SIX
Harold Lambrechts had had a nightmare the previous night, a nightmare about an intruder in his house. He’d snored himself awake, laughed at the dream and himself. Then he’d rolled over to doze until morning. He had no fear of break-ins with his service revolver in the bedside table and twenty years of experience on the Police force.
He knew with absolute certainty that dreams were just the brain barfing up recent events, so he had no idea why last night’s had unsettled him to the point that he had felt edgy the entire day. He’d never been Mr. Congeniality when it came to the people that he met at work, but even he thought he’d been an asshole to everyone from support staff to his partner. No night without sleep, and of course he’d had many, had ever left him feeling so—haunted.
Sure nothing would keep him from zonking as soon as his head hit the pillow, he’d laid down ready for a good night’s sleep. However, his eyes had only been closed for a moment when he sensed the presence of another person in the house. Last night they’d been downstairs; tonight, he felt they were just at the foot of his bed. <Enough of this crap,> he thought. <There’s no way anyone’s in the house. And there’s no reason to be afraid if someone IS; I can fuck up anyone who thinks this house is an easy mark because it’s in a nice neighborhood.> Lambrechts tried to shout, more to make himself feel better than to scare an intruder he really didn’t believe was there.
He found he couldn’t open his mouth. He couldn’t move his arms, couldn’t swing his legs over the side of the bed. He tried to force himself awake and the effort only convinced him that he wasn’t asleep.
Lambrechts couldn’t see the intruder, but the certainty that they were there was powerful; and after a moment more of lying there sweating, he couldn’t deny their existence.
And he knew they were moving closer.
He could feel them creeping along the foot of his bed, just out of sight, parallel to the floor. He strained to break the paralysis as he became certain whatever was down there had come to the corner of the mattress.
He could hear his heart and his breath coming faster… and a ‘pop pop pop’ sound he couldn’t identify.
Blue fingers spider-walked into view around the corner of the mattress at the bottom of his bed. Two hands, side-by-side, fingers tapering to needles, their tips sinking into the sheet, pinning it to the mattress, withdrawing and coming closer.
<Pop pop pop. >
Speeding up. And a sound, almost a voice, like the creak of old furniture or the wail of child diminished by distance. It was something out of a horror movie. Lambrechts had never found monster flicks frightening in the least, but he couldn’t draw in a breath for fear of the thing creeping up on him.
Wrists nearly bone sticking out of loose sleeves. A hood framing only darkness.
<Pop pop pop.>
It could easily reach over the side of the bed and grab at his legs, but it continued to pull itself along the side of the bed defying gravity scrabbling nearer the head of the bed.
When the first needled fingertip pierced the flesh of his shoulder, Lambrechts had time enough to scream before his world went dark.