Mia took one step after another forward on the sol
Mia took one step after another forward on the solid ground, with Zuckerbird urging her on, all the while uttering “Yes, yes, yes…,” directing her to keep on going in the direction of the mountain. Zuckerbird was urging Mia on to wade along down the path winding among the tall pine trees in the woods until she reached home.
Mia lived with her mom in a rented small house. She reached home and stood outside the locked door, afraid to go in and tell her mom that her car was damaged by the flood water. The car insurance had expired because her mom had no money to renew it.
The house sat in silence beneath the evil Satan dark sky now. Mia stretched to ease her tension as she stood outside the locked front door. She stood hearing the wind sighing through the trees, and the swaying branches creaking in the wind and thrashing up against the glass of the front window.
She took a deep breath, her heart thumping wildly in her chest, and braced herself as she turned the key in the lock. She stopped and caught her breath, feeling suddenly scared with a sense of premonition and of expectation of the works of the evil to come.
She rested her hand on the doorknob, turning it slowly. The door opened about an inch, and an uncanny smell wafted out of the narrow opening between the door and its frame and reached her nose, causing her to gasp. She felt confirmed in her belief that the devil himself was in their home, doing his work.
Mia followed the smell into the hallway, gently closing the door behind her without locking it, just in case she might run into some serious life-threatening trouble inside the house and needed to run back out the door. She gave the hallway a final long sniff, and could feel her heart pounding in her chest, feeling a combination of terror and the need to run away from the house.
But Mia held her ground, realizing that her mom was probably inside the house and waiting for her to come home to talk to her. As Mia stood still, agitated with dread, she noticed the door to her mom’s bedroom was wide open. That was unusual because her mom would never leave her bedroom door wide open like that.
“Mom, I’m home!”
There was no answer.
Mia gingerly stepped to her mom’s bedroom and stood outside the door, with her back leaning against the wall beside the door. She turned sideways and peeked around the doorframe and into the bedroom, bracing herself for bad news and expecting the worst as she called into the bedroom, “Mom, why are you still at home? When I didn’t get home with your car, in time for you to drive to work, I thought you would have already walked to work.”
Mia’s heart pounded in her chest, a frantic rhythm against the backdrop of the wind’s mournful howl. The smell, a cloying mixture of damp earth and something metallic, lingered in the hallway, a tangible reminder of the terror that awaited her. The open door to her mother’s room, usually meticulously shut, felt like a gaping maw, swallowing her courage whole.
“Mom, I’m home!” Her voice, a trembling whisper, echoed in the stillness of the house.
Silence.
Mia, her hand instinctively reaching for the pepper spray tucked in her pocket, took a cautious step forward, her eyes scanning the room. The bed was rumpled, a single book lay open on the bedside table, its pages fluttering in the draft. The silence was broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the old grandfather clock in the corner, its pendulum swinging like a metronome of dread.
“Mom, why are you still at home?” Her voice, a desperate plea, was swallowed by the silence.
The metallic smell intensified, pulling her closer, a sickly sweet allure. Her eyes, searching for any sign of her mother, landed on the open closet door. Inside, on a hanger, hung her mother’s coat. It looked as though it had been hastily removed, as if…
A wave of nausea washed over her. Her mother wouldn’t leave her coat hanging in the closet. Not in this weather. Not with the floodwaters rising.
Mia’s mind raced, a kaleidoscope of terror and confusion. Where was her mother? Why did the house smell like that? And what was that noise?
A low, guttural groan, like a beast stirring from its slumber, echoed from the back of the closet. Mia’s breath caught in her throat.
“Mom?” she whispered, a single word that was swallowed by the growing darkness within the house, a darkness that now seemed to seep from the walls and press against her, suffocating her with fear.
Her hand, shaking, reached for the doorknob. She needed to get out, to call for help, but a paralyzing fear held her frozen, her eyes glued to the back of the closet, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird.
The groan came again, louder this time, accompanied by a shuffling sound. The darkness seemed to pulsate, drawing her closer, a siren’s call to a terrifying fate.
Taking a deep breath, Mia closed her eyes, her fingers tightening around the pepper spray. She knew she had to confront the unknown, to face the terror in the closet. Her mother’s life, perhaps, depended on it.
With a whispered prayer, she threw open the door, the metallic smell surging to meet her, a wave of putridity that almost knocked her off her feet. But she stood firm, her eyes searching for the source of the sound.
And then, she saw it.
Not a beast, not a monster, but something far more insidious, far more terrifying. Something that filled her with a dread that went beyond the boundaries of human comprehension.
She gasped, a single, strangled cry, before the darkness swallowed her whole. The groaning stopped, replaced by the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock, a steady beat that echoed the silence of the house.
And the smell… the smell clung to the air, a haunting reminder of the terror that had taken root in her home, a chilling testament to the evil that lurked in the shadows.
