SO YEASTER WROTE 2,700 WORDS

So. Much. Text.

Hello all. This is the prologue to something I wrote in my spare time while I was looking for a job (and strangely once I actually found a job, I was writing even more... o.O). Anyway, the story itself is done and I'm now revising it, but I'm looking for some extra pairs of eyes to help me out, as well as some advice from local artists.

Anywho. This is a horror story, character driven, with fantasy elements. Think of a kid whose father is The Evil Dead, and mother is Silent Hill, but who has a bit of A Nightmare on Elm Street blood in her family. Of course, honest constructive comments are appreciated. If it sucks ass, hey, tell me that, too. haha

If you can actually sit through this, you'll get a dollar.

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THE UNSEEN

PROLOGUE


. . .

Marcia Jarvis had little reason to suspect that she was going to die today. Nor did she expect that Brady Mitchell, her next-door neighborhood and lover, would murder every living member of her household.

Twigs, sticks, and leaves carved her cheeks as she ran through the midnight forest. Her fear made her immune to the pain. She had been on her feet for nearly an hour, her heart beating faster than it ever had before. Her lack of breath did not stop her. She wouldn’t let it. If she stopped, she was dead. Even if she wanted to slow down a bit, she couldn’t. Her legs were almost acting independently, and she had neither the strength nor the will to go against them.

Her brain was bombarded with questions, questions she could not answer. Questions she could not silence. She thought of every possible conclusion but nothing made sense to her. Red fury washed all over her. She felt helpless; a mere pawn in fate’s cruel and twisted game. In some ways she was.

She was not a minute older than nineteen. She was the tallest girl in class. Third tallest student overall. Her eyes were chocolate brown, matching her shoulder-length hair that she usually kept tied up in a ponytail. Her skinny arms and flat chest plagued her since she was small. Her robust jaw-line earned her the nickname “Marcus Jaw-vis”. While that was a tad extreme, it was true that she wasn’t the most feminine girl in class, and painting her face with cosmetics only heightened her harsh features. Chap-stick became her only source of makeup.

Brady Mitchell was the boy that every girl wanted. Never in a million years did she think she stood a chance with him. They had lived next door to each other since she was five. Her parents had just moved to Santa Monica from Lake Charles. It would not be until grade six before they’d exchange more than two words to each other.

The subject was Earth Science—his favorite, her most reviled. Her hatred for all things science reached its peak when the mid-quarter review was placed in front of her. The material looked vaguely familiar; she knew she had seen it before. The answers were just on the tip of her brain, held back by something invisible. She dug and dug until deciding it was pointless. She thought about fleeing to the bathroom. Figured she’d hide behind a stall until the bell rang. She heard a whisper, turned to it, and saw Brady curling his hand into a “C”. They then worked out a system. She would let him know if someone was watching (specifically Mrs. Carson, who taught the blended sixth and seventh grade class) and he would give her an answer.

They'd been inseparable since. By grade nine, he professed his love for her. By graduation, he proposed. Despite her doubts—and there were plenty—she accepted. She knew, believed rather, that they would iron out the kinks somehow. Together.

Marcy knew that keeping the engagement a secret was going to be more trouble than it was worth. For starters, she was a spectacularly awful liar. Secondly, once she got the ring she would never want to take it off. Brady did not agree but there was no use in trying to change her mind. The best route to take, he figured, was for them to share the news together. First, they'd tell her parents, then his. Marcy saw her family’s annual camping trip as the perfect way to share the news (every July, she and her family would spend five days at the camping resort in Oregon; the place was so darn big there was always something new to explore). To Brady’s surprise, Marcy’s parents welcomed him aboard. “Oh, Brady isn’t that kind of boy,” Patricia Jarvis explained to her husband. “He’s a sweet young man. Bright, too.”

But he was now a murderer, and Marcy was set to be his last victim.
A pit lay before her. Her mind was in such disarray that it wasn't until she got close to the edge when she noticed it was there. She leaned back so she wouldn't fall in. She wobbled too far back and ended up falling on her bottom. She crawled to the edge, despite her heart (and her mind) telling her not to. She looked inside. Then screamed.

The pit was filled to the tip with mutilated corpses, dismembered pieces of the people she once called her family. Two bodies were missing. One was Reese, her eldest brother, whose murder she had just witnessed. He had thrown himself in front of an axe that was meant for her.

The other was James, her twin brother, whom she last saw hiding at the rental cottage. She hoped—prayed—that he was still alive.

Bushes rattled behind her and she shut up. She rose to her feet, circled around the pit, and kept going forward. The aches and pains in her legs and arms were beginning to wear on her. Her legs slowed down and her throat burned from all of her heavy breathing. If she did not find a safe haven soon, she was no more alive than road kill.

Like a light at the end of a tunnel, an old wooden cottage sat at the end of the trail. Leafless trees circled around it as if it were its own private sanctuary. Marcy pushed with everything she had. She threw herself inside and slammed the door shut.

It was nearly black inside. She had been staying at a similar cottage for five days but this one felt different, like a place where people were sent to die. She slowly stepped away from the door, silencing her breaths. She stared at the handle as if it was going to move itself.

Obscured in the darkness a few feet behind her lay a corpse face down on the naked floor. The body belonged to a man, same age as she, who shared her gawky frame, hair, and eye color. There was a hole in his chest, deep enough to put your first through without having to worry about getting any blood on it. Entwined in his milky fingers was a handgun.

Marcy felt her heel make contact with something hard. She jumped, almost shrieked. Threw her hands over her mouth to keep it in. Every muscle in her body trembled, her sweat so thick her tee shirt felt more or less like an added layer of skin. What is that? She bent over to find out. She grabbed the object, turned it over, and…

A piercing cry escaped her lungs. Her back hit the door, her fingers quivering under her cracked lips. The body belonged to her dear brother James. People assumed that since they were twins they must have been close. That couldn't be further from the truth. But she loved him dearly, always had. For the first time in several years, they had formed something of a friendship.

But James was dead; their friendship terminated before it properly begun.

Slow footsteps prowled towards the cottage from outside. Marcy forced the handgun—her father’s only reminder of his time in the service—out of James’ hands and disappeared into the bedroom, unaware of the trail of blood leading in that direction.

. . .

Marcy stood in the far corner of the bedroom, back firmly against the wall. Her wet brown eyes fixed on the doorknob. Fear kept her from holding the gun steady, but she was more than willing to shoot whatever walked through that door. Especially if it was Brady.

She heard the door outside open slowly. A gasp inched up the walls of her throat but she slapped her mouth shut to bury it. Heavy stomping approached the bedroom door. Boots. Brady’s boots.

A bladed object of some sort, no doubt the axe Brady used to butcher her family with, hit the floor. It dragged as the wielder drew closer and closer to the door. Her eyes trailed to the door. Two feet stood on the other side of it. She could see the shadows. Her eyes sealed tightly and her whole body shivered, but she forced herself to keep quiet.

It didn’t work. The wielder threw the axe against the door, and Marcy covered her ears and screamed. After four hits, the doorknob shot across the room like a torpedo. After five hits, the door was no more.

A young man stumbled inside. He was a year older than Marcy was at most. His blonde locks were cut short, and his biceps outweighed Marcy and her brother combined. Little tan dots sprinkled the arc of his nose, the only feature of his youth left untouched. His white tee shirt and blue jeans were drenched in blood, dried and fresh. His movements were slow, his coordination poor. He was getting tired.

His eyes reeked of desperation. They were like two empty holes, devoid of humanity. He held up his left hand in peace and crept toward her. He didn’t bother to lose the axe.

She swallowed hard and aimed the gun at the thing masquerading as her lover.

“Don’t you fucking move, you bastard!”

He came to an immediate halt. He looked surprised. He shouldn’t have been. He didn’t have the right.

He started with, “Marcy, please. Let me explain.” His voice never raised above a whisper.

“I mean it! Stay away from me!” Her body was trembling, but her voice was stern and cold. She meant it, and he knew it.

“I was trying to protect you.”

“From what, Brady? You’re the one holding the axe! You’re the one with their blood on your clothes!" Behind her pooling tears was a smoldering rage that threatened to explode.

Brady's desperation began its shift into impatience. He rushed toward her but she cocked the gun and he stopped instantly.

“Listen to me,” he barked. “Those people were not who you think they are. Those…those things were not your family.”

She bit her lower lip. She was sick of hearing this. Since the second day of the trip, Brady had been "cautioning" her about putting too much trust in her family. They had gotten into a big fight over it early yesterday morning. The subject had been dropped, so she thought. But since he could not use his words to haul her away from her family, he decided to use his blade apparently, the same blade he threw at her when she refused to go with him. Had it not been for Reese, she wouldn’t be standing there right now.

She knew what she needed to do now. She had known what to do when life departed from Reese. But no matter how badly she needed to do it, wanted to do it, she could not bring herself to pull that trigger.

Brady saw the confusion on her face and stepped forward. He shed a tear, the first time he had down so since he was twelve.

“Why?” Marcy cried, head swaying side-to-side.

“Because I couldn’t let them have you.”

“So you had to kill me?”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was trying to save you.”

She wanted to believe him, almost did. Then she reminded herself that the man standing before her was not Brady Mitchell. Everything about him had changed. His voice, energetic and full of life before, had become husky and dark. His skin had gone pale, streaked with red and black veins. He walked with a hunch and moved as though he was learning to walk for the first time. She toyed with the idea that he was possessed by Satan himself. Whatever the case may be, one thing was certain—he could not leave the cottage alive.

She held up the gun and stared at the beast in its eyes. “Step back, Brady.”

“You need to understand.”

“Stay. Back.”

“You’re making a mistake!”

He lunged forward; she fired her first bullet. He fell on one knee, his shaking hands moving toward the burning hole in his stomach. He looked up at the sniper. Tried to call her name but the pain had tied his throat into a tight knot. He could make sounds—husky sounds, as if he was trying to breathe on the moon. But no words.

Making the most of his parting strength, Brady pulled his knee off the floor and edged toward Marcy, his left hand out in front of him, his right hand gripped firmly around the axe. Marcy fired again. He kept going. Every step he took earned him another bullet, each one pushing him further and further away. No fewer than eleven hits did his body finally hit the floor.

His breaths were few and far in between. Had he been a normal human he would have died shortly after the second or third bullet. Maybe even the first, if she was lucky. But there he was, eleven bullets in and his heart was still pumping. Perhaps his heart had nothing to do with it. Maybe he was acting on something else, controlled by some other force. Whatever it was, it was weakening. His breaths came to a complete stop, as did Marcy’s sobbing.

She gazed at the corpse. She kicked its head. No response. It looked as dead as any other corpse, but she wasn’t convinced. She aimed at the head and fired. The silver pellet dove straight through its skull and a geyser of blood mounted from the hole. She pressed the trigger again. Nothing came out.

Unsettling silence crept in. She tossed the gun. She retreated to the corner of the room and sank to the floor. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She hung her head down and wept. She had taken a life. She had taken his life. She might as well have turned the gun on herself. Nothing was going to be the same after this.

Her isolation was cut short when the sound of dangling chains encircled the cottage from outside. She lifted up, unsure if the strange sound was real or derived from her delusions. It wasn't.

Not this time.

The sound got louder as it drew near. She stole the axe from her lover’s corpse and rose to her feet, keeping her back against the wall. She glared at the door. The tears she shed had dried and her wrath reached a pinnacle she never thought possible.

Within seconds, the floor was deluged under a thin cloud, coming out of the countless cracks and holes that speckled the room. Marcy backed away from it as far as she could, but could not escape its touch.

The outside door burst open. Marcy covered her mouth to bury her gasp. Something stomped inside, some kind of…animal or something. Its movements were slow but strong. The chains attached to its flesh danced about as it approached the bedroom door.

Marcy shuddered as if she had been locked in a freezer. Her mind might not have been coherent enough to process fully what was going on, but she knew that whatever it was on the other side of that door was not human.

When she looked at the floor, she saw the shadows of a blade, chains, and…hooves? Her eyes grew large and her throat sucked its moisture dry. She could not recall the last time she had seen a horse, but she knew that hooves of that size were nothing short of impossible. Is this what Brady tried to warn her about?

Did I… make a mistake?

She raised her weapon up high, preparing herself to strike at any moment. The chains stopped dancing and the mist stood still. Seconds, then minutes passed by in which no one moved or made a single sound. She backed into the crease of the room and anticipated the attack, her heart nearly bursting out of her chest.

The walls then collapsed behind her and four skeletal arms extended from the rubble! Patches of burnt flesh clung desperately to the bones of which they were bind. Their claws, black and stained with blood, were larger than their tiny arms should have allowed.

Marcy barely had time to scream before she found herself caught in the clutches of the hands from hell. She screamed as she sank into the flaming abyss. No matter how hard she screamed, no one would ever hear her cries.

No one. Not even her.


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I actually did not know that. Thank you so much for pointing that out! Maybe I should have paid more attention in Biology 101 after all.

*edits*

This is just the introduction to a story I was working on. It serves as a parallel to some of the ordeals that the main characters of the story will face and have to overcome.

Thanks for the comments. :) I'm always looking to improve, so this will be probably be modified and touched up about 20x before the month's out. =P

Yes. That's what this is. The prologue. =P