ZERO
By: Michael McBride
Publisher: Necessary Evil Press

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Brian's eyes snapped open the moment Buck started to growl.

His heartbeat immediately accelerated, sweat beading his forehead.

He lay there a moment, not daring to move, all of his senses attuned to his surroundings. Without raising his head to draw attention to his movement, he tried to peek at the doorway to the bedroom, where that first growl had already stilled.

Buck's dark silhouette was framed in the doorway, tail fixed rigidly.

Brian pinched his eyes shut and tried to block out the sounds and the damp fear that was slithering all over his body, clinging to the sheets, but to no avail. The longer he closed his eyes, the more intense the fear became, until it was almost claustrophobic, forcing him to pry his eyelids open.

The growling snapped into a barrage of barking.

Before he even consciously formulated the thought, Brian leapt from bed and dashed toward the doorway, slapping the wall to flip on the overhead light.

Brian scoured the hallway, expecting someone to dash across the shadows toward the front door.

All was still.

This was stupid. He was going to drive himself out of his mind if he didn't seize this crazy horse by the reins right now.

Without taking his eyes from the threshold, Brian backed toward the stack of boxes, fumbling with the folded lid of the top one before finally opening it. He reached in and fished around until he found something suitably long and hard, pulling it quickly out and holding it high over his shoulder.

The entirety of his flesh was taut with goosebumps, every single hair rising uncomfortably erect.

Slowly . . . quietly . . . he crept across the hardwood, conscious of every barely-audible creak and groan that betrayed his advance. His sweaty grip readjusted constantly on the wooden shaft of the hammer, which seemed to become smaller and lighter with each step.

Buck still barred entrance to the room, long teeth bared menacingly between ferocious barking assaults.

"Good boy," Brian whispered, unnerved by the tremor in his voice.

His arm tensed in preparation as he peered around the trim of the door, hoping he would be quick enough to strike whoever was out there before they could-

There was no one in the hallway.

He wanted nothing more than to climb back into bed, close his eyes, and force himself back to sleep, but he knew that wasn't an option. He'd lie there for the rest of the night imagining all sorts of scenarios playing out in his living room while he cringed in fear beneath the covers.

Stepping around the side of the door, he brought his right foot silently into the hallway.

Buck thundered past with a violent battery of barking. Nails clattering, the dog's back legs slid out from beneath him on the slick floor. He quickly righted himself in the middle of the skid and disappeared into the darkness of the living room, where his furious barking echoed like gunshots.

Brian hurried behind, heading directly for the switch plate in the hallway. Toggling all of the switches with a slap, Brian whirled toward the living room, tensing his arm in preparation for driving the hammer down as hard as he possibly could.

But no one was there.

A stripe of fur stood erect down the Lab's back like a mohawk. His stance widened, head lowered toward the ground, Buck was planted in front of the hole in the floor, barking at the empty space that separated him from the back wall.

Brian stood there a moment, watching his companion menacing nothing at all, before finally lowering the hammer and tossing it onto the couch.

From where he stood, he could see over the half-wall into the kitchen, and with a couple of steps could easily verify that there was no one in there either.

Still, Buck released his wrath toward the wall.

His first thought was of Old Yeller . . . and a rifle.

"It's all right, Buck," he said, placing his hand on the dog's shoulders through the bristling hair.

Buck's head jerked toward him, barking jaws snapping.

Brian recoiled quickly.

"It's okay, boy," Brian said calmly, reaching his hand slowly and deliberately toward Buck's collar. Clenching it tightly in his fist, he softly stroked Buck's side with his other hand. "Come on."

He pulled firmly on the collar, dragging Buck backward, though his nails scraped grooves into the floor in defiance.

Reaching behind him, he swung his arm until he found the lock, quickly withdrew the deadbolt, toggled the lock on the knob, and drew the door inward.

It took both hands and all of his strength to force the dog outside into the night, a cold wind battering his nearly-naked form with dampness and the smell of rain.

Bracing his right hand against Buck's heaving chest to hold him out, slobber spraying from his barking maw, Brian quickly grabbed the door and slammed it closed.

He took a step back.

Buck was still barking like mad, the nails of his front paws clamoring against the door as though trying to carve his way back in.

Brian wanted to cry.

Buck had never acted like this.

Turning, he walked into the living room, burying his face in his hands. The scabs on his palms from the shattered television chafed his stubbled cheeks.

He spun in a circle, then looked up to the ceiling to hold back the tears threatening to swell over his lower lashes. The ceiling fans turned almost imperceptibly on an invisible current. They were so close together, as though one's blades would hardly spin without hitting the other's.

Shaking his head, he brought his hands from his face and let out a long sigh.

Buck was still outside throwing himself against the door and barking up a storm.

Brian was going to have to let him back in before the neighbors called animal control.

Then what?

He spun to go open the front door, but quickly froze in his tracks.

Movement summoned his attention to the embellished mirror on the wall to his right.

His eyes caught his own reflection in time to watch the color drain from his face and his mouth drop slack, before darting back to the initial source of the movement.

There was a young woman crouched on the floor behind him.

Her long blonde hair was clumped into scraggly strands like dreadlocks, soaked to a rich sunset red with blood near the roots and toward the ends, hanging over her obscured face, trailing down her hunched back. She shivered violently, causing nearly black fluid to drop in spatters from her ratty hair to the floor, smearing in streaks across her bare chest. She wore nothing but translucent skin, through which he could see the bluish vessels forking along her lower stomach to her bare legs.

Buck barked furiously on the other side of the front door.

Her outstretched right arm terminated just above the wrist at the edge of the crater in the floor, the rest of her hand somewhere beneath. She strained as though trying to cram her whole arm down into the gap beneath the hardwood.

Suddenly, she looked up.

Brian quickly averted his stare from her eyes. He had glimpsed them so quickly, yet the mere sight of them was burned into his retinas.

Blood-streaked eyes vibrated within swollen black lids, barely visible through her clumped bangs. Her face was one enormous bruise.

He looked down, paralyzed by the strangling grip of fear.

There was the hole in the floor, slightly behind and to his right, but there was no one there. Just a raggedly-rimmed hole in the hardwood and a portion of the circular rim of the black drain within.

His heart thudded to a stop.

When he looked up again, her reflection was walking toward him in the mirror.

He spun around again.

Still no one.

Static tingled beneath what felt like a hand placed gently on his shoulder, shooting sparks clear through his fingertips. There was a gentle squeeze, and then a release of the pressure.

He looked to his shoulder and then quickly back to the mirror. She was now so close it looked as though she could have reached her hands through the reflective surface like the placid waters of a still pond.

But she stopped.

Tangled strands of nappy hair clung to her chest, her ghastly-white abdomen splotched with smears of blood, clotted to a festering brown.

Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

She raised her right hand and pressed a bloodied palm to the mirror as though it were little more than a single sheet of glass between them.

Her lips moved again. Slower this time. Carefully framing soundless words.

Don't let him find us.

Brian gasped.

The woman leaned forward, bringing her face to the mirror, hair slapping crimson streaks.

She exhaled deeply, her breath widening in a circle of fog on the glass.

Taking a step back, she reached up with the index finger of her right hand, and drew a circle in the middle of the dwindling condensation, then a line diagonally through the center.

She spun, her wet hair throwing arcs of blood across the glass, and looked away from him, deeper into the reflection in the mirror.

Buck was going ballistic throwing his weight against the door.

When she again whirled to face him, her pained face was twisted into a scream of gut-wrenching terror.

Other darkened figures appeared in the reflection, ducking out from behind the stacks of boxes, from behind the television set, crawling from behind the half wall in the kitchen. They all looked just like she did: bodies alternately dripping and crusted with blood in the various stages of clotting, naked and shivering so hard their shadowed outlines were like the blur of a hummingbird's wings.

He felt all of their beaten and bruised eyes upon him like hands wringing his skin from the bones.

Brian seized control of his body and sprinted for the front door, jerking the knob, then turning and jerking again.

Buck burst past him and into the living room, summoning a crescendo of guttural barking.

Brian turned in time to see Buck skid to a halt in the middle of the floor, nails tearing ribbons of finished wood from the floor. He whimpered and brought his chin all the way down to the ground, lowering his trembling haunches until it appeared as though he were trying to merge with the hardwood.

A whine seeped from his quivering form.

Brian looked up to the mirror, only this time, there was no blood-drenched lady. No bleeding human shades skulking from the shadows.

Nothing but his own reflection beside his cowering dog.

And a dwindling circle of expired breath, melting inward around the number zero.