Eyes snap open and you know that you are awake but your body doesn’t respond. You can feel as if your arms and legs are thrashing to move but you lay there paralyzed. Heart beat racing, your eyes focus on the ceiling. You try to calm yourself. Your grandmother would have told you there was a witch riding your back. You begin to feel hands pressing down on your shoulders and you find it hard to tell if you are still breathing. It’s silly, you’re just dreaming right? There is a scratching sound coming from beneath your bed and you hear a strange whimper.
Jerking yourself awake, you sit up in bed panting and sweating. The summer’s night air is heavy and thick. You glance at the digital clock on the night stand; it reads “3:00 AM.” Your heart is still pounding and your head is throbbing. The throbbing and pounding make your eyes feel as if they will burst out of your skull. Slapping one hand to cover your eyes the other clumsily reaches to grab the glass of water off the night stand. Miss; sending the glass tumbling to the floor, water spills and soaks into the carpet.
“Dammit!” you spit stumbling out of bed, grabbing the cup and staggering into the bathroom. Your breathing is heavy as you open the medicine cabinet and grab a few aspirins. As you gulp down the pills with warm bathroom tap water a shiver runs up your spine. For a moment you pause your breathing…the breathing -- your head whips to the door as your stomach sinks heavily in dread. Your dilated pupils soak in all of the darkness and makes out the corner of an end table in the hall and photo frames hanging on the wall against the tattered floral wall paper.
Shuffling back to your bed you feel exhausted. You’ve been waking up at 3AM for the past few weeks and it’s really beginning to affect your health. Typically you would have fallen back to sleep by now but the scratching sound reappears grabbing your attention. You imagine what kind of rodent has been nesting under your house for these past weeks jostling you awake but then it begins to whimper. Poor thing. Your face tingles with relief and is heated with sadness as you imagine some stray pooch has been struggling to keep her pups alive under your house this entire time. And here you were thinking about witches, rodents and ghouls. Grabbing the flashlight from your dresser you saunter into your kitchen and place a few slices of turkey meat onto a tray. You’ve done this before, take in a sick animal and nurse it to health but your mother never let you keep them did she?
Finding your way around to the crawl space outside, the whimpering of the animal is clear as you crawl on your belly to get closer. A pair of glowing eyes meet your gaze and you whisper sweet nothings towards the animal to keep it calm. Using the army crawl technique you learned in elementary school, you inch closer to the animal and push the plate towards it. A breeze blows though and your gut clenches and twists as you catch a horrible stench. Your heart begins to thump in a whisper, your face and neck burn hot as your veins gasp. A normal animal would hiss or growl at a stranger approaching their vulnerable offspring. And what is that stench? You remember the flashlight in your hand. Your heart begins to moan at the sudden dread emanating from your gut. Flicking the switch to the flashlight, the light bursts onto the creature in front of you outlining its slender dark body heaving up and down as it breathes in and whimpers out.
Your eyes stretch in horror and your pupils scream as they inhale every detail. At the end of its snout, its fangs drip with blood and there is flesh and hair in between its teeth. The scratching sounds you heard were of its sharp horns grazing against the floor boards as the beast feasted on its prey. A bone snapped in half as its long slender forked tongue laps at the marrow.
You stare into the creatures diamond shaped pupils and you begin to feel hands pressing down on your shoulders and you find it hard to tell if you are still breathing. The Witch. You thrash your limbs about to scurry from underneath the house but you are not moving. You are struck with paralysis and your heart screams as it runs from your chest and lodges into your throat cutting out any means to cry for help. The creature lifts a dark arm and stretches its claws mockingly slow towards you. The increase of adrenaline to the heart amplifies the stench of rotten eggs, decay, burning and sulfur, clouding your senses. The stench of Hell is what you conclude as your bowels release with your last breath.
The Devil’s Hour
By Jameelah Adas
