Double Halloween Murder part 3 of 5

Double Halloween Murder part 3 of 5

Frantically you glance into the kitchen. A dark shape still sways aimlessly. You dare not even think about a scramble to the back door.

Not with... not with that in there. You are half trotting before you even consciously make the decision. No matter how hard you squint through the dark, the hallway appears no shorter. Voices begin to echo all around: gentle sobbing, distorted cries for help, angry screams of rage... all of it grows louder the further down the hall you run.

"It's a dream," you say aloud. "It's a stupid damn dream!"

But your head is on a swivel. You look for that tall lumbering thing behind. Your search for any source of the voices, but they seem to slide out of the air right in front of you. Scanning the pictures on the wall, you see more and more of those faceless family portraits. They were small before... they keep getting bigger. You realize that the faces are turning to watch you run. That woman's head turns. Those two children's heads turn. That man. That family. All the faceless turn to watch you go.

That large picture ahead on the left... is moving. You deny the logic over and over in your head. It does no good. Tiny fragments of glass fall to the floor. Your back is pressed to the opposite wall as you attempt to slide by that bulging picture. It is a picture of a face; a contorting face that is trying to press its way through the frame itself.

Your head jerks back as your neck is seized!

Immediately your hands claw at the thing around your neck. Peculiar pain lodges in your throat as the fingers squeeze painfully. You pull at them frantically. It is only when you lose your footing and fall that the hand on your neck loses its grip.

You scramble to your feet rubbing the icy pain in your throat. All thought or logic evaporates in your head as you begin to run. With a quick glance behind, you can see the hand protruding from the frame on the wall.

Every breath is a gasp now. The door is there. It just seems so far away. Why is this happening? Why are you still dreaming? Why can't you wake up? It is a dream, isn't it? Hallways do not just stretch, and arms do not come out of damned picture frames! The logical side of your brain still scrambles to put the pieces together, but it has no time. You only know you want out. The door... you must get to that door.

The screams are so loud you cannot even hear your footfalls. You have run for so long that the frigid air in your chest feels like razor blades. You can see the front door. It is closer... isn't it? You cannot stop. That is what you swear to yourself over and over. Get outside.

Get away from here. Run. Run.

You collide with the door at last. It happens so suddenly that you stare at it for several seconds, baffled. Then you reach for the knob and twist. It does not move. You curse, jerking and wiggling the knob frantically, but to no avail. In your frustration, you beat at the door.

"Please...."

Whirling at the sound of the voice, you wildly grasp at your ear. The single sobbing word sounded like it was spoken from lips pressed close to your ear. The thought makes you shudder.

The stairs loom ahead. The living room to your right looks like a black pit. That long tunnel of a hallway still wails out in agony. Your heart is galloping in your chest. No matter what you do, you cannot get your thoughts together. You cannot make sense of anything. Every part of your body shakes beyond your control.

"Think, think, think!" You hiss angrily.

Turning toward the dining room, you look to see if there is another door, or a window, any way to escape, or anything of use that might wake you up.

There are people seated at the dining table.

You flatten your back against the door. You do not breathe. Your eyes dart around searching for something to use as a weapon. There is nothing. Through wide eyes, you watch the motley family at the table.

The two larger people are naked, slumped lifelessly in their chairs, posed as if in some sort of odd portrait. You do not need to look at their faces to know that they have none.

It is the smaller people that are new to your dream-entranced eyes. A dim, blue glow emanates from the tabletop. One of the figures hunkers over this glow. It is holding... something... a phone. You blink.

The person is holding a phone. You see two thumbs flashing rapidly across the screen of the device, quicker than you can follow. Children, you realize. Two girls. The older one is on a phone. The younger sits and stares blankly.

You are trying to catch your breath but not alert the strange, silent family at the table. Every breath you take is across quivering lips. You are trying to think of something, anything. The stairs are just ahead... it just seems like a damned dead end. Your brain screams at you to try the door again, break a window, to do anything, but your eyes beg you to stay still and silent.

The thought of those things at the table hearing you is humbling.

You stare at them in a horrified trance, wondering what hell they must have suffered, and wondering why you are trapped in such a nightmare from which you cannot awaken. The fact that they sit so still and lifeless is unsettling enough. The naked corpses of the lovers are too obscene to look at with their misshapen heads and purple nipples. The others are no better. Much is very normal about them; they are clothed and looked like normal children. The older of the two is even wearing earphones connected to that glowing phone it held.

But their faces... Seeing those blank featureless heads is something that still makes your brain writhe about in your head. It looks so wrong.

All in unison, each of the four heads slowly turns toward you.

"No!" You gasp.

Each of the wretches stands. The tallest of them wobbles, as its leg bends the way it should not. The bloated head of the woman rolls about on her broken neck. You all but recoil at the site of the thing holding the phone. A plastic bag is cinched taut around its head. And the little one... why is it dripping?

They each turn and begin walking toward you. Their faceless gazes never look away from you, even as they maneuver mechanically around the table.

"No!" You cry out. "This isn't real, it isn't real!"

Those gaping black mouths appear. The deafening sirens pierce the air.

You do not wait. You do not think. In a frenzy, you are practically crawling up the stairs. Even though you dread to look back, you must know that you are getting away. It only takes a single glance to see the four faceless people already standing at the bottom of the stairs.

The sudden sight of them pulls a scream right out of your gut.

You stumble to the top of the stairs and collide with a door. There is something wet at your feet. Jumping away from the closed door, you look at the crack at the bottom, where you see that water flows freely into the hall. Backing away from the shut room in horror, you hear the faucet running from inside.

BLAM!

Again, you are reeling in the second-floor hallway. Another closed door, another room shut. Whatever crashed against this door on the opposite side continues to beat and bang. You can hear a struggle, and you wince at the pleading screams you hear within. The cries for help are so desperate that the tiniest fraction of you wants to open the door in some attempt to help. The thought of what is happening on the other side chills your blood.

Water spreads across the floor, cascading down the stairs. The walls seem to rattle from the incessant beating at the bedroom door in front of you. Your senses are overloaded. There is too much haze in your eyes, too much horrible beating and screaming. The hallway only grows darker, as if the darkness itself is crawling along the walls.

All the while, you still are wondering why you cannot wake up.

"This is a dream," you remind yourself.

The first door at the landing swings open. A wave of water carries a stuffed animal down the stairs.

"No! This is a dream!" You repeat.

The screams behind the second door turn into muffled gasps. You hear a strange papery rustling. The beating at the door gets more frantic.

"This is just a dream!" You say again, trying to convince yourself.

To be continued