Excerpt: Deadfall

After the nurse left, Declan lay in the darkness, exhausted and unable to sleep. His mind moved sluggishly over the day with Maire and the girls’ visit that evening, but he just couldn’t reach that edge of consciousness. So he lay there, remembering and beginning to hear the whispers on the other side of the glass.

How he wished he could just get out of bed and do some quick exercises or something to tire himself out. But he figured if he managed to get out of bed, he’d fall and not be able to get back in and then he’d just be cold, on the floor, unable to sleep and generally worse off than he was at that particular moment. He was resolutely attempting not to hear the wraiths outside, trying to get under his skin.

Then suddenly, it was too quiet. He could hear muffled sounds of paper turning at the nurses’ station, the padding of one of the nurses walking down the hall, but not a sound from the wraiths. The hair on his arms and neck started to stand up and he felt something bad was about to happen.

“Nurse? Nurse!” he called, first hoarsely, not realizing cold fear had started to fill his throat. The second call he made was stronger, and urgent.

He heard papers fall and a chair slide back before footsteps came running to his room.

“Declan, what is it?” the old nurse asked, concerned.

“I feel… something… but there’s no noise outside. They’re getting ready to attack…” he tried to explain, panic starting to rise.

The nurse looked at him oddly, as if trying to decide if he was lucid. But then she cocked her head to the side and listened, eyes widening.

“You’re right, they’re gone. I wonder…”

She didn’t get to wonder very long as the crash of breaking glass came from next door. She screamed for aid as she sprinted next door to find the wraith howling in victory outside the bloodied broken glass window. The trail of tangled bedsheets still held the patient’s foot, suspending him out the window where the wraiths were eagerly feeding on him. He screamed in agony as they prolonged it, torturing him. The nurse took hold of the bedsheets and tried to haul him back into the room, still screaming for help.

Another, younger nurse came running into the room and grasped the sheet as well. Together they pulled and brought his lower leg to the knee back into the room. The wraiths laughed and started to pull back, swinging him back and forth, enjoying their grotesque game of tug of war. The nurses set their teeth and hauled again, only to be pulled back once more.

“Come on!” the older nurse muttered fiercely through clenched teeth. It built into a scream of rage as they were pulled back towards the window a third time.

The wraith were howling with evil glee, diving in to feed, coming back to the window to show the nurses their bloodstained teeth. And yet the patient still screamed in pain. Determined that the wraiths would not win this one, the nurses steeled themselves and threw all their rage and terror into the final pull.

Then they were sailing through the air and landing hard against the bed as they heard a loud, wet crack. The patient’s screams climaxed, then went silent. Two distinct sounds of wet meat hitting a hard surface happened in the otherwise deafening silence, as the wraiths stared in, laughing noiselessly and allowing the nurses the understanding that the tug of war game had quickly sawed through the patient’s leg, as he was dragged across the broken glass. The young nurse looked down numbly to see it lying on the floor in a pool of what little blood it contained. She leaned over and emptied her stomach’s contents onto the floor beside her, crying in frustration and horror.

That act seemed to bring the sound back into the world as the wraiths shrieked and dove to the courtyard below to see if there was any essence left in the patient’s body.

Declan stood shakily, supporting himself against the doorjamb, holding a lamp. Maire and Perdrix were behind him, terror filling their faces. The light from the lamp fell into the room, far enough to illuminate the gory severed leg. It was then that they saw the grievous wraith-wound on the calf.

“No,” Declan choked, falling to his knees. Maire reached out and caught the lamp before it smashed on the floor, and then wrapped an arm around him to support his collapsing form. She buried her face in his shoulder as he whispered in despairing disbelief.

“Pud.”