AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Oh fuck no, not the baby again.
Thank god I’m not chained down this time.
I’m about to get out of bed and go for the door when something drips on my arm. I stare at it, a dark splotch of foul-smelling blood spreading on my skin, then look up.
The boy is staring at me.
His back is on the ceiling, his arms and legs splayed in broken angles, his mouth open wide in a silent scream. Blood drips down from the gash in his arm, splattering cold on my forehead.
You did this!his voice screams inside my head.You did this! You did this!
I yelp and throw back the covers, leaping out of the bed. They tangle around my legs and I stumble to the floor, my hands taking the brunt of the fall.
You did this!The boy keeps screaming and suddenly he falls from the ceiling onto the bed, as if gravity lost its hold, and I’m scrambling to get to my feet. I reach for the door and fling it open just as I hear his bloody feet hit the ground behind me.
Holy fuck!
There’s nowhere for me to run but to Valtu and I don’t even know where his room is in this maze of hallways, but I head down a passage I haven’t been through before, running as fast as I can. The candles quiver in my wake but thankfully don’t go out and from behind me I hear that slap of his bloody feet on the floor, coming after me, closer and closer. My vampire speed is put to the test, but the boy keeps up with ease.
Finally I come to a set of stairs and head up it just as I feel a whoosh of air, the boy lunging for me, just grazing the ends of my hair as I fly around the corner.
I yelp and run up the stairs two at a time, my thighs burning, up up up until I’m wondering if it’s a trick, if there’s a door at the end of this all and god help me if it’s not Valtu’s room.
Then I see the door, metal and heavy, faintly lit by one flickering wall sconce.
“Valtu!” I scream. “Help me!”
I reach the door, going for the handle and pushing and with a heavy groan the door opens a crack. I throw my weight against it, aware that the boy is running up the stairs on all fours like a rabid dog, snapping at my heels.
The door opens more, enough for me to slide on through, and I launch myself into the room, expecting to see the type of bedroom that Valtu would have.
But it’s not a bedroom at all.
It’s a literal torture chamber.
There are chains hooked up to the walls, blood stains splattered all over the floor, and there’s even one of those stocks that you’d find a medieval criminal in, with holes for the head and hands.
“What the fuck?” I whisper out loud.
I have no time to ponder it. The door flies open further, banging against the wall hard enough that dust floats from the ceiling, and the boy comes staggering into the room, raging blue eyes fixed on me.
I’m fucked. The room is circular and there’s nowhere for me to go, the window a narrow slit that I wouldn’t even get my head through.
“Valtu!” I scream again, praying he hears me through the house. Praying he cares.
The boy takes another step forward, his ankles broken, his movements like a zombie.
You did this! You did this!
I back up against the wall and look for a weapon. The chains. Maybe I could wield the chains.
I make a go for them, all the while hoping to hell that this boy is only an apparition just like the baby was, that he’ll suddenly disappear and I’ll escape unharmed.
But he doesn’t disappear.
Instead, he grabs me by the throat, his fingers cold as ice and nails cutting my skin and drags me right up to his face.
You did this!he screams, and his mouth gets wider and wider and wider until it’s just a big black hole with teeth that’s taking over his face and I’m being sucked into it, being sucked into this never-ending abyss, this cosmic world of horror.
