“Slitherskin. The Slitherskin is coming.”
Those words were the only warning for the nightmare that would be coming for me. But they were muttered to me by someone I didn’t know, someone I didn’t trust, someone who was a stranger, and so I hadn’t listened to them. God, how I wished I would have listened.
For as long as I’d been working at my job, I had taken the same route home from the office. Ride the subway, get off five stops later at the station that was only a ten minute walk away from my house. From there, I could enjoy the stroll home and be back inside by 6:30. I had walked that same route almost every day for the last five years, knew every turn by memory, knew most of the folks that lived along the road. It was a nice neighborhood, with trees lining the road and vintage style streetlamps that illuminated the walk on darker evenings, evenings like the one where I met him.
From the moment I got off the train I knew a storm was blowing in. Wind rustled through the trees, making their branches shake as if they weighed nothing. Dark clouds obscured any signs of the sunset, and already, low rumblings of thunder echoed around me as I quickened my pace down the sidewalk. I hadn’t brought an umbrella, and I could tell that I was about to get soaked.
With my eyes on the darkening sky, I hadn’t seen the Stranger until he was almost right in front of me. When I did finally look back at the road and first caught sight of him, my immediate thought was if he had been injured or something. He was limping towards me, quickly, and seemed almost in a panic as he did so. His clothes were ragged and dirty, and I think I saw dried blood stains on the edges of his tattered jacket. His blonde hair was greasy and stuck to his face, but as he got even closer, I could see that his eyes were strikingly bright blue. I was struck by the odd feeling that this Stranger felt oddly familiar, though I knew we had never met before. Then our eyes met for a second, and I was startled to see how they were wide with panic. With fear. That was when I saw how pale he was, how thin he was, how the skin seemed to almost hang off his bones.
Then, as we were about to pass each other, he stumbled into me. His shoulder slammed into my chest as he lost his balance, and as he lurched forward into me, I would have fallen over as well if I hadn’t steadied myself by grasping onto the streetlamp next to me. He wasn’t so lucky, falling roughly to the ground and scraping his legs on the concrete. Leaving little splotches of blood on the ground, accidentally leaving a sign that he had been there, a breadcrumb for something to follow. The rain wouldn’t wash it away in time.
“Shit man, are you okay?” I asked him after steadying myself, reaching down a hand to help him up. I didn’t know if he had been hurt or was drunk or what, but the guy definitely didn’t look alright.
Instead of taking my hand, or even answering my question, the man instead scrambled up to his feet and stared at me with those panicked eyes. It felt almost like he wasn’t even seeing me, the way his eyes darted all around me, like he was searching for something behind me. Then he spoke those five words, his voice hoarse and trembling, but in that voice was more fear than I’ve ever heard spoken before.
“Slitherskin. The Slitherskin is coming.”
It was just gibberish to me, and I was getting more convinced that he was either drunk, high, or hurt. I reflexively took a step back and said, “Listen man, I don’t know what that is, but do you need me to call someone? Are you sure you’re okay?”
“No, I’m not. It’s coming for me,” he hissed back in almost a whisper. “It’s coming for me, and it’ll be coming for you. Don’t let it touch you, stay in the light. Don’t let it touch you!”
His voice had gotten louder and more hysterical with each word, and as he finished speaking, he turned and started to sprint away, or at least, as close to a sprint as he could manage with that bad leg. I watched him turn out of sight down a side street, feeling confused and a little worried for the guy.
But after a minute of trying to understand what he had meant (and failing), I turned back towards home and I didn’t give the man another thought. Neither did I think much of the trickle of blood he had left on the sidewalk leading towards where he had gone. But after that odd beginning to my walk, the rest of it passed without incident. Although, I did think I heard something that sounded almost like the distant sound of a rattlesnake’s rattle far away, but it was only brief and like I said before, the man’s words had only been gibberish to me. I ignored them. I ignored him.
Slitherskin.
I managed to get into my house about a minute before the storm began. The thunder was almost deafening as rain came down in sheets, and the hallway lights kept flickering on and off as I took off my coat. Most of the house was dark, and as I walked through the living room and dining room, I called out to see if my wife was home.
“Anna? Are you upstairs?”
I didn’t get an answer back verbally, but I found the answer when I went upstairs and found the door to the guest bedroom was closed and locked, with light shining through from the crack underneath the door frame. Anna had been spending most of her days - and all of her nights - in the guest bedroom lately. It was just the latest in a series of increasingly bad signs that our marriage was coming to an end. She wouldn’t even open the door for me half the time anymore.
“I’m home if you need anything, honey,” I called to her from behind the door, and I thought she’d ignore me again.
Instead, I got a curt “Thanks.” back as an answer, but at least it was something. With a resigned sigh, I went back downstairs to spend my evening alone as the storm outside raged on harder. I guess if I hadn’t been so tired I would have looked for a metaphor in there somewhere, something about how the storm outside mirrored the storm in our marriage, but I didn’t. I missed out on the opportunity then to realize something about us, as I had been missing out on opportunities with Anna for the last two years. Huh, I guess I did find my metaphor after all. I just wished the last normal night of my life could have been spent with her.
Instead, I made myself a quick dinner with leftovers from the fridge and wasted the night away by working on my novel as the storm outside continued to rage. The sounds of the wind rattling against the windows, of the rapid pitter-patter of raindrops against the roof, of the sometimes jarringly loud rumbling of thunder, it was all like a peaceful symphony playing as I wrote my words. The scene outside my window helped paint the scene of my romance novel, as it helped me in turn forget about my own life and my own troubles. But eventually, it was getting too late to concentrate, so I went upstairs into my bedroom and flipped the TV on to some crime show, something mindless to entertain myself. Or rather, to distract myself from dwelling on the present. It was a good enough show, but as I watched, I felt my eyelids grow heavy and start to drift closed…
Slitherskin.
My eyes shot back open as I jolted upwards into a sitting position on my bed, blinking away the drowsiness as I tried to figure out what had woken me up and gotten me so panicked. I had fallen asleep watching the show, and as my eyes darted around the dim room to see the TV still on, the pile of clothes laying on my desk chair, the rain still streaming down my window, I realized that I had woken from my sleep because of something within it, not outside it. It was a nightmare, the realization dawned, and though I couldn’t remember the details, I knew I had been terrified. But I was awake now, and I was safe. That was what mattered.
Grumbling under my breath, I reached for the remote to turn off the TV, only to stop in my tracks as a fresh wave of panic ran through me. The TV was showing some kind of news broadcast, and the face in the picture staring back at me was one I knew. It was the Stranger from earlier in a picture onscreen, looking a bit younger, a bit tidier, and a huge smile across his face and no trace of the delirious terror that he wore when I had run into him. Turning up the volume, I managed to catch just enough of the segment to understand its purpose, even over the odd rattling noise in the background of the broadcast.
“…once again this is a missing persons alert for Jack Dawson. Jack is a Caucasian male, 34 years old, and was last seen leaving his home on Parkland Road three nights ago. This alert has been airing for two days now, and if you have any information about Jack or his whereabouts, please call your local police hotline. Once again, this is a missing persons alert for…”
That was it! That was why he seemed vaguely familiar to me when I had run into him, I must have seen one of those broadcasts during the first two nights. Blinking away the grogginess of sleep, I knew I had to call someone. I had to tell someone I had seen him, had to tell someone that he was in danger from… something.
Lightning flashed outside, lighting up my room for a split second as I was reaching for my phone, and for that brief moment, I saw the clothes on my chair move. It was almost imperceptible, but I could swear I saw them slide down the chair a few inches. Then I was once again left in the darkness, and as the shock broke me out of my grogginess for good, I realized something very important.
I never changed out of my clothes last night. I never put anything on that chair. And as the last rolls of thunder died away for good, I could hear a slow, quiet rattling sound coming from the corner of my room.
As panic started to take over my body, I reached for my phone on the bedside table and fumbled around for a few seconds before finally grabbing hold of it. Frantically, I shook it to activate the flashlight feature, wincing as bright light filled the room, and pointed it at the chair, terrified for whatever I’d see- and I saw nothing. The chair was normal, and there was nothing on it.
That was when I saw something move on the ground. At first I thought it was just old clothes in a pile from a previous day, but what I thought had to be cloth was slowly moving, no, slowly seething towards the edge of the door. I stared at it for a moment, not quite understanding what I was seeing, and then it clicked in a moment of horrible realization. Writhing away from me, like some kind of snake, was a disgusting thin pile of… skin. I only caught a glimpse of it, but it looked like a flattened human being, with the same shape as a body, but loose and thin and hollow. It was as if a skeleton had ripped off all its skin and muscles and left them on my floor.
And as it slid away, faster than anything should move, I heard the same unmistakable sound, like a rattlesnake’s rattle.
Then the moment was gone and the thing slid under my bedroom door and out of sight into the hallway. It wasn’t until it was gone that I realized just how much my heart had been racing. How cold I had suddenly gotten. How dry my mouth had gone. I tried to swallow and calm my panicked thoughts that were taking off almost before I could stop them, trying to rationalize away what my own eyes had seen, but in the back of my mind I knew that there was no dismissing what had just happened.
“The Slitherskin is coming.”
If that was the Slitherskin, if it had gotten that man, Jack, then it was here to kill me too. I knew I had to go after it, had to find where it went… and with that thought the shock-induced fog vanished from my mind, and I suddenly understood with frightening clarity where it was going. But as I jumped up from my bed and grabbed my cigarette lighter off my bedside table for a meager attempt at a weapon, I knew my sluggish reaction had already damned me as a shrilling scream erupted from my wife’s room down the hall.
“Anna! Anna, I’m coming!” I shouted as I threw the door open and raced down the hallway, lighter in hand, but my fear was turning to an icy fist of terror closing around my heart. Her screams were agonizingly, heart-wrenchingly desperate. There were screams of pain and sobs and the repeated, hoarse “Alan! Alan!” as that goddamn rattling noise echoed throughout the hallway now, so loud it almost eclipsed the sounds of horror as I ran.
I banged on the door, more frantic now than ever, but of course it was still locked. The screams were louder now, her voice raw and hoarse, and as I rammed my shoulder into it once, twice, three times, the screams abruptly cut off. It was like she was mid-shriek when it just stopped, as if someone had pressed a mute button on her murder. Adrenaline was keeping me going at this point, but even then I had the sinking feeling of dread weighing on me as the lock finally gave way and the door swung open.
At first glance, everything seemed fine in the dim light of the room. Anna was standing there in front of me about a foot away from the bed and about six feet away from me, but the room seemed okay. No signs of struggle, or blood, or injury. My heart racing, I took a cautious step forward.
“Anna? Are you… are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Lightening flashed as I stepped forward, flooding the room in bright white light for an instant, and I stopped in my tracks. The body, the outline of the shape standing in front of me, had clearly been my wife. But the naked body standing in front of me was not her. The face I saw on her head was not Anna’s. It looked as if someone had draped another skin over her’s, one that didn’t quite hang right on her bones. The skin pulsated and squirmed on her ever so subtly, moving ever so slightly along her body as it tried to… to bond with her, I think.
But the worst part was her face, or rather Jack’s face. Because that was who it was. Jack’s face, pale and greasy and foreign hung on her in a way that reminded me of a Halloween silicone mask. But underneath it, behind the pale skin and the drooping cheeks, were my Anna’s eyes. Brown eyes. Eyes staring at me that quivered in agony, that pleaded in sorrow, that pierced with terror.
The skin was stuck to her. Bonding to her. Feeding from her.
Then the light was gone, and when the thunder cracked a second after, her screams shattered my heart. I wanted to step forward, to do something to stop it, but I found myself unable to move. My feet felt sluggish, my head pounded, and my heart was racing. We all like to believe that we’re the heroes, that we’ll do anything when faced with danger. But when I was put to the test, I found out that I was a coward. I couldn’t move.
In a few seconds I managed to turn my flashlight back on as she stopped screaming, and when I did, I felt a rise of nausea surge its way up into my throat. On the floor around where she stood was a pile of… for lack of a better word, meat. Bloody bones and organs and muscle lay clumped up on the floor around her feet, as if the creature had taken what it wanted and discarded the rest of her body. And when I looked up at her, I no longer saw the other man’s skin fused to hers. Instead, her skin, her face, everything was her again, but twisted. Changed. Her whole body sagged the way a balloon does when it’s deflating. Her face looked hollow and pale and somehow wrong in every way. And when I looked into her eyes, praying to see something of her left in them, I saw nothing but blackness in the eye sockets. No eyes. No Anna. Just an empty shell that tilted its head at me as I looked at it, and that damn, ever-present rattling.
I couldn’t save her. I knew that as I watched the skin crumple to the ground, as if the last of the air had left the balloon. I watched it start to slither towards me, the naked, wrinkled, flat skin seething towards me as that sound droned in my ears and I knew I had failed Anna. I had failed her, and I had killed her. It was too late for both of us.
The lighter left my hand before I knew what I was doing, the small flame from the metal box spinning downwards with as much force as I could hurl it. It hit the Slitherskin and within a second the creature was engulfed in flames, an unholy screech now replacing the rattling that had filled my brain. It writhed and blackened under the flames, its foot end twisting and slapping across my feet as it burned, but I still didn’t move. I was rooted in place, watching as the last piece of my wife was consumed in front of me.
As it burned to death, the Slitherskin made contact with the bed, which carried the flames after the Slitherskin was left nothing more than a charred pile on the ground. The heat radiating from the room was almost unbearable as the fire ate at the bed, then the curtains, then the walls, but I couldn’t move. I just watched.
And although I knew it wasn’t moving, although I knew it was dead, I could still hear that rattling in my ears. It didn’t stop once I was outside, watching the inferno consume my house as fire engines roared past me. It didn’t stop once the fire was out, the crackling flames replaced by an eerily silent night. And it doesn’t stop now, as I sit here in my hotel room writing out this story for anyone who will believe me.
I didn’t act fast enough. I didn’t heed the warnings. I couldn’t find my courage, and my Anna, my Anna paid the price. We could have changed. We could have worked on our marriage. God, we could have been so much more and there was so much I should of told her if I just had
I’m sorry, I’m rattling now. Oh. Rattling. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t it funny, how I hear it even now, even as I break down for the fifth time tonight, even as I hear the sirens outside my hotel from the police that I know are on their way? They think I killed her. But they can’t hear it. They can’t hear the rattle.
I killed one, but there are more out there. I know they’re coming, I can hear them coming for me. For you.
The Slitherskin is coming.