Creatures

Part 3: Skin and Bone

"RUN!" Alex screams at the top of her lungs as she drops everything she was carrying to take off into a sprint. The rest of us are hot on her heels, our feet hammering against the forest floor. The creatures continue letting out vicious growls that sound more like dying hounds than anything else. I don't really get a chance to get a good look at the things following us. They have some sort of pale white skin and awkwardly bent limbs. They gracefully run through the vegetation on either side of the path having no struggle whatsoever keeping up with our full speed sprinting. They run with their arms and legs and have their backs hunched over. They have a similar build to that of a scrawny human, yet they manage to appear as far from human as possible.

Just as it started to seem like our adrenaline was pushing us ahead of the creatures, a group of them hurl out of the tree line onto the path ahead of us. Alex comes to a sudden halt before diving into the thick forest to her right. There wasn't the slightest bit of a trail once we ventured away from the main path, only the cluttered forest floor. All four of us follow slightly different routes while running and dodging protruding roots, rocks, fallen logs and low tree branches.

The bruises and scratches I receive from the thorn's roots and other forest debris mean nothing to me right now. I know they are there but nothing is settling in my brain, I am set on one thing and one thing only. Run. If I were to fall or stumble I could end up dead or tortured or eaten alive.

"Here! There is something over here!" Kate screams through the ragged breaths of her running. I turn towards the direction of her voice and within seconds I escape the dense forest and enter a small clearing to find our saving grace. There is a small run down cabin with torn and crumbles shingles on the roof. The wood on the bottom has been rotting for 30 years at minimum and the dull wood siding has had its fair share of weathering.

Riley bursts through the trees to my left with a loud sigh of relief, she turns to me and smiles. Together we take off toward the thick wooden door that has been left slightly ajar. We barge into the cabin and slam the door behind us. My shaking hands struggle to work the lock on the back of the door, but I manage to turn the stiff deadbolt.

I turn away from the door to see that the cabin is roomier than I had expected. Most of the space comes from the lack of furniture. The area in front of the door was once a kitchen and living area. There are couch remains to my left, and a mess of a table right in front of me, legs and splintered wood tangled together like a cat's ball of yarn. To my left is a kitchen with a stove, a counter that's still mostly intact and a small sink. By the sink Alex and Kate are bent over trying to catch their breath. All of us just stand there panting for a few moments.

"What the hell just happened?" I say as soon as my breath returned to a semi normal pattern.

"Last time I checked we were just chased down by some sort of vicious pack of creatures." Alex sarcastically replies.

"How 'bout we see what's in this place?" Riley suggests from behind me. Alex and I mumble in agreement, but Kate keeps staring out the window.

"They are coming out." She announces quietly when we all give her expectant looks. The rest of us join her around the sink where a medium sized window is set in the wall. I gasp when I see what was chasing us.

Slowly inching from the treeline are three of the creatures. The things are basically a mess of skin and bone, they have pale white skin that's pulled tightly against their bony forms. Their backs are hunched over as they hobble around on all four limbs. Their arms bend back giving them the appearance of being dislocated whereas the legs are similar to a monkeys. They don't appear to have any ears or hair. As one of them turns to look at our window I get a good look at their big cloudy eyes, stretched lipless mouth and flat nostrils that must serve as a nose. I have never seen anything as horrid as these things, they don't even seem real.