I hope you enjoy this excerpt. Thank you for reading my work.
The storm erupted, becoming fiercer, a bolt of lightning exploded across the eerie sky, lighting the yard like a stadium. The growling thunderstorm stole her from her repose. She sat up, leaned against the headboard, wiped her face. A quick glance at the clock. 11:30 p.m. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, she realized a few items had been left outside by the pool. Good thing she was awake. The radio, the food, the glass, the magazines—everything must be drenched, she thought, and the food attracting bugs. Oh, how she hated bugs. They scared her senseless, she cringed at the sight of spiders, worms, cockroaches and maggots, all of them nasty, gross, unsightly. She had to stop herself from thinking about the creepy-crawlies; otherwise she would be up all night, utterly paranoid, staring around the room, praying she wouldn’t be devoured by some disgusting critter.
She grabbed a raincoat from the closet, draped it over her pajamas, and slipped her bare feet into sneakers. It would only take a few minutes to clean up the mess outside and then afterwards she would take a shower and go back to bed; she wanted to be prepared for her family’s return tomorrow. Downstairs she switched on the exterior light and stepped out onto the dimly lit deck. The lower section, the lawn in particular, was shrouded in darkness. She couldn’t see much of anything.
She suddenly jumped back, screaming shrilly. Panic froze her stiff as the heavy rain needled her face. Darren Beckwith was climbing the deck stairs. Eyes bulging like a man possessed, he crossed over the threshold of darkness into the faint light on deck. He hadn’t changed clothes; now his uniform was pasted to his body from the soaking rain, his baseball cap backwards on his head, revealing his stringy, sopping-wet hair, hair that concealed part of his menacing eyes and their intentions. He smiled at her, exposing his gruesome teeth. She scrambled back into the house and thrust the screen door closed. In a millisecond the chase became more intense. Darren covered ground fast; he moved with the grace and speed of a feline, despite his gargantuan size. Just as the screen closed, he tore a hole through the mesh with his bare hands; his sharp nails became daggers, slashing through, giving him an opportunity to grab her skinny wrist in his powerful palm. She shrieked at the touch of his slimy fingers. His strong hand, veins bulging, wrapped around her arm like a handcuff of wet flesh, and his long, dirty fingernails ripped into her skin, drawing blood. She attempted to jerk her hand away but Darren only squeezed harder—like a boa constrictor incapacitating its prey. With the other hand she managed to pull hard on the handle of the main door, crushing his knuckles between the frame and the jamb, breaking his grip. Trembling, breathing heavily, she turned the latch and heard it click in place. She ran to the bedroom. On the way she could hear Darren trying to break the door down.She jumped onto the bed to get to the phone, dialed 911, only to find the line had been destroyed. Downstairs the sliding glass doors shattered. The maniac was inside…
Temporarily secure in the bedroom, she threw the phone down in frustration. Fright battered her, forced her to think fast on her feet or die at the hands of a freak. She opened the window and estimated the drop: approximately thirty feet. She paused for a fraction of a second; she had so few seconds left before Darren burst through the bedroom door and maimed her. The flimsy door wouldn’t hold for long once his six-foot-plus, two-hundred-fifty–pound body jack-hammered it. She leaned out the window and gauged the drop again, and at the same time one question haunted her thoughts: Why didn’t she follow her instinct to file a complaint against this psychotic? Infuriated with herself, all she could do in the heat of danger was face the reality—she was on death’s doorstep.
Darren barreled into the bedroom door with his shoulder, exerting the force of a human ram, separating the molding from the frame, the door cracking down the middle, weakening the foundation. He failed to break in, however, and rage consumed him. His deep, harsh breathing was like that of a seething, salivating monster—his destiny in the wicked world of miscreants. A changed man, a man eager to inflict pain and suffering, he rammed the door relentlessly, each lunge getting him closer and closer to his petrified target. Five more times he threw his full weight at the door—No access. He stopped. Shoulder pulsing with pain, he rubbed the wounded area. A few deep breaths recharged him. He moistened his lips with his tongue, turned, faced the wall and punched a basketball-sized hole in the sheetrock. Scraps rained down on the floor, dust was airborne, the impact spreading cracks from floor to ceiling, violence heightening his thirst, his hunger, his savagery. He submerged himself in the pain and the release. He wanted more, needed more, would settle for not a fraction less. He stepped back a few feet and kicked the door with his oversized work boot. The hinges parted from the jamb, the lock broke into pieces, wood shavings sprayed across the room.
His frightened victim braced herself on the window frame, her fingers clinging to the ledge, twenty-five feet the balance between life and death. She cried out as her grip faltered; her body broke free. Who could hear her searing cries for help? Not a soul.
Darren charged the window, he watched her writhing below. He smiled. He wanted to savor this moment, the sights and sounds of her misery. He thrived on her piercingly loud screams, and the way she clenched her leg, and the way she couldn’t stop herself from tossing and turning in the grass as total anguish overwhelmed her. The rain dowsed every inch of her body, her life now in an abject state of calamity.
Darren wet his lips like a wild beast, anticipating the sensation of her tender skin squashed underneath his thick fingers as they coiled around her skinny neck. Maybe once she was dead he would bring to life his wildest dreams, giving her what he knew she needed, what her husband had never given her because he wasn’t man enough. Darren left the bedroom and chased after her, to end it all, to fulfill his duty to all brutally scorned men. His adrenaline spiked from sheer excitement, sent him to a place beyond his most profound otherworldly hallucinations.
She had been limping through the woods, the silhouettes of equidistant trees keeping her path in focus. The stabbing pain in her legs felt as if a long hot poker had been driven into her shins and was coming out through her knee caps. Her injuries were extensive, her pain severe. But she kept moving, though the throbbing increased with each step she took, absorbing valuable oxygen she needed to scream for help. She would have to shout loud enough to be heard over the heavy downpour and the air conditioners roaring in unison on the block. Spots danced in her head as she faded in and out of awareness, her life dwindling before her eyes with blurring speed.
She looked back and saw that Darren had come down to the first floor. He could have gotten out of the house and caught up to her as fast as he had broken in, but he knew she could neither outsmart him nor outrun him, not in her enfeebled condition. She could see him staring at her through the kitchen window. He readjusted his cap, leered at her like a wolf eyeing its next meal, eyes wide and intimidating, and then made his way from the kitchen, through the demolished sliding doors to the bottom of the deck stairs, where he sped up his pursuit.
Gimping, stumbling, nursing her leg, his victim endured, waves of intense agony hampering her escape, making her dizzier, more nauseous. Having entered thirty feet of the pitch-black forest, she noticed a light far away, obscured behind a barricade of evergreens dividing the development. By taking deep, controlled breaths she tried to stabilize her erratic breathing. Despite her meager energy, she let out the loudest scream her lungs could generate. She shouted for help with such force it made her head ache. Ahead a few feet, a boulder impeded her path.
Certainly very intense. But even with Darren being a crazed monster in human form, some of the obstacles didn't work well and a bit repetitious. She doesn't have a name and that might help alleviate all the shes, but that's your choice.
Darren certainly is more dangerous than any of those other phobias. I assume later she wakes up from the dream.
The impossibility of Darren turns me off. I would prefer he was a real man/monster. You seem to allude to that with his inability to do some things a monster would find easy.
Grab those side-irons, saddle up and join former Civil War sharpshooter Luther Henry for a ride into pure terror, western-style…think ‘Wild Wild West’ meets ‘The X-Files’.
Pray for the light. Pray that you last that long. The Long Hour Before Light is a classic collection of Horror tales, re-mastered by Champagne Book Group
Did you ever wonder what happened after the Archangel Michael through the demons out of heaven? Let one of them guide you through the origin of evil in the world.
