Be Careful What You Wish For: A Zombie Apocalypse-Chapter 491: Vanished

The moment we stepped out to wherever the house wanted us to go, I turned to look over my shoulder. I wanted some type of reassurance that the door that brought us here was still going to be there when we wanted to go home.

What can I say? I was becoming paranoid anytime the house was involved with something.

However, the doorway that we stepped through wasn’t a doorway anymore.

It was a mouth. Bone-white and crooked, carved with symbols that pulsed faintly like veins under skin.

Cold air poured from the threshold, curling around my ankles like smoke from a corpse. The runes weren’t hellish. They weren’t divine. They were just there...designed by something that didn’t know right from wrong, only hunger.

I stepped forward, out of Daddy’s arms, with Dante on one side and Daddy close behind me, steady and unblinking. I could hear Tank cracking his knuckles as if he was already prepared to take someone out, while Ronan adjusted his grip on the rifle cradled in his arms like a baby.

But no one told me to stop. Instead, they all walked into the belly of the beast with me.

The air on the other side of that door; it didn’t seem like air at all. The oppressive weight of grief and something wrong bore down on my shoulders until every step forward was like walking through quicksand.

The further we got away from the door, the hallway behind us faded away until there was nothing left of the house.

We were standing in the middle of a flat, gray, colorless field. Even the gray sky above hung like wet paper, heavy and low. There were no trees, nothing breaking up the sky and the ground. No horizon as you think about it, just a stillness that bordered on creepy.

And then it moved.

Crawling toward us, slow and deliberate.

At first, I thought it was a child. I honestly think that it tried to be.

Its torso was the size of a boy’s, but it was stretched—too long, like someone had pulled both ends just a little too far. The spine arched high, giving it a hunched, broken silhouette even as it crawled. Ribs jutted out, sharp and perfectly spaced, like someone had arranged them more for display than for practicality.

It moved on six limbs—some bending correctly, others cracking backward with every twitch. One leg dragged, stiff and curled, like a broken branch. The elbows clicked on each movement. It had hands, but they were all wrong. Too many knuckles. Fingers that bent in too many places. Nails like clear glass, jagged and curling. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

The thing had a head, if you could call the round thing sitting on the torso a head. But it had no face.

Where the features should be, it was just a smooth mask of skin. The hint of a nose, a dent where a mouth should have been, might have been. But there were no eyes.

And still—

Ever so slowly, it turned its head and smiled at me, like it knew exactly where I was and who I was.

The skin around its lower face split open like petals, folding outward to reveal rows of baby teeth —small, perfect, and so many that I couldn’t count them all.

"Mommy?" it rasped, the rib rattling around as it tried to say the single word. Almost as if it were too much effort, the creature started to hum instead.

A lullaby. Off-key and cracked, the sound of something trying to comfort itself, or a mother comforting a child.

Behind us, the woman gasped, her eyes widening before she let out a high-pitched scream.

"That’s not him!" she wailed, thrashing in Papa Khaos’s arms. "That’s not my baby! That’s not my baby!"

But it had her son’s voice.

And her son’s shoes. They were clearly worn, tied too tightly, like the thing was desperate to keep the shoes on legs without feet.

The creature tilted its head at the sound. The skin twitched on its face, as if trying to rearrange itself.

And then it stood.

Too tall.

Too thin.

Too eager.

"Balance," it whispered, no mouth moving. The word drifted over to me like air, a teasing note to it like I was the fly caught in the spider’s trap. "The house said you’d come."

"Did it now?" I asked, my voice calm. My hand clenched at my side even as the guys closed ranks around me.

"It told me you’d be soft," it said. "But you’re not, are you?"

I couldn’t help but smirk at that description. "I can promise you, I am anything but soft."

The creature flickered, its body moving unnaturally as if it was surprised that I even answered it.

Either that, or it didn’t like my response.

For half a second, it wore the boy’s face—mud on his knees, a laugh in his eyes, and a red balloon in his hand before it quickly snapped back. Too weak to hold the image for long.

As if frustrated at his inadequacy, the creature flickered again.

And this time, the illusion stayed just a little longer. Just long enough to hurt.

"You brought me here," it said, voice sweet and curious. "That makes you my mommy, doesn’t it?"

My voice dropped. "No," I replied, even as my body broke out in goosebumps at the idea that I was anyone’s mommy.

Its grin widened as it cocked its head to the side. "Then what does it make you?"

Smiling brightly, I took a step forward away from the guys. "That would make me your executioner."

The smile on the creature’s face stayed, but its posture changed. The body tensed right before it lunged at me.

Fast.

It came in a blur of limbs and clicking joints.

Tank stepped in first—his arm catching it midair and slamming it down into the dirt so hard the ground split beneath it. However, the creature managed to roll away before standing again.

Completely unfazed.

"Hit me again," it whispered, its smile still on its face. "I liked it."

Eric moved beside Tank. "That thing is built wrong."

"It’s not from here," Beau said. "Not from any version of here."

"I want to know what door it crawled through," I grumbled under my breath. Because any door that that thing had managed to go through needed to be welded shut.

The creature cocked its head again. "You already know," it purred. "My door." The second the words were out of its mouth, it vanished.

No noise.

No power surge.

Just gone.