A warm droplet splattered onto my arm from above. I looked up to the sky, squinting as the sun filtered brightly through the thin patches of clouds. The rain was about to hit, and it would no doubt hit hard as it always does.
"Come on then, let's head back inside," I said as I turned to face my son. He looked up at me with that big, stupid, unbelievably endearing grin he was always wearing, then dropped the dirt he was playing with and stood to follow me. I took his hand and guided him back toward our house just as the rain started pouring out of the heavens as through from an enormous, divine bucket.
On the porch, under the safety of the awning, we shook off what rain water had made it onto us before I noticed something strange. The door was slightly ajar.
"Did you leave the door open Hayden?" I asked the boy, but he just emphatically shook his head, looking quite genuinely innocent. He couldn't have anyway, I was certain I had come out behind him and he hadn't made it back up to the house since. Figuring I was just losing it in my ever-growing age, I cast the thought aside and went inside with my son.
After seating him in front of the television with one of his favorite shows, I moved into the kitchen to fix some juice. No more than a few moments went by before I had a cup ready for each of us and returned to the living room. But the couch was vacant. A potent mix of confusion and horror filled me before I calmed myself. He had probably just wandered off. But then why did something feel so off...
A door slammed from somewhere upstairs. It was frighteningly loud, and it seemed unsettlingly unlikely that a seven-year-old could even swing a door that hard. Panic creeping ever further into me, I dashed up the stairs calling my son's name with no response.
The door to his bedroom had a crack running through it. Something had slammed that thing hard. What the fuck was going on? Wasting no time to question further, I darted forward and opened the door, bursting into the room and immediately looking around for some sign of danger.
My eyes were met with nothing unusual, except perhaps a darkness somehow even more pervasive than would be normally expected given the dark curtain. My nose, however, was assaulted by something vile. Most of the smell was the odor of blood, of death. But there was something even more monstrous and revolting than that underneath.
I took another quick scan of the room, then stooped down to look under the bed. All seemed clear, which just made the hairs stand on the back of my neck even more. Something was terribly wrong. Before I could ponder further, or even stand back up, I was interrupted by a truly terrifying sensation. A warm droplet splattered onto my arm from above.