Chapter 12

David blinked the sweat from his eyes and dislodged the word that was stuck in his throat. "Rick?"

"Shoot it!" Rick shouted over the ghoul's cries and profanity. His face was drawn and haggard, dripping rain. He looked as though he'd been lost in the woods for a week rather than a night.

"Wha—what?" David sputtered, choking on his own surprise. The lack of oxygen and surge of adrenaline combined with the rushing of blood in his ears made it seem as though he was seeing the world under water.

"Shoot the fucking thing!" Rick yelled again. He grabbed the handle of the axe sticking from the creature's throat and used it for leverage to keep the damnable thing from rising, but it slammed the floor and bucked like an unbridled stallion. His hands, weak and sweaty, could not hold for long. "Where's the gun?"

"It's under the…couch," David said, voice trailing off as he looked up to see Mia standing with the gun to her shoulder. In her eyes was a look he had never seen before. It was cold and unwavering with just a dash of the insane.

"Mia, shoot it!" yelled Rick before the thing slammed its elbow into his chin. The axe came free from its shriveled flesh as he staggered back, tripping over Eric's body, and fell to the floor as the blast of a twelve-gauge shell thundered through the cabin.

A chunk of Henrietta's face splattered against the wall as her hideous frame jerked from the impact. She clamored and fell back towards the doorway, shrieking in fiery rage.

"You miserable fucking cunt! I'll swallow your soul!"

Mia took three strides forward and leveled the unspent barrel at Henrietta's rolling eye.

"Swallow this, bitch!" she said and pulled the trigger.
Henrietta's mutated, oversized head popped like a ripe melon, raining bits of bone and stinking, putrid brain matter onto the walls. The flesh of her neck whipped and expunged noxious gasses like a punctured hose as she danced around in her own blood like a grisly clown.

David braced his foot against her stomach and pushed until she tumbled through the doorway and out into the rain. Though the latch and lock were both busted from the previous assault, he closed the door again anyway. Any barrier between them and the creatures outside was one he would gladly take.

"There's more of those things out there," Rick said, still dazed by the hard blow to his face. With a grimace of pain, he rubbed his chin and checked his jaw, thankful that neither was broken.

David was still surprised to see his friend. He offered a hand and helped Rick to his feet. "We know. How the hell did you get by them?"

"I don't know. I took off running when they spotted me. I grabbed the axe by the shed, tried to get inside but they were too close. I lost them somewhere at the edge of the woods and ran back." He looked down at Eric's corpse, faceless and growing cold. "Oh God. Eric."

David swallowed hard and tried not to look. "I'll cover him up in a minute. We've got to get something in front of this. There's no way it'll hold on its own."

"The couch," Mia said.

They slid the couch in front of the door, which was now little more than a battered piece of wood hanging on a loose frame. David ripped free one of the curtains and draped it over Eric's body, which they moved into the corner behind the table. All the while, David was too preoccupied to notice or care about the odd looking mask wedged in Rick's belt.

Grieved at the loss of his friend, Rick looked down in silence until interrupted.

"Rick!" Natalie pled from the cellar. "Rick, help me. I'm hurt. They locked me down here and I don't know why. I just want to go home. Please get me out of here." Her voice broke down into fractured sobs.

"Don't listen to it," David said immediately. "That's not Natalie. Or…it is, she's just sick. Whatever got into those freaks outside must have got into her. She attacked us all earlier. We had to put her down there. She nearly cut off Olivia's hand."

It didn't take any more than that to convince Rick. All of the insanity was starting to make perfect sense. He nodded and glanced around. "Where is Olivia?"

David looked as though he'd been bit on the ass. "Shit!" he said. Still quick with adrenaline, he turned and headed toward the bedrooms. At the hallway, he spun around. "Reload and make sure nothing comes through that door." Then he was gone.

Rick slid fresh shells into the shotgun and set it on the table. After the immediate necessities of survival and sanity were out of the way, he was finally able to lay eyes, dilated and unfettered, upon Mia. She looked back at them and the path of their pupils locked. She stepped forward like the ghost of a graceful ballerina, tattered and torn but as lovely as anything he had ever seen in his life. His only desire in that breathless space was to hold her close. As close as he could.

For a moment it was like a sweet dream in the midst of a high fever, and then the air rippled with an audible smack as she sent the palm of her hand flying across his face.

"Shit, Mia!" Rick cried, rubbing the sting from his cheek. "What the hell—"

"You son of a bitch!" said, pounding at his chest weakly. Her eyes quivered and drowned in a sea of salty tears. "Where the fuck were you?"

"Mia, stop." He tried to calm her hands but the pitiful assault waged on. "I'm sorry."

"You fucking coward! Why?How could you run away like that?" she cried.

"I had to! I didn't want to hurt you. Didn't you see what happened?"

"I don't know what I saw! All I know is that you stopped that…that thing and then you took off."

His face softened with sadness and regret. "Mia…"

Her fists slowed until he was able to hold her hands in his own. She pressed her face into his neck. "Don't ever do that again!" she sobbed, breath scorching hot and wet on his clammy skin.

His flesh instantly rippled with raw energy at her soft touch, as if shocked by a current of high-voltage electricity. Her breathing suddenly calmed, drawing slower and heavier and he knew she felt it, too. Her heart beat furiously, sending pulse waves through her chest and into his. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her so tight he could feel when their hearts began to beat in sync.

She grabbed his face and pressed her lips hard into his in a bid of pure, chaotic passion, arms then flowing around his neck to hold him tighter. He leaned back, trying to drink in every bit of her like a glass of cool water. She followed eagerly, rising onto the tips of her toes. The current flowed even stronger between them as he felt her nipples harden and jut into the flesh between his ribs.

Still locked together, his legs folded and they both went to the floor in the middle of the room. He sat on his feet and she straddled his lap. He ran his hand through her messy, unkempt hair and she dug her fingers into his back. It was so much like their first night together, high and brimming with uncontrollable passion, except this time the drug was an indescribable concoction of love and terror.

Finally, the seal broke and they sat in silence, breathing hard and resting their foreheads against one another, each drinking in the other's scent and presence. It became for both as if they were no longer in the cabin, surrounded by insanity. It was as though they had left, as though they had forgotten, and there was nothing in the space they occupied but each other and the pulsing, divine current of need passing back and forth through their touch. However strange and wonderful that odd Nirvana was, they could not stay, and so they slowly drifted back to face the tribulations of the sinister night together.

Mia released him with hesitance and slid down the slope of his legs. She caught sight of the mask and plucked it from his belt, turning it over in her hands. "What is…is this what I think it is? Why do you still have this?" Some memory passed across the membrane of her eyes. "What happened to you in those woods earlier?"

Rick took the mask and ran his fingers down its smooth surface, looking uncertain but resigned. The time had come to reveal his own personal twisted reality of madness. He had to say something, and he wasn't about to lie to her again. Not after all they had been through. Not after fighting his way back into her arms.

"It's hard to explain."

"I thought you took all that stuff back."

"I did…everything but this. Mia, I lied about dropping out of school. I got kicked out under suspicion of stealing."

She looked at the mask in stark understanding. "I should have never asked you to open that box. Rick, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. Yeah, we were stupid, but it wasn't your fault. I just…I couldn't take it back. When they saw that the box was empty, they started asking questions that I couldn't answer. Mia, this isn't just a mask. It's some kind of—"

You sure you wanna do this, Rick? She's going to think you're a big batch of crazy cakes with extra nuts.

Mia looked at him, perplexed. "What?"

"I don't know how to explain."

She put a hand on his shoulder and gave him the most gentle and affirming look he had seen from her in a long time. The distant, glazed eyes and bitter countenance were finally gone. "It's okay. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. You can tell me all about it when we get out of here. I just want to live through this damn night. We never should have touched anything in that basement."

Rick looked up. "The book! I know this sounds crazy, but I think we brought those things to life when we turned on that recorder."

"I know. Eric played more of it. The same thing happened to whoever made the tape. I think he's dead, too. It said something about the passages in the book. He thought he could translate something that could send them back, but that was it. There was nothing else."

Rick scanned the room and saw the ugly, flesh-bound tome sitting on the coffee table, seemingly innocuous amongst the previous chaos and bloodshed. He crawled to the table with Mia in tow and opened the volume's grisly cover.

"Rick," Mia said, a hint of warning in her voice.

"It's okay," he reassured her. Page after page he turned, staring once again at the odd and alien illustrations within.

"Have you ever seen anything like this?" she asked.

"Not in the general archives. The restricted section has some pretty weird stuff, but this is…something else."

She shivered beside him, touched by the obvious cold that emanated from the very binding of the book itself. Rick spotted his jacket on the edge of the couch. In all their hurry to leave earlier, he had left it behind, and there it was, dry and warm. He retrieved it and handed it to Mia. She slid into it like a favorite night shirt, reveling in the comfort of recovered love.

"Thanks," she said. "Do you think there's a way to stop all this? You know, reverse it or something?"

"I don't know," Rick said, staring at the book with a furrowed brow. "Maybe I could translate some of it, if I had enough time, but I'd be afraid of reading anything. We could end up just making things worse."

Mia thought for a moment and said, "Maybe there's another way."

Rick looked to her. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Let's burn the damn thing."

He patted the pockets of his jeans and said, "Got a light?"

XXXXX

The bedroom was disturbingly quiet as David entered with a mix of newfound hope and heart-wrenching anguish, his thoughts still lingering on the horrid memory of his childhood friend perishing before his eyes. His mind suffered the assault of awful images that couldn't be shut away. Freeze frames of claws and teeth and a carefree childhood now drenched in blood.

How the hell am I going to tell Olivia? He wondered. How can I tell her our best friend is dead?

He looked around the room, eyes drawn to each dark corner. Shadows, once innocuous elements of nature, were now portals for evil things that bathed in bile and lived in darkness. Things that cackled and ate the flesh from the faces of innocent men.

He approached the bathroom. A razor's edge of soft light shined through the crack beneath the door. Still a stone, he listened for any sound, unaware that pressure building in his lungs was his own breath.

"Olivia?" he called timidly.

There was no answer.

Though he had broken the door open earlier to get to Mia, the knob remained in place. As it could no longer lock, he didn't want to intrude on Olivia if she was somehow indecent.

Slowly, he reached out and let his hand hover above the doorknob. The sensation of heat and unexplainable waves of dread emanated from the other side and passed through him. He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat, licked his lips, and tried again. "Olivia, it's time to go."

"David?"

A sigh of relief vacated his lungs. Though free from the dark thoughts that bred his reticence, he still couldn't shake the tense feeling of discomfort that stiffened his spine.

"Liv, we've got to get out of here. Something…something happened. I need you to hurry so we can—Olivia? Are you crying?"

Indeed, the sound of her muffled sobs soaked through the door. David's heart swelled with pity and understanding. Had he the convenience of time and privacy, he would break down himself. If only he could remove his stoic façade and weep, but such a luxury would have to wait. Rick and Mia needed him to stay cool.

He pushed gently and let the door swing inward. The single bulb hanging from the ceiling had all but faded completely, casting only the faintest amber glow over Olivia's frame. She was crouched on the floor just beyond the sink, facing away, her long satin hair shining in the dim ambience. He wanted to hold her, comfort her, and cringed slightly in shame as old, long forgotten feelings suddenly arose within him.

It seemed so long ago when he and Olivia had let themselves love one another. It was a different life, another world, but not a world meant for them together. Perhaps love wasn't the right word for what they shared. Surely enough there was love between them, but it was heated teenage passion to which they succumbed, and it was that long ago passion that he felt rising up again from inside, tempered by years of absence and frequent thought and stoked by the fires of terror and desperation. It felt as though he were trapped in a furnace, and there was nowhere for that heat to go. He needed a vent, a flue, something to release the aching pressure.

He shook his head to clear the odd fog that had overtaken him. Without realizing, he had crept closer to Olivia as she sat weeping into her hands.

His dry tongue rolled over cracked lips with all the smoothness of a cinder block.

"I'm so scared."

"Come on, Livy," he said, calling forth the name he'd once called her in the silence of his bedroom. When he'd deceptively followed with the words he knew would make her his own. And she was…for a time. "Let's go."

"Do you still love me, David?"

He froze, breath caught in his chest as though his lungs had calcified in an instant. He tried to think about Natalie, about the promises he had made to her, but the image of her face kept slipping into murk. "Of course. Mia loves you, too. And…and Eric. You know that."

"No. I mean…like the old days." Her voice turned to a whisper. "Do you remember?"

She spun on her knees, head still facing down, and slowly ran her hand up his pant leg. David heard her breathing turn heavy before she spoke. "Do you still love me the way you used to?"

The heat, overbearing and sinister, had turned the bathroom into a boiler. Great pearls of sweat rolled down David's face, soaking into his collar below his pounding carotid.

"I never stopped loving you, David," she said in a gentle, hushed tone, her hand traveling higher. "I never forgot how you touched me."

David moved his head from side to side, trying to get a grip on himself. He knew something was wrong, but the more he listened to her talk, the less he cared. If he let her go on, he might not be able to help himself. "Olivia, stop."

Her hand slowed at his thigh, massaging the fabric of his jeans and the quivering, sweating meat beneath. "You could touch me again. I wouldn't tell anyone. I love you, David. Just hold me like you used to."

He filled his lungs with heavy air and summoned all of his resolve. "Olivia! Stop it now!"

Her soft caress became a painful grip of steel-like fingers. Flinching at the surprising pain, he grabbed her hand and tried to loosen her grasp when she raised her face to the light.

David couldn't scream, couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Her cheeks hung in tattered strips, dripping blood and dangling against her jaw like limp bacon. Shards of wicked sharp mirror, large and small, stuck in her formerly smooth skin, protruding from her forehead and cheekbones as if she's driven her face into a disco ball. It wasn't Olivia's face, it was an obscene perversion of all that had once been lovely, turned now to frightful deformity.

"What's wrong, David? Don't you still love me?" she crooned in a hideous, wet tune. "Don't you want to touch me?"

A cracking burst of thunder echoed from the sky and shook the cabin, causing the hanging bulb to flicker momentarily into a cast of light bright enough to illuminate the bathroom. Blood covered Olivia's chest and legs and smeared the floor at her knees. More blood, dark and coagulated, streaked and spotted the cracked tile and the stained porcelain of the toilet. The room had become a tapestry of gore painted in her own hematic fluid.

In a terrifying display of speed and animosity, she sprung from the floor like a coiled snake, taking hold of his shirt and launching him through the air. He crashed through the door as if it was balsa wood and landed on his back in the bedroom. Head rolling, his vision blurred as he regained his bearings, but before he could rise, Olivia sailed through the doorway, snarling like a wild animal.

Incredible, burning pain exploded through his chest. He looked down and saw that she had planted a five-inch dagger of mirror shard into him. Her wild eyes flared with demonic fire as she locked her fingers around his throat and snapped forward, trying to catch the flesh of his cheek between her jaws. He pushed as hard as he could, grunting from the pain yet unable to yell for help.

"Stuh—stop!" he sputtered, spittle flying from his lips. "Please!"

Turning his face to avoid the violent gnashing of teeth, he spied the crowbar that Eric had taken lying at the foot of the bed. Some miracle of light in the darkness had placed it within arm's reach. He knew what he had to do, but couldn't summon the courage to retaliate against Olivia.

She's trying to kill me! One of my best friends is trying to cut my fucking heart out! His mind rambled as the paralysis of fear and uncertainty held tight.

While he hesitated, she ripped the glass dagger from his flesh and stabbed him again, lower and harder. Hard enough to send scarlet blood squirting into the air.

Gripped by agony, he wrapped his fingers around the cold, hexagonal steel and swung with closed eyes. He felt the hard, reverberating thud of bar against bone and felt the ache spread through him as her fingers flew away from his throat. When he opened his eyes, she lay unmoving in the doorway, tossed back by the force of the blow. The unthinkable was done—saving himself by hurting one of the people he had only ever wanted to love and protect. There was a sudden sensation of spinning as he fought back the urge to vomit.

WhatdidyoudowhatdidyoudoWHATDIDYOUDO?

"Olivia. I'm sorry," he coughed through a mix of pain and tears, still unable to draw in a full breath as he rose to his feet. It felt as though he was breathing through thick liquid, and when he doubled over and spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor, he realized the wound in his chest was worse than he thought.

"Oh God."

Olivia's limp body twitched where it lay in a contorted heap, bent backwards at the spine with the head turned around. In a single grotesque movement, complete with the crunchy popping of rearranging cartilage, she unfolded with all the grace of a crumpled candy wrapper and began to rise.

"I'll cut off your dick and suck it like a candy cane!" she snarled, inching toward him with a slow, stiff gait, jerking like a puppet with knotted strings.

Hot blood leaked through David's fingers as he tried to cover the hole in his chest, all the while backing away from his demonic pursuer. The shard of glass was still in her hand, dripping his vital fluid at her feet.

XXXXX

Mia found matches in the jacket, struck one to life, and lowered the wavering flame to the page. Before it could touch, without breeze or breath or shudder of the hand, the fire flittered away as if choked out, though it had barely burned past the tip. She frowned at Rick and lit another, following the same protocol. Again, by some unknown method it was extinguished before even nearing the page.

"Maybe it's the matches," she said.

Rick was doubtful. "I don't think so. We could light the whole box and I don't think it would work. We could make a torch or throw it into a fire, but I get the feeling it wouldn't burn no matter what."

"Then let's tear the damn thing apart!" Mia growled and clenched the open page in her hands. She pulled and twisted and torqued until her knuckles were white, but it was like trying to rip through denim or thick leather. The parchment refused to split or fray in the slightest, affirming Rick's fears, and when Mia stepped back, shaky and out of breath, the page looked as if it had never been touched.
"Shit," Rick said. "I'd say that's a pretty bad sign."

Mia moved close and grasped his hand, running her fingers between his. "What do we do?"

"I don't know. We can't read it and we can't destroy it. There's got to be something we can do."

"What if there isn't?"

He spun to face her. In her eyes he saw the endurance and stamina needed for a run around the entirety of the world, and damned he would be if not right beside her. "I don't want to think like that. Not now. Not after all we've survived. These things were summoned before and the world didn't end, did it? The last poor soul found a way to send them back to Hell or wherever they came from. We'll do the same."

She looked at him with softness and regret, thinking about all the time that had been lost and filled with a thousand unspoken hopes. "I wish none of this had happened. I wish we could just go back."

"I know," he said. "I do, too."

Holding her in his arms, the eerie silence crowding their heartbeats invaded his ears. He cocked his head to the side and listened.

"What?" she asked at his intent focus on the silence of the night.

"Do you hear that?"

She turned an ear skyward. "No."

"It stopped raining."

A fresh wave of hope lifted her shoulders as she realized it was true. The static sizzle of storm water against the roof was through. No thunder, no wind. Nothing.

"We can make it out of here," she said. "The creek will be clear enough to drive through by morning."

"I don't plan on waiting that long."

"Do you think we can make it across?"

"We'll swim it if we have to."

As if unified by a singular script, they leaned slowly toward one another when the silence was sheared by the sound of heavy, uneven footfalls in the hallway.

"Mi…Miaaa…"

They turned as David lunged from the corridor, spilling blood from mouth and nose.

"David?"

He staggered toward them, splotched in a Rorschach of red upon his chest in shapes of oddly oblong shapes blooming like spring flowers. The long crowbar which he had been using as an impromptu cane, slipped from his grasp. Mia dashed to catch him as he fell, though her weak frame was hardly up to the task. Rick stopped them both from crashing down and helped her lower David to the floor. He could see the severity of the damage and knew the score right off. He didn't feel an especially pressing need to say anything, so he picked up the mask from where it lay upon the table and stepped back to give them space.

"David, what happened?" Mia questioned as she applied pressure to his wounds, slicking her hands with blood.

"Dead," he coughed. "She's…not dead…"

"What?"

"One of…" blood gurgled deep in his throat, "one of them. I'm s-so…sorry." From the front pocket of his jeans he plucked the keys to the SUV and put them, shaking like a rattle, into Mia's hand. "G-get out of here. Run."

"Just hold on, okay? We're going to get you out of here."

His eyes glazed over and lost focus, as if he were looking off into the distance. "B-baby, little," coughgurgle, "little baby…ti-time to g-go…"

"Hush," Mia told him, setting a bloodstained finger to his lips. Beneath her fingertips she could feel him slipping. He looked off into the distance, mouth churning out silent syllables.

Jolting once, he sputtered deliriously, blood slinging from his wetted red lips. "Mo-mom? Mom?" he said, staring past Mia, past the cabin, past the horror and off into some faraway better place.

His body, freezing cold under the final rush of still-warm blood, grew calm and lax. Suddenly and all at once, in Mia's hands he ceased to feel real, as if his flesh wasn't flesh anymore but some strange textile she'd never before felt.

"David? David!"

Rick stood by, watching his friend fade in silence and sadness. "Mia," he said, softly, then came to instant awareness of their increasingly bleak predicament.

She was nearly in tears again as she beat her fists weakly against her brother's chest. "Wake up, David! Wake up, damn you!"

"Mia," Rick said again, without the soft cushion of sympathy. "We need to go."

"No! I can't leave him." Tears streamed down her cheeks as she caressed David's face. "Not laying here like this. I can't."

"I know. Believe me, I know. But if we don't go now, it's over. This is our only chance, and it's not a good one, but it's all we've got."

Suddenly, it was as if the house had come to life all around them. The furious pounding from outside against the walls of the cabin commenced from all sides at once. The lights flickered and sent a phantom flurry of misshapen shadows dancing around them. Startled and alert, Rick's gaze darted to every corner, sure that danger could emerge from the very air itself.

The cellar door shook and bounced and vibrated in its frame as the groaning hinges bore the assault of the beast beneath. It cackled and crooned the grisly refrain, "Dead by dawn! Dead by dawn!"

Rick looked down the hall and saw from out the doorway come the creepishly jittering form of the long-haired ghoul that had once been Olivia, face torn wide open and smiling. In one hand it wielded another long, sharp blade of glass, coated red and flinging drops to the floor. It ran the sharpened tip along the side of the hallway as it lurched, one staggering footstep after another, through the darkness.

Well, this is it, Ricki-Oh. It's been a fun ride and all, but it's time to nut up or shut up. Stand and deliver. I think you know what to do.

"No."

Come on. Are we going to do this stupid song and dance again? You can't bullshit your way through this one, buddy boy. You don't have a choice. Look around. Without me, you're fucked

"I won't do it," Rick said, so caught in the thick of it that he forgot that Mia couldn't hear the voice of the mask.

"What?" Mia asked. In truth, her concentration had been so fully on the encroaching danger that she had barely heard Rick speaking. The drumming of undead fists upon the walls had become a painful roar. Behind them, the cabinet stacked before the window toppled over. Soggy, bleeding arms reached through the broken slats of the shutters, feeling all around for the latch.

Mia rose from the floor beside her brother and moved to Rick's side. He scooped her into his side and gripped tightly as they continued their descent into Hell.

You have to, you obstinate little fuck! Let me spell it out for you—you are going to DIE! Now put me on, Rick. PUT ME ON NOW!

With a great heavy crack and a rattle of metal, the latch in the cellar door gave way and the great wooden slab flew open, blowing a stench so foul as to tighten their throats with the sting of sulfur and rot. Natalie, horribly mutated and the color of washed-out gravestone, dripping dark fluids, smiled and sprung up with the frightening glee of a jack-in-the-box. She screeched and beat her fists against the floor, gnashing teeth and spraying black spittle from shiny, split lips.

"Time to chew on your fucking guts, shitface! I'm gonna bite your fucking lips off and make you eat my dripping cunt you fucking scared little shit! You're gonna wriggle like a worm!"

"Fuck you!" Mia nearly screamed above the clamor of the damned all around them.

You won't let her die like this, Rick. I know you. When the chips are down, you'd give the flesh off your bones to save her. But what about your soul? How far into the fire are you willing to go?

Rick looked into her eyes. "Mia," he said, relenting to what seemed to be the ever-rising tide of fate, "I love you. No matter what happens, please know that."

He turned the mask in his hands and gazed into the hollow of its form. Upon first sight it had been slightly larger, but after the first union it was a perfect fit for the dimensions of his head. Though the lamp by the couch shone upon them and should have illuminated the smooth convexity, he looked within and saw an endless depth of impenetrable shadow, knowing that however deep into that abyss he fell, he would not be alone.

"Rick?" Mia asked, and received no answer as he lifted the mask.

He drew closer to that void and all the power it had to imbue, ready to reveal the horror and truth even at the risk of losing control of himself forever. He had but a fleeting moment to wonder if he could ever come back, if this would be the time that the strange other one would swallow him whole, but those thoughts were conquered by the dire maelstrom of death closing in. There was no recourse but to give in, and hope he had the power to resist it at least one last time.

The mask was inches from his face when a grip like chiseled ice crushed his shoulder. They hadn't seen Eric's body as it transformed and moved with terrible quickness from the floor to where they stood. His head had turned from a faceless crater to a giant maw framed by melded red scar tissue where the flesh had been ripped from the muscle, and now the underlying bone had formed a succession of long, jagged fangs like stalagmites and stalactites, looking like a hideous zipper when they closed.

Eric's body, or rather the thing in residence, spun Rick and slapped the mask from his hands. As their only hope for survival skidded across the floor, Rick doubled up and flung his weight into the creature, pushing it back where it stumbled and fell, having lost its balance on legs still stiff and swollen with settling blood.

Damnations approached from all sides. The hinges on the front door were sure to give way with another hard hit, and the Olivia-thing was fast approaching from the hallway.

Left with no other resort, Rick dove across the ground after the mask as it tumbled clickety-clack across the hardwood floor, following it headfirst toward the darkness of the cellar…right into the welcoming, outstretched arms of the thing on the stairs, squealing like a giddy swine for its incoming meal.

"Rick, no!" Mia screamed as the creature clutched him by the stringy meat of his shoulders and pulled him away from her. They both went down, gone like a magician's trick, and the cellar door slammed shut, sealing Rick in with imminent death.

She folded to the floor in defeat, a crumpled and lightless husk. All vibration and energy in the world ceased to exist, and silence filled the space between all things. The air stopped moving. Her mouth worked soundlessly, trying to pull oxygen into lungs that felt as stiff and dry as petrified wood.

Over, she thought, her fate sealed in a single word.

Eric's body rose from the floor, razor sharp teeth chomping spasmodically. The front door splintered and cracked across the center and another dripping fiend pushed aside the couch and stumbled through. From the hallway, Mia's greatest friend stalked with a grisly grin, slashing back and forth with a bloody glass blade.

Her brother was gone, her friends were gone, and now Rick was, too. She had nowhere left to run, and she was all alone, defenseless against the hideous creatures converging upon her. The shotgun lay on the table, far enough out of reach to make even an attempt at suicide seem pointless. There was simply nothing more to worry about. If only she had a fix…one last fix to make the biting and the tearing feel like a warm, slow massage. That would make it not so bad. But she didn't even have that.

"Get on with it," she said to the approaching horde, raising a middle finger in one final act of defiant contempt.

Vibrations suddenly started beneath her knees. An odd clamoring beneath the floor, like the bubbling of an underground well. The planks began to shake like a clapboard roof in a hailstorm, and a great roar stopped every creature still before the cellar door erupted, blowing off its hinges and shattering apart in the fantastic force that came from below. A red-black pillar of blood spewed forth like crude oil, pressurized to outstanding proportions. It slapped the ceiling and cracked the drywall, pooling and spreading against the very laws of gravity before finally falling all around like a fresh rain. The roar was nearly deafening in the enclosed space.

Blood sprinkled Mia's face as she watched in awe-struck astonishment. She didn't know what it was or what it meant, only that it had spared her life for another few moments.

And after those moments, the spewing, screaming geyser of blood finally slackened, lowering nearly all at once back into the hole from which it jetted. When all was settled, the only sound was the drip-drip-drip of ruby teardrops from above. The ceiling and walls were awash with glistening, candy-apple red, and a pungent, coppery redolence scented the air.

A thumping sound met her ears and as up from the cellar came a hulking, blood-drenched creature like a nightmare come to life.

Mia watched in a faraway daze as it approached, massive arms outstretched and reaching to take her away.