I hesitated at the door. It was a door I usually hesitated at, but this time was different. My skin felt like a flimsy membrane; it was like I was hollow.
Inside that space was a heavy, dark fog, one that stirred when I moved, so I kept still to see if it would too. I needed to breathe, step forward, and turn the old silver door handle, but my feet would not step forward. I did not want to obey time and space. Time and space were cruel.
To my side was the short male nurse I had come to know, Shawn Cole. He was a distinctive character, I would guess an introvert at heart, with his black bowl haircut, wire-framed moon glasses, and his fuzzy, unshaven chin, always dressed in neatly ironed medical greens. His head was bowed in apology, but his eyes were looking up at me, as if hiding under his brow. In the end, he opened the door for me, which was one less challenge.
“Were you with him when…?” I asked.
He shook his head, and that almost broke his composure, a twitch in the cheek, eyes scrunching – and then he snapped back to professional. I knew how much time he spent alone with my son. I could see the mechanisms of his mind recalling those intimate, private encounters.
I walked inside, I guessed for one of the last times. The room had become so familiar, like a comforting sanctuary of peace. It was dim but full of fresh, brisk air, and a shaft of sunlight fanned like an ethereal gateway from the window onto the gnarly wooden floor of the ground-level bedroom, right next to the wheelchair he was hunched in. Waves of dust particles were glinting and swirling in the light, the normally concealed soup of hidden matter exposed to see.
It was a nice new day ending outside. Little birds were making excited noises, hidden in forest trees – singing hard as they came to roost. The window was half open, and the thin white curtains were dancing and flicking with the playful breeze. There was strange moisture on the floor, a kind of sticky, glistening trail from the window mantel to where he was slumped. I didn’t have the capacity to think about it because he was sitting there, frozen and blue in complexion, froth accumulated in the corners of his lips.
I had been away for the afternoon, on a selfish purpose. I had located the local town’s convenience shop on its periphery, Getaways, mostly aimed at camping tourists, which was a fair distance away from the hospice lodge. I had been slowly buying things – like biscuits, fruit and herbal teas, dragging my heels around the shop floor to the background ‘elevator music’ on a loop. I had been trying to make time to think, to process, to create my own guardrails and build a mental wall that I needed, the wall that to date kept crumbling under the molten-hot intensity of pressure and sorrow. And in that time, where I was circling in my own self-made holding pattern, he had slipped quietly away, like a sparrow suddenly taking flight from a branch. My son had died.
I looked at him, and I could feel something rise in me, like a tsunami of grief that a paper-thin barrier had barely held back. His eyes were still wide open to his last vision, and his bold head was shining in the evening twilight. His expression was one of melancholy, a mouth that had sadness shaping it, a stare that saw something that reflected inevitable death. I felt helpless beyond measure. I felt frozen, like I had caught Medusa’s eyes and been turned to stone instantly. His laptop had slid from his grip in his last moments, to end up overturned and sideways on the floor. The screensaver was glowing and I realised I had missed his last moment by the smallest margin. I always wanted to be there to hold his hand when it happened, but it was too late. I wished he had not been on his computer. When his diagnosis came through, at school, rather than attract empathy and sympathy, he was made the victim in rage-bait TikTok videos by other students, who would mock him to film his reaction. I had reported it obviously, but the videos kept reappearing online, as if they were an unstoppable virus in the air. I took him out of school, and his decline seemed to accelerate with his misery. This place, at least, I thought was away from the madness of his peers, but with WiFi in the lodge, there was never any true escape. People had become monsters, in my mind. They might look like normal people in the street, in the school, in the workplace, but they could be devoid of the most basic compassion, and worse still, thrive on the suffering of others.
He looked so frail, and fixed. To think he used to be muscular and full of life, it was all gone.
I did what any father would do, and I kissed my son gently on the forehead, my own tears free at last to stream and drop.
“Sorry, I wasn’t here…” I said softly. The room seemed to nod at me in acknowledgement.
If only his mother were still alive, I could have split my grief in two at least.
Shawn sauntered in sideways, crab-like, ashamed almost, and put one sweaty palm on my shoulder. I met it with my own hand and squeezed it for a moment to communicate my thanks. He had been there to dress him, bathe him, feed him, like an unsung hero in the backdrop, a quiet angel of care, and I would never forget that.
I looked up, and the sounds of the fast-flowing river beyond tuned back in with an acoustic rush, as if my ears had just started working. For the slightest moment, I saw it, the glow, the slithering snake-like shape, and I heard the big splash.
“There is something in the water,” I said plainly.
Shawn neither flinched nor questioned me, and we stared together at the bend in the river outside the front window with a sense of wonder. Something large, alive and unnatural had made a commotion nearby in the water, like it had just dropped into the rapidly moving torrents from the reeds in the riverbank. The river was a fast, swooshing, rock-strewn watercourse next to the dense woods, and we both witnessed that bizarre oddity, perhaps at the worst time for a distraction.
The Retreat was a large private hospice in the middle of nowhere, recommended for its tranquil peace and contemplative isolation, surrounded by thick dark coniferous woodlands and two major branches of a split river. It had become a place for those under twenty with parents with enough cash, to die in relative comfort – without the bustle, indifference and stench of disinfectant of a hospital ward. All the best machines were there in the large lodge – bleeping and monitoring or feeding intravenous cocktails, but they had that backdrop of wooden panelling, oil paintings of landscapes and mountains. It didn’t feel like a hospital; it didn’t feel like a medical facility at all, although it was impossible to say it didn’t feel like a place to die.
I had spent the best part of my pension to get Peter here, as waiting for the end at home was out of the question – he would experience too much pain and be too close to those who had made his condition that much more unbearable. The Retreat had rustic charm and was surrounded by natural beauty; it was a choice that seemed right.
I closed Peter’s eyes, and carried his thin, skeletal body to lay it carefully upon the duvet on his bed.
I had to address what we had witnessed.
“What was that?” I asked Shawn.
“Honestly, it’s been a thing for a while. We don’t talk about it.”
“What do you mean?”
I could sense his reluctance to bridge this topic, like he had been told not to by superiors – who managed from a distance on Zoom calls and text messages, clearly just in it for profits and margins.
“For a couple of months now, some of the residents have said they have seen things, like green glows in the river and strange moving things… I don’t know, it’s weird, and what’s happening is we’re turning all these moments into ghost stories. You know, because so many die here, so management doesn’t want us to talk about it, because they don’t believe in ghosts, and they think that ghosts are not good for business… Sorry to be so blunt.”
“No… I really appreciate it, Shawn. I hate BS. Thanks for the truth.”
He nodded again, biting his hairy lip, like he knew he was constantly taking risks with trust, but I guessed that was who he was, and he was damned if he would change for a pay packet.
“I want to stay here with him tonight. And tomorrow, I’ll call everyone and get everything moving, but please, give me tonight with my son.”
Shawn patted me hard on the bicep as affirmation.
“Of course. I’ll get you some blankets and a Z-bed.”
When he returned to the room minutes later, he also brought a half-full bottle of bourbon, and I took it without apology or ceremony.
“Goodnight,” he said quietly, and he closed the door behind him. The room felt still, ethereal, a waiting place reserved in the Universe for just me and my deceased only child.
One dangling ceiling-hanging light offered little shine; it glowed rather than illuminated, meant to be soft to ease sleep. I didn’t even unfold the Z-bed. I sat in the Boston Rocker that Peter had often favoured, and I let it cradle me in gentle movement back and forth, as I swigged from the bottle, staring at the blackness beyond the window, where the noisy river was splashing and rushing into the night.
My eyes were hooding with heavy eyelids and heavy thoughts, and I was about to drift away when I heard it, that extra big splash, but this time it was like something was emerging from the river onto the bank near the house, rather than diving in.
I stood up instantly, and the blanket I had adopted for warmth and comfort slid from me like a skin shedding. I stared at the blackness outside, and sure enough, a slight green glow throbbed from the direction of the riverbank. I rushed to the window but was careful not to make a sound lest I disturb the mysterious event as it unfolded.
I could make out a shape, a black shape in the green glow. It slithered and writhed and seemed to be coming at a pace in a zig-zag through the grasses toward the large, multi-roomed lodge. Maybe it was a snake, I thought, a big one.
The dark entity seemed at home in the shadow of night. It curled toward me, as if attracted by something it could smell on the wind, a predator homing in on a carcass.
I could feel my senses spiking, part fear, part intrigue.
It was close by when it suddenly jack-knifed and turned toward the other side of the house.
At that moment, to my shock, the door burst open.
It was Shawn, panting and clutching a large Maglite torch with both hands, like he was wielding a lightsaber.
“Sorry. I knew you would be up, and I guessed you were watching what I was seeing – it’s here!”
“What the fuck is it?”
“I don’t think anyone can answer that with confidence…”
There was a thumping on the side of the building as if it were ascending.
“It’s going for Michelle’s room! She is on life support!” blurted Shawn.
And with that, we listened to the gentle crack of a glass pane as something bulky forced its way into the building.
Shawn looked terrified but also angry, like something was going to take what he considered his. This was invasive; this was an attack.
I did not want to leave my son alone in that room. It would feel like betrayal to his soul, but I could feel the threat was real to the living. A creature was trying to reach the weakest prey, slithering into their space as a predator unable to delay satisfying its appetite.
Michelle was seventeen and had days left, the doctors had said. She was in a perpetual dream state, as if her brain was churning out a few last stories it could invent, to make some sense of her draining life. Her mother and father were somewhere in the nearby town tonight, so she was alone.
We headed for the wooden stairs with a fine, smooth mahogany handrail, which fuelled the mystique of a haunted mansion. We could hear something being knocked over, like a side table and a vase crashing to the floor.
We both filled the width of the landing when we confronted Michelle’s room upstairs on the first floor. There were several sleeping, ill children up here, so without communicating, we tried to be as quiet in our approach as feasible, under the circumstances. As we neared the door to Michelle’s room, we could clearly make out a repetitive noise, like suction, like something sucking through a straw, almost, but we were under no illusion, this was strange and animalistic.
Shawn’s hands were shaking as he grabbed the handle to turn it and push the door. I still had the bottle of bourbon in my clutches and was staring in confusion at the room as it revealed itself.
The creature was there. It rendered us helpless, as we stood in a state of shock and disgust, momentarily paralysed to muster any meaningful reaction. It trailed the best part of the length of the room. We had not expected it to be so large.
It resembled something like an ungodly cross between a leech and a millipede, a long, thick black body and a dome-like head with twitching feelers – I could see no eyes. It was loosely attached to her skull, like it was sucking out her essence through a proboscis-like appendage that reached deep into her throat. Her face mask for oxygen had broken and fallen to the floor. The nightmarish scene was a most disturbing vision.
Shawn, to his credit, broke out of the spell first, and I guessed, as a protector by nature, he ran into the room and kicked the thing hard with his shoe, and bashed it twice on its dome head with his heavy torch. It reared up like a cobra, angry at being disturbed, its feeding proboscis uncurling from its host’s throat, a sprinkle of blood splattering her face as it pushed away from her on the bed. The beast appeared defensive but uncertain, and as if making its decision for safety, retreated for the broken window in a twirl of black scales and a scuttling wave of tiny arachnid legs.
“How is this thing even possible?” I gasped as it slid out of the cracked window.
Shawn was hyperventilating but managed a reply, “I guess things this dark are just good at hiding from sight… Until they get lazy…or too hungry… I don’t know.”
Michelle had a layer of transparent slime left in gloopy clumps on her pale, spotty face, but she was still with us, if completely unconscious of any peril she had been placed in. The monitor near her bed had spiked with high numbers during the attack, and those numbers were now descending fast. I guessed her dreams would have taken a strange turn, with a smothering by the grotesque animal that had found her at her most vulnerable moment.
Her skin looked gaunt and degraded; we both saw it, her hollow cheeks and whiter than white complexion. Whatever it had done, it had sucked something fundamental from her, something she needed to keep fighting. I noticed that in her hand above the bedsheet was a mobile phone. She had been unconscious for days, so she must have been clutching it all that time like a shield. It was like she had been clinging to her world in the device, whatever that was. It seemed a small detail, but hard to ignore.
She looked dreadful, as if her decline was now unstoppable, the blood the creature had dripped on her – her own blood – was now running down her white cheeks.
Sure enough, as the beast fled down the side of the building to the overgrown grass outside, she flatlined, the screen on the machine next to her whined in distress for all of us, and displayed that thin red line where peaks should be spiking rhythmically. Zero, zero it reported. Shawn knew there was a no resuscitation notice on her, so he just watched in despair as yet another young life left the boundaries of this mortal world before his eyes.
Despite the horror of seeing her passing, I realised this was not over yet.
“It’s going back for Peter!” I grunted as I sensed it meandering toward the front of the large lodge and his open window.
Peter might already have died, but I was damned if that thing was going to feed off or take his body from me.
I ran from the landing, bounding down the stairs, and as I swung around the corner to get to Peter’s deathbed, I heard Peter’s voice from inside the house.
“Dad? Help,” it said.
I froze.
I never thought I would hear that again.
“Dad?” it repeated, questioning. “Where are you?”
I didn’t know what to do.
There was a green glow from the communal kitchen nearby. It was back inside the house, but was no longer in Peter’s bedroom. Whatever it was, it was in the kitchen, and it was attempting to deceive and wrongfoot me with something it had mimicked. Somehow, it had taken my son’s voice at his most vulnerable, absorbed his distress like a sponge and was using it against me. This thing was a scavenger of the worst kind, harvesting deeply personal moments, like despair and misplaced hope and using them as tactics for its own means. I could feel its dark intent. It was as if it had sucked the marrow of life from those who were clinging desperately to it and could use what it consumed against anyone trying to interfere with its feeding patterns. Zoologically, it was a marvel of science, something unprecedented in biology that had remained hidden until now. Perhaps feeding on humans for the first time had finally exposed its presence. It would have no idea how big a mistake that was for its survival.
There was a broom against the front door just behind me. I was short of options, so I ditched the bottle in my hand, reached for the long wood handle and stepped toward the kitchen door, clutching it like a spear. I could use it as something to at least poke the animal and guide it out of the lodge.
By the time I reached the door, the whole room was lit green – like it had intensified, perhaps a warning signal to me. I peeked in, without making sudden movements. The beast seemed to be emanating a light from a long bioluminescent line that ran the length of its tubular back. It was reared up like a snake again, half its body upright and looming over the central kitchen island workspace, its hundreds of legs wriggling in a threat display. It was waiting for me, expectant and preparing for violent engagement. Its head knocked a ceiling light, which swayed violently.
When I appeared at the doorway, it lurched toward me, crashing down on my head in seconds. I didn’t have time to jab it with the broom handle, and some suction-like mouth wrapped around my nose and throat. I could not breathe. I could sense the probing proboscis trying to force its way into me, and then it found my mouth, leveraging it wide open, and I was helpless. I panicked, of course, but the slime it was oozing seemed to be a narcotic and was easing my state with its sedating poison. Worse than that, I could sense its presence in me, like it was attempting to probe and suck at my mind. It was hard to explain. It was like my love, my hate, and everything in between were exposed to it and being stolen from me, including memories, feelings, and yes, my weaknesses.
In the suffocating blackness, I grasped its tubular body with my hands, but it had a vice-like hold on my head. Despite the drugged-like state it had induced in me, I felt utter revolution and helplessness in equal measures, and worst of all, I was not able to scream or call for help.
The memories seemed to surface vividly as it was sucking them out of me, taking my life force from me. I had spent fifteen years with my favourite person in the world; every moment of his life, I had been there for him. His mother had died in childbirth, so it had always just been us alone together. It had been like the smallest gift back from heaven, this time-limited offer of redemption and happiness and then like a storm had arrived unannounced, it was all snatched away in one awkward conversation at the hospital. The doctor apologised as if it was his fault; nothing made sense. I cursed the hideous nature of fate. And now this black creature from nowhere had hunted us both – had smelt our sorrow on the breeze and licked its lips, as if nothing was sacred from a sinister appetite.
As hope began to evaporate, air returned to my lungs in a desperate and welcome gush. I saw a flash of the green glow and the blurry outline of kitchen worktops, and the animal collapsed to the kitchen floor in a wounded loop of its body. I coughed out in disgust, and to my relief, there was Shawn, a large kitchen knife in one hand and a face like thunder.
Shawn stood over the twitching black creature and stabbed it again and again with spittle fanning from a twisted grin, which surprised me, in honesty. I had never seen his eyes wild like that, full of a viciousness that was hard to measure. It was like a mask had slipped for a moment. The monster stopped writhing. Disturbingly, it made a sound like a distressed child as it bled, perhaps a last attempt to rattle and stall the attacker, to appeal to sympathy. Little did it know.
It shook and spasmed, the holes in its body causing it immense suffering, and then it said something, somehow through its suction-like mouth, repeating noises it had taken from a victim. I could hear the words, something from Michelle’s voice, I assumed.
“…Shawn, get off me, no, get off, you’re hurting me…”
I squinted at Shawn, confused, and he just stared back at me, his eyes now betraying something, something I had never seen in him before.
After a long minute, the creature finally lay still and silent. Shawn straddled its long, curled body like a safari hunter standing over a trophy kill, knife stained red, his arm raised slightly as if he wanted to stab one more time.
“That river might be full of these things. We’ll need help…” he said. I think he was trying to own the narrative, to see if I had heard what the creature had vocalised in its last moments.
He continued: “We’ll get help. We’ve seen them now, we know how they operate, and we have a specimen to study. We’ll get them all… I’ll do it for Peter. We can dredge the river till we catch every one of them.”
He was smiling at me now, as if to placate me, but I knew something was deeply wrong. I had heard what I heard.
I knew for certain now that terrible monsters can hide in plain sight.
I could feel my guts stirring with hatred, and my fists clench tight into hard knuckle-ridged balls. I had rage welling in me. I didn’t care how clever monsters were; when they came for our children, that was a red line.
I watched the animal’s long, black, tubular body leak dark blood across the kitchen floor into large, flat pools.
A small group of ill children from upstairs, who had heard the commotion, had come down to the ground floor nervously, to observe the scene with horror and fascination from the hallway. They were clutching scraggy teddy bears and well-hugged dolls tightly, and their eyes appeared huge with both innocence and terror.
The green luminescent glow on the animal’s back faded gently to grey, and then to nothing at all. This parasitic thief of young, vulnerable lives was finally dead.
But as I sat up and wiped the blinding grime from my eyes and my drained face, I realised the children weren’t looking at the beast with those fearful, innocent eyes. They were staring at Shawn.
The End
Dystopian Days 