The Unwritten

The Unwritten Part XVIb - Tom

Thirty minutes later….

Opening the door wide enough to step into the cabin, Tom looked around at the carnage. There was no doubt in his mind there had been some kind of a massacre here. Taking a deep breath, he had trouble finishing it. He blew out slow tense air between tightly pursed lips and tried hard not to breathe through his nose.

“What in God’s name happened here?” Tom took a step into the room rather gingerly. He brought one foot up to the other and stood in a pool of blood. It seemed to be everywhere now. It occurred to him that even though he felt little compassion for someone who had tried to kill him, to torture him, at very least no one deserved this kind of death.

He was feeling much better now about his decision to have gone down the stairs however.

Realizing he may still have something himself to fear from in here, his only thought was to try and figure out how this had happened in order to avoid it happening to him, and the only way to do that, was to examine the room and the cadavers. First he counted them. He counted eleven.

Had the murderer escape? Was he (or she?) still here somewhere, still a danger to him? Anyone who could do this much to this many, would be a tough force to conquer. Alone. Obviously, they couldn’t and there were many of them and he assumed they were all fairly formidable.

Maybe there was more than one?

Tom started to back up, but realized he could only retrace his step into the next room and then back down that interminable staircase once again. Thought of that made him cringe and his legs go weak. Then again, nothingness is better than lifelessness. Still, he wasn’t going back down those stairs unless he absolutely had to.

Gritting his teeth he realized for the first time there was now light in the room. He looked at the flickering kerosene lantern attached to the wall near the front door. He tried breathing through his shirt sleeve to filter the air, took a couple of deep breaths and squatted on legs, painful from the staircase from Hell in order to get a closer look at the nearest of the bodies.

His lowered position stretched his side muscles which brought his hand to his painful, somewhat dried stab wound, breaking him into a slight sweat from the throbbing ache in his side.

Earlier….

There was no warning.

Each of them in the cabin had received their marching orders from memories the Darkness had fed to them from above through its thin black filaments of ectoplasm, its interdimensional fluids, secretions of a Hellspawn.

Petsha, in his many ways had been the most perverse of them all. As close as they once had been, his brother Ferka had avoided his sick proclivities, much preferring his own brand of perversions with his wife who was now as usual, nervously waiting for him back at the party.

Single and living mostly alone, few women wanted to be with Petsha for they had heard stories about the experiences of the few women who had from time to time been attracted to him. Mostly though, they were attracted to Ferka and just assumed his twin was a best second, at very least.

Petsha enjoyed slaughtering his lambs when it was time for new meat. He would take his carnal pleasures with them, killing the lamb at only just the right moment, slashing its throat, enjoying the ride and its terminal cries of fear and pain.

Ferka well knew about his brother, as many did. Just, no one spoke of it.

So when Petsha got that look in his eye there in the cabin and had turned to Drina, Ferka knew exactly what was coming. He saw the others inexplicably attacking each other as a thread from above grazed his shoulder, then attached itself with threads to his skin.