S14 Ep17: S14E17 - "Shapes of Man " - Horror Hill

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Thank you for listening, and enjoy the show. [Music] Disclaimer. Horror Hill is a horror anthology podcast bringing you scary stories from all corners of the internet and beyond. As such, certain stories include content that some listeners might find offensive. Listener discretion is advised.

[Music]

Greetings listeners, and welcome back to Horror Hill. As always, I'm Eric Peabody, your host and narrator.

As I sit here speaking to you, I have a fresh stack of glorious new stories by Ambrose Absin, who we featured before on this show. These stories come from his new collection, What Gathers at Dusk. I dare say that we have too many to fit in a single episode, so I hope your Ambrose appetite is as ravenous as mine is. The four stories we're going to cover over the next two weeks all share a common element, and while I don't want to spoil too much, you have a strong hint in the episode title here. Tonight, our two tales are home again, home again, and the thing at the window.

Make sure your doors are locked and your shutters drawn, and let's see what lurks in the shadows shall we. You're listening to the free edition of this program. If you'd like to help support Horror Hill and also remove these pesky ads, head to chilling tales for Dark Nights.com and click Patrons in the upper menu to sign up today. You'll get instant access to hundreds of ad-free stories, so what are you waiting for? Also, if you're watching on YouTube, do us a favor and drop a like and subscribe. Become part of our Dark Circle, listeners.

And now, from author Ambrose Ibson, I give you, home again, home again.

“Eight and a half years. That's how long it had been since I, or anyone, had last seen my older sister Sabrina.”

She ran away from home at 17 just before graduating high school. On account of her age, the cops got involved right away. Every lead dried up, though, and after a few months, her face was replaced by others on the posters at the local stores. We made flyers of our own, appealed to the local and statewide news, but nothing much came of all that. Drugged up hitchhikers, matching Sabrina's description, were spotted as far away as Duluth, but tended to vanish before the cops could locate them.

Unfortunately, the elements had broken down the evidence so completely that the resulting goo proved useless to forensics. No positive ID could be made.

Again, we were denied closure. The man on the case, very sorrowful in their way, but run off their feet, assured us that the corpse in the bog was probably Sabrina, a conclusion that my mother simply refused to accept. And so, even when the case went ice cold, my poor mom kept waiting up night after night for her daughter to return.

She was certain that Sabrina was still out there somewhere, and I soon tired of attempting to convince her otherwise. I and everyone else in our town knew that Sabrina was never coming home.

“That's why, when the text message came in at a quarter to midnight, I could hardly believe my eyes.”

Sam, your sister's home, after all these years, she's really back, my mother around. Please, come home as soon as you get this message. The weight of eight and a half years hit me like a tidal wave, and after rereading the message several times, I went running out of my apartment and jumped in the car. I didn't know what to think, I was out of my head with excitement and gratitude, though there were other things in the mix too, which plagued me as I booked it through the empty streets. Incredulity, hints of bitterness for such a long absence, these and other emotions weighed down the sharp hair. My ran red lights, breathed through four-way stops, fallen leaves rustling rockously in my wake.

“Sabrina had been gone almost a decade, and everyone except my mother had written her off as dead. Now, unbelievably, she was back.”

I expected a flurry of flashing lights, at least a few police cars on the lawn, and neighbors rebronacking from across the street, but as I pulled into the old neighborhood and approached the house, I found none of that. The porch light was still burning, but that was all. I eased my car into the driveway and killed the engine. I didn't even bother locking up. I rushed out and went straight for the screen door, ripping it open and almost tripping over the threshold. Ma, I called into the warm house. Ma, the TV was murmuring in its usual corner, and a tepid cup of half-finished tea sat on the collapsible tray beside the rumbled sofa.

“The light and the kitchen was on, but as I charged across the living room, I found the kitchen and dinette unoccupied.”

Ma, Sam, a faint voice reached my ears from somewhere down the hall to my left, and as I turned in search of its source, I discovered a light coming from the rear bedroom, Sabrina's old room. It had been many years since I'd last heard that voice. Sabrina? Immediately, I hurried down the hall and hooked a ride into the dimly lit doorway, and there, on the bed my mother had beautifully laundered and remade for over eight years. I found a slender woman seated, hands bunched in her lap, brown hair hanging low in oily ringlets and green eyes cast even lower.

My sister stirred a little, as I walked in, and she turned her pale face to meet mine, fixing it into an odd expression. She didn't look happy, but she didn't strike me as entirely sad. The look transmitted something more subtle, a mood that lived somewhere in the vast gulf between the two, nervousness, shame, maybe. The smile that spread across her lips was a shaky and in constant thing. "Hello, Sam." She said in a voice barely higher than a whisper. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?" I didn't know what to say. Certainly, it had been a long time, a long and painful time.

I was facing someone I had never expected to see again, had been given an opportunity I had never expected to receive. Many words approached my tongue as I stood there in the doorway, stupidified.

Some were kind, others were barbed. What I most wanted to say was, "You'd better have a good excuse for the past eight years." The words I spoke instead were these.

The old lamp to the left of her on the nightstand was burning beneath the dusty shade she'd once decorated with quotations in Sharpie.

“To the right was her dresser, along with the tall mirror whose corners were crowded with curling polaroids of friends and pictures of pop stars she'd carved out of magazines.”

In a word, Sabrina looked filthy. Her baggy white sweatshirt had been stained gray black by too many tours of service, and the fraid ends of her jean shorts gave way to grimy knees and filth-streaked legs. She was wearing a cheap pair of flip-flops that looked ready to give out with the next step, and her toenails were studded with murk, as though it were chipped nail polish. Her fingernails were similarly jagged and dirty. She looked as though she'd been living on the streets for some time. That was how it seemed to me as I studied her from across the room.

She sniffed and ran her palms over her face, forcing another smile past shaky lips.

So, I'm sure you have a lot of questions. She said, clearing her throat.

I know you and Mom are both going to have a lot of questions, and you deserve answers, of course. I nodded slowly. Yeah, well, turning back into the hall I paused. Where is Mom anyhow? She texted me, asked me to come by, but she wasn't out in the living room when I came in. The other rooms along the hall were dark, bathroom included. I'm not sure, replied my sister. She was in here just a few minutes ago.

Now that we were on the subject, I found myself bothered by my mother's absence.

“Here, her beloved daughter, eight years gone, had returned, and where was she?”

I couldn't imagine anything taking precedence over this reunion, especially at so late an hour.

What was she up to? Sabrina leaned forward, ready to launch, and her lengthy explanations, but I cut her short. Hold on, I said, let me grab Mom real quick. Sam, wait. No, I interjected. You said it yourself. She and I both deserve answers. She's going to want to hear this.

Defeatedly, Sabrina nodded, and eased back down onto the edge of the bed. Slipping down the hall, I returned to the living room and stood at the threshold to the kitchen.

“Mom, where'd you go? I called out. There was no reply.”

I paced across the kitchen and then opened the side door leading into the garage. Her sedan was still there. The cold concrete floors were cluttered with boxes, gardening supplies, and more, but I found no sign of her as I looked in from the kitchen doorway. Next, I moved to the backyard, passing through the stubborn screen door that wind on its unoiled hinges. There, the empty flower beds were hidden under carpets of dead leaves, the bird feeders swayed in the icy breeze,

and various creatures lent their voices to a low nocturnal chorus. But once again, there was no sign of my mother. I was at my wit's end when I locked the back door and trudged into the kitchen, warming my hands in my pockets. Pulling out my phone, I decided to send her a text. It was just barely possible that she'd stepped out, and that she'd contacted law enforcement,

and was giving officers the necessary details to close Sabrina's case for good. I tapped out a quick message. Ma, I'm home, where are you? From somewhere close at hand, a sudden chirp shattered the silence. It wasn't the call of a night bird, it wasn't the musing of a cricket. It was an artificial noise, sharp bordering on irritating.

A noise, I knew well. I recognized it at once as my mother's text tone, sounding no doubt on account of the message I'd fired off just seconds before. She was close by, apparently, more, at least her phone was. Ma, I froze in place, ears groping the air for every last hint of the high pitched tone. It seemed to be coming from across the kitchen, specifically from the small laundry room beside the dinette.

This was the one place in the house I hadn't thought to check, and I now saw that the slim door leading to it's had a jar. A thick darkness lived on the other side of the white jam, and as I stood by the sink, be welded.

The glow, perhaps, of a cell phone spitting out notifications.

“Ma, my voice was quiet as I walked around the dinner table and approached the door.”

I eased it open carefully, and stepped inside just as the white glow cut out, leaving me stranded in the darkness. Though I pushed at the door, the kitchen chairs on the other side kept me from opening it fully, and the washer and dryer, not to mention the laundry baskets and boxes stacked on either side of me, blocked out much of the outer light. I swept the inside of the doorway with my palm, but upon hitting the light switch, discovered that the bulb overhead was either dead or missing.

I reached then for my phone, preparing to turn on the flashlight. Before I could do so, however, the white glow returned, rupturing the blackness for one horrible instant. And in that instant, I realized I was not alone in the laundry room.

A cell phone gripped in rigid hands, lit up and answered in my earlier text.

A pale, staring face with eyes of glass was revealed by the screen's glow. My mothers, she was seated on the floor, half curled with her back against the wall, her lips nodded in a dreadful scowel, and her gaze as wide as it was vacant. Ma, I rushed to her, dropped to my knees and tended to her, though, before the glow of her phone died out, and I lost my view of her dreadful frozen face.

I knew she was dead. There was no blood at the scene, no clear wounds or signs of struggle. Had it been a hard attack, a stroke? The way I found her tucked against the wall in a fearful posture, suggested she'd been confronted with something traumatizing or terrifying in the end. I took my mother's phone and crawled out of the laundry room, half hysterical.

Bumping against kitchen chairs and knocking the table out of place, I sucked in a few deep breaths and shambled over to the sink, or my stomach threatened to mutiny. What was I to do?

“How could I break this news to Sabrina, who'd only just returned home?”

When I got in a hold of myself, I took my mother's phone into the backyard and prepared to call 911. My shaky thumb went searching for the phone icon, but I soon realized that the messaging app was still up and running. And before I could close it, something caught my eye. I discovered something unexpected in the text window. My mother had drafted a long rambling message at some point, but it failed to send it.

Don't come home, Sam. Don't come home. It's not to your sister. It isn't Sabrina. I don't know what it is, but it's not your sister.

It looks like her. It talks like her. It's in the house, but it's not her. Don't come here, Sam. Don't come inside.

I can hear her from the other room. She's coming. She's coming. My mother had written that all out in evident panic while hiding in the laundry room. And death had taken her before she'd been able to hit send.

Baffled. I read the message again, pacing across the yard. What was this supposed to mean?

“Had my mother suffered from hallucinations before dying, a psychotic break?”

I'd spoken to Sabrina just minutes ago. The unsent message was clearly the work of a deluded mind. My panic to pacing through the yard brought me just a stone's throw from my sister's open window. Blancing into her room, I found her still seated upon the bed with her back to me, oblivious to the horrible discovery I'd made in the laundry room. I found sick with grief.

My nerves pulled so tight that they were on the verge of snapping like guitar strings. How am I going to break this news to where? I wondered.

After all we've been through, and after Sabrina finally came home, we have to suffer this.

dizzy and blurry eyeed. I stood there, wondering what to say to the emergency dispatcher. And then unexpectedly, a shiver shot down my spine. It wasn't the cool autumn air that did it, and wasn't even the memory of my poor mother's huddled corpse in the laundry room that made me shudder. I shivered because there were eyes on me.

I scanned the thinning bushes and trees, surveyed nearby yards and windows, seeing no one.

“No one, that is, except for Sabrina, still seated on the bed just a few yards away.”

She had her back to me, had low. I knew that she wasn't looking at me, and yet, the longer I peered in through the window, the sure I was that the unwelcome attention was pouring from her. I took a few quiet steps toward the house, bringing the inside of Sabrina's room into sharper focus. I spied the wrinkled bed spread, the borders of a dusty shelf crowded with books and old plushies, the hazy outline of the bedroom doorway opposite the window, and the edge of the lamp on her nightstand. And then, I happened to glance at the mirror.

The streaky mirror sat atop the dresser to Sabrina's right, and from where I stood, there was light enough to study the scene reflected in it. Everything captured in the mirror was precisely as I've just described it.

Save one very important thing.

My sister was seated on the bed right where I'd left her, but the Sabrina, I knew, was not visible in the mirror.

“Something else was reflected there where she should have been.”

The figure in the reflection was gone and bare, with skin, splotchy and dark as black mold. It maintained the same posture, my sister did, shoulders, stooped, head low, hands perched upon the mattress as if for support. Unlike the Sabrina, I'd left behind in the room, however. The reflected figure's eyes were not rooted to the floor. Instead, by a subtle turn of the head, it had focused its oozing, greenish gaze upon the mirror.

Through this act of discrete surveillance, it revealed a grinning and skull-like countenance,

whose only covering was a thin and clinging film of blackish, rubbery flash.

Damp orbs, the color of moss, answered for eyes and the things wide sockets. And these were fixed on me, with such demonic interest that I would not have been surprised, had they slithered free and come to the window themselves. I was not merely being watched. I was being anticipated.

“The distraught figure on the bed was an illusion, mere bait meant to draw me in.”

Something had come to this house, wrapped snugly in allusions, but in the moonlit mirror, its cover had slipped. My mother had seen through it, though far too late. As I stood shuttering in the yard, I had the impression that the figure was not fully aware of my understanding that it didn't realize I'd seen through the rows. It grinned and watched with the perverse satisfaction of a predator in hiding, savouring the deception. It's pride, it's delight.

These alone are enough to strike me nauseous with fear. I did everything I could to telegraph calm and ignorance of the truth. Backing away, the mirror fell from sight. I stood against the side of the house, moving away from the window. From inside the room, I heard a faint stirring upon the bed.

Sam? Is everything alright, Sam? Came my sister's voice. Please, come back in. We have so much to talk about.

I didn't bother replying until I was sure I could do so without stammering. Everything's fine Sabrina, it was just looking for mom. There was a brief silence, a silence in which I could feel the fiend's smile widening, even as I coward against the sighting. I see. And did you find her?

Asked the thing on my sister's bed in a mocking, honeyed tone. No, I lied. No, I didn't. I squeezed my mother's phone. I'll be back inside in just a minute.

The figure said nothing. Taking a deep breath, I started slowly past the window as if heading back into the house. I trudged through the yard with all the nonchalance I could fain. But there was no subduing my fright when I passed the open window and caught sight of my sister's room in my periphery.

Sabrina, filthy, be-drag-old, yet smiling sedately, followed me with her green eyes.

“She sat just a few feet from the screen, hands in her lap, and head cocked to the side so that her tangled hair spilled messily across her face.”

Walking slowly, steadily, just then, was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Instinct told me to run, to sprint for my life. Only by a herkulean effort was I able to calmly reach the edge of the backyard fence. Hatching a leg over carefully, I tried not to rattle the chain links, and then hoisted myself over. Then, stealing past the garage, I found the driveway.

I was in my car with the engine running within seconds, and I pulled out as fast as I could without so much as glancing in the rear view.

It was in the bright lot of a 24-hour pharmacy several miles away, that I finally fired up my mother's phone and called the cops.

“What happened next though? Still, haunts me.”

The night grew darker, the autumn wind called her. A mass of police cruisers arrived outside my mother's house, and after I told the responding officers everything, the premises were stormed. I explained that there had been an intruder, someone pretending to be my long lost sister. Though I didn't elaborate much on the strange and frightening nature of this figure. I admitted, too, that I'd found my mother in the laundry room, unresponsive.

I stood in the street with a pair of officers while the rest entered the house, looking on with baited breath. When all was said and done, I wasn't surprised that there were no signs of the figure in the back room. The counterfeit Sabrina was nowhere to be found. She probably bailed before we got here, one officer theorized. I was surprised, however, when the officers began filing out of the house and claimed after a search of more than an hour,

that my mother's body was also missing. The laundry room had been thoroughly checked, but they'd found no evidence of a body or any struggle within. I have been assured that both are being sought by the authorities, that the local PD is doing everything and it's power to track them both down.

But if I'm honest, I hope they're never found.

I lay awake some nights, especially those cold and cloudy ones in mid-autumn, and wonder if my sister or mother will one day arrive at my doorstep, asking to be let in. In the future, things garbed and their essence may wrap at my door in the dead of night, plaintively seeking admittance. It's been a long time, we have so much to discuss, they'll say. Please, let me in, Sam.

Should that day come, I intend to keep my door locked. For years after Sabrina's disappearance, my mother hoped for her return. She maintained a place for Sabrina in her home, spoke of her constantly as if she was on the verge of coming back and kept the porch light on perpetually as a beacon. In a sense, I believe that my mother's years of yearning and desperation drew that opportunistic thing to her door. I've mourned my mother and sister, but unlike my mother, I've made peace with loss.

I won't spend the rest of my life pining for a reunion, but we'll try to hold on to the good memories. The alternative, wishing and waiting for something I can't have is far more dangerous.

Wishes cast carelessly into the void sometimes come true, desperate whispers of the heart do not always go unheard.

If you leave your porch light on long enough, something is sure to come shambling out of the gloom eventually. For one of your lines with choppy feiners and to be honest with you, with the checkout with the world for the best conversation.

“The truth is that the checkout with the world for the best conversation.”

The legendary checkout of choppy feiners is just the shot on your website, just the social media and everything else. That's a music for your ears. You've been listening to Home Again Home Again by Ambro Zipson. Next, here's the thing at the window, also by Ambro Zipson.

Of course, this was not possible. Only an intoxicating sleepiness could account for such a burst of deja vu. To his aching and rest starved eyes, the rumpled twin-sized bed and chipped furniture were familiar friends. The stained lampshade and the dusty curtains seemed the kith and kin of those he'd met in Tacoma just the prior night. After 17 hours behind the wheel, his rig flirting constantly with a rumpled strip during the last leg. John's mind was filled with many odd things. The flat, twilight scenery had been poisoned by his fatigue.

Innocent shadows and nigh empty fields had struck him as unnecessarily ominous while shuddling his load down the freeway at 70 miles an hour. Inside mirrors had been polluted time and again by dark shapes that, after an initial start, proved to be nothing more than spots in his vision. Having made his delivery, he'd lit out in his cab for the nearest motel, where he'd planned to sleep well and long.

“He'd cleared the routine with the clerk the front desk without incident, and within minutes had been handed his key.”

Now, inside the room and wrapped in the stuffy silence particular to rural flop houses, John should have been pleased. Within arms reach was the bed, the one he'd pined for while slamming gas station coffees on an empty stomach. No roaches had come skittering out when he'd flicked on the light and turning down the covers he'd found no bed bugs. The cramped bathroom looked clean and usable enough. Even so, peace polluted him.

For hours on end, he'd sought a place to lay his head, but having finally arrived, he was gripped by peculiar restlessness.

Fancing himself merely over tired, he sought to sue this frayed mind by walking slowly around the little room.

“For a spell, he worked over his face with warm water at the sink and then relieved himself.”

Then, kicking off his boots, he turned on the old television and allowed its murmurings to breathe a little life into the space. The heaviness and his eyes hadn't debated one Ioda. His legs were sore after so many hours spent bunched and cloistered behind the wheel. But when he stretched out on the bed, they grew so restless they compelled him back into nervous fits of pacing.

He'd wagered that he'd broken through the worst of his fatigue and was now in the thrall of the most inconvenient second wind.

A shoeless trip down the main corridor brought him to a trio of humming-vending machines, from which came rattling a pitiful dinner of cheese crackers, ginger ale, and chocolate snack cakes. These he brought back to the room, consuming them, apacing the floor, and waiting, praying, really, for his aching body to get with the program.

“If anything, the jolt of sugar only served to wake him further.”

Drinking down the last of his soda and pitching the crushed can into the little waste bin by the bed, he became conscious of a thundering beating in his ears. The pounding of his heart.

In his ears, driving semi-trucks, John had never struggled to sleep after completing a big job.

Quite the contrary, it was his custom to sleep like a baby once the goods had been delivered and to spend the following days in a lazy fugue. The alertness that now plagued him, the queer unsettled feeling that tugged at him every time he tried to shut his eyes, was so utterly beyond the pale that he couldn't help being concerned, and this stress, of course, only riled him further. Fresh air may be a walk around the remote building would cure what held him. Refassining his boots, John left his room and paced through a glass side door into the parking lot, empty, safe for a smattering of cars and his own hulking cab.

The late September wind carried a chill, yet another stimulus serving to stir his senses where he'd been aiming to quiet them. Hans and his pockets, he crossed the fading blacktop and studied the starless sky. Dim exterior lights haunted the establishment like will of the whispers, some of them guttering in time with the breeze, and once he'd advanced more than a stone's throw from the side door, their only effect was to blur the borders of the edifice. As he approached the flat, open field, beyond the lot, and through a glance over his shoulder, the entire motel seemed a hazy smear on dark glass.

Night insects sang their songs a little further on, their music drifting from patches of overgrowth and from the bows of rare slanted trees, which grew palmel across the murky plain.

It was odd, but the silence, the peacefulness, did nothing to playkate him.

“Instead, it only gave him the space to fixate on a strange notion.”

John couldn't get away from the feeling that he was being followed, but he couldn't guess by whom. Time and again, he nervously plumbed the emptiness, and each time he found nothing.

How unsettling it was to feel the presence of another under circumstances so plainly lonesome.

This feeling of being carefully tracked by something unseen was not new, however. Behind the wheel of his truck, he'd fallen prey to dreads of the same stripe,

“seeing things that weren't really there, mistaken shadows and defects in his field of vision for vague fantasms.”

John had not been walking long when he lost all faith in his course and began doubling back toward the motel.

The longer he tracked beneath the moonless sky, the further he wandered in the shade of sickly trees and kicked at tufts of weed-strangle grass, the more away he felt.

And more than this, the pressing paranoia he'd been so keen to flee from had not merely followed him out of the stuffy room, it had tightened its grip on him. John found himself many dozens of yards from the edge of the parking lot and was struck by such a foul pang of dread that his step faltered and his dark surroundings seemed to swirl all about him.

“He felt, in a sense, both literal and metaphorical, exposed as he stood in the sparse field.”

Felt as though, he had put himself in plain view of the very thing his instincts had pressed him to run from. His bloodshot eyes, though they worked the whole scene over in a panicked fury, could attach no cause to the doom that surged within him. He was alone there, after all. Alone as one could be. He had no fear of crickets and Katie dids, no terror of parked cars or thinning trees. All the same, he felt himself dangerously close to the snare. His was the sense of a dough upon entering the hunter's crosshairs. He awaited only the report of the rifle.

Shuddering against the wind, John lingered daisedly in place, his mind binging on doubts and fancies of the most colorful sorts, but still nothing swiped at him from the dark. The only casualty was his hope of a good night's sleep. No matter his earlier exhaustion, a prompt sleep now seemed utterly beyond him. It was then, while making a final study of the field and attempting to scramge what little comfort he could from the stillness, that he realized he was not, in fact, alone. Quite a distance off from around the trunk of a bent old tree.

John spied a white leering face. There wasn't light enough for him to be very sure of what he saw, and besides his mind was already so disturbed at that moment that he should have known better than to take such sights at face value. Nevertheless, as he stood gawking, the pale thing hugging the narrowed shaft of naughty wood looked to him like nothing less than the face of one staring intently in his direction. He fell back a few paces. Yes, sin. Once a face, and there emerged now a porcelain hand, it gripped the sinewy bark as though the lurking figure were on the verge of a full reveal.

John was a sensible man, and recalling the frivolous fright he'd weathered on the road just hours before, he groped for sensible explanations. Another motelgast, surely, had decided to go for a short walk just as he had done. This chance meeting, no matter how unwelcome, was no cause for alarm. Probably the figure in the distance was just as frightened as he was, caught on a wares during a peaceful nightly stroll. With this in mind, John sufficiently tamped down his nerves. He took a deep breath and let the tension drain from his bunched shoulders, offering a little wave so as to clear the air and make known his good will.

What happened next was no friendly, tada-tent, no exchange of kindly gestures, but a sudden confirmation that the night's fears were rooted in something very real, something which presently came loping out from behind the slanted tree and across the gloomy field toward him.

Unclothed and utterly androgynous and overall build, the things strode forward with its head angled to the right, so that one of its long, bat-like ears was nearly pressed against its heaving shoulder.

“The face entered into sharper focus with every staggered step, hairless ridges framed small, dark eyes, and the visage terminated in a long pointed chin, couched beneath a long flat nose was a purse and slender mouth.”

Generally, man-like and shape, the thing appeared animal in nature, it called to mind a giant bat, though hairless milk white and wingless, and this resemblance was doubly reinforced by the things spastic jittering as it stamped across the field.

The BDIs contracted in their little sockets, boring into him from afar, and the things colorless lips parted to emit a keening hawa.

The very knowledge that he was being seen through those miserable eyes was sufficient to send his blood hickabing nervously through his veins. His surroundings already blurred by darkness seemed to evaporate completely until his field of vision accommodated only the horror striding toward him. He staggered backward, unable to feel the firm ground beneath his feet, and then he turned and ran. A breathless, panicked sprint sent him rocketing across the field into the cusp of the parking lot, where the smack of his boots against the blacktop charred him so badly he couldn't keep back a frightened yelp.

He quickly reached the side door, and clawing his way in, he bumped against the wall, and turned to behold the dim outdoors. The thing was still there.

“It was no illusion, no trick of the light, nor had it given up its pursuit.”

The lanky thing remained on his trail, its willowy form cutting through the blackness and nearing the edge of the lot.

Though John had succeeded in distancing himself, he knew could feel that it's eyes remained upon him. The stair, wearyed him, sapped his limbs of strength, and it was with no little difficulty that he flopped to his left and came scampering into the front lobby, where the clerks suddenly sat a detention. "You all right?" asked the man behind the desk, his hand moving discreetly to the phone. John signaled over a shoulder. "There's something out there, man."

Casting a frightened look through the main doors, he cleared his throat and tried to make himself plain. Out there, and in the parking lot, there's something out there. The man behind the desk stood up. "What do you mean?" "Well, it's like a monster."

“He spat, his breathing finally under command.”

The clerks smiled uneasily, his gaze divided between the doors and John's pallid face. "Are you...are you high on something?" John shook his head. "No, I mean it, I stepped out for some fresh air and..." Slowly, the clerks came out from behind his desk.

He sauntered into the lobby proper with his hands on his hips and neared the glass doors, peering this way and that. "Sorry, I don't quite understand. What did you see exactly? And where?" He motioned at the threshold. "I don't see anything out there." "Here," said John, waving him around the bend.

"It was out there by the side door." He shuddered, full in the knowledge that the thing was likely very close now that it might soon enter the building. He shuffled nervously down the hall and zeroed in on the door, standing to one side so that the clerks might get a look. Looking rather put upon, the clerks indulged his frightened customer. He approached the door, rubbing at his stubble chin while studying the lot and all that lay beyond.

When seconds passed without remark, John joined him, and together the pair scanned the darkness for some moments more. Finally, the deskman let out a long sigh.

"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked, turning a critical eye upon him.

"There's nothing out there. What did you think you saw?" A monster? He added the last with a mocking smirk into roll of the eyes. "I'm being serious," John looked out once again, almost wishing now that the hideous thing would rear its head. Though he stood at gaze, fists bald at his sides, he found only gloom.

Could it have been an illusion?"

"I'm sorry," he said.

“"I was out there taking a short walk, and I saw the damnedest thing." "Look lurk nodded, not at all convinced, and looked as ledger over in his periphery before taking the last peek out into the night."”

"Between you and me, you look like you could use some sleep." John studied himself against the wall and nodded. "You're right, I'm so tired I must be seeing things." "He forced a sheepish smile and broke off in the direction of his room with his head low." "I, I'm sorry for the trouble. I'll take your advice and get a little shut eye."

"Good night then," at once puzzled and amused, the clerk watched John from the hall until he slept into his room and shut the door.

“Sleep would not so much as shadow John's doorstep. Earlier, when his paranoia had been little but a vague nuisance, sleep had not come.”

Now, after his fright in the field, he wasn't sure he'd be able to rest again. Pre-entering his room, he'd locked the door, but it declined to kick off his boots. A late night drive to some other motel, far, far from this one, seemed a rather enticing prospect. He walked the floors till he grew dizzy, and several times, when his nerve allowed it. He pulled back the curtains and looked out into the night, searching for signs of the horrific figure in the distance.

He saw, nothing, safe for the same cars, the same shadows he glimpsed earlier.

“"You're tired as hell. He muttered to himself. He brought his palms to his eyes and needed at them like a baker.”

Positioning himself on the edge of the bed, John sought to assess the matter logically. "Math thing out there. It couldn't have been real. The guy at the desk was right. You need some sleep, that's all." There was a substantial wrinkle in John's theory, one that he couldn't easily iron out no matter what he did.

Oftener than not, he was a tired man. On account of his job, his sleep debt was always maxed out, and rare were the days when he felt truly refreshed.

He was familiar then with what sleeplessness could do to a tired mind. Not once, had it ever done that. The incident in the field was so unlike anything he'd ever experienced, he couldn't simply write it off as an artifact of drowsiness. The thing, staring and malformed, had not come especially close, but even from a distance, he'd judged it to possess the weight and aura of a living, breathing thing. He had heard it, howl, and the noise it had made, shrill, grating, had been unlike any other sound he'd ever heard.

But now, it was gone. Again, he moved to the window, nudging the sun faded fabric aside, and narrowly scanning the exterior of the motel. There was no sign of it, no sign that anything of note existed beyond the line of dark and cars. From where he stood, the particulars of the field were scarcely visible, too bundled and shadow. His fatigue was no longer a mental burden alone. His exhaustion was passing into a new and more detestable phase, plaguing his body with all manner of odd aches and numbnesses, which rest alone could ameliorate.

He stretched out on the bed after making certain that the door and window were locked. With eyes closed, he endeavored at least to let his body sink into the thin mattress and rest. He shut his eyes, the lids slamming down like heavy doors, and focused on the silence. The lights were on, he'd lacked the nerve to shut them off, the den of the electricity crackling in the walls and the faint settling of the building were peaceful companions, as he tried to settle into dreamless hibernation. It wasn't long before those eyes snapped open and began restlessly scanning the ceiling.

He recalled the thing's misshapen face, the bent and peculiar advance it had made from behind the neural tree. John laughed a little to himself, laughed because it was the only sound he could think to make, which might, however slightly, ease his fears. Probably, by daybreak, he would find it in himself to sleep. The presence of the sun outside is window would chase off all bad thoughts, all vague fears,

and he'd finally no rest while the world at large was gearing up for a new morning.

Tourism, much-needed leisure would help him. Every hair on his body began to levitate.

“His gaze was drawn to the curtain window, and there it lingered with the weight of a millstone while his heart began inching toward his throat.”

There'd been a noise at the window. It was not a noise he could blame on the wind. What's more, it was a clear dry night, wood that he could have studied himself by accusing a brief drizzle. It had been a soft tapping sound. Wrap, wrap, wrap. John waited for what seemed like Eons clutching at the bedspread in the hopes that he'd misheard.

Again, the soft rapping intruded into his room. Wrap, wrap, wrap.

There were no trees outside whose branches might reach the windows, and the bushes growing along the building's perimeter were far too squat to interact with the pain.

It could only be the work of something animate, something willful, and in the spasm of terror. He felt quite sure he knew what. Something, it, was trying to get his attention.

“He ignored the sound. He couldn't have stood up to investigate, even had he wished to.”

Every vital force in him had jelled, rendering him an impotent mass. Even his heart, raucous at the onset, had piped down as if to listen closely, and his blood had stilled in his veins. Wrap, wrap, wrap. It wasn't going to stop. If anything, the sound was growing in intensity in vigor, the summons of one who insisted on being acknowledged. He did not rise from the bed so much as tumble off it, and one he'd found some command of his legs, John passed shakily to the window.

A thick silence enveloped all, and for one honeyed moment, he could nearly fool himself into the belief that it was over, that the tapping had ceased, and the collar had moved on. Wrap, wrap, wrap. Along, delirious weight in the room till daylight, are an ill-advised glance beyond the curtains. These alone were the paths left to him.

“So that he might rip off the bandaid, and perhaps break free of the dread that presently crushed the breath from his lungs,”

he reached out a stiff hand, and chose the latter. The frayed edge of the curtain was pinched. The hole was pulled back in a single, frightened yank. There are, in times of terror and confusion. Occasional lolls, moments when the senses must catch up before ultimate fear or relief can be realized.

Upon uncovering the window, John spied in it, only the blackness of night. The square frame was outlined in the hazy glow of the light from within his room, and his own dim reflection played there, a whiteened mask contorted by anxiety.

Had this emptiness persisted, but a second longer, he might have allowed himself the privilege of relaxation.

But all hope was promptly snatched away by the large, white hand, that suddenly appeared from below, and struck the glass. Smooth, pasty flesh clung to the thin fingers and broad palm. The dark, jagged nails now in view had been responsible for the wrapping, and these were slowly, desirously, dragged across the glass.

Still more of the figure became visible. The milky crooked arm, the tip of a flabby ear, and the crown of a bear, veins studded, had. Seated beneath the stony brow, the tiny, dark eyes vibrated in their sockets, like vermin's stirring in their burrows, and fixed him with a hatred too awful to be human,

yet too plainly malefic to be merely animal. From without, a long whale, the sound perhaps of a breaking steam locomotive on rusty tracks pierced the air. It had arrived. John flew from the room like a cannonball and went ricocheting down the carpet at Hall. He dashed, red-eyed, and shuddering into the lobby,

where his fever charged through a cry from the desk man's lips. What the hell? He screeched to a halt, woozy with dread as he studied the main entrance,

I have to go. He choked out. I need to leave.

“Now, but you've only just, something's come up.”

John blurted, his face as wide as the floor tiles.

Your rooms already paid for, buddy. I'm not going to refund you for, I don't care about that. John put in. Please, just, will you walk me out to my truck? The clerk furrowed his brow.

You want me to want? Just, uh, just come outside with me. John pleaded. Make sure I get into my cab. That's all.

The desk man seemed marooned between outrage and pity. He loosed an impatient laugh and came a little way around the desk, sizing up his launcher with a frown. You're in no shape to drive, man. John edged his way to the door.

I'm fine. He insisted. I'm good to drive. Believe me. I just need to go.

Something's come up, and I have to leave. The closer he got to the door, the further he drew out the clerk from his perch.

“Keep an eye on me, will you, from the door here at least?”

Look, I wouldn't. Holding his breath. John reached for the door and went bounding into the night like a madman. Certain the death awaited him in the cool night. He raced to avoid its reach and fixed his sights on the cab.

The clerk followed him out, muttering the same warnings from the entryway. But his words were whisked away by the steady breeze. In a shuddering panic, John succeeded in unlocking the driver's side door. Scurrying into his seat, he immediately brought the truck to life and cut into the gloomy lot with his high beams,

where he discovered no trace of the pale, groping feigned. Only the shape of the concerned desk clerk, still waving at him, still mouthing his warnings, came and defraim as he paned about, nauseated. Hands locked tightly around the wheel,

John went speeding out of the lot in search of the highway entrance ramp. There was really no telling how long it had been on his trail. He had caught glimpses of it all evening, before he'd even finished making his drop off. It occurred to him that maybe it had taken an interest in him even earlier.

And as he sped, he racked his mind in search of other oddities that might have been written off as "benal" in the moment. Things sensed, but ignored, warnings left unheeded. The highway opened up before him, a black ribbon threading the seam between unending planes of Merck.

Signage, rare, and scattered, flew by in a blur. John crushed the pedal underfoot, his eyes leaping between the side mirrors and windshield frenetically. Top speed was not fast enough to escape the monstrous thing. Would it be enough for him to cross-state lines

“to speed into the distance until dawn reared its head?”

He was moving eastbound, down a carless, lightless stretch, and sunrise was still several hours off. He entertained thoughts of other motels, many zip codes away. He could just keep on driving. He told himself, "I am the fuel gauge.

It was nearly full. He could afford to put hundreds of miles between himself and the thing if he so chose."

It was in the right hand, Merrier, that he first noticed it.

Movement, the creeping progress may be of something at the rear of the cab. John's grip on the wheel faltered, sending the truck listing for a beat. Something white was clinging to the dusty red body of the cab, barely visible in the corner of the mirror. He could not be sure of what it was.

When blown refuse stuck to the rear panel, an ordinary feature of the rig made strange by the darkness its proportions overblown by his adult mind. The rumple strips along the shoulder jostled his attention back to the road. It's nothing. He told himself through gritted teeth.

"You're losing it, man. You're losing it." Still, when he'd gotten the truck within the lines again, his gaze went drifting back to the mirror, searching out the anomaly once more. There was nothing there. The white mass, a curled, gripping hand he'd feared, was no longer visible.

It wasn't nothing. He said aloud, cracking a delirious smile. A bit of paper or plastic, a clearly bent stuck to the rig, and he'd shaken it off. That was on. Heavy lids beat down upon his blurry line of sight. His arms quaked as he studied them atop the wheel and slowly cut speed.

He began traveling and keeping with a limit for the first time

since leaving the motel. He slowed enough, in fact, to read the signs peppered along the road.

They all went by like a slideshow.

“There arose a sudden thump from the top of the cab,”

which robbed him of all control. He left up in his seat, the truck swaying as he looked roofward. The blood drained from his face. He was driving through wide open country, and conditions were clear. Nothing, save for a creature, scrabbling across the top of the cab,

could have produced such a noise, and he knew it. John hooked a sharp right, and then a left, sailing between the lanes, he sought to throw off whatever was clinging to the truck. But to no effect. No sooner did he write his course than another thump echoed through the cab,

and this time, from the uppermost edge of the windshield, a set of pale fingers came into view. Dark claws teased the auto glass as the abomination dragged its weight across the top of the truck, and its shadow fell across the hood. In the sparse moonlight, its hole, hitting his shape,

bloomed before him. It was not the ghoulish bat-like face that appeared next.

“Nor did the creature's piercing cry reaches ears as he reared back in his seat.”

Instead, the vast flat edge of a concrete highway divider loomed up before him. The crunch and wine of twisted metal filled his ears as the front end disintegrated. The lonely stretch of highway flashed red in blue, an ambulance had cycled up to the wreckage, but the gurney and its rear remained empty,

while the paramedics tried to decide which piece of the victim to load first.

A highway patrolman waved on a slow moving gawker in a sedan before crossing the lanes. He paused beside the wreck, wencing a little as he took in the mangled chassis. Hell of a mess, he uttered. The punished driver's side door had been wrenched open,

allowing the paramedics a measure of access to the interior, and one of them, with a heavy sigh, hopped back onto the asphalt. I don't get it. He had to have been going well over the speed limit to crash this hard.

Was he suicidal? The patrolman shook his head.

“Now you see this all the time with these guys,”

and buddy fell asleep behind the wheel and didn't know what hit him. The paramedic took a deep breath and scanned the dark planes. It must be a dozen different motels within miles a year, while not just grab a room and rest off. Perhaps it was only an effect of the flashing lights,

but while trolling the distance, he thought he detected movement, a vague stirring in the dark and field. He had only to blink and it was gone. Stillness prevailed. The paramedic wiped the designs with the back of his glove hand.

Yes, I'm not one to talk, though. I need to get some sleep myself. For one to die in a light and soft mid-shoppy fine art business, and knuck us at the court with him checked out with the world-felt best conversion. That's right, that check-out with the world-felt best conversion.

The legendary check-out from Shopify, an einfach das shopping off deiner website, this is in the social media, and UberIDOT's vision. And that's the music for your ears.

Videos of the rest of the vendors, with Shopify, can sit to a real hip garden. Start your test today for just one of your promo. On Shopify.de/record. This has been The Thing at the Window,

by Ambrose Ipsin. Once upon a time, a young Ambrose Ipsin discovered a collection of ghost stories on his father's bookshelf.

He was never the same again.

Apart from horror fiction, he enjoys good coffee, brewed strong. Connect with him on his official website, Ambrose Ipsin.com. Tonight's stories are from his collection,

What Gathers at Dusk, available at Velix Books. A very good friend of mine, actually, was a long haul trucker for several years, and from time to time, he's regaled me with a number of stories from his time on the road.

Most of them, luckily, only involve unexpected and sudden glimpses into the personal lives of some of these stranger folks that live on the highways of America. But between bat-like pursuers

and the occasional large-marge situation, I'm glad that he moved into another line of work when he did. Keeping with our theme, we'll be rolling this truck straight down the Ambrose Ipsin Highway for another episode before we unload this rig.

Tune in next week for two more stories of things in dark places, masquerading as human beings.

Stay spooky.

You've been listening to the horror Hill podcast,

a production of chilling entertainment and the creative team at Chillin Tales for Dark Nights. Episode was hosted, narrated, scored, and finalized by yours truly, Eric P. Body. Additional music by Nikki Mixorley.

“Got a terrifying tale of your own that you'd like performed?”

Email it to us at [email protected] to have your work considered for future production. Note that any writing utilizing artificial intelligence is ineligible.

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I just so happened to know a guy. Email me at [email protected].

“That's ERIK, P-E-A-B-O-D-Y-V-O-I-C-E at gmail.com”

and we can talk details. If darkness is what you're after, listener, your search is over. Yet, let it be known. You haven't found the darkness.

The darkness has found you. (music) I'm Teresa and my experiences with all entrepreneurs started a shopping trip.

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