Hide and Go Seek

4. Katie

It took a month. One, measly month, for her to find me. I knew out of state wouldn't be enough. I should've known I'd be first. I mean, Jacob disappeared off the face of the Earth, even the authorities couldn't find him when his parents filed a missing persons report. Caleb was always on the sea, and the twins were on another continent. I should've gone farther. But I held out hope. And now I was going to pay for it.

"Katie!! Please! I know you can hear me! I need help! Katie!!" I heard it yelling. I let out a sob. It sounded just like her. Before the possession. I felt that I could open the door and see Grim standing there, smiling as she scared me after another prank. I stayed put. When it didn't hear anything the voice changed, grew more guttural.

"Katie! You agreed to play! It's too late! I've found you!" I shudder. I hide in a kitchen cabinet choking back my scream. I try to quiet my breathing. I can't hear her, or it, anymore. All is quiet. That makes me even more scared.

Then a loud boom as it pounds something against my front door. I hear it splinter. Then footsteps. Walking around my house, looking for me. I stifle a sob. I am as good as dead.

It stops in the kitchen, listening I presume. I don't dare to breathe. Footsteps start and fade away. It's in a different room. I let out a quiet, shuddering breath. All at once I realize I've made a mistake.

The footsteps are thudding my way again. I hear my kitchen cabinets getting thrown open one by one, getting destroyed as they are flung back and ripped off their hinges. Then mine flies open. I expect it yet I still scream. 

I'm yanked out of my hidey hole. Then I see her. My old best friend. I let myself sob then, as I look at her ruined state. Even after a year of healing, she still looked like she was tortured, I'm still not certain she wasn't. She had scars curling up her cheeks to her jaw line where her skin had been ripped. The doctors stitched them back up as best they could but in some places her skin was pulled unnaturally taught where some acid mostly ate away more than other areas, causing a weird, shining, rippling effect that looked horrifying. The burns on her face had healed but you could still see the grooves lightly dug into her face and caught the light when it turned her head, like a grotesque light tunnel. Her eyes were the worst though. Only half of one remained. One eye was completely out, whether by doctors or it had been completely dissolved I didn't know, and showed the back of her socket. A light pink hole veined thickly with blue and red. The other eye had most of a pupil and some white left on the bottom, looking like a tipped half-moon.

I scream. I know it wasn't likely that anyone would hear me. Jade was at a party, and I didn't even know if we had neighbors that were under the age of eighty and could hear me shrieking in terror.

"Oh, shut up, would you?" It says calmly as it produces a knife from one of its pockets. I scream louder and back up until my back hits a wall. It sighs as if it's disappointing to have to do this the hard way. It rushes at me. My terror is so strong I stop thinking right. I stop screaming. It grabs my chin and forces me to look at its horrifying face. Grim's face.

 I jerk myself back and scream again. I feel it grab at my face again, its thumb going into my mouth digging at the soft flesh under my tongue, its fingers curling around under my jaw. I scream louder.

Then it raises the knife, and stabs me in the mouth, pinning my tongue to the bottom of my jaw. Pain overwhelms me. My sight flashes white before showing black dots everywhere. My mouth fills with blood and spills over my lips and down my throat, staining my shirt. There was too much blood. I was going to die. Even if it left me here and I was able to call the paramedics. I would lose too much blood by then. I start to cough, causing me to be in even more pain. A bolt of pain stabs at my brain and makes me dizzy. I hear maniacal giggling as I sink to the floor.

"Now that I've quieted you, Let's have a little fun shall we?" it giggles again. I don't move. I can't, it would hurt too much. It walks around the kitchen, moving out of my sight. Fear grips me in her cold hands as I wait for what happens next. When Grim comes into my sight she is holding a carving knife. I involuntarily swallow, sending a mouthful of my blood shooting down my throat. I gag and start to cough, making the wound in my mouth spark with pain, the knife still in it, stanching most of the blood flow. It rips it out. As the knife slides out I feel it scrape against my jaw bone and come out with a sickening, suction breaking sound.

I scream again as the blood pumps out freely. It sets aside the knife and wields the carving knife and it dawns on me. She is going to do what the knife does best; carve.

I try to run, but I topple over. I've lost too much blood already. I'm too dizzy to run away. I turn as it stalks up to me. It brings the tip of the knife to rest against my skin. It smiles, stretching the skin on her face to make her look even more gruesome. I let out a whimper. The knife plunges into me. It guides the thing down my leg and cuts shapes into me. She then moves to my arm and starts to skin me alive. I shriek as long pieces of my skin fall away and are added to a growing pile on the floor. I am sobbing screaming at it to stop.

After a while the pain slowly fades away. I closed my eyes soon after she started on my other arm. I don't want to know what I look like. My thoughts start slipping away. I am dying, I can tell. Blood loss maybe? I didn't care. I let myself float away, free of pain.