Page 3 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
“Lyssa.”
The scream that tears from her throat is a masterpiece. It is not the shrill, panicked shriek of simple fear. It is a cry of someone who has not just seen a monster, but has had her most sacred memories defiled by it. The sound echoes through the silent forest, pure and sharp and beautiful. A ravenous craving consumes me for the emotion she is pouring into the night. I want to bottle the sound, to keep it, to listen to it in the lonely dark of my lair.
She doesn't freeze. She bolts. An explosion of motion, she turns and crashes back into the underbrush, fleeing with the desperate, blind panic of a creature who knows death is at its heels. I watch her go, a dark shape swallowed by the deeper darkness of the woods. The urge to pursue her is a primal command that screams through my bones. My muscles tense, coiling for the chase. It would be easy. She is slow, clumsy in her terror, leaving a trail a blind thing could follow.
But I remain still. This hunt is different. The prize is not her body, not the warm blood that would offer a fleeting moment of relief from the curse. The prize is her return.
A strange, unfamiliar pang resonates in the hollow space where my heart should be. Loss. I feel a sharp, aching sense of loss as the sound of her flight fades into the distance. The clearing feels empty now, the silence she leaves behind a thousand times more profound than the silence that came before. The scent of her terror; a perfume that should be intoxicating, but it is mixed with something else now—the scent of her, uniquely her, and its sudden absence makes my chest worse than ever.
I let her go. I let her run back to the false safety of her village, back to the world of light and warmth. I let her go because I know, with a certainty that settles deep in my marrow, that she will be back. The lure has been set. She has seen the monsternow, she has heard it speak in her own voice, and the mystery of it will be a hook she cannot dislodge. She will be consumed by questions, haunted by the need to understand. And that need, I sense, is even stronger than her fear.
I step over to where her lantern lies sputtering in the snow. I reach down with one clawed hand and carefully right it, the small flame flickering back to life. A beacon. A promise. I will wait. And when she returns, the real conversation will begin.
4
LYSSA
Idon’t sleep. I’m not sure I will ever sleep again. The moment I slammed my bedroom door shut, I shoved my heavy oaken dresser in front of it, the legs scraping against the floorboards. It’s a foolish, childish gesture. A piece of furniture will not stop the thing I saw in the woods. I know this, yet the illusion of a barrier is the only comfort I can find. I spend the night huddled in the farthest corner of my room, wrapped in a quilt, my back pressed against the cold plaster wall as I stare at the window. Every gust of wind sounds like its approach, every creak of the old house the scrape of its claws.
The image of the creature is burned into the back of my eyelids. I see it every time I blink: a towering silhouette of bone, a nightmare given flesh. But it’s the details that truly haunt me. The skull-face, bleached white under the moon, with empty sockets that were not empty at all but held a flickering, crimson intelligence. The glowing heart, a grotesque lantern pulsing with a life that felt ancient and wrong, its light painting the snow in shades of blood. Most of all, I hear its voice. My voice. The perfect, chilling mimicry that took my name and turned it into a weapon against me.
He didn't just frighten me; he violated something. He took the sacred, private grief I have carried for five years and wore it like a mask. The hope that my mother might be out there, the desperate love that drove me into the woods—he twisted it all into a lure. A bitter, coiling shame mixes with the terror. How could I have been so foolish? How could I have allowed my own sorrow to blind me so completely? For five nights, I thought I was communing with my mother’s spirit. In reality, I was being stalked by a monster, my own grief a dinner bell calling a predator from the shadows. I feel a wave of nausea and press a hand to my mouth, my body trembling with a fresh wave of horror. The room feels like a cage, but the world outside feels infinitely worse. There is nowhere to run when the monster knows your name and can speak it in your own voice.
The next day passes in a blur of muted terror. I move through the house like a ghost, avoiding Clara’s worried questions and the heavy, pitying gaze of my father. I can’t tell them. The words would sound like madness.There’s a skeletal creature in the woods that speaks with stolen voices.They would lock me in my room for my own safety. They wouldn’t understand that safety is an illusion I can no longer afford to believe in. The world is full of teeth, and I have seen the things that wear them.
As dusk settles over the village, casting long, menacing shadows from the eaves of the houses, a familiar dread begins to build in my chest. I retreat to my room, but I don’t bar the door this time. Some part of me needs to know. I sit on my bed, staring at the window, waiting. The sun dips below the jagged peaks of the Causadurn Ridge, and the forest becomes a solid wall of black. And then, it comes.
Lyssa.
My mother’s voice. It’s softer tonight, more hesitant, as if it knows I am afraid. It doesn’t sing the lullaby, just whispers my name with that same aching tenderness. My heart lurches, apainful, frantic rhythm against my ribs. Fear and longing are at war within me, a battle so fierce it leaves me breathless. I stay put. I clutch the quilt in my fists and stare at the dark glass of the window, refusing to answer, refusing to follow. But I listen. Gods help me, I listen until the voice fades with the last of the twilight.
That night, I finally fall into an exhausted, dream-haunted sleep. I am back in the clearing, the snow cold beneath my bare feet. The creature is there, its heart glowing a furious, hungry red. But this time, when it speaks, it mimics my deepest fears in My voice.You’re alone. No one is coming for you. You will die in this forest, and no one will even find your bones.I try to run, but my feet are frozen to the ground. The dream shifts. Suddenly, I am a child again, safe in my mother’s arms. The scent of her—of lavender and warm bread—is so real I can almost taste it. She is laughing, her head thrown back, the sound a perfect, untainted melody. She hums the lullaby, and the sound is not a lure but a blanket of pure, uncomplicated love. The memory is so vivid, so warm, it feels more real than the waking world.
I wake with the first pale light of dawn, the ghost of my mother’s laughter still echoing in my ears. The terror from the dream of the creature is still there, a cold stone in the pit of my stomach, but the warmth of the memory that followed has changed something. It hasn’t erased the fear, but it has ignited something else alongside it: a fierce, burning resolve. The dream didn't just remind me of my fear; it reminded me of what I had lost, and why I had been willing to risk everything in the first place.
That creature, that monster used my mother’s voice. It desecrated my most precious memories and turned my love into a weapon. The violation of it makes my hands clench into fists. But it is also the only new thing, the only clue, in five years of agonizing silence. The town gave up on her. The world gave upon her. But this thing in the woods… it knows her. It knows her voice, her lullaby. It knowsme.
I swing my legs out of bed, the cold floorboards doing nothing to cool my veins. The fear is still there, a constant, chilling companion. My heart pounds at the thought of facing that creature again. But the questions are louder than the fear. Why me? Why use my mother’s voice? What kind of monster doesn’t hunger for flesh, but for memory? For emotion? I cannot let it go. I cannot go back to simply waiting, to being the "cursed girl" who listens for ghosts. I have to understand.
I dress with a purpose I haven’t felt in years, pulling on thick woolen trousers and a sturdy tunic. The clothes feel like armor. I look at my reflection in the small, cracked mirror on my dresser. My eyes are shadowed from lack of sleep, my face pale, but there is a spark in my gaze that has been missing for a long time. It is the terrifying, exhilarating light of determination. I am afraid. I am so deeply, bone-chillingly afraid. But for the first time since my mother disappeared, I am no longer lost. I have a path, and it leads back into the dark.
5
LYSSA
Night falls again, draping the world in a thick, velvet blackness. The fear is a living thing inside me, a cold serpent coiling around my ribs, but my resolve is a shield against it. I will not let terror be my master tonight. I move through the sleeping house with a deliberate silence, my purpose a steady flame in the chaos of my emotions. In the kitchen, I find what I’m looking for. The small paring knife my mother used to slice apples is a pathetic weapon against the creature I saw, its blade barely longer than my finger. But as my hand closes around the worn wooden handle, I feel a surge of defiant strength. It isn’t for fighting him. It’s for me. A reminder that I am not returning to the woods as helpless prey, but as a woman seeking answers, armed with her own will.
I retrieve the lantern from my room, its familiar weight a small comfort in my trembling hand. The oil sloshes softly, a liquid whisper in the profound silence. I don’t say goodbye to Clara or my father; they wouldn’t understand this journey I have to make. They would see it as a death wish, a final surrender to the madness that has haunted me for five years. They don’t seethat this is the opposite. This is the first time I have chosen to walk toward my haunting rather than letting it chase me.
The cold air hits me as I step outside, sharp and clean. The village is asleep, windows dark, the only light coming from the moon, a sliver of bone hanging in the star-dusted sky. The walk to the forest’s edge is the longest of my life. Every rustle of leaves is the scrape of his claws, every shadow a towering, skeletal form waiting to emerge. The familiar world of my home, of cobbled streets and the distant scent of woodsmoke, feels like a lifetime away as I step past the last manicured lawn and onto the wild, untamed earth of the woods. The trees loom over me, their gnarled branches like skeletal arms reaching down. This is his world. I am a trespasser here. My heart pounds a frantic, suffocating rhythm against my ribs, but I force my feet to move forward, one deliberate step after another, the lantern light carving a small, brave circle in the immense, waiting darkness.
I follow the path of my own terror from two nights ago, the memory of my panicked flight now serving as a twisted sort of map. Broken twigs and trampled undergrowth mark the way, a trail of fear leading me back to its source. The forest is different tonight. It feels alive, aware. It feels like his.
The musky scent I first noticed, the one that clung to the air before he revealed himself, is stronger here, a territorial marker that screams of ownership.
The clearing appears ahead, a pool of muted moonlight in the dense woods. The snow is disturbed where I fell, where he stood, a silent tableau of our first encounter. For a moment, my courage falters. I could turn back now. I could run back to the village and bolt my door and pretend this was all a nightmare. But the memory of my mother’s lullaby, pure and loving in my dream, pushes me forward. I need to know.
I step into the center of the clearing and stop. I raise the lantern, holding it high, the light a beacon in the oppressivegloom. My small flame pushes back the shadows, revealing the circle of silent, watching trees. And I wait. The silence is absolute, a heavy blanket that smothers all sound. Even my own heartbeat seems deafening in the stillness. I feel a thousand unseen eyes on me, but I stand my ground, the little knife in my pocket a cold, secret weight against my thigh.
