When Night Falls

by Kayla Krantz

  When Night Falls

  A Collection of Short Stories & Poems

  Kayla Krantz

  Dedication

  To all those who feel the night in their lives will never turn to day: push onward.

  Truth be told, I’m tired of the pain. I’ve lived with it so long; I don’t want to die with it too.

  Don’t Look

  I CLUTCHED AT MY blanket as I heard the scratching at my window once again. The uncomfortable sound sent chills down to the depths of my spine. It was as if someone dumped ice water on me. I drew the blanket over my face, ignoring the heat trapped against my skin.

  Ignore it… you’ll be okay, I thought.

  That was the strategy I had used for a week. The noises got louder, and my fear? More intense. But, I was okay.

  So far.

  The scratching became louder, more persistent—as if the creature outside knew that I was weakening. No matter what I told myself, it was impossible to hold my own. In the back of my mind, I wondered if it could smell my fear—or if it knew what feelings it instilled in its victims. I was sure I wasn’t the first to do something like this in its presence.

  I’m too old for this, I thought, closing my eyes. I pulled the blanket further over my head as I burrowed into the pillows. My heart raced so fast it hurt. Was it possible to die of fear?

  All I could think about was Bethany.

  ***

  I WAS WALKING to school when she found me and talked to me for the last time. Her appearance was disheveled—thick, brown, unbrushed hair, heavy bags beneath her eyes, ripped clothes, and worse—a fresh wound on her arm. I wondered what horrible things might’ve happened to her.

  “W-what happened?” I asked, taking a small step forward. Part of me almost thought she might not be real. I felt helpless. She was my best friend, but I hadn’t been there to protect her.

  “Please, Lizey… listen to me,” she said, looking around. “I don’t have much time.”

  “What is it, Bethany? Do we need to go to the police?”

  “Whatever you do, don’t look at it,” she whispered, standing still a few feet away. Her gaze was distant, as if she stared into a memory.

  “Don’t look at what?” I urged. She took a few small steps away from me.

  “Be warned,” she replied, pulling her lips into a pencil straight line, as if were afraid to say another word.

  “Please…tell me what’s going on!”

  “I-I’ve said too much.”

  “Wait! Bethany!” I called, but she ignored me as she turned and ran out of sight.

  I threw my backpack down and followed her, every thought of school was gone from my mind. But, no matter how quickly I moved, she moved faster. She bounded through the town as if she could go on forever. The moment she disappeared from my sight, I hated myself. I knew she was in trouble, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to save her. I didn’t know where she went after that; that was the last time I had seen her alive.

  When the police converged two doors down the next day, I knew that all was not well. I ran outside, joining my neighbors along the edge of the caution tape where I saw two men wearing coroner’s jackets. My heart sank as her corpse surfaced. I hadn’t told anyone about the last time I had seen her, which, in that moment, I regretted. When they pulled her out on a stretcher, I only glimpsed the mound of ripped flesh that had once been my friend. The police tossed a white tarp over her, sealing her from my life forever.

  Her monster, however, lived on.

  I TOOK A few deep breaths with the blanket over my head, trying to push away the images of her remains. Will they find me like that in a few days after I am ripped to pieces?

  The thought made me sick, but it was the only outcome I could imagine.

  If I don’t look, I’ll be safe, I tried to convince myself. But was I really?

  All I had to go by were Bethany’s cryptic last words—probably the strategy she had used to survive. It wasn’t a shield—I wasn’t even sure that it would work for long. If it hadn’t been enough to save her, why would my case be any different? At Bethany’s funeral, her face was frozen in a kind of horror that even death couldn’t erase. Whatever killed her hadn’t just taken her life—it scarred her very soul as well.

  I couldn’t imagine something of this world having the ability to do that, and for all my thinking, I didn’t want to.

  Bethany had good intentions by warning me that day, but neither of us knew there would be consequences for her good deed. Her death was only the first. She never realized that her warning put me in as much danger as she had been in during those final days. The night the scratching sounded at my window, I didn’t think much of it. I barely lost a wink of sleep.

  Looking back, I envied that night.

  The day after Bethany’s funeral felt odd. The town seemed still—unreal—as if everyone was part of a giant, unscripted play. People barely spoke a word, and when they did, they were void of emotion. It was like we were all puppets. I didn’t want to go to school and see the empty desk and locker that was once hers. None of my classmates did, but the board president thought it would be good for us to get back to a regular routine. Problem was, he had no idea about the creature that plagued the town. Who knew how many other people she tried to warn on the last day of her life?

  For all I knew, if the monster was passed by a single warning, everyone in the school could be on its radar.

  Who knew how long she had been trying to escape before she died?

  Before I learned about the truth of her words, I tried to take the advice of every adult in my life who told me to “mourn in a healthy manner.” Everyone felt her death in their own strange way. I didn’t question it; I merely buried myself in the mystery of her loss. It was how I kept her alive—the thought of her actually being dead was too much to handle.

  Everyone offered advice on what I should do to move on, but none of them felt her death as strongly as I did. I could see the sympathy on the faces of all my teachers, and despite myself, I felt bitter. It was easy for them to judge a situation that they knew nothing of. I heard them whispering about me when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. They didn’t know that I could hear everything.

  I shuffled my books in my arm on my way to my locker, and considered ditching school for the rest of the day. If no one else did, I was sure my parents would understand. I avoided the benign glances of my classmates in the hallway, assuring myself that they would pass with the strange feeling that Bethany’s death had created.

  Something had to give eventually.

  I opened the small metal door and nearly dropped the heavy textbooks on my toe. I froze in place. A lock of brown hair sat on my shelf, a long beautiful ribbon tied at one end. Its frayed edges had been dipped in blood, leaving an ugly puddle that stained every book in its path. Everyone would think I was insane, but I knew that the hair belonged to Bethany.

  Taken after her death, I was sure.

  “Who did this?” I yelled, turning to face the kids in the hallway.

  A few of them turned at the sound of my voice, but not a single person stopped to acknowledge me.

  “You think it’s funny? She was murdered, you twisted psychopaths!”

  The bell rang, summoning everyone to their classes. I laughed to myself, banging the back of my head gently against the locker door. I felt like I was going insane. Maybe I was. For all the things I could’ve been bullied over, why did they choose a tragedy? I sank to the floor, burying my face into my knees for a long time.

  Things wouldn’t be normal for a while.

  I felt a light touch on my arm. Sniffling, I looked up at a teacher. I didn’t have her for any of my classes, so she was practically a stranger. I hated that she saw me in such a broken m
oment—reminding me, once again, of Bethany’s disheveled look.

  “Hey, are you okay?” she asked.

  I wiped at my eyes and looked at the smear of makeup on my skin, before I looked back at her. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I squeaked, sticking a cork in the part of me that wanted to spill everything.

  There was no way I would tell anyone what was going on. It didn’t seem right.

  She offered me a gentle smile. “Make sure you get to class, okay?”

  I nodded, and she quickly walked away. I sighed as I wiped at my face again and struggled to my feet. I was about to slam the door when I noticed a tiny note sitting beside the lock of hair. I glanced around and noticed that nobody was watching me. Maybe that’s for the best, I thought. My hands shook as I reached out for the note, my eyes on the bloody lock of hair the entire time. I was glad the teacher hadn’t noticed it. I unfolded it carefully and read the poem inside:

  Bethany, Bethany

  Why don’t you see,

  The monster outside

  That’s coming for me

  I didn’t waste a second tossing it on top of the hair and closing the door. The time would come to deal with it, but that wasn’t the day. On my walk home, my head was reeling. Did the scratching on my window belong to the thing that she tried to warn me about on the morning of her disappearance? Somehow, amidst my routine, I forgot all about Bethany’s cryptic words, giving myself the last sense of peace I would ever feel. That night, the noises started again. They were gentle, almost as if the creature wasn’t sure how to approach me.

  Thoughts of Bethany’s remains were enough for me to know that whatever it was, it wasn’t shy.

  After sleeping through it the first night, I felt annoyed as the second began. I rubbed my eyes before wandering outside to check my window. I wanted to see if the scratching sound was nothing more than a broken branch scraping eerily against the glass. I felt braver on the first few days, convincing myself it was nothing and always finding evidence to back it up. Without the crippling fear, I was able to go outside in the middle of the night to investigate the source of the noise, rather than hiding like a four-year-old afraid of her closet. I smiled to myself as I broke the branch and tossed it to the ground without a second thought.

  Part of me was ready to face the thing that had taken away my best friend. If it decided I was next, then so be it.

  When I turned to go back inside, my heart plummeted to my stomach. On my windowsill was the lock of brown hair with the bloody ribbon. I felt as though a thousand eyes were on me, picking up on every move I made. My heart pounded against my ribs as I ran back inside.

  I was sure that I left it in my locker.

  There was no coincidence. It wasn’t a cruel high school joke, it was a warning.

  Whatever had killed Bethany had its eyes on me.

  Whatever you do, don’t look at it, Bethany’s words echoed in my mind.

  My stomach knotted itself into a ball. How could I not look if I didn’t know what it was?

  I know better than to look, but how can I possibly win if all I do is hide every night? I thought numbly. This isn’t much of a life. The scratching at my glass only seemed to get louder with each minute that passed.

  I was too afraid to look—to confront the thing that took my best friend away. In my head, the image of the beast was a shadow that lurked everywhere, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

  Only a week had passed since Bethany’s death. The thought of living like this for the rest of my life made me sick. How could I live a normal life being hunted down every night? Would I endanger anyone that I tried to warn, just as Bethany had with me?

  She had a different approach to this situation than I do, but I have a feeling neither of them are right.

  The scratching became deafening as the creature hovered just beyond the fringes of my sanity.

  I remembered the poem in my locker once again. I hadn’t recognized the handwriting on the tiny scrap of paper. Perhaps it was a warning to my deceased friend from someone close. I wondered who gave it to her. Did they cause the beast to go after Bethany? Were they warnings from the beast itself, so it would know that I was aware of its existence? I thought about the last few weeks’ worth of news. The only death that had been reported was hers.

  Was it possible that no one noticed when the other person went missing?

  I can’t let it win. For Bethany’s sake, I can’t let it win. I must end it.

  Something pounded against the glass, joining in with the unearthly scratching sound. I bit my tongue, trying not to scream. The sound mimicked the blood pulsing in my ears. If my parents knew this beast existed, they would be in danger too. Part of me couldn’t help but wonder how they hadn’t heard a sound.

  The scratching started up again, but then came the sound that I had dreaded most of all. The glass shattered with such a loud crash that it sent goosebumps across my skin. I heard each tiny sparkling shard land on the hardwood floor like ice from a hailstorm.

  After a week of torment, the beast had grown tired of waiting for me to crack.

  I sobbed quietly under the blankets with my eyes tightly shut. My last line of defense. I didn’t know what to do. Had Bethany’s last moments been like this? Should I make a run for it, or stay under the blanket?

  My fear made the choice for me.

  “Don’t look,” I whispered, with shaky breaths. “Don’t look.”

  Floorboards creaked as the creature closed in, knowing perfectly well where I was hiding. The footsteps sounded deep—I guessed that whatever it was weighed a considerable amount. I felt the pressure on the end of the bed as it pressed softly on the corner. A few more steps, and I could feel the indented spot on the bed moving closer to me.

  I clasped my hand over my mouth, fighting the urge to scream. Tears streamed down my face as fear and adrenaline rushed through my veins. Suddenly, I felt pressure onto my back. Its grotesque hand felt almost like an eagle’s talon. The odd fingers circled my skin for a moment before its claws pierced through the blanket and into my back.

  I let out a cry of pain, but my throat was so hoarse from crying that I barely made a sound. The other hand grasped the blanket and I felt the cold air hit my face as it threw the sheets aside.

  It’s just trying to get your attention, a familiar voice whispered. It can’t hurt you if you refuse to look into its eyes.

  “B-Bethany?” I stammered, feeling the urge to peek through my fingers.

  The claws dug deeper into my back in response, and I cried out again. I dug my fingers into the pillow as I tried to wait out the fresh wave of pain. I felt the tip of each of its three claws. Seemed real enough, but I wondered if it was all in my head. A second hand put pressure on the bed, and the beast leaned toward me. I could hear its breathing as it inched closer to the side of my face.

  “Run,” Bethany whispered, urgently. “Run!”

  At the sound of her voice, a hurricane of emotions flooded through my heart. I tried, but could no longer keep my eyes closed. They opened a little, picking up the shadowy figure of the nightmarish creature beside my bed. Suddenly, large orange eyes stared at me from a face straight from Hell. I could feel my soul being ripped to pieces as it was pulled from my body.

  I made the fatal mistake –I looked.

  I want a fairytale romance in a make-believe land. Let’s run through the beautiful meadow and pretend the walls aren’t closing in. One trip and the world will consume us, but don’t hesitate—don’t look back. This world of make-believe survives solely on your faith.

  The Senator’s Daughter

  “EVERYONE ON THEIR best behavior!” Kaylee, my ‘mother’ yells from her perch beside the door.

  Her gaze sweeps over the crowd before coming to rest on me. I pull my lips into a thin line and fold my arms across my chest. We’re both painfully aware of the absence of familial bonds between us—it’s obvious from that look. She would never address her own daughters that way, and even though there are five h
undred people crowded in the same room, I know her comment was only meant for me. Beside me are my half-sisters, Miranda and Destiny, standing with their clothes looking as perfect as their hair and nails. No expense was spared in making sure they looked top of the line for this evening’s event.

  Average by comparison, I am wearing the dress I have worn to a hundred events before. My hair is sloppily pulled back, and I only bothered to put on enough makeup to keep my face from looking shiny if I happened to sweat.

  A crowd of partygoers behind us begin to cheer. All the venom Kaylee threw my way moments before disappears. As she turns toward the cameras at the front door, she’s all smiles.

  “Welcome to Senator Abrams’ grand ball!” She gushes, sweeping her arm out toward to the foyer where we wait.

  The reporters snap pictures and fire off their questions, gobbling up every morsel of Kaylee’s demonstration. The face she shows them is a much different side to her than the one I see in the privacy of our own home. I sigh, watching Miranda click on the stereo while Destiny spins away to accept a dance from the very first man who asks.

  I find myself in the middle of a party now in full swing, not sure what to do with myself. The Senator—my father—has yet to be seen. I know he’s at work in his chambers, waiting for his wife to lead the reporters his way so he can give his grand speech for the night.

  Publicity. That was the point of tonight’s event—supposedly thrown in the name of charity, but if I knew anything about my father, that was a lie—it would all go directly into his own pockets.

  I grasp my thick ponytail of deep blonde hair and toss it over my shoulder. Taking a quick scan of the room, it seems impossibly full of people. I can’t even tell the media from the partygoers anymore. Nothing captures my interest, and I’m already exhausted. I suddenly long for the luxury of my bed, but tonight would keep me away from it longer than I care to wait.