The Terror

Here's an old story I mine I found on a memory stick I thought I had lost, let me know what you think. King's influence is stronger in this piece than it has ever been for me.



She was scared; the terror was here. The terror was in her house and it was waiting for her. Waiting to kill her, to eat her to her bones, to put her through the most agonizing pain imaginable. A fierce chill started at the base of her spine and travelled to the nape of her neck. She shivered violently and tried to be as quiet as possible. She felt gooseflesh break out on her arms and chest. She sat up slowly and pulled the covers around her shoulders. She reached to her right and felt only the smooth sheets.
He’s already dead.
Kevin had been in bed beside her the last time she was awake. After they had made love, she had drifted into a pleasant sleep and he had stayed up to have a midnight snack and catch the score in the basketball game.
Now he has become the midnight snack.
The terror had come last week, and there had been much speculation as to exactly what it was. The plump Mrs. Dawkins who worked at the hair salon had said it was an ‘ancient in’jian curse to be certain.’ Pastor Collins had told her it was the towns sin that brought the vengeance of god down upon the small town of Pachitewa.
It doesn’t care what you think; it will kill you just the same.
Her heart thumped in her chest and the sound filled her ears. The terror was in the room, its presence hung in the air. There was a stink like a bog, like rotting flesh and organic material. The room was nearly pitch black but she thought she could see a large shadow where the TV closet normally stood. She could feel it. It was large, bigger than a man, and strong with large talons and rotten and jagged teeth. They would rip her to shreds in an instant; its hideous face would be unlike any animal that she would have encountered in her life. Like a cross between a snake and a man and a bear. She was not its first victim and she would not be its last. She could sense its eyes on her, it was like there was a presence in her mind that was not her own. This foreign invader probed her thoughts, her anger, her fears.
Can you feel it?
She was scaring herself, her mind was racing and she was seeing her own death in all the ways it could come. Her head ripped from her body as it pierced her stomach with razor sharp talons. It wanted to tear her to shreds; it wanted to pluck her eyes out so she couldn’t see what to be afraid of. Her last image would be of that terror. Its bright glowing, hellish eyes looking down on her, drinking in her fear, eating her heart and mind.
What are you afraid of?
“What ev’r the fuck it is, it’s tearin’ the town apart.” She had heard an old farmer mumble just the other day. Half the town had left to be stay with family far away, after the first few days. Of those who stayed most were dead by now. Dr. Marshall and his two nurses had stayed and each morning they went to each house seeing who was still alive and studying the dead. Kevin was good friends with Dr. Marshall and had visited him when he had gotten groceries from the store, which was abandoned, almost every day since the strange deaths began to occur.
“They all die in good health,” he had told her. “The only major medical concern is that their heart isn’t beating anymore, with the exception of Mr and Mrs. Tovsky who smoked like the devil and whose lungs were in rough shape. But, the scary part is that as they die they go crazy, they begin to etch their fears into anything and everything. Alexander Johnson had scratched into his forehead with a tack ‘MY TINY PENIS.’” He had paused at that point in the story and sipped his beer. “I mean; what the fuck is that?”
The local diner owner Jim Svenson had been the third body they found. When Dr. Marshall and his nurses broke in through the back door they had found that none of the lights in the house worked. The breaker was fine, the bulbs were new, and the electricity was flowin’ like the Mississippi during flood season, but there was a presence in that house that wanted the lights off. There were candles everywhere, burnt down to small clumps of wax. Jim was hanging from the second floor banister, four candles on his left side and four on his right still burned; the wax was completely un-melted. He had cut of the fingers of his left hand and the toes of his right foot and had cauterized the wounds with a blow torch Nurse Jenny Halliday found at the top of the stairs. Underneath his body he had, or something had, manoeuvred the digits to crudely spell, THE DARK.
Your soul will rot in hell while you body rots in its stomach.
Sandy Mackall was the mother of four kids and Ray’s wife, a man of questionably integrity. It was well known that on most Friday and Saturday nights Ray would get drunk and go down to Dorsey and go to a cheap titty bar to fool around with the local whores. It was rumoured that when Ray got home he would smack Sandy around a bit before passing out on the couch and getting into work a few hours late on Monday. Sandy had beaten herself one night; Dr. Marshall was sure of it because of the freshness of the bruises and the larger ones on her left side. She had taken a hunting knife and cut open her stomach, killing the three month old child she was carrying. On the white tile floor of the bathroom where she was found naked in the bath tub read: THAT OBUSIVE DRUNKEN FUCK, in bloody almost illegible letters.
Jonathan Jacobs was 10 years old, the youngest of three, and an average kid in almost every sense of the word. One night little Jonathon had crawled out of bed in the dead of night and taken one of his red crayons and began drawing a picture on the bare white wall beside his bed. After a while, Jonathan’s crayon was worn down and he began to use his bloody fingertips to continue his drawing. When his father found him, the next day the boy had small stubs for fingers, worn down to the first knuckle. The boy had continued his drawing even while his fingers were raw and bleeding and the hard plaster wall was wearing down the bone of his own little red crayons. The drawing was magnificent, far above the skill level of a ten year old boy; there was a closet, strikingly similar to the one of the other side of the room. Leering from within the closet was a dark hooded figure with glowing red eyes, blood eyes. Underneath the caption read: THE TERROR.
Oh shit, here it comes.
There was nothing she could do to stop it. It was like the passive presence in the room came forward violently and took control of her thoughts. The terror was looking for her fears, probing, organizing them into neat, little file folders to put away for later. It selected one, it was time to begin. She was breathing heavily, sweating like a madman and digging in her nightstand for something. She didn’t know what, she didn’t know until her hands clutched the scissors.
I don’t want to do this.
She removed her husbands t-shirt and looked down at her naked body. Where to start? There was no stopping it now, the terror had more than just a hand on the wheel now, it was in the drivers’ seat. It was taking her to hell. The terror must be very pleased, seeing her go crazy, watching her begin to dig the scissors into her tanned thigh. Warm blood trickled from the wounds, but the word was clear. ALONE. Her greatest fear, to be abandoned (by Kevin) when she needed (him) most. The prospect that she was facing the terror alone was worse with the knowledge that she would never she him again, touch him again, feel his warmth ever again. He was already in its stomach, he was crying out for her but she couldn’t save him. But she could join him, her fear began to diminish.
“Come here you wretched piece of shit!” she cried, spittle flying from her mouth. Her eyes ablaze with an angry fire and the bloody scissors clenched in her right hand, she screamed from the terror to take her. She was no longer afraid, she could be beside him again, in death, in hell, and it didn’t matter to her anymore.
He is not where you’re going.
Its lies changed nothing, the closet door crashed open as she screamed his name as loud as she could. Oddly she couldn’t hear her voice, just the rumble and dark, deep voice of the terror. The top hinge of the door had been ripped from its frame and red eyes, the blood eyes, glared at her through the piercing darkness and the thick smoke that seemed to have entered her vision.
“Go back to Hell; I’m not afraid of you.”
The eyes burst into an even stronger red which dripped down. They were weeping blood. The terror shrieked and cursed her, and the eyes disappeared and the door slammed shut. The bedroom door burst open and the world turned into a blinding white, and a tall, dark figure rushed out of the door.
Ready to ride the white-knuckle Caddy to Hell?
“Jesus Josie! What’s happening? Why are you bleeding?” Kevin said as he ran to her side.
“Thank you,” she whispered too quietly for him to hear. She could hear the steady drumming of her heart as he picked her up into her arms and carried her from the bed. The numb sound of his voice was soothing, and Josephine Calloway slipped into a peaceful sleep.

Epilogue
Little Jonathan Jacobs found a black eagle’s skull a week before he died. He took it home with him and thought himself quite the explorer, pretending it was an ancient Indian war bird, or an alien, or the goblet of the devil. The eye sockets were a deep, blood red. Jonathan put the skull in his closet when he got home. Doctor Marshall and Kevin Calloway found it after Jonathon’s death; Kevin had brought it home and forgot to take it out of his leather jacket’s pocket to show Josie. He hung it up in their bedroom closet when he got home the night Josie had her encounter with the terror. Kevin jacket was in the back of their pick-up, the eagle’s skull tucked safely in the left hand pocket. It would remain there, even as they unloaded their belongings at Kevin’s parent’s house in Dorsey.