When the Void Stares Back

             There have been many strange happenings in my city recently, more than ever before.  Sure, every town has tragedies that they deal with, or strings of misfortunes that befall it, but this felt different.  It started small, as most things do, but it quickly ramped up and before long, terror had clutched the hearts of most citizens in town.  Now, I’m no expert on death and am by no means a detective, but I had to get to the bottom of this for a couple reasons.  A big part of it was that this city is where I was born and raised, and it’s where I currently live; I genuinely love this town.  But more than that, I thought I knew what was causing this, and if I was right, I might be able to stop it.

             It started with the local wildlife; squirrels, birds, rabbits and raccoons were being found dead in the streets and parks throughout the city.  This wasn’t too shocking, after all, small animals had a tendency to run into the streets and get hit cars, or be mauled by larger animals.  What was alarming though, was the sheer volume of them, and the way they were found.  These poor animals were being found torn apart and scorched, with their grey matter frozen in their skulls, and as many as a dozen were being discovered every day, all throughout the city.  They appeared to be partially devoured, but not by any mouth that the local vets could identify.

To the authorities, this meant that some sick individual was responsible, but to me, it didn’t seem that simple.

             After a week of these critters being found in horrifying states, larger animals began to go missing and show up in similar conditions.  These started out as typical family pets, dogs and cats of various breeds and sizes.  Families were devastated; you couldn’t walk more than a hundred meters through the streets without seeing a lost pet sign.  Anyone who had pets began to keep them inside on a permanent basis, whether the animals liked it or not.  But this didn’t stop the slaughter, it only changed the trajectory of the predator hunting its prey.

             Once family animals weren’t allowing outside, larger wildlife began to appear mutilated in the early hours of daylight.  Anything from foxes, deer, birds of prey and even bears from the nearby forest were found in the same state; vivisected, burned and frozen.  This frightened my town even further and caused the local government to issue city-wide curfews, but this didn’t stop anything, it only caused local kids to defy the curfew to prove themselves to their peers, but of course that didn’t end well.

             The first incident happened two days after the curfew began.  A young boy named Billy snuck out after his parents went to sleep to run over to his best friend’s house, to show him that he wasn’t scared of anything; they found him barely a block away from his home the next morning.  No, he wasn’t killed, but he might as well have been dead.  They found him missing most of his left leg in a field in a vegetative state; his face was frozen in a ghastly expression of pain and panic.  He was taken to the city hospital immediately, and I even heard he was airlifted to a children’s hospital in a city a few regions over.  From what I heard, his leg appeared to be cauterized where it was torn off.  That was the normal part of the incident though, as he was missing his entire femur and even part of his pelvis, with the muscle and soft tissue deep inside suffering from frostbite.

             There were an additional seven victims after this, ranging in multiple ages and genders.  They were all left alive in the same state that I would consider worse than death; all of them were missing pieces of their bodies, and were in non-responsive states.  The mysterious tragedy only further increased when it was discovered that each of them were missing bones that weren’t near the site of dismemberment.  The strangest one was a middle-aged woman who lost bother of her feet, but was also missing her left clavicle.  It was around this time where the tragedy of my city blew up and became provincial news; I’m sure that some of you read those articles.

             It was at this point that I began to investigate the matter myself.  Like I said, I’m no detective, but I know this city and at this point, I had a slight idea what this could be.  While none of the new articles or press releases would dare say it, there was no way in hell that this was the work of a human being, it just didn’t make any sense.  I personally discovered a couple of the animal bodies, and nothing about them appeared mundane or natural.  The teeth marks didn’t follow the pattern of any set of teeth I had ever seen, and the burnt/frozen aspect couldn’t be done by natural means either.

Either the culprit was using scientific means beyond our explanation, or the being responsible was not of this world; my money was on the latter.

             Like I said, I don’t claim to be an expert in any field like this, but I have read a lot of books and seen a lot of movies that deal with freaky, suspicious circumstances such as these.  I know how that sounds, but I have always felt like I had a more open mind than most due to my interests.  But on top of this, there was a fact that was more pertinent than my love for horror; I believed I had encountered something like this before.

             A couple of years ago I found a couple dead birds in my neighbourhood.  I really didn’t think anything of it at first because there were at least half a dozen cats that lived on my street.  I did what any decent citizen would do and I picked up the carcasses so that an innocent-minded child wouldn’t stumble upon gored mess and become traumatized from it.  But as I was picking up those shredded carcasses, I noticed the same thing that people were seeing in current times; these bodies were simultaneously burned and frozen.  I honestly thought that my mind was playing tricks on me, so I didn’t swell on it too much and just moved on.

But when I heard that all of these incidents shared these similarities, I knew that I had dealt with this before, and I should try and do what I could to stop whatever this was.

             So, last night after the curfew had begun and people sequestered themselves in their homes, I strapped a hatchet to my belt and left to wander the streets and search out whatever was causing this.  It was quite easy to move unseen; most people kept their curtains and blinds closed at this time, especially since everything started.  I made sure I wore dark colours to better blend in with the looming darkness overhead.  The cars cruising through the streets were few and far between, but I always had enough time to jump back from the sterile white street lights and avoid being seen.

             I wandered the streets for hours, roaming anywhere from subdivisions to main strips.  Eventually I found myself on the other side of town, in the older section filled with rundown building that used to be the good side of town.  I walked through the grimy underbelly of my city, making sure to observe everything and anything I could.  I searched high and low for the cause of these brutal incidents, until I finally proved my suspicions and found the cause of this all, but in the most unlikely ways.

             Throughout my search, I was accompanied by the ambient sounds of the night; the steady chirp of crickets, the gentle brushing of the night breeze through the trees and the rushing water of the nearby canal; general sounds of the night.  But as I was walking through the more destitute part of town, I noticed the ambient noises began to rapidly fade away, only to be replaced with a barely audible static.  With each step I took, the world’s volume knob increasingly turned down until all that was left was static, and I found myself perfectly aligned with the opening of an alley way.

The unease that rooted itself in my chest told me that I found what I was looking for, and it was more than I had bit off.

             The innards of the alleyway were pitch black, much darker than the darkest shadow or the emptiest part of the night sky.  I could only see about fifteen to twenty feet into the alleyway before the darkness engulfed it, something that should have been impossible since there was nothing blocking the light from the moon from illuminating what was inside.  I felt a prickling chill run down my spine as I gazed into the void that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  My instincts were trying to take over; my legs wanted to carry me out of the danger I was facing, but I forced them to take a step forward into the unknown.

             The instant my foot hit the pavement, the static disappeared.  It was replaced with low whispers.  Countless voices murmured over top of one another to the point that I couldn’t make out what any one voice was saying.  The voices were coming from all around me; no matter where I looked, it felt and sounded like I was surrounded by hundreds of people.  It overwhelmed me quite easily, and before long I had a splitting headache from the voices.  This only got worse when I took another small step forward.

             Before my foot even touched the ground, the whispers became yells and screams; it caught me so off guard that I stumbled to the ground as I clutched my ears.  This made no difference as the shrieks seemed to be piercing directly into my brain.  I collapsed as my vision went blurry and the pressure from the noise squeezed my brain like it was in a vice.  I tried to overcome the agony in my head as best as I could; I needed to confirm my suspicions.

When I looked up, I was greeted with a horribly, perplexing, alien sight.

There was a single, glowing yellow eye in the very center of the reaching shadow in the alleyway.  It was a wide slit that tore a jaundiced hole in the shadow, yet it illuminated nothing.  There was a small slot in the center of it that I imagined to be the pupil.  It wasn’t staring at anything; it vacantly looked straight ahead.

As if it could perceive my fear, one by one, innumerable eyes opened, tearing more holes in the darkness.  Through the agony of the scream infiltrating my skull, I made a weak attempt at counting the eyes, but I quickly lost it; partially due to the sheer number of them, but also because I couldn’t concentrate on anything.  The void in front of me was not looking, but not at me, not at anything at all.  I laid there on the ground, in a heap of pain, trying to keep my sanity.  Just as I began to wonder if this would be my demise, I realized something.

I knew these eyes.

“I knew it.”

             Even though I could barely hear my own words, once my voice left my throat, the slitted eyes honed in on me in unison as the screaming ceased.  The void that filled the alleyway stared at me, peering through my very core.  An immeasurable amount of time passed as I looked upon this terrifying sight while it took me in.  Eventually, the sounds of the night returned, but so did the rumbling static from earlier.  The glowing, yellow slits rounded, as did the pupils, until it appeared that there were an infinite amount of small, golden halos floating in this void.

             The eyes began to close, two by two, each with a soft, wet plop.  They all closed, until there were only two left, barely a foot off where the ground should have been.  Those small circles gazed up at me with affection as the shadow began to retract from the alley.  The light from the moon and stars started to drape over the alleyway.  Previously unseen items and details unveiled themselves before my eyes; bags of trash, littered the sides of the alley, which only added to the various pieces of garbage and litter that was scattered over the asphalt.  The brick walls had seen better, cleaner days, and many of the attached windows had cracks and breaks in them.  The shadow continued to recede until there was only a small, obtuse shape left.

             There, in the center of the ground was an oblong cone of darkness with two golden rings floating near the top.  The static becomes more of a rumble as it quiets.  The shape in front of me begins to move towards me, taking more of a shape.  Four, slender legs manifest as it begins to walk towards me.  It's head began to take shape, angular with two ears that pointed out.  At the end of its slim body was a long tail that stood strait up with a slight hook at the end.

“You’ve been a bad kitty.”

“Mrow?”

             He cocked his head to the side as he walked into the light, rubbing up against my legs as he met me.  Seeing him in the light, I could almost make out the bright stripes of red that covered his body.  I scratched his little head as his purring increased in volume.  I picked myself up, prompting this mystical cat to look up at me, asking to be picked up.

“Ah!”

             Of course, I answered his call, picking him up and perching him on my shoulder.  He latched on, purring in contentment.  I tilted my head towards him, as he did to me, giving me a forceful headbutt as he vibrated gently on my shoulder.  I began to walk as an uncontrollable smile crossed my face.

“What am I going to do with you, little guy?”

“Meow.”

             I remember the day I found little Wraith almost four years ago.  I was walking home from a night out with some friends, when I came across a wall of silence as I was crossing the street.  I found a small blob of shadow in the crook of a curb.  As I approached it, it began to screech in fear; I would be lying if I said the substances in my systems at the time didn't override my fight-or-flight and allow me to move forward.  Once I was beside the blob, I picked it up, forming a pitch black kitten with bright red stripes across his body.  I held him close, telling him it would be ok as I securely brought him home.  Turns out he was hurt, and as I took care of this strange breed of cat, he warmed up to me, and he became my best friend; I named him Wraith since his colouring reminded me of something spectral and eerie.

             I suspected Wraith was responsible for the animal slaughter and the comatose dismemberments after I found the first animal corpse recently; it reminded me of the time I found the dead birds years ago.  He was responsible back then, I knew it because I him chewing on one of the bodies.  Well, I thought that's what he was doing.  In truth, I saw his head take a shape that was closer to a clam mixed with a couple squids and an arachnid.  A soon as I called to him, he stopped feasting, and reverted back to the form that snuggled me and loved me.  Once I heard about what was happening currently, I needed to confirm it was my little friend, and stop him.

             I took my little Wraith home for the night, making a mental note that I should stock up on litter and start locking the doors and windows closed.  I knew he wasn't going to like that, but it's what needed to be done and I hoped he would be able to understand; something told me he would.  I would have to start buying frozen mice that you can get for snakes and other large reptiles.  I know that frozen is never as good as fresh, but it would have to work for now, but not forever though.  I would have to start taking him outside of town for his food.  I loved the people here, and the longer this spree went on, the more people would get suspicious and the higher the risk would be.  It would be more work, but I was willing to do it.

I mean, after all, what pet owner wouldn't do anything for the furry critter that they love?

- Cody S