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Cherry and Veil
Jacob leaned heavily against the door behind him. Splinters from the damaged wood edged through his shirt and into his back.
That’s what I get for using overdone horror motifs in my writing! he yelled at himself internally. Why would there even BE splinters on the inside of a closet door?
He willed his heart to slow and closed his eyes. He swallowed. He had to get his fear under control if he was going to survive.
Quickly, he recapped what he knew. He’d stayed up late with his friends at his college dorm. They’d broken out a voodoo spell book for research…and laughs, if he was being honest…as part of their plan to write a horror movie script. Jacob was lead on the project because he’d written several horror stories before in high school. He recommended they look into wicca, voodoo, and arcane burial traditions for inspiration and to give their horror a spark of authenticity.
He hadn’t expected to go to bed only to wake up in a world of his own design.
At first, he’d been confused. Waking up in the middle of Anywhere, USA, he’d thought it was a prank. He wouldn’t put it past his friends to tease him like this in one of their dumber, liquid-courage induced moments. Perhaps they thought it would help him with the plot research.
Whatever it was, his amusement quickly faded to frustration and then concern. No one answered his calls to end the joke. In fact, he couldn’t find anyone. He’d walked the decrepit city block he’d woken to, looking for help, but aside from a few squirrels and birds skittering across the vacant street, he couldn’t even find signs of life.
Whatever had caused the resident’s hasty departure had to be recent enough that the homes were in good order but distant enough that the landscaping had grown wild. The street itself was clean enough, but the doors on several of the houses had been pulled off their hinges, and the lawns were overgrown. Having mowed the grass as a chore growing up, he had estimated the area had been abandoned for at least three to four weeks.
Then he’d come to the end of the block.
Cherry Street and Veil Avenue.
The crossroads of one of his more unhinged high school fictions.
What were the chances a real intersection like that existed?
Taking in the city block behind him, he had begun to recognize the scene. He’d written the story ages ago and couldn’t quite recall its specifics. He did remember, however, that he’d unleashed a monster here, a horrible beast able to scent out its victim’s fear. A creature with ripping claws and razor teeth to maul the life out of them, and a fluid body with expansive limbs. He’d engineered it so it could easily clamber buildings as it scoured for victims No one could be safe.
He'd written heroes into the story…didn’t he? Had he even finished that novel?
Beads of cold sweat dripped down the back of his neck as he struggled to remember. I did have that rather despondent phase where I thought it was “artsy” to write unhappy endings…
As if on cue, the distant screech of something unseen pierced the air and his hair stood on end. If this really was his story…
I need to hide.
He scurried back to one of the abandoned houses, tripping as his foot found deep furrows hidden in the long grasses. He managed to catch himself with his hands while falling but swore when he stood. A large, human-shaped impression had formed in the grass, and the ground would now be covered with his scent.
He’d risked a dangerous maneuver then: running to a second house and rolling in the grass there as well, hoping it would lead the monster off course. He ran in a circle around a set of driveways before jumping to catch the limbs of a tree for a house across the street. Pulling himself up, he managed to follow the tree limbs to a second-story window. Carefully he dropped in through the broken sill.
His pant leg had snagged, but luckily he hadn’t bled. He’d ducked low as he walked quickly and quietly down the hallway to a bedroom. Gently closing its main door he shuffled himself to an interior closet, which he closed behind him.
Which brought his thoughts back to present. He turned to rest against the back wall, avoiding more splinters.
So long as I can keep my fear under control, it shouldn’t be able to find me. He encouraged himself. The creature could scent out a victim, but its true beacon was fear. Fear made a victim light up in its mind, like infrared vision. He’d taken his inspiration from things like snakes and mosquitos and the cops hunting down pot farms in the 90s. He had wanted his monster to be “cool.”
Now he was cursing his monster and his stupid, teenage self.
Something changed outside and he could swear he heard a noise. Had it been the snap of a branch? The kick of an aluminum can? Whatever it was, it had been subtle.
He sucked in a breath. It wasn’t sound that triggered his ears. It was the sudden absence of sound as the birds and insects had stopped their calling. It was the sound of a forest in dead silence because a predator was among them, and the realization almost made his heart stop cold.
Then he really did hear a branch snap.
Breathe.
He took slow, measured breaths. There were more trees than the one he climbed on, he told himself, more loose branches than the ones on the way into this house.
The crashing of a door across the street made him jump, and he willed himself to focus more.
“In through the nose, out through the mouth. Slowly, quietly. In and out. In and out. Focus on your breathing.” He said a silent thank you to his mom who had insisted he follow her to a handful of yoga classes for meditation. Who knew yoga breathing would be his saving grace someday?
Jacob heard more thudding across the street before a heavy thump, then the sound of leaves being raked into a pile. He focused on his breathing, letting the sounds outside wash over him. Eventually, they faded, and the evening birds and crickets began their songs.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he finally dared to exit his tiny saferoom, but it was nearly dark. He chanced a look out the window and spotted a door newly flung onto the street. His impression in the grass had been clawed through—repeatedly—and he could almost smell the freshly overturned earth from where he stood.
His eyes drifted to the tree branch he had used to enter the house. Snapped. But the monster hadn’t followed him in, which was good. It hadn’t scented his jump into the window then, and his breathing trick had been successful. Thank goodness, because that was the only “trick” he had.
Jacob retreated to the home interior to avoid his scent somehow blowing into the street. He tried to recall what he could of his story. If his memory served correctly, it had began with the protagonist making their way toward the city. They would meet up with a group of survivors, who had erected a fort while they planned out how to defeat the monster. They would make runs to houses and stores for resources before moving on to a larger settlement. Not everyone had gotten happy endings.
So, had he taken the place of a character, or was he a new addition to the world? Should he stay here, which had at least some measure of safety, or make his way to a waypoint station?
It always seems so easy when I’m just reading things, he thought with a sardonic twist of a smile. It’s so much harder when your actual life is on the line…
The sun was setting. His stomach was rumbling. Honestly…he also had to go to the bathroom. Would using the…er…”facilities” be a security risk? Probably, he figured. Animals often communicated with their leavings. It wouldn’t be safe to discount the risk.
Taking the most terrifying bathroom break of his life several houses over (but grateful that at least the plumbing still worked and he could wash his hands), he looped around the various houses, trying to confuse the monster should it try to return to track him by his scent. Spotting a few houses with branches, he jumped up to grab each in turn. He scuttled up to a new house and, this time, jumped from roof to roof to avoid detection. Only…
Ouch.
Not only was it terrifying to jump from roof to roof—he was not Spiderman—it was also painful because he was not Spiderman! Several times he barely made it across, the edge of the roof slamming into his gut as he flung his arms out to hold on. The abrasive of the tiles scraped his skin which ended up bleeding after all. He chided himself for the error. Not smart, man. Not smart.
Stuck as he was, he had to keep going, so three more jumps over the houses and…now he was a different type of stuck. How to get down from a roof without dying, he wondered. It was a three-story drop from this height, and he was pretty sure help wasn’t coming. Sighing, he looked at the thin, upper branches of the tree in front of him.
Oh, tree. How you save me and let me down at the same time.
Holding onto a branch within reach he slowly walked his way toward the edge. These branches were not as sturdy and bent as they took his weight, but at least they didn’t break. After a few death-defying attempts, he was able to shimmy to a thicker branch that let him get a toehold onto the windowsill. Praying he survived, he pushed off from the tree and slammed into the exterior wall. He never crawled into an open window so fast in his life.
Returning to his closet, Jacob shut himself in and prepared for the night. The howls of coyotes confirmed that his inclination to wait out the evening was a good one: the monster wasn’t the only threat out there. Wild animals, wandering bandits, and dangerous terrain were also waiting. They would be hard enough in the daylight, let alone the evening. For now, sleep would be his best friend. It would banish the terror and pass the time.
In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth...
*-*-*-*-*-*
The night was awful. He heard several loud crashes up and down the street. Around two a.m., by his best estimate, he heard the strangled scream of a victim off in the distance. He’d have loved to help, but he had to face facts. He was a normal guy, not a hero. What was he going to do, yell at the monster?
He felt a little guilt that it was possible the monster was searching for him, encouraged by his scent around the housing area. And, he had to remind himself, his fault the beast existed in the first place. Kind of. He hadn’t brought it to life, as far as he knew, but his ideas had generated it. Regardless of whether it was cowardice or practicality, he focused first on staying alive…and swore that he’d take a guided meditation class when he got back to reality.
When he finally left the safety of the house to do his business the next morning, he found deep claw marks where he had scraped himself on the roof the day before and shivered. It was time to get moving.
Jacob retreated to the kitchen to scrounge for foodstuffs. Using a pack of matches he found and some of the broken wood scraps outside, he made up a small fire in the backyard. It was a risk, but with the monster having been out all night, he hoped it was sleeping in this morning. He used a soup pot to boil water—thank you, city pipe breaks for that info—and was overjoyed to find some instant coffee.
He walked the house and ate cold peas from a can while he waited for the water to boil. Pilfering a backpack from a coat closet, he filled it with basic supplies. There was so much he’d love to take, but the weight and limited space available forced him to choose carefully. When he got to a room decorated with dinosaurs and basketballs, he simply closed the door. There he would not look.
Once the water had finished boiling, he made his instant joe and nicked an aluminum bat from the garage for his weapon. Backpack of supplies and water bottle finally readied, he set off with mixed feelings toward where he thought the local tool shop would be. On the one hand, if it was where he thought it should be, he’d likely find allies. On the other, it would definitely confirm he was absolutely in his own story world. Technically he hadn’t seen the monster so…it was still possible he was somewhere else, right?
Wrong. His shoulders slumped as the shop’s sign came into view.
“Ah…poop,” he groused, hitching the backpack into a more comfortable position as he walked.
The stench of rotting bodies greeted him as he avoided looking at any one of them directly. He knew these were likely victims unsuccessfully fleeing the monster as they sought safety. He hoped, guiltily, that their scents would overpower his own in some form of macabre protection.
The door’s bell jangled as he stepped inside the shop, but the click of a gun by his temple let him know he was not alone. He immediately put both his hands up.
“Hello,” he said calmly, even though his heart was beating a mile a minute. In and out. In and out. “My name is Jake. I’m a survivor looking for supplies.”
“Jake?” a female voice beside him queried. “I don’t remember a Jake.”
“I’m new in town.” He said simply. “And you are?”
He saw the gun drop in his peripheral vision. Turning, he saw a cheerful woman with white-blonde hair and a rockin’ body, smiling back at him. “Mary!” she trilled with a smile. “Mary Sue.”
Jacob closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “Mary Sue. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Mary Sue had been the name of his joke characters, after the familiar trope of people inserting themselves or ultra “perfect” characters into their works. He always gave them the token hand-to-hand combat and weapons proficiencies, only for all of it to be useless. They all died by their story’s end.
He really had been mean to his characters. He puffed out a breath, shaking his head at himself. Teenagers. That said…
“Hi Mary,” he began, still wanting to get as far away from this character as possible. “Can you tell me if the settlement is still northwest of this shop? I’m heading over now.”
“Actually, I can take you!” Mary announced brightly. “I’m here to get a few supplies for the fort before heading back.”
“No, no, no!” his mind yelled inwardly. Externally, he put on a kind but tired smile. “Thanks, Mary, but I’ve had a long night and I’d really like to get going. If you could just point me in the right direction, I’ll be on my way.”
“Oh, sure,” Mary said, blinking. She stepped outside with him and pointed. “It’s—AHH!!”
A long tongue curled around Mary’s arm, yanking her upward where the gaping jaws of the monster waited. It had the head of the Alien, neck as long as a giraffe, and claws at the end of its stretched limbs. Its wrinkly, purple-gray body otherwise resembled a scaleless alligator, a huge mass of muscles.
Jake didn’t pause to observe any more of his horror. He turned and ran. Where to, he did not know—just forward, and quickly, one foot in front of the other. He heard Mary shrieking behind him, before going quiet. He shut out the slurping noises behind him. In and out, In and out, he chanted.
Of course, none of that saved him. It was an easy thing for his monster to lope after him. He heard it thundering towards him. He dared not look, hoping, praying to somehow escape his own bad end.
And then it was on him. He felt a slash on his back, the ripping of claws through soft flesh, and he knew blackness.
…then waking up. On Cherry Street.
Everything looked the same…only this time, he walked the other way.
“Hi, I’m Mary.” A girl with white-blonde hair greeted him as he stepped into one of the more distant houses.
They didn’t even make it through the night that time.
Like Groundhog’s Day, he woke again. Again, he found her. “Hi, I’m Mary.”
“Hi, I’m Mary.”
“Hi, I’m Mary.”
It was the same every time. He actually debated whether or not he should just look for the monster and get it over with when an idea struck him.
Hi, I’m Mary.”
“No…” he said slowly. “You’re Jane.”
“No, I’m Mary.”
“No. You’re Jane. Jane Griffin.”
“I’m…”
Jacob held his breath.
“…Jane.”
Before his eyes, Mary’s hair transformed from white-blonde to a beautiful auburn. The rest of her character changed too.
In the distance he could hear the sounds of the monster, but this. This he could work with.
Grabbing Jane’s hand, he mimicked his initial trail maneuvers from his first night before boosting her into the tree and scuttling into the house and closet. With the sounds of crashing on the street outside, he focused.
He was the author.
He could still fix this.
In and out. In and out.