Chapter 9: Is This The End?

It was still eating when it noticed him.

The hand of a person hung from its mouth by a thin strip of skin. Most of the fingers were already gone. What remained was bone and slick strings of tendon that stretched and snapped each time it chewed. Blood ran down its chin in slow thick drops and had already pooled under its knees, dark and clotting at the edges. A longer strip of skin still clung to the wrist and swung with every movement of its jaw. One of the remaining knuckles had been chewed open; the bone showed through, white and glistening.

The smell hit second thick, sweet, sour, like meat left sealed in a room for days. It coated the back of his throat. His stomach turned hard enough that he doubled over and retched once, dry, nothing coming up but the taste of bile.

It turned.

Slow. The way something turns when it already knows exactly where you are.

His eyes wouldn’t hold it all at once. They kept sliding off some part of it an extra joint that wasn’t there a second later, a shoulder that sat lower on one pass and higher on the next. Like his mind refused to finish drawing it and kept starting over from a different place each time.

Cold sweat ran straight down his back, soaking through his shirt until it turned clammy against his skin. His breath shortened until it barely reached his lungs. When he looked down, his hands were shaking badly enough that he couldn’t have held a phone steady.

His legs refused. He told them to move. A small furious voice under the panic kept saying walk, just one step, and nothing answered. Fear had him. Not the creature just fear, plain, nailing him to the concrete, his knees locked so hard they ached.

"Hah— hah—"

The creature’s breathing filled the tunnel, thick and irregular, air dragged through meat that shouldn’t have held shape. Its feet made no real steps. Only a soft dragging scrape, patient, the sound of something that had never once needed to hurry.

It began to come near him

The smell thickened with every step as it comes nears him, pressing against his face until he could taste it directly, coppery and rancid at once. A drop of something warm landed near his shoe and spread. Another followed, thicker, carrying a small piece of tissue that stuck to the concrete and sat there, glistening under the one working light.

"I’m not—" His voice cracked, high and stupid. "I’m not scared. I’m— oh. I remembered. There’s a wedding tomorrow. My cousin’s. I have to go."

It was the dumbest thing he’d ever said out loud. Somepart of him knew it even as it left his mouth a flicker of shame, gone as fast as it came. The rest of him kept walking, a little too fast, like the ordinary sentence might convince the tunnel to let him leave.

The creature moved with him. Still just pacing. The stretch of it went on long enough that a small treacherous corner of his mind started to wonder whether it wasn’t going to do anything at all. Whether he could just keep matching its slow circle until one of them reached the light first.

Can you see me

The words arrived directly behind his eyes, cold and toneless, layered under its ragged breathing.

You can see me. Come with me. See me.

His shoe caught the strap of the dropped shopping bag. He bent for it without thinking, some stubborn stupid part of him still believing he might walk out of this and finish an ordinary errand.

Its head dropped into his vision.

Upside down. Impossibly low. Six inches from his face. A mouth opened wider than any jaw should allow, hot breath rolling over him thick with the smell of the hand it had just been eating. The remaining fingers still hung from the corner of it, swinging once. A piece of tendon stretched and broke with a soft tearing sound. Blood from the torn knuckles smeared across its teeth, and a thin line of it dripped down onto Lian’s collar, warm where it landed.

"Ahh— fuck—"

You can see me. You can see. You can

It attacked.

The first strike came fast. A long limb snapped toward his throat with a crack of joints bending the wrong way. His hand found the beads before his mind gave the order and dragged them up between himself and the claw in the same motion.

Light bloomed around him, thin and pale. The claw hit it and skidded off with a sound like metal dragged across ice, close enough that he felt the wind of it against his throat. The creature reeled back, shrieking a sound that went through his teeth more than his ears. The half-eaten hand finally tore free and hit the concrete with a heavy slap. Blood sprayed in a thin arc across his shoes. Bits of skin and a small fragment of bone stuck to the floor near his feet.

It didn’t stop.

It struck again, a second limb this time, catching the barrier low near his knees. The shudder of the impact went up through his whole body. He staggered. It struck a third time, higher, and the edge of a claw grazed past the light close enough to open a thin line along his forearm not deep, but enough that his own blood ran warm down to his wrist and dripped from his fingers onto the concrete beside the creature’s.

He was crying without noticing. His breath came in short broken pulls, each one dragging in more of the smell until he could feel it coating the inside of his chest. He could hear the crack of its joints every time it struck, and under that, closer now, a low continuous growl building somewhere behind its ribs like something winding itself tighter.

Then, for one stretched second, it stopped.

It simply stood there, three feet away, breathing its ragged breath, watching him through the thinning light. His own blood ran down to drip off his elbow, steady, small dark circles blooming on the concrete. The not-knowing whether it was gathering itself or already deciding something worse sat on him like weight.

I’m dead. The second this barrier goes, I’m dead.

"Oi."

A dry, unimpressed voice cut through the quiet.

"Brat. Why didn’t you use the talisman I gave you? If you’d used that, you’d still have died but you’d have died like a warrior instead of a scared little rabbit."

His head snapped toward the sound.

The old woman stood at the far mouth of the tunnel, small and unhurried, walking toward them like she had all the time in the world.

The creature turned from him at once and closed on her instead, faster now, hungry. She didn’t slow. Her lips moved around short rough words under her breath, and the air around her drew tight with each syllable a faint shimmer bending the light near her shoulders that he couldn’t explain and didn’t try to.

He could barely see her from here. A small dark shape against the tunnel’s far light. The creature already closing.

His hands shook around the last of the barrier’s glow, his own blood still dripping steadily from his fingers.

Could she actually save me....!?

Lian thought how pathetic I’m I? .... Couldn’t even protect myself and relaying on a old lady who should rest at her homeℯℯ𝑙.