I

When the smoke eventually cleared, Paul collapsed into Norah’s arms. He felt no heavier than a dry twig and his eyes were rolling back into his head. His face was a horrible pale color and there were dark hollows under his eyes. Norah felt sticky and the taste of blood made her want to vomit as it drooled from the corners of her mouth. Her face, neck and chest were drenched in it.

Norah dropped to her knees, cradling Paul, who became a dead weight in her arms. She shook him, and although still alive, his eyes refused to focus and lulled around in his skull like loose marbles. His white face was splattered in blood and it had soaked through his shirt and jacket, still dribbling out in pitiful spurts.

“Hey, wake up, wake up!” Norah slapped him hard enough to leave a mark on his cheek.

Paul gasped, causing blood to sputter from the gaping would in his neck, although the blood was slowing down, which Norah was certain wasn’t a good sign.

“I’m sorry, please wake up.”

Norah slapped him again, and for a brief moment, Paul’s eyes focused on her, but they were filled with confused terror. He helplessly flailed in an attempt to free himself from her grasp, before he slumped down and his eyes once again rolled back so that they were bulging at her like boiled eggs.

It was happening all over again, this was the reason they’d had to run. Norah didn’t know how she kept finding herself in these situations. Norah saw flashes of her and Susan hanging out in the park, drinking the vodka she’d stolen from Mary’s liquor cabinet and talking under the stars. Out of nowhere a burst of energy had hit Norah and moments later she was ripping into Susan’s throat.

That moment would haunt her forever, now history was repeating itself and Norah had no idea why any of it was happening. It was like deja vu, except instead of Susan’s lifeless body laying in her arms it was this stranger. She didn’t even know if he was friend or foe, but there he was dying all the same.

Though she had no right to them, tears began flooding down Norah’s face as she held Paul to her body, his heartbeat so weak she could barely feel it, “I’m so sorry”.

Suddenly the weight of him became too much and Norah had to lay him on the ground, where he flopped down like a rag doll. Her panicked hand hovered over his neck in an attempt to stop the bleeding, but his wound was too large for it to be of any use. She attempted to rip a strip off her shirt, but her hands were too slippery, and it likely wouldn’t have been enough to help anyway.

Instead, she knelt there helplessly crying, wishing there was someone there. If only she had her backpack so she could call someone. She placed her hands under Paul’s head to try to get him to focus on her, “Hold on, I’ll go get help–”.

This time grasping her hand, Paul opened his mouth in an attempt to speak, but was only able to spit up blood.

“Just hold on!”

Paul’s eyes widened, and Norah knew what that meant, she remembered the way Susan looked at her. That look of fear and betrayal before the light died in her eyes forever. Paul’s body jolted and his eyes became slack and lifeless.

Norah jumped up, staring down at his body in horror, there was only one thing left to do – run.

----------------------------------------

II

Did she seriously just leave him there? Josh stood frozen in shock as Norah sprinted away into the darkness, leaving the injured man to die in all alone in a dark alley. Josh’s mind raced through all the possible explanations for what he’d seen in front of his eyes, but every single one came up short. What happened defied explanation.

Shaking some sense into himself, Josh ran to the chainlink fence separating the alley and climbed over it, snagging his t-shirt on the way down. He scanned the area, concerned that Norah might come back, before he dropped down beside Paul and jabbed at his collarbone.

“Hey, can you hear me?”

When Paul didn’t respond, Josh tried to think back on his first aid training, he hadn’t been keeping up since his dad went to jail, but it was somewhere buried in his mind. Okay, we check for a response. Josh jabbed Paul in the collarbone once more, harder, “Hey, my name’s Josh, I’m here to help. Can you hear me?”

Paul’s eyes fluttered and he gave a weak gasp, momentarily focusing on Josh’s face before he lost comprehension again. Relieved, Josh removed his sweatshirt, and putting his hand under Paul’s neck, he pressed it against the wound. It was a terrible injury, like someone had hacked at his neck with a chainsaw.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

The last time Josh had seen this much blood was the day he came home from middle school to find the Deadbeat had tried to put his mom’s head through a wall. After that, the drunk bastard cracked her skull so hard against the fireplace that she’d been barely conscious for several days. It was hard to imagine another human could do this to someone.

Was Norah human? Her face changed, it was like nothing Josh had ever seen before. That couldn’t have been real, surely, maybe a trick of the light? Josh had heard of myths like the beast of Gévaudan or that dancing plague in 1518, so it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility, but in Hogarth?

She actually drank his blood. Her face changed and she drank his blood. What did that make her some kind of vampire? It was too horrible to imagine. The worst part was that she left him there to die. Josh always prided himself on his ability to read people, but now he was starting to question that. Norah seemed like such a nice person, but underneath she was harboring a monster.

The craziest part was that Halle was actually right about someone for once. For all her mistrust and assuming the worst in people, the stopped clock finally hit a home run. Although, Josh severely wished it hadn’t. If only for the sake of this poor, helpless guy bleeding out all over his shirt.

Reaching about for his cellphone, “Stay with me, okay–” said Josh.

In a brief moment that Paul was lucid, he stared into Josh’s eyes, squeezing his hand with surprising strength. He wanted to live, Josh could see it in his eyes.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Hi! Yes – there's been an attack I need an ambulance. The guy... he's hurt real bad.”

“Okay, stay calm, we’ll get an ambulance over to you now. What’s your location?”

“East Hill Industrial Estate, near the Cannery”, Josh glanced around him disorientated, he hated the fact they’d blocked off so many routes through the estate thanks to a string of burglaries. “Tell them to take the West Entrance or they’ll be blocked off from my location. If they take the west route they’ll drive right past us”.

“I’ve added the note to their manifest”, said the operator, her calm voice helping to ease Josh’s anxiety, “Is there anything else?”

Josh looked down at Paul, “Yeah, tell them to hurry”.

----------------------------------------

III

Norah sprinted through the estate with absolutely no idea where she was or where she was headed. After hitting several dead ends she had to stop to catch her breath. She stashed herself in a dark place behind an old rusty dumpster where she leaned against a wall and before she knew it she was slumped on the ground.

Norah ran her hands through her hair, only to realize they were caked in blood causing the strands to stick to her fingers in a grotesque manner. She let out a wail of sorrow and aggravation that didn’t even sound human before she began weeping into her filthy hands. They’d only been in town for one day and already Norah had found a way to spectacularly screw things up. What was she going to tell mom?

Norah tried to force herself to her feet, but they were like jelly beneath her and she ended up back on the ground. Maybe she’d never be able to get back up and she could just die there and then everyone’s problems would be solved. The thing Norah was most afraid of, most disgusted by, was that some sick part deep down inside of her… liked all of this.

The pain and the chaos, it fed something deep within her. It was the same feeling she got whenever she heard the thoughts of those around her. This sick, sadistic desire to goad them. Twist the knife and push them to embrace their darkest impulses. It’s what caused her to go off on Halle, to say awful things to her mother.

She felt the smoke licking the edges of her eye, and like aways, Norah had to fight the feeling down, bury it as deeply as possible. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there until she was roused by the sound of sirens fast approaching, moments later an ambulance whipped past where she was hiding back in the direction she’d come from.

Norah shakily got to her feet and peered around the corner, where she saw the ambulance skid to a stop up ahead, followed by two paramedics running into the night with their medical bags. Part of Norah wanted to chase those sirens, in the vain hope that maybe Paul was okay. Maybe she wasn’t the worst person to ever live.

However, the urge to escape was far greater, and Norah found herself sprinting out of the estate where she met a dark back road that was lined by trees that grew down a steep, rocky incline. Wanting to remain unseen, Norah dashed across the street and made her way through the trees, despite having no idea where she was headed or if she was even still in Hogarth. It didn’t matter.

After what she did, maybe it was better that she got gone. The ground was loose and it was difficult to keep her footing, causing Norah to skid down the incline and slam into a road marker. She yelped in pain, then laid there dazed, staring up at the stars above. Her shoulder was throbbing, but there was no time to stop. Disorientated, Norah got to her feet and stumbled into the road, just as a white sedan came around the bend, dazzling Norah with its headlights.

The startled driver attempted to brake, but the distance was too short and the car struck Norah, throwing her onto the hood and rolling off onto the ground. The driver, a gentle-looking man in his fifties, hopped out with a look of utter terror on his face. He froze in shock at the sight of Norah, filthy and covered in blood, rolling around on the ground in pain.

“Oh my lord, don’t panic, Miss. I’ll call an ambulance”, he said, rushing to his car to grab a cellphone.

“No!” Norah bellowed, that inhuman quality shattering the air, as she sent him skidding along the road with merely a thought.

The man sat up, seemingly uninjured, but petrified and confused from being flung across the road like a rag doll. With terrible effort, Norah pushed herself up onto her feet. She could barely move her arm, which had to be broken or at least dislocated, swinging like some useless dead-weight by her side.

Despite what had happened, the man’s expression shifted to concern, “Miss, you shouldn’t move”. He hopped up and tried to approach Norah, only to be knocked back once again, albeit less violently.

“Stay back, please!” Norah’s arm was searing with pain and she just wanted to get away.

“I’m not going to hurt you”, the mean said earnestly from the ground.

Norah scoffed, shaking her head, “It’s not me I’m worried about”.

Without another word, she ran off into the woods, with the man kept calling after her. Norah didn’t care. She needed to get gone.