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As John leaped out the window head first, his right foot was
caught in a vice-like grasp. It was inhumanly cold, colder than the saturated
night, colder than the blood running through his veins. It was like having his
foot encased in a block of ice.
Another squeal issued from within the bathroom. It had a jarring
metallic resonance like a piece of broken machinery.
He dangled several inches from the porch roof where Sandy was
watching in horror. He clawed at the rain-washed shingles, ripping some from the
rooftop but couldn’t get enough of a grip to pull himself free. He slashed
open one hand on shards of broken glass as he scratched and clawed and pulled.
The security lamp above the garage thirty feet away cast a washed
out, silver-yellow pool of light onto the porch roof, but shadows still draped
the bathroom window concealing the creature.
Like a suspended Houdini trying to free himself from a bondage of
chains, John twisted and turned and kicked and bucked trying to loosen its grip.
He had never moved more frenetically in his entire life. I’m going to die, he
thought. Right here, right now.
During his explosive frenzy, he felt a jarring pain as something
pulled from his foot, and he sprang free landing, head first, onto the porch
roof.
My God, did It tear off my foot? Am I going to bleed to death?
In an agonizing panic, he quickly felt the bottom of his leg as he
blinked back sweat, tears and rain that mingled and burned his eyes. To his
delight, the foot was still intact, though he was bleeding and in extreme pain.
The only thing missing was his sock.
He stood up gingerly and tested his ankle even as Sandy was
quickly running to him.
She steadied him on her shoulders.
He inspected a sharp pain in his left hand, then carefully but
quickly pulled a quarter-size piece of glass from his palm. It was fairly deep
but wasn’t life-threatening. With pressure applied to it, the laceration would
soon clot, but it still stung.
Whatever was in the bathroom now wanted badly to be out on the
roof with John and Sandy. With a loud crash more glass and debris showered down
on them as heavily as the storm in progress. What used to be the bathroom window
was quickly becoming a double-wide door.
“We gotta get to the car!” John yelled over the noise and
storm.”
They hobbled over to the edge of the porch and surveyed the steps
and grass twelve feet below.
Sandy looked at John disconcertingly.
“Now’s not the time to be timid,” he said loudly.
“What about you? Your foot?” she shouted in reply.
He quickly looked back over his shoulder. Two effulgent, mercuric
eyes stared vehemently out at them from the gaping hole on the side of the
house. They were squinting, smiling. They looked like the slits in an
over-stoked furnace grate. One long, tan-gray-green leg stepped through the gash
in the bathroom wall. It was smooth but had a rotten, dark-splotched appearance
to it. It looked built for strength, like the talon-tipped leg of an eagle.
“Right now, my foot is the last thing that needs worrying
about,” he replied. “Go!”
Sandy steadied her shaking feet at the edge of the roof and
jumped, aiming for the rain-sodden grass. When she hit, her legs slipped out
from under her, jarring her tailbone on the ground but otherwise survived the
jump well. She turned and looked up at John.
“Run for the car!” he shouted.
“But--.”
“I’m right behind you.”
She hesitated then turned and dashed for the Nissan.
The temperature had dropped considerably since the storm began.
The rain was cold, numbing. John could see his panting breaths, plumes of white,
ascending like a departed soul. He shivered but not because of the rain.
The thing had to turn sideways to try and fit through the hole,
though even at that angle way it still too large to squeeze its massive frame
all the way out. That’s when John saw the dark outline of what looked like
wings protruding out from between its shoulder blades. They were leathery and
bat like but misshapen and too small on its immense trunk. It tried to face
forward jamming its body through the too-small opening. The splintered wood
gouging its bare flesh didn’t seem to affect it in the least.
With a little under half its body out of the hole, the light from
the garage now caught its hideousness. It’s face was greasy slick with a
oversized cranium tapering down to a pointed chin. It had no lips, only a long
slit where the mouth was. Its quicksilver eyes seemed to hover in their sockets,
blazing with a fire of unquenchable anger and unspeakable evil. And its nose was
no nose at all, only a slight mound of flesh with two narrow, vertical slits.
Its hands were humanoid with four digits and an opposing thumb, only they were
much larger with fingers incredibly long and remarkably undelicate in their
movement. The thing’s hulking body appeared even more massive in the wan
light, though some of it was still consumed in shadow. It was as heavily
constructed as a Mack truck and was as corroded-gray and overwhelmingly foul as
a rotting corpse. Its entirety was hairless and splotched with puke-yellow sores
on its upper body. It was covered with a glistening coat of some sort of
petroleum jelly-like substance and on its slick, mottled scalp and veins bulged
and pulsed in anger because it couldn’t easily get through the opening. The
thing exposed a double-rowed, multi-fanged sneer that reminded John of the
well-honed teeth of a radial saw. Its slitted mouth was stretched impossibly
wide, almost completely separating the upper and lower portion of its face.
The demon-thing retracted itself and began pounding out more wood
and siding and what little glass there may have been left from the window.
Without even letting himself give another moment’s thought to
his injury, he turned and jumped from the rooftop, disappearing into the silvery
sheets of rain.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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