Hide

For the moment you're frozen to the spot, trying to fight the blind panic that's flowing through you. Your hands are still clamped over your mouth to stop the screams you want to give, and your body trembles with fear. From downstairs the liquid growling sounds continue, interspersed with the sounds of something heavy being moved.

Like a body being moved, you think. Like Jack's body being moved so that whatever is feeding on him has better access. As the thought rams through you, you start to whimper behind your hands, then will yourself to silence. You must do something, you tell yourself, you cannot just stand here until whatever is downstairs comes to find you in the open. Part of you want's to run, but you're terrified of going down the stairs, of entering that room where the growling noise comes from, of trying to run past it to the basement stairs and the window of escape.

Perhaps you can hide, you think. Perhaps when it's done with Jack it will be satisfied. Perhaps it will leave. Perhaps you will be safe. With that thought you tiptoe through the open door, and hide behind the boxes in a corner. There is a dusty tarpaulin there that looks like it's been used as a painter's drop cloth, and you lay on the floor and pull it over yourself, hoping that if anyone....if anything...sees you it will mistake you for garbage in the semi-darkness. You can see the darker shadow of the open door between a gap in the boxes, and you glue your eyes to it, biting your thumb to stop your teeth from chattering.

You listen hard, still hearing the liquid snorting and growling from downstairs, then after a few more moments silence falls. You strain to hear, hoping for the sounds of something leaving, trying to stop yourself from trembling in fear, but hear nothing for a long few minutes.

You're trying to build up your courage to try to find a way out, when a noise sets your hair on end again.

The sounds of something moving downstairs. Heavy, slow, deliberate footfalls, the sound of some large animal. It's getting closer, from the sound of it, near the foot of the stairs. Your mind is willing it to go away, to leave, to not come up stairs.

Then you hear two sounds that drive a nail of panic through you, making you clamp your hands over your mouth to stop yourself from screaming.

A deep, feral snuffling, like an animal scenting the ground.

And the sounds of heavy footfalls on the stairs. Footfalls that combine with with a clicking noise with each step.

A clicking that sounds like claws on wood.