Monsters: Chapter 3

It was quarter to twelve by the time Gregory had locked the heavy iron doors to the steel mill, behind him now only a strong silence that rang out like the strange knell of a bell. It was always eerie when he had to lock up, as the mill was always a buzz of large bangs and a constant thrumming of smelting machines that filled the ears from dusk until dawn. Now the silence was almost alien to him. It was the first silence he had heard in almost ten hours since his shift started at mid-day.

He turned to look over his shoulder and saw that a deep fog had descended upon the courtyard he now stood in, the piles of dirt and mounds of coal seeming like simple black shapes in the haze. He then looked down the yard, the thickness giving way slightly so he could see the vast emptiness, which stretched far and long southwards, until stopping at a row of thick fencing, beyond which a cliff edge plummeted down into a deep, flooded quarry that had long since been abandoned. On a clear day, Gregory would take his lunch and a hot mug of black coffee, and sit on the worn leather sofa chairs the mill workers had salvaged from the scrapyard, enabling one to see far over the bustling town of St Argent and off into the depths of Pacific Falls.

On this particular night it had been Gregory who was left to lock up. He didn’t mind it, as it gave him some aspect of peace and tranquillity as he roamed the rusted interior of the mill, occasionally checking the equipment to see if it had come to any fault before making his way up to the main office and continuing his pursuit of a high score on solitaire. It was easy work. Most of the time, that is. He had worked for the mill for almost thirty years now, taking over from his father who had been a veteran of sorts in the smelting department, having been employed when it first opened its large heavy doors and began birthing out racks upon racks of hot, smoking steel.

The place was a far cry from what it had been. Gregory thought this as he swung his rucksack around his shoulder and began walking across the hard concrete, slowly approaching the entrance gate. He chuckled to himself as he thought how brilliantly large and brutish it had seemed to him when he was little, almost like a gigantic climbing frame that one could get lost in. An endless maze of metal framing and ladders that seemed to go on forever. Now he wouldn’t dare to take anything but the concrete stairs, the ladders rusted and brittle and the metal of the whole mill worn to look like it had been set on fire at least a dozen times, holding a deep blackness where the soot and smoke had clung to the exterior like a babe to a breast.

Though the fog around him was beginning to become chokingly thick, he could still make out the details surrounding him across the courtyard, as the moon was astonishingly bright and full through the haze, shining down like a spotlight on a stage and illuminating the summer landscape, giving everything a shine of glee wherever he looked. The wind blew softly threw Gregory’s greasy hair and he could almost feel the extra weight of lethargy begin to grip him as he walked. He now longed for the embrace of his bed and to feel his head rest against the feather-filled pillow and drop into a weightless sleep.

His wife would still be up however, and this brought a feeling of sheer dread and melancholy to the forefront of his mind, as he knew she would immediately begin moaning at him, first about how he was always working and then about how he was spending too much time down at the truck stop on Maynard Cross, drinking his sorrows away with Michael McGaimon and Johnny Theron. The truth was that he used these two escapades to get away from his wife and two sons, who were always nagging him for the next big thing they had seen in an advert on the tv.

He hated his two kids, finding them too lazy and too much like their mother, always thinking that all their problems could be solved by the money Gregory bought in for the family. His wife hadn’t worked for years now, living off the system and always boasting about how she had cheated the government, and was somehow some international fraudster who couldn’t be caught. Gregory would often laugh to himself about how hubris she was and thought that the most fraudulent act she had ever committed was getting a brand-new hot tub with Gregory’s credit card, which he used to keep the bills up-to-date and paid off. He had been furious when he had come home to find her lounging in the ugly looking thing, sipping iced tea and telling him his supper was ready to be put in the microwave.

It made him even more angry that she refused to take it back and get a refund, and to this day he was still having to pay off the debt collected, almost doubling in price for how long it had taken him to repay it with the money earnt from the steel mill. He had spent months working overtime, only to come home to more moaning about what they didn’t have and how Gregory was spending too much time repaying the debt his good for nothing wife was collecting for him. Fury was slowly beginning to burn within him and Gregory quickly began trying to force the thoughts regarding his wife to the back of his mind, using his slow, heavy footfalls as a distraction, focusing on the grinding sound of stone beneath his boots.

As he made his way closer to the gate, the sound of creaking hinges stopped him dead in his tracks, his gaze quickly falling upon the gate, which was swinging softly in the breeze, its chain-link fencing chiming and clinking against the more solid frame of the metal gate. He quickly rummaged in his bag and brought out a large black torch, its beam blasting on and shining over the gate and well past, seeing the beam reflect off the windows of his car and the glistening sheen of the wet leaves of the bushes behind.

Nothing out of the ordinary stood out to Gregory at first and his mind quickly fell upon the explanation that his boss, who had left a few hours previous for a family member’s birthday party, had simply forgotten to lock the gate on his hastily departure. However, he then noticed a detail that made his heart judder to a halt and his blood run thickly cold.

The chain, which was usually wrapped in a figure of eight around the gate post, was now cut into multiple hanging appendages rocking inches from the ground. He walked closer and examined the broken links, finding the metal to have been bent in oddly shaped positions and featuring marks that almost looked like someone had taken a huge chunk out of the chains with their teeth.

Suddenly the silence around him was no longer pleasant or relaxing. It was deafening. A void of horrifying nothingness. It pierced through him like an arrowhead and made him frantically think of what could have broken the links of the chain. Gregory turned to face the courtyard, shining his torch across the desolate metallic jungle that made up the main steel mill and then across the baron yard itself, disappearing far off beyond what his eyes could see. His breath caught sharply in his throat, and he felt the muscles in his neck contract as if some invisible force were squeezing the air out of him.

His mind rummaged through ideas of what the creature could be, not able to come to a reasonable conclusion, as no animal had jaws powerful enough to pierce through steel chains. At least, no animal that he knew of. His pulse thrummed methodically in his ears now, his boots feeling like they had been glued to the ground, his legs refusing to make any sort of movement.

Gregory settled on phoning his manager and leaving a message for someone to replace the chains in the morning, walking quickly toward his beaten-up ford focus, wanting to switch the engine on and drive straight down to the truck stop to forget about the whole ordeal. It was only when he reached the car that he heard movement from behind him, a soft rustling sound followed by low and heavy footfalls.

Gregory turned, every shadow within the fog now like a hidden foe, promising to strike at any moment. His heart began pounding in his chest like a drum solo, feeling like it were going to break through his chest at any moment. The beam of his flashlight darted from one detail in the fog to the next, not finding anything that could’ve made the strange noise.

“Who’s there?” He shouted, trying to drown out the fear with as much authoritarian anger he could muster.

Maybe it was a kid playing a prank on him and trying to scare him with the chains and making loud noises. Well, it wasn’t going to work. Gregory was a large and stout man, his height giving a good advantage of intimidation over others when it came to confrontation.

“If you want to play games then we can play. There’s loads of things I can blame for the beating I’m gonna give you!” He shouted, his confidence wavering as silence began to consume him once again.

A mighty crash then rang out across the courtyard, his torch zipping to an oil drum in mid-fall that crashed heavily against a metal shed sitting at the foot of the fence. He froze, wishing the world to swallow him up where he stood.

He approached the shed, feeling fear overwhelm him and settle at the pit of his stomach. Reaching into his rucksack once again, Gregory pulled out a 44. Revolver, its flawless metal shining brightly in the moonlight. He kept the revolver with him most times, as him and Michael, who also worked at the steel mill, would take the revolver down to the creak sometimes and shoot at the old bottles and rusted bear cans left over from teen parties that took place almost every weekend. He thought the weapon would reassure him, make him feel safe and secure, but it only made his goosebumps flare even more, changing rapidly from blizzardly cold to blazingly hot.

Fear was now coursing through his veins, and he could feel his forehead moisten with newly formed sweat, the beads running across his wrinkled skin and down the bridge of his nose until it settled on the hair of his grizzly moustache. The air had turned crisply dry in his mouth now and the fog seemed to thicken, his vision now impaired to only a few feet in front of him.

A sound echoed out once again from behind him, but before he could turn another sound came forth from the night air beyond. It was a deep and guttural growl like that of a snarling dog, only it was louder than any he had ever heard. The growl was heavy and chestly, Gregory knowing that whatever had made the horrifying sound was big and extremely dangerous. His palms flooded with fearful sweat and his grip on the torch slipped, falling until it smashed against the hard gravelled concrete, glass flying off in all directions like confetti at a party.

It was then he heard slow, rhythmic footsteps quickly approach him from behind, gaining pace as he turned to look at his aggressor.

A huge dark mass slowly arose from the shadows, its form towering above him by a few feet and wider than anything he had ever seen before, the only features visible on the creature being dagger like teeth that gleamed in the moonlight and yellow, hunger-filled eyes that glistened with horrifying fury. As the creature bared its teeth in preparation of an attack, Gregory screamed and threw his revolver up, firing off four consecutive shots into the beast’s face, then following with two more that impacted its swollen chest.

Though at first, it seemed the beast had been maimed by the gun, recoiling and falling slightly back against the sea of fog that encased them, it soon recovered and pounced angrily at Gregory once again, his body hurled in the air with bone crunching force, crashing awkwardly down upon a pile of heaping scrap and feeling the pain of many broken ribs’ seer up through his body. He tried to move but was held down by the pain, like a thousand bricks had been quickly piled upon him. He cried out in agony, hearing the creature approach with a tormenting slowness. Then his flesh was torn by sharp daggers, a hunger-filled growl rippling through the pool of torture he was now in.

Gregory could hear the terrible sound of his own stomach being torn open, the feeling of his body being slowly emptied and ripped apart. It was only when the beast rested its heavy, claw-filled hand against his neck that Gregory was put out of his agony, the echoing snap making his body go limp under the monster’s immense weight.

The beast continued to gorge until the early hours of the morning, when only splinters of broken bone and bloodied clothes were all that remained of Gregory Winters.