Free Supernatural: Night Terror by John Passarella Page B

limp at his sides. The branch then pulled him to the right and back to the left, forcing his dragging legs to perform the plodding steps of a macabre dance.
    Daniel backed away until his own numb legs bumped against his bed. Then he dropped to the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees, head turned to the side as he screamed over and over again.
    “Mom!”
    Before she returned and without his notice, the splotchy darkness slipped out of the bedroom window and into the night.

SEVEN

    Another sleepless night was what the gray-haired woman had come to expect. She hardly ever slept well in her bed. Maybe an hour here, a half-hour there, tossing and turning. Aches and pains too numerous to categorize contributed to her long nights. But not all the aches were physical. Memories had a way of keeping her awake into the wee hours. Invariably, she would surrender the idea of sleeping in her bed and, instead, settle into her musty recliner and watch television. If she was lucky, she’d catch a few hours of sleep spread over the long night.
    Lately, her level of exhaustion had become more pronounced. Throughout the day, she would bumble through her inconsequential routines and by evening, she had so little energy it was a wonder she didn’t collapse simply from climbing the stairs or completing a minimal amount of housework. Nothing seemed to matter much to her anymore. She wondered how long she could go on simply marking time. Living had become a reflex, a habit. She found no joy in it, and hadn’t for some time.
    She reached for the remote control and her hand, with veins and liver spots more prominent than they’d been a week ago, trembled with the effort. Such a simple act was almost beyond her current level of physical stamina. Maybe it wasn’t physical. Maybe it was a neurological issue. Health problems plagued the elderly, became the focus of their twilight years. Marking time in the interval between taking one pill and the next.
    She turned the television on and leaned back in the recliner, her eyelids already heavy with a sleep deficit she could never pay. It would do her good to see the doctor. Another routine to pass the time. Of course, he didn’t care if she got better. Wouldn’t know her name if she bumped into him on the street. But he tried to shock her with predictions of death and disease. Inevitable, but he made it entertaining. A jolt to remind her she was alive and not yet worm food.
    Yes, she’d pass some time with the doctor again because, oddly enough, he was a comfort to her. He was as familiar with death and violence and tragedy as she had become...
    Images flickered on the television set and she was only half conscious of them. As she slipped in and out of her troubled sleep, she was unaware of another image, an expanse of darkness that slipped under her door like a trick of the light, then flowed up her wall, slid across her ceiling and descended to the back of her chair, dyeing the ivory antimacassar on her headrest deepest black. And there it began to swell into a roiling mass of darkness with a head and glowing red eyes rising from the center and arms growing from the sides. Spindly, crouched legs formed beneath the torso. These were new but improving, strengthening. As were its abilities.
    The darkness became as comfortable as the old woman in her recliner. The house and the chair and the woman had already become familiar to the monster. It had mined a rich vein of darkness with this one. But soon their collaborations would come to an end. It sensed time was running out. Yet all was not lost. The town presented so many intriguing possibilities. And the night was young.
    As twin red eyes burned in its obsidian head, it reached out with fingers of solidified darkness and draped them over her forehead. In moments, it began to feed.
    In keeping with his nightly routine, after grading the eighthgrade science homework and preparing a lesson plan for the next school day, Harvey Dufford jogged along