FROM THE DARKNESS COMES A SOUND.
It is one that I know too well: a bare foot squelching against the bathroom floor, painting a bright red footprint on the time-cracked tiles.
I lie paralyzed on my four-poster bed, unable to do anything but listen to the footstep, and then the pause, and then the inevitable next step as the monstrous figure drags itself from the stained enamel bathtub in the room adjoining mine. Blood squishing between skinless flesh and hardwood floor.
I’m staring at the ceiling of my cavernous old bedroom, veined with mysterious lines and cracks. Open windows like staring eyes are hung with white linen curtains billowing in the night breeze, and the floors creak at the slightest weight. Like they do now as the Flayed Man steps into my bedroom.
I try to lift an arm. My fingers shake; my hand rises an inch from the mattress but that is as far as I can move it. My body is made of lead. I am helpless. Unable to run. To hide.
I grit my teeth, summoning another ounce of strength, and am able to raise my head. There he is, framed by the bathroom door, an eerie green light shining from behind him, outlining his body as it unsteadily emerges from his space into mine. Thick blood oozes from the surface of his skinless carcass, where, in places, white bone protrudes from dark red bands of muscle. The orbs of his eyes bulge horrifically—there are no lids to hide them. A hole gapes where his nose should be, and the exposed teeth of his lipless mouth protrude like a jagged row of leaning, crumbling tombstones.
He takes another step, his head drooping slightly to one side as he staggers in my direction. He points his finger at me, raising it on a trembling hand as blood sloughs from his wrist and pools on the floor beneath his arm.
I try to scream but my throat doesn’t work—the choking sound I make is swallowed by the muffled terror filling the room like a fog. With renewed determination, I manage to push myself up to a sitting position and swing my leaden legs over the edge of my bed. My feet brush the floor. When I look back up, he has abruptly crossed the room and stands mere feet away.
He takes another step toward me, reaching, dripping. His bare eyeballs give him the grotesque appearance of surprise. A shrieklike groan comes from somewhere inside him, and that is the trigger that releases me from the paralyzing gravity that’s been weighing me down. As I catapult myself across the room, he lunges forward and grabs me, covering my arm with blood.
Jerking away, I struggle with the knob before throwing the door open and pitching myself into the hallway. To my left, a spiral staircase leads to the ground floor, and I fling myself down it, tripping as I go, leaning against the wall for support. I glance upward and the Flayed Man, though moving at a sepulchral pace, has suddenly advanced from my bedroom door to the landing at the top of the stairs. I hurl myself toward the front door. I grab the handle and pull with all my force. Nothing happens. It’s stuck.
I scream—my voice has returned—and slam myself ineffectively against the door. The Flayed Man is halfway down the stairs, leering at me, doing his shriek-groans as he leaves a trail of gore behind him. I give up on the door and glance around to see that the coat closet is ajar. It’s a futile hiding place but I take it anyway.
I scramble inside, pulling the door shut behind me, and crouch down. I push myself back until I feel the wall against my shoulders.
I know he will find me. My heart constricts as long seconds of terror-laden silence tick by, and then I hear his jagged nails scratch at the door handle. It catches. The door opens. As it widens a bony hand reaches in and scrabbles around, ripping at the coats, inches from my face.
I breathe in the coppery smell of blood and shudder from its raw stench.
The groping fingers reach my skin and grab, clawing my arm as I leap up and smash out of the closet and past the man. For some reason, I know the front door will be open now, and there it is, standing wide, waiting. I throw myself outside, running across the front porch, past the cast-iron chairs and white wooden swing and into the perfectly mown grass of the front yard. The ground is cold beneath my bare feet, and I shiver and fold my arms across my chest as I breathe in the heady smell of gardenias and wet earth.
I feel something trickling down my arm. Blood flows from the gash the Flayed Man scratched near my shoulder. A current of alarm runs hot through me.
I swing around to see him emerge from my house. There is no one around but him. No one to run to. No one to save me but myself. I cut across the lawn and up into the backyard, my feet crunching against dry pine needles as I enter the forest of evergreens that bordered our house.
The man appears at the corner of the house. I blink, and he is halfway across the backyard. The spiny leaves of the holly bushes tear my skin, leaving welts on my arms as I plunge deeper into the woods.
The Flayed Man’s shriek rings out from behind me, and I hurtle up over the top of the hill and back down the other side toward the crawfish stream. I’m getting ready to jump over a rotting log when I’m suddenly blinded by a flash of light. A tremor shakes the landscape, as if a bomb exploded. I am paralyzed with my body suspended in midair, midstride, as if God pressed pause and everything froze. A full second passes, and then I unstick and land on the other side of the log. The light has disappeared, but something weird has happened. It’s like I’m running inside a shimmering bubble. Inside the bubble, nothing has changed—I’m still scrambling down the hill toward the stream. But outside it I see other people . . . in other places.
A shantytown where a boy hides behind a broken window from a truck full of soldiers. A swimming pool, water green with algae, with a girl standing at its edge watching the floating body of a child. The inside of a creepy room, where someone is blindfolded and tied to a chair. A basement lit by a single, hanging bulb, a boy beneath it staring at a line of padlocked doors. A beach in what looks like a hurricane . . . torrential winds and rains and an empty bed sitting halfway out in the waves.
And, parallel to me, a field of long grass where a boy runs, limping along frantically like he too is being chased. He looks over and our eyes meet. He glances behind me and his eyes widen. As if on cue, the Flayed Man’s groaning shriek rings out, blinding me with terror.
I forget the boy and run for all I’m worth until suddenly before me stands a wall of dark, empty nothingness. The forest runs right up to the edge of it. The bleeding man gives one last cry as I fling myself face-first into the wall and my world goes black.