moment and then realised he wasn't going to finish his sentence. She turned her head and stared out of the window again. "What if it finds us?" she asked. "Did you hear that noise it made?! It was... bereft." She shook her head. "We have to go back for the cat."
"No we don't," Alec said, and then he raised a hand to cut off her protests as soon as she opened her mouth.
Elle looked out of the window. They had turned off the main road now and were driving down a lane lined with tall dark trees. It was getting lighter now and the digital clock on the dashboard said that it was 5am. "Where are we going?" she asked again.
"I saw a sign at the top of the lane," Alec said. "There's a bed and breakfast down here somewhere, we can stay there for a bit."
"Oh," Elle said, and then she fell silent.
?
The monster had killed again and the first part of its victim it ate were the eyes. It took them into its mouth, swallowed and then waited for a moment. Then the eyes appeared in the sockets in the creature's face. It looked towards her. She couldn't move, not here, she couldn't escape... The monster shuddered and then turned away from her. It doubled over and retched and then two green eyes came out of its mouth and plopped down onto the mud. When it turned back to her its eye sockets were wide and empty again. The monster reached for her...
Elle woke up gasping for breath. She looked wildly around the room, not recognising where she was. "Alec?!" she called desperately. "Alec!"
He wasn't in the bed. She flung the duvet off and scrambled out of bed; she went to the wardrobe and opened it up, looking for her clothes. When she heard the bedroom door open she spun around, ready to throw herself at whoever was there.
She laughed in relief when she saw Alec. "Where have you been?" she asked. "I had a dream..."
"You always have dreams, Elle," Alec said tiredly. He closed the door and moved into the room, sitting down on the bed. "I've just been downstairs. We've missed breakfast."
"I saw the creature from the lake," Elle told him, "In my dream! Listen to me, we have to go back there. We have to kill it or it's going to come after us and it's going to kill us and eat us and leave our eyes for the fishes! Listen to me!"
"I'm sick of listening to you!" Alec snapped. "I just want to get on with my life and you always, always..."
"This isn't my fault!" Elle cried, suddenly indignant. "We have to kill this thing, I have seen what it can do, what it will do to us unless we kill it!"
"I've been up most of the night," Alec said, turning away from her. "I'm going back to bed."
"Well I'm going back to the house," Elle declared. She stood and waited, for Alec to say he would join her, or for him to try and stop her... She watched as he got back into bed and said nothing. "I'm going," she said quietly. And she went.
?
Elle trudged back up the lane, walking with her arms protectively around herself. She glanced back over her shoulder every time she heard a noise, paranoid that the creature had found her already, was following her and would devour her at any moment...
It started to rain and Elle cursed and wished she'd thought to bring a coat. Her feet splashed wet mud up her legs as she walked, covering her jeans. She buried her hands in her sleeves and kept her head down against the driving rain.
She'd reached the top of the lane and the sign for the bed and breakfast when she stopped and realised that she didn't actually know the way back to the house from here.
"Damn," Elle muttered. She wiped rainwater from her eyes and peered down the road, first one way and then the other, trying to remember which way she and Alec had come. With a resigned sigh she turned and headed back down the lane.
The monster was waiting for her, there in the middle of the lane. For a moment she thought it was a trick of the light, just strange shadows cast by the tall trees at the sides of the lane. Then it opened its mouth and keened, a long pitiful sound full of sorrow and loss which sent several birds fleeing from their roosts and disappear, cawing harshly, into the sky.
Elle shook her head desperately, her breath caught in her throat... She couldn't draw her eyes from the creature and the two yawning sockets in its face.
"Please," she managed to gasp out. Please don't hurt me.
Water ran from the creature, flowing smoothly over its grey skin before pooling on the ground beneath its feet. Gills on the creature's neck opened and closed and breathed out sticky bubbles of air and mucus.
The creature doubled over and it coughed and struggled like a cat trying to bring up a hairball. Elle watched in horror as two very small eyes plopped from its mouth. Cat's eyes...
Elle ran then, she darted past the monster as it retched, and screamed as it grasped at her leg. "No!" she cried, shaking the thing off of her, pushing at its wet skin to get away.
She ran towards the bed and breakfast, not looking back. She could hear the monster following her, she could hear its bare feet splashing in puddles and splattering mud as it ran.
She reached the door, her wet hands slipping on the handle for a moment before she pulled it opened and disappeared inside.
?
"There's a monster in the lane outside," Elle told the receptionist, not caring that she was dripping over the guestbook. "You have to call the cops..."
"A monster," the receptionist said, smiling. "Of course."
"I've seen it!" Elle said. "It looks like a fish... well, it looks like a human really, but also a fish... You must've heard about it on the news?! Heard the stories?!"
Elle could see that the woman was still smiling fixedly so she rolled her eyes. "Forget it," she spat. She turned and headed upstairs and along the corridor to her room. Alec didn't answer to her knock, so she unlocked the door and went inside, not bothering to be quiet.
"Alec! It's here, I've seen..." she started.
There was an arc of blood splashed across the wall behind the bed and a crimson trail of it led across the room to the window. "Alec?" Elle called tentatively.
Her heart pounded as she padded across the room leaving wet footprints on the beige carpet. She pushed the window open as wide as it would go and peered down at the ground below. The rain came down heavily and bounced off the courtyard and the sodden patio furniture.
Elle chewed her lip anxiously. "Alec!" she called loudly. The sudden bark of a dog made her jump and she pulled the window closed quickly before she turned and ran from the room and back downstairs.
The receptionist glanced up briefly from the magazine she was reading but Elle ignored her and headed outside, snatching up an umbrella from the stand by the door as she went.
There was no sign of the monster outside. Elle fumbled with the umbrella, managing to get it up with shaking hands, then she headed around the outside of the bed and breakfast to the back of the building.
Rain battered against her and she shivered. "Alec!" she called again, desperately. "Alec, please!" She listened, trying to hear over the roar of the weather. She strained all her senses, hoping...
"Elle!"
"Alec!" Elle cried. She ran onto the courtyard, tossing her umbrella aside. He called for her again and she stopped suddenly, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
"Elle!" he called again, weakly. "Elle..."
She approached him cautiously; everything inside her screaming out that this was some sort of trick, that something wasn't right...
"Alec?" she said. Then she saw him. He was slumped back against the wall of the bed and breakfast with his head bowed and blood pumping from a wound to his neck. Her heart ached and she went to him, taking his face gently in her hands and raising it so he would look at her.
His eyes were gone. Tears of blood ran in rivulets down his cheeks from his eyeless sockets. "Elle?" he asked.
Elle gasped and scrabbled backwards, slipping on the wet patio slabs in her haste. "No!" she sobbed.
"Elle!" Alec said again, reaching for her desperately. "Help me!"
Elle shook her head silently; she could feel the blood pounding in her ear
s, louder than the rain around her. Run, she thought.
"I'll... I'll get someone," she told Alec. "I'll get help!" Elle pulled her gaze away from him and hurried from the courtyard.
She ran back around the building, her vision blurred with tears and the rain, thinking only that the receptionist would have to believe her when she saw Alec!
Elle skidded to a halt and screamed in terror when the creature leapt out in front of her suddenly. It landed on all fours and then drew itself up to stand over her. Needle teeth glinted in its cruel mouth as it smiled at her. Elle met its gaze. The creature looked at her with eyes so dark they were almost black. She screamed and then saw no more.
Night Dance
by Jo Robertson
Dance in the darkness, lash out with your teeth
Show me what is there underneath
I'm not afraid, the dark gives you power
You're just a slave of the broken hours
Watch me walk into the light
Walk away from our constant fight
You with your teeth, me with my eyes
And the pulse in between us as the sun slowly dies
Touch me and tell me it's meant to be
That nothing compares to you and to me
Then hide like a coward in the heat of the day
Your embers