Work Text:
Night of the Living Darkness
by PEJA
His car sputtered and coughed its life away a mile down the twisted, winding snake of a side-road he'd been detoured onto. Mere moments after he'd climbed out of the corpse that had been his lovely BMW, the first crash of thunder applauded overhead, followed by a great ripping streak of silver-forked fire and the skies ripped open to dump a torrential rain on his head.
Within a handful of steps the cold and wet rain seeped into his bones chilling him through to his very soul. He hastened his steps, stumbling over twigs and rocks that seems almost to slide under his feet with the sole purpose of landing him on his ass. And still he pressed on, forever stumbling...tumbling, ripping great tears in his expensive tailor-made cloths. Painful cuts and scratches filled with dirt and twigs, marring his perfectly groomed skin.
The mad thought that the road itself was laughing at him as it dwindled to little more than a cow track skipped across his mind. The morbid fear of what might be pressed him forward with ever quickening speed. Clutching the lapels of his suit jacket tight around his neck he bent over from the force of natures fury unleashed over his head. With each unsure, rabid step, the road seemed to reach out and snatch at his cuffs. Still he scrambled along in the mud and the rain, almost afraid to stop for fear the road might turn into quicksand and suck him down to drown in the dirt and the mud. Onward, always onward he pressed. The trail wound around a jagged hill and to his excited amazement he spied the dead end driveway where a nearly paintless, grey and dry-rot cripple of a falling-in-on-itself motel awaited his approach.
Uncaring of the building's forlornly feeble appearance, the dashed onward. He had found some semblance of shelter. It was enough and thanking whatever god had seen fit to offer him this olive branch, he rushed head-long inside the dilapidated shelter, nearly tripping over the doorstep in his haste to get out of the freezing rain.
A single, dim kerosene lamp on the check-in desk drew him forward even while it cast a frightening eerie illusion of midnight figures creeping across the floors of the desolate weathered motel. He could almost imagine he saw raven will-o-the-wisps darting here and there with no solid form to comfort the superstitious bit of his mind, brought to life by the forked lighting streaking across the moonless sky.
Swallowing down th dark imaginings that this nightmare of an evening had flushed from that primal part of him that lingered under the thin veneer of civilization, he reached out a trembling hand and tapped the little, rusted, silver-colored bell. The ting it made was a hollow lifeless thing, but it brought a short, gnarled man with the look of antiquity to him.
"Room?" the ancient asked. "Twenty five dollar."
"No, I ..I'd like to use your phone." he explained quickly. "My car broke down and I want to call Triple A."
"Phone?" The clerk shook his head. "No phone." He cracked a toothless grin. "You stay. Twenty five dollar." He shoved the register book at him.
Too cold and wanting nothing more than to have a hot shower and dry off, the traveler snatched up the pen and began to write.
He was half-way finished with his entries when he noticed that the room was filling up with silent people. People with a look that sent a shiver up his spine. All pale and bloodless. With eyes that seemed to burn with the very fires of hell.
People who were relentlessly, deliberately moving in on him.
"Dinnertime." the clerk announced grimly.
Scowling, he turned his attention to the grinning scarecrow of a clerk. "Not hungry."
"No?" he chuckled, nodding toward the others in the room. "But they are."
The traveler whirled around as the first hand fell on his arm. His screams rent the air even before the first set of dagger sharp teeth found a home in his throat and silenced him forever.