Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

He didn’t say anything, fearing that Puppy Slayer, who was still too busy writhing on the ground, would freak out and attract unwanted attention, but he knew that Homewrecker had seen everything as well. Pointing toward the younger boy, Corpse Eater made a hush sound, and Homewrecker slowly nodded. He went to help Puppy Slayer up, and Corpse Eater looked around.

The cover, made of old rusty metal sheets and supported by equally rusty girders, was overlooking the forest that started some hundred feet away from it. In the past, during lunch breaks when the sun was high up in the sky, heating everything below with its curious and omnipresent but scorching gaze, it was probably a favorite spot for tired warehouse workers to rest and enjoy the view while listening to bird songs. For the same reason, the adults of their brigade had chosen this spot as a designated area to spend their time—with some of them idling away there around-the-clock.

Now it was a deadly trap. Its allure and comfort lulling the soldiers’ senses, making them oblivious to the threat looming over them, a threat that crept closer and closer until it was too late to grab a weapon. This place was an accomplice to the massacre that had taken place here, luring the men in, the rain muffling their dying screams.

“Do you think a wild beast did that?” Homewrecker wondered. Corpse Eater shook his shoulders: “I dunno, maybe… But what kind of beast would do something like that? And most importantly… What kind of beast would turn off the lights?”

“Maybe it got broken in the fight?” Homewrecker suggested.

Corpse Eater carefully walked over to where he had remembered the lamp being and, reaching out, felt his fingertips get coated in still-warm blood, running down the very much intact glass. “Doesn’t seem so,” he said, trying to shake the blood off of his hands. “It’s still in one piece,” he explained, wondering to himself if the walls were coated in blood as well.

“This is bonkers.” Corpse Eater could hear growing panic in his friend’s voice. “The lights were on just a few minutes ago; I remember looking here when the rain was starting and seeing that the game was still on. We did nothing but run here after that and now, when we’re here, everyone’s suddenly dead?”

His friend’s words made Corpse Eater’s blood run cold; indeed, when could this bloody massacre have taken place? The window of time when the adults were unaccounted for was very small—during those two minutes when the boys were running toward the adults.

Did that mean that when they had been blindly charging ahead, laughing and giggling, with their clothes pulled over their heads, they were rushing toward a slaughter taking place at that very moment? If they had looked up while they ran, would they have seen the enigmatic assailant slaying five grown soldiers as they tried to escape with their lives? If Corpse Eater hadn’t stumbled and fallen, would that mysterious killer have noticed them coming and killed them as well?

It had disposed of the adults so easily and then vanished without a trace, even turning the lights off before leaving. With such agility, Corpse Eater thought, as the dread was rising within him, creating a lump in his throat. It could be anywhere . That thought made his skin crawl and his leg muscles itch for movement. But, more than staying in that place, the boy was afraid of running out of it, only to come face-to-face with whatever it was that had left five adults lying dead with their guts torn open and necks snapped.

“We need to go to the others,” Puppy Slayer said, panting. He had finally emptied his stomach to the point where he wouldn’t be able to squeeze out another single drop of stomach acid. “We need to wake everyone up and let them know that there’s some animal in our base.”

“I’m not going there.” Corpse Eater shook his head, looking around. “I’m staying here. It already left this place and went somewhere else. Let it be someone else’s problem. I don’t care.”

For a second, there was a pause, as everyone processed what he had said and whether or not it was a good idea. Then, quietly, with concern in every word, Puppy Slayer asked: “Where’s Desecrator?”

Homewrecker spun in place to look at the field where they had come from. His head was turning quickly as he was trying to catch a glimpse of the fourth boy. “I don’t see him,” he said calmly, before he raised his hand to his mouth and gasped. “Do you think it has taken him as well?”

“Can’t be.” Corpse Eater’s breathing was getting erratic, and his head was spinning. “Can’t be,” he repeated, also trying to locate the boy’s red headband. Nothing. He grabbed his head and violently shook it: “No, it can’t be, he was right behind us! How could it snatch him as well?”

Although he couldn’t call Desecrator a friend, his concern was understandable; if the boy was snatched away, then it meant that the unknown assailant—or his accomplice—had been right on their heels the entire time. That meant that he most likely saw them and, at that very moment, was probably planning an attack.

“Son of a bitch!” Corpse Eater swore, startling the other two. “You sure you don’t see him either?”

“I don’t!” Homewrecker shouted back. Panic was making them careless, making them forget that they wanted to stay quiet. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know, keep looking!” Corpse Eater exclaimed, trying to pick up at least something in the rain. “If you don’t see anything, we might make a run for it, if you do—keep your head down!”

The boy’s plans were changing with every passing second; he was too afraid to run, but also afraid that with each passing second the unknown assailant was getting closer.

Puppy Slayer ran over to them, hugging three assault rifles. Corpse Eater appreciated the gesture; he was so in so much panic and confusion that the thought of arming himself never crossed his mind as a viable option. After all, the adults not arming themselves in time didn’t mean that guns were useless. He took the gun and, as its weight rested in his hands, he felt a bit better.

“What the hell is that?” he heard Homewrecker wonder. The question that Corpse Eater dreaded so much made his heartbeat spike; he feared that his friend had spotted something beyond his grasp or understanding. But then he realized that the question didn’t have any fear or shock in it—only complete and utter bewilderment.

The boy glanced at his friend, trying to figure out where he was looking. But contrary to what he had expected, Homewrecker was not looking up ahead; his gaze was aimed at something on the ground.

Corpse Eater glanced down and saw something that, despite everything he had seen in the past few minutes, managed to raise his eyebrows in surprise.

The unknown killer, despite being such a stealthy being, still managed to leave a trail. The imprint of a hand, pressed deeply into the ground, with scratch marks behind it. Though it was already being washed away by the pouring rain, it was deep enough to last long enough for boys to see it.

There was another one next to it, and two other trails on the ground further from the cover probably indicated where the legs were. Scratch marks behind hand imprints could mean only one thing: the attacker, whoever he was, had crawled up close to the very edge of the building, taking up every last inch of darkness before it was dispelled by the light of the lamp, unseen behind the waterfall from the roof. And when the moment was right, he launched himself at them like a wild lion.

But even that wasn’t the strangest detail. The most bizarre thing about this already unbelievable situation were the imprints themselves. The index finger was way too long and thick at its base—at least twice as long as it should’ve been and twice as thick. The thumb, on the other hand, looked more like a solid hook then a finger. And, as Corpse Eater was trying to make sense of these weird traces, he noticed that the footprints were too far behind the hand imprints—separated by no less than seven feet. At that point, it was easier to think of the attacker as non-human, as something else entirely. Some creature that none of them had ever seen.