Look Behind You

Prologue

In a desolate town near Ameo, a girl was running frantically along an old road thick in fog. She was nursing a bleeding wound on her shoulder. A wide gash slowly trickles blood as she made her way across the old road. As her energy runs out, she tried to squeeze herself in a narrow alley on an obscure side on the left of the road. Wearing only a tattered shorts and a torn t-shirt, she ripped off a part of her shirt's sleeve and tried to self nurse the wound by damping the cloth over the wound. She nearly screamed in pain as the cloth touched her sore skin, tainting her torn sleeve in crimson red.

"I need to think! Think!"

She urged herself to walk and limp fast, hoping to lose whatever was chasing her. She saw an abandoned house at the end of the alley and luckily, the window was open. The girl felt the wind was changing in temperature again, so she took it as a cue to speed up. When she finally reached the window, she flopper herself in and groaned as she landed with a soft thud on the wooden floor. It was a modest home, the living and the dining room immediately visible  to her, realizing she landed beside the house's TV set.

The house smelled of dust with it's visible particles floating in mid-air. She panicked when she saw her blood made a clear trail along the alley. Cursing herself, she crawled carefully on the floor careful enough not to expose her head on the open window. She finally reached the steps of the stairs beside the dining room. It groaned under her weight, making it clear that the house has been uninhabited for a very long time. Edging herself along the walls, she made her way up.

Her heart almost exploded when she heard the door creak below...

She managed to jump the last three steps to the second floor. Too scared  to move, she tried to be wary of what's happening down floor. She listened silently.

The moment she heard the faint footsteps getting louder and louder to the stairs, she jumped to reality and looked for any place to hide. She saw two rooms on her left across the hall. She picked the farthest room and turned the knob but to her dismay, it was locked. She looked to her right and saw a painting of a woman gracefully looking upward, as if mocking her to accept her fate. She finally averted her gaze and rushed to the first room, silently praying for it to be open. She turned the knob. Hope rushed in her when the door opened.

She was inside. A small moldy bed was beside an open window. To her right was the comfort room. She can see a small drawer at the foot the bedroom and judging by the pictures on the frames on top of it, the owner of the room was a girl. She rushed to the window and looked outside, contemplating whether to jump or not. The light of the moon illuminated the ghostly town, not a single light could be seen. She gauged if she could survive the fall and immediately backed out.

"Thud..thud..thud.."

Scared out of her wits, she picked her choices. She could hide under the bed or go to the comfort room. Before she could decide, she noticed a large cabinet beside the bed and it could easily fit her. She rushed to it and went inside and immediately closed the cabinet's door. Tears now streaming her face from exhaustion and pain from her wound. The cabinet was crowded with small clothes and guesssed that they belong to the owner of the room. A foul odor different from the room outside wafted through her nose.

"Thud..thud..thud.."

She closed her eyes and inched herself to the back of the cabinet, her hands groping the walls of the cabinet slowly. Calming herself, she opened her eyes and tried to adjust to the darkness. A few seconds passed and she could now somehow see the inside of the cabinet. The foul odor was now so empowering that her eyes started to tear again. A dead rat must have been there for ages. She cupped both her hands to her nose.

"Creak.."

"He's in". She could sense that whoever was chasing her is now prowling inside the room she's in. She edged herself a little more to the left and tried to screen the hanged clothes in front of her.

She could sense that the man was inside the comfort room because she heard the water faucet being turned on and the little drips that it made. The soft groan of the man's footsteps on the wooden floor was sending chills down her spine. When the man finally approached the bed, she held her breath for a minute fearing that it might gave her away..

Her breath relaxed when the man's footsteps was now near the door.

"Thank goodness." She wanted to blurt out of relief. She tried to crouch and touched the top of the cabinet. That's when she made the mistake of her life.

Her hands touched the face of a bloody young girl with her eyes open that was staring back at her. Her neck was slashed midway,dried blood traced from the open wound down to her left eye making it red. Her mouth was open in half-scream. She was certainly dead. The girl stifled a scream. The dead girl was stuck on the ceiling of the cabinet. Her hands, torso, knees and feet were forcefully rammed with nails ranging from two to three on one part. Now she knew where the odor was coming from.

But the dead girl wasn't the most frightening part. It was the deafening silence.

She was sure that if the man had left the room, she would hear his footsteps shuffling across the floor. But she didn't. There can be only one explanation, and she immediately confirmed it.

The man heard her.

She held her breath once more, trying to clear her senses yet again, praying that she might have just missed the man's passing while she's shocked on the girl at her top. She didn't dare look up again because she could not stand staring at the dead girl's eyes. She embraced herself in a sitting position and wished that she would soon wake up in her bed to the chirping of her alarm clock for her to get ready for another day's work. She opened her eyes,exhaled, and she saw.. nothing but darkness.

"Thud.. thud.. thud.."

The footsteps were now nearing the bed once again. She bit her lip as she tried to squeeze herself again at the edge of the cabinet.

A few seconds passed. A minute. Five.

"Is he gone? Please be gone."

Ten minutes.

She inched slowly to the door of the cabinet, careful not to make any noise. When she reached it, she tried to open it silently, barely enough to see outside with just a sliver of light passing through the small slit. She saw no one.

She opened it a little more.

Nothing.

She opened the cabinet all the way and tried to crawl out. She close the door of the cabinet while crouched. But then,

At the edge of her eyes, just after she closed the door, she could make out someone crouching beside her!

Scared to look, she gripped the knob of the cabinet tightly.

"Psssst...."

Too late to stop, she averted her gaze to her left.

A pair of red eyes were staring at her.

Her scream rang through the night.