haunted prey

“Shut up, you lying bitch!”, he muttered, his hand flying to his forehead, tapping his chest, then falling to his side and rushing up again at his forehead. He repeated the motion compulsively, tap, tap, silence, tap, tap, silence, as he stumbled through the deserted dark street, his irregular steps echoing off the bare brick walls engulfing him.

They were still behind him. He could hear their panting breathes and see their pitch-black figures scurrying to hide in the shadows whenever he threw a look over his shoulder.

“They’re going to get you!”, she cackled in his ear again with vicious delight. “Nowhere to run for you!”

“Shut up!”, he shrieked, his voice growing shrill with panic. He pressed his hands to his ears, but he couldn’t shut her out. Her voice was louder than ever in his head, yet all he could do was to keep moving.

“Billy!”

His sisters voice cut through to him, muffled by his hands. She had stuck her head out of the window on the passenger’s side of her sky-blue Polo.

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”, she shouted over the old car’s engine noise. “Get in, we’ll take you to Dr Stratton. She’ll give you your meds, so you’ll feel better in no time at all. Come on, Billy! One night at the clinic and tomorrow we’ll come and get you, I promise.”

He had taken a tentative step towards the car, but her last words had caught in his head. “They’re going to get you!”, the voice chanted irritatingly in his head and, though he saw she was still talking, his sister’s words no longer reached him. He stared at her, horrified, as her appearance slowly shifted: Her mouth gaped wider and wider, her teeth became cruelly pointed. Her eyes were slits, glowing eerily red in the mask of malice that was her face. The fingers of her outstretched hand grew into long claws grabbing for his shirt.

He bolted. Panic ruled him as he ran, his movements made awkward by his hands still pressed to his ears. He pounded along unrecognised alleys, skidded around a corner and was thrown onto a bustling street.

Suddenly there were lights everywhere: the orange of the streetlamps, the red of the taillights, blue and green and white light from the shop windows, all of it a kaleidoscope of colour whirling around him. He staggered along the pavement, trying to regain his balance, but people kept popping up in front of him forcing him to stumble out of their way. Their faces were contorted in pain and loathing, and he could read it on their lips: “They’re going to get you!”

And then he fell. His hands shot out to break his fall, even so his head hit the pavement hard. Roaring noise suddenly pierced his ears as his hands no longer covered them. A blur of engine hums and train rattles and glass clinking and car horns and water splashing, screeching laughter and threatening shouts and intense talk, all mingling into a diabolic cacophony. As he desperately pushed himself up again, the pungent stench of puke and dog shit, of beer and smoke and exhaust fumes added to the pandemonium in his head.

He couldn’t think, so he ran. He shoved the demonic figures away that had stopped to stare at him, and he ran. His feet battered the ground, and the groping hands flew past him and for once she was silent as he ran for his life.

“They’re going get you!”

It was as though someone had tripped him up. The voice boomed over the city like a god’s and reverberated through the streets. It penetrated his skull and made it feel as though it was a huge bell being rung. He came to a halt, slowly turning on the spot, and peeked into the black that surrounded him anew. All the menacing lights were gone now and so were the truculent sounds, aside from his own ragged breathing. Yet the darkness and silence did not calm him. They held their own terrors, he knew. He could feel their eyes upon him, crawling like cockroaches over his skin. He could smell their sulphurous stink and feel their moist breath on his face.

But where were they? He couldn’t see them, hear them, locate them. Cold sweat soaked his shirt as he stared and listened into the void. His heart pounded, thud, thud, thud, and missed a beat when he felt the light touch of a cold limb at his throat.

It was gone in that same instant, but it had cracked him. As her voice grew louder in his head now, he no longer fought her, but embraced her as an old companion. She was evil but in a familiar and intimate way. So he sank to the ground and started tapping his forehead and chest again, tap, tap, silence, tap, tap, silence, and muttered along with her: “They’re going to get me! They’re going to get me!”

It was for the tapping and self-talking, he didn’t hear them approaching. There was three of them: young, burly, drunk and full of testosterone. They noticed him from a little distance away, nudging each other and pointing at the nutter, then turned their steps towards him.

When he looked up, they were already close. He scrambled backwards feebly until he hit a wall, then dragged himself up. They encircled him and only then got a good look and whiff of him.

His clothes were filthy: stains of sweat, urine and other unidentifiable substances graced his shirt and pants. By the smell of him, it might well have been faeces and vomit. His hair was long, matted and tangled, and the eyes that hid beneath it were those of a panicked animal, not a human being.

They made their jokes that he didn’t hear and had their laughs that he didn’t hear either. When one of them moved forward he dashed away into the night.

They called after him, half angry, half entertained, but it was only when one of them roared drunkenly “We’re gonna get you!” that the pavement opened up before him and a wave of ice-cold fear swept him under.

He fled into his nightmare.