Chapter 5: Red Light, Green Light

Chapter 5: Red Light, Green Light

The distorted chirp echoed in the sudden, crushing silence of the apartment. It was a sound both familiar and hideously warped, a memory of kindness twisted into a threat. The low murmur of the television documentary was a flimsy shield against the malevolent presence that now filled the hallway.

Chrr-ee-irrp.

The sound was closer this time.

Elara’s blood ran cold, her muscles locked in a state of primal paralysis. Liam was on his feet, the half-asleep haze violently ripped from him. He moved with a jerky, adrenaline-fueled purpose, his eyes wide and fixed on the impenetrable darkness of the hall.

“Stay here,” he commanded, his voice a low, tight command that did nothing to hide the tremor running through it. He scanned the living room, his gaze landing on the set of black iron fireplace tools standing beside the cold, unused hearth. He grabbed the poker, its weight a small, inadequate comfort in his hand.

“Liam, no,” Elara breathed, finding her voice. “Don’t go in there. It’s a trap.”

“We’re already in it,” he shot back, not looking at her. “It’s in our home. There’s nowhere else to go.”

He took a step toward the hallway, raising the poker like a sword. Elara scrambled off the couch, her phone clutched in her hand. “Wait! At least let me…” Her thumb fumbled across the screen, activating the flashlight. A brilliant, clean beam of white light sliced through the gloom, cutting a sharp path down the narrow passage.

And the light found it.

It stood halfway down the hall, and the breath caught in Elara’s throat in a choked, painful sob. The word ‘cat’ was a joke, a laughable understatement for the thing that confronted them. It was larger, easily the size of a lean greyhound, but its proportions were a study in anatomical horror. Its legs were too long, bent backwards at the joints like a bird’s, ending in the same disproportionately large paws, now tipped with claws like black, curved daggers that dug into the hardwood floor.

Its patchwork fur was sparse now, clinging in greasy, matted clumps to an emaciated frame, revealing the pale, greyish skin beneath. The sleek, velvety black patch on its back was larger, a creeping stain of alien vitality on a dying form. Its head was more skull-like than feline, and its ears twisted and swiveled like fleshy antennae.

But the eyes were the epicenter of the nightmare. They were just as she remembered from her horrifying glimpse in the kitchen: not eyes at all, but two perfect, round voids of light-swallowing blackness.

The instant the beam of light touched it, the creature froze. It had been in mid-stride, one horrifyingly elongated foreleg lifted, its head turned at an unnatural angle. It held the pose, a grotesque statue carved from shadow and bone. The game had begun.

“Don’t look away, Liam,” Elara whispered, her voice trembling so hard the words barely formed. “Don’t take your eyes off it.”

“The front door…” Liam whispered back, his gaze locked on the monster. The front door was on the other side of it. The hallway was a bottleneck, and they were on the wrong end. They were trapped. Their only way out was the bedroom behind them.

Slowly, carefully, Liam began to back away, pulling Elara with him. “Keep the light on it. Whatever you do, keep the light on it.”

Elara’s hand was shaking so badly the beam of light danced and jittered, but she kept it centered on the creature’s chest. For three steps, they moved in synchronized, terrified retreat. Three steps toward the relative safety of the bedroom door.

Then Liam’s heel caught on the edge of the area rug. He stumbled, his arms windmilling for a second to regain his balance. For a single, fatal moment, his eyes darted to the floor.

The sound was not of footsteps. It was a dry, rapid skittering, like a thousand giant cockroaches scurrying across the floor. In the split second Liam had looked away, the creature had covered half the remaining distance between them. It was frozen again now, closer, so much closer, its skull-like face angled down, its black-hole eyes seeming to stare right through them. The poker in Liam’s hand suddenly looked like a child’s toy.

“God,” he gasped, scrambling back. “It’s so fast.”

“It’s the game,” Elara said, her mind racing, frantically trying to piece together the rules of this waking nightmare. “Red Light, Green Light. It only moves when we’re not looking. We both have to watch it. At the same time.”

They were at the bedroom doorway now. The creature was less than ten feet away. The air had grown cold, thick with an odor like ozone and old blood, the phantom smell from the kitchen returned with a vengeance.

“Get the door open,” Liam ordered, planting his feet, holding the poker in a two-handed grip. “I’ll watch it.”

“No, if I look away to find the doorknob—”

“I won’t blink,” he promised, his voice raw with a desperate, shaky resolve.

Elara trusted him. She kept her eyes on the monster for another precious second, then risked a glance away, her free hand fumbling behind her for the cool brass of the doorknob.

Skitter-skitter-skitter.

“Liam!” she screamed, snapping her head back.

It was on him. Liam had kept his eyes open, but the creature had exploited her momentary distraction. It moved with a speed that defied physics, a blur of wrong angles. Liam swung the poker, a desperate, wild arc of black iron.

There was a clang, not of metal hitting flesh and bone, but of metal striking granite. The creature swatted the poker aside with one of its forelimbs. The iron rod bent at a thirty-degree angle and clattered uselessly to the floor. The thing’s head lunged forward, its jaw unhinging, opening impossibly wide to reveal rows of needle-like fangs.

But it didn’t bite. It stopped, a hair's breadth from Liam’s throat, the moment Elara’s terrified gaze and the beam of her flashlight fixed upon it once more. It froze, its grotesque mouth wide open, a low, guttural growl rumbling from deep within its chest. It was enjoying this. The terror was the point.

They were trapped at the threshold, Liam pinned against the doorframe, Elara a few feet away, the only thing holding the creature at bay the fragile beam of her phone. Her arm ached, her muscles screaming from the tension of holding it perfectly still.

Then the creature did something new. It slowly, deliberately, closed its mouth with a soft click. It tilted its skeletal head, its void-like eyes seeming to study them with an ancient, predatory intelligence.

The distorted chirp echoed again, but this time it was followed by a new sound. A voice.

“Elara…”

The voice was a perfect, horrifying mimicry of Liam’s, a digital copy stripped of all warmth and life.

“Help me, Elara…”

“Don’t listen to it,” the real Liam choked out, sweat beading on his forehead. “It’s trying to trick you.”

Elara’s mind was fracturing under the strain. It was learning. It was adapting its psychological warfare. The simple game wasn’t enough anymore; it was adding new layers, new torments. They couldn’t outrun it. They couldn’t fight it. And they couldn’t keep staring at it forever. Eventually, they would blink. They would have to.

And then she realized. The game was about sight. About observation. The creature was bound by the rule of being seen. What if she could change what it meant to be seen? Her thumb, slick with sweat, slid across her phone’s screen, her movements clumsy but driven by a sudden, desperate spark of an idea. Away from the flashlight icon. To the camera app.

“Don’t look away, Elara…” the thing whispered in Liam’s dead voice.

“I’m not,” she whispered back, her finger hovering over the shutter button. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat counting down her last seconds. “Liam! When I do it, get through the door!”

“Do what?” he gasped.

She didn’t answer. She took a deep breath, aimed the camera lens directly at those two bottomless pits of darkness, and pressed the button.

A flash of brilliant, searing white light filled the hallway, momentarily bleaching the world of color.

The creature didn’t just freeze. It reacted. A shriek tore through the apartment, a sound of tearing metal and digital static, a high-frequency scream of something alien and wounded. It recoiled violently, its long limbs flailing as it staggered back a step, shielding its face-that-wasn’t-a-face.

It was all the time they needed.

“Now!” Elara screamed.

Liam lunged backward through the doorway, pulling her with him. They tumbled into the bedroom in a heap of tangled limbs. Liam slammed the heavy oak door shut, the sound booming like a gunshot. He fumbled with the lock, the click of the deadbolt the most beautiful sound Elara had ever heard.

They collapsed against the door, their chests heaving, their bodies trembling uncontrollably. On the other side, there was silence. The horrible screaming had stopped. The skittering was gone.

But they knew it was still out there. The game wasn’t over. It was just waiting, patiently, in the dark. And it was learning new rules.