The Lamia Hunt

Chapter Eight: The Storm

19:48 02/11/1992

Inside the house, Sarah could still hear the sea pounding, and rain lashing against the windows, and she was glad that she didn't commute any more. She had never enjoyed the train ride from Truro, especially in weather like this, but here, in this house, she felt invincible. Well, to an extent, at least.
The house itself was not beautiful; it was an attached government-built brick block, identical to every other house on the street, but it was her home. Her family's home. It may not have been a large sitting room that she was lying in, and the taps in the kitchen might be faulty, but it was her home. The furniture helped, but there was attachment to the house itself as well, however delusional it seemed. Yes, she was definitely at home, curled on a pudgy settee, reading until Dave got home.
There was a flash of lightning outside. She turned to stare out of the window, and the power went out. Thunder echoed in the distance, and Sarah lay back on the couch, marking her place in the book with her thumb. All at once, she realised how tired she was. It wasn't late, but somehow, she felt as if she could sleep forever, bugger it all. Her eyelids were too heavy to bother trying to keep them open, and her head drooped onto her chest.

She woke up later, and she didn't know why. 
How long had the power been off? The cable's must've been damaged. That was going to be fun; making tea on the fire, lighting everything with candles. And what about showering? She hadn't washed yet, and now she wasn't going to be able to. 
Well, it could wait. 
Everything could wait; it was dark, and it was cold, and she was content to lie here for the moment.
But she didn't. She sat up, looking around her. Something was wrong, but she couldn't tell what. There was nothing to see; nothing had changed outside, and it was still barely light enough for her to see her own hands.
She stood up, letting her book fall onto the settee. The darkness was no longer a comfort; it was a threat, and she didn't know from what. The silence was oppressive, and she had to hold herself back from screaming to end it.
Then, somebody else did. The scream was long and howling, a wordless cry of pain and fear, loud enough to shatter the night, and Sarah was paralysed with fear. 
It was not for herself.
She had never heard a scream like that before, but she knew, in the pit of her stomach, to whom it belonged. Perhaps it was a mother's instinct, or perhaps simple recognition of the voice, but she knew with unwavering certainty that it was her daughter who had screamed. Rose.
She was only upstairs, and should have been asleep in her room, but it would not have mattered if she had been a thousand miles away, for Sarah felt she would have arrived there in the same time.
In the dark, the house that she loved so well seemed to turn against her, to shuffle its contents to block her path and stop her from reaching Rose. She tripped on a table, and felt its edge slice through her skin, but she didn't care. She could have lost an arm and not cared. 
In the moment of the scream, she could have thought of no sound more terrible, more heart-wrenching and frightening, but she had proven herself wrong.
The silence that followed was far more threatening. It was expectant and mocking, daring her to hope for another sound, another shriek of pain, another anything, just not silence. She didn't want to think about what silence meant, but she couldn't stop herself. Images flickered in her mind, darkness she'd never believed she'd had surfacing, showing her just what could have happened. She pushed the thoughts away, but they returned, assaulting her as she climbed the stairs, almost crawling on all fours so as not to fall, and held there by fear.
She rose as she reached the landing, and her eyes flicked around the miniature corridor. Nothing seemed wrong, and it terrified her. The door to the children's room was closed, but that could have been the wind. 
She knew that it wasn't.
Sarah paused at the door, and waited. She didn't want to know what for, but at the same time, she knew that there was no reason for it, but for her own fear. She sickened herself, but fear had her in its clutches, and, for a wild moment, she contemplated running, turning on her heel and never returning to this place. 
Before she could think of it for a second longer, she pushed open the door, and sealed her fate.
The man at the window waited before he turned to face her. He winced at her arrival, although she was sure she could have made no sound. 
She should have looked around the room, but she didn't. There was something transfixing about the intruder; Sarah found herself unable to draw her eyes away from him as he turned to face her.
His features were bony, his skin taut and faintly yellow. It was his eyes, however, that captured her; they seemed to almost glow in the darkness, bright pulsating red. They lightened at the sight of her. The lower half of his face was stained with some dark liquid, and Sarah shook her head at the thought of what it could be. 
He wiped his chin with his arm, and smiled. Sarah caught a flash of white teeth between his lips, and gripped the frame of the door. The sight of him unnerved her, and whatever plan she had had disappeared before her eyes. She was powerless, and she didn't know how she knew, but she knew, more clearly than she had ever known a single thing in her life.
She let herself sink to her knees, and, as she did, a flash of lightning let her see the rest of the room. Rose's bedclothes were strewn over the ground, one of her pillows ripped open and spilling polyester. Rose herself, she couldn't see, but she could see something else, something that she tried to deny, but at the same time knew. It was pooling on the floor, turning the bedsheets into a dark, sodden mess.
She shook her head at the thought of what it meant. It didn't matter; she needed to know where Rose was, and that was all.
The man glanced at her, and bent down, rising again, his hand at the collar of what seemed to be a rag doll. He raised it without effort, and shook it, listlessly. 
There was another flash of lightning, and the man - and what he was holding - were illuminated in detail Sarah felt like vomiting at the sight of. The rag doll was not what she'd thought it was - she'd hoped that it wasn't, but she could not deny what she had seen. She would have recognised them by each feature that she saw, and at each, she was certain.
Rose's eyes were still open, wide and frightened, yet glassy and lifeless. Sarah's breath caught at the thought. Her daughter's mouth gaped open like a fish's, and there was a bloody mess of a wound at her neck.
The man lifted the corpse into the air, and stared into its eyes, an indifferent frown on his face. He dropped it to the floor. It landed with a dull thud, and he turned to Sarah.
"You're next," he said, and smiled.