Blood of Gato

William and Sam sat on the living room floor, surrounded by boxes and crates coated in a thick layer of gray dust. The room looked less like a home and more like an archaeological dig: yellowed newspapers spilled across the floor, broken clocks and forgotten toys peeked out from the clutter, and books with cracked leather covers threatened to fall apart at the slightest touch.

Their mother had insisted on a grand clean-up—it was autumn, and she planned to hold a yard sale before the attic and basement disappeared entirely under years of hoarded junk.

Sam dug into one of the boxes with an enthusiasm that made her look like a treasure hunter rather than a child elbow-deep in trash. Every discovery—a one-eyed doll, a faded letter, a rusted trinket—was presented to her brother as though it were priceless.

William, on the other hand, sifted through the piles with zero interest. The dust irritated him, and the whole task felt like punishment. He silently dragged a stack of books closer to himself, when something thin and papery slipped from between the volumes—a small packet of photographs.

"Hm?" he murmured, picking them up.

The photos showed their grandparents, smiling, radiant, impossibly young. The images looked like postcards from another life: bustling Moroccan bazaars alive with color, London streets drowned in gray fog, Egyptian pyramids under a blistering sun.

One picture caught William's eye in particular—it was taken at the monument of the Three Wise Monkeys, each covering eyes, ears, or mouth. Smirking, he waved the photograph toward his sister.

"Look, sis," he teased. "Found some of your childhood portraits."

Sam froze only for a moment, then scowled, slapping her knee in irritation.

"William! Can't you ever make a normal joke?"

"Sorry," he said, grinning wider. "But hey, some things never change, right?"

She muttered something under her breath and turned away, pointedly resuming her excavation of another box. Her irritation only delighted him more, and he laughed louder than necessary. Hoisting a box into his arms, he started toward the basement stairs.

The staircase groaned beneath his steps, each plank creaking like a warning. Halfway down, though, something shifted. The air thickened, heavy and suffocating, and the boards seemed to ripple under his feet as if he were walking on waves.

"What the…?" William muttered, clutching the railing for balance.

A pounding built in his skull, his vision swimming. Then warmth spilled down his upper lip. Blood—thick and bright—dripped onto the lid of the box, blooming into dark, wet stains.

He froze. His breathing quickened. Then, without warning, a blinding, fiery red light burst from inside his head, swallowing his sight. His legs betrayed him, slipping out from under him. He crashed onto the damp basement floor, the box splitting apart around him.

Darkness surged in. But it wasn't mere unconsciousness—the world itself was changing.

******

When he opened his eyes, William stood in a forest at night. The trees clawed at the sky like skeletal fingers, their branches twisting in grotesque angles. The air reeked of decay, the stench so thick it gnawed its way into his lungs. Through the hanging mist, he saw it: a cottage. It didn't look built so much as grown out of the shadows themselves.

Its door creaked open on rusted hinges, revealing a hollow blackness inside. An invitation. A command. His stomach lurched.

"No, wait…" he whispered. But his body stepped forward without his consent. One step, then another—his limbs moving like a marionette pulled by unseen strings.

Inside, a fire burned in the hearth. Yet instead of warmth, it radiated a piercing, unnatural cold. Shapes crouched in the corners: blood-caked knives, iron-bound tomes wrapped in skin, pages etched with symbols that twisted out of comprehension the moment he tried to look at them.

And then he saw the table.

At first, he thought it held the carcass of some animal. But as he drew closer, horror froze him in place—it was a body. Human. Or what was left of one. Skin peeled away in sheets, ribs and organs grotesquely exposed. Lifeless eyes stared upward in an eternal scream.

"My God…" William gagged, clapping a trembling hand over his mouth.

He wanted to howl, to run, but his throat tightened as if gripped from the inside. His legs rooted to the ground; his body refused him.

Then—the corpse moved.

Its hand shot up with a wet snap, seizing William's wrist. The touch was clammy, freezing, slick with something he dared not name. From the torn ruin of its throat came a sound—half rasp, half whisper—the voice trembling straight into his bones:

"P… p-please…" The word cracked like dry wood. "H-help… me… It… isss… already… so close…"

At that instant, the forest outside shuddered. Something was moving out there—snapping branches, forcing its way closer.

William clenched his teeth so tightly his jaw ached. The corpse's grip on his wrist was impossibly strong, far too strong for dead flesh. The touch leached into him like ice pressed to bare skin, as though he had clasped frozen iron left out in the winter night.

"Let… let me go…" he hissed, yanking back, but the hand refused to unclench.

Panic strangled him, crushing down harder with each futile attempt. He realized now—here, in this place, none of the familiar laws applied. This wasn't a dream, no matter how much he begged his mind to treat it as one. He could feel the splinters of the wooden floor beneath his knees, could taste the rancid musk of rotting meat, could smell the burnt char of the fire that gave no warmth.

Suddenly, the dead head twitched. Its cracked lips parted wider, oozing flakes of blackened blood. The broken breath rasped louder, more distinct.

"You… don't understand… it's already here…"

The words tunneled into William's skull, vibrating deep inside his bones.

His lungs strangled shut. He couldn't draw air—couldn't even manage a gasp. An icy weight clenched his ribs, a frostbound vice around his chest. A swollen vein pulsed thick in his neck; he could hear his own heart thrashing inside his throat, as if it would tear itself out through shreds of flesh.

Desperation made him lash out. He slammed his free hand down on the corpse's wrist. The bones beneath the mottled skin cracked with a brittle snap. But the hand didn't release. The fingers dug deeper, puncturing flesh, and ribbons of blood trickled down his arm.

Outside, something shifted—slow, deliberate, heavier than any man. The ground itself sagged under its weight. Branches snapped so close to the cabin walls it sounded as if teeth were breaking in the dark. William's teeth clicked against each other uncontrollably.

"It comes…" whispered the ruin of a mouth. Rotting lips spat flecks of foul saliva against his cheek. "You've… already… been chosen…"

Revulsion jolted through him. He tried to scream, to tear the sound from his chest, but what came out was no human cry. His voice doubled, split into twin tones—one his own, the other something else, something speaking with him from inside his body.

The corpse released him. He collapsed to his knees, wheezing, clutching at his throat, mouth gulping air like a drowning man dragged from the depths. His ragged gasps were swallowed up by a new sound: the groan of wood.

Beneath the table, the very floorboards were moving. Not trembling—wriggling. Something swelled and shifted just beneath the planks, something vast forcing its way upward, slithering toward his feet with agonizing patience.

Terror sliced into his brain like a hot blade. For the first time since this nightmare began, William broke.

"P-please! Stop! Stop it!" he screeched.

But the voice that bellowed was no longer his. It echoed, doubling again, words folding over themselves—one inside his skull, one spilling into the room, alien and wet.

The corpse's grip released… and silence fell. A silence so absolute it pressed down like the bottom of an ocean.

William lifted his head. The fire was gone. The corners of the hut swelled with blackness that moved and pulsed of its own accord. In that thick and shifting dark, something unfolded itself. Shapes stretched into unnerving silhouettes—tall, bent, grotesquely jointed, inhuman in every line.

And then, it stepped forward.

William's reflex was to turn, to run—but the decision alone damned him. His heart froze mid-beat, as though gripped in a glacial hand. His blood was cold poison in his veins.

Something stood in the doorway.

Calling it human would have been blasphemy.

It towered against the crooked beams, its head nearly scraping the ceiling. Its skin was white as candle wax, slick and ghastly, scored with deep, ancient scars. Across that pallid surface seeped ragged stains, dark blotches like congealed blood that had long ago dried and then been made to bleed again.

From its skull hung long, sodden hair—black, rotten-smelling, as though steeped in grave earth and decay. It poured over its face like a curtain, hiding most of its features.

Yet William felt the gaze through that veil. It crawled under his skin, a weight on his chest, a gaze that did not look at him but into him.

And when it shifted—just fractionally, just a breath—the whole cabin seemed to sag in its shadow.