It was a relief to know the source of the light wasn’t within the apartment, but she still couldn’t help but wonder what it could be. There wasn’t anything out there that she could remember that would glow like that. Maybe an ambulance light or the light from the top of a police car? But if that were the case, wouldn’t it be flashing rather than pulsating?
For a moment, she hesitated. She almost returned to her apartment, called it a night, and curled up with Steve. That would be the smart thing to do rather than wandering around in a strange apartment at night. Or at the very least, she told herself, I should go down and knock on Lacy’s door, get her up here to have a look, too. Safety in numbers. It was late, sure, but this was important.
She stayed there on the threshold, hesitating, holding to the edge of the door frame. But then curiosity got the better of her and instead of turning around and leaving she went in.
Inside, she could smell the dust. The air, too, was thick and stale, as if it had been trapped there for too long. She shuffled in slowly, crossing the room and moving toward the pulsating light.
She reached out and parted the curtains, brought her face close to the glass so she could see. There, on the back of an old brick building, was a flickering red neon Jesus Saves sign. She stared at it. No, that was wrong, she told herself. It couldn’t be there. She knew what was behind the house, and it wasn’t that. Something was wrong.
And as soon as she began to think this, the Jesus Saves sign began to change. It almost seemed to melt, the words beginning to shift and change, the neon staying lit but flowing like water along the wall to become a series of strange, incomprehensible symbols. What the fuck? she thought, beginning to feel apprehensive. She rubbed her eyes, but when she opened them the symbols were still there.
I’ve got to go, she told herself. She turned from the window and made for the door, but before she could reach it she heard a rustling from the shadows. There was something there, or maybe someone.
“Hello?” she said, but nobody answered.
But something was moving there, she could hear it, and as she stared, something came stumbling out and into the red light.
It was not a person, though it had once been one. Now the face was charred and burned, little more than bone, the body mere bone as well, though bits and pieces of withered and charred flesh still clung to it here and there. It was dressed in nothing but a few blacked scraps of tattered fabric. It stared into her eyes—or at least would have if it had had eyes. Instead, it turned two blackened sockets in her direction. Its jaw clicked and then opened. When it did, a black liquid began to spill from the mouth.
Heidi just watched, horrified, paralyzed. She couldn’t breathe, felt like the wind had been knocked out of her.
Then the creature hissed and lunged at her and she came to herself enough to stumble back and away from it. But there was another one behind her, this one charred but with more flesh, a woman obviously, her body still warm and smoking as she clawed at Heidi and made a noise a little like someone suffocating might make. Black fluid was pouring from her mouth as well. Heidi struggled to get away, feeling both creatures tear into her with spastic motions, almost as if they were puppets or sleepwalkers. They shredded her clothes but didn’t stop there, continuing to rip and tear at her, deeply slashing her skin with their charred and bloody hands. She cried out in pain, struggled to get away. The sharp nails of a hand clawed deep into her forehead, tore her scalp partly off.
She cried out again, pushed and shoved violently and managed to break free. She ran toward the light of the open door, but before she could reach it something struck her hard in the side and knocked her off balance. She missed the door and hit the wall hard, unable to stop, and quickly the hands were upon her again, dragging at her, pulling her down onto the floor as she screamed and cried. She could feel them clawing at her, caught glimpses of their hideous bodies and burned flesh, their strange fleshless grins, as they set upon her.
She lay there. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious, nor, to tell the truth, whether she was alive or dead. She wasn’t sure when they had stopped tearing at her, nor if they were still there, hovering over her, just waiting for her to move before setting on her again.
The floor was wet all around her, her body wet, too, but it took her a moment to realize that it was with her blood. She rolled to one side and felt her whole body blaze up with pain. She stopped there, hesitating, but there was no movement in the apartment, no sign that they were still there. Perhaps they had thought her dead and had retreated to their shadows. Or had gone elsewhere to make others their victims.
Very carefully she got her limbs under her. She felt something tear painfully in her arm, a wound ripping open again. She thought of standing up, but no, she wasn’t sure she could manage, and she worried she would be too visible. No, she needed to be as inconspicuous as possible, needed to try to make it out before they realized that she wasn’t dead after all.
There it was, the door to the hall, light coming through it. She put one hand out in front of her and dragged her way a little closer to it. Then she waited. When nothing happened, she pulled herself with the other hand and then managed to get her legs partly under her and begin to crawl.
It didn’t seem like she was the one crawling. The pain made her feel so distant from her body that it felt like she was a ghost hovering above herself, somewhere near the ceiling, watching someone else crawl. She kept the body below her moving toward the door, trying not to feel its pain, trying just to keep it moving.
Her fingers crossed over the threshold and pulled her partway out. I might survive after all, she thought. All she had to do was drag herself the rest of the way out and down the hall and into her apartment and call 911, then staunch her wounds and try to stay alive until they sent an ambulance for her.
Then she was all the way out and into the hall. She came back from where she was hovering like a ghost over her body to occupy the body itself and had to stop herself from screaming in pain. But being in the body made her feel more capable as well. She could feel the adrenaline pumping within her and she managed to crawl up the wall and pull herself to her knees. From there, with a tremendous effort of will, she stumbled to her feet and stood there, braced against the wall, out of breath. The wall was all bloody, she saw, from where it had touched her, and she knew if she turned around she would see a swath of blood along the hallway floor as well from where she had dragged herself. Don’t look back, she told herself. Move forward.
She would have done it, too, only when she looked up she saw a woman standing there, a tall woman with an austere face and dark eyes and a cruel mouth. She stood dead center in the hallway, blocking Heidi’s path.
The hallway suddenly seemed bled of sound. Heidi couldn’t hear the rustle of the wind outside, nor the settling of the house, nor even the sound of her own breathing. It was as if the whole hallway had been swaddled in cloth and removed from the world, as if nothing beyond this hallway existed. She could not feel her body either, but it wasn’t as if she was above it now, only as if she was in it but unable to feel it. She felt strangely at peace. There was even a comfort to this, but a comfort, she couldn’t help but think, that must be like the comfort you might find in being dead, if you could be aware of being dead. And it was as if she was under a spell.
She stared at the woman in the hallway, wondering whether she should try to go around her, not even certain she’d be able to move. Before she could make her decision, the woman began to speak in a soft, almost inaudible voice.