Earth. Fire. Blood.
A Horror Story
Welcome to my little corner of the internet! I’m so glad you’re here. Below you’ll find a short horror story. I recommend reading it with the lights on 😉.
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Six trees.
That was the distance between Claire and freedom.
She clutched her necklace with one hand, a family heirloom. Something reassuring in the night.
Behind her was a vast forest, shrouded in darkness thanks to the lack of moonlight. Behind her as well was the thing she desperately sought to stay ahead of.
It had awoken.
No, that was the wrong word to use.
She had awoken it.
Her pursuer moved slowly, but that was not due to tiredness. She knew firsthand how fast it could be.
There was a sense of triumph, of inevitability to its movements. To the creature, the outcome had already been determined; now it and Claire were just playing out their parts.
Claire left a bloody handprint against the tree trunk as she hobbled forward.
Five trees left.
“There are things best left untouched in the forest.”
Claire remembered the warning inside the white welcome folder that was waiting on the coffee table when she arrived at the vacation house: “By staying here you assume all risk, but we’d prefer you leave on your own two feet instead of in a body bag. Helps with our reviews 😉”
Everyone knew that the forest was “haunted”, and the owner of the house played it up to full effect. That was half the fun of the location, after all.
The hot tub didn’t hurt either.
A gurgling sound disturbed Claire from her reverie. She could hear the creature’s excited breathing as it moved closer. It had been quite some time since its last meal.
Four trees left.
Claire had often been forced to contemplate death, but only as a far away thing. Death came for the old, the unlucky, the unprepared.
Now death was less than ten feet away from her, following the trail of blood she left from various wounds.
Blood itself is odorless. But if you expose it to the air, the iron in the hemoglobin produces a sharp, coppery smell.
The creature hunting Claire was eyeless, but its other senses worked very well.
Her watch buzzed, briefly drawing her attention. It looks like you’re on a walk. Would you like to record it? She let her arm drop to the side and continued on her way.
Three trees left.
“You’ll know you’re close if cell service goes out unexpectedly.” A post from an online forum had given clues as to how she could find the creature. “Some sort of electromagnetic interference. That’s how it got its name”
The Silencer. Another internet legend that the gullible took seriously.
Her father had always shunned advice from those he deemed “addicted to conspiracies but unwilling to do anything about it.” He thought it was better to trust your own eyes and experience. Claire unfortunately did not yet have that luxury.
The forum was full of people corroborating sightings. Some even claimed to have encountered a “strange darkness in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.”
Every so often she would see a message from someone planning to investigate on their own.
That was always the end of their posting history.
Two trees left.
A circle drawn with chalk. A match. A knife.
The summoning ritual had been simple: earth, fire, blood.
She hadn’t expected it to work so quickly however.
The calcium carbonate in the chalk produced a bright white light as she tossed the lit match onto it.
Sprinkled blood from a self-inflicted cut along her hand caused the fire to change color briefly. From white, to red, and then to black. It seemed to pull in the surrounding shadows before going out.
What was left was another shadow, darker than the area around it. For a moment Claire thought the ritual had failed.
She moved closer to examine the pool of darkness. It had a watery appearance, the surface rippling inward as though someone had dropped a stone into a pool and then reversed time. The effect was mesmerizing; almost beautiful.
Sudden movement caught her eye. She saw a claw extend from the pool an instant before she felt it rip into the flesh of her leg.
She fell to the ground, a pained gasp escaping her lips.
Get up! her senses screamed. She rolled away from the creature, her necklace brushing the ground as she took a deep breath and then pushed herself to her feet.
That seemed like hours ago. She spared a glance at her phone; still no service, and it had only been 10 minutes since the chase began.
The forums had been right about the cell phone at least. She had to hope that the rest of the info she found was as reliable.
One tree left.
Claire paused for the briefest moment at this final tree, taking in the sight of the house around 30 feet away. It was funny to her how this location, which she had only arrived at yesterday, could already feel familiar.
She just needed to reach it.
The forest ended in a small grassy field that counted as the vacation house’s backyard. Claire moved as quickly as she could on her injured leg. Determination and fear warred with pain, and her world condensed into a series of individual seconds.
One strong step followed by a painful stagger. Another step, another stagger.
It was gaining on her.
Steam rose from the hot tub as she approached the wooden deck. Her wounded leg was nearly useless as she dragged it along. She spared a glance behind her; the creature was less than five feet away now.
It remained an oily puddle, but had grown in size as it followed her. She grabbed the handrails to help pull herself up the three steps to the deck, then collapsed to the ground, her leg refusing to carry her any further.
The creature slithered up slowly behind her, its mass consuming one step at a time as it continued to grow. She saw claws emerge again, one still slick with her blood.
“Here goes nothing,” she said, then grabbed the closest edge of the hot tub and pulled herself in.
In seconds the clear water was tainted with blood. She gritted her teeth and inhaled as the hot water stung her wound. The sharp pain helped to clear her mind slightly, and she turned around to watch what the creature would do next.
It paused at the edge of the hot tub.
“No sightings have been reported on rainy days.” The other repeated claim that Claire had gleaned from her search online. This, combined with other, older tales, had led her to this final part of her plan.
“Come on,” she said. “I’m right here!”
The creature seemed to be at war with itself. There was a hesitancy mixed with the hunger. It shied back slightly.
Claire was beginning to panic now. She would never get a better chance than tonight.
So she pretended to faint.
She let herself fall backwards against the wall of the hot tub, pretending to close her eyes and counting on the creature to not recognize her ploy.
Claire felt pride mixed with an instinctual, animal terror as the Silencer slipped into the water with her. There was a hissing sound and a small amount of it’s shadow-bulk evaporated. Its extended claws were still razor sharp however.
Her heart felt as though it might explode from her chest. How close would it need to get? The water seemed to be slowing the creature, but did not stop it entirely. She forced herself to stay still despite every instinct yelling at her to move, run, get away from the nightmare.
Two feet away. Blood dripped from the end of one claw.
One foot away. The creature slowly raised its shadow arms higher above the water, preparing to strike.
Claire’s necklace started glowing.
She opened her eyes and ripped the piece of jewelry from around her neck, holding it in front of her. The creature paused mid-slash, as if forcefully held back.
She could sense a new sensation coming from it: fear.
Claire slowly moved closer to the beast. Weakened by the water, parts of the oily blackness began to drift away from the main mass, seemingly being drawn into the necklace. The more darkness it absorbed, the brighter it glowed, until she had trouble staring at it directly.
Before she knew it, the creature had disappeared completely, and she collapsed back against the edge of the hot tub. Her leg was still throbbing, and the necklace felt more solid than before. Claire suspected that if she had placed it on a scale that it would not have actually weighed more than at the beginning of the night. All the same there was a heaviness to it, like a house that had been the scene of a grisly crime.
Claire closed her eyes in truth this time as the necklace began to dim. It was finished.
Proud of the work she had done tonight, she now looked forward to presenting her trophy to the others next week.
The Silencer. A perfect way to start her collection.
She hadn’t chosen to be born into a family of bounty hunters, but she sure as hell meant to prove that she belonged.
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If you enjoyed this, you might also like some of my longer stories. Here’s a link to Part 1 of Going Home:
I loved the build up, the tension and the way you developed the character of the landscape, the Silencer and Claire all at the same time!