Hell's Eyes
BRIANNA SHAFFERY
forepaw landed on the floorboards of the top landing. Elliot’s breath caught as a wet snout nosed its way past the corner of the doorjamb.
The creature. It was there.
A low growl penetrated the air, raising the fine hairs on the back of Elliot’s neck and along his arms and legs. An unshakeable certainty came over Elliot. The creature was waiting for him, lurking just around the corner. The creature, with its onyx-colored eyes that held a raging fire—a fire that consumed the mind and taunted its prey with paralyzing visions of their deepest, darkest, most formidable fears. A hellish fiend, the hound was not— could not —be of this world. Of all the creatures in Tenebris, this was one most unnatural. “It is not real,” Elliot muttered under his breath. Miss Hyacinth’s words from the night before came to him. “I will not let it consume me.” But still he could not— would not—take another step. A tendril of shadow wrapped around the corner at the top of the staircase as another paw came into view, landing with a thump against the floorboards. The shadow lapped at the floor like an impatient tail. Elliot took note of it, watched it tap the floor, once, twice— “Not real…not real..” he said, his throat going dry with his inability to control his mind. No taller than his knee, the hellish hound came into view. With a growl as fierce as its sharp-toothed snarl, Elliot did not waste another fleeting moment. Fearing for his life, and his sanity, Elliot staggered backwards, grab bing for a lifeline that did not exist as his eyes met those of the creature. His mind seized before he could even cry out.
***
It was only some hours later when the noontime sun had reached its zenith over the town of Halberry that Elsie Hyacinth forced herself into
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