The Grip by Griffin Hayes Read Free Book Online Page A

touched the flesh of his left wrist and to Peter’s surprise he felt the cold steel waiting to bite him just as though he were doing it himself. The knife rocked back and forth splitting the flesh so that it looked like a bloody eye staring back at him. But his real eyes, the ones controlled by that thing that were watching with sick delight, were white bulging orbs.
    Blood ran down his forearm and fell to the floor in a thick stream. The pain was unbelievable as the blade sawed through first tendon and then bone. Peter was shrieking now, not just with agony but with the certainty that he was about to die and the sound of his screams were flat and dead in this new place. When he felt the blade begin cutting his other wrist, Peter could only hope that it would all be over soon. He had no idea that it was just beginning.

Chapter 7
    D erek was having trouble getting the lantern going.
    “This thing have any gas?” Derek said, striking a match against the side of the box. The match burst into flame.
    That was when Lysander heard a loud click and the room became shrouded by a deep orange haze.
    There was a swooshing sound and then Lysander was swimming, an astronaut through a vast expanse of empty watery space. The feeling was strangely familiar. The thought of death crossed his mind quickly and then vanished… he knew he wasn’t dead, he could still think. Where am I? The corridor, he thought. The last thing I saw was the corridor… Two figures were hunched over him. “Mom?” he screamed… no, not Mom… this one was different. The other figure was larger like his father, but that one too felt different. He looked down and he saw a third person lying on the floor. Someone dressed in black, with big black boots covered in white dust.
    Sudden blackness descended and then intense movement. He was moving at the speed of light. Trees and houses flickered by. Below him appeared two men standing in a dark living room. The shorter one buttoned up in a yellow cardigan and bent over to slide his feet into a pair of slippers. But the other didn’t feel like a man at all. It felt more like a shadow pretending to be a man: something terrible hidden inside a shroud of blackness. The shadow turned and seemed to look up at him. A lump of charcoal without a single distinguishing feature… except its eyes. They were milky white and cold, like two distant stars in the vastness of space. A glimmer of light was refracted from the shadow’s inside pocket. There was something there. Something metallic and shiny. The handle of a knife? Lysander wondered, a sharp chill shooting through his veins.
    The shorter man in the yellow cardigan motioned and walked into the kitchen. The shadow followed, leaving part of a shoe print behind, as if it had stepped in mud outside and was tracking it through the house. Panic gripped Lysander. Couldn’t this guy see he had let a monster into his house? It wasn’t trying to sell him a subscription to Sports Illustrated or get him to change his long-distance carrier. This thing, whatever it was, meant to kill him and Lysander was powerless to do anything about it.
    The kitchen door swung open and the two men walked into the living room laughing, the thin man with the cardigan first. They stopped by the fireplace. Then the dark man cupped the other’s face. The man in the cardigan squirmed uneasily and then settled, his eyes blinking with mute expectation. They’re about to kiss, Lysander thought, puzzled. Then suddenly, the smaller man’s eyes grew wide with terror and he reached for the shadow, only to have the shadow slip away and crumple to the ground. Now only the man in the cardigan was standing, but there was something different about him. Even from far away Lysander could see the difference, but didn’t quite believe it. His eyes had become milky white. Somehow, the shadow had snuck into him like a fox in a henhouse. Cardigan leaned over the shadow-man, fell into his coat and removed a long blade.