Entry #23

Night Falls
by Ben Marroquin


They came in the night, unseen. Eyes of onyx, skin of shadowy leather, needle sharp teeth, and ravenous appetites for the careless.

It was our mother who spotted them first, through the bay window overlooking the garden. She gasped as cloud filtered moonlight betrayed them, revealed them flitting about outside our home.

She gathered my sisters and I in the living room by the burning fireplace. We huddled under a soft quilt, secure in her comforting embrace. We shuddered as claws raked against the walls and windows outside, but still they did not come in.

They pressed their ghastly faces against the windows and began to lick it with long jaundiced tongues as their eyes fell upon the mass of entwined flesh that was my family.

Goosebumps crawled on my flesh as they began their sick raspy chant: "Night falls, blood calls. We taste it on our lips. Its salty tang so liquid slick, come fill our empty pits."

On and on they chanted, their bodies flailing about in dance and their voices raising in pitch, filling our very souls with their macabre chorus. Immense waves of rolling fear pounded into our hearts. We clasped one another, battling the mountainous urge to flee the safety of our home.

Then it happened, the full moon broke free from the clouds to shine brightly down on our house. It's unfiltered beams burning into the flesh of the hideous creatures outside, making them run in pain, back to wherever they came from.