Chapter 5 – Between a Wall and a Hard Place

That horrifying feeling of being pursued kicking her adrenaline to new highs, Shannon bolted to the car and started fumbling with the latch in blind terror before she realized that it wasn’t a pull latch, but a button latch, and she hastily shoved her thumb into the button and yanked the door open. She had gotten all the way into the driver’s seat before she realized she’d forgotten her keys. On the peg. Inside.

“Shit,” she whispered. “Shit, shit!”

She opened the car door with a gentle click and listened. Inside the house, through the upstairs dormer window, she heard the sound of a hacksaw.

Fuck! Shannon got out of her car, carefully, now, and tiptoed back to the house. Upstairs, the hacksaw went quiet.

Oh God, she whimpered inside. Odin’s balls. Odin’s fucking balls. She twisted the knob timidly and opened the door, very careful not to make a sound.

Upstairs, she heard a thud.

He’s out of the attic! her mind screamed. She threw the door open, lunged inside, and yanked the keys off of the rack just in time to see the naked Japanese dude hesitate on the stairs, giving her a startled look.

Shannon leapt backwards, slammed the door shut behind her, and bolted for the car, leaving her wallet and all of its ID, money, credit-cards, and half-filled coffee vouchers on the hook with her coat. She was running for her life, now, and she heard the door rattle behind her. Oh sweet Jesus. He was fast.

But the rattling continued as she made it to a skidding halt in the gravel beside her car and flung the door open. He’s trying to figure out how to open the door, Shannon’s panicked brain realized, even as she threw herself into her seat and began jamming keys into the ignition. Halleluiah Jesus. Her trembling fingers fumbled and she dropped them.

“Fuck!” she screamed, in terror, now. She took just enough time to check to make sure that the front door was still closed before she ducked her head down and scrabbled for them under the pedals.

Then it opened with a crash and bare feet were thumping across the front porch.

“Oh God, oh God,” Shannon whimpered, her trembling keys finding the Dodge key and shoving it into the ignition. She twisted violently and the engine caught, began to purr. Shannon slammed her foot on the gas.

The car revved in neutral.

A fist slammed through her window and started tearing at the glass. Shannon screamed and leaned out of the way of the tawny fist. She was about to put the car into reverse, leaning to the side, when she saw the man’s glowing yellow-white eyes. Then she forgot all about cars and engines and gears and slammed her foot down on the gas again, screaming.

“Come out!” he snapped, slamming a fist into the cab of the Dodge Dart, making a dent just above the crown of her head. His knuckles were bloody from the glass. Shannon cringed and started crawling towards the other side of the car. He frowned at her and reached in after her.

Shannon yanked the opposite car door open and spilled out, just as his bleeding fingers caught her shoelaces as they scrabbled for her. Screaming again, Shannon kicked at him, then, when he grunted and released her, got to her feet and ran for the highway.

“No!” he shouted. She heard him come around the car after her. Shannon stayed on the gravel, knowing it would be harder for him to follow her on gravel. Bare feet. Had to use that. Oh God, she was gonna die.

Indeed, he was running on it anyway. Catching up. Shannon screamed again and ducked her head.

“Stop running!” the man shouted behind her.

She could make it to the highway. He couldn’t kill her on the highway.

Then she realized that the highway was another five miles away, and that there was only a lonely dirt road running up to her parents’ ancient homestead. She took a last few steps, then came to a halt, spinning to face her pursuer.

He slowed to a cautious walk, like a big cat whose rabbit had unexpectedly stopped running.

Oh fuck, Shannon’s terrified mind whimpered. He was, in fact, much bigger than she had thought. A samurai, she thought. I am so screwed. She started edging around him, making a wide circle, back toward the still-running car.

He watched her alertly, following at a distance, but made no moves to try and keep himself between her and the vehicle. “I have a proposition for you, vampire.”

The word left a leaden weight of dread settling in her stomach. “I’m not a vampire,” she whimpered, easing back to the car. Could he just not realize what it was? How long had he been imprisoned?

“You are a vampire,” he said. “The fact you’ve not yet been made a woman by a man doesn’t mean you are not a vampire.”

Oh she did not like the sound of that. Shannon spun and raced back to the car. Then she thought about how much time it would take to get the door open and get inside and she altered her trajectory for the house, instead. She bolted up the steps, lunged across the front porch, and threw the door open. She stepped inside and slammed it shut just in time to catch him in the face.

Hyperventilating, now, Shannon threw the deadbolt, then ran around looking for a phone, unable to think. She needed a phone. She started searching countertops and couches, looking for the last place she’d put it. Behind her, she heard glass shatter and heard the mottled entryway window collapse to the floor.

Seeing his big, naked body step through the now-open window, however, Shannon forgot about phones. She took several steps backwards, edging toward the stairs.

“Stop,” he growled. “I’m bigger and faster than you, girl. This is not going to go well if you keep angering me.” Indeed, his eyes were twin glimpses into a golden star.

Not human, she realized, sparking more terror. He’s not human.

Remembering the guns upstairs, Shannon spun and ran. She raced up the stairs and bolted down the hall to her parents’ master suite. Behind her, her pursuer cursed and started up the stairs after her. She jumped inside her parents’ bedroom—a room that she had carefully avoided ever since the first time she’d seen the odd racks and cages contained therein—and slammed the heavy door shut. This time, when she locked it in his face, it stayed locked.

“Come out, now!” the man bellowed on the other side. Shannon went to her father’s gun-case, saw the lock, and used the combination she knew her parents used on everything—her birthday. The padlock clicked, the door came open, and Shannon was suddenly looking at a dozen different guns, none of which she knew what they did. The man had started to kick the door outside with house-rattling thumps that were making the walls shake.

She took the biggest, most scary-looking gun she could find—a rifle of some sort—and put it to her shoulder, pointed at the door much too high to be aimed at his head, and fired.

The gun slammed into her chest and shoulder and threw her backwards to land on the floor with a groan.

In the silence that followed, Shannon had the presence of mind to shout, “The next one, I put through your chest! Go away and leave me alone! I’m not a vampire!” When, in reality, she certainly wasn’t firing the gun again and probably wasn’t going to be able to move her arm for a week, she dragged it with her to the huge master bed and put her back against the mattress, facing the door.

And, for his part, the man had gone silent.

Too silent. She heard nothing out there except for the pounding of her own heart. She wondered if maybe she had accidentally hit him. The hole in the door was lower than she’d been aiming. Just how tall was he? In that pang of guilt, she said, “Hello?”

She got no response.

“Oh shit.” Shannon carefully got to her feet and went to the door and squatted to dip her head low enough to see under the crack into the hallway. She saw nothing. She slid from one edge of the crack to the other, trying to see as much of the hallway on the other side as was possible.

Seeing nothing creeped her out even more than if she had seen a dead body on the other side. She quickly recoiled from the door and scrabbled away. Swallowing, she said, “Look, I know you’re out there. Please believe me. I’m not evil. I’ve never hurt anyone in my life.”

Silence.

Shannon let out a terrified breath, close to a sob, now. “Please!” she screamed at the door. Being in her parents’ room was beginning to creep her out. She’d always hated the smell—like a mixture of heavy-duty cleaner and cinnamon air-freshener—and there were dozens of different bolts and chains and cuffs hanging along the walls, the bed-frame was made of wood and metal as thick as her torso, and the cages were placed in strategic locations around the room. Three of them, that she could see.

They waited for me to go to sleep, she thought, in horror. Or, during the winter, to go to school. They were killing people while I was at school.

“Please!” she cried again, thoroughly unnerved by the weird feel of the place. Dark and dreary, it had only a single, tiny light set into the ceiling. She had no doubt that people had died here. No fucking doubt. She knew it in her gut. Her eyes fell upon the big black leather chair in one corner, where she had seen her father—

Then, suddenly, she did remember. Like a vivid flash of a nightmare, she remembered the strange gurgling sounds coming from down the hall, when she’d woken to go to the bathroom. She remembered her parents’ heavy door swinging open under her touch, remembered the naked man twitching in the bed under her mother’s body, as she grasped him by the throat with both hands. She remembered her father, sprawled lazily in a chair, as a similarly collared blonde woman huddled at his feet, sobbing, dripping blood to the floor between her legs, wearing a leash like a dog. The end of which, her father held loosely in one hand while he read a Civil War book with the other. His groin and abdomen and thighs had been covered in crimson.

She remembered her parents looking up, remembered her mother pulling…things…out of the man’s neck as she pulled her hands away. She remembered him choking, that weird little gagging sound that she’d heard in the hallway outside. She remembered her mother’s smile as she licked the things sliding back into her wrists and said, “Maybe someday, sweetie. Go back to bed for now. We wouldn’t want to wake you before it’s time.”

“Let me out of here!” Shannon screamed at the door, in complete panic, now. It was the same chair. The same black chair. And the bolts where the man’s hands had been tied as her mother rode him. Dropping the gun, Shannon bolted to the exit, slammed back the lock, threw the door open, and ran outside.

Immediately, a big form grabbed her and threw her against the wall, pressing his body into hers.

“No!” Shannon screamed, kicking, biting, scratching, still seeing that woman’s terrified blue eyes flicker up to her, the corpses strewn around the room. “No, no no!”

“Calm down,” the man holding her roared.

She screamed again and started pushing at his face, his neck, his eyes, trying to get him away from her, crying.

He grabbed her by the wrists—though strangely delicately—and held them at her sides. “I’m not going to hurt you!” Then he leaned in and kept her there, her back pressed tightly against the wall. “Be still,” he said, more gently. His eyes were glowing again, and Shannon felt the pain of the light against her forehead and neck. She whimpered and flinched away.

She felt him turn his head aside, the light no longer hitting her skin, and she let out a relieved whimper. He continued to hold her like that for several minutes, with only their heartbeats keeping time. His chest rumbled against hers as he said, “Are you calm?”