Did That Just Move

Did That Just Move

Jackie R. Sisk II

She sat smoking. The cool, damp air had her wrapped in a blanket like a living burrito. The night was coming on, but she didn't think anything of it, Annalise had done this often enough. Sometimes she just needed to get away from everyone else in the house. Private time can be a blessing.

The house was rural, there weren't even any neighbors for more than a mile. She loved the quiet of it, the sheer loveliness of the absent urban sounds. It gave her a calm that not many other things would or could.

Annalise loved the setting, the trees swaying in the light breeze, the smell of earth and leaves and nature. Even the smell of the remaining coals in the fire-pit. Putting out her cigarette, she sighed and decided to light a second. It just wasn't time to go in and be around all the people. She loved her family, but they could get on your fucking last nerve.

As the sun fell below the horizon, she noticed something. Startled, she felt panic begin to rise inside her chest like a living thing clawing at her heart. It was small and subtle at first, but it began to grow, paralyzing her with terror.

She looked up and noticed a disfigured face in the growing gloom. It looked melted and twisted and was watching her through the scraggly trees. It looked haunted and it increased her anxiety even more.

Annalise just sat wrapped in her blanket frozen with fear. The visage never moved, it never twitched, but she could feel the evil, the hunger all around her. Sweat began to collect on her forehead in the night air and though she wanted to scream her terror wouldn't allow it.

Barely able to breath, she considered going for her phone and calling someone inside the house to come out, but her fear filled mind convinced her that the moment she moved it would come for her.

She stretched her legs out from under herself very slowly, so slowly that she barely moved. Trying to get the blanket to unwrap and fall away. Her fear had her almost unable to do even that.

Annalise wasn't a stupid woman, she knew intellectually that there couldn't be anything there. It was a trick of the failing light, an optical illusion that made the limbs of the trees form an image that terrified her.

This logic didn't help Annalise, the feeling like something was there. Something dark and hungry. She could almost see the drool running down it's chin. She knew only that she was food for something not right, something of the night, and that knowledge caused her to stop the movement as slight as it was with the blanket.

She glanced with the corner of her eye toward the door to the house, it was only twenty feet away. Annalise knew, deep in her terror that she would never make it, once she looked away it would be over, it would be after her and she would die as food for some dark, hungry thing.

Just when she was about to get her fear under control she heard something. It sounded like breathing, like the thing in front of her couldn't control itself much longer. The clawing, gnawing terror grew more intense. She froze, she was even afraid to look toward the door out of the corner of her eye now.

The sound grew clearer harsher. Annalise knew it was getting ready to come for her. The small hairs on the back of her neck rose and stood out. The paralyzing fear ate at her heart now, having ripped it open inside of her. The cool air did nothing more to slow the sweat that beaded upon her forehead.

She stared at the face it's yawning hungry expressing amplifying what she felt.

"It's just a fucking shadow of the tree or somethin'," she told herself. "It can't be anything. There isn't anything real like that." Yet, even if the face wasn't real, the terror was more than real, it became her only reality. She lived in it now, succumbing to the paralyzation.

Her life was one of reality. She was a mother, a wife. She worked for a living just like every other good person. There weren't things that fed upon people like this, it was fantasy, it was like a horror movie. The fear however, didn't know that, it didn't care. It froze her as if she were a statue.

The wind blew, and this caused face to appear to move slightly, but to her mind it had to be a trick or an illusion of her eyes. She told herself over and over and it began to work.

She finally leapt to her feet and ran. Unfortunately, she could hear it coming behind her like a large dog huffing hungrily in the night. Its odor overwhelmed her; the smell of a hundred rotten and dead things and of brimstone and the fire of hell. She couldn't scream, she just ran... ran until she felt the cold, hard hand grab her shoulder from behind.