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Not long after Daniel had headed out the driveway in his old beater truck and she had settled into the couch with a throw-blanket to read a book or two she’d found in his shelves, Rachel heard the clear sound of thunder rolling down the mountain and from just over the other side of the ridge behind the house. The rain picked up within twenty minutes and she tried to force the atmosphere to be the cozy, stay-at-home-and-read-a-good-book day Ray used to imagine these rainy days were when she was growing up.
A brilliant triple strobe of lightning that shone simultaneous from almost every window in the home regardless of its facing told her she might be in for another very serious storm. Her hair was already on end when the thunder clapped only half a second later. The windows resounded and she felt as though the home had been stepped on by some goliath titan of weather attempting to stomp Daniel’s home flat. She rose quickly from the couch, dropping the blanket on the floor.
Then the lights went out. The cloud overhead combined with the very low December 12 angle of sunlight made for a nearly night-time scene in the home. She looked out the larger picture-frame window at the front porch and could see the imposing black cloud roiling over her and moving outwards away from the town towards the larger cities in the valley below. She could still see lights in several of them, so Daniel was likely not to notice the power outage until he was done with his interview and headed home. But Springton just below had also lost its lights. She could see two, or perhaps three cars driving down the main street through town and past the convenience store, but its tall sign and the red neon lights that surrounded its eves were all off. It wasn’t as though they would normally be during daytime, but there was nothing but gray around her and immediately below Woodland Hills in town either.
Rachel felt a sudden and near panic-inducing need to be out of the house and she started to move to grab her coat to hop into her own truck and head down the hill immediately, paying no regard to her sweatpants and t-shirt attire. Then she saw him reflected in the front window. He was slowly approaching her from elsewhere in the house.
Turning to face her attacker, the dark soul she was fully expecting to visit now was not there. Where is he? she thought. Wind suddenly blew terrifically at the back corner of the house facing the ridge. A couple flaps of vinyl siding could be heard banging about against the outside of the wall. The vents up in the attic howled momentarily and then silenced again, though the wind kept rising and falling.
Another brilliant flash of lightning focused more behind her, to the front of the house, indicating the storm was overtaking the entire mountain also shown a light upon the basement stairway well. There were two shadows there. Her own she recognized and then there was a taller one aside her own. Even in that nearly three second short pulsing of light on the wall she could see the shadow’s height growing and bobbing as though its owner was walking towards her from behind. She shrieked at the shape utterly shaking her whole frame.
Again she turned expecting to see the angry shadow with red eyes and hints of war paint and tribal mask reaching for her. Again nothing, and no one stood before her.
Rachel’s eyes darted back and forth looking for the assailant. Resting her hand on the rail of the stairwell she traced it slowly as she stepped back towards the archway into the kitchen. Her hand bumped the much larger and detailed newel that she recognized as the one in the middle. While she continued to scan the darkness and attempted to make out the various lumpy shadows of couch, side-stand and then the cabinets in the kitchen, she scraped her fingertips around the outside edge of the newel and then regained possession of the rail as it continued out the other side. With three very slow steps she was at the end of the rail on that side of the stairwell. It was just the short rail extending from the last newel at which she then stood to the wall and she’d be practically in the kitchen.
Light flashed all about the home and the thunder struck instantly. Had the power not been out already, that strike may have hit Daniel’s home rather than the outbuilding just behind his back fence in the neighbors’ yard. Rachel only gasped this time. There was something building at the bottom of her mind that the shadow was actually looking for her, and she wanted to be sure not to signify where she was with another scream. Her eyes glanced about the kitchen looking for the beast.
So intent was Rachel on finding a glowing pair of red eyes or a misshapen dark face mask peering at her that she entirely missed the obvious for a few seconds. The back door was open. It wasn’t clear if it had been the terrible wind or if it had simply not been shut correctly by either herself or Daniel at some point since last night. But as she watched, the wind pushed it slowly open. The tile floor before the doorway was slightly illuminated over the rest of the home as what little daylight could get through the storm attempted to creep inside.
Nervously, Rachel took a few steps towards the doorway at the back of the kitchen. As the wind finished moving it open and then it swung back closed by a few inches the rain was driven onto the tile by another burst of wind. As her eyes redirected to the lit rectangular space in the doorway lightning flashed again from upon the mountain. There a shadow, with a few odd shapes jettisoning from an overly large head moved in from outside.
Without looking up, Rachel recognized the shape of the war-mask in the shadow and she knew the Shadow was seeking her no more. He had arrived.
Stepping backward for the first few feet, Rachel yelled, “You go away! You’re not allowed in this home!”
But the shadow’s eye’s glowered and pulsed a brighter red for a moment. It hissed at her. “Ha’u…” it said.
The word was a long, drawn out reverberation that sounded a lot like someone grunting a reply. Hah-uh, it might have been, had it not been for the hiss and length in which the greeting had been pronounced. It stopped Ray in her tracks for a moment.
Then the shadow stepped onto the tile from the doorway. It was a methodical and deliberate gait it made towards her. At each step, water dripped from the shadow’s form onto the tile but it gave off whiffs of steam as well. There was a sizzle with the steps and suddenly Rachel felt waves of anger emanating from the creature as it seemed to size her up.
No longer was the shadow an enigmatic emblem or sign. It was no longer manifesting itself as a messenger or warning as Daniel and Rachel had hoped even in their fears. It had come for her. And it was a physical entity encroaching upon Rachel’s presence as well as her sanity.
She turned quickly and ran through the front living room, into Daniel’s bedroom and slammed the door, quickly turning the lock on the inside of the handle. Ray viciously pulled down the retractable stairway Daniel had shown her before and raced up it into the attic. Tugging on the built-in side-rails of the stairs to see if she could get it to close behind her, Rachel realized quickly that she could not from up above the stairs. Instead, hearing a pressing wind on the bedroom door, inside the house!, she fled to the back dormer and turning to watch the stair opening fell backwards, landing hard on her hips. She managed to scrabble on hands and knees into the corner of the dormer behind a chair Daniel had placed there and next to the small bookstand under the window. Another flash of lightning shown through the one window above her head, and below she heard the slow moan of the hinges on the bedroom door opening. Whenever Daniel would move the door while Rachel lay quietly down stairs in her bedroom she would alternately hear it squeal and pop as some friction in the hinges would catch and then release during its motion. They did so now as she listened for the shadow.
She caught the sound of the sizzling again as though rain were falling on hot coals at the campgrounds. The smell and feel of moisture quickly filled the attic, but strangely the stairs did not groan with the weight of a person’s foot. For a few seconds, long enough for Rachel to hear how fast her own heart was beating, she thought perhaps, just perhaps, the creature had stopped. Had it entered the home just to make itself known again?
The
n, peaking around the inside corner wall of the dormer area, Rachel could see steam rise through the stairway hole. A darkened shadow of a figure rose from it, one step at a time, the masked and painted face turning towards her as chin, and then shoulders, rose above the height of the floor.
Rachel drew in her breath sharply when the one lone light at the peak of the unfinished attic space flared to life. Glancing about she noted the bedroom light was also now shining up from the bedroom below the stairs.
The dark creature before her seemed somewhat more human suddenly than it ever could have before. The dim lights created shadowed areas of muscular structure. The body appeared to generally be in proportion now, aside from the dressings or mask that adorned the creatures head. Its face was a maze of black and red paintings and darkened skin between. The eyes too seemed somehow more human as he began walking slowly towards her. There were whites at the corners and there was a hint of a dark iris and pupil in each. But behind it, perhaps through each eye, there glimmered the red flame that spoke of hatred and anger still.
When the figure had walked across the attic to Rachel she was near blacking out. Her breath was raspy and racing, and her heart beat so solidly against her breast she thought she may be having a heart attack. She felt some recognition and acknowledgement that she would die now as the figure stopped before and knelt down. He leaned towards her and placed dark hands upon her shoulders, pressing her further into the corner and down to the floor.
Slowly moving his face within inches of Rachel’s face, cocking his head slightly to the right, the dark man grinned, showing white but fang-ish teeth, and hissed his greeting, “Haaaaa’uuuuuuuu.”
Rachel slipped unconscious with the vision of the being before her pressing upon her, steam hissing and voice grating upon her ears.