Page 5 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger
LYSSA
N ight falls again, draping the world in a thick, velvet blackness.
The fear is a living thing inside me, a cold serpent coiling around my ribs, but my resolve is a shield against it.
I will not let terror be my master tonight.
I move through the sleeping house with a deliberate silence, my purpose a steady flame in the chaos of my emotions.
In the kitchen, I find what I’m looking for.
The small paring knife my mother used to slice apples is a pathetic weapon against the creature I saw, its blade barely longer than my finger.
But as my hand closes around the worn wooden handle, I feel a surge of defiant strength.
It isn’t for fighting him. It’s for me. A reminder that I am not returning to the woods as helpless prey, but as a woman seeking answers, armed with her own will.
I retrieve the lantern from my room, its familiar weight a small comfort in my trembling hand.
The oil sloshes softly, a liquid whisper in the profound silence.
I don’t say goodbye to Clara or my father; they wouldn’t understand this journey I have to make.
They would see it as a death wish, a final surrender to the madness that has haunted me for five years.
They don’t see that this is the opposite.
This is the first time I have chosen to walk toward my haunting rather than letting it chase me.
The cold air hits me as I step outside, sharp and clean.
The village is asleep, windows dark, the only light coming from the moon, a sliver of bone hanging in the star-dusted sky.
The walk to the forest’s edge is the longest of my life.
Every rustle of leaves is the scrape of his claws, every shadow a towering, skeletal form waiting to emerge.
The familiar world of my home, of cobbled streets and the distant scent of woodsmoke, feels like a lifetime away as I step past the last manicured lawn and onto the wild, untamed earth of the woods.
The trees loom over me, their gnarled branches like skeletal arms reaching down.
This is his world. I am a trespasser here.
My heart pounds a frantic, suffocating rhythm against my ribs, but I force my feet to move forward, one deliberate step after another, the lantern light carving a small, brave circle in the immense, waiting darkness.
I follow the path of my own terror from two nights ago, the memory of my panicked flight now serving as a twisted sort of map.
Broken twigs and trampled undergrowth mark the way, a trail of fear leading me back to its source.
The forest is different tonight. It feels alive, aware. It feels like his.
The musky scent I first noticed, the one that clung to the air before he revealed himself, is stronger here, a territorial marker that screams of ownership.
The clearing appears ahead, a pool of muted moonlight in the dense woods.
The snow is disturbed where I fell, where he stood, a silent tableau of our first encounter.
For a moment, my courage falters. I could turn back now.
I could run back to the village and bolt my door and pretend this was all a nightmare.
But the memory of my mother’s lullaby, pure and loving in my dream, pushes me forward. I need to know.
I step into the center of the clearing and stop.
I raise the lantern, holding it high, the light a beacon in the oppressive gloom.
My small flame pushes back the shadows, revealing the circle of silent, watching trees.
And I wait. The silence is absolute, a heavy blanket that smothers all sound.
Even my own heartbeat seems deafening in the stillness.
I feel a thousand unseen eyes on me, but I stand my ground, the little knife in my pocket a cold, secret weight against my thigh.
Suddenly, he emerges. Not with a sudden crash, but with a fluid, silent grace that is all the more terrifying.
One moment there is only a deep shadow beneath a towering pine, the next, he is there, a shadow of nightmare coalescing from the darkness.
He is just as horrifying as I remember—the towering frame, the skull-face, the terrible, glowing heart pulsing a slow, steady crimson in his chest. He stops near the clearing, half in shadow, half in the moonlight, and simply watches me.
The silence stretches, taut as a bowstring.
This is a test. My fear is a wild bird beating its wings against the cage of my ribs, but I force myself to remain still, to meet his empty sockets without flinching. I will not run this time.
The seconds tick by, each one an eternity.
The creature and I are frozen in our standoff, predator and prey, the space between us charged with a tension so thick I can almost taste it.
My arm begins to ache from holding the lantern aloft, but I don’t lower it.
The light is my shield, my declaration not to be consumed by his darkness.
The crimson glow in his chest is steady, pulsing with a rhythm that feels measured, almost contemplative.
He isn’t moving to attack. He is simply…
observing. Waiting for me to make a move.
When he finally breaks the silence, his voice is not the mimicry of my mother, nor the chilling echo of my own. It is something entirely new.
“You came back.”
The sound rumbles from deep within his chest, a low, gravelly rasp like stones grinding together at the bottom of a riverbed.
It is a voice that has not been used for conversation in a very long time, rough and resonant with disuse.
It is undeniably his own. And it is more terrifying than any mimicry he could have produced.
This is the true voice of the monster, stripped of all artifice.
The sound itself seems to suck the warmth from the air, and a violent tremor runs through me.
My knees feel weak, my resolve threatening to crumble into dust.
I want to run. Every instinct, every fiber of my being, screams at me to flee, to turn and crash through the underbrush until my lungs burn and my legs give out.
But I force myself to hold his gaze. The flickering embers in his sockets seem to brighten, to focus on me with a new, unnerving intensity.
He has revealed a piece of his true self, and now he waits for my reaction.
I take a shuddering breath, the cold air searing my lungs, and clutch the knife in my pocket.
My voice, when it comes, is a trembling whisper, but it is my own.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
It is the most profound lie I have ever told.