IS
16

How could I, or anyone who would find themselves in my shoes, think of anything else but the fact that he was out there! This nightmarish being that had come to life… my life! Why? And from where?

I punched in the code to the left of the garage door, and watched its mechanical purpose slowly rise once again, leaving me hesitant to move any further when I knew the nightmare hadn’t left, even from the house I had so desperately tried to get back to. I guess the only positive aspect to any of this, if you could actually call it that, was the fact that he still hadn’t made any attempt to physically harm me in any way. As elusive and powerful as I now knew he was, he could have easily killed me if that were his purpose. What the hell was his purpose? And would it ever end? Or would this go on forever, until I was reduced to a small sniveling excuse for a human being, curled up in some corner, making every attempt to cover both my ears and eyes from the inhuman mercilessness that consumed me.

And what of my plan to take care of this before my family’s return? I was doing a splendid job! Maybe I would have to reach a little deeper and step up my game. God! I was so tired, and my body was aching for the comfort of my soft bed. I turned the knob and cautiously opened the entrance door to any number of unforeseen possibilities.

The kitchen was dark and still, and as I slowly moved forward into the space, my tampered and twisted thoughts could only think of one thing, as I whispered, “Cujo?” A smile came to my face but it was short lived, as anything outside the boundaries of serious had no place here. I continued on with my investigation through the rest of the house.

“Midnight?” I called out, nervous for a response as I turned into the hallway. I was answered by only a dead silence. My ears began to ring and I pushed for denial of the horrid scent that had begun to creep into my nostrils.

“Midnight, come here, baby!” I again called out, as the ringing in my ears seemed to gradually fade away to nothing. It was then that I thought I heard a faint and distant answer to my calls, only I couldn’t quite make out where it was coming from, or if it was possible that my tired and disillusioned mind had thrown me a curve and that I hadn’t actually heard anything at all.

“Kitty-kitty-kitty, come on girl, where are you?” I called out once more, not wanting to concede to the idea that she really was gone, and there was the possibility that my sanity had finally gone with her.

I reached the end of the hallway and turned to face my bedroom, when I found myself also facing the silhouette of a large figure standing motionless, practically centered in the dimly lit window at the far side of the room. And just as the ringing in my ears had faded, my denial of his scent had no choice but to leave as well… I moved for the light switch.

“Please don’t,” a voice asked. My voice.

It was now time to lay all the cards out on the table. I swallowed hard with what saliva I could muster, and decided to ask the most extreme question I could think of asking. Everything else could only be comfort and resolution from there on. “Are you here to kill me?” I heard myself ask, feeling as if I were outside of my own physical being. My ears began to ring once more.

“Of course not!” I again heard my voice answer. “But there is a dangerous presence among us. He is of my kind, but not the same.”

“More dangerous than you? You’ve got to be kidding-–right?” I answered back in the direction of the shadow figure.

“You do not understand. He is…” and then he paused and turned his head to one side, searching for the correct word in the human language. He then turned back to finish. “…Evil.” Joshua, there are things I feel your mind could never accept, but I feel now that I must at least try to tell you, even if only to protect you!”

“Protect me? Now you want to protect me when you’ve been putting me through hell this whole time?”

“Listen to me, and I will do my best to explain,” he said, as his head dropped with pause to again find the correct human words. “When one out of every so many of your kind is born into your world, one of my kind is set forth to watch over you, to follow and learn from your human actions, to study human emotion. And once we are selected for a human, we are to stay with him or her for the duration of their human existence. But, there is one rule that we are to abide by. We are never to have contact with them, or any human–-ever!

“What happens if there is contact?” I asked, feeling drawn into his story.

“If there is contact with a human, then that human must be quietly extinguished, for fear of exposing our kind.”

“Killed?”

“Yes. Killed,” he replied, with of course, no display of emotion.

“Then you are here to kill me!” I stated, as I slowly began to back out the doorway into the hallway behind me.

“No! That is a task for another—the dangerous presence I spoke of. He is here around us, but has only temporarily spared your life because of mine.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, as I began to shake with the intensity of human words he had chosen to use.

“Our law is such that he must extinguish me before he is allowed to extinguish you. I have failed the law.”

“And if he fails?” I asked.

“I do not know! No task such as this has ever failed before in my time.”

“Can he take you?” I asked.

“Now it is I who does not understand!” he stated, as I could see him tip his head, questioning.

“Is he stronger than you? Can he overpower you?” I asked again.

“Overpower? No. Our bodies and the powers we possess are of the same strength. It is his mind that is different. It allows him only evil thoughts from which to act upon. His existence is meant for only one thing, and he will not stop until the terms of that existence are met. Do you understand?”

“So, where you come from–-there are two different kinds of you?”

“Yes, there are those of us who monitor and learn from human life, and there are those who enforce the termination of it, when needed. In my world, there is very little difference in our appearance, only our thoughts and actions are different.”

“How does your kind distinguish one of you from another?” I asked, still shaking, and still feeling as if I were dreaming all of this.

“We have our own auras that contrast one another.” He replied. I must have looked confused at his response, when he then added, “To you, we would have a different smell, or scent from one another.”

I then became flooded with the intense realization that I had encountered the evil already, as the horror in my eyes must have given proof of that.

“You have seen him, haven’t you?” he asked, as he moved from around the bed to approach me.

“Wait!” I cried, with a hand pushed out in front of me, signaling him to move no closer.

“I don’t know about all of this! How do I know you’re telling the truth? I mean–-what the hell!” I yelled, for fear that he was telling the truth, and that now after all of my distorted conclusions, I had gone back to square one, where my life was in jeopardy. My head was reeling with everything that had been dropped on me at this point, and I was praying to wake up from this nightmare, when he calmly spoke again.

“I am not capable of lying, for I do not possess the ability to alter the obvious and true. We do not feel human emotion, or anything that would compare, but evil is evil, no matter the origin it hails from.” He turned his face towards the window and continued. “Know this Joshua. There are things out there even your worst nightmare would fear; things that would pull the life from your beating heart and consume your soul for their entertainment. And these things I speak of, these creatures who bear no conscience to the atrocities they do?” he then turned back from the window to face me. “They all fear the evil that comes for you and me.”

I began to feel light headed and sick to my stomach. This had become far too much for me to conceive.

“I told you your mind would not accept this.” he said.

I began to feel as though I would faint and reached for the bed. As I sat down on the edge, I fought to remember the questions I needed answers to. “There are more questions I need answered!” I said, as I held my head in my hands, trying desperately to comprehend everything I had taken in so far. “Why do you talk to me in my voice?” I angrily asked.

“It is a voice that I have grown accustomed to, and comfortable using… you are not comforted by this?”

“It kind of freaks me out, if you really must know!” I replied. “What does your voice sound like?” I asked.

“We have no real speaking voice of our own, so I am forced to use a human voice that I know. But this bothers you?”

“As I said-–it freaks me out! But I guess I’ll have to get over it. Oh, hey! What about the cat?” I quickly asked, as I lifted my head in desperation for a response.

“I knew from watching you that she gave you comfort… so I brought her to you when your human emotions yearned for it.”

“What? Brought her to me from where?”

“The earth from where she was resting.”

“The earth from where she… she was dead! You know how sick that is? Where is she now?” I asked, as I could feel the mixture of anger and fear pulse hard through my body, taking precedence once more.

With that, he moved passed me and into the hallway where he stopped just as he entered the kitchen, pointing to the window over the sink, which in turn overlooked the Stanton’s patio.

I quickly moved past him and to the window, when I saw the small black shriveled body lying across the cool concrete just in front of the door wall. My jaw dropped and for the moment I ceased to breathe, as I could see the Stanton family moving about their brightly lit family room, only feet from their beloved Midnight that they had buried and said their goodbyes to.

“The life I restored in her was only temporary. She must have tried to return back home,” he stated.

“No, no this isn’t happening!” I quietly cried. I then turned around and was taken back by his appearance. His powdered flesh was illuminated by the small amount of light that was bleeding in through the very same window. A scene that horror masters of the cinema have been imitating for years was now front and center–-and real… I was living it. For the moment, I tried my best to ignore his presence. I turned away and began talking to myself.

“I can’t just leave her there. What if they open the door for whatever reason and see her?” I mumbled. I also began to giggle, frantically–-like some deranged lunatic who could see imaginary friends-–or aliens! I could actually feel my sanity tottering on the brink of forever, and feeling what the insane must have felt just before the fall. I started pacing in circles, mumbling my way through to some majestic threshold of deliverance that I could somehow cling to. It wasn’t working. I could feel myself slowly slipping away to a place from which there would be no return. “No. No. No. This isn’t real, he isn’t real, it isn’t real, isn’t real… ”

I continued ranting and pacing until I felt everything begin to spin out of my control. I collapsed into nothingness.

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