She couldn’t allow herself to meet that fate. She refused to die at the hands of a monster. Not yet, at least.
The beast pressed down onto her mouth, a claw tickling hernostril, when the dormant animalistic core of her brain suddenly took hold and she sank her teeth with a snarl into the taut, gray flesh. Rank blood flooded her mouth, then splattered all across the front of her as the beast howled and ripped itself away. She spat out the small bit of meat and a congealed residue remained on her tongue, bathing it in a taste and texture not too unlike mud.
A cold, piercing sensation resonated from her palm as the beast howled, and her fingers curled into an even tighter fist around the knife still held there. She screamed her own howl as she drew the knife upward and stabbed into the other paw that held her down. She pierced the beast’s claw and forearm again and again until the whole limb, and her torso, were bathed in its rotted blood; she only dared to pause her assault when the skin seemed to sizzle beneath every puncture of her pin. The odor of singed flesh permeated through the rain.
A great weight heaved itself off of Jane, and she could suddenly breathe again. Desperately she inhaled gulps of air but paused to gag when she tasted the blood on her tongue and felt a sharp pain flare in her leg.
Through the rain, she could hear the beast whimpering as it mewled over wounds that steamed as it licked them.
Jane seized that moment to stagger back to her feet, grateful she still had both limbs—and run. Or at least run as fast as her ruined leg and slick mud would allow, toward the looming shadow of the Drowning House. She nearly wept with relief when her feet met wooden steps and the sturdiness of a front door. She had never been so grateful to feel wallpaper beneath her fingertips as she rushed inside and slammed the door shut behind her. Her fingers, glistening red, slipped and fumbled to lock the door just as the weight of the beast pummeled against the other side. Unlike the cellar door, the wood stayed.
Jane didn’t wait another moment before stumbling further into the house, seeking sanctuary as another howl rang through the storm outside.
She did not know where she was in the house when she at last collapsed in a heap. Her fall was cushioned by ornate, plush rugs. Numerous Tiffany lamps illuminated by strikes of lightning bathed Jane in a multi-colored delirium as her blood seeped into the conservatory’s rugs.
So much blood…
Through the pain humming across her body, she listened to the beast’s assault on the front door, felt it through vibrations in the house’s very foundations, until it gave way to silence, the drone of thunder, and Jane’s dull heartbeat. She hoped that the beast retreated out of frustration and defeat like a pouting child so that it could continue mewling over its festering wounds, but she found her fingers curling into a feeble fist around the knife in preparation for another attack.
If the beast attacked again, Jane was unsure how well she could fend for herself as the periphery of her vision started to haze and she could no longer will her limbs to move. Beneath the floorboards, just as Jane was beginning to slip away, was a low, deep thump, like that of a heartbeat, resounding from the resting place of Old Man Hayes’ book.
Jaaaane…
A horrible whisper, caressing her with a cold, unseen hand, was what coaxed her into a numb oblivion.
Blood.
So, so much blood…
CHAPTER
Eleven
When she opened her eyes, an overabundance of flesh surrounded Jane, in columns and arches of red. It crafted the ceiling above her, the floor beneath her, the walls pressing against her in viscid swirls. What wasn’t made of meat was pitch darkness that was hot and reeking and endless.
Rhythmic thrumming, almost like that of a heartbeat or a digesting intestine, jerked the fleshy mattress that pillowed her. To her right was a plinth of meat, and beside that was a fleshy stalagmite, giving the appearance of a lamp and chair.
She blanched as she looked around the chamber, noticing more furniture-shaped hunks of meat and bony protrusions that hinted at window sills, a door threshold, a fireplace, and shelves.
A heart. A gut. An organ. Jane was trapped in the vaultsof some great organ, one that was some hellish mimicry of the Drowning House. It was hot and damp and smelled foul, like being seated before a hound panting its rank breath into her face. The room—theorgan—itself that was breathing.
How did she even end up here?
When she looked down at her leg, blood continued to gush from the wound in torrents that turned her skirt black. The skin there was ravaged in the jagged pattern of monstrous teeth that consumed nearly the entirety of her calf. Flaps of flesh hanging onto the wound by mere sinews wavered with the room’s breathing. The ache she felt was but a distant echo despite her growing lightheadedness as memories of the beast, blood-drenched mud and cellars, and collapsing in the conservatory rushed back to her. She needed to run—where to, she’d decide on once she gained her bearings.
The flesh beneath her squished and she slipped on the slick viscera when she tried to stand. Blood and fluids splattered each time she fell. A sweet and coppery tang bathed her tongue, invaded her nose.
Paired with the pain in her leg, the organ-room refused to let her find purchase, and it seemed to wheeze out a laugh once she accepted that she was trapped.
She groaned, finding herself too exhausted to even attempt to comprehend how she came to occupy this nightmare-space, and halfheartedly gripped the pin-knife in her hand when she recalled she still held it. Her fist fell from her lap to be cradled by the flesh-floor and her nose wrinkled beneath the sudden smell of burning meat.
She wondered if the beast was here too. And if it was still hunting her. The thought made her breath snag as she paused to listen foranything. The slip of claws against organ-meat, thepanting of angry breaths, the roars of a creature hellbent on vengeance. But there was nothing. At least not at first.
The first thing she heard was her name.
“Jane…” it was a sound that gurgled, the syllables bubbling from the back of a blocked throat.
She gasped and pressed herself deeper into the flesh-wall; her body was jerked by another undulating pulse.
