How They Come In

SCREAMS!!! Contest Entry 1/27/22
Prompt: There's a hole found in the bathroom wall. Where does it lead?
2,499 words

Kneeling beside my bed, Dad’s head disappeared underneath.

“Well?” I asked, shivering in fear.

Suddenly, Dad’s head popped above the edge of the mattress, inches from mine, startling me. He smiled, but his eyes, while warm, were reticent. I could tell that he was hiding something from me. I pulled the covers up to my chin.

“Nothing to be afraid of under there. No monsters,” he said, rising from his knees beside my bed, his thin lips twitching ever so slightly. “See, kiddo?”

He reached out, as if to pinch my cheek affectionately in his usual way. However, he seemed to think better of it, his hand withdrawing awkwardly without ever touching me. As it took its place at his side, I noticed a slight tremor in his fingers.

My eyes rose to meet his, except they couldn’t. His gaze was averted.

“Thanks for checking, Dad.” I forced my lips into a smile. “I’m glad you didn’t find any monsters. I just thought that might be how they come in.”

“Nope. That isn’t the way that the monsters come in,” he replied ominously, still looking at my blankets rather than my face. He seemed to want to say more but didn’t. Instead, he turned, reaching for the lamp on my nightstand.

“Good night,” he said as he clicked it off. I shuddered again. I hated the dark. At least it was better when Dad was nearby. “Just remember that I love you always, Elizabeth.”

He turned and strode quickly out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving me to stare at my ceiling in utter darkness. What was Dad hiding? Why was he so nervous? He had been about as wound up as I’d ever seen him, despite his effort not to show it.

As I lay there, mind whirring through the possibilities, I gradually became aware of hushed voices coming from outside my bedroom door. Curious, knowing that sleep wouldn’t come for the foreseeable future⁠—not with Dad in the state he was in⁠—I rose from my bed and pattered, barefoot, toward the door. Pressing my ear to the cool, painted wood, I strained to hear the barely audible speech. It was Dad. He was speaking with someone. Someone with a low, deep, smoky voice. I managed to pick out only every few words.

“...have her.”

“You seek to alter…(muffled)?”

“Yes.”

“(muffled)...offer in return?”

“(inaudible).”

“Then, it is agreed.”

There were a few more sounds that I couldn’t identify. Then something that sounded like the crinkle of wrapping paper from a different location. Maybe the bathroom? After that, I heard nothing.

I waited several minutes, but, hearing nothing, I pulled my door carefully open. I stepped silently into the hall, feeling a strange chill in the air. Attempting to rub warmth into my bare arms, I wandered into the living room. “Dad?” I rasped in a voice barely rising above the volume of a whisper.

There was no answer.

I straightened, cleared my throat, then called out in a loud, clear voice. “Dad?”

But again, there was no answer⁠—only the lingering flutter of nervousness in my voice as it reverberated through the silent room.

I ran to his bedroom to find his bed made and no one present. I ran through the apartment, flipping on all the lights until I stood panting in the bathroom under the steady, droning buzz of fluorescent lights, my father nowhere to be found.

That’s when I heard it.

It was the same crinkling sound I’d heard through the door. Much fainter, but definitely there. It was coming from somewhere in the bathroom. I inspected the cramped room, probing around the mirror with my fingers, along the edge of the tub with my eyes. Finally, I dropped to the floor, craning my neck until my head swooped under the sink, next to the toilet. A breeze brushed my cheeks as my eyes saw the edge of a flap of ancient wallpaper flutter against the wall.

That was the source of the sound!

Cocking my head, I studied the loose wallpaper for a moment before reaching out to peel it away from the wall.

Behind the yellowing paper was a gaping hole. I peered into the darkness, taking note of the edges of what appeared to be some sort of tunnel. It was a large cylindrical tube made of concrete or stone. It was rough on the inside, as if thousands of small, sharp-edged stones had been splashed onto the concrete as it had finished drying.

As my eyes scanned the coarse surface of the tunnel’s interior, I found myself scratching at my face, nails reddening my cheeks. I stopped, giving my own fingers a curious look, then rose to retrieve a flashlight from the kitchen drawer. When I returned, I fell back to my knees in the bathroom, aiming the light inside. I couldn’t see to the end⁠, but the rest of it looked much the same⁠—a long tube, perhaps two feet in diameter, with a rough inner surface. It angled downward until the circular walls disappeared into darkness.

Could Dad be down there?

It didn’t seem likely. If he had gone in, he would have had to pull the wallpaper back up behind him, and the tunnel was too small for even me to be able to turn around once inside. And I was half my dad’s size.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where else to look. My father wasn’t in the apartment, and I was fairly certain the door hadn’t opened. I couldn’t imagine that he had climbed out the window⁠—we were several floors up, so, strange as it was, I decided that he may have actually crawled down this odd tunnel.

I thought about the other voice that I’d heard just minutes before Dad’s disappearance. That of the mysterious visitor. How had he gotten into our apartment? And left? Had he come from the tunnel?

Or maybe he hadn’t been here at all. Maybe Dad had put him on speaker, and it was simply a phone call? He had sure sounded as if he had been in the apartment, but it was possible that it had been a phone call.

Scratching at my tingling cheeks again, I sighed, still staring into the darkness. There was only one way to find out. I ducked my head into the opening, the musty, dank air hitting my nostrils immediately. Wrinkling my nose, I fought back the urge to wretch, ignored my disgust, and climbed inside. Dampness soaked into my cotton nightgown as my knees pressed its fabric into the rough interior of the large pipe. Trepidation causing my heartbeat to flutter, I began to crawl downward, descending into the inky darkness. As I moved through the nasty pipe, the jagged edges of the rocky surface scraped my hands, rubbing my knees raw even through the thin cotton fabric of my nightgown. The flashlight, clutched in my fingers, clunked against murky stone with sharp, percussive cracks, as if it were the beat of a drum accompanying a dark ceremony that would end in some sort of ritual sacrifice.

As I continued onward, the flashlight began to dim and flicker. My heart leapt into my throat, sudden fear lancing through me as the thought of being consumed in absolute darkness flashed through my panicking mind

Thankfully, however, the flashlight didn’t die⁠—at least not entirely. Dim yellowish light continued to spray across the tunnel floor, illuminating a spot perhaps 2-3 feet in front of me. But I was thankful for that small, oddly formed oval of non-darkness. It made all the difference in the world. Monsters lived in the dark. People lived in the light. I was definitely a light sort of person.

I scratched at my cheeks again, noticing that the itch that had been plaguing me seemed to have spread to other areas of my body. Finally, forcing myself to stop, I picked up the flashlight again. As I caught a glimpse of my fingernails in the light, I saw that there was blood on them. What was that from? Had I really scratched my own cheeks bloody?

I set my jaw, resolving not to scratch my itchy cheeks any more. Instead, I began to scratch my palms and shins, contorting my body to reach each patch of tingling, tickling skin within the tiny space.

Eventually, I continued onward. As I did, flashlight growing ever dimmer, I noticed that my back was now scraping the top of the tunnel. Another shudder of fear rippled through me. The pipe must be narrowing!

I squeezed my shoulders down, crawling now on my forearms, extending my legs further behind me to avoid grinding my back against the upper portion of the pipe. I paused, however, as I felt a sudden wriggling sensation in my left cheek.

Shocked, I stopped, concentrating fully on the feeling inside my cheek. It almost felt as if a tiny worm were burrowing into my flesh.

I shrieked, horrified at the mental image, immediately breaking my vow not to scratch anymore. I didn’t care if I bled. I just wanted whatever was causing that icky sensation out of me! I raked my skin with my fingers, clawing away at the spot where I’d felt it, but I couldn’t seem to stop the wriggling sensation.

Wincing, I dug deeper with my nails, the withering burst of pain that followed a welcome relief from the horrible sensation of burrowing. I felt warm, sticky liquid flow onto my fingers, but I kept scratching, harder and harder, until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Finally, I stopped, panting as I lay on my belly. The only sound in the dank space was the sound of my breathing. After a moment, however, the burrowing feeling started again. In both cheeks this time.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!” I screamed, launching into a new flurry of frenzied scratching. As I worked at both cheeks, I began to feel a similar sensation in my palms.

A sob bubbled from my stomach all the way to my throat, bursting forth with a gurgling moan. At the same moment, I felt the top of the pipe touch the crown of my head. I froze, my sob transforming into a quiet whimper in the darkness.

The pressure on the top of my head increased. Slowly. Inexorably. The feeling brought with it a fresh wave of dread. The walls of the tunnel were moving. It was shrinking around me, tightening as if I were inside the belly of a snake as it clenched its long, slithering body around me.

Then, as if fate wanted to pile a bit more misfortune onto my misery, the flashlight gave out entirely.

A bellow of terrified desperation belching forth from the deepest pit of my clenching, heaving stomach, I shot forward with sudden urgency. Wriggling and squirming, I did my best imitation of whatever creatures continued to wriggle deeper into my bloody, aching cheeks.

What were these things? Was the roughness inside the tunnel not rocks? Were they something else? Eggs? Spores? Pods? Or had these things gotten into me through the air? I remembered the wisp of air that had brushed my cheeks back in the bathroom. Had it carried something within it? Some tiny, invisible creatures? An infection of some sort?

Eyes wide with terror, the squirming sensation within my skin intensifying even as it spread, I continued to struggle forward as quickly as I could. Now, my backside was scraping the inside of the tunnel, as were my shoulders. Determined to reduce the friction and speed my progress, I pressed my hands before me as if I were swimming the breaststroke. My head fell, chin cracking the curved floor of the tunnel as my upper body lost the support of my forearms. I felt the well of blood and its trickle down my neck, but I ignored it, determined to continue forward at all costs. I needed to get out of here before the tunnel shrank to the point where I could no longer move and crushed me.

Just as despair threatened to consume my terrified mind, however, my saucered eyes detected a faint light at the end of the pipe. But it looked so far away! Could I make it?

I had to try.

Squirming through the tunnel with my hands clasped before me, I scraped my elbows and hips forward, using my knees to wriggle just like the awful things that seemed to be inside me, will alone fueling my frantic attempt at escape.

The pipe pressed into me from all sides, but the light was close, now just a few yards away.

As I neared the exit, squeezing ahead inch by inch, I heard a voice! The same one I’d heard earlier. I was sure of it! I paused to listen, sensing that its owner was just outside the mouth of the tunnel.

“...were the terms of our deal, were they not? I would choose you rather than your daughter as the final Infected, sufficient to close our tunnel to your world for another 90 years. As you can see, I’m keeping my end of the bargain. The tunnel to Earth is shrinking to a close even now. It’s too bad, really. All those precious monster larvae inside, doomed to death. Such a waste.”

Monster larvae? So my body was infested with monsters? Oh my God! I had to get out of here. Just a few more feet! I tried to move, but my hesitation had cost me my momentum. Now, all I felt were the cold, sharp edges of the tunnel’s lining pushing into my skin from every direction. I tried again to move, willing myself forward. The tendons in my neck strained. I grunted. My shoulders shifted slightly against the stony interior of the pipe, but it was no use. I simply couldn’t move.

As the tunnel began to compress my chest, making breathing difficult, I heard my father reply to the voice.

“Those were the terms. Thank you for taking me instead of her. I wouldn’t be able to bear it if she were to become infected.”

My breath caught. I stared at the shrinking circle of light before me, horrified that I had unknowingly made my father’s worst nightmare come true. I tried to suck in another breath. To wail my frustrations. To call out to my father. But I couldn’t. The tunnel was simply too tight. I felt panic wrack my slender form, my heartbeat thudding loudly in my ears, faster and faster. After a moment, darkness began to creep into my vision from every side. Tears streamed down my cheeks as my bones snapped and cracked until finally, even my heart was silenced and the blackness consumed me.