double take | welcome to the blumhouse

double take

 Something was in the house.

That was the only thing that Ellie knew for sure. She wasn't sure where her little brother went. She didn't know why her mom was standing on the front porch, staring out at the street, gazing right past Ellie and her father in the driveway. She didn't know why the hairs were standing up on her arm. But whatever was in their house was something that could harm her family, and she was not about to let that happen.

Ellie and her dad went through the garage, grabbing Ellie's old softball bats on the way in. She turned the bat in her hands, her arms tensing up as she realized that she wasn't about to use this bat for softball.  Ellie's dad went first, and they both froze when they saw her brother's body sprawled out on the kitchen floor. His throat had been ripped open, and Ellie had to look away. She would process later, and save her family now.

"What happened here?" Ellie asked her dad, and he shook his head. Something crashed behind her, and they both whirled around. Ellie did a double take, flinching backwards but trying to keep ahold of her bat.

It was her brother, staring blankly at them both. But sweet little Benjamin was laying behind her, dead, his throat ripped out.

"Benny?" Ellie's dad said, making eye contact with the boy wearing his thirteen-year-old's face. Before Ellie could do anything, the glass-eyed Benjamin's arm reached out and grabbed her dad by the throat. Ellie couldn't look as the monster started to try and do to her dad what it had done to Ben. She whacked it over the head with her softball bat. The monster crumpled, leaving behind two of her brother's bodies. Her dad, however, was too late to save. Ellie hit the monster again, hard, before taking off running out the door, stepping over her mother's body on the way out as she slammed the door.

Ellie ran and ran, as far as she could from the house, the double image of her brother lingering in her mind.