Susan Adams picked up her backpack hefting the books
inside onto her shoulder, downstairs she heard her uncle stumble into the
kitchen. The nearly twenty year old had been living with him for the past four
years since her father had been killed. As she remembered her sixteenth
birthday Susan gritted her teeth in anger at the flash of memory, her father sitting
against the wall slowly dying in her arms.
She glanced down at the Tibetan prayer beads on her left
wrist, his last gift to her. She still did not know what she was supposed to do
with them but he had said belonged in her family and it was now her only link
to him.
“Not much of a family anymore,” Susan said bitterly thinking
of her institutionalised mother and her alcoholic uncle downstairs.
Her uncle was not terrible as people went but treated her
with a kind of mild neglect. Whatever demons he was trying to chase away he
kept to himself, for that Susan was grateful though she had hardly grown up
with much love over the last four years of her life.
Outside she heard car hoot and walked out of her room and
down the stairs. As Susan passed the kitchen she heard her uncle open up a beer
can singing to himself. She shook her head sadly, it was going to be another
long day again.
Susan opened the front door and smiled at her friend
Janice who sat in a small car waving, Susan waved back and jogged down the
stairs. Janice was one of the few friends she had, since her sixteenth birthday
Susan kept most people at arm’s length it had taken Janice three years to get
into the walls Susan had built.
Still no one knew of the truth behind her father’s death
at the hands of some creature that had possessed the wealthy business man, Tom
Mayhew. The police could not understand why he had been at her father’s house
that night but Susan knew the truth and it was far worse than some business man
who had grudge against her father or so people thought, why else would someone
as wealthy as Tom Mayhew come after her father in a small town.
His company had paid for her medical bills and had set up
a fund in her name though she could only access it on her twenty first birthday,
so now her uncle was the executor of her estate.
Thirty minutes later the two friends arrived at the university
where Susan studied Law and Janice was trying to get a degree in Philosophy and
Dramatic Arts.
“You so have to come out with us tonight,” said Janice as
she parked the car in the university’s lot, “Mark’s friend is going to be
there, and he’s a cutie.”
Mark was Janice’s boyfriend and the two of them had been
trying to set up Susan for a while but she kept on declining.
“I’ll see. It depends on my work load. You know they
don’t go easy on us in that faculty.”
“Aah come on! Live a little, Suzy.”
With a sigh Susan smiled at Janice and said “I will try,
ok lazybones?”
With a small cry of jubilation Janice exited her car and
waited for Susan to exit before she locked the doors, “I’ll see you later, your
worship!”
“That’s your honour!” called Susan as Janice hurried away
sticking her tongue out at Susan.
Susan shook her head still smiling and headed off towards
her faculty to start the day as a second year student. The day moved swiftly
and the afternoon found Susan in the university library with a book she was looking
for at the furthermost corner.
As she searched Susan thought that it must have been
twenty minutes since she had last seen any other student. After a further fifteen
minutes of searching Susan found what she had been looking for.
Her hand slid the thick book out and she said, “Here you
are.”
Susan paged through the book quickly looking up from her
find and gave a start. A few meters away stood another student looking at her.
“… Sorry, you startled me,” said Susan.
The student continued to stare at her not uttering a
word.
“Err hello?” asked Susan hesitantly lowering the book in
her hand.
The student was tall and thin, almost scrawny to Susan’s
eyes. He also seemed very pale and a film of sweat had broken out on his
forehead.
Susan stared at the boy for a moment as fear started
curdling in her gut “Are you… alright?”
The soon to be twenty year old Susan Adams slowly backed
away from the boy who had now started twitching as if in the beginning of an
epileptic fit, yet he stayed on his feet, eyes fixed on Susan.
“Not this crap again,” moaned Susan as she turned to run
from the boy dropping the heavy book.
Behind her the boy lurched after the fleeing girl, bones
popping up as he ran. Susan dashed between shelves of books and glanced back
once. As he loped after his prey the boy lurched onto all fours and ran, legs
twisted under him and the knees folded backwards with a sickening crunch, the
boy’s lank form filled out and his hands elongated into grasping claws. His
face also pushed outwards into a snarling, fang filled maw.
“Oh fuck,” muttered Susan as she careened around a bookshelf
grasping its edge to help her turn. The beast behind her tried to turn but went
sliding on the linoleum floor into another bookshelf snarling and whining.
Susan did not stop to look back as she burst out into the
populated area of the library. People stared as she came running out of the
book stacks.
“Run!” she shouted at the watching people but most of
them just stared at her.
Swearing under her breath Susan looked around and spied
the nearby fire alarm. She rushed towards it and pulled the lever down and a
siren started whooping out through the library.
Most of the students looked around confused and slowly
started collecting their belongings as Susan stopped to catch her breath a
moment trying to fight the urge to scream at the other students.
She wondered where the creature was when a bookshelf
thundered to the floor and the giant hound-like creature stood on top of the
fallen wooden shelves. It looked surprised at the students milling around, the
students looked back at the creature with its lank mane of black hair and
pallid skin.
No one moved.
The creature howled and the students screamed stampeding
for the doors.
“Sure, someone shouts run and you all look at me like I’m
crazy,” muttered Susan angrily to herself as she ducked down behind a nearby
counter.
Risking a glance over the counter Susan saw the beast
pounce on a male student who was trying to run away. Its jaws closed around his
head and the life was crushed from him blood splattering the floor. The beast
growled as it killed, feeding off the blood.
Looking up it snarled and pounced on another student,
this one a young woman who had been too terrified to run.
Susan watched in horror as the beast fed on the two
corpses tearing at the flesh and lapping at the blood.
“What have I done?” whispered Susan in horror thinking
how she had led the beast there.
By now most of the students had managed to run away from
the creature, though here and there Susan heard crying and moaning from other
students still trapped in cubicles or under desks too scared to move.
Susan ducked back down behind the counter whispering
“Think, think, think… Ok assess the situation. Beasty over there needs to be
stopped… And I can do that how?”
Susan stopped and reached underneath her shirt, there she
wore a hunter’s skinning knife ever since her old knife had broken.
Looking at the sharp blade Susan knew that it would not
do much good against the large creature unless she could subdue it somehow and
get in close.
She suddenly remembered how it had slid across the floor
and plan started forming in her head. Taking a quick, deep breath Susan steeled
herself and peeked around the corner of her hiding spot hoping to see something
that would help her fledgling plan.
To her right she heard the beast still crunching on one
of the unfortunate student’s bones while the fire alarm whooped irritatingly overhead.
To her left was a row of bookshelves that led towards the
fiction section. With one last look at the creature she quietly stood in a
crouch and crept from behind her hiding place. But the moment her feet passed
the safety of the wooden counter the beast reared its head and froze blood
dripping off its jaw to splash on the face of the girl underneath it.
The fang filled head followed Susan’s movement, no sound
not even a snarl of rage came from the beast as it watched Susan slowly turn
towards the shelves.
Susan kept one eye on the beast and muttered to herself
“Seems I’m making this up as I go.”
As she finished her sentence she sprinted away from the
beast. It sprang away from its kill to follow her.
Susan’s breathing quickly shortened to ragged gasps as
fear leeched the strength from her but she knew she had to keep running behind
her the beast’s claws scraped at the floor.
In front of Susan a wall loomed with two bookshelves set
against it, she stopped and turned to face the creature as it bore down on her.
“Wait Suzy, wait,” she said between gritted teeth.
As the beast charged forward ready to kill, Susan threw
herself out to the side diving as far as she could. The beast’s claws still
managed to clip her left thigh leaving three bloody furrows in her leg tearing
at the jeans she wore. With a cry of pain Susan fell to the ground and gripped
her injured leg.
But her plan had worked the beast had gone head first
into the bookshelf toppling the heavy oaken piece onto it.
The beast thrashed and shook but was unable to get its
feet under it to lever the bookshelf off. Susan glared at the beast as it
whined and tried to stand again but the shelves settled more with each
struggling movement.
Susan used the second bookshelf to slowly get herself to
her feet though she almost collapsed under the pain from her injured leg,
crying as it gave way but she managed to catch herself with both hands.
The beast growled as it watched Susan slowly limp forwards
using the standing shelf as a crutch.
“Yeah well fuck you too ugly,” she spat at it as it tried
again to stand.
Susan drew her skinning knife and stood above the beast
her hands trembling, looking down she almost felt pity for it.
“You know tomorrow is my birthday but of course you knew
that… Someone keeps on sending you fuckers after me on my birthday,” she
growled at the beast before she limped to the back of the beast’s head away
from the still dangerous jaws.
Reaching around Susan swiftly cut the beast’s throat and
fell backwards as its thrashing caused her to backpedal on her good leg. The
beast’s convulsions grew worse dislodging books around it, one skittered open into
Susan’s foot as her wounded leg gave way and she collapsed onto the floor
As the beast finally died the young woman picked up the
book. It was a copy of Lewis Carols’ ‘Through the Looking Glass.’
Looking at the open section she saw that blood had
obscured most of the page but one line stood out “and shun, the frumious
Bandersnatch!”
“First a Jabberwocky and now a Bandersnatch?” said Susan
incredulously as she started feeling light headed from loss of blood.
A few minutes later police and paramedics rushed into the
library to find two half-eaten students and a third lying in a pool of her own
blood with some hound like creature dead under a heavy bookshelf.
“This one’s alive!” called one of the paramedics feeling
Susan’s pulse, “She’s fading!”
Quickly the paramedics set about stabilising her as one
of the police officers looked at the creature and said “What the hell is this?”
“An animal attack.”
Near the two dead students a third officer threw up as
the first one said “Never saw an animal like this before, Stan.”
“Well what else can it be? Demon dog devours students?”
said Stan gazing at the damage in the library and the blood on the floor.
“Yeah don’t ever become a journalist… Demon dog.”
Susan murmured to herself as the paramedics lifted her on
a gurney, the book she had been holding dropped to the floor. Stan picked it up
but the pages had been obscured by blood. All he could make out was “a d shun,
t fr m o s Ban .”
“What’s that you got there?” asked the first officer.
“Damned if I know, Fred… Damned if I know,” replied Stan
gazing at the book’s title and at the beast again, “But that’s one brave girl,
I’ll tell you that.”
Stan’s partner nodded his head as Susan was wheeled out
of the library, outside Janice let out a cry as she saw her best friend being
wheeled away looking as pale as death itself.
