The Crawlers

The screaming started. Jensen awoke with a start as it pierced through his subconscious, shattering the beautiful dream that had been his to indulge in as the moon shone brightly through his window. The screaming emanated from outside, and Jensen looked down. It was hard to see where it was coming from, shadows looming large in the central courtyard as an owl hooted nearby.

It sounded like a woman screaming before it turned guttural, like a growl as something moved down there. He adjusted his spectacles and tried to see something, anything. A tall, dark shape moved down there, barely visible in the dark night, a glistening form seen in occasional glimmers of moonlight but revealing very little.

He stared at the thing as it then moved to all fours, and he heard an audible sniffing sound as the owl hooted again, and the thing started to crawl slowly up a building wall. It wasn't his, thankfully, and he watched with curiosity and horror as it crawled using four limbs up the opposite wall. Finally, it found an open window and slid in like a spider. Voices could be heard and a scream, and before he knew it all was silent, vague squelching sounds audible in the stillness.

He turned away from the window and back to his bed, taking out a heart-shaped locket that he had kept on his bedside cabinet. He fondled it for comfort and opened the locket to reveal a faded picture of a woman, blonde, curly hair framing her blue eyes and radiant face. He kissed it and turned to the side as he tried to close his eyes again.

He heard faint dragging sounds outside but daren't look and waited for dreamland to welcome him into its embrace as all went dark again. The following morning loomed high in his thoughts as he welcomed the bright sun into his dreary room.

His room was bare for the most part; some old, landscape paintings lined the walls, and a dusty microwave sat drearily on his desk. The bathroom door lay next to the main entrance on the left. The desk to the right and his bed to the left. He walked across the tiled floor and made himself indulge in his daily ritual: the washing.

He did this methodology and almost meditatively, taking the time to smooth his worn skin of many years, his tired eyes peering out of an aged face as his green eyes radiated from his sunken soul. He splashed water in the bowel and gazed at his reflection, the dreariness of the bathroom sinking in as he opened the cabinet in front of him and took his sickness pills, and ventured into the room again.

He took out an instant meal from a draw underneath his desk and made his first meal of the day. A telescope stood to the left of the vast, horizontal window, and he peered through it, seeing last night's devastation. A blood trail ran from a window opposite; little other evidence of the creatures' escapades visible.

A curtain blew gently through the open window, everything still in the courtyard as detritus littered the ground below. Broken leaves, smashed bottles, and faded walls that looked like they had seen better days. The mountain beyond the complex loomed large on the horizon, imposing despite its distance, and sometimes he liked to examine it on a clear day.

Its jagged peak stood tall in the sunlight, its crevices and recesses shining brightly in their snow-covered glory. It flickered momentarily, and he knew that it might disappear soon. The mountain did that sometimes; he had forgotten why but one minute it was there, the next minute it would be gone; no telling of where it went.

He remembered the first time it had happened; he had regarded with startled curiosity, digging through his mountain of books underneath the bed to find an explanation. But, unfortunately, his memory wasn't so good these days, and he had to take comfort in what lay in the books, which felt like they were from another time.

He regarded the books like lost treasure, finding gold within their worn pages. He had collected them gradually, raiding other people's apartments; their inhabitants, long gone, some with bloodstains on the walls, some with broken furniture. One had an entire photo album stuck in the back, a single sheet of card with several photos stuck on.

He looked at that book now, looking through the handwriting, the journaled notes scrawled, their writer clearly losing clarity over the subsequent pages. It seemed to resemble a family, a mother, two young kids, and a proud father standing with a mountain in the background. He wondered if it was the same one and compared the two before deciding it wasn't.

"Must get help, [illegible] night terrors. They come for us like jackals, maybe the one, I don't know. Screams in the night, like a woman, sometimes like a child, hissing at times. Don't know what they are...we think [illegible] mountain [illegible] We don't know though, children scared, water running low…infec [illegible] Jack sick last night, kids needed to play, we daren't let them out, monste [illegible]".

He sometimes liked to read over this, trying to decipher, almost like a historian regarding an item of antiquity. He had no memory of his time before the complex, sometimes the days faded, and he realized that, occasionally, he had to remind himself of his own name, which he had written on a piece of card under his bed.

He kept it in one place, so he always knew where it was and tried to strengthen his memory by doing that. A simple thing in a very uncertain world. What those things were, he had no idea. All he knew was, one night, the screaming started. Chaos followed; some inhabitants held a meeting in the courtyard, others barricaded themselves in.

Harvey, an older guy with a dressing gown as his default outfit, stocked up with a shotgun and other weapons. "Can never be too careful," he had said, "those bastards like coming here, easy pickings, maybe it's just the one, but it sure seems like many, better watch yourself."

He had been one of the first taken; Jensen liked to keep watch by his window. He enjoyed watching the inhabitants go about their business, a young woman directly opposite him holding a particular fascination. He would watch her for hours at a time, no matter what she was doing or wearing. He didn't know whether this was appropriate or not, but he didn't give it a second thought.

She could have easily seen him, he reasoned, and he thought she had, one time, but no objection was ever made, and it helped pass the time. She'd even smiled, as he recalled, which warmed him. He'd never had anyone that he could remember and was content to let her form sustain him when he needed it.

They had seen each other a few times, a vague hint of attraction, but he could never bring himself to go near her. She seemed too distant, and he contented himself instead with her vision and the picture he had in his locket.

He didn't know who she was anymore, his memory fading, but he knew she meant something to him, and he kept that close. Sometimes, he heard faint moans from the other rooms and let them sustain his fantasies, which could be elaborate.

How he had come this far, he wasn't sure, the past seemed like a distant memory as all he could now do was read the books over and over again; sometimes he read a book and felt he remembered it; other times, it felt like a brand new experience; a smile forming over his face as it took him to another world.

He contented himself that day by eating some noodles and watching the sky idly wander past in wisps of clouds. He sometimes went out for exercise, but signs plastered outside told him otherwise: "Don't go out, they'll get in, stay away! The outside is dangerous". Some of them were graffiti, and he felt he should heed their warning.

He remembered a time when he had ventured outside the complex through a broken door, the forest surrounding it as he walked through it. The trees seemed to whisper to him, vague doubts which filled his mind as he saw distant objects in the sky flashing at him. He sometimes saw them in his dreams and felt they talked to him, but he had no idea what they were saying.

He had wandered close to a bubbling brook that day, feeling the cool water against his face as he looked across the clearing to see a distant object hovering. It looked metallic, glistening in the sunlight, round in shape, and with a single light that blinked. He stared at it for a while before it moved on at speed, and he thought he could see two figures, jet black in color, moving among the distant trees further on out in the clearing.

He wanted to chase on after them but didn't have the energy and instead wandered back to the complex, taking in the crumbling structure as it beckoned to him like a broken home. He never bothered to get out of his dressing-gown; nobody else was around, or he never saw anyone anyway; some of the windows were boarded up, some had blood smeared against them.

He simply sauntered around, sometimes sitting on a lone bench in the middle of the complex, staring at the windows surrounding him above. He heard nothing other than the window slowly circulating through the complex, small objects flickering in the breeze. The occasional butterfly would dance around him, a fly would come to say hi. He cared not.

He wiled away his days in this fashion. Sometimes, he would try to write something but the moment he started to write...it faded like someone trying to speak but the air floundering from their lungs. He didn't know what he wanted to say. Even think sometimes. Sometimes he just sat there, hearing voices around him but not know what they were saying, not really.

He didn't remember any friends of his, even lovers. He just tried to read his books and peer out at the mountain, which, somedays, seemed to glisten iridescently in the summer skies, which blazed in bright orange at sunset. He smiled at the thought and turned his attention back to the complex. He knew every inch of it now, its cracks, its faded concrete walls, its faded glory. He would study it sometimes, noting the texture of each surface, wanting to reach out and touch it but knowing he couldn't.

He dreamed of doing that sometimes, his dreams often very chaotic and filled with odd faces, terrors, visions of flames engulfing the complex before he would wake up again, covered in sweat. It was dark outside, and he ate his one last meal before taking out a book from underneath the bed. It had no cover, but its post-apocalyptic survival tale appealed to him if only to feel a connection to its main character.

He let the night pass on by uneventfully in this fashion, eventually drifting off. Then, a woman beckoned to him in his dream: she was tall with curly blonde hair. She wore a flowing dress, and they danced under the light of the full moon, the mountain behind them. They then stopped, and she shared into his eyes.

Blood was now dripping down the mountain, and her eyes went wide. She screamed and his connection to the real world blurred with the dream world as he emerged from that strange netherworld of limitless fantasy.

The screaming was real and was coming from just below his window.