The sound explodes through the store, and the walls seem to narrow. I rise to my feet quickly before Mattie and rush toward the noise.
Rounding the corner, Sarah stands there stiff, a smashed jar of rotten pickles scattered across the filthy floor like pale, severed fingers in brine.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whispers, fright strangling every word, tears spilling into her big eyes.
We don’t have time to respond, because in an instant, we hear it outside in the street. That low growl of an engine, followed by that same demented ice-cream truck melody, gliding through the rain like it’s been waiting for us.
Lena instantly goes into a frenzy beside me, but we all duck behind the nearest shelves, bodies pressed low, peeking wide-eyed through gaps in the products toward the shattered window.
The song loops again, closer now, the notes bending into something that almost sounds like laughter, like it remembers every little girl it ever took.
No one dares to make a sound, but my pulse rings so loud in my ears I’m sure that thing outside can hear it. Lena’s hand finds mine and squeezes until it hurts, her body shaking so badly I can feel it through the shelf.
When the truck stops close by, too close, I hear heavy footsteps, and dragging sounds before a tall shadow spills across the wet pavement outside the window.
Then, we see a creature that’s lanky, pale and thin stepping into view. Like a man stretched and flattened by roller until his bones crushed.
It wears a filthy, old-fashioned ice cream man uniform, the once white fabric now stained yellow and brown, buttons missing, and a little striped hat is perched crookedly on his head.
His arms slog along the ground behind him, abnormally long and ending in hands coiled into sharp, gleaming ice cream cones, the metal tips filed into vicious points that scrape against the concrete with every step.
His face is grey with two sunken black eyes that sit too far apart, empty and endless. His mouth hangs open, slack and wide, revealing rows of small, needle-like teeth drenched in something dark.
He stops in front of the shop, head tilting from side to side with a strange clicking sound, as if listening for the fear leaking out of us.
The thing takes one step closer to the door, and my stitched mouth trembles. It looks like every nightmare who ever offered me something sweet… right before they took everything.
Without warning, his cone-shaped hands smash through the doors window, and glass explodes inward like shrapnel.His metallic cones stretch incredibly far, whipping through the air with violent force.
They crash into the shelves, smashing everything in their path. Jars shatter, cans explode, and products fly like broken bones, the sound deafening, chaotic and destructive.
Everyone screams, and we all scramble backward in blind panic, feet slipping on debris and spilled brine, aiming for the end of the store.
My heart is a trapped animal trying to fight its way out of my fucking chest, but Mattie’s hand yanks me forward until it’s too late.
One of the cone arms lashes out like a whip and wraps around Lena’s waist with a repulsive slap. She shrieks, high, raw, and terrified, as the arm lifts her clean off the ground, her legs kicking helplessly in the air.
It tightens, swathing around her like a serpent, her body vibrates with a horrible sound that fills the store, bones cracking and organs bursting.
The other arm swells at the tip, blooming into a cone-shaped spear of teeth. Then, it shoots up with brutal speed, slamming straight between her legs.
Her body jerks as the massive appendage tears into her, ripping through soft tissue and muscle.
Gore spills out in heavy gushes down her thighs, splattering across the floor as the tendril burrows deeper.
When it grabs hold of something vital inside her, her eyes bulge wider and wider, veins bursting, until they pop out of her skull and fall to the floor with a soft splat.
Hot blood spurts from her mouth, nose, and ears, spraying across the shelves and us in thick, dark waves.
Then, with a savage, violent tug, it rips her spine clean out through her anus.
The long, glistening column of bone and nerve comes free with a tearing crunch, vertebrae cracking one by one as her body twitches in its final death.
“Lena!” Lotty wails.
But it’s already over.
The arm yanks her broken body back through the smashed window with ruthless strength before throwing her into the back of the ice cream truck like a sack of meat.
