The Hunt

The Hunt

The rain poured down on my face as I rushed across the street. I did not dare to look back to see if anyone was following me, all I could think about was getting as far away from whatever the thing I saw was. I’d left my house and all my belongings right upon encountering the thing. Never before had I seen anything like it, I tried to stop thinking about it, but it kept coming back, it was as if the picture was painted on the inside of my eyes. Those terrible eyes, you could feel the insanity oozing from them, all the while, his mouth twisted in a horrible, haunting grin. I did not know where he came from, nor did I care, I just walked, not knowing where I was going.

The street lights flickered. First of one in the distance, it flashed a couple of times, then, as I held my breath, the light died out, my heart skipped a beat. I stood still, thinking, surely this is how it ends, but nothing happened. I don’t know how but somehow my legs started moving again. One step, two steps. Then the light right in front of me started blinking, and in one of the flashes I swear I saw his face, and just as quick as it appeared, it disappeared again. This time I did not stop to think, I just ran. I ran, and ran, and ran. I have no memory of how long I’d been running when I stopped, but it must have been quite a while because when I stopped, I was in the outskirts of the city, in a part I’d never been before. I looked around, I saw several abondoned houses, something that surely had been a church once, but now? Less so. And what looked like an old cemetery, now overgrown with old, twisted trees. An old lady was walking on the other side of the road. Her back was turned against me and she had quite a limp. I approached her slowly, I guess as an act of curiosity, to check if she was okay, and ask what she was doing out here in the middle of the night. As I got closer I realized that something seemed off about this lady. Whereas you could both hear my breath and see the icy mist from it, I could neither hear nor see her breathing, and it also felt like it got colder with every step I took towards her. I ended up matching my pace to hers and now it got really surreal. I expected her to look back anytime to see who it was that was following her, but she didn’t. She just limped on down the street. I thought surely she must have noticed me, if not while I was walking behind her then as I sprinted panicly through the street. I was so focused on uncovering the mystery of the old woman that I didn’t notice that I too was being followed. Eyes watched me walking down the road and a dark figure – the man I saw in my house earlier – was breathing right down my neck, but I just kept on wondering what the thing was with this lady. Finally I gathered enoguh courage to approach her.

I tapped her on the shoulder, and with a horrible noise of cracked bones her neck turned, but what revealed was no face. It had neither eyes nor teeth. The mouth was cut open in a big red smile, and just as I tried to scream I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a slow, evil laugh. I stood frozen, unable to move, as the lady collapsed and the hands slowly moved to grab my neck. My eyes started watering, my heart was galloping like a horse and a tear was falling from my eye. Now truly it was over. Just as the hands started tightening around my throat…