Chapter 12 (part 1)

Evan was fully aware that there were slithering sounds in the darkness.

There was something there, something in the cellar with him, but he was too disoriented to locate it. He did his best to focus on his breathing, to look beyond the dizzying darkness and the pain that swept through his body like fire. He sat on the floor and slowly began to use his legs to push himself back. He used his right hand to speed this process, making sure not to put any force at all on his injured left hand. His pinky was a throbbing maelstrom of agony and the pain seemed to be parading through his entire body.

When he came to the stairs that he had fallen down, he nearly screamed. He felt the bottom stair pressing against his back and was sure that it was some terrible instrument that would slice through him.

With the solid feel of the bottom stair at his back, he tried to imagine the layout of the cellar. He had only seen it briefly before he had gone tumbling down the stairs and he had assumed it to be a perfectly square room. So that meant that whatever was making the slithering sounds was very close to him. There were no walls between him and the sound; he was sharing an open space with whatever made the noises.

He kept seeing the creature from the bus toilet, certain that there was another one of those things down here with him. He saw its dented infantile head, its numerous eyes and reaching tentacles in his mind’s eye and it was very easy to imagine it in the darkness with him.

Directly ahead of him, he heard another sound of motion. It sounded like something being dragged across the floor, but he wasn’t certain. Then, following this, there was a gentle clucking sound that reminded him more of the qualities of a frog’s croaking rather than a chicken’s call.

It was this noise that helped him to realize that there were two sources to the noise. He heard the odd sounds coming from two different locations, from two different voices; it was almost like hearing crickets or tree frogs calling out to one another at night. It sounded like it could be one thick voice but it was unmistakably a chorus of voices, communicating something that his ears could not understand.

Evan narrowed his eyes and tried to peer into the darkness. There was not a single light source within the cellar and he could see nothing. He hoped that his eyes would quickly adjust, but the darkness was too thick and his eyes were still muddled from his disoriented state.

As he peered forward into the dark, something soft landed on his right leg. He felt it caressing, searching for purchase. He jerked his leg back with a shout, pressing his back harder against the stairway. In the darkness came that odd call again, a clicking sound from some bizarre throat.

Evan reached back and pushed himself up, using the stairs to help get to his feet. As he did this, he felt another reaching appendage slap against his foot, then another at his right leg where it tried to wrap around his knee. With each touch, he heard that clicking language again.

He tried figuring out how many separate voices he could hear and this only made his panic worse. His heart seemed to stammer when he realized that there were at least six different sources.

He slowly made his way back up the stairs in the darkness. He knew that there was only a locked door behind him, but he didn’t care. Each second he lived in ignorance of what was clucking in the cellar and reaching out for him was a glorious one. He backed up the stairs, tripping once and falling hard on his backside.

From the bottom of the stairs he heard a soft slapping sound. This was followed by another loud slapping, and then another. Following this, there was the sliding noise again. He imagined the creature from the toilet pulling itself along the cellar floor, grabbing onto the bottom step and pulling itself up.

Evan continued to make his way up the stairs, not daring to look back. He knew that there was the thinnest amount of light at the bottom of the door but he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to see any more. Yet, as he took one more step closer to the top, he realized that he could actually see the immediate space beside him. The light that barely crept in through the closed door was working with his slowly adjusting eyes and he was slowly beginning to make out what the darkness was hiding from him.