Bruised 🎈Eddie Kaspbrak Fanfiction 🎈

°🎈8🎈°

🎈CHAPTER 8🎈

*•°Vanessa's POV°•*

I pushed the front door open with a soft, hesitant creak, holding my breath. The house within was a tomb, steeped in a silence so deep it felt like a physical presence. No blaring TV, no heavy footsteps, no hateful voice yelling my name. My uncle must still be working late, and Henry was undoubtedly out with his gang, painting the town with his particular brand of terror. A sigh of pure, unadulterated relief escaped my lips. For now, the house was mine, and my fragile, newfound happiness was safe.

I moved through the familiar rooms, the floorboards groaning under my weight like old bones. I immediately set to the chores Uncle Butch had scrawled on a list for me-scrubbing, dusting, vacuuming. The mindless work was a welcome distraction, a way to keep my hands busy and my thoughts, for once, blissfully quiet and focused on Eddie. I finished just as the sun began to bleed orange and purple across the sky, casting long, distorted shadows through the windows.

Needing air, I slipped out the back door and into the field that bordered our property. The tall grass whispered secrets to the evening breeze. I lay down in it, the blades tickling my cheeks and arms, and stared up at the vast, darkening canvas of the sky. I closed my eyes, letting the wind caress my skin, losing myself in the gentle, rustling symphony around me.

My mind, of course, drifted back to him. To Eddie. To the stunned, breathless joy on his face. To the way his hands had trembled in mine. I would never, ever have dared to hope. Not with his mother looking at me as if I were something she'd scraped off her shoe. But his words echoed in my mind: She doesn't have to know. For now, I clung to that. I wrapped the memory of his smile around me like a shield.

A sound cut through the whispering grass.

It was a low, wet, tearing noise. Like roots being pulled from sodden earth.

My eyes snapped open. The peaceful evening was gone, replaced by a sudden, primal stillness. The hair on my arms stood on end.

The sound came again, closer this time. A dragging, squelching weight moving through the grass toward me.

I sat up instantly, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I scanned the swaying sea of green, my breath catching in my throat. I wished, with every fiber of my being, that I had kept my eyes shut.

It emerged from the tall grass not ten feet away.

It wore the tattered, mud-stained suit my father was buried in. One side of its face was still recognizably his, though waxy and sunken. The other side was a ruined mess of dirt and decay, the eye a milky, unseeing orb. Soil dribbled from its slack jaw as it spoke, its voice a grotesque parody of the one I remembered, guttural and choked with grave dirt.

"Nessa... why did you let me die?"

A choked sob escaped me. This couldn't be real. I squeezed my eyes shut, a frantic, silent prayer on my lips. It's not real. It's not real. It's not-

I opened them.

It was closer. It had dragged itself several feet forward without making a sound. The smell hit me then-a sweet, cloying rot, mixed with the damp earth of a freshly turned grave. My stomach lurched.

"How could you, Vanessa?" it moaned, and the sound was full of an ancient, bottomless sorrow that clawed at my soul.

My entire body began to tremble violently. I could feel hot tears streaming down my face, but I was too terrified to even wipe them away. "It wasn't my fault!" I screamed, my voice cracking with a desperation I didn't know I possessed. "It wasn't my fault!"

It kept coming, repeating the same damning phrase, over and over, its voice rising into a screech that didn't sound human. "How could you? HOW COULD YOU?"

I clapped my hands over my ears, but the voice was inside my head, scraping at the inside of my skull. I crumpled forward, hiding my face between my knees, trying to make myself small, trying to disappear.

The voice changed. The sorrow was gone, replaced by a sinister, singsong lilt that froze the blood in my veins.

"My dear Nessa... why don't you come and float with me?"

I whimpered, pressing my knees tighter against my ears.

"Come on, Nessa..." it crooned, its voice now dripping with a predatory glee. "Come float with me. We all float down here."

I couldn't take it anymore. I scrambled backward, my hands slipping on the damp grass, and shoved myself to my feet. I turned to run, and a final, paralyzing glance over my shoulder sealed my terror.

It wasn't my father anymore.

Looming where the corpse had been was the clown. The same clown from Ben's pictures, but life-sized and infinitely more monstrous. Its porcelain-white skin was cracked, its head too large for its body. Its ruffed collar was stained a rusty, ominous red. Its grin was a horrifying rictus, stretching far too wide, lined with rows of needle-sharp, yellowed teeth. Thick, viscous saliva dripped from its maw, sizzling where it hit the grass. And its eyes-those horrible, jaundiced yellow eyes-locked onto me with a terrifying, intelligent hunger.

It took a step toward me, not with a drag, but with a predatory grace that was all wrong.

I ran.

I ran like I had never run before, blind with terror, my lungs burning. I didn't dare look back. I could hear it behind me-not footsteps, but a sound like grotesque, jingling laughter and the rustle of cheap satin, keeping pace effortlessly. I could smell its putrid carnival breath on the back of my neck.

I burst through the tall grass and onto the main road, my chest heaving, my legs threatening to give out. I spun around, ready to scream, ready to fight.

The road was empty. Silent. The field behind me was just a field, swaying gently in the evening breeze. There was no clown. No corpse. Nothing.

But the smell of rot and gasoline lingered in my nostrils.

I stood there, trembling uncontrollably, tears still streaming down my face. Home was no longer a sanctuary; it was the place where the walls had eyes and the past could claw its way out of the ground. I couldn't go back. Not alone.

I started walking, my body moving on autopilot, driven by a raw, animal need for light and people. I ended up at the park, under the weak yellow glow of a streetlamp. I curled up on a bench, pulling my knees to my chest, and kept my wide, terrified eyes fixed on the shadows between the swings and the slide. I would stay here, exposed and shivering, until my uncle's shift ended. Because going back into the silence of that house, into the memory of that voice, that face, that smile...

It wasn't an option. It was a death sentence.

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