Moments before midnight

BLEED

John moved cautiously through the dark, stale air of the warehouse, each step slow and deliberate. His flashlight's beam swept the floor, revealing nothing but shattered glass and rusted remnants of a long-abandoned space. His instincts were heightened; he could feel something was wrong. Something was here with him, just waiting for him to get close enough.

The calmness that had settled over John was a boon. Now, at least, he knew what he was dealing with. He stepped toward the ominous inky blackness he'd been eyeing before, moving into its murk. His malfunctioning cell phone's light did little to illuminate the space. Between the hulking machines and tangled cables, he made his way toward the far side of the wall. There was nothing but an empty space—bare concrete covered in dust, cobwebs, and rusted steel debris.

Another quick scan confirmed what his gut already told him: nothing here. He turned his eyes back toward the machines. Some of them bore gnarled claw marks, deep gouges in the metal. Then he heard it—a sound that cut through the silence like a whisper in the dark.

Bounce... bounce... bounce.

A soft, almost playful rhythm. The sound echoed across the vast, empty space. John's pulse quickened, his eyes narrowing as he watched a small, bright red ball bounce out of the shadows. It rolled lazily across the floor, coming to rest at his feet. The faded markings on its surface hinted at some old company logo, barely legible now.

This was clearly an attempt to taunt him, but he told himself it wouldn't work. He stared at the ball for a moment, then tapped it away with his foot, letting it roll back into the darkness where it came from.

There weren't many other places something could hide in this room, and he knew it was here. His senses prickled with awareness, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He made a beeline toward the other half of the room, past the looming machines, aiming for the corner by the boiler.

Before he'd made it halfway across, a voice cut through the stillness.

"Mommy... Daddy... help me, please."

The sound was unmistakable. A child's voice, crying out from the darkness. John's steps faltered, and he turned sharply to his left, the voice drawing him like a magnet. He moved quickly in that direction, toward the far end of the room. He could swear it came from the corner.

But as the words registered in his mind, he stopped dead in his tracks. The exact same words. The exact same tone. The exact same plea.

It wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

John slowed to a walk, the sense of urgency bleeding away as his mind worked furiously to process the oddity of it all. And then, again, the voice rang out. No difference in pitch, cadence, or desperation. The same plea, looping endlessly.

He reached the edge of the room, passed the last machine, and swung the light to his left ,

His light cut through the gloom, and then he saw it—huddled in the corner, crouched over a small, lifeless body.

The creature's gaunt, emaciated frame was bent low, limbs unnaturally long, its fingers so grotesquely stretched that they wrapped completely around the body of the child it held. Its skin was pale, sickly, almost translucent in the dim light, veins like twisted black vines visible just beneath the surface. Its face was a horrifying mess of blood and gore, with bits of flesh clinging to its sharp, jagged teeth. It had been feeding, and the sight of it sent a wave of revulsion through John's gut.

Then it moved.

The milky white eyes of the creature slowly lifted from its feast, locking onto John. For a moment, the two stared at each other in the eerie silence of the room. And then, as if it knew something John didn't, the Childersnatch's lipless mouth twisted into a wicked grin, blood still dripping from its teeth. A piece of the child's torn clothing dangled from its maw. The child had been dead for a while—perhaps a small mercy, but it did little to lessen the horror of the scene before him.