Sorry this took so long, it's another of those lengthy 5 page specials…Thannkyou so much to everyone who has reviewed, it really is most encouraging.
Chapter 32: Judgement in red
Just like they sung in that particularly corny hymn, morning had broken. Jobe lay on his back, enjoying the feel of the soft bed sheets against his skin as he watched the sun's pale, red fingertips slowly crept across the ceiling.
He'd never appreciated it before…
Jobe closed his eyes and drank in the silence- no, not silence. That word had taken on a whole new meaning to Jobe. Silence was something terrifying, the sound of your own blood thrashing against your temples as you try to bottle up a scream that bays to run lose, ripping you up from the inside like some lethal infection.
'Quietness is such a nicer term.' Jobe smiled, happy with the outcome of this particular meditation and let his mind, which felt lighter than ever, wonder back to the events of last night.
The fit, which verged dangerously on hysterical had only lasted a few, curt minuets and Julia had remained silent thorough, whatching the shaking form of Jobe with large, worried eyes. He could still feel those twin pools of harrowing concern on him even as she joined him on the floor, wrapping her arms around him and patently waited for him to get over whatever it was torturing him so.
The tears gradually subsided, along with the internal tremors that shook Jobe so viciously and the two shared the sudden noiseless that filled the apartment like an empty vacuum.
Finally, when it reached the point that this mute force threatened to burst, Julia broke the silence with the words Jobe had been dreading from the moment he'd first seen her blurry outline through tear-stained eye.
"What happened to you?"
It was inevitable. Even if Jobe had come strutting in and grinning from ear to ear, his rank appearance would have woken the spark of curiosity in even the most unobservant soul, and Julia was far from that…
Jobe would have given anything to just unload his woes and take of the mask there and then, however, as empathic as his girlfriend was, he doubted she would swallow a story that's dark chapters contained tales of the coming of god, monsters and the fanatics that worshiped them. Topping that all of with the revelation that not six hours ago, he'd splattered his once best friend's gut on the wall with a shotgun… well, she'd be on the phone dialling the number of the nearest funny farm in no time.
So Jobe told a glorious lie, the words just lolling of his tongue as he covered up his immediate, and down right disturbing past with a brand new lick of paint that made a much prettier picture.
He had Phil had been driving back when an argument erupted between the two and swiftly plunged into very morbid territory. Hateful, hurtful words had been exchanged and very quickly, blows followed. The conflict reached its climax when Phil threw Jobe out of the car, leaving him in the mist as he tore off.
Jobe then walked to the nearest town, a certain Silent Hill, but was forced off the road by the ever thickening mist that descended on the region, smothering everything with a milky hew. At some point, he'd tripped and cut his leg quite badly on a rock that had snuck up on him (ironic that that was more believable than the far-fetched truth) but by some miracle, he'd final reached the town. From there, he'd somehow managed to rent a car and hauled ass home.
Julia didn't question even one detail of the fabricated tail but for some reason, that hadn't made Jobe feel any better. They'd gone to bed, the man expecting nothing more than a sleepless night as his heavy conscious crushed him into the mattress beneath him, but the minuet his head had hit the pillow, Jobe had slipped into a deep and utterly consuming sleep.
And that pretty much brings us back to where we started off.
Jobe looked to his left, his eyes wondering slowly over the creased mounds of the sheets until his gaze became trapped in a forest of familiar curly hair.
'She's still asleep.' the man noted to none but his own content self, noting the rhythmic slowness with which her chest rose and fell. 'No point in waking her.' Jobe tore himself from the blanket's comforting embrace and stumbled from the bed, brisking himself against the less that welcoming morning air.
He'd been mulling over nothing in particular as he sat in the kitchen, hunched over a cup of coffee when he noticed the blinking light that rhythmically pulsated from the phone set. The dull grey contraption winked tirelessly at Jobe from the opposite end of the table he was sat as, the small, red flash advertising the fact that someone had left a message.
It was more out of practised habit than curiosity that made the man lent across to it, pressing down on the play button clumsily as he tried to slot himself back into the world of the living. As the mechanical voice whirred into life, Jobe settled back into the seat, eagerly hugging the cup in his hands as if he had the power to leech the precious warmth from it into his own cold being.
"You have one new message," The artificial voice chirruped with forced enthusiasm. "Message one…"
BEEPJobe suddenly realised that he'd been listening to nothing but empty sounds of the kitchen for an ever-lengthening stretch of time. He cast the phone set a doubtful glace as it remained dumb and reached over to it, his finger hovering over the 'clear' button, eager to do away with this ghost in the machine.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you…"
Jobe started back into his chair at the sound of the voice cracking through the noiseless room, staring at the machine with wide eyed disbelief as the message continued to play.
"What? Don't tell me you're afraid to hear what we have to" But that was all the voice managed to say as Jobe pummelled the little green button, silencing it with a sharp, electronic screech as the phone wiped whatever it had to preach from the memory.
His heart was still hammering in his ears as Jobe lent stiffly back in his chair. He raised the mug to his lips but found he no longer hankered after the thick liquid that suddenly smelt so bitter.
"You have one new message, message one."
The mug fell from Jobe's hands as the phone kicked into life once again, but he headed no attention to the harsh crack of ceramic on the tiled floor.
"Didn't we just tell you not to do that? Don't think you can hide"
This time, Jobe nearly fractured the plastic coating as he hit the machine, cutting it off mid sentence. For what felt like an hour compressed into a few short seconds, he stood over the phone set, trying to control the bile rising in his throat. What the hell was going on?
"You have one new message…" It began, but Jobe didn't hear the rest of its speech.
"FUCK OFF!" He grabbed the machine in both hands and hurled the machine into the nearest wall with every iota of strength as if it bore some terrible, contagious desies he would contract if he held it for a second longer.
The phone set hit the plastered surface and splintered like bone. It landed on the floor in an undignified heap of exposed circuits and obscure, metal organs as the casing came apart, exposing its dry innards. Jobe stared at the broken object as if he expected the machine to lunge at him, propelling itself towards him on those bare, tendril like wires that now lay strewn across the kitchen floor.
A cold silence ensued, its sudden snare over the now still environment made Jobe suddenly wonder if he'd heard anything at all. After all, he'd been through a lot over the past day, maybe his mind was just playing tricks on him…yes, that had to be it.
"Don't tell us you're going to even lie to yourself…" The voice hissed from the wreckage of the phone, stopping Jobe's heart dead in his chest. "But then, you're very good at lying, aren't you Jobe?"
The man leapt up from the chair, and before he could stop himself, the words were out of his mouth.
"What the hell do you want from me?" Jobe even went as far as clapping a hand over his still moving lips but it was to late. He'd acknowledged this antagonistic entity and there was no way now he could kid himself into believing it was some by-product of his disturbed mind.
"What do we want? We want you to see the truth you so stubbornly ignore," The voice whispered, growing more ragged and wet with each syllable. "You've lied, Jobe. You've lied to Angela, you've lied to Grace, but most importantly, you've lied to yourself! You insisting on burying yourself in this web of lies, so deeply that you've forgotten what is real!"
Despite all that his inner voice hollered at him not to, Jobe had slowly made his way over to the artificial carcass that whispered to him beyond the grave, looking down at it with a chocking mixture of plain fear and disbelief. It rose a notch within him when he realised he'd heard this voice before in a dank, perpetuity dark corner of that town…
"We cannot understand why you refuse to hold onto this fabricated reality. Everything would be so much simpler if you just let it go…and float away."
In his mind's eye, Jobe could see the black, serpentine tongue lashing against the horde of oversized teeth that filled the poisonous mouth of the speaker as its words disintegrated into a low hiss.
"We've tried to show you the truth before, but you chose to ignore it. We think the time has come for usss to try again. tell me LIAR, how do you REALLY feel about that pretty girl of yours?"
The words bubbled away into a sickly laughter as the inhumane voice disintegrated into hysterics. Something black began to ooze from between the cracks that split the phone set, the viscous liquid lazily crawling between the tiles that made up the kitchen floor like some ravenous cancer as it spread out from its epicentre.
Jobe was already gone by the time the once pristine tiles immediately surrounding the phone had been completely consumed by the tar-like sludge, racing through the small living space between the gradually flooding kitchen and the bedroom. Even though it was less than ten steps to clear the short distance, Jobe felt as though he'd run a marathon as those bare few steps stretched into uncountable miles.
Even after all he'd been through, the man had never been so consumed by such terror as that which seized him as he burst through the bedroom door. Nothing, not even the most disturbing image that Silent Hill had scalded into his mind could match the raw fear of the unknown that held onto him as he steadied himself, bare feet gripping desperately to the carpeted floor as he took in the scene around him.
At first, Jobe couldn't understand what it was his eyes were trying to show him. The bedroom was fine, the fingers of corruption that had snared the kitchen were yet to pry in here and everything seemed in order.
Except for the bed.
He shook his head, soundless words spelling out on his moving lips as he tried to comprehend its condition. There was a noticeable hump in the centre of crumpled sheets that now seemed dyed with tones of brown and red as if the very material had begun to rust.
"no" Jobe uttered, his voice sounding o so small in the silent (yes, for it is fair to use this word as Jobe had come to understand it in this context) room, feeling sicker by the second.
The final detail was the one that made the man collapse to the floor, his knees giving out beneath him as his brain crashed, shocked into total numbness by what lay before it.
From the centre of what Jobe had finally come to accept as the human shaped mound was something rising perpendicular from where its chest would be, but all detail was masked by the sodden sheet that smothered it.
'That body… it…it just can't be her under there…' Jobe forced himself to his feet, the world swimming before him as he tripped towards the bed, his feet catching on nothing but the empty air. Somehow, he managed to force him self closer to it, trying so hard not to see the little details like the clumps of matted hair, tinted as red as the sheet they clung to. His eyes fell upon the familiar, slender hand that hung lifelessly from the side of the bed, escaping from beneath the sheet and the soft, comforting numbness left him. Suddenly, he was more than aware of just how vibrant and fresh those stains were, so very akin to the colour of blood. And then there was the smell…
Jobe had become acquainted with the smell of death during his stay in Silent Hill, but the smell that burnt away at his nasal cavity was a thousand times worse. The rich odder of turning flesh invaded his throat, pouring into his stomach like lead.
The man finally cracked, becoming enlightened to the true meaning of the term 'sensory overload'.
He screamed, and was still screaming when the thing under the sheets sat up.
Jobe fell back, trying to hold onto the few shards of sanity he still had as the head beneath the sheet turned and locked onto him with covered eyes, the sheet still clinging onto it like a filthy cowl.
It swung its legs over the edge of the bed, both limbs battered to the point where most of the skin was covered in ugly blotches of blue and black and rose with deliberately slow grace.
Something moved under the sheet.
"Oh dear god…"It locked around whatever it was sticking from the entity's chest and a low, moist sucking noise filtered out from under the sheet as it was pulled free from its once living resting place. Its arm fell it its side, now clasping the mystery object.
A baseball bat…
The very same one Jobe's brother had given to him a countlessly long time ago for Christmas and had been in his possession ever since, but he no longer felt the spontaneous burst of happiness that usually filled him when his eyes fell upon the crafted wood. Now, coated with a fresh lick of gore that winked at him in the pale, morning light, it made every inch of his skin crawl.
"…Why…?" He looked up at the thing he never wanted to identify, towering above him like some snowy mountain, tainted by the setting sun. "What happened to you?"
The obelisk of material's only reply was to smash the bat into the side of Jobe's head and for half a second, the man truly believed he could see the stars as he reeled back into the carpet. It took a step forward, raising the bat high above it as it prepared to smash the fallen man apart.
Jobe rolled, turning in time to see the bludgeon crack against the floor with enough force to turn his skull to nothing but a runny pulp if it had still been there. The thing gathered itself, its covered eyes somehow seeking out the man's position as Jobe madly scrabbled away from it on his back, hitting into the desk at the other end of the room. From beneath the sheet, it watched as the man looked up and an expression of unadulterated fear spread across his face as he realised he had nowhere left to go.
It took a step forward.
Jobe's eyes locked with the pinnacle of the bloodied sheet, wide and dry as panic yanked mercilessly at his optic nerves as he pulled himself up the desk, watching helplessly as the thing drew ever nearer with each paced step of its battered feet.
"Please, don't do this…"
His weak, hollow words sounded so very pathetic in his ears and had no impact on the thing bent on crushing him as it took another step forwards, the distance between them drawing dangerously thin.
His clammy hands, soaked with cold sweat began to wonder blindly over the desk's smooth surface in search of something, nay, anything he could defend himself with.
His fingers had just kissed the rounded surface of a stone paperweight when it spoke.
"Do on to others…" The voice creaked like rust on an old joint, sending Jobe's very brain quivering as if it had somehow managed to get inside his head and rack its fingers over the fragile organ.
"…As you'd have them DO ONTO YOU!" Its voice rose, slicing into the man's ears as it reached a high, avian pitch. The bat soared again, hovering momentarily at its lethal peek…
…But that brief gap, that momentary hesitation was all the time Jobe's fingers needed to lock around the heavy rock and smash it into the side of the thing's head.
And for a moment time stopped.
They stood, frozen in that position for what felt a little short of ever, the paperweight snugly resting in its newfound nest of fractured bone and the bat still caught in motionless flight.
However, nothing lasts forever. A moan, a sad, painfully human noise escaped the covered lips of the clocked being, and before its plaintive swan song was out, it had collapsed to the floor in a heap of broken limbs and sodden sheets.
Even though the cover had remained on it throughout the whole scene, the one that had masked Jobe's eyes had finally fallen away. Now, he could all to clearly see the features of the one hand and stray strands of hair that had escaped the oppressive cover, and they were unmistakably familiar.
They were Julia's
"Oh-" But that was all Jobe managed to say before the emotions that had been numbed by adrenalin eventually caught up with him.
He fell…
And for the first time, the pain of loss took its final toll and pierced his heart, ripping it to shreds. The broken man curled up on the floor and cried, utterly alone save for the sound of silence's bitter laughter.
Time passed, but the agony refused to fade until one single thought snapped him out of his bleak state of mind. He sat up, so fast that the blood flooded his head and uttered a single word.
"Grace…"
8 8 8
The woman in question opened her eyes for the first time since she'd collapsed onto the motel-standard single bed without even a hint of her namesake, stirring into life with a hacking cough. Blindly, her hand shot out to the bedside table in a frantic search for her cigarettes, scrambling over a bible that looked as though it hadn't been consulted for a long time.
"Shit…" She hissed unnecessarily to herself when her groggy brain remembered that she'd left the precious sticks of nicotine in her discarded trouser pocket…
Wait a minuet, what was she doing in a motel?
Grace sat up, the lethargy instantly leaving her as the fog of sleep dissolved, revealing the events of the last day.
"Oh shit…" The woman stared dumbly into her lap as the memories of all that had taken place in the town of Silent Hill bit into her with teeth sharper than any of the faceless monstrosities they'd encountered there. It was as if the room's lowly radiator had turned traitor, plunging the room into negative figures in a matter of a few spars seconds.
The woman's jaw began to tremble, she felt colder and sicker than she could ever remember in al her twenty four years of life…
And had never been in such desperate need of a cigarette.
Grace fell out of bed, swearing loudly in the pale, grey morning light as she caught her foot on the bedside table.
'Well, it's all over now. All we need to do is put some miles between us and this god forsaken dump and we can put this whole thing be- FUCK'
Grace grabbed her knee. We'll just say that she'd found the chair and leave it at that but she was still swearing like a sailor as she returned the trousers to their proper place.
The short, nova-like flash from the lighter had just died when the knock on the door sounded. The soft orange, light from the illuminated fag illustrated the woman's face as her brows knit, the green eyes narrowing into lean, suspicious slits.
"Who is it?"
Grace became suddenly aware of how bumped the skin on the back of her neck in the silence that ensued.
Whoever it was knocked again, beating so hard against the wood that it rattled against its hinges yet remaining as dumb as the material it pounded.
'Jobe didn't pay for my room and now the owner wants his due?' Her brain offered, still warming up as it tried to think straight through the soothing haze of nicotine that buzzed through its cells. Yeah, that had to be it, why else would the knocker sound so pissy?
"Hang on!" Grace muttered from the side of her mouth as she went for the door. God, whoever seeked her company at this early hour was going to break the wooden panel in if they hit the poor thing any harder…
Her lips lost their soggy grip on the paper cylinder as she uttered that sentence, the illuminated cigarette tumbling from its living zenith and crashing into the carpet.
"Aw shit," Grace added to her list of profanities as she ducked to grab the fallen fag. "Hold on a sec…"
However, this wasn't good enough for the entity that had been waiting less than patiently on the other side of the door and it hammered down on the door…
…And this time, the wood truly did splinter.
Grace screamed, falling back as the dull, metal object sliced through the wood as if it were nothing but a paper panel. In the pale, morning light, the sparse rays of light that managed to filter into the room danced along the enormous…what the woman could only describe as a blade's edge. From where she lay, spread out on the floor, it looked very, very sharp.
There was a creek as its wielder pulled the obscene weapon back, cracking the brittle wood as it yanked it violently free and peace returned to the small motel room, save for the harsh sound of Grace's hyper-ventilation as she stared wide eyed at the hole in the door. It didn't last long.
CRUNCHThe door finally gave, fracturing under the inhuman stress and exploding into a fine rain of splinters. Grace was already on her feet as her visitor stumbled through the remaining chunks of painted wood that tried in vain to hold their original position, diving headlong into the Spartan 'on suite' bathroom. She threw the door shut, only just catching a glimpse her assailant's shadowy form as it lumbered into the room before the door latched to. To say it was human would safely be underestimate if the year, if not century.
Her hands flew to the lock, snapping the small, metal contraption into place and suddenly time, which had seemed to have been flying past at a hundred and seventy miles per hour, slowed to a crawl.
"Moron…" A mumbling scold rose from her lips, but I think we can safely guess what her first, unheard word was.
What's the one thing you don't do in situations like this, a point that had been finely illustrated in almost every horror movie since the dawn of time? Lock yourself in a room (which, conveniently, you can't get out of) while there's a blade-wielding maniac on the rampage and out for blood. Persificaly yours.
As Grace's eyes flew over the detail's of the tiny, tiny room, she realised she'd put herself into that exact position.
The lurid green shower curtain wasn't going to offer any protection from… whatever the hell that thing was, nor were the toilet or sink nailed to the wall that stared starkly at her, as if muttering: what an idiot. Oh well, you'll be dead soon.
She ran her finger's through her hair so hard she nearly ripped the brittle strands from her head, weakened by years of colouring and straightening as her eyes raced over the details of the small room that was going to become her final resting place if she didn't do something soon. After analysing each detail of it at least fifty times, she finally noticed the window above the toilet. She was nearly floored by the sense of deja vu that flooded her.
The woman leapt up on to the toilet's water tank as the thing smashed into the other side of the door, rattling the one and only barricade between her and it. She tried to ignore the sound of her oncoming doom as she went to fling the window open…
Only to find it was sealed shut.
"Fuck!"
There was no handle, no hinges, nothing except for a blank pane of glass that stubbornly refused to budge.
'CRUNCH'
Grace cast a hopeless glance over her shoulder as it beat against the glass again, her stomach liquidating when she saw the wood begin to fall away in sharp, angular sections as the colossal blade ripped through it.
She looked back to the window. It mocked her. This one, tiny piece of opaque material was all that stood between her and freedom.
'This is going to hurt so much…' Grace shut her eyes as the thing broke through the wood, tearing down the battered door with its bear hands and rocked her head back, quietly asking herself just how much it would…
Grace slammed her head forward and found the answer to her question as her skull cracked through the thin pane.
It hurt. A lot.
But she didn't care, the woman was too pumped up on a cocktail of terror and adrenalin to notice as she scrabbled rabidly through the broken window, paying no heed to the sharp renaments of glass that bit into her skin as she wriggled through.
The door finally gave as the great knife ploughed through it, shattering any remains of the door that still stood. It stepped through, its tough, leathery feet crunching the flakes of wood in to the tiled floor, evidently not feeling the splinters that punctured its bare soles. It was here to do one thing, and one thing alone.
'Make her answer to the call of god…' Those were its simple instruction, and nothing on earth could or would-
It stopped dead, laxing the grip it had on the handle of its obscene weapon. You may ask what had the power to stop this behemoth in its tracks when locks and doors had little to no effect. It was the simple fact that the bathroom was empty…
8 8 8
"Ouch…" Grace pushed herself up from the bed of broken glass, winking merrily up at her like fine crystals from the wooden pavilion that ran along the outside of her room with a groan. She felt as though someone had just forced her head into a meat grinder, probably looked it too…and that short flight from the bathroom window did precious little to help.
She staggered to her feet, grabbing onto the railing that marked the end of the wooden walkway and blundered on feet that seemed to have forgotten how to walk towards the pavilion's short series of steps.
"Move, goddamnit!" She hurdled past the now empty crater that had replaced her room's door, trying to spur herself on. She had to get out of here…but where to go?
Grace grinded to a halt at the top of the short flight of steps, the breath catching in her throat as she took in her surroundings. Someone might as well have erased them with some divine rubber as she slept, for the car-park that all the cabin-like rooms encircled had gone, swallowed by a dense fog that seemed to have rolled in from nowhere over night.
Hope crumpled like unneeded paper. For some reason, that blanketing layer of fog seemed like a more solid, trapping wall than anything constructed from brick and mortar could ever be.
Something moved in behind her and Grace suddenly remberd the reason why her heart was beating so feverishly hard in her chest. Hopeless panic gripped the woman as she went for the steps but her foot overshot the mark, missing its target completely. She barely managed a scream as gravity took over and she fell, rolling down the short flight in a heap, letting out a short cry of protest as the edge of each step bit into her.
She hit the floor, inhaling a lungful of dust as she moaned, trying to comprehend the pain that swelled inside her.
'Get up' some distant voice called, appealing to whatever determination was left in the battered woman, but it seemed so very weak. Wouldn't it just be so much easier to call an end to this mismatched battle and just slip away? There was no way she could win this one, not now.
Grace lifted her buzzing head from the ground, the grit that itched her face clinging sullenly to her skin. She looked up the steps that had just now claimed any hope she had of making some sort of escape, blinking as her eyes tried to remember how to focus but when she saw the figure who stood at the top of them, even her eyelids froze in their fluttering dance.
She…she had to be seeing things…
She blinked again, but it was still there and Grace came to realise that the inhuman entity that towered over her like some bloody monarch was no figment of her exhausted imagination; it was real. What else could explain the details her eyes picked up? Like the way its moist skin glinted in the sickly morning light, as if the organ itself was a separate, living entity, or how its shoulder's rose and fell with each paced breath as it bode its time, trying to judge just when would be the right time to descend upon the fallen woman. Also, the little things like the way it altered its grip on long blade's handle just made it all the more convincing…and then there was what Grace guessed was its head. For a long while, the woman goggled at the creature Jobe had dubbed 'the red judge' in his short time in the hotel, something the beast could add to the long repertoire of names it had been branded with over the years. However, not a single one came close to its true, beautiful title:
Xuchilbara.
The helmet like structure tipped forward as it loomed down at Grace, the unseen eyes glaring at her from beneath the obscure, metallic mask.
It took a step.
And that was all it took to snap Grace from the catatonic, dumb state of fear that had locked down her entire system.
The woman turned onto her back, scrabbling backwards as fast as she could, oblivious to the bits of jagged grip that scratched at her hands as she propelled herself away from the flight of stairs.
It took another, the blade trailing listlessly behind the creature that appeared to be clothed in a smock of long dead rags.
Grace's hands had begun to bleed, but she didn't care. All her mind could focus on was the ever-approaching monstrosity.
Its gnarled, leathery feet touched down on the grainy surface of the car park.
She struggled to her feet, teetering on the spot as she tried to tell her shaking legs to remain still, if just for a moment. Who was she kidding, there was no way she was getting out of this one alive or even in one piece. Grace no longer seemed capable of walking, let alone breaking into a sprint and losing the lumbering hulk in the mist, unless of course fate granted her a miracle… and it wasn't like they'd been falling from the sky recently.
Well, that had been Grace's train of thought until the sound of a car's wheezing engine suddenly flared from some inpeantirble point in the mist as the tail-tell mechanical snarl rapidly grew.
Both the woman and her unholy antagonist looked up, and under its gory helmet, it probably wore the exact same expression of shock as a blaze of high powered headlights sliced through fog, making the moisture that danced in the air glow a hazy white.
Grace stood motionless, finally achieving that control over her weakened body that she'd so desperately sought, caught in the suddenness of the moment for a bare moment until the car ripped from the fog, ploughing into malevolent being that had stood only five meters away from her. As quickly as the car had come, it vanished and dragged the morbid body with it, sinking back into the smothering blanket of grey that had seeped over every inch of the car park. All of this was accompanied by the wailing screech of tires on the lose gravel chips that composed the ground as the car grinded to a halt, the twin red break-lights momentarily illuminated the fog as they blinked on.
Grace watched them as they clicked off, trying to run over the rushed series of events in her brain, as if to make sure it had all really happened.
The sound of a car door slamming shut was all that was needed to seal the deal with her dazed brain and short-term memory. The woman staggered forwards, unable to stop the mad grin that cracked her face as the familiar, white, rust-bucket of a car slowly solidified before her from the cloud of murk, its outline becoming all the more certain with each dragged step she took.
8 8 8
Jobe leapt from the car, his eyes rabidly scanning the sparse patch of gravel that stood out from the fog before him. Where was it? He'd hit something; hell the brand-new dent in the centre of the car's stained bonnet was a bold testament to that…
So where was the body? Had it crawled off into the mist to die, or was that inhuman thing he'd barely managed to catch sight of lurking somewhere in the milky backdrop, biding its time…
Jobe was saved from his grim meditation as a familiar voice bayed from the fog.
"Jobe?"
The man turned, harkening to his name as something leapt at him from the heavy mist, catching and binding the man in hard embrace.
"Wha-"
He stopped, the blurb of surprise catching in his throat. His fears weren't confirmed; for it wasn't that thing he'd hit that held him in an iron death grip…
It was only Grace.
Jobe let himself relax as the woman he'd come searching for melted, hanging herself around his neck, sobbing bitterly into his chest.
"She's right, it's not going to let us go, is it?" Grace's muffled voice rose from between the creases of his shirt. Jobe said nothing, but then, she never really did expect an answer…
For a long while, the pair stood in this numb embrace, framed in the harsh light of the car's headlamps.
A/N- well, all of you wondering how this could go on, I hope that answered your question and we'll be back to Angela next chapter.
E.P.O, I must ask, why did you write Beatrix?
