Macabre Moments

The turn inside the woods resulted in a delightful surprise: a small village in the mountains with a hotel to rest. 

The backlight of her phone illuminated the dark, dense room. The time read a few minutes passed the witching hour. She managed to sleep thirty-three minutes—a bit unfair when compared to traveling hours to her destination. But the night was pitch-black on the roads nestled between the thicket of woods and far too dangerous to keep driving.

The air up in the mountains felt odd, almost too thick to breathe in. Stephanie was in no position to complain. She needed to rest at least one night before making the trip up to Humboldt County. It was impossible to rest when unease crawled up her leg. The feeling clung to her, like a leech draining her senses.

Still, she resisted the pull of the unconscious warmth. Her mouth was dry, thick with cotton.  She jolted up and out of bed, staggering to the door. The guard rails guided her down three flights of stairs. At the corner of her eye, she saw the front desk. She wobbled forward, stretching her arm toward the reception bell. As she neared, she saw the ghostly silhouette of the receptionist. Relief flushed across her face.

“Excuse me,” she said, her voice hoarse.

There was no answer. Stephanie rang the bell, repeated herself.

But the silhouette remained, and a layer of stillness she hadn’t noticed before circled the person in front of her. She reached out, and spun her around in the chair.

A jolt of terror burrowed itself at the base of her skull. She felt its heaviness hold her down, blocking her lungs from performing. In front of her, the receptionist sat slumped, her jaw slacked to the side and her cheeks sucked in as if she was drained of life. Her skin reeked of copper, potent and pungent.  But her eyes followed Stephanie as she swayed in terror.

Stephanie’s eyes diverted to strange shapes on the top of the receptionist’s head, sticking out like two open cellar doors. Curiosity crept alongside her terror as she leaned forward, the eyes still following her.

She peered inside. The terror spread like venom, petrified her in place, unable to lift a finger.  She gasped for air, silently choking on her lack of breath.

There were two small puncture holes on the most profound groove of the girl’s brain—one on each hemisphere. The brain pulsed, as if it was breathing, sloshed around in the clear fluid. Stephanie felt the urge of her dinner well up into her throat from the sound of the wetness.

 The silence was broken by a thousand clicks, small taps on the ground, sounding closer, and closer, and closer. In a moment, the clicks stopped at her feet, circling her. And just like the receptionist, Stephanie’s eyes followed the movement, noticing a pair of long, slender antennae peering from the darkness.

In an instant they disappeared and reappeared behind the receptionist’s shoulder. Stephanie swallowed her dinner, forcing chunks of undigested macaroni and cheese down into the pit of her stomach.

As she turned her gaze to the girl’s other shoulder, it disappeared again. They appeared through the girl’s hanging hair, behind her neck, only to disappear in an eye’s blink.

Stephanie scanned the girl, searching for what she didn’t know loomed in the darkness. But as she flicked her gaze upon the girl’s head, she saw what she feared. A centipede—thick and slimy—twirling its antennae, as if sniffing the fear in the air. She stared at the horrible thing with its thousand legs, feeling the surface of the head.

And then it stopped, frozen in its movement. Its top segment slithered, slowly, into the head, burrowing its two large fangs into the holes she noticed before. The rest of its body twisted, circling around the front of the opening and wormed its way inside, its hooked legs closing the doors on the way inside.

The receptionist straightened, her jaw in place, face full of life. The warmth in her eyes was welcoming.

“How may I help you?” Her confidence beamed on her face.

Stephanie ran. She didn’t know how, but she ran—ran up the stairs so fast until her lungs pumped fire.

Her keys lay beside the bed on the nightstand. She grabbed them, her phone and bolted out the door and down the stairs, skipping a few.

In her haste, she fumbled the keys somewhere in the darkness of the stairs. The lights were dim, not illuminating enough to help her see. Her breathing burned, nostrils flared desperate for air. Her heart pulsed, beat over her panicked squeals as her hands searched the stairs.

She realized she held her phone in one hand and turned on the flashlight. Frantically, she flashed the light up and down the stairs and caught a small glint at the bottom, close to the ground floor. She flew to them. 

Stephanie picked the keys up, gripped them and tore past the receptionist desk, eyes following her out the front door, which stayed open from the force of her body pushing forward.

The car beeped, unlocking. She ran inside the driver’s seat and pressed the car on.

As the headlights turned on, she was met with dozens of people standing in front of her car. She looked at each one, her gaze flicking from person to person. They looked off somehow. And just as she switched the car into drive, the masses opened their mouths in unison and said: “How may I help you?”

She sped down the mountain curves, eyes locked on the road, never daring to look back.