan was instant. With a choked gasp, his body jerked and trembled. The child whispered louder. Tristan’s eyes rolled back into his head, leaving only his whites exposed to the glow of Ruby’s phone.
“Tristan,” Ruby whimpered, the syllables struggling past the lump of fear swelling within her throat.
Tristan rattled against the wall as if in a seizure. Froth began to bubble up his throat and bleed out from the corners of his mouth. All the while, the little girl never stopped whispering.
“Leave him alone!” Ruby cried as she took a step closer.
Tristan and the whispering girl remained as they were while two more faces emerged on the very edge of the light. Their deathly pallor glowed while the rest of their features remained shrouded within a darkness as deep as their eyes. The illusion transformed them into hovering, eyeless faces. A pure, primal fear raced through her veins at the sight of them. Her skin crawled as their bloodlust settled upon her like a physical force. They didn’t need to speak a word for her to know exactly what they wanted to do to her.
Ruby restlessly shifted her weight, barely able to keep herself from fleeing into the back room. She flicked her eyes to Tristan, her only reason to stay, and the side of her foot tapped against one of the decapitated heads. It rocked against the tiles, the sound somehow both wet and grinding. Ruby tried not to think about who that head belonged to. A hiker or a member of the search party, it made no difference now. She couldn’t let herself dwell on it. Then, in unison, the children smiled. Bile gushed up the back of Ruby’s throat and she hunched over, desperately trying to fight off her gag reflex. The motion had forced her to take her eyes off of the children for a split second. But it was enough.
When she glanced back up, another head was hurdling towards her. There wasn’t time to get out of the way and the blur cracked against her face, its skin like ice and its bones as hard as iron. Pain exploded out from the point of contact and blinded her for a split second. Blood trickled from her nose, burning like fire against her air-chilled skin. She reeled back, the phone slipping from her stunned fingers. The device struck the kitchen floor and, with a solid crack, the light died.
Ruby froze as she was suddenly left blind. Silence curled around it, steadily squeezing her like an icy serpent, leaving only her panted breaths and the blood gushing through her ears to break the stillness. Then the whispering returned. It seemed to come from all around her and she fought the urge to turn, afraid that a single shift would leave her utterly lost. A slight giggle tickled against her ears, coaxing a damp sweat to line her palms. She had barely felt the air stir before something solid drove into her stomach. Doubling over with pain, the air rushed from her lungs, reducing her breaths to a broken wheeze. Under it all, she could hear the head bouncing across the floor.
“We want to be in there with you,” a delicate voice whispered. “You have to invite us in. We want to come into the kitchen.”
Ruby cringed, hissing through the aftershocks of pain as she struggled to determine where the voice had come from. She hadn’t moved, but it was like everything had become jumbled up. Lifting her hands in an attempt to defend herself from the attacks, she slowly began to inch towards where she thought Tristan was standing.
“Tristan!” Ruby whispered, desperate for guidance. “Tristan, answer me.”
“Let us in,” the voices whispered from all around her, each one tittering off into a flurry of delicate laughter. “Let us in.”
“No!” she screamed. “Go away! Leave us alone!”
The laughter twisted and combined to form an innocent voice. “Tristan,” it purred in a dozen voices in one. “Let us in, Tristan.”
A ghastly, choking noise akin to a death rattle permeated the kitchen. It gurgled within Tristan’s chest, too suppressed to be considered words, and she rushed forward. With every step, she remembered that she was racing not just to him, but also towards the children. Don’t cross the threshold, she told herself. She clung to that, pushing aside the thought that she wouldn’t know she had crossed the point of no return until it was too late. Screaming for Tristan to be silent, she fumbled closer. Don’t cross the threshold. Don’t let them touch you.
Her outstretched arms trembled, waiting to feel the tiny but unrelenting grip of the children’s hands dragging her to her death. The whispering grew louder, devouring her mind bit by bit. Swinging her arms wide, her fingertips brushed against the edges of the door. Relief rippled through her as she gripped it with both hands and flung it closed. It wouldn’t offer her any greater security, but she couldn’t stand the eyes upon her. Still, she scrambled for Tristan. He was still shaking, vibrating in place as she traced her hands to his shoulders.
“Tristan, snap out of it.”
The whispering stopped. Ruby’s senses lit up, searching desperately for any trace of stimulation. For a while, all she could hear were Tristan’s and her own panted breaths. Her insides churned, finding no solace in the fact that his breaths were sharp but even.
A long low swish made her flinch. She instantly recognized it as the kitchen door beginning to push open once again. Locking her muscles into place, she held her breath and waited for the children to call to them again. The door opened a little more and her fingers tightened on Tristan’s shoulders. A now familiar dull thud repeated across the floor. Another head, she realized, biting back a sob as her mind filled with images. The sound ran its course, petering out into nothingness, and Tristan’s voice rose to replace it. It was still a fractured crackle but steadily began to gather to create a whole one. Ruby lunged forward and shoved the palm of her hand under his chin, forcing his jaw u
p in an attempt to kill the noise.
“Tristan,” she begged as she crowded closer. “Don’t say anything. Don’t speak! Please!”
Clutching onto him with both hands, she dragged him across the room, searching the abyss for the back hallway. Thud. Thud. Thud. A head rolled into her path. The rotting flesh squished under her feet, slipping over cracked bones and oozing liquid that slicked the floor. It sent her crashing to the ground, Tristan slamming down on top of her. The weight of his body drove the knife in her pocket against the tiles, the point cutting through the material of her pocket and slicing across her thigh. Her scream seemed to stir Tristan out of his daze, and he pushed himself up.
“Ruby?” he stammered, his voice weak and breaking around the edges. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t let them in,” she hissed around her sobs. “They’re here! Please.”
He promised her that he wouldn’t as he began to fumble and squirm. There was a soft click and the glow of his phone washed over them. It illuminated the severed head that was hurled towards them. Tristan plastered himself onto her, shielding her as the head whipped over them and smashed against the wall. It splintered apart like rotten fruit, spraying them with clogged blood and brain matter. The children giggled.
Sitting up, Tristan swung the light of his phone back to the kitchen door. All three children stood framed in the doorway, their eyes glistening in the pale light, their skin appearing transparent and thin. They didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. As their smiles grew, it was as if hooks were embedded within their cheeks, peeling the flesh back to expose their teeth. The youngest girl stood at the front, holding a head with both hands. With her smile cut into place, she gently tossed the head, like a child playing with a ball. On reflex, Tristan caught it, his phone toppling from his fingers.
Time seemed to expand until everything played out within the same moment. Tristan’s eyes widened as he realized what he was holding. The color drained from his face. His lips parted. Ruby’s ears rang with his scream as she lurched up and attempted to grab the phone. It bounced off of her fingers, hit the floor, and skirted off under one of the cabinets. Wherever it ended up, it was enough to smother its glow, casting them once more into darkness.
Ruby sobbed in pain as she forced herself onto her feet. Grabbing the back of Tristan’s shirt, she pulled him after her. For a moment, he remained locked within his shock, barely able to do more than just scream in horror. In desperation, she began to drag him across the floor. The children’s laughter followed them to the hallway leading to the staffroom. It seemed to be this that pulled him back from the edge. Twisting in her grip, Tristan got to his feet and they both tumbled into the back room. Falling once more, they didn’t bother to get up, and instead crawled to the furthest corner. Huddling together in utter darkness, they clasped their shaking hands over their ears. But it didn’t stop them from hearing the growing laughter.
Chapter 13
The constant shivers that wracked Ruby’s body drained her of what little energy she had. Her eyes burned but she refused to close them. The manic laughter hadn’t stopped throughout the night. Howling like wild animals, the black eyed children had cackled through the night, only stopping once the sun had broken over the horizon. A moment later, the neon lights sputtered and came to life with a droning buzz. Despite these two signs that the children had gone, neither she nor Tristan attempted to move.
In the back of her sleep-deprived mind, Ruby tried to remember what had happened to the head that Tristan had been carrying. The possibility that it could be in the room with them, staring at her, made her squirm. Memories of a death-bloated face hovered in her mind’s eye, reminding her that she was in no way ready to see it in reality again. So she kept her forehead pressed against Tristan’s shoulders and stared blankly at a spot before her eyes. Tristan seemed just as content to hold his position, a mirror copy of her own. But while her mind wasn’t ready to face reality again, the pains and needs of her body were becoming harder to ignore.
Her mouth was parched and cracked with thirst while her empty stomach was steadily turning on itself. But it was her leg that needed the most attention. Trapped within the bottomless night, she hadn’t been able to treat or even see the cut. Exposed to the air, the broken skin had numbed and taken the edge off of her pain. Her blood had cooled, clotted, and now felt like sleet against her thigh. Having not changed their position for hours, her muscles had clenched. It left her limb feeling hollow, like a long tunnel that made pain echo and roll in time with her heartbeat. She knew she needed to check on it even as she forced herself to stay put.
She slowly began to untangle herself from Tristan. He flinched at first, his fingers tightening against her back as if clutching to a shield. It took time and gentle nudging, but she was able to coax him into letting her go. Her muscles tore as she straightened her legs and pulled back enough to meet his gaze. Tristan was both limp and frozen. The natural energetic restlessness that she was used to him possessing was utterly gone. He just sat there, staring blankly, his chest rising and falling at a steady pace. Their sleep deprivation was evident upon his face and she considered that she must have looked just as wrecked. Dark bruises blossomed around his eyes. His face was drawn and his lips cracked. And despite the cold, it was getting harder to miss the traces of body odor that wafted around them both.
He spoke in barley a whisper but his words boomed around them.
“I didn’t know I had gotten up.”
There was no need to ask him what he meant. She had been rolling the situation over in her mind all night, especially when the laughter became too much and she was sure that another second of it would drive her mad. The black eyed girl’s whispering had pulled at him in a way Ruby had never expected. A part of her clung to the notion that it had been a trick, something akin to sleepwalking that could only be repeated if he were to fall asleep again. But that was because the only other explanation she could think of scared her to her core. What if they can hypnotize him? What could they force him to do?
No matter how hard she had tried not to think about it, the questions had bubbled up in her mind like a carcass rising from a swamp. Once again, she tried to push it back down, but the damage was done. Tears of pure helplessness burned her weary eyes as they seeped out. The notion that he could turn on her wasn’t something that she could dwell on right now. Not if she wanted to continue to function.
“Have they ever done that to you?” he asked meekly.
“No.”
“Do you think it’s because your brain is screwed up?”
Exhaustion soothed the rough edges of his careless words. “Maybe. If it’s all in the tone, it would admittedly be lost on me.”
He was silent for a long moment. Despite the pain that zipped through her in time with her heartbeat, it was the murmur of the florescent lights that kept her from dipping into sleep again.
“How many nights did you last with them before?” Tristan asked suddenly.
“Three.”
He nodded absently, still staring blankly at some far off point. “And they did the same stuff to you back then?”
“No,” she admitted. “If this is really all just their sick hunting game, I prefer playing by the boy’s rules. At least with him, I knew what was coming. Everything was a trap. Just something to lure me out of my safe hiding places. With him, I felt like I had a chance. I just had to make the right choices. But this ... It’s as if she’s trying to drive us insane. I’ve never been this tired. I don’t know how much more I can take.”
After a few deep breaths, he ventured forward, “What happened on the third night?”
“I trapped them in a house and set it on fire. I really thought that they had burned up. I don’t know how they survived.”
Hesitantly, as if it pained him to form the words, he said, “I held a head.”
“Yes,” she said. “You did.”
“Do you think it was one of the skiers? Or the search crew? How are we going to explain t
hat to the survivors?”
With her mind sluggish and filled with fog, it was hard to decide if it was a good idea to tell him or not. Better to have him fall apart now than leave him to face it when we try and get out of here, she eventually decided.
“They threw more than one head.”
Tension instantly filled his muscles, pulling him as tight as a bow string. “How many?”
“I didn’t count,” she said before her mind could attempt to do the math.
Finally, he turned his gaze to her. The muscles of his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth.
“They murdered them all.” He pronounced each word carefully.
“I think so.”
“To get to us?”
It was another question she had been struggling to keep from contemplating. Two people had died for her already. It was the reason she had come here. To hide. To isolate herself while seeking safety. To flee. And now, once again, people were dying because she made the wrong decisions. In the darkest, most selfish recesses of her heart, she longed for someone else to share that burden. It was tempting to leave Tristan’s statement lingering between them uncorrected, but she couldn’t bear to do it. She couldn’t leave him with the blame.
“Me,” she said as bile rose in her throat. “They’re after me. This is my fault, not yours.”
Tristan launched himself to his feet. She jumped back at the sudden movement and caught herself on her forearms before crumbling onto the floor. Blinking up at him, she raised her eyebrows in silent question.
“To hell with that. And to all of this!” he snapped. “This is their fault, the demonic little bastards.”
“Thank you for saying that, but–”
