Echoes of Darkness by Rob Smales Page A

thought of the word now. She hadn’t; all she knew was the way Valerie was moving looked wrong , and frightened her as much as everything else that was going on. She almost called out to Valerie’s mother for help, but the sound of male voices rising in anger was a forceful reminder that she needed to keep quiet. They needed to keep quiet.
    Wanting to reassure her, Hillary reached out to Valerie. She searched for something to say that might comfort her friend, might silence her, but could think of nothing but the here and now, and the fear. She laid a gentle hand upon Valerie’s twitching shoulder and the shaking and muttering stopped like a machine seizing up, the sudden stillness itself startling Hillary. She had one quick moment to think there, I helped her, everything’s gonna be okay.
    Valerie’s head snapped around so fast Hillary gasped—then reeled backward, shoulders and head striking the dumpster behind her with enough force to stun, though she barely noticed the impact.
    Valerie . . . wasn’t Valerie.
    What stared out at Hillary when the rippling barrier of hair was flung aside wasn’t the familiar smiling face of her dark-eyed schoolmate: it was a monster, a demon from Hell, like she’d seen in the stained glass the few times she’d been to church.
    The face—if she could call it a face—was elongated, stretched, the mouth and nose pushing forward, black lips pulled taut as the mouth widened. Expanded . The skin stretched and moved as things beneath it flexed and writhed. There was a series of cracks and snaps, like when the school bully had broken all her colored pencils one by one, but this was faster. Sharper.
    The mouth surged forward as she watched, straining the face still further, and there was a moment where she thought something’s in there, something’s in her head and it’s trying to get out before the black, flattened lips parted, spread wide, and Hillary could see what was trying to get out, what was filling that face to overflowing, forcing it to expand just to make room.
    Teeth.
    The lips skinned back to reveal a tangled forest of teeth, long and sharp and white against gums of red and black. So many teeth, even that great maw seemed crowded, packed with canines, incisors and molars. The mouth had to open, was forced to open by this terrible multitude of tooth and fang.
    And she could swear they were lengthening before her eyes.
    Hillary inhaled to scream, her gaze rising past the blackened, distended nose, so pushed and distorted the nostrils faced her rather than the ground. Coarse, tufted hair surrounded that mouth and nose—thickening and spreading even as she watched—to cover the cheeks, and the scream died in her throat when she found the thing’s eyes.
    Valerie’s eyes peered out at her from that hideous mask of growing horror. Valerie’s eyes: dark with anger, bright with rage, and filled with a terrible sorrow. It was that sadness, so strong it was nearly tangible, that closed Hillary’s throat against the scream that welled up within her like magma from a venting volcano. The scream rose, choked off, and died, the breath leaving Hillary in a whisper, raised brows turning the quiet sound into a question.
    “Valerie?”
    The terrible jaw cracked open, just a touch. Air hissed through that forest of fangs, an audible intake of breath as someone might make before speaking, preparing themselves for delivering bad news or telling a hard truth. The thing’s weight shifted, feet moving just a bit, as if beginning to take a step. One arm rose, half reaching toward her, and Hillary saw not a hand at the end of the arm but a claw, fingers far too long and with an extra knuckle each, tipped with talons curved like a fish hooks and just as sharp.
    She saw all this in a moment; then two things happened simultaneously.
    One was that Hillary took a half-step back, jerking away from that rising claw, fear slamming her against the dumpster once more, air rushing into her lungs in