Clint didn’t see Danny’s mother. No one here but us. And then he doubted that thought.
He glimpsed something in the mirror,
dark and dirty and smudged by some smoky quality, but he was sure he could see a figure. Something without a defined shape cast a dark reflection across the mirror. It was as if the smudges on the mirror came to life and moved and mixed together to form something large and amorphous. It swayed ever so gently. Clint wasn’t sure if it was his own imagination that was moving it or if it was all real.
He felt the others’ bodies all come together, pressing against him. They pushed themselves into a mass in the corner of the room.
The heat and heaviness enveloped them, pulling them to the floor with invisible hands, into a heap of tired bodies. Clint clung to his friends and they to him as they sunk to the floor. They lay helpless in the corner, and Clint could feel someone’s fingers gripping him so tight he was sure he’d bruise. But he didn’t care. The proximity to his friends was the only safety raft in the sinking ship. A heavy feeling, like cement bricks tied around his ankles, pulled at his consciousness and he was sure he would pass out. A taste ran across his tongue, acrid and bitter, and he thought it must be what fear tasted like.
Clint fought the heaviness as he watched Danny reach out to greet a shadow as if it were someone familiar. It moved toward him, peeling from within the mirror. Claws materialized first, working across the wooden frame. They scratched along the wood before they finally found purchase and sunk in. As the form pulled forward, its head inchoate, black and opaque as it pressed through, followed by a long, smoky trail which coalesced into a torso and body. Clint wavered, his mind not able to comprehend what was unloading in front of him, what was making its way toward his best friend. His bowels tightened and clenched, and he hoped he wouldn’t lose their contents. Nothing he’d ever seen in his short life had prepared him for this, to understand this horror, this evil thing before them. Even through all the stories about this house, they were always just that. Stories. But this was real.
Sounds of tiny wings began to flutter. First, one or two sets, then what seemed like hundreds. Clint couldn’t see what was making that sound, but he knew it was probably better that way.
“Mom,” Danny said, as the thing moved closer to him.
Clint wanted to call out to warn him, to get to his feet and save him, or run away and hide from what was about to happen, but his body wouldn’t obey the simplest commands. He felt like he was trapped in one of those nightmares where he needed to scream but no sound would come, in which he needed to run but his feet were glued in place.
Petrified still, by fear, the oppressive heat, by the evil of the room, Clint and the rest of them could only watch in dread.
As Danny reached out, the smoky figure pulled up over the foot of the bed, with hands first, if they were hands at all, and then dragged the rest of its vague form over the dingy mattress. It slithered onto Danny’s chest, like a serpent, and crouched there, now more like an ape. It reached its smoky tendrils down, clasped the sides of his head and leaned forward, its wispy shape bending and folding unnaturally until its head was over his.
Danny tensed his feet and shot straight up off the bed as he bellowed, the rest of his body pinned down. From his position, Clint couldn’t see what was happening to Danny. All he could see was the black cloudy back of the creature.
The cries didn’t last, though, as the figure shifted and bent further over Danny’s body until their foreheads seemed to be touching. Danny’s agonizing howl shriveled and tightened as if he were choking on something.
The darkness oozed forward. With each touch, Danny’s body sizzled, and smoke billowed out of his pores.
It’s burning him alive.
Clint swallowed down a scream, not wanting to draw any attention from the creature. He looked away, to his friends next to him.
Reid’s eyes bulged from their sockets.
Tears streamed down Heather’s face as she watched, frozen.
Alex slammed his eyes shut.
And then the heat and heaviness of the air finally won and pulled them all down. Clint fought to stay awake, struggling to force his eyes to stay open. He watched each of his friends give over to it, their bodies going limp as they drifted into unconsciousness. He bit down hard on his lip, hoping the pain would keep him awake. Blood trickled down his chin, and for a moment he thought he might make it. But he lost the battle.