'The Horrible': An excerpt from 'Stories About Monsters: Volume Two'

Kingston Springs local Sam Morris released his second book in his original series, 'Stories About Monsters.' Below is an excerpt from the book titled 'The Horrible.' The fictional horror story takes place in Kingston Springs.

Morris' book can be purchased here.

Prologue

No one knows where it comes from.

Madeline Rapoport sat at an ivory-white
bench, playing a matching K. Kawai baby grand
piano. This afternoon was unique, as she found an
hour or two with her family’s entire mansion all to
herself. She could play piano, and she could play
it as loud as she wished. On this day she finished a
brand new original piece. In her mere thirteen
years on planet Earth, she had amassed a treasure
chest of talent that would’ve taken decades for
even the most gifted players or composers to
discover. Her first time playing this piece in its
entirety, Madeline was just as much the audience
as she was the performer. A glorious melody was
placed around the core of the music like a lifelong
jeweler would perfectly press diamonds onto a
timeless ring. Madeline smiled. She presented a
range of dynamic volume and texture throughout

the piece as if capturing all of the light and
shadow on an Alpine evening. Arpeggios
intricately waved up and down eighty-eight keys,
her hands overlapping one another with an equal
force of nature as dolphins dancing and leaping
through and above water. Soon, within Madeline’s
mind, the binary black and white piano keys
dissolved into a swirling, iridescent wind that
lifted any sorrow or worry from the world. Her
brown eyes softened and unfocused from the
handwritten sheet music, turning up toward a
nearby window. Her brain would’ve noticed a
sunny front yard, affixed with poplar and pine
trees, and a few scattered, chattering squirrels.
Her eyesight was all but turned off, though; the
visions within her brain were beautifully lost in
music, and even a placid scene outside would
prove ugly against the product of her imagination.

“Keep going,” a voice within her, which
sounded like her, softly encouraged.

Madeline kept on, obeying the friendly
order. She closed her eyes and lifted her head,
breathing deeply through her nose, filling her
body with air and music.

“This is the greatest thing you’ve ever
written,” the kind little voice whispered within
her yet again.

“Almost there, let’s finish this perfectly...”
Madeline nodded to herself as her hands
kept moving over the keyboard. She was reaching
the end of the piece. The music swelled into a
glorious climax, pulling several melodies together
into a perfectly balanced fugue. She was no longer
playing piano. She was flying. She was flying, and
her airplane was the entire concept of a piano, the
entire possibility of what wood and wire could be.
Finally, she hit the last written chord, taking her
hands away from the keys but keeping her right
foot on the damper pedal until the golden tones
fully dissipated.

“Good...perfect...” the encouraging voice
congratulated her.
Madeline smiled and ran fingers through
her long brown hair. She returned to Earth, proud
of what she had accomplished.

Then, another voice entered her psyche. It
was a different voice, one that didn’t sound like
her. It sounded lower and rougher. It immediately
didn’t sound like a friend at all.

“Again, Madeline...” it barked.

Madeline sat up, wondering where this was
coming from. A cloud passed somewhere over the
mansion and the front yard was stained with
shadow.
“Play it again, Madeline...”

Madeline felt a bit uneasy, but then slowly
started flipping the pages of her sheet music back
to the start of the piece. She supposed that
practice did indeed make perfect, even if she had
already deemed her performance as the best she
could do. Hey, she had the house to herself, and
her brother and the babysitter wouldn’t be home
for a while longer, so why not play some more?
She smiled and placed her fingers back at their
starting positions.

“Play it again, and if you fail even once, or
play a single wrong note, then your parents will
die...” the new gravelly, angry voice in her head
announced.
Madeline’s eyes widened. She felt an
electric current sweep over her scalp and neck.

“That’s right, Madeline. By now, they’re
probably in the air. Lots of planes are crashing
these days...theirs could easily be next. It’s all up
to you and how you play right now...” the voice

dripped with evil, as if it were holding a gun to
everything Madeline loved.
She began to breathe quickly and shallowly.
Her hands trembled over the keys. Suddenly all
logic escaped out of the chimney of her mind. She
thought she knew what she had to do. She nodded
and began to play.
The performance started perfectly yet
again, but about the halfway mark Madeline
began to picture her parents. She pictured them
buckled into their airplane seats, her mother
sleeping and her father reading a magazine. Then
she saw her father turn to face out the cabin
window at a terrible engine fire. Bird strike. She
saw him wake up her mother, who sat up and
screamed at the disaster. Madeline could see the
plane dive down, spiraling toward the ground at a
speed that should’ve killed her parents from
merely the G Force alone. But no, her parents
stayed conscious long enough to feel the blinding
terror of approaching death. In her mind, she saw
her parents crying and sweating and holding each
other right before the moment of impact.

THUD

Madeline froze. She had hit a wrong note.
She couldn’t breathe. She only stared down at her
right hand, which still pressed the sour key, her
failure ringing in her ears.

“YOUR PARENTS ARE DEAD! DEAD!!!
BURNED UP AND DEAD!! HOW COULD YOU
LET THIS HAPPEN?! IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!
YOU SHOULD KILL YOURSELF!!” the angry, evil
voice boomed within Madeline’s brain.
She slapped her hands to her ears and
screamed. She screamed and stomped her feet,
the painful noise echoing throughout her parents’
mansion.
No one knows where it comes from.

PART ONE: THE CAVE

Four young people walked together along a
forest trail, two in front and two behind. The year
was approaching the end of summer, a summer
that proved to be unusually pyretic.
The recent weeks of sweltering heat waves had
finally broken into cool relief, and so casual
outdoor activity could resume.
Leading the walking group was Audra
Blanchard and her boyfriend Devon Walton. They
were both twenty-two, having met in their senior
year of college. They snickered playfully, always
enjoying each other’s company. Behind them, in
almost total silence, walked Madeline Rapoport

and her brother Tony. Tony held a thick book
under his arm and Madeline carried a Canon EOS
R7 camera, hung around her neck, awkwardly
bouncing against her chest as she kept her eyes to
the gravel. Tony, eleven years old, glanced over to
his older sister. He could tell she wasn’t feeling
well. He could sense it the moment that he and
Audra and Devon had all pulled into the Rapoport
mansion to pick her up to go to the park. Her
irises had been red from crying. She hid it well
from the others, but she couldn’t hide her pain
from a younger brother’s all-noticing eyes.
“Maddy..." he whispered, trying not to alert
the couple in front of them, wanting to keep the
conversation between siblings.
Madeline walked on, seemingly not having
heard Tony. Her eyes were to the ground,
twitching rapidly. Her mouth was moving as well,
although she made no noise.

She was counting. Madeline had spent a
better part of the afternoon in unspeakable agony.
Ever since she messed up her piano performance
she had borne a weight of guilt that only
murderers can understand. In her mind, her
parents were dead, and now they could all only
wait to hear the dreadful news about their plane
crash. Audra, their babysitter, had a phone and
had the parents’ numbers, but with a long day of
travel and spotty international signal it would be
fruitless to try and contact them until they got to

the resort, where they could connect to WIFI and
put in a call home. They should’ve called by now,
Madeline decided. They should’ve called to check
in on their kids, tired from a long travel day but
excited to arrive at their resort and begin their
vacation.

They wouldn’t call, it was already too late,
Madeline told herself. They were dead, little
charred pieces of their bodies floating in the
South Atlantic, soon to be filling the stomachs of
sharks and other carnivorous fish and birds.
As she awaited the horrible news, Madeline
did one of the only activities that could point her
inflamed mind in a different direction. She
counted. In this instance, she counted rocks along
the gravel path. She counted every single rock

that she could, assorting them into even-
numbered groups. Eight here, ten there. It helped

slightly. At least she could do something to even
halfway distract her from the doom that this
random late-August Saturday had decided to
present.
“Maddy...” Tony raised his voice a little
more this time, wanting to make sure to get a
valid response from her. He tapped her on the
shoulder. Audra and Devon walked on in front of
them, lost in their own much nicer world.
“What?” Madeline responded, not taking
her eyes off of the rocks below.

“Are you okay?” Tony asked.
“I’m fine," she whispered.
“Aren’t you gonna take any pictures of
birds?” Tony had a bit of conviction in this
question. Madeline had just recently developed a
love for bird watching. (“Not ‘bird-watching’, it’s
called ‘birding’ Tony," she would argue). She
routinely picked up obscure hobbies and would
form her entire life around them. The only hobby
that really stuck and waxed into a lifelong skill
was piano. Tony would tease her about the
hobbies that he found a little “dorky” like her bird
obsession. At his core, though, Tony loved his big
sister, and appreciated all of her otherworldly
talents. A big sister is always a younger brother’s
hero, whether he ever admits it or not. Tony hated
seeing his hero so troubled.
“Well?” Tony repeated.
“Well WHAT?” Madeline finally glanced
toward him, throwing her eyes open briefly before
returning them to the uncounted rocks.
“Are you going to take pictures of birds?”
“Uhhh, yeah...in a minute...”
“What are you doing? What’s wrong with
you?”

“Nothing Tony...I’m okay I’m just...I am,
uh...”
“Whatever Maddy...” Tony gave up the fight
and pointed his attention back ahead, the big
book under his arm.

“Boy they are quiet...” Devon whispered to
his girlfriend as they walked on. Audra flashed
her eyes back behind them. The two siblings were
indeed not talking. She never wanted to be too
hands-on of a baby sitter. She wanted to value
their privacy and their individuality. She had
known the Rapoport family most of her life, and
had babysat Madeline and Tony for five years at
this point. She respected them, she liked them a
lot, and she knew when and when-not to
intervene with their wide range of moods.
“Oh they’re fine, probably just missing their
parents...” Audra whispered back to Devon. She
gave him a tiny wink and then grabbed his hand.
She thought she loved him, and was preparing to
let it be known to him. He was only a couple
inches taller than her and a bit overweight, but he
had a full head of thick hair and a very handsome
face. That more than justified her infatuations.
Audra herself was secretly considered by her
friends to be well out of Devon’s league. She had
auburn hair, fair-if-not-expensively-pale skin, and
dark green eyes. Her green eyes, however, had
beheld Devon, and had found Devon to be

beautiful. That sort of crush is heavy for a young
woman, and extremely hard to lift.
“I gotcha...should we talk to them though?”
Devon asked, trying not to alert the children that
they were being talked about.

“No, no, it’s fine, really...” Audra replied,
before a sudden buzzing made her jolt. Within
Audra’s purse came the all-too-familiar vibrating
of a phone call. Audra paused her walk to take out
her phone and answer it. Devon stopped as well.
Behind them, Tony and Madeline also noticed.
Madeline froze both outside and in. This
was it. This was the acute, violent attack she had
been waiting hours for. She was so scared that she
couldn’t even count rocks anymore. She grabbed
her left forearm with her right hand and squeezed
hard enough to where she could mask her
trembling.
Audra raised the phone to her ear.
“Hello?......oh hey guys!.......alright that’s
great!.....ahhh wow I’m jealous!......no we’re good
we’re here at Hidden Lake on a hike........they’re
good they’re walking with me and Devon!......he’s
good!......yep they’re good too we just all miss
ya!.....yes we sure will!......yes I do have the
Capital One card, thank you again!.....okay great,
we miss you!....okay awesome, I’ll talk to you
again soon, bye-bye..."

Audra turned to the children with a smile.
“That was your parents, they’re all safe at
the resort, they said they’d call again later and
check up on you!” Audra turned back to a smiling
Devon and then ahead to the trail yet again,
restarting the hike.
“Okay cool...” Tony answered with a nod
and began walking again as well.

Madeline’s mouth was slightly open, and
she couldn’t even blink. She felt a wave of relief
that could’ve cooled-over a volcanic eruption.

“They’re okay?" she asked up to Audra.
Audra paused and turned back.
“Yes sweetie, they’re fine," she said with a
beautifully clean smile.
“Did you bring that big camera just as a
fashion statement?”

Madeline looked down to her chest. She
grabbed the camera with both hands. Her brain
felt so soothed. The balm of good news can heal a
horde of problems. She felt like she had just been

given a new life. She didn’t care to count rocks
anymore. She felt so good.
“Oh yeah, you’re right...” Madeline lifted
the camera to her eyes and pointed them up to the
trees.
Tony smiled over to his big sister, happy to
see her smile.
“Atta girl!” Audra hollered as she grabbed
Devon’s hand again. He gave her cheek a kiss.
Madeline breathed easy as she looked into
the camera and up into the canopy above. She felt
a cool breeze around her, one she would’ve
noticed a lot sooner had she not been buried in
her mind. Through the lens she saw thousands of
leaves. The rare, refreshing breeze shook the
leaves and even loosed a few of the browner ones.
In fact, even the healthy leaves showed a slight
hue of yellow and orange. Yes, the entire forest
whispered with the rumors of autumn.

“Where are ya?” Maddy breathed to herself.
“Oh they’re here, I’ve been hearing them
this whole time...” Tony said, adjusting the book
under his arm, which began to grow heavy. Tony
was scrawny, and by no means a strong boy. He
looked down at it as if to question why on Earth
he had brought it on a hike in the first place.

Madeline focused through the zoomed in
scope of the forest ether, scanning for any
movement. She multitasked, able to walk the trail
and look above through her camera at the same
time. This worked for a few yards. Suddenly, her
mechanically advanced eyesight caught a swift
blur of deep-ocean blue fly by way up there. She
let out a short gasp, just as her right foot caught a
root and she almost fell all the way down to the
gravel.
“Crap!" she exclaimed, regaining her
balance and composure.
“You okay clumsy?” Tony chuckled.
Audra and Devon also noticed and turned
around.
“You’re gonna hurt yourself if you try to
walk and look through that thing at the same
time, sweetie,” Audra kindly remarked.

“Yeah we can stop for a rest if you all want,”
Devon added, his brow showing a heavy layer of
sweat.
“No it’s FINE let’s just keep going, I’m
fine...” Madeline sharply decided. Audra and

Devon gave each other a wide-eyed look of half-
surprise and half-humor. Tony shook his head

and smiled.

Madeline looked back up to the same tree she
had seen the burst of color at. Nothing was there
now. She cursed herself within.

“You failure,” a low, gritty voice that
Madeline hoped to never hear again scratched at
her from inside her mind. She instantly felt the
hairs all over her body react. Her lungs were
paralyzed.
“You can’t even find birds...you’re an
absolute FAILURE...you should KILL yourself
tonight when you get home...” the voice barked at
her like a rabid Doberman.
Madeline nervously shook her head and
blinked heavily. The camera shook within her
frightened hands.

“Maddy...LOOK!” Tony said and pointed
over to the side of the trail where she was.
Madeline shot her eyes over to a low branch.
There, sitting wonderfully and beautifully, was a
small blueish bird. It called to them. Its noise was
a fun, sporadic little swizzle. It was a noise that
Madeline had never heard before in person. To
her, it sounded like somebody writing in cursive
very quickly over a plastic notebook cover.

“INDIGO BUNTING!" she shouted.
Everyone else stopped and looked over to where
she was excitedly studying. Just as she raised the
camera to get a photo, the blueish, wonderful
little bird flew off, deeper into the forest off-trail.
“NO!” Madeline yelled. She twitched her
eyes around deeper in the woods and found the
bird again, resting on a higher branch just dozens
of feet away from them.
“Go get it champ!” Devon encouraged.
“Yeah just be careful Maddy!” Audra added,
“we’ll be right here waiting.”

Madeline shook her head quickly up and
down at them, her eyes wide and desperate. She
took off into the woods.
“What are we supposed to do until she gets
back?” Tony asked the couple, with less of an
annoyance and more of a genuine curiosity.
“You, my friend, are gonna tell me what
that gigantic book under your arm is...” Devon
smiled and pointed a fleshy finger.
“Oh yeah, this is for summer reading. I
don’t know I haven’t started it yet," Tony
shrugged.

“Isn’t school like starting the week after
next?” Audra added with a parental, raised
eyebrow.
“Yeah, I’ll finish it by then..." he said,
unconvincingly.
“What is it?” Devon asked, reaching out a
hand. Tony gave him the mighty book.

“Oh no WAY they’re still making y’all read
this! Is this for Mr. Gardner’s history class?”
Devon asked with a laugh.

“Yep," Tony responded.
“Wait what is it?” Audra asked for the book
from Devon.
“Ew WHAT? ‘Unusual War Crimes’? That’s
disgusting!”
“Oh babe this book is GNARLY...” Devon
snarled with a playful evil.
“Is it really?” Tony perked up.
“Ohhh yeah dude. You gotta start with the
chapter about the Long-Eared Bear. It is
INSANE," Devon took the book back from Audra
and started flipping through it until he came to a
spot near the end.

“YEP! That’s it! You gotta start there. That
thing still haunts me to this day, dude,"
“Devon, your nose...” Audra remarked,
pointing at Devon’s face. A small red flow poured
out of his left nostril.
“Oh crap, oops," he said, half-embarrassed.
He would often get nosebleeds. Nothing to be
concerned with, according to the doctor, but an
inconvenience nevertheless.
Audra reached in her purse and took out a
napkin and blotted it under Devon’s nose and
around his mouth. Tony just watched, having
been used to the occasional bleeding from Devon.
“I’ll read that chapter tonight Devon,"
“Oh dude you won’t believe it...” Devon
responded as Audra finished drying his blood.
Devon’s eyes fell to the ground, something
shiny having caught his attention.
“Ooo! What’s this?" he said with the glee of
a child in a toy store. He squatted down and
picked up a beautiful, naturally sculpted black
stone.
“Nice one dude!” Tony knew that Devon
was always on the lookout for cool rocks.

“You can put it in my purse, babe," Audra
suggested.
“Thanks!” Devon turned the stone in his
hand a moment longer and then gave it to Audra,
who tucked it into her white leather bag.
Tony looked back into the forest toward
where Madeline had gone.
“She’s fine Tony let’s just give her some
space. I can tell she’s been a little off today and
she probably needs a little alone time," Audra said
with a nod.

Madeline Rapoport stood at the mouth of a
cave. She had tracked the Indigo Bunting
hundreds of yards through the forest, ducking
under branches and collecting several cuts from
thorns and stinging nettle. The elusive bird kept
evading her focused lens, sensing that it was
being stalked by a potential predator. The cicadas
of the late-summer screamed in the trees around
Madeline, but were all but mute against the
incessant roaring of her inflamed thoughts. That
low, serrated voice had kept telling her she was a
failure and told her that she should kill herself
tonight when they got home. It told her that she
had strange, violent, sexual impulses toward
Devon and toward Audra, and it also told her that
she needed to murder her brother Tony. If she
could only capture this indigo bunting on camera,
then maybe the voice would cease those torments.

She had followed the bird past the property
line of the state park and across a railroad track,
where she carefully climbed up the pale gravel
and over the iron and wood, avoiding sharp
debris. She ignored a sign at the tree line that
read “PRIVATE: STAY OUT” and kept on
trudging.
Now she was here, staring into a natural
cavity in one of the countless bluffs in the area.
Minutes before, she had seen the indigo bunting
fly directly into the darkness. A moment later she
had heard what sounded like the bird in utter
distress, a brief, desperate alarm before nothing
more.
Something about this cave intoxicated
Madeline. To the sides of the mouth were the
various vandalizations of graffiti, ranging from
rude quips to unintelligible gang symbols. Above
the mouth, however, there was something
unusual.
Deep, ancient markings within the
limestone decorated the area above the opening of
Earth. Madeline didn’t recognize the language,
but noticed that it must’ve been really old, as it
looked a lot like the names and dates on the oldest
gravestones in the cemetery, the ones from the
1700’s.
It read:

MUHK AKANA SI JEHK CORRI DJINN
KHERE

Upon scanning her eyes over these ancient
words, the voice within her mind changed. It
became almost sweet, and wholly solemn.

“Mercy...
...Mercy...
...MERCY”
It was almost as if it was praying.
Madeline’s eyes glazed over.
“Love...
...Mercy...
...MIRACLE...”
She lowered the camera in her hand until it
was held up by the nylon strap around her neck.
She didn’t blink, only staring deeper and deeper
into the impossibly dark cave. A cool wind rustled
prematurely fallen leaves.

“MIRACLE...

...MIRACLE....
...SAVIOR...”
The voice grew louder between Madeline’s
un-pierced ears. The ends of her long brown hair
lifted in the breeze. Her eyes remained fixed.

“SAVIOR...
...SAVIOR...
...MOTHER....
...MOTHER...”

...god....
...God...
...GOD...”
Her inner voice was worshipping whatever
lay inside this cave. Madeline, entranced, began
slowly walking up to and inside the mouth,
passing by a neat pile of colorful rocks just at the
edge.

She walked over dirt and stone until the last
lights from the outside world no longer reached.
Madeline had disassociated, as she tended to do

when extremely overwhelmed. She never blinked.
She was enveloped in total darkness. Total
isolation. At least, at first.

......SLOP....SLOP......SLOP........SLOP.......

A sound like a soaked mop slapping a wood
floor sloshed out through the cave. Madeline
slowly turned her head left and right. It was
coming from her left, far off in a tenebrous corner
of this great hole. Still in a heavy daze, she lifted
the camera to her eyes. She moved a switch and
put the camera into Night Scene mode, which
would give her a burst of photographs enhanced
for low lighting. She pressed the shutter button.

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK

She lowered the camera and saw the
footage on her monitor.
Had she been in her right mind, Madeline
would’ve screamed at the top of her young lungs
and fled the cave that very instant. Had she been
there in her body at all, she would’ve ran and ran
and ran until she collapsed.

The series of photographs showed
something large hunched over what appeared to

be a dead deer or a dead cow. Whatever it was it
was reaching gangly, twisted arms into the
carcass and pulling out the suet of the animal,
rubbing handfuls of the globules of fat over its
deeply porous skin. The final photograph showed
the big creature turning and looking directly into
the camera, with vertical, yellow eyes thrown
open in surprise.
Madeline didn’t react at all. She simply
lowered the camera back down and looked over in
the dark corner. There, within the black, shone
two yellow, vertical eyes, just like she had
photographed. They started low but then raised
up as high as she believed the ceiling to the cave
would go.
.....stomp....stomp.....stomp....stomp......
The walls of the cave vibrated with each
heavy footfall. Soon those yellow eyes were right
over Madeline, who looked up without fear.

“Madeline...” a new voice came to
Madeline’s ears. A sweet voice. A woman’s voice.
The voice of a woman that didn’t sound much
older than Audra.

Madeline smiled up to the pair of yellow
almond eyes. Pupils as black as the cave around
them pointed straight down at her. She began to
feel herself being lifted up off of her feet, up to

where she could stare into the yellow eyes without
moving her neck.
“Madeline...what do you wish?” The sweet,
feminine voice cooed out to her. It sounded
curious, and kind.
Madeline instantly found her answer.

“I wish you would take these horrible
thoughts from my mind," she responded with
pure absolution.

The yellow eyes shrank slightly.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Madeline sounded terribly certain.
“As you wish...now sleep...”

Madeline was lowered back to the cold dirt
of the cave. She stared up at the yellow eyes,
which remained fixed on her, but then the large
creature turned away, stomping back to the far
corner of the dark cavern. Madeline felt her own
eyes becoming impossibly heavy, and she sat
down on the stone floor, before giving up and
entirely collapsing into sleep.

“Maddy! There you are!” the voice of Tony
Rapoport echoed into the waking ears of
Madeline. She opened her eyes. She was sitting
outside of the cave, several feet from the mouth.
She looked over and saw Tony, Audra, and Devon
quickly approaching. She smiled. Her mind was
strangely quiet.
“Hey guys!" she said with a wave.
Tony and Audra got to her first after a brief
gallop. Audra looked winded. She breathed
heavily.
“You ran off, Maddy! It took us a while to
find you!”
“Yeah bozo what took you so long?” Tony
teased with a legitimate twinge of concern.

“Did you get the bunting?” Devon shouted
as he jogged up, his breath pained with cardio. He
put his hands on his knees, his eyes squinted.

“I got it all! How did you find me?”
Madeline asked, overjoyed to see some of her
favorite people in the world. She loved them.

“Well, as I’ve told you before, your parents
have trackers on all your devices, so it was pretty
easy, luckily...” Audra answered, flashing a look to
her and Tony.
“Oh yeah, that’s right!” Madeline happily
squeaked.
“Are you okay, Maddy?” Tony asked her,
one of his brows raising with brotherly suspicion.
“Oh I’m great!" she responded, her mind
suddenly filled with light and peace.
“What should we do for dinner?”

“Great question!” said Devon, who had
finally caught his un-athletic breath. He glanced
over to the pile of colorful rocks just to the right of
Madeline.
“Ooo!" he shrieked. Eyes wide, he reached
down and picked one up, black with a hypnotic
swirl of emerald green. He walked over and
showed it to Audra, who nodded. Devon slipped
the stone into Audra’s purse.
“Let’s get outta here, kiddos...” Audra said
and walked over to put an arm around Madeline.
Together, the four young people made their
way out of the park and to the car. Madeline

smiled up at the forest canopy the entire time, lost
in her own, happy world.
No one knows where it comes from.

PART TWO: THE SHADOW

The day melted into a pleasant evening over
the Rapoport mansion. An almost-full moon
glowed above (the Sturgeon Moon was next,
Devon pointed out as they made their way
through the tall front gate). A fog rested over the
moistened grounds, its pale color accentuated on
this unusually bright night.
The four young people went to their
respective quarters, cleaned up, got dressed, and
all congregated for dinner in the mansion’s
kitchen and dining area, which could’ve easily
passed as an upscale hotel lobby. Food was
ordered and delivered from two different local
restaurants (a big thanks to Mr. And Mrs.
Rapoport’s credit card) and so Audra, Devon,
Tony, and Madeline all shared a lovely meal
together. Madeline was especially bubbly,
laughing at Devon’s jokes and finishing her entire
take-out bowl of spicy Pad Thai. Tony was in high
spirits as well, especially enjoying seeing his sister
so calm and funny. His own meatball sub didn’t
stand a chance.

Audra always made it a point to try and give
each child equal attention, so she asked Tony all
about his summer hockey league and about what
he looked forward to in the new school year. She
then turned to Madeline, who sat with a sunny
smile.
“So Madeline, I hear you’re already getting
letters from Juilliard?” Audra lifted her perfectly
groomed eyebrows and placed a napkin over her
vegetarian ramen.
“Oh yeah, I guess that’s right!” Madeline
answered with a nod. Tony looked at her with a
bit of surprise at her response.
Audra noticed the casual tone in which
Madeline talked about her dream school.
“Well, would you like to play something for
us that you’ve composed recently? We always love
it when you serenade us!” Audra said, gently
coaxing the girl and nudging Devon, who was
diving into his second meatball sub. Devon
chewed quickly, swallowed and gave a “Here,
here!”
Madeline paused and looked down at the
large mahogany table. Strangely, playing piano
was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.
“Uh...no thanks, that’s okay! I think I just
wanna go to bed," she answered with a smile
and began to pick up her dishes.

Devon and Tony shared a look.
“Maddy, come on?” Tony asked.
“That’s okay! Maybe tomorrow!” Madeline
walked over to the sink, placed in her silverware,
and threw away her take-out bowl.
“Goodnight everyone! Today was so lovely,
thank you!" she sweetly regaled before leaving the
dining area off toward her and her brother’s wing
of the mansion.
The three remaining all looked at each
other with puzzled expressions.
“That’s not very like her...” Devon
whispered, wiping marinara sauce off of his
mouth.
“Hmm. Oh well. Tony, feel free to run off
too I guess, if you’re tired of hanging out with the
old people," Audra flashed a sarcastic smile at
Tony, who remained off-put by Madeline’s
behavior.
“Okay...I have some reading to do...” Tony
went and did his dishes quickly.
“Good night guys..." he waved as he passed
by the table and off into the dark hallways toward
his room. Audra and Devon waved back.

“Interesting couple of kids” Devon said.
“Is it about time for a trip to the cellar?”
“Ooo, yes, I’ll grab one...you always grab
the most expensive bottle they got...” Audra rolled
her eyes and squeezed Devon’s left arm.
“I mean babe, they’re loaded, like they
care...”
Audra walked through the kitchen and over
to a door that led down to the wine cellar. She
creaked it open and started down the stairs but
then paused. All of the walls of the stairwell were
made of lacquered pinewood paneling, covered in
dark-brown spots of sap stain. Three of these
large dots caught Audra’s attention. In her mind
they formed a face. In her eyes she saw a howling,
tortured face that silently screamed at her with a
proportionally cavernous mouth. Her eyes
unfocused and she went into a daze. She just
stared at the wood spots from the top of the stairs
for almost a full two minutes. She just couldn’t
shake the mental image of that howling, hungry
face. She thought she began to see it move.

“SHE KNOWS WE HAVE IT!!!” A booming
voice erupted behind her, breaking her from the
hypnosis. She jumped, miraculously grabbing the
rail and not tumbling down the stairs.

“WHAT?!" she yelled and turned around to
face a bewildered Devon.
“You just want me to grab it? That’s all I
said" he replied sheepishly.
“Oh! Uhh...yeah, sure. I’m just gonna go lay
down for a minute," she went up and past a
confused Devon, who shrugged and made his way
down the stairs into the dark wine cellar. He sort
of knew his way around the room, which was the
size of most liquor stores. He didn’t bother
turning on the light, trusting that whatever bottle
he chose would be some of the best wine he had
ever drank. He reached down and felt a tube of
dusty glass.

...SLOP...

Devon froze. He thought he had heard
something in the dark cellar, somewhere further
down the rows of bottles and barrels. His breath
stopped so he could listen better. After a few
seconds of silence he resumed his task, shaking
off the momentary scare, although hurrying
himself back up the stairs to the main floor of the
mansion.

Meanwhile, in the East Wing of the house
where the children stayed, rooms far apart but
connected by a long hallway, Tony found himself

buried in a large book titled “Unusual War
Crimes”.
He laid in bed, a small flashlight tucked
under his chin as he turned pages. He was reading
the chapter that Devon had recommended, and
was learning all about “The Long-Eared Bear”. A
frightful affair, Tony could only stretch wide eyes
at the horrible story that opened before him.
Apparently, toward the end of World War
2, the Russians had experimented with prisoners
of war, although evidence went purposefully
under-documented. One such case involved a
Russian Army deserter who had fled from a
battlefield in Belarus, soon to be captured by his
former comrades. Deep within the bowels of
Russian military complexes this deserter was held
and tortured by one Dr. Kovarnyy. Kovarnyy
believed within his amphetamine-sizzled mind
that the war could be one, as could all other wars,
as soon as Russia developed what he called the
Supersoldat, or a league of super-soldiers.
Wanting to use the Russian prisoner for his
strong stock, but not wanting to take lightly the
treasonous act of desertion, Dr. Kovarnyy went to
his brutal work. Kovarnyy threw the prisoner into
an industrial oven and baked him alive, making
sure to open the small window every few minutes
to make eye contact with the screaming, cooking
man.

After the prisoner was well done, Kovarnyy
surgically removed the brain and eyes of the body
and implanted them into the head of a Kamchatka
brown bear that had also been captured and
killed.
“The Supersoldat must have the strongest
brain, the sharpest eyes and ears, and the
mightiest body...” a drug addled Dr. Kovarnyy
would command over his assistants as they cut
and sewed and mixed together pieces of man and
beast. The final touch involved removing the
bears’ ears and replacing them with the long ears
of a Russian hare, gruesomely stitching them into
place on top of the bear’s head. Kovarnyy was able
to sit back and see the full, grotesque glory of his
monstrous creation.
Reports within “Unusual War Crimes” gave
a mixed account of what actually happened with
The Long Eared Bear. Some say that, of course,
the brain and eyes of the baked prisoner never
took with the physiognomy of the brown bear.
The bear never regained life, even with electric
shock.
Other, more obscure findings of the
experiment told a different story. They recall Dr.
Kovarnyy toiling over the great body of The Long
Eared Bear, shocking and shocking it until finally
it woke up. They say it sat up, its half-boiled
man’s eyes training right on Kovarnyy. They say
its hare’s ears stood erect as the beast sat up,
shook its head, and immediately attacked the

treacherous Russian doctor. They say it roared
and swiped giant claws all over the doctor’s face
and chest, all the while getting sprayed by
machine gun fire from nearby soldiers, taking the
bullets like a T-34 tank. Reports say the bear
picked up a howling Dr. Kovarnyy and walked
over to the same industrial oven that had killed
the POW, and threw in the doctor, slamming the
door shut and cranking the heat up until the knob
broke. The Doctor’s screams were reported to wail
out through the door of the oven, and the Long
Eared Bear opened its great arms, taking in
hundreds of more bullets until finally it collapsed.
Final reports say that upon approaching the
great monster, a human-like moan escaped from
its jaws, and right before the final bullet to the
skull, one word was softly muttered:
“Ma-ma”

Tony slammed his book shut, his skin
tingling with fright and disturbance. What was
wrong with Devon, for recommending such a
horrid story. In fact, what was wrong with his
school for assigning a book so heinous?!
Tony threw the book on his bedroom floor
and looked up and out the window just in time to
see a great shadow pass by the Rapoport mansion.
It didn’t resemble the shadow of a bird in the
moonlight; it was a thick, slow shadow. Tony
turned his unease out of the book and toward his

real life moment. What was that? He looked at the
clock. 12:13. He scoffed, and realized he needed to
sleep well before his hockey game the next day.
He dove under the covers and led a splotchy
night’s sleep, troubled by dark dreams.

Audra had gone off through the courtyard
over to the guest cottage that stood near the main
house. She had laid down, trying to shake off the
daze she had fell into since becoming lost in the
faces of the pine paneling of the stairwell earlier.
Sleep had not come easily, especially since Devon
had not joined her in bed yet. She stared at the
ceiling for a long time.
Then, after what felt like days of staring,
Audra saw a large shadow passing across the
ceiling of her guest cottage. This startled her, and
her eyes followed the shadow all the way across
the ceiling and out of the cottage. The light of the
lamp by her bedside had dimmed upon the
shadows passing, as if penetrating and stifling
even electric light. She remained puzzled until at
long last sleep took her.

Devon was in the main living room near the
dining area, almost fully finished with a bottle of
Chateau Lafitte-Rothschild Bordeaux wine and
half a quart of rocky road ice cream. He was
gaming on the ninety-five inch television screen,
as he loved doing anytime he visited the
Rapoport’s. At one point a shadow passed right

over the screen and took his focus off of his game,

making him throw his hands up and half-
drunkenly slur out curses. He shook it off, took

the last big swig of expensive wine, and restarted
his game.
Madeline had gone right to bed, her mind
light and unbothered. She sweetly and
comfortably snugged into the covers after clicking
off her bedside lamp. She slept deeply, and
instantly, in a way that she didn’t remember ever
having slept before. She had no dreams, and
therefore no nightmares.
The dark shadow that passed through
Madeline’s room and directly into her closet went
completely unnoticed.

PART THREE: THE ATTACK

The following day, a Sunday, started
unremarkably. Devon had gotten up early,
delightedly not-hungover (“that’s why you drink
the good stuff" he told himself) and headed off to
do some chores down at his own family’s house,
which wasn’t even three miles down the road
from the Rapoport’s. Audra had slept well, and
had walked all the way to the kitchen to make
coffee and get out some danishes from the fridge
for the children’s breakfast. She then had walked
over to the children’s wing of the mansion and
rapped on Tony’s door. Tony jostled, wiped the

sleep and the nightmares from his eyes, gathered
his hockey gear, and followed Audra to breakfast,
and then with her on to the local ice center, where
his team was to have a pick up game.
Madeline once again had the entire
mansion to herself for a few hours. She slept in,
and glowed the entire morning with the sheen of a
restful night. She was chewing on a raspberry
danish in the kitchen when her eyes fell over to
the ivory-white K. Kawaii baby grand piano that
she had spent so many thousands of hours
playing. She nodded to herself, finished breakfast,
and walked over and planted on the bench.
She looked down at the keys. Strangely, all
of the black and white punched up strange and
foreign to her eyes.

What?

She placed her hands on the keyboard,
somehow not knowing where to rest each finger
or how far to reach from thumb to pinky.
She looked up and arranged the sheet
music on the stand. She read over it. It may as
well have been Romanian runes. She puzzled
deeply, but didn’t panic.
She pressed her fingers down on the keys
and a clunky, misshapen noise banged out. She

wasn’t playing the right notes at all. She scoffed,
before ringing out a girlish giggle.
“Piano is so silly..." she heard herself say,
before closing the cover of the keyboard and
walking away from the baby grand. She spent the
next few hours watching a stupid television show
about idiots competing for love in the tropics.

Once again the day swiveled into night as
the four young people reconvened around the
dinner table, recounting the day’s activities.
Tony’s team, The Ice Flyers, had won their
scrimmage, and were shaping up to be very
competitive for when the regular season started in
the fall. He had even scored a goal. Madeline
shared about how she had played piano and
watched television, again shying away from giving
the others a concert, to their muted chagrin.
During dinner, Madeline and Tony’s parents had
called Audra and so everyone got to talk over the
phone.
After plates were cleaned, the children
excused themselves to their wing, and so the
group split up for the night.

Madeline climbed into bed, once again
feeling the warm wash of sleepiness cover her.
Her mind was so shiny. So simple. She loved it.
She loved not concerning herself with deep
matters, her life only serving as a vessel of

comfort. It was easy. She closed her eyes and
began to drift off.
Right before she took the plunge into sleep
a rustling noise snapped her eyes back open. All
was dark in her room but she heard something
knocking around in her closet. She sat up and
pushed her head forward to try and get a better
look in the blackness. As she did, the double doors
of her closet slowly creaked open to reveal a wide
column of deep shadow. Madeline rubbed her
eyes, somehow not frightened, only curious.
On the doors to the left and right, Madeline
could make out two gigantic, claw-like hands
holding everything open. Then, in the very middle
of the column of darkness within the closet, two
tall, vertical, almond-like eyes opened yellow and
seething, right below the ceiling.

“Madeline...” it softly called, the same
woman-like tone wafting out to the bed.
Madeline’s eyes didn’t blink. She simply
waited.
“MADELINE!!!” The voice within the closet
changed from soft to roaring, holding an ancient
and devastating rage. The boom of this shouted
word shook the entire room. Way down the hall,
even Tony was half-awakened, turning in his own
bed.

Madeline felt a pang of fear like she thought
she had long forgotten.

“THIEF!!!” The grating, low voice growled
in the dark of the closet. The yellow eyes shrank
into molten daggers.

“What do you mean? Thief?” Madeline
innocently inquired, having subconsciously raised
her comforter to her chin.
The yellow eyes in the closet eased and
opened back up to their original size. The eyes
studied Madeline up and down, pausing for
consideration, as if reading her mind.

“It’s in this house, I know...” the voice
returned to a lower feminine timbre.
“I will find it, and I will take back much
more than was stolen...”

Madeline turned her face in confusion,
keeping the covers under her face.
“But first...” the voice said with a teasing
tone. The yellow eyes lowered again and trained
two midnight pupils on Madeline like an
executioner handing out his judgment. One of the
claw-like hands released the closet door and

stretched slowly across the room and over the bed
to Madeline’s face, although the rest of the
creature’s body remained in the darkness of the
closet. Madeline followed the claw with her eyes
as it approached her face and stopped just short
of her nose.
The claw gave a wet, gritty SNAP, like a
lighter trying to ignite in a rainstorm.
The claw then dropped on top of the covers
over Madeline’s chest and the entire arm
retreated back to the closet like a rapidly
retracting firehose. One of the yellow eyes winked
at Madeline, then both doors of the closet were
pulled shut with a ferocious bang, pulling off the
left side from its hinges.

Madeline shivered under her covers, once
again alone in the dark. Then, something within
her changed. No, not changed. Reverted.
The hibernating snakes in her brain thawed
and began to slither and hiss once more. She
began to tremble.

“You’re doomed, it’s time to end your life
Madeline...” a familiar, yet horrible thought
projected across her psyche. Madeline’s eyes
twitched.

“You’ll never get rid of me unless you kill
yourself...”

Tony snapped out of sleep. Yes, that boom
was real, he was not dreaming. He scanned over
his dark room, the only source of any low light
being his window, which brought in reflected rays
from a now-full moon. He slowly crawled out of
bed and walked over to his door. He gently
creaked it open, easing one eye over to the crack
and peering down the long, dark hallway that
separated his and Madeline’s rooms. Nothing
down there except pungent shadow. His breath
shallow, he then decided to walk over and check
out the window. He approached it and got up on
his toes to see out. His eyes flew open and he was
instantly wide awake, a surge of adrenaline
entering his body like a needle to the heart.
There was something on the front lawn, in
the moonlight, down on all fours, and then raising
up on two legs. It looked big. At full height it had
to be at least ten feet. The shadows of two, tall
ears topped its wide head. Pale, glowing eyes
decorated its otherwise dark face. Only one
thought crossed Tony’s young mind.
“No!" he whisper-screamed. He shut the
thin curtains and ran back to his bed and flew
under the covers. He shivered there for a couple
of minutes, wondering if he was still dreaming.
Having lost the ability to fall asleep, he decided at
long last to walk back over and look out the

window again, hopefully proving his late-night
eyes to be unreliable narrators. He lowered the
blankets from his head.

In the window, behind the curtain, a large,
round shadow pressed in, with two glowing eyes
piercing the dark and fixed right on Tony.
Whatever that thing was, it had somehow climbed
up the wall and was now looking into his
bedroom.
Tony screamed and ran over and into his
closet, slamming the door shut. He got down on
his knees and listened. He thought he could hear
clacking and woofing and chuffing from outside
his window. Then, all went silent. Tony remained
in the dark of his closet, breathing rapidly and not
blinking for what seemed like hours.
Then, he heard his bedroom door being
roughly opened. He gasped and threw himself to
the back wall of the closet. Ouch. He felt himself
hit his hockey gear that he had packed away
earlier.
The stick. He grabbed the stick and placed
it against the closet door, under the back of a
knob, to help keep it closed. He held both hands
against it and pressed tight. Heavy footsteps
boomed across his bedroom and then he heard a
sharp swipe on his closet door. He heard baying
and growling. Another swipe. Tony’s mind
scrambled. He looked around the dark of the

closet, trying to remember if there was anything
in here that he could use to defend himself.
His skates. The blade of his hockey skates.
He kept one arm on the stick against the back of
the door and reached the other hand back and
grabbed one of his sharp-bladed skates. He put
his whole hand into it, ignoring the smell of the
recent game, and wielded it like a dagger. His
heart raced. He needed to summon some
bravery .

Madeline. He had to protect Madeline and
the others from whatever this thing was. He
shuddered a quick nod to himself and waited for
this thing to make a move. Then, he heard the
strangest noise he would ever hear in his life.

“MA-MA...” a low, heavy voice called out
from the other side of the closet door. Tony
paused.
The entire door ripped open, decimating it
and even taking and snapping the hockey stick.
Tony fell back. There, in his room, on two legs
now, stood a large, strange bear in the full
moonlight. Stitched-on, long ears stood tall and

its jaws hung open, as if dislocated. Two half-
boiled, white eyes glowed down, pinpointing

Tony. It raised a fleshy, razor-clawed paw.

For Madeline. For the others. For his
family’s home.

Tony got up and raged over to the beast and
sliced his hockey skate across its face, catching it
on its upper lip and severing through its nose,
popping an eyeball like an over-easy egg, and
removing one of its long ears. The bear roared in
pain, bringing up a paw to its mutilated face. Tony
raised his skate once again to attack. The bear
roared an embarrassed, cowardly warning,
keeping a paw to its sliced eye, and lowered down.
It galloped out of Tony’s room on three legs,
whining out a moan like a midnight train whistle.

Tony felt a surge of pride in the moonlight
of his bedroom, the floor scattered with pieces of
his closet door. He walked over and looked down
the hallway to see the giant bear turn and head
toward the living room. He had to go wake up
Madeline and they had to get out of this house.

Madeline sat in bed, squirming with
tormented thoughts. They were back, and they
were more horrible than ever. She held the heels
of her palms to her cheeks and squeezed her skull.
She felt her heartbeat throb in her temples.

“Tonight is the night...

You must kill yourself...

You will never get rid of this...

You have to murder the others...
Go to the kitchen and find the knives. You
know what drawer they are in...

Kill Devon first. He’s playing video games
and won’t see you coming.

Then, murder Audra.
Bring their bodies to your room afterwards.
Molest them on your bed. Then slice them
up and play with them. Cover yourself with their
organs and dance. Dance. Then, Tony can hear
and come to your room. Then, kill yourself right
in front of him.”

Madeline screamed and pounded fists
against her inflamed head.

Meanwhile, Devon sat in the living room on
the big sectional couch and played video games.
He had finished a bottle of wine with Audra
earlier and they had a pretty great make out
session, at least until Devon’s nose erupted with
blood and it spilled down to Audra’s shirt. She
was usually more patient with his condition but
this time was completely turned off. He
apologized, but also scoffed, telling her that he
can’t help it, and that if anything it helped him
understand what she went through with her body
every few weeks. That did not go over well, and so
Audra stormed off to the guest cottage, leaving
Devon to his wine and video games.

He played, not doing so well, until a
shaking sound from behind him caught his
attention. He paused the game and took off his
headset, throwing his eyes back to the hallway
that led to the children’s wing.

A gallop of several large feet boomed and
banged over the floorboards, growing nearer and
nearer to the entrance of the living room there in
the dark. Devon could hear a roar like a grizzly
bear. A hungry, devilish roar. It got closer and
closer. Devon wiped his eyes, not believing what
he was perceiving.

Just when the sound approached the living
room as close as it could, it stopped. Someone

exited the hallway and slowly turned to face
Devon, who had now stood up from the couch,
throwing down his controller. It wasn’t a
nightmare beast. It wasn’t an animal.

“Audra?” Devon asked, full of fear.

Audra stood there at the mouth of the
hallway in the almost full dark. Devon recognized
her silver-lined silhouette. It seemed as though
she was fully naked, and covered in some thick
liquid.

“Hey Devon! Where did I put that rock that
I found in the cave yesterday?" she asked, sweetly,
yet strangely. Something about her didn’t seem
like Audra at all.

“What? Audra?!”

“Devon, where is the stone?" her shadowed,
naked body stood still, yet her voice turned stern.
“I, uh, it’s in your purse, remember? That’s
always where I keep cool stuff I find?” Devon
raised his shoulders like he was stating the
obvious.

“Okay, Devon. I love you," Audra’s likeness
sang out to him across the living room.

Devon leaned his head back in amazement.
They had never said these words to each other.

“What?! You do??" he yelled in surprise.

“I always have. I always will," she
answered.
“Well, babe, that’s great news! Ah! Ha! I
love you too babe! Come here!” Devon began to
walk toward the shadowed outline of his beloved
Audra. As he approached her he could definitely
decide that she was naked and covered in dark
liquid.
“I have to go...” Audra said, this time in a
low, angry voice. Devon heard a click and a creak
and looked over past the hotel-lobby sized kitchen
and through the foyer and saw the front door
slowly open on its own. Then Audra tucked her
arms into her chest and began running toward it,
and quickly escaped into the night.

“Babe? BABE!! Audra!!” Devon, bewildered
but still buzzing off of wine and love, chased after
whom he thought was Audra, running out of the

mansion and into the night under the full
Sturgeon Moon.

Tony banged on Madeline’s door, having
ran all the way down the hall once he could no
longer hear the Long-Eared Bear. He still held his
sharp hockey skate. He had to get Madeline out of
here with him.

“MADDY!" he yelled, banging on her door.

Madeline flinched at the sound and turned
toward it. Her mind with drowning with boiling
ideas. She got out of bed and ran to the door,
locking it and using all of her weight to hold the
knob.

“NO TONY!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!" she
screamed desperately, her brain sending her
messages of murder and sodomy and suicide
without relent. She cried loudly.

“MADDY! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF
HERE NOW!” Tony banged on the door with his
fists.

“NO Tony!! You don’t know what I’m
capable of! I’m CRAZY, TONY!! IM GONNA GO
TO HELL!!”

“What are you talking about Maddy?!
You’re not crazy! We gotta get OUT of here now!
It’s not safe!”

“YOU’RE not safe with ME TONY! I DON’T
WANT TO HURT YOU!!” Madeline half
screamed, half sobbed, painful tears running
down her face in the dark.

“You could never hurt me, Maddy! We have
to get out of here and then we can find you some
help!” Tony yelped, feeling his own tears welling
up and then spilling down his cheeks.

“TONY, IF I SNAP AND TRY TO HURT
YOU, YOU HAVE TO PROMISE THAT YOU’LL
KILL ME BEFORE I KILL YOU!” Madeline
screamed through the door.
Tony couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
He took furiously quick breaths.

“YOU HAVE TO PROMISE ME TONY!!!
PROMISE!!”

“FINE MADDY, I have my hockey skate
here with me, I just fought off a bear with it, and
if you try to hurt me then I...I...I’ll have to kill
you..." he couldn’t understand the words coming
from his mouth. He tasted salt from his tears.

Madeline also sobbed, and then unlocked
and opened the door. Her terrible thoughts waned
for a moment, enough for her to show some
semblance of herself.

“Tony..." she collapsed into her brother’s
arms. He dropped the skate and hugged his sister
tighter than he ever had. They both cried
together.

“You’re not crazy Maddy...I know you...
you’re my hero...you just need some help Maddy.
Even heroes need help.”

She had never heard Tony call her his hero.
A new wave of tears seeped out from her. Her
brain cooled.

“We gotta leave the house Maddy...”
Madeline snapped back into focus, wiping
her face.

“You’re right...Audra! Devon! We have to
get them!”

Audra was awakened from her sleep in the
guest cottage, having turned in early after her and
Devon’s spat. She heard a noise underneath the
bed. She adjusted herself, then woke up enough to
fully listen. Ears open, she could hear what
sounded like teeth chewing on wood. Something
biting, grinding against wood, sounding like it
was ripping off chunks. Audra’s green eyes
widened. She breathed through her nose, her
heartbeat quickening.
Then, a series of bumps from underneath
lifted her bed slightly. The chewing noise
continued, and got louder. It started sounding
wet. Sloppy. Frenzied.
Audra quickly grabbed her phone and
turned on the flashlight, leaning over and
pointing down to the floor. For the rest of her life,
she would wish she hadn’t done so.

The silver circle of flashlight showed her a
great sprawl of greasy, black hair crowning a wet,
bubbling, pale, fleshy mass peaking out from
under her bed. Whatever it was, it seemed to have

a large, round mouth, and it seemed to be sucking
on the opening of her white leather purse. Two
yellow, vertical eyes glowed open from
underneath the black, leaf and dirt-filled hair.
Audra screamed, a scream that was quickly
muffled as her attacker crawled out from under
the bed and onto her face.

Madeline and Tony ran from their wing of
the house and to the living room.

“DEVON?! Audra?!” Tony called out,
keeping his ice skate raised.

“GUYS?!” Madeline yelled.

There was no answer. Only darkness
throughout the main body of the mansion.

“The cottage!” Madeline said loudly as the
two of them met eyes and then began in a sprint
out of the kitchen, through the courtyard under
the full moon, and then over to the guest cottage.

“Wait...” Madeline whispered to Tony and
held an arm out to stop him from barging in.

“Somethings not right...”

Madeline heard what sounded like
somebody screaming through a soaked pillow.
She creaked open the cottage door and turned the
light on.

The two children’s eyes and mouths fell
open in astute disgust and paralyzing terror.

A large mass of tallow-colored flesh almost
took up the entire bedroom of the cottage. It had
arms on the bed and legs against the wall.
Bulbous rolls of fat rippled throughout its body.
Its head was wide and elliptical, and a long mess
of black hair flowed down to the floor like a
waterfall of ink. It had Audra pinned to her
pillow, stretching a mouth around her face,
looking like its lips could split at any moment.
Two yellow eyes adorned its face right above the
straining mouth. Long teeth pierced Audra’s eyes
and cheeks and chin.
Tony looked and saw clusters of holes in the
loose, greasy skin of its back and sides, with small
crustacean-like creatures burrowed in deep like
barnacles, their little claws and antennae showing
within the inflamed rims of the cavities. Audra’s
arms were held down to the bed by pincers that
grew out of where the monster’s ears would be.

She writhed in agony underneath her muffled
scream, covered by the creatures stretched, putrid
mouth.

Tony also screamed.
Madeline took it all in. This was her fault.
Maybe the voice within her was right about one
thing. She needed to be the one to die. Not Tony.
This was all her fault. She was better off dead
after all of this.

“Tony, give me the skate...”

“What?!!!”
“Hand me the skate Tony. This is all my
fault, and I have to fight it..." she held out her
hand. Tony shuddered and handed her the skate,
still wondering if he was in some horrible dream.
Madeline nodded at her little brother. Maybe she
could be his hero after all. She turned back toward
the monster on top of Audra and the bed and
raised the skate and began to drop it blade-first
with as much force as she could.
The vertical, yellow eyes swiveled around
the terrible face of the monster and trained right
on Madeline. A large crab-like claw that had been
buried by its obese belly sprang forth and grabbed
Madeline around the waist, not squeezing hard

enough to kill her, but more than enough force to
stop her. Audra kept on screaming within the
monster’s mouth, the sound stifled but growing
ever-insane with pain and horror.

Madeline began chopping at the clawed
arm with the skate and it the flesh began to break,
showing a shell underneath. After a few good
strikes, the claw fell off entirely. Tony, standing
behind Madeline with hands to his screaming
mouth, could only watch his hero in terror and
wonder.
“GET OUT!!!” Madeline screamed.

The monster howled in pain, its lips and
teeth still covering Audra’s face. Audra stopped
her screaming and went still just as the creature
bit deeply into her cheeks, eyes, and forehead,
causing a wet crunch.

The monster began to raise up off the bed,
still biting down on Audra’s face and dragging her
with it. The huge body of the thing began to crawl
and slither toward a nearby window, using its
other clawed arm to break the glass. It began to
seep out of the cottage bedroom until Audra’s
horizontally-held body caught the walls around
the window. Two more claws came forth out of
some disgusting recess of the creature’s torso and
snapped Audra’s spine in half, folding her body

up, slamming it like a hated book. The creature
spilled out of the window with Audra’s body and
off into the night.

Madeline dropped the skate. The severed
claw on the floor twitched to life and crawled
toward and out the window after the rest of its
body.

Tony grabbed her from behind and they
both sobbed and screamed.

No one knows where it comes from.

EPILOGUE

The body of Audra Blanchard was found on
private property near Hidden Lake State Park,
after police were led there by the tip of Madeline
Rapoport. Audra was found crumpled outside of a
cave with traumatic facial avulsion, with evidence
of unstable thoracolumbar fracture-dislocation
consistent with traumatic transection and adipose
tissue avulsion.
In other words, her face was eaten off and
her spine was snapped in half. She also had cuts

deep into her stomach and buttocks where her fat
was forcibly removed.

She was also found with the DNA, in blood,
of her boyfriend, Devon Walton.

After authorities were notified by two
horribly upset children at the Rapoport Mansion,
a patrol was sent to the premises, but was met
beforehand by Devon Walton, who was running
alongside the road in the dark. He was stopped
and questioned, but kept repeating that he was
looking for Audra. He seemed shaken. A second
patrol car took him in and down to the station for
further questioning, held until DNA evidence had
him convicted as the murderer.

The police had notified Mr. and Mrs.
Rapoport of the crime almost as soon as the
children had called. They chartered a private jet
and were home well before morning. They pulled
up to the house to blue lights whirring and their
two children huddled under shock blankets,
surrounded by officials. Tony and Madeline
sprinted toward them, shedding their covers.

“I NEED HELP! I NEED SO MUCH
HELP!” Madeline buried her face on her mother’s
shoulder and wept. Tony also took into his
father’s arms, sobbing.

In the weeks and months that followed that
horrific night, Madeline and Tony Rapoport got
the help they needed. Tony was able to go back to
school much sooner than his sister.
Madeline found a wonderful team of
doctors and therapists that could help her manage
her mental condition. Sitting on a couch in a cozy
room, Madeline did what she did best. She
learned. She learned that she was not crazy. She
learned that what she had was actually common,
and manageable. She learned that everybody got
these strange intrusive thoughts from time to
time. She learned that these thoughts don’t come
from her, and should not even be considered or
engaged with. She learned that she had to let
these thoughts in and through her and not fight
them.
She learned that a happy life was still
possible, even with all she had been through.

The Rapoports fought all they could with
the investigation and trial of Devon Walton. The
evidence was just too strong. He would die in
prison. The entire family would visit him regularly
and continue to try find a way to prove him
innocent.

On a bright September day, over one year
since the deadly night, Madeline found herself
walking home from another successful session
with her favorite doctor. The afternoon rays fell
through the turning leaves and scattered, dappled
into a thousand sundrops on the sidewalk.
Madeline smiled. She felt like that too, a golden
light, just broken up into pieces. A dark bluish
blur whirred past her periphery. She gasped and
shot eyes up to a branch. An indigo bunting sat,
turning its beautiful little head straight toward
Madeline. She reached into her book bag and
pulled up her camera, quickly training and
focusing the lens before taking the photo. She
smiled down at the footage before looking back up
and thanking the bird as it flew away.

When she got home she was surprised by a
pancake meal prepared by her parents. Tony
joined in, too, and together they all enjoyed a
delicious breakfast-at-dinner. Madeline got
emotionally joyful at one point, tears watering the
rims of her eyes as she giggled down at the simple
beauty of blueberry pancakes with her family.

Later that evening she sat down at the
piano and started in on a new piece, one that
Juilliard had asked her to compose for one of
their youth programs. It was going perfectly,
perhaps the greatest thing she had ever written,
until about halfway through when she messed up
a note.

“You’ll never get rid of me, you FAILURE...
not until you really SNAP and KILL yourself...” a
horrible voice barked at her within her brain.
Madeline didn’t pay it any mind, she just
kept on playing right where she left off, smiling
and getting lost in her own music.

No one knows where it comes from.
However, lots of people are able to live wonderful
lives in spite of it. They are able to enjoy
themselves and manage it. For Madeline, the
Horrible remains, as it most certainly always
would, but it would never reign. Never again.