The rain was relentless, the kind that doesn’t fall but rather collapse from the sky, hammering the pavement until the street seemed to ripple under my feet. My coat was soaked through. My hair stuck to my face. Every breath tasted of iron and wet leaves. I kept my head down, eyes fixed on the glimmer of streetlamp ahead. The storm pressed close, muffling the world to nothing.
Crack.
Light split through the night sky, bricks etched with white fire and every raindrop suspended in midair, a picture of the moment.
And in that frozen instant, the street was wrong. The corner house was gone, its windows, its sagging gutters, its ivy-smothered walls, replaced by raw earth that steamed as though the rain couldn’t touch it. Vanished.
Then the darkness swallowed everything again.
Silence hung heavier between thunder, pressure curling around me with sharp, pointed claws. My legs were locked, unmoving. Unrelenting. Ignoring my silent pleas to move, to keep going. But my body only listened when the thunder finally broke, rattling the air inside my chest.
I forced a step forward. Then another. The streetlamp started to flicker up ahead, a dim beacon behind the watery veil.
Another flash.
The house was back. But its windows burned with light, every one of them. Pale figures crowded the glass, shoulder to shoulder, faces pressed so close their features flattened. Dozens of them. Watching.
Dark again.
I stumbled, catching myself on the slick iron of a gate. It was cold, or at least colder than rain should make it, like the metal had been pulled from deep underground. My fingers ached where they touched it. Ice biting at my skin, grasping me with death-chilled fingers.
The storm hissed against the ground, as though whispering.
Another flash.
The figures were no longer behind the glass. The street was crawling with them. They stood on the curbs, in the road, their outlines trembling in the lightning’s glare, every face pale and vacant. Their hair hung in dripping ropes. Their mouths hung open as if mid-breath, mid-scream, but no sound came.
Dark.
I froze. The rain lashed harder, striking my skin like nails. My breaths came sharp, each one tasting of rust, clouding my lungs in thick smoke. My eyes strained against the black, trying to find what I knew was there but couldn’t see.
The next flash didn’t come quickly. It waited. Dragged out the seconds until my chest was tight, until the silence screamed louder than thunder ever could.
When it finally came…the street was empty.
All but one.
It stood near the centre of the road, closer than the others, enough that I could see its skin. What should’ve been its skin. Thin, grey, stretched too tight over bone. Its head tilted slowly, water running off in rivulets. No eyes, only hollow sockets pooling with shadow.
Dark.
The silence closed in, thicker. A heartbeat pulsing against my head, heart thundering louder than the sky. I couldn’t hear my own breath, just the hush of water, steady and patient, as if the storm itself was waiting.
Another flash.
It was closer.
The sockets were no longer empty but glistened with something wet and moving, like worms writhing in an eternal pit. Its mouth cracked open, too wide, splitting the grey skin of its lips until black bled into the rain.
Dark.
I stumbled backward, boots slipping in water that suddenly felt deeper, ankle-deep, calf-deep, swallowing the street whole. The storm whispered again, but now the hiss carried words. My name. Drawn out, stretched thin.
Another flash.
It was right in front of me.
Its hand rose, bones jutting through the wet skin, reaching, reaching…
Dark.
And this time, the light did not come back.