Part Three
I do not know how much time had passed – I awoke into darkness and cold; a cool breeze forced its way through the crack in my window, and I arose to shut the window and latch it. Lost in sleep and the haze of fading dreams, I donned my coat and hat. I craved a cigarette, and could wait no longer, and weaved my way through the darkness of my apartment, hearing only silence. My father must have been asleep. The darkness engulfed me. I was confused, for the last I recalled was daylight.
I precariously made my way down the steps to the entrance of the building, pushed open the door, and stepped outside into the early morning air (presuming it was early morning – it seemed a strange time that mirrored night or early morning). A crow atop a nearby building announced my presence and took flight, its large wings like that of sheets flapping in a strong wind.
I lighted my cigarette and stood gazing at the small garages on the other side of the parking lot. The lot was small; the only cars were parked in line in front of the building. Toward the back, the garages, some used only for storage, stood steadfast against the wind. It was just a mere straight line of a building, a few of the doors hanging crookedly. I considered the building as I smoked, and that is when I saw the object.
On the upper left-hand corner of one of the doors, I saw a dark mass in the shadow. As I studied it, I noticed that it had extensions. Twenty or more, marking the edges of the mass. And then they moved, quivering, growing until they were much longer than I had first seen, and it was easily a foot and a half across. The dark mass suddenly took on the semblance of a spider. I held my cigarette to my mouth for another drag, watching the object twitching around in the shadows.
I dropped my cigarette, transfixed by the object. It seemed to move to a crack in the wood and disappear, only to reappear again, and in enforced motion. It moved into full view, yet still only a shadowy mass encompassing no body I could see, only the quivering legs that sent shivers down my spine.
Try as I may, I could not make out the exact shape of the thing in the dark, and it seemed to stay in a long shadow alongside one of the garage doors. It flitted upward to the roof, and out of sight, the bizarre network of legs moving swiftly.
I moved slowly farther out into the parking lot, closer to the small building. In the darkness, I saw it moved down again, and my heart jumped – the thing found the crack in the wood and all but vanished into it. By this time, I was more than shocked at what I was seeing. This was no spider, for I knew of no spider that spanned nearly two feet across, with a body that was indiscernible, almost as if there was no body. Simply a mass of legs, jointed in their middles. It sickened me, and I ran inside my apartment for shelter from this thing that was crawling around on the garage building.
I paused for a moment near my desk. There, I kept a small flashlight. I grabbed it and went outside one more time. I switched it on and aimed it toward the spot where I had seen the creature. The light, however, was too dim. I moved closer. I thought of all those legs wrapped around my head and face, something biting into my face; I could not bring myself closer, even though I was still quite far from the spot.
I saw it again, drawing close to the crack in the wood and apparently going inside, and then out again, the legs twitching around as if excited. I fled for the safety of the indoors and stayed for an intermediate amount of time before returning outside. I then saw nothing. The thing was gone.
Or so I thought so; for I saw a flurry of legs scuttling across the parking lot toward me. I dashed inside, letting the thick security door shut behind me as I returned to my apartment, and into my room. My computer stood waiting for me, the words in the exact place I had left them.
I had been writing about Cthulhu for hours that day, and since yesterday, and I thought maybe the content was affecting my thoughts. My brief studies had brought nothing but curiosity, and now that I was actually writing a fictional account, something real seemed to be entering my thoughts.
I began to write, staring at the words, and then I was no longer there. Yet, I was there; I was aware of myself sitting upright in front of the screen, my hands poised above the keys as if ready to type. My mind wondered…
I saw a man’s head, the skin torn away, leaving only bone and sinew and muscle contorted as if he were screaming. I was terrified at the sight. The man’s mouth opened wider than any human I had ever seen, and his eyes looked down in terror as small versions of the spider-like entity crawled from his open mouth and onto his face. His countenance was pure fright as more of the multi-legged animals emerged from his mouth. I found myself wanting to scream.
I shook off the vision, and found myself sitting in the same position, hands above the keyboard. What I had seen had shaken me internally, but was not part of what I was writing – and yet, it did seem connected. I read the words already on the screen, and started writing again, determined to finish.
Again, I was drawn away to the hideous face of a woman, her skin and hair stripped from her head. My heart seemed to pound at this new atrocity, and I watched in horror as her mouth opened so wide I thought it would split her head in half. Her eyes rolled in sheer shock as the things crawled from her open mouth and onto the bloody remains of her face. Though I still could not make out a body, I realized that these multi-legged creatures were feeding on her face. She was trying to scream and could not.
I shook my head of these visions, for I felt close to losing my sanity, so abhorrent were these sights, and I had to stand and leave my station at the computer. The visions had been too real, and I had come very close to screaming, had I not escaped when I did.
I lay on the bed, for it had grown late – in fact, several hours had passed of which I was not aware. I fell into a quiet sleep, and awoke later to find it quite cold in my room, and so I rose to turn up the heat. The living room windows revealed morning had arrived; I was too tired and confused to think about time.
I decided to make a trip to the front stoop for the warmth of a cigarette. The visions of the thing from earlier the same morning (I was beginning to get a grasp of time by then) were still fresh in my mind, though the fear had lessened. I absently put on a coat and went outside to find that in only a few hours’ time, frost had layered everything, including the large expanse of lawn next to my building.
It was then that I saw the footprints.
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