Chapter Ten

The melancholy wailings coming from the thing in the pantry were animalistic, clamorous to the ears, a fusion of horror and pain.

Over the beating rain and thunder, I let the phone ring. I didn’t want to crawl ten feet across the room to answer it. Disturb whatever was in the house.

Maybe the loud clamoring of the phone would wake Zane.

I prayed. Hugged my knees to my chest. Waited until I couldn’t take any more, the jarring racket of the phone, grating. I stood, dashed across the room, yanked it up on its last ring.

There was heavy static, a bad connection. But I could hear something on the other end, someone talking through the white noise. Fighting to speak, I could hear a voice struggling on the line, as if it were being strangled.

The ghastly thing thrashed in the pantry thrashing, the walls of the house shook.

I turned back to the phone. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

I heard every other word, the muffled voice breaking up in fragments. “Help…me…David.”

Hearing my name sent chills through me. I shuddered, felt cold.

A briny scent of mold lingered from the edge of the pantry.

The creature was moving.

The door opened slowly, screeching on its hinges.

Panic set in and I was dizzy with fear.

“Who is this?” I yelled into the phone.

More static.

“David. Can you hear me?” The voice was familiar.

Hissing and groaning came from the pantry, the doors sliding open and closed.

“There’s something in the house,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

“Who is this?”

Something was moving in the doorway between the pantry and back door, and the sound of it was gut-wrenching as the sound skittered across the walls like an insect.

I was standing in the hallway, whispering into the phone.

I heard movement upstairs.

The bedsprings pinged under Zane’s weight as he shifted, turning from his left to right side in his usual sleep pattern. Being a light sleeper, he’d wake me in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I’d hear him grumble and shuffle across the room.

Now, I had the urge to shout to wake him up, but I didn’t want to draw the attention of whatever was in the kitchen.

The frightened voice on the line was rambling, their words muffled and then dying, thick with radio silence, as if taking a last breath.

“Hello?” I said, cupping my hand around the mouthpiece to keep from gaining attention.

“David.” It was female, frightened, and far away. She was crying, her panicked voice rising.

“Who is this?” I asked.

The answer came in broken syllables, sparking like popping embers. “Cheryl…help…me.”

In the pitch-dark of the kitchen, I felt movement at my back.

I pressed the phone to my ear, white noise crackling like a pinwheel of explosives. “Can you hear me?” A cold draft prickled the hair on my neck and curled around the bottom of my feet.

Cheryl was in trouble. I could hear it in her voice. “David.”

I shook violently, mumbling, screaming, “What do you want?”

I heard footsteps above me and then Zane calling out my name.

The hulking presence behind me held me in a trance. Cold. Decaying. Sickening. It seized me. I couldn’t move. I panicked, stricken with fear.

I closed my eyes as the burning stench of death enveloped me. Too scared to scream, I heard Zane running down the stairs, calling out my name.

When he got to me, I was lying on the floor, crying, moaning, and shaking.

“Jesus Christ!” he yelled, flipping on the hall light and then crouching next to me. “What the hell happened?”

I was too frightened to pull my hands away from my face. I didn’t want to see the terrifying presence of the dark figure in the light.

But when I opened my eyes, the only face I saw was Zane’s, staring down with wide, frightened eyes at me in my fetal position as I mumbled incoherently.

There was nobody in the room but us.