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Alice realises she’s made a mistake as she reaches the midway point of the path through the park. Too far to just run for it and too far from the entrance to scream for help. Ever practical, Alice settles her mind before deciding what to do next. Her options are few: run, scream or carry on walking and hope it’s all in her imagination.
A faint snapping of a twig some distance behind convinces her momentarily that the third option no longer exists. However, stubbornly refusing to be one of those fey helpless women she so despises, Alice stops walking and cocks her head in the direction of the sound.
Alice compromises with herself: no noises for a minute and it’s OK; another noise and I run like hell, screaming all the way.
Alice has reached twenty-four in her head when he steps out of the shadows. |
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Alice’s heart pistons painfully in her chest. For what seems to Alice an unreal length of time, they just stand there. Like an antelope and lion in the nature programmes she likes so much. Adrenalin is coursing through her system, her breathing loud in the silence.
The man takes a step forward and Alice starts to panic as her legs won’t obey her and run. In quick succession the man takes a step, pauses, then takes another. Frantically, Alice struggles with her frozen limbs. A slight step backwards feels like the ultimate triumph.
Then the man steps into the moonlight and Alice sees his smile. The thin, reptilian lips twitch in an evil parody of a smile and Alice’s paralysis breaks. Her shaking legs give way beneath her as she turns too quickly to flee.
The raw pain of the gravel tearing into her palms brings her instantly alert and she scrabbles at the ground to pull herself away, her mind screaming rape!rape!rape!rape! Her feminine psyche reacts to the thought of the ultimate invasion with an instinctive scream of revulsion and a surge of strength. Alice manages to get to her feet, her legs becoming stronger with every passing second.
She needs time, just a few precious seconds. But that respite is not given. He’s already there, looming over her.
Alice looks up into the smiling face of a stranger. |
At first Alice is only confused as to how someone can do this. Then she sees his eyes. They’d make a shark’s eyes look warm.
He licks his lips, the tip of his tongue appearing to Alice as something so repellent she shudders involuntarily. This widens his smile. But he doesn’t move. He’s just watching her, like he’s got all the time in the world.
Slowly, Alice pushes against the ground with her feet, all the time watching him as she slides away. Still he doesn’t move.
Feeling sick with terror, Alice has to turn her back on him to get to her feet and run. She can feel his hands grabbing her, mauling her but it’s all in her head—he still hasn’t moved. Just that smile below those pitiless eyes.
And then she’s off, running for her life. All alone in the big, bad park. |
Running.
Alice is aware of her rasping breath and her feet pounding the ground.
Running.
Alice’s normal route through the park is strictly in and out. Along the path and home. So she has no idea where she’s going. She ran from the man is all she knows and cares about. Ahead there are trees and they look thickest to the left.
Alice veers to her left and risks a look behind.
He’s coming. Running.
Calling on her last reserves, Alice hits the questionable shelter of the trees. Risks another look behind.
The man’s about twenty seconds behind her. Running.
He’s laughing. He’s obviously just having so much fun! But it’s an inhuman laugh, more a demonic shriek and Alice’s terror consumes her world. |
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The darkness underneath the trees’ cover is momentarily blinding. Alice stumbles in the dark and fearfully glances back to see how much closer he is. And her soul shatters.
The man has stopped. He is caught in a cone of moonlight. He stands there as though sniffing the air, his head back, arms slightly raised, hands splayed. There is a primeval feeling about the scene and Alice feels an instinctive terror. She almost expects him to howl but his silence is worse. He’s a silver statue.
Alice’s inner voice points out that this is probably a good time to keep running. She turns and scrambles through the undergrowth, feeling somehow even more vulnerable as she turns her back on that scene.
Each twig and root seems determined to ensnarl her. She sees a nail rip off on a particularly vicious branch but the pain doesn’t register. Her entire being is focussed purely on fleeing and has no resources to waste on pain.
A hut looms up out of the dark, palely illuminated by the meagre moonlight allowed through the cover of the trees. Possibly a tool store for the park gardeners. Something to use as a weapon.
Alice frantically circles the hut looking for the door, finds it. Locked.
Desperately aware of the precious seconds ticking by, Alice almost sobs with relief when she finds an open window. Grimed over, the glass gives no indication of the interior. Even so, as Alice hits the floor the last thing she expects to see is a corpse. |
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Alice lands not so gracefully and finds herself nose to nose with a dead woman. Clamping a hand over her mouth to silence her screams, Alice scrambles away. She can’t stop herself from looking, even as the thought that she’s looking at her future crosses her mind.
The woman’s corpse looks unreal—death makes it unnaturally still. There’s no sign of decay so her death was recent. Alice notices that the corpse’s head is lolling at a strange angle to the floor. She has no time to work out why (and there was no way she was going to get closer) as the noise of a key rattling in the door lock freezes the breath in her throat.
The man steps inside, his shadow grotesquely twisted by the thin cone of pale light streaming through the doorway. He quickly locks the door behind him, slipping the key into his back pocket.
He steps towards the body then stops. Alice can hear him breathing deeply. He spins round and transfixes her with his dead gaze. A smile flutters across his lips.
‘Don’t you love the moon?’
The question throws Alice. She’s in a situation life just doesn’t prepare you for. It seems to have been a rhetorical question.
‘I love the moon. The ancients used to hunt by it so it was worshipped. No moon, no food.’
Alice doesn’t want to listen or look at him but like a rabbit in headlights, she’s paralysed.
He moves closer and squats down in front of Alice. He points his thumb over his shoulder, his expression blank.
‘I see you’ve met number four.’ |
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The implication of his words freezes Alice’s bone marrow.
‘I was on my way to see her when fate brought you to me. There you were in the moonlight. A sign for me. You were meant to be mine. And then you come here out of your own choice. All the park to run through and you come straight here. Another sign. So don’t be afraid—you can’t argue with fate. We’ll have all eternity together.’
Alice starts to whimper. He reaches over and pats her knee. Alice can’t help but react—she pushes him away.
He sniggers as he moves away which makes Alice angry. She is surprised to feel any emotion but terror yet she feels her anger grow.
‘They all fight me at first, you know. Until they understand and reach their eternal place.’
Alice screams: ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?’
There is no reaction to her verbal assault. The man simply gets himself comfy on the floor, one hand on the corpse.
‘I’m a studier. Of ancient arcane rites. Of moon lore. And I discovered a way of creating slaves to serve me in the afterlife.’
He pats the dead woman. ‘She went ahead of me over two weeks ago, and look at her. The longer the body lasts, the more time her essence has to pass over. No decay. The other three were not such successes but they may have made it over. But practice makes perfect.
‘So don’t worry, number five will be superb.’
He continues regardless of Alice’s expression.
‘Have you heard of the life-clock?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer.
‘The second you’re born your life-clock starts its countdown. First it measures in years, then months, then weeks until it’s down to minutes.’
He puts a finger to his lips. ‘Can you hear yours?’ he whispers.
He wags his finger from side to side: ‘tick tick tick tick’
Alice thinks of herself as a good talker with all sorts of people but his obvious insanity leaves her speechless.
‘But once I’ve helped you over to our eternal place, your life-clock starts again. Only this time, it’ll never stop.
‘You should feel blessed.’
Alice feels many things but ‘blessed’ hasn’t crossed her mind. She is about to respond when the cadaver sits up. |
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The man looks as surprised as Alice and just as horrified. The handle of a screwdriver protruding from the woman’s ear explains the angle of her head against the floor.
‘Hello again,’ she quips and breaks his jaw with one punch.
Alice is struck by the strength of the blow. The woman herself looks pleased. Her smile looks wrong on a dead face.
‘It would appear that being in our “eternal place” has improved my strength.’ The stench of her breath smothers the air, makes Alice almost believe the breath can be seen as a green miasma. It can be tasted. Foul and fetid.
‘You his next conquest? Did he tell you, you were blessed?’
Alice merely nods.
‘What a tosser. Not even original.’
The man is whimpering, a disturbingly liquid noise.
The woman rips the screwdriver from out of her ear. Alice gasps as she realises its length and tries not to imagine what that is stuck on the end.
Brandishing the screwdriver nonchalantly, the woman squats in front of the man.
‘Can you hear your life-clock—tick tick tick tick?’
Weird animalistic grunts emerge from his throat.
‘No? Are you sure? Because I can hear it loud and clear.’
She sways the screwdriver like a metronome—‘tick tick tick tick’
The man’s eyes move with the rhythm. Alice wonders whether he wants to be hypnotised, to remove himself.
‘I can guarantee that your life-clock is in its last seconds. That it’ll never start again. Your “eternal place” will not be yours. That’s why I’m here—to let you know. But don’t shoot the messenger.’
She laughs. It’s unpleasant.
‘Bored with you now. Thought this would be more fun but I really can’t be bothered with you.’
She buries the screwdriver in his left eye. Keeps pushing, grinding and twisting until only the tip of the handle is visible.
Alice’s stomach muscles ache; she’s been dry retching so much in such a short time.
Relieved beyond belief that her would-be killer can no longer hurt her, Alice is still more than slightly put out by the presence of the dead woman, who now appears to be decaying. Rapidly. |
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The woman turns to face Alice. The skin on her face is sloughing off.
She sees the expression of horror in Alice’s eyes, touches her right cheek. Her right cheek falls to the floor.
‘Bummer.’
Alice can’t help the cliché: ‘Is there anything I can do?’
The woman attempts a smile, her lips collapsing.
‘I doubt it. It seems nature must run its course.’
She sighs and sits on the floor, hugging her knees.
‘He’s a park gardener, you know. This is his work shed. He’s also a moon freak, though he must have been onto something otherwise I’d already be just a mess on the floor.’
Alice tests her legs and stands shakily. ‘If there’s nothing I can do, I might as well leave.’
‘SIT DOWN!!’
The blast of her dead breath as she screeches takes away any resolve from Alice’s knees and she crumples to the floor.
‘Sorry for shouting but I’m having a bad day here. You could at least keep me company until my insides fall out.’
Too emotionally drained to even think of a response, Alice just slouches against the wall. How long could it take? She was almost just a skull with skin already.
‘He was right, you know. There is an eternal place. There’s only me and some other girl there. And that’s all it is—a place. Nothing but me and her. Forever.
And thanks to that psycho, that’s all there’ll ever be for me. But at least I’ve stopped him joining us. Stopped him from reaching his eternal pla—’
Her decaying head shatters against the wall, struck from her scrawny neck by the back of his hand.
‘Stupid bitch.’
Alice stares in horror at the man looming over her, his fingers deep in his left eye socket. Grinding, gouging out the screwdriver.
‘She could hear a life-clock all right. Only it wasn’t mine.’
The screwdriver is free. He waggles his mashed eyeball on the end: ‘tick tick tick tick.’
He thrusts, leaning forward to catch Alice’s last breath in his nostrils.
‘tick tick tick ti—’ |
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