The creature charged across the porch and plowed straight through the railing, forcing Eric to dive out of the way.
At first glance, he thought the thing was some kind of centaur. It had a long, beast-like lower body with four legs and an upper torso with two arms and a round head. But as he rolled away from it and rose to his knees, he saw that it was neither half-horse nor half-man. It was much smaller than a horse, for starters. More like a large goat. It didn’t have hooves, but rather strange, monkey-like feet and a thick, muscular tail that beat the ground behind it with bone-shattering force. Its upper body was the size of a child, but with big, powerful arms and huge, bony fists. It had no hair and its face looked like some kind of bald rodent, with huge, protruding front teeth, tiny, black eyes and almost no visible nose.
It was also female, if its flat, flopping breasts were any indication.
This was almost certainly a part of Mistress Janet’s bizarre collection of alien monsters. But what was it doing here, of all places?
But now that he was thinking about it, didn’t she say something about coming back here to give him a present? Was this what she was talking about? This was the nasty little surprise she wanted him to find when he found his way out of the basement?
It made sense, really. It was no different than opening those cell doors while he was in the middle of the hallway, just to see him use his “powers.” She probably hoped to stick around and watch him kill the thing.
Instead, she must’ve locked the thing in the house in hopes that he’d find an excuse to come back.
She was seriously starting to piss him off.
The monster turned toward him and hissed.
His thoughts snapped back to the task before him. He rose to his feet and began backing away, but there was nowhere to go. And he certainly wasn’t going to be able to outrun it.
Three shots rang out. The creature jerked and turned away from him, revealing three bloody holes between its shoulder blades.
Jay stood on the other side of it, his gun in his hands, staring back at the beast. The terror on his face was unmistakable and unsurprising, given that the thing shouldn’t still be alive. A human would’ve dropped dead with three bullet wounds into the back of the chest cavity, but this thing didn’t appear to be slowing down at all. It pounded the ground with its tail, let out a piercing shriek and then charged him.
He staggered backward and emptied the rest of his weapon into the creature’s chest, but it was no use. It was on him in an instant, seizing him with those powerful, bony hands. He barely had time to cry out before those razor-sharp teeth sank into his neck.
Panicking, Eric snatched up a broken piece of the railing and hit the creature as hard as he could. The effort was just enough to get the beast’s attention. It turned and snarled at him.
At this point, some of his senses returned to him and he dropped the board.
But it was too late to run away.
The monster rose to its full height and turned to face him, its chest full of oozing bullet holes, Jay’s blood dripping from its snout.
“Aw hell…”
The monster’s strange, monkey feet pawed at the ground as it prepared to charge him.
Thinking fast, Eric bolted toward the house and launched himself headfirst into the hole he’d made in the porch lattice.
The monster was far too big to fit in that hole as it was, but neither was it giving up without a fight. It dropped onto its knees and began to crawl in after him, pushing itself with its monkey feet and clawing at the dirt with its bony hands.
Eric wormed his way deeper under the porch, army crawling on his forearms, forcing himself all the way back to the bungalow’s foundation, cursing the whole way.
He didn’t think it was possible, but inch by inch the monster drew closer, its bony hands clawing at the dirt, its gore-covered face screeching at him.
He could hear its tail pounding against the earth behind it.
This was one of those bad situations he was always getting himself into.
He reached the wall and turned himself, flattening himself against the concrete. He was out of room, and yet the monster was still coming. It was almost on him and he had nowhere left to go.
Then his elbow struck something. He heard glass clink against concrete.
Hector’s letter.
The bottle.
He snatched it up, smashed it against the foundation and then turned and thrust the broken end into the monster’s face, plunging it deep into its eye.
The monster shrieked in pain. It thrashed. It clawed at its face.
Eric turned himself so that his shoulders were against the wall and drew his knees up to his chest. Then he thrust both his feet out and kicked at the end of the bottle. He missed. All he did was kick the beast in its protruding teeth, further enraging it. One bony hand clamped down on his ankle.
He cried out, frustrated and terrified as it began dragging him toward it. He only had one more chance at this. He aimed carefully with his free foot and kicked. This time, his aim was true. He struck the lip of the bottle squarely, driving the glass all the way into the monster’s brain.
Finally, it went limp.
His heart pounding, Eric yanked his foot free, plucked the letter out of the broken shards of glass and began the awkward task of crawling back out from under the porch.
He had to kick out a new hole to leave, since the monster’s huge butt was blocking the first one.
Finally free, he stood up, dusted himself off and then hurried over to check on Jay.
He was dead.
Well…for now, anyway.
He checked for a pulse. Not to make sure he was dead. That was fairly obvious. There was a nasty gash tore out of his neck and a vast amount of blood soaking into the grass beneath him. And his eyes were open, blank and glazed. But Jay had been dead twice before already today, and he was hoping that maybe there was a flutter of a pulse to indicate that he might be on his way back soon.
There wasn’t.
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
He couldn’t just leave him here. He was going to be waking up in a little while. (He hoped…)
And who knew what other surprises might be waiting around here.
He looked down at Hector’s letter. Then he looked at the broken back door and shattered railing. He glanced over at the tool shed where Hector once waited to be tortured and killed. He looked at the dead monster’s repulsive ass sticking out from under the porch. And then he looked back down at Jay’s lifeless body again.
I GUESS ALL YOU CAN DO IS WAIT FOR HIM TO WAKE UP?
“I guess.” But how long would it take? Minutes? Hours? He couldn’t remember how much time passed between the times when he saw him alive and dead. At most it couldn’t have been much more than an hour or two. Right?
He sighed and sat down on the porch steps. With no idea what else to do, he unrolled Hector’s letter and began to read.