She whipped around, the scream still ringing in her ears. “Rachel? Rachel?”
The room fell silent. Her legs knocked against tables and chairs in the darkness. “Rachel? Rachel! Where are you? Please! Rachel!” Her stomach lurched and twisted. She abandoned all caution, all discretion, desperate to find her sister. Something soft caught her foot. She stepped back and cast the light from her phone towards the object.
Rachel’s severed face stared up from the floor, her body nowhere to be found.
He is neither kind nor jolly. Every year he enters the homes of especially unruly children and snatches them up, leaving behind no trace or memory that they had ever existed. By night’s end, with his sack full of naughty children, he slinks back to his lair to gorge himself. When the last child is devoured, bones and all, he falls into a deep sleep for another year, with none of us the wiser.
Until now.
He had grown old and fat. Time had been unkind, and he felt its weight upon his shoulders. He looked down once more at the package that had been delivered only hours ago—a key, a deed, and a death certificate bearing his father’s name. The voice of his father, it seemed, rose from its hellish resting place to mock him, enjoying one final laugh at his expense.
“Fool, bastard.” He said. “I’m too old for this—and so were you. Or, at least, you should have been.”
Void Engineer 