Hiding Spot

They've been here all this time – from the beginning of time, before earth was granted life. Invisible and intangible, they thread under the layers of reality like blood vessels beneath skin. They are the things that go bump in the night and the caress in your hair on a windless day, the shadows that flit by the edges of your vision and the cold shiver down your spine on a hot summer afternoon. And from the moment of their very existence, they are being hunted.

-

Detective Arin Wu sat in her study, stiff and hunched, focused on the documents laid neatly on her desk. The 34-year old exuded an aura far larger than her small frame. Dark eyes, ringed by shadows, soaked in every detail as long slender fingers flipped through the papers she had brought home days before. The case of Marissa Hobbs was a strange one and it was leaving her stumped.

On December 17th, 21 year old Marissa Hobbs was found dead in her dorm. She was single and lived alone. Having just moved in from a nearby town a week ago, she had no friends in the locality. If it weren't for her neighbours who had noticed the unbearable stench of death coming from her apartment, who knows how much later her corpse would have been found?

Arin had visited the crime scene. Marissa's decomposing body lay face down by her desk, as if asleep. On the floor, directly under her, was a large patch of dried blood. Chairs were upturned. A cushion had been torn in two, stuffing spilling out onto the floor. The door was locked from the inside. Every window in the house was latched shut from the inside as well, with no sign of being forced open. What was on these windows, however, were traces of an oily residue. Closer inspection revealed that they were handprints, pressed against the glass from the outside. Someone outside the house had been peering into these windows. Marissa Hobbs lived on the 12th floor with no possible way of anyone climbing all the way up to the windows.

The interviews with the neighbours had gone exactly as well as one would expect an interview with an oblivious elderly woman and her hysterical caretaker would go. If there had been any odd behaviour of Marissa's part, they had not noticed. The oily substance found on the windows were analysed but not identified. According to the autopsy, Marissa died from having her throat torn out. No tools seemed to have been used. It did not seem to have been torn out by any human hand.

No matter how the detective looked at it, nothing seemed to add up.

The words on the documents were starting to blend into one another. Arin squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her head throbbed. She had lost track of how long exactly she had been fixing her attention on the papers. It was 3.30 am, a little too early for fatigue to set into her. She felt a tinge of guilt, having just remembered that she had not tucked in her son. After the early death of her husband, Arin was the only one left for the 6 year old boy.

She supposed she could always tuck him in some other day.

As she turned her stare back to the documents, something brushed faintly against the back of Arin's hand. It felt uncannily like hair- long drooping strands of it. It could not have been hers. Arin wore her thick black hair in a short bob cut tucked behind her ears. She opened her eyes. There was nothing around her that remotely resembled hair. The sensation had vanished.

Arin headed to the bathroom to wash her face. That should clear her head up a bit.

The stream of water from the faucet seemed to waver as it fell into her cupped hands. She splashed the water onto her face. Once, then again. She looked up into the mirror. Her reflection stared back with sunken eyes, looking older than she remembered herself ever looking. Something about it seemed strangely dejected – something she was not feeling despite being stuck on the case.

Then its lips moved. Not hers but its – her reflection in the mirror. Arin brings two trembling fingers onto her own lips. The face in the mirror followed suit but did not stop moving. However, her own lips were not moving. The woman turned her face down and washed it one more time. Again she looked up into the mirror.

Her blood ran cold.

It happened again. In the mirror, her visage spoke without sound. Arin read its lips as they were forming words.
"Shut..the..doors?" Arin followed, whispering above the sound of water still running from the tap. "Pull down...the blind? Oh...The blinds?"

The face in the mirror mouthed back a "Yes."

Then it stopped. In a daze, she turns off the tap. All that resounded in the cold tiled room was breath, ragged and rushed.

It was her own.

She was just seeing things right? She took a step back from the sink, only to stumble and fall back into the door behind her. Leaning her body against the door, she tried to regulate her breathing and process what just happened.
Her own reflection just spoke to her.

It did not make any sense and this was certainly not something that had ever happened to her before. Maybe she really did need to get some shut-eye. Continuing her work in this state was obviously not going to do any good.
Arin returned to her study, shut the door behind her and pulled down the blinds by the latched windows. She settled back into her chair, laying her head back against the back rest. Her eyelids were heavy and despite the recent excitement, she fell into slumber quickly and easily.

-

Even in sleep Arin did not rest as visions and thoughts pressed into her dreams. She saw shadows creep by the edges of light. And the light came from a glowing sphere, hanging in the air above her like a piñata. In the blink of an eye, the shadows solidified into pitch black strands of what seemed like hair and slithered closer into the light.

Words and phrases that did not feel like hers sprang into her mind.

Many. And then One.

The hair (or were they still shadows?) gathered into a dark, round mass. It hovered off the ground, no longer having the consistency of hair. The strands that dangled beneath it twisted braided into each other, forming imitations of human hands dripping with a viscous fluid.

The Collective. It hunts.

Clumps of hair remaining on the ground writhed like worms. (Were they even still hair?) The numerous hands from the hovering mass grabbed hold of the ones on the ground, assimilating them into its body. The more it took, the larger it grew.

Weaker ones. They flee.

The worms (or were they hair?) slithered away from the hands, trying to evade capture. (Or was it consumption?)

It follows. Our presence. It seeks.

The hands groped the ground blindly. For a moment it paused. Then it floats purposefully after the fleeing strands of darkness.

Human presence. It is strong.

The light of the sphere hovering over Arin's head grows brighter and its range widens. The strands crawled into where the light covered. The mass follows but once again, its hands grab without direction. The strands were safe in the light.

Yours especially.

The strands of hair (or were they worms?) drew closer to Arin. She wanted to step back but found herself rooted to the spot. They stopped and lay by her feet.

Hide me.

The light goes out. Something skittered. The ground creaked.

Please.

Images flashed, one after another; something twitching in the darkness, a large shape outside a window, a wall of eyes, the sun rising from the horizon, a human heart beating no more, and Marissa Hobbs lying face down on her desk.

Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Hide me. Help me. Please.

-

The detective woke up to a cold sweat and a dry throat. The walls of her office seemed to cave in. She glanced at the clock on the wall. She had been asleep for only half an hour. Arin blinked and straightened up in her seat. There was a breeze. The fan was turned off.

Arin looked up behind her. The blinds were down just as she had left them. However, one of the windows was open. She was sure it was latched shut when she fell asleep. Her eyes widened and flitted about the room. A few papers were on the floor, probably moved by the draft from the open window. No footprints or marks on the floor. Only drops that shone, like grease.

A sort of restlessness swelled inside Arin. She grabbed her handbag and briskly left the room. She was running away from something she couldn't see, something she didn't even believe in. But Arin knew well that while it was always wise think things through, sometimes it is your gut that tells the truth.

Then for the first time in her life, the detective spoke to something she could not see.

"Are you with me?" She muttered.

No reply. Arin was starting to suspect she was going mad.

But then, she felt it – something brushing by her cheek. She flinched. She supposed that was a yes.

Whatever was going on, whatever was trying to communicate with her, she wanted it out of the house and as far from her son as possible. She figured it would be safer, for both her and her boy, if she headed for a more populated place. After all, did her dreams not tell her that whatever entity it was clinging onto her needed to hide in human presence? She'll give them human presence. Maybe it might even find someone better to hide behind. Maybe it will leave her alone.

Before she left, she just needed to make sure he was safe. She crept into the boy's room and, using the light from her mobile phone, made sure all the windows were latched shut. They were. With a soft whisper of "Goodnight Louie", she left the room. It was not for him so much as to give her a sense of ease over having not tucked him in that night. She donned her jacket, slipped on her shoes and left the apartment. It was 4:25 am.

On her way down the stairs and to the carpark, he took out a pocket mirror from her handbag.

"You still with me?" she asked. Then she closed her lips together and looked into the mirror. The lips on her reflection replied.

Yes. Hurry.

Arin felt something coming. She did not look back. She looked up instead. The moon hung above the city like a sphere of soft light looking over her. No, looking over them – both she and the entity that hid by her.
She got into her car, turned on the engine and drove.

-

It was 8.45 am when the corpse of detective Arin Wu was found, still sitting in her car which was parked by a roadside not far from her home. Her body was in bad shape, with her arms broken and her throat torn out. The wounds were fresh. There were obvious signs of struggle within the car. Her car on the other hand, showed no signs of damage. There were, however, traces of an oily substance streaked over the windows by what seemed to be either tendrils or very thin fingers. No murder weapon was found nearby.

-

Louie Wu sat on the living room couch with a police officer trying to explain what happened to his mother. Louie did not get it. She left but she would be back, right? She always came back. Little fists trembled as he denied the situation. This man was lying! Lying right to his face! His mother was not gone! She couldn't be.
He was certainly Arin's son. He had his mother's eyes and a presence almost as strong.

The prey had a new hiding place and the hunter had new prey.