The Three Puppets



The old man pushed the hold button, and checking the hallway, moved to a space without blood. Leaning against the elevator wall, he pulled his shoes off and placed them in the bag. He pulled a slipper from a side pocket and another one from the other pocket. He slipped them on and sticking his head out into the hallway again, looked both ways. Then staying clear of the blood, he stepped into the hallway. His gloved hand reached back in and pressed the down button.

He didn’t want to track blood, Mark thought dully. The elevator doors closed, and Mark felt its surge as it dropped for the lobby. Oh God! He cried silently. Oh God!
His right foot moved, and he could turn his head. The sightless eyes of the young woman stared at him. Mark quickly shifted his eyes from one to the other. All of them were dead. He felt the elevator come to a stop. His eyes jerked up as the elevator doors opened slowly, like in a slow motion dream.

Outside the elevator was a ring of faces, faces filled with shock and disbelief, and then horror. Screams and shouts filled the air, and then the faces were gone.
Mark could move a little more now. He tried to shake his hand, to rid himself of the cursed gun, but his fingers wouldn’t move. The elevator doors shut, and then opened again. He looked up as more shouts sounded from the lobby. Blue uniforms appeared all around the door. They were shouting at him to drop the gun. Suddenly, he could feel his legs. Mark tried to push himself to his feet. The shouts came louder and more urgent. They wanted him to get rid of the gun, the dreaded thing hanging like a dead weight from his fingers. His lips began to move, and
he could whisper.

“I can’t,” he whispered. He made his tongue move again, trying to say it louder, but it was still only a whisper. They would never hear him.

Gunfire sounded and something pushed at his arm; the same arm with the gun. Another gunshot sounded, and he was falling sideways down the elevator wall. He blinked his eyes, but the dim light turned to blackness, and he felt himself falling into its depths. The last thing he remembered was the cursed gun slipping from his hand.

TheHunters

THE HUNTERS


The man, if you could call him that, darted around the patch of trees and slid down the steep gully on the other side. He had a thick beard and long dirty looking hair and his clothing was little more than a tattered shirt and cut off jeans. He was more of an animal than a man, darting for cover at the slightest sound, his head moving from side to side trying to catch the slightest movement and the constant sniffing the air for any strange order. He climbed the almost straight up grade on the other side effortlessly and moved smoothly, silently through the thicket of small bushes and trees near the top of the grade. Reaching the top, the man squatted like an animal and studied his back trail with a pair of worn field glasses.

He mumbled softly to himself as he scanned the woods, jerking the glasses back as he caught a movement. Suddenly the still air was broken by a dreadful sound. It wasn’t a howl but close to it. It was their way of talking. In the distance he heard several of the hunters answer from areas spaced well apart. They were in a giant semi circle and were drawing it tighter and tighter.

They had his scent now. It would only be a matter of time. Then he saw the thing merge from the forest on the other side. It stood close to seven feet tall and must have weighed over four hundred pounds. It had a small head for its body but the mouth was massive and full of razor sharp teeth. The head looked something like the dinosaurs from Earths past. The body stood on two muscular legs. It had two huge almost human looking arms and a long neck that led to the head. The neck moved back and forth like a giant snake. The thing could tear a humans head off with one rake of it razor sharp teeth, and the man had seen it happen. The thing raised its head and sniffed the air. Then it turned and its large yellow eyes looked straight at him. The man squirmed deeper into the soft pine needles. The monster opened its mouth, revealing a long flickering tongue. Slime dripped onto the forest floor. It would wait there for the others and then close for the kill.