Hunger: A Halloween Story

A middle aged man named Alexander Mitchell, standing just inside the door out of his office building, checks his coat and scarves one more time. It may not be winter weather outside quite yet, but he is ready. Every inch of his skin is covered. And, from the way he checks his clothes before walking out his work’s door, it’s clearly intentional. After adjusting his scarf and hat slightly, then pulling up a hood, Mister Mitchell walks out of his office and into the slightly brisk night air. Well, slightly brisk to someone not layered up like Mister Mitchell is.

He hurries down the city street. Despite it being a city, it’s nearly empty at this hour. Slightly too early for the nightlife enjoyers to be out here in force, but too late for normal people. He hurries not due to any reason in particular, however. He hurries with a habitual pace. He hurries because he always hurries. Any onlooker, like the uniformed workers relaxing in their van or the couple making out in the sports car, might be curious about the strange man rushing around the sidewalks, but they would be much more curious if he were more nonchalant in his brief journey across the neighborhood to the cheap parking lot. Because they might notice his face around his eyes. A face that should be in shadow by all accounts. A face which is clear as day.

But this day isn’t like all those other days before. Mister Mitchell feels it before he notices anything. A shadow, shifting in the alleys, following him around the lights. It makes the hair on his neck stand on end. As his hair stands on end, he does glance around. Just a glance. There’s movement, but nothing he can lock into, or thinks is dangerous per se. Double checking his surroundings, he heads into the parking lot. He’s half ready for someone to jump him. This is the cheap parking lot, after all. And it’s even darker than it is outside. The light fixtures of this place haven’t been fixed since they went out two years ago. Not that it matters to Alexander. He can see just fine. No one jumps out from the shadows. No one lurks near his car. So the man takes a deep breath, in and out, and climbs into the beige 2002 Crown Vic. Even inside the relative safety and comfort of his car, Mister Mitchell does not remove any layers of his clothing. He merely tugs down the scarf slightly for better vision, revealing slightly more of his skin. It seems to almost shine in the shadows of the parking lot.

He pulls out from the space and drives down to the lot’s gate. Swiping his ticket, he heads out. He doesn’t need to pay, he rents the space monthly. Slowly, he drives out into the open. His route home doesn’t normally take him on any big highways. It’s just taking one of the grid roads north to one of the major thoroughfares in town, then taking that street west until he’s just out of town, then a couple back roads until he’s on one of the one lane state highways, which takes him around the city to the south, then a few city grid streets in, and he’s at his building. There are more direct routes, but most times of day, his drive is the fastest.

As he drives, above the eminently forgettable car, the rooftops of the city, and the walls of its skyscrapers, seem to momentarily darken in places. As though the shadows themself are sliding along after his car. But Mister Mitchell never happens to look up. He does check his mirrors occasionally, however. And, halfway through his drive, as he’s getting out of town, he notices something suspect. He didn’t notice it at first, because while the streets aren’t full of traffic, there’s always a car or two around. But a ways behind him, there lurks a dark blue panel van. Again, alone would not be out of the ordinary. But he could have sworn that he’d seen that van before. Back near the parking lot, while he had been walking. Suspicious. He continues his drive out of the city.

He turns onto the one-lane highway. He does not seem to notice the shadows shift the crops in the fields around as the night itself seems to move to follow him. After all, his focus is elsewhere. On the road. And on the van which has not stopped following him. It’s dropped back slightly, so he errantly thought he was in the clear for a moment, but it is still there. Which means he knows it can’t just be some strange coincidence. That van is following him. To what end, he muses. There’s only one thing of note about him. He works an office job with no power and somehow even less access. He lives in a terrible apartment with nothing valuable. His car wasn’t even valuable when he bought it. By all accounts, save one, he is a nobody. He nervously touches his nose. But what do they want with that, he muses. He gets off the small highway and drives back up into the city. Fortunately for him, and unfortunately for his new stalkers, his apartment building has its own garage. A garage that they wouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, be able to follow him into when he drives inside. He drives around the apartment complex slightly, to come at it from the right direction. He doesn’t want to turn into the lot from a full stop, in case the van happens to be right on his ass. Some distance would serve him nicely, which means rather than coming from the normal direction, he needs to take a few extra turns around the grid streets. Then, as he’s approaching the garage door, he presses the opener. It slides open, finishing just in time for him to turn the Vic in. The garage door slowly closes behind him. He waits, blocking entry, until it’s all the way closed. With stalkers, it’s good to be sure. Then driving down to the sublevel, he pulls into his proper parking space.

Sitting in his car, he takes another moment to readjust everything. He’s almost back home, back where the flooding of fluorescent lights and the lack of strangers makes him not need to worry about being noticed. He climbs out of his car. His parking space is across the whole lot from the stairwell up. But he doesn’t mind that much. As long as he keeps his head down, it’s not like anyone is going to be down here. He walks across the eerie parking lot, dimly lit by only three small red-orange lights on three different pillars, which mostly serve to cast long, misshapen shadows across the cars parked within. As he reaches the stairs, he hears a sickening noise from above. A sparking, groaning shriek, like metal grinding against metal. It sends a shiver down his spine. Fortunately, whatever that was, it wasn’t coming from the stairwell. Which means he doesn’t need to worry about it, right? That said, he knows better than to stop to breathe this time. Because if it is something dangerous, it’s better that he’s in the apartment complex than in a parking garage. Breathing heavily as he pulls open the door, Mister Mitchell hurries up the stairs to the fifth floor.

The parking garage itself is not temperature regulated. The stairs, however, are. Which makes the fact that Alexander is wearing so many layers even more uncomfortable. And he knows the bridge is even more so. But he can’t take any off. Not until he’s through the door and in the apartment building itself. Any other time would simply be too much of a risk. And, as he steps out from the stairwell and into the bridge, his suspicions are confirmed. Below him, parked calmly across the street and clearly waiting for him to do something suspect, is the dark blue van. Watching the parking lot. Watching the apartment. Watching him. He decides to hurry across the bridge. Maybe if he can move quick enough they won’t see him. It isn’t that far a distance to walk. It should be easy. Still in the stairwell, he pulls out his garage key, to be ready to unlock the door on the other side as soon as he reaches it. Then, head down, he begins his walk. He doesn’t notice the shadows begin to gather and loom in the stairwell behind him.

He gets four paces in before he hears a disconcerting sound behind him. A strange, simultaneous mix of a wet thudding of gathered slime and a deep rushing of warm air. Alongside a soft whisper on the wind. A whisper that almost sounds like a word. “Hunger.” Whipping around, the man looks into a pair of piercing green eyes. But they aren’t set into a face. They just sit in space, surrounded by a mess of twisted shadows. Shadows that seem to hold a physicality to them. Shadows forming a functional muscle structure. Or perhaps it is a muscle structure obscured by shadows. Then, louder this time, the shadow muscles that seem to form a mouth open. “Hunger,” it says to him. Mister Mitchell opens his mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. Looking down, the man realizes why. The shadow figure’s hand, or whatever would be at the end of the armlike shadowy musculature, is no longer visible. It’s inside his chest. “Feast,” it says. Its hand and arm twist while inside Mister Mitchell’s torso as the shadow creature lifts him into the air. The man’s layers begin to fall off as gravity and circumstance fail to hold the ensemble together anymore. First the scarves and the hood fall, revealing his glowing face and head more clearly. And it was not merely a trick of the light or turn of phrase, his face truly does seem to glow. Then the coat falls to the ground, revealing that the skin visible on his neck and arms are glowing too. And the man remains a shining beacon in the bridge, though only for a few, long moments as he hangs in the air. Held aloft by the shadows that seem to stick through him. Then, alongside his breath, the glow fades away. Allowing his body to join his spirit in only darkness. But that darkness, too, lasts barely a moment. Because, as the glow finishes fading, the shadow figure’s only human feature, the only thing about it that doesn’t scream monster, those green, piercing eyes, start to glow themselves. The self same color that the man’s skin had glowed just moments before. “Sated,” the shadow whispers on the wind as it seems to dissipate.

Back in the garage, the shadow figure swoops out of the stairwell and slides its way through the air near silently to the hole it made on the way inside. The metal shutter meant to protect from gunfire, that had been latched down over the window, looks torn through by some kind of beast. But no beast was that strong. It would be a mystery, just like the dead man in the bridge who lacked discernable injury. The creature had left many such mysteries in its wake. Shifting through the opening, it makes its way up to the roof of the garage with ease. Because, while it does have a physicality to it, its fluid movements are much more like those of air or water than of a person or animal. Sliding comfortably into the shadows of the rooftop entrance to the stairwell, the creature breathes. And something on the air calls to it. The eyes, still glowing, open and whip around. Facing the van. The uniformed men and women in the van. “Hunger,” it whispers on the wind. And any semblance of it being in that place fades as once more it seems to dissipate, being blown out of existence by a non-existent breeze, just like earlier on the bridge.