Page 57 of Unbinding the Demon
“Bitch, please, you and I both know how laughable that statement is,” he whispered back with a sassy tone.
“You guys are ridiculous,” I grumbled while rolling my eyes.
I slowly leaned over, glancing out the window to see what all the hullabaloo was about. The yard was dark under the moonless night. I could barely make out the almost empty trees blowing in the wind against the starry sky. My eyes scanned around the slightly more visible areas on the lawn. However, I found no sign of anyone. I’d have bet that if it weren’t so cold out, crickets would have been chirping.
“Is this a prank? I don’t see anyone.” I gestured out the window and glanced over at my worry-stricken friends with an expression that said,“you guys seriously woke me up for this crap?”
William and Lacey joined in behind me like a couple of spooked house cats. Lacey’s hand trembled as she placed it on my shoulder. The three of us stared out into the empty yard together. “They were just out here,” Lacey said, her voice barely rising above a whisper.
“Shh, shhh, shhhhh!”William frantically shushed as a tall, skeletally thin, and deathly pale girl limped into view.
Filthy blond hair hung in stringy tangles around her sunken, lifeless face. She wore a disgusting, tattered white dress with no shoes on her grimy feet. The way she walked reminded me of the deranged shuffling of a zombie. Her head and upper body swayed limply while her feet tottered without coordination across the cold, dying grass. An immobilizing sense of dread washed over me as I took in the harrowing sight of her.
“What the fuck?”I whispered, staring fearfully through the slightly fogged glass.
Her head snapped up, and she looked directly at me with an eerie gaze. It was as if she had somehow heard my voice, pinning my exact location by mere whispered words alone. The three of us jumped in fright. Then her jaw dropped open in a loose gape and she let out the loudest, most horrifying banshee screech imaginable. She then sprinted toward us at full speed like an Olympic gold medalist.
All of us screamed and began to panic in utter terror.“Fucking fuck! Everyone get the fuck away from the fucking window!”William screamed while swooping Lacey and me up with his long, slender arms like a mother seagull ushering its chicks to safety.
We frantically scrambled away from the window and over to the wall on the opposite side of the room. William tripped on the throw rug on the way over and desperately half-crawled the rest of the way. Glass shattered with a deafening crash. Large, jagged shards went flying all over the room, somehow missing us, as if some magical force had shielded our quivering bodies. We huddled together, whimpering in terror, as low, otherworldly snarls came from right outside the window. I knew that staying put was the stupidest thing to do, but my mind was too clouded by fear for me to move.
A gangly, pale arm inched its way up and latched its sickly hand onto the windowsill like a hookworm. The girl slowly dragged her bony, malnourished body up through the window with stiff, jerky, and unnatural movements. She was completely unbothered as the sharp shards of glass sliced into her papery skin, causing darker than normal blood to drip beneath the window. She grinned at us with malice, her mouth full of black, oozing slime. Her nightmarish eyes were completely black, sunken, and hollow, with black veins webbing out around them and down her cheeks.
“Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck!”William shrieked in horror while grasping me like his life depended on it. Lacey and I both screamed and clung to each other, sitting petrified against the wall. Hysteria overwhelmed my senses, and hot tears streamed down my cheeks. The girl looked like a soulless corpse as she crawled in and stood before us. Thick, dark trickles of blood dripped down her body; yet still, she grinned.
Lacey swiftly reached up onto an end table next to us and grabbed a decorative lamp.“Die, bitch! Die!”she screamed as she threw it at the malevolent intruder with all her might.
“My favorite lamp!”William yelled in desperation with an outstretched arm.
The lamp bounced off the girl with no effect and hit the floor with a clunk. She looked right at me with her unsettling crooked grin and slowly pointed a long gnarled finger my way.“Oh, Gwendolyn,”she sang in a creepy, hushed voice.“The father’s waiting for you,”she hissed with a distorted, evil smile. Then she began limping quickly toward me while snarling like a rabid animal.
All three of us cried hysterically and screamed in absolute horror. We held on to each other for dear life, cowering and bracing for the worst. Both Lacey and William had bruising death grips on me. It was as if they would not let this sinister, undead hobgoblin lady drag me away to her repugnant father, in their ramshackle swamp hut made of putrid bones, or wherever the fuck they were from.
She halted with a look of aggravation on her face, and then let out a harrowing shriek that could have split my skull. Her body convulsed in what seemed like agonizing pain. I covered my ears, shock and disbelief filling me as five deep gashes materialized over her face. With loud popping noises, invisible spikes seemed to drive into her skull. She then beganliterallylevitating up off the floor, like a demon-possessed child in a shitty horror film, while flailing her bloodied limbs and screeching out in anguish.
I desperately tried to crawl further back against the wall. My eyes felt like they were bulging out of my head as I watched in terror and bewilderment. There was a loud crunch and a pop as her torso tore right off her hips. Rancid blood, guts, and black slime sprayed all over the room like an erratic sprinkler system. It looked as though an invisible force had ripped her at her waist, splitting her right in two. Both halves of her sickly body then fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
What the actual fuck is happening right now!?
William and Lacey were hysterical, screaming their fucking heads off. I, however, went into a state of complete shock. Time seemed to stand still as I watched her black eyes eerily shift to look at me from the bloody floor. Her hand reached out weakly in my direction.“Gwen—“she tried to rasp out, right before her head exploded with a splash of brain matter and blood. It looked as if some invisible person had curb-stomped a ripe watermelon.
“What the actual fuck!”Lacey screamed while shaking me, breaking me out of my shocked trance.
“How is this possible? This can’t be real life! This literally can’t be real fucking life!”I panicked. My lungs felt tight, and my heart raced, causing me to gasp for breath. The stench of decay was suffocating, and a freezing breeze swept in through the broken window.
“Is she dead!?” William asked, right before leaning to the side and throwing up on the floor. He then ran into the bathroom to rinse his mouth out in disgust. Lacey and I were both trembling as we stared at the gruesome scene and the mutilated corpse in disbelief. “Let’s grab the cats and get the living fuck out of here right now!” William screeched from the bathroom doorway.
He was right. We had to get out of this house! Adrenaline kicked in and I took off running up to my bedroom, with William following right behind me. We ripped the peacefully slumbering kitties from the bed, with some confused meows, then darted back downstairs. Lacey already had her shoes on and her car keys in hand.
“Let’s go!” she said, and she opened the door.
We warily peeked around the yard for a moment, then the three of us all made a crazed dash for Lacey’s little red car. I jumped into the passenger seat while holding Pepper Paws tightly in my arms. William had Esquire’s plump body on his lap in the middle back seat. Lacey tore out of the driveway fast enough to catch fire, with the tires skidding on the rocky dirt below.
We sat in silent shock as the tires crunched over cracked asphalt. The headlights illuminated the foggy road, and I couldn’t help but half-expect another decrepit person to jump out in front of us. My wide, vacant eyes were glued to the maple leaf-shaped air freshener as it swung side to side from the rearview mirror, as if it were hypnotizing me. Esquire was yowling in the back, and Pepper Paws squirmed in my arms.
“What the fuck even was that!” Lacey yelled, with tears streaming down her cheeks as she slammed her fists on the steering wheel. I jumped from the suddenness of it.
“That was like, a literal motherfucking demon zombie.” William covered his face with a shaky hand.
