cryenos

"When it is before you, you cannot move, you cannot breathe. Your mind constricts itself, and your nerves freeze. There is no sound, no sight, only the faint smell of burning rubber and an inky blackness that coats all else."

"Yes, we know about all that, but what did it look like?" Jack asks impatiently.

Noel takes a shuddering breath, wrenching his face up to look into Jack's eyes. "I told you, it has no form, it is not a creature like you and me. It was something else."

"It must have some description, a colour, the colour of its flesh," said Jack.

Noel shook his head, eyes closed tight and trembling. "You still don't understand, it had no flesh."

Jack sighed, this was taking so much longer than they thought it would, "Okay Noel, this thing, what exactly is it?"

Noel shook his head slowly, "like nothing I have ever seen, is what it is."

"So you have seen it then?"

"No, not really," he said pensively, " it's more like a presence, a ghost almost. But worse, older, angrier."

Jack dragged a hand down his face. It was already nearing two o'clock in the morning, and he still hadn't gotten anywhere with Noel.

"Alright, well Noel, this 'presence' has killed three people this week, and it is only Tuesday. So I'm going to need you to start thinking a little more clearly about what you saw, or felt, or whatever. Because later this morning, I will need to address the town on what we know and if the best we can come up with is 'unknowable horror' then I'm afraid we'll start to see some very tangible murderers emerge. Understand?"

Noel looked up at Jack in stony silence. His jaw clenched under his beard.

"Noel, please" Jack pleaded, " just tell me what you saw. What you really saw."

Noel shook his head, "I told you didn't I? If you don't believe me why not go out there yourself?" He raised a hand to point in the general direction of the woods. "Go and see what the brilliant detective can uncover," Noel muttered to himself.

Jack sighed. They'd already searched the area around where Selena was found. No weapon, no blood, just a broken and bruised body lying half a mile from the nearest road.

But he clearly wasn't getting anywhere with Noel, "You know what, fine. I'll go out there, but when I come back with nothing, I'm going to start seriously considering the possibility that you know a lot more about this case than you are letting on." Jack said threateningly as he picked up his coat and keys, "I'll be back in an hour, I'll leave you to think about what happened, maybe your memory will clear up a little."

Jack heard the beginnings of another muttered phrase before the door shut firmly behind him. He sighed, again, and started walking to his car. He wasn't going to drive out into the middle of nowhere because the old man said he saw a nameless horror there where he found the girl, but there wasn't much point in just sitting around outside for an hour either.

He got in his car and started driving towards home, maybe after waiting for an hour or so Noel would change his story. He must have seen something out there, a person, the murderer perhaps. He didn't think that Noel was responsible for any of the deaths. But if he didn't have anything else to tell the people by the morning, well they would certainly start thinking Noel might have something to do with it.

The lonesome old man living on the edge of town, Noel was an odd fellow. No family, friends. He rarely spoke to anyone, rarely even left his house. Even if he hadn't found the girl's body people would probably still think he was guilty.

The land outside his car window was lit dimly in the early hours of the morning. The moon was barely half full, and the stars were next to invisible this close to town. Either side of him the heavy forest pressed in, the road gradually thinning the further it stretched away from civilization. Shadows danced dimly in between the trees playing tricks in the corners of Jack's eyes.

He wouldn't say that Noel's story was convincing, but it had gotten him on edge. Usually, people were fiddly with their cover stories, they went back and forth on the details, stopping and starting, going all over the place.

But Noel had been different. He seemed truly convinced of this story he had told Jack. Almost as if he had been telling the truth.

Jack chuckled to himself, he must be more tired than he thought, how could Jack have been telling the truth, it was ridiculous. But really, an inexplicable creature stalking around the woods and murdering teenagers, it wasn't exactly the standard excuse when accused of murder, if he was lying, he would have come up with something more reasonable.

But people panic when under pressure, maybe he thought of it and just decided to run with it, having no other choice than to double down on his story.

Jack pressed his lips together, staring hard at the road ahead of him. His arms tensed with hands gripped tight to the wheel.

There was just something about Noel's story, a faceless, formless creature lurking deep in the woods. That wasn't something you heard every day, and with how the bodies were piling up, he couldn't help but feel... curious.

Jack jerked the wheel sharply, wheels screeching as he threw his car onto a narrow dirt road that led deeper into the woods.

The trees were even closer together on this path, looming on either side of him, silent and oppressive watchers of his journey. Jack kept his eyes ahead as he bounced his way along the road, every rock seemed to appear directly under his tire, sending a jolt up his spine.

Maybe this wasn't the best idea, he looked about, intending to turn his car around in a break in the trees.

But the trees were pressing even closer now, squeezing the sides of the cars to the point where he could hear scratches being clawed along the sides and the top of his car. Instantly he put his foot on the brake, his eyes wincing closed as he imagined the surely near end of the path drawing ever closer. But the car never stopped, the brake did nothing and he continued to move faster and faster through the still impossibly narrowing woods. He felt trapped, frozen in place as he moved against his will closer and closer to his inevitable death. His breath came in short and stuttering, the little he saw from the blurring headlights ahead of him starting to fade, his eyelids started to fall closed and his hands fell quietly off the wheel, dropping softly into his lap. The last thing he thought was that you should have believed your friend.