Waking Up a Living Legend
By Zoe E. Whitten
© 2010 All rights reserved.
I wake up to the sound of a machine beeping. I recognize it as a heart monitor, and the pace of the beeps increases.
But I shouldn’t wake up at all. My last memories contradict this shift in my reality. I was attacked by my neighbor, shot in the gut even as I was delivering a killing blow by throwing my knife. I remember Murray being eaten by the closet monster, and then it turned on me, consuming my body from the inside out.
Something feels different about me as I open my eyes, but I can’t put a name to what’s wrong. The fog in my brain lifts, clearing my senses. Then I can hear the change.
I’ve lost the voices of my victims.
I can still hear voices, but these are all adults, all humans speaking coherent words I can understand.
I stare up at a white ceiling, and then turn my head to find an empty room. But that can’t be right, because I can hear so many voice clearly, as if they’re in the same room with me.
The door opens, and the man who walks in is talking to me. But he’s not. He’s thinking through what he will say to me before he says it.
He approaches the bedside and clasps my hand, just like I know he will. He squeezes my hand, looking for a response. I squeeze back.
He says, “Hi, Carol. I’m Robert—”
“Carlyle,” I say, smiling at his surprised reaction. “I’ve seen you around town before. But you normally wear a uniform.”
My smile melts as Robert’s thoughts fill me in on a shocking revelation. But I will not deny him his well practiced speech, so I cover for myself by asking, “How did I end up in the hospital?”
“You were attacked by your neighbor, Murray Dunwick. You were badly injured and you’d lost a lot of blood. By the time help arrived…you were clinically dead. The paramedics revived you, but you’ve been in a coma for three months.”
I stare at Robert with blank, wide eyes. This is what he expects, a look that says I don’t understand him.
I really don’t understand. I saw Murray’s body riddled with holes when the closet monster ate him. But the corpse of my neighbor in Robert’s memory had only a single knife wound in the throat.
The police never found the knife that killed him.
This makes no sense to me.
Robert presses on with his speech. “We spoke to your boss. Greg told us your husband had been missing for months, and that he’d been away in Germany. But we checked the flight records and your husband never flew to Germany.”
I say, “I don’t understand. Where is he?”
I already know.
Robert says, “We found his body buried in Murray’s backyard. I’m sorry.”
I shake my head, and blink fast. It’s a convincing act, probably my best act ever. There’s even a tremble in my voice as I say, “No, you must be mistaken.”
“No, I’m sorry, but we’re not. We took John’s dental records, and they’re a perfect match. The body is dried out. The throat was cut, but only on one side.” Robert swallows and looks down at his hand closed around mine. “We think Murray fed from him.”
“Fed,” I repeat, my voice devoid of emotion.
Robert says, “He drank John’s blood.” I nod and look toward the window. Robert squeezes my hand. “I’m very sorry.”
I nod again and say, “I want to be alone, please.”
Robert leaves, and my mouth pulls into a bemused smile.
I’m confused by this turn of events. I shouldn’t be alive, unless…unless the closet monster acted to aid me. There was so much pain in its embrace, like fire branching out through every limb that had entered my body.
The corpse of my long dead husband was moved from my bed and hidden in the yard of the man who’d tried to kill me. But I’d seen Murray consumed. I’d seen him riddled with holes as a hundred thorns stabbed him in the cavernous and hollow body of the closet monster.
I rise from my bed and remove the wires reading my pulse. The medical staff rushes in as I search for a way to turn the machine off and end its never-ending squeal.
The nurse and doctor don’t want me to leave, but I need answers, and I won’t find them here. I leave after a brief debate, and the doctor makes a note that I’m leaving A.M.A., against medical advice.
The rest of the day passes in a blur. I return to my home and find it clean. No sign of dust despite my months-long absence. Every thought I have of evidence begins a hunt for some souvenir, but the house is clean.
The police let me leave the hospital without arguing. That tells me enough to know my work clothes aren’t in an evidence locker, nor is my primary weapon, my iron knife stained black with the blood of my many victims.
The sun sets, and I walk to my room and open the closet. I sit on my bed, and then that strange feeling I couldn’t identify before becomes more keen. I feel something stronger than hunger. I feel unreal, like my shell is an illusion.
I’m drawn from this thought when my head fills with whispering voices. But this night is different. This night, I do not hear a cacophony of chattering and hissing. These are words I can understand.
The voices welcome me into their family. They beckon me to remain calm, though I feel sick with hunger.
Then he is in the closet. Now I understand the closet monster is male. I can smell him, and his odor is masculine. I know it now as surely as I knew the masculine scent of a human male.
The closet monster slips out of my closet with a dry rustle as his shadow body slides over the bare wood floor.
He senses my agitation, and his whispering voice is full of confusion when he speaks. “Is this not what you wanted? You wished to know us, to be one of us.”
Unable to answer, I ask, “What are we?”
“We are the things that go bump in the night. We feed from fear as often as we feast on flesh.” The closet monster sends out two black tendrils that coil around my forearms. He is cold, dry; like the wax skin of a tomato.
He pulls me to my feet. I don’t resist him. He is the only one who can give me answers now.
A split forms in the body of the closet monster, and then I am inside him. I have the sensation of moving, but there is no point of reference to explain why.
I blurt out, “I saw you eat Murray.”
“Yes.”
“How could the police find a body with only one knife wound?” I just finish the question when I know the answer. “It wasn’t his body they found. It was one of your…”
This feels wrong. I correct myself. “It was one of our people.”
“Yes.”
“So, there is no body in Murray’s grave.”
“No.”
The pitch black parts like drapes, and I’m in another closet. I open the door, and I can smell the child in the bed. I can hear her dreams turning into nightmares, and I understand.
She is aware of my presence already, and she is afraid.
I make a sound of hunger, a quiet, eerie rattle that sounds like a door hinge in need of oil.
The child wakes and sits up in bed. She looks at me, and I see myself through her thoughts. I’m hideous. My silver eyes glint in the closet, and my head is misshapen.
I ease out of the closet, taking on a more horrifying aspect to push the child to her limits. My lower face stretches down, and my ears rise to the top of my head. They grow long and pointy, and my hair forms into a short Mohawk.
No, it’s a mane. I’m becoming a creature close to a donkey, and as I think this, my back begins to distort. I’m growing, changing.
I’m becoming a nightmare that will haunt the children of this town for centuries.
The girl’s fear fills the hollow space inside me. It completes me even before I reach out to touch her.
She’s so hot, but I know this is due to my colder body. In the daylight, I will look human. I will even feel human to people who touch me. But at night, I will become this thing. My short, coarse fur will be cold to those who touch me.
My hands are hard, black and colder than ice. The girl is so hot, and I need her heat just as much as I need her fear.
I force her to lay back, and I cover her body. Then I open my mouth, and I show her my jagged yellow teeth.
She whimpers, but she can’t close her eyes. Lost in my spell, she is mine to play with. I could do whatever I want to her. I could rape her, forming a phallus to violate her virgin body. I could part the cold illusory folds of my flesh and consume her in the same way that the closet monster consumed Murray.
But what excites me more is the idea that I can keep coming back to feed from her over and over. I shiver with the excitement of the thought, and I lick the side of the girl’s throat. The taste of her fear is so much more intoxicating than blood ever was.
I rise from the bed and leave her keening in her bed, her white-knuckled hands clutching at the sheets and she waits for me to come back and strike the killing blow.
I slip back into the closet, and the pitch black captures me again.
The closet monster whispers, “Very good.”
I laugh and say, “I’m so horny now. Please, take me to Greg.”
“As you wish.”
When my sight is restored, I’m on Greg’s front porch. I’ve been here many times, always for the same reason. I have urges, and he can fulfill my needs.
Greg is stunned to see me when he opens the door. “Carol? My God, what—?” He shakes his head and takes hold of my arm.
He winces at the coldness of my skin, but I know from his thoughts that my appearance is right.
“God, Carol, how long have you been outside?”
“Too long,” I whisper, moving close to embrace him. I part my lips and suckle his hot skin. I start on the side of his neck and rise on the tips of my toes to suck a wet trail of kisses up to his earlobe.
Greg responds as he always does. He pulls me tight against him, and he grinds his already stiff hard-on into my mound.
He slams the door behind me, and then he shuffles back to his living room while he strips me out of my clothes.
He doesn’t strip himself. He can’t wait that long. He shoves down his sweatpants and sinks into me, hissing a gasp at the coldness he finds inside.
The feeling of heat inside me is glorious, but the horniness I felt before shifts to hunger with sudden speed.
My labia split above my mound, and when Greg sees this, he tries to pull away from me. I take hold of his arms, smiling at my lover as the split in my body lengthens. It grows until I can fit Greg’s spasming torso inside the dark hollow.
I can feel my thorns now, and they grow long before I snap the trap shut. Greg’s head, arms and legs flop away from me, each producing a vulgar crunch that I revel in. My body convulses and distorts as I chew the hot corpse.
Funny; judging from his clothing and his lack of skill in interior design, I never would have guessed that Greg had such impeccable taste.
I turn off the lights and eat the rest of my former employer, saving the head for last. Then I spread myself thin to clean his blood from every surface.
No one will ever know what happened to Greg. Like so many others in Bedlam, his absence will be another unsolvable mystery, adding to the morbid pull of the town.
I don’t see the closet monster again. I don’t need to. He’s taught me enough that I know how to get home without being seen.
The voices are whispering to me. The same voices that started me on this path are no longer alien. They are my family, and I’m one of the shadow people now.
I am what goes bump in the night, and in due time, my legend will be just another attraction to pull people into my town, into my trap.
Zoe E. Whitten lives in Milan her husband and two cats. She describes writing as her hobby, but has put enough hours in over the last few years that it may safely be called an obsession instead. She is an avid fan of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi, and her writing fuses elements from each genre into her weird fiction amalgams.
To read more of Zoe’s amazing – and free – fiction, visit her website
