This is an excerpt from my blog, a micro-story framed in the Marching Darkness 08 universe.
***
I was alone, yet left with a vague awareness that she had been here. The subtle scent of jasmine and cherry blossom still hung in the air, a ghost I couldn't dispel no matter how hard I tried. I looked at the door, but it was still locked, from the inside, as I had left it before drifting off to sleep two hours earlier. Reaching beneath my pillow case, I withdrew the Colt 45 Peacemaker that was nestled there. A memento of another time, still in working order, it had been passed down through my family until it was eventually given to me by my grandfather. The handle was worn from use, but felt as natural in my hand as any tool of killing possibly could. The mechanism for firing had been retooled over the years, refinements and fixes worked painstakingly in to the original design so as not to detract from the beauty of the weapon. Purists would have been mortified. I, on the other hand, needed functionality over historical accuracy. I opened the loading gate. Five chambers stood empty, the sixth contained a single active round which I pulled and placed into the next firing position, closing the gun in a single motion. I looked to the window to confirm that their was no light coming in from the hotel parking lot.
It was four in the morning, too early to be day time, and too late to be night. I stood up from my bed, which was still made. I had slept on top of the bedding, as I always did, so as not to be bound by the blankets if I needed to move quickly. These were the sort of things one grew accustom to after a while. I knew it would come, but I never knew how quickly, and this time it was far faster than I'd imagined possible. Seven paces it took me to span the distance from the bed to the door, and when I got there I placed my eye to the spy hole. The Peacemaker felt warm in my left hand, pulsing gently with expectant energy. It knew, even as I did, that the time for action was approaching. I looked into the hallway beyond my room.
It was dark there, unnaturally so. The lights that should have brightened the long hallway seemed obscured as if by dense, black fog. I shifted my position at the peep-hole, trying to gain a better perspective on the terrain beyond my door, but the hole was small, and the darkness deep.
From behind me I heard a soft female voice, "It comes a-rippin' while you sleep. It comes a-rippin' in the night." I swung to face the intruder, the 45 coming up, ready to fire, but the room that faced me was empty, as I should have known it would be. At my back there was a scratch at the door sill. I turned to face that wretched door, and stepped backwards into the room. The scratching continued, emanating from just beyond the threshold of my room, for a moment longer, and then silence settled about me again, heavy and oppressive. The lights in the room flickered, then began to dim and I felt such an urge to scream that I almost gave in to it. Instead I bit my lower lip, finding some solace in the pain. Pain has a way of centering the mind, bringing the unclear into pristine focus. The scratching sounded at the door again, this time louder, more insistent. It was too high to merely be an animal scratching to be let in, otherwise I might believe it was just a cat, fed by a past resident of my room, scratching for a treat. The scraping that issued from my room's entry, however, was too high upon the door for any creature so small. Whatever lay beyond the threshold of my place of solace was scratching nearly 6 feet up the length of the door, not begging for the door to be opened, but promising that it would have the door open. It was a terrible sound.
A loud crack came from the lamp near my bed, and the light went out entirely. In that moment I found myself surrounded entirely in all consuming night. I trained the pistol in the direction of the door as the scratching their turned into something far worse. The scratching had become digging, burrowing, tearing and sundering. The thing beyond the door knew the light was out and it was coming for me now that my lamps feeble protection had fled.
At my ear, so close I could feel the breath on my neck, there was the slightest whisper of a female voice, "Do you remember..." I couldn't help myself, I swung to face her, even though I knew she wouldn't be there. I wanted to see her again so badly that I couldn't stop myself. Of course, she wasn't there. She couldn't be.
"Lyn?" I called into the night. The answer came in the form of a shrill rending of wood from behind me.