Page 22 of Starve
It’s a shriek, but a lower-pitched one, I think. The thing in my doorway turns at the sound, stepping right back toward the door in an almost frustrated manner. It opens its mouth wide again, hissing to show off those teeth, before it’s dragged away suddenly with an indignant, panicked yowl that echoes in the hallway as it goes.
The sound lasts for much longer than Sam’s screams had. But I remain there, frozen and terrified, with Hattie as still as a statue against my back except for her muttering. Finally, the noises die off, though the thing sounds mad as its voice fades away. It must be getting carried or dragged, since it hadn’t seemed like it wanted to leave.
But I don’t want to meet whatever could just pick it up and carry it off anymore than I wanted to meet that. The paralysis breaks at the thought of finding something scarier in my path, and I stagger away from Hattie with a bit of difficulty, shrugging her off despite her protests.
“Stop!” I snap, shaking off her hand when she reaches out for me. “I’m just going to look!” Though I wonder if sticking my nose out is maybe the worst possible thing I could do, truth be told. There’s an excellent chance that the monster or something like it could still be out here, waiting for me to do just this.
On stiff legs, I make it to the door, and I’m slower than I’d like to admit to take that last step out into the hallway. Immediately, my eyes work to adjust to the flickering lights, and when I turn, my stomach clenches and nausea climbs up my throat at the sight beside my door.
Sam’s body lies there, or what’s left of it. Torn into more pieces than I’m letting myself count, she’s very, very dead with her insides strewn about the hallway and parts of her torn away. Her face is the worst, and when I see what’s left—her jaw cracked and eyes sightless and staring—that’s what does it for me.
I lean the other way and retch, thankful I didn’t really eat much at all for dinner, so all that comes up now is burning bile as my body heaves its protests against what I’m seeing. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, eyes closed as a shudder goes through me. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, Sam.” I barely knew her. I’d barely spoken to her three times, but I still can’t help the stab of guilt that goes through me.
If only I had gotten the door open, maybe I could’ve saved her.
Or maybe all three of us would’ve ended up in pieces on the hardwood floors.
The unwelcome thought feels practical, but I don’t want practical right now. Or rational. I don’t want to let myself begrateful that I didn’t end up like her. With her body so close, it feels wrong to be relieved that I’m still alive, at least for now.
Almost in punishment, I force myself to look at her body one more time. Whatever got a hold of her had been strong enough to quite literally wrench her apart into pieces, though it doesn’t look like it actually broke her bones.
A cold part of my mind relates it to pulling apart a chicken at the weak points, which only makes me double over to heave all over again, disgusted with myself and horrified by the comparison. “Fuck,” I groan, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. “Fuck, get yourself together, Fern,” I whisper, trying not to focus on the vaguely nauseating way the lights continue to blink on and off.
“Hattie!” I call back into my room once I’ve made as sure as I can that there’s nothing still alive in the hallway. She’s leaning against the window in my room, staring out with a thoughtful, slightly blank expression on her face. “Hattie, come on!” I try again. “I…I think we should go.”
But she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even look at me, and I only know she’s somewhat aware because her eyes move, following whatever it is she’s watching on the other side of the window. Frankly, I have no interest in learning what that is, and I’m not about to go back to the window to check. I hesitate for a moment longer, wondering if I should grab her and drag her out of here, even if she doesn’t want to go. However, the memory of how easily she grabbed and held onto me is quick to flicker in my brain and I sigh, shaking my head.
“Hattie!” I try again, and I hope this time it’s enough to jerk her out of her stupor. But it isn’t. Once again, she doesn’t even fucking look at me. “Fine, I…I can’t stay here. I have to go. I have to?—”
“Fern?”My name sounds in the hallway, from the direction of the stairwell where I met Cairo and Tyler only a few days ago,though it feels like a lifetime. The word seems to echo, a little eerie, and everything in me suddenly seems on edge.
“Hello?” I call back tentatively. “Did someone?—”
“Fern?”the voice calls again. It doesn’t say anything else, and still has that same eerie quality that doesn’t sound quite right. But I’m sure the monster that growled and chirped wouldn’t know my name, and with its mouth, wouldn’t have been able to say it anyway.
I turn that way, the direction that’s thankfully away from Sam, and take a few tentative steps. I don’t hear anything close enough to be worrying—or at least any more worrying than this entire night has become. But I’m still as quiet as I can possibly be as I pass other women’s rooms, trying not to look into the first few, since the doors are all open and some are hanging off their hinges. What remains of the other patients is visible out of the corner of my eye, and there are spatters of blood in the hallway, but by the fourth one, I can’t help looking.
The two women inside are familiar in the way I’m sure I’ve seen them around the halls before. They’re older than me, probably in their forties, and both of them are just as torn apart as Sam was. The job seems hasty; the teeth marks are voracious and feral. I don’t let myself dwell on the fact there are definitely chunks of them missing, as if something hadn’t just torn them apart, butatewhat it took.
This seems like a lot for just one creature, but how am I supposed to know that for sure? I don’t even know what was standing in my doorway, or what was able to drag it away.
They’re starving.
Hattie’s words echo in my head, and the realization that she knew, and that there’s more than one, hits me with all the joy of a sledgehammer to my chest. Nausea claws at my insides, and it’s so hard not to focus on one woman that was ripped apart with something that looks like glee, given how scatteredher remains are in the room that I pass. Barely any of her seems to be missing, though I don’t know the inside of a human body well enough to know what remains in the mess of gore that’s spattered around the room.
At least my stomach isn’t protesting quite as much now that I’m becoming a little numb to the situation.
The voice calls out again, my name garbled on their tongue, and it occurs to me the person might be injured. It doesn’t sound like Cairo or Esther. In fact, the voice has a very neutral, unidentifiable quality to it that makes it impossible to place. But Sam’s face in my mind weighs too heavily on me to even think of leaving them and finding my way out. Besides, the stairwell is just as good an escape as any, I hope. The stairs are the quickest way I know of to get to the first floor, and it will mean I don’t have to cross the main areas of the building, where I can still hear screaming.
Finally, the stairwell is in sight, the open archway looming in a menacing, and not at all reassuring, way. The windows near it are broken, glass scattered all over the floor in thick shards, and I can’t stop myself from looking out to the ground beyond, even though I don’t know what I expect to see.
I’m not even shocked when I don’t see anything. After all, with all the monsters inside, what’s left outside except the trees? But a breeze makes me shiver, reminding me that we’re near the top of a mountain in northern Washington, where it never really gets warm and I constantly need some type of jacket. My long-sleeved thermal under the powder-blue scrub top definitely isn’t cutting it, and I rub my hands over my arms as I walk.
“Hello?” I call while standing just outside of the stairwell. The lights inside are off, and the door has been ripped clean off its hinges. I don’t really want to run in there blindly, given that with my luck, I’ll probably end up tripping and falling, breakingmy neck on the staircase before any monster has the pleasure of ripping me apart.
Although all things considered, it would probably be a better death.
The moment I finally get the courage to take a step forward, there’s a snarl and a scrabbling noise on the floor behind me that makes me whirl around. It takes me longer than it should to realize that the thing hurtling down the hallway behind me isn’t one of the creepy, man-eating monsters that killed Sam and stood in the door of my room.
