Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

Through the coolers.
He yelled incoherently as he went through a row of soda, and then a wall
of cement. He was outside again, on the side of the store. He ran his hands
over his arms as his skin continued to flake. The hook in his chest twisted
angrily, the cable running back into the wall he’d just rushed through. He ran
around the back of the store. An empty field stretched behind it under a night
sky that seemed infinite. On the other side was another neighborhood, the
houses close together, some with lights on, others dark and foreboding. He
took off toward them, still rubbing his arms frantically.
He crossed the field and went between two houses. Music blared from the
house on his right; the house to his left was silent and dark. He burst through
the wall of the right house directly into a bedroom where a woman in a fullbody
suit of red leather slapped a riding crop against her palm, her attention
on a man in footie pajamas who said, “This is going to be so awesome.”
“Oh dear god,” Wallace croaked before backing out of the house slowly.
He turned toward the street in front of the houses.
He paused when his feet met pavement. He wasn’t sure where to go, and
now the skin on his legs was flaking off through his sweats and off the top of
his feet. His ears were ringing, and the world had taken on a hazy glow, the
colors running together. The cable flashed violently, the hook shaking.
He hurried down the sidewalk, wanting to get as far as he could. But it
was as if the bottoms of his flip-flops had melted, sticking to the concrete.
Each and every step was harder than the one before it, like he was moving
under water. He grunted at the exertion. The ringing in his ears grew louder,
and he couldn’t focus. He gritted his teeth as he tried to push through it. The
fingernail from the pinkie of his right hand slid off and disintegrated.
He curled his hand into a fist as he looked up. There, standing in the
middle of the street, was a man.
But he was wrong, somehow, off in ways that turned Wallace’s skin to ice.
The man was hunched over, his back to Wallace, his shirtless torso covered
in gray, sickly skin, his spine jutting out sharply. His shoulders shook as if he
were heaving. His pants hung low on his hips. His sneakers were scuffed and
dirty. His arms hung boneless at his sides.
A chill ran down Wallace’s spine even as he took another step, everything
in him screaming to back away, to run before the man turned around. He
didn’t want to see what the man’s face looked like, sure it would be just as