Charming Trickery

Chapter One

There was the sickening crunch as his ribs splintered. He blinked as blood spewed past his lips. My head exploded with pressure. Blood was pouring from around its fingers as it loomed over him. Its twisted skeletal fingers were buried into his chest up to the base of its bulbous knuckles, while its black saliva fell in strings onto his neck and face. It towered over him, a tall twisted thin grotesque tree of a creature, and its black eyes gleamed with feral malice. His chest heaved unevenly around the intruding fingers, while the pool of blood spread from underneath him and soaked the leaf litter and termite-eaten floor.

The only thing I could smell in the rot filled cabin was the sharp copper tang of the blood and decay. I felt as if I'd swallowed hot coals, my silent screams ripping at my throat.

"Run," he mouthed helplessly, his teeth and tongue stained crimson from the blood pooling in his lungs. It looked like he was drowning in cherry syrup. It didn't seem real. His blue eyes were unfocused and foggy, the black saliva corrupting them. It didn't look real. I'd never seen such gore with my own eyes. This couldn't be real.

Hands dug into my shoulders, the nails biting into my exposed skin. Someone else was screaming. I couldn't move my eyes. All I could do was look. it didn't feel real, I swear to god, it wasn't real. The light left his eyes, he shuddered and stilled.

He didn't move.

Then the room exploded into light.

——

I blinked and shook my head. Tall evergreen trees meshed and blended in my peripherals as my headlights left them to be swallowed by the heavy darkness. Turns out there's no street lights on the rural roads of Texas. To be fair, there wasn't a whole lot out here that needed illumination other than the occasional speed limit sign and side road entrance. My head pulsed painfully, in that way that makes your eyes feel like they'll pop and someone's hand is squishing your brain.

I unclenched my jaw and rubbed at one of my eyes. I was definitely on edge from driving for six hours. My ass hurt, my legs were cramped, and I was starving. Besides the physical discomfort, I was plagued by flashes of the gore filled dreams that'd been haunting me for the last few weeks. Now, I'd had violent and scary dreams most of my life. I'd usually forget about them by midday, but I couldn't shake that one. I'd had it twice in the last week. The first time was after I'd gotten the letter from Hiram Lebeaux. The second was last night just after I'd decided I would drive across the state and check out the possible inheritance of a small country house in the middle of a no-where town called Charming. Home to a post office, a single gas station, a bar, three churches, an elementary school, a small doctor's office, and a few farm plots.

Unincorporated and supposedly calm and quiet, Charming seemed like it might be the breath of fresh air desperately needed after having worked two jobs to try and pay rent in the city. Plus the letter said there was some money set aside for me to live off of if I moved into the house. That's not exactly something you can just say no to sanely.

I pulled myself out of the same swirl of thoughts I'd been white knuckling the steering wheel over for the entire drive. I needed to stay focused on the road. It was hard when my eyes burned like they'd never been moist in my entire life, but the energy drink I'd sipped on since the last gas station was doing its job mostly. My GPS let out a chirp and told me that the signal was about to cut out. I only had a few straight-shot miles and a single right turn until I got there, so it wasn't a world ending inconvenience.

Not until my phone dropped signal and my music cut out, leaving only the rattle of the shitty road beneath my tires as the backtrack to the start of my new life. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, but I've always been easily spooked so I ignored it. The air could change temperatures and it would happen. It didn't really mean anything. There definitely wasn't an ax murderer waiting in the deserted little house in the middle of the very thick woods at all. Definitely not.