The final chapter... after the break!
CHAPTER 13
Jennifer crept through the silent hallway on her tip toes.
She flinched at the feeling of something squelching under her shoe but refused
to look down. She kept her eyes as wide as possible but the candle made it
impossible to see more than a few feet. She inched along in her flickering
globe with one hand on the left wall. Dust motes parted in waving clouds around
her without a sound. Past the swirls and eddies of the dust her mind filled the
blackness with childhood nightmares. A tarantula the size of a horse with legs
as thick as baseball bats and far too many eyes stalked along the corridor
behind her just out of sight. Grotesquely deformed clowns and pantomimes
crouched just inside open doorways adorned in jewelry made from pieces of their
victims and bandoliers of rusted cleavers. Thick carpets of worms and
cockroaches were parted by the wan light of the candle. She reached another
dingy doorway and decided that she could take no more of the hallway she was no
longer sure had an end.
Sliding carefully into this new room, she put her hand
between her eyes and the candle so that she could see to the opposite walls.
The orange glow revealed a completely empty room. The walls were still a more
recognizable shade of blue than most of the others, and She jumped at the sight
of herself in the mirrored closet doors. After twenty minutes of “hiding” in
the absolute blackness of the rest homes’ halls and dilapidated rooms she had
begun to lose some of her nerve. She twitched at every creak of the floorboards
or rustling magazine page. Most unsettling of all was that since she had
started wandering the halls alone she had not seen or heard any sign of the
rest of the group. She began to have wild, far-reaching thoughts that she
whispered to herself in the burnt orange light of her quickly dwindling candle.
“Why did I come here? Were there ever others? Where the hell are they, if they
are here? God damn it, God damn it, God damn it!” She yelled the last curse,
uncaring as to whether she would be heard by her pursuer.
Her pursuer; that was another thing. She had lost all sense
of for what she should be looking. Was it a man, a shadow, or the horrible
thing she saw in the kitchen with Fred? Or were all of those things simply
manifestations of a greater will? The questions in her mind weighed on her
nearly as much as her lack of sleep. “Screw it,” she said, setting down her
candle and sitting with her back against the mirrored closet doors. “If he
wants me, he can come get me.” After a few minutes of silence Jennifer’s head
began to droop. She had almost fallen asleep when the closet door behind her
rattled with a resounding clatter. She jerked herself away from the mirrored
doors and into the middle of the room, knocking over her candle. Hot wax
spilled onto the dirty carpet. She stared at her own reflection in the doors.
Her heart was hammering in her chest. She righted the candle and waited for
them to move once again.
She heard rustling from within the closet, and… whimpering?
She pushed herself to her feet and inched toward the doors, careful not to make
any sound. It sounded like someone was inside the closet and that they were in
pain. She reached for the grip of the right door and breathed deeply. She could
not stop imagining what could be on the other side. Images of the thing she had
seen in the kitchen flew through her mind unbidden. She threw open the door and
stepped back.
Liz sat curled up into a ball in the corner of the closet.
Her head was hidden behind her arms, but Jennifer could see that her shirt was
soaked in sweat. Dozens of scratches covered her arms as if she had been
clawing at herself, and her hands were pink with soaked-in blood. “… Liz?” Jennifer
asked, stepping back towards the closet. She reached out tentatively to touch
Liz. “Liz, are you okay?” She touched Liz’s arm and Liz slapped her hand away,
screaming loudly. “No! Oh, God no the buh-uhgs, the bugs!” Liz began thrashing
wildly at herself as if she were swatting away insects from her body. “What
bugs, Liz? There isn’t anything on you!” “Cockroaches, spiders, oh God, nnngh!”
Liz grunted, still clawing at her skin.
“You can’t help her.” Jennifer jumped at the sound of Fred’s
voice from the hall door. “Fred, Jesus, where did you come from? Where have you
been?” Fred stepped toward Jennifer with his eyes fixed on hers. “No where you
would understand.” Liz whimpered in the closet. Fred continued crossing the
distance between himself and Jennifer. “Stay away from me, Fred,” Jennifer
said, balling her hands into fists. Fred smirked and lunged at her with his
arms outstretched. He grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her into the wall
with a hollow thud. She slid down the wall with her hands wrapped around her
stomach in a reflex from the pain. Fred stood over her without speaking. “Why?”
Jennifer asked. Fred leaned down and opened his mouth. On his tongue was a
single maggot that writhed frantically. He spit it at Jennifer and it landed on
her cheek.
She winced and wiped the maggot from her face. She looked up
at Fred’s satisfied smirk and decided she had had enough. She braced herself
against the wall and swung her leg into Fred’s crotch with as much force as her
tired body could muster. He collapsed
and fell backward, hands clutching his crotch. “Jennifer what the hell?! Why
did you kick me in the balls? Ow!” Jennifer stared open-mouthed at him trying
to process what was happening. Liz crawled out from the closet and looked at Jennifer
with a shocked expression. In Jennifer’s mind a cog clicked into place. “Liz,
check your watch! What time is it?” Liz rolled onto her back to rest her
wounded arms and looked at her digital watch. “3:34,” she said with a desperate
laugh, covering her face with her hands.
Epilogue:
Seven people trudge exhaustedly from the Sunny Vale Rest
Home toward their cars in the fresh darkness of early morning. Birds chirp, the
wind gently blows through blades of grass, and dew settles on flowers. Without
a word they part ways and pile into their respective cars. In a small silver
car a boy and a girl hold hands. “Sean, I can’t… Do you think it was real, or
do you think it was some kind of mass hysteria?” The girl continues to stare
out of the passenger side window at the front entrance of the rest home. “It
doesn’t matter,” she says. With an exhausted shrug the boy pulls his car out of
the cracked parking lot and into an empty street. As they disappear from sight
thick black smoke begins to flow from one of the rest home’s broken windows.
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