Nightmare on Third Street - Chapter Twelve

Elrick was lying on his back, his once lively eyes dull and glazed over in death. His face was deathly pale, his mouth open slightly, as if in a final gasp for breath. I could vaguely see his teeth, which were stained red with blood. His blood. I choked back a small sob and slowly crawled toward his body, the stinging sensation back in my eyes as tears pricked at them. I blinked them back furiously. I would not cry; guys didn't cry. Crying was a sign of weakness. "Elrick..." I whispered faintly, grabbing his wrist in my hands. His flesh was cold to the touch, his skin stiff and rubbery. I felt around numbly, struggling to find a pulse, though I knew it was futile. But I prayed I wasn't too late.

I felt nothing, not a single, faint beat. Nothing. Swallowing thickly, I tried to feel a pulse with my other hand, thinking that somehow the fingers on my left hand might be better to find the heartbeat that obviously wasn't there. Still, there was nothing. I should have known just by looking at him.

He was gripping a knife in his limp right hand, as if he were going to attack something with it. The voice, I reminded myself vaguely. He was trying to protect himself. It had been a futile effort, as his chest was torn open, blood splattered all over the walls and cabinets, even the refrigerator. I was kneeling in a puddle of it as I held his wrist, the blood sticking to my pants. I didn't care, though. I didn't care that I was sitting in a pool of gore, or that I had sat against a wall splattered with blood. All I cared about was that Elrick was dead, and all because I had left to go to my stupid concert.

I could see into his chest, the wounds were so terrible. A rib protruded through one of the wounds, and I found myself blinking back tears once again. I wouldn't cry. I would NOT. His chest looked like some kind of animal had torn through it with its claws. But that wasn't possible, the doors had been shut, as had the windows. I couldn't see Elrick gladly letting a wild animal into the house so it could rip him to shreds. At least, not of his own free will. The voice must have done this.

Could the voice take on a form, though? Could it openly attack someone and make them bleed? I looked at the knife, wondering if maybe the voice had made Elrick do this to himself, but the knife was clean. There wasn't a single blood spot on it, except for the blood it was lying in. The way he was gripping it wasn't the right way to stab himself anyway. He was holding in the way one held a knife to attack someone else, someone standing in front of you.

Elrick hadn't done this to himself. Someone had done it to him. Someone had killed him in my house, in my kitchen. My throat was so constricted that swallowing only seemed to make it worse. Choked back sobs only worsened the constriction. I continued to blink back my tears, taking shaky breaths. The room smell of blood, of someone's dead body. With each breath I was reminded of what had taken place here, even though I clenched my eyes tightly closed to forget the scene before me.

A strangled sob escaped my mouth, and with it came the force of tears as they poked at my eyelids. I opened my eyes and blurrily looked down at Elrick's tortured body. Shakily, I reached a hand out and slowly closed his eyes. I had been told it was respect for the dead. I had respected him in the time I had known him, which had only been a few short hours. Also, I couldn't bear to look at the glazed look of death in them any longer.

"I'm so sorry," I choked out between shaky breaths, struggling to keep the tears and sobs at bay. "I never...never meant for this to happen, I...I shouldn't have left. I should...I should have stayed here, with you. I'm so sorry, Elrick...this is all my fault. Oh God..." I squeezed my eyes tightly closed, but somehow the tears still managed to trickle through and down my face. I took shaky breaths, trying to stop crying, but I couldn't. This sight was just too horrible to NOT cry over.

'Screw being weak,' I thought. 'This is all my fault. I basically did this to him.' I brought a shaky hand up and wiped at my eyes, but the tears kept coming back. 'I should have stayed home. I shouldn't have left him here alone. I should have taken him with me.' I should have done so many things, but I hadn't. It was too late now, Elrick was dead, his blood and guts splattered all over my kitchen. I would be having terrible nightmares for months to come, maybe even years. It would be a while before a recovered from this, if I ever did.

"I'm so sorry..."

A noise suddenly turned on. I frowned and narrowed my eyes. No, a sound hadn't turned on, it had turned OFF. Something had been on the whole time I had been here, and now it was suddenly off. So much had happened that I hadn't noticed it. I struggled to think about what could have made the noise that had gone through me and was now suddenly gone.

'The shower,' I thought faintly. I shakily rose to my feet, before I grabbed another kitchen knife that was in a drawer on the counter. I looked at the sharp blade as it glistened in the light of the kitchen, and turned and left the kitchen, not once looking back at Elrick's battered body. I couldn't bear to. I hadn't wanted to grab his bloody knife and pry it from his cold dead hand. I shivered at the thought.

Slowly, I crept down the hallway toward the bathroom. The door was shut, but light was seeping into the hallway from under it. I stilled myself and took in a deep breath, struggling to calm my nerves, but it was futile. My nerves couldn't be calmed. At least, not at a time like this.

Whoever had killed Elrick was still in the house. That was all I could think about as I grasped the doorknob. Someone had killed Elrick in a terrible way, and they had the nerve to take a shower in my house. Probably to clean themselves up after what they had done, because surely they would have been splattered by the blood, too.

A sudden rage filled me. They had killed Elrick. They had killed him. He was dead. Elrick was dead, he'd died painfully in my kitchen. I had just left his tormented body. The person in the bathroom had killed him, the only one who understood what I was going through. Elrick had been the only one, the only one other than me. And now he was dead. I was all alone again.

'And whose fault is that?' I asked myself bitterly, my eyes narrowed dangerously. 'It's your fault, Bryan. You killed him. It may not have been by your hand, but you did it.' I glared at the door, my hand still gripping the doorknob. 'You should turn that knife on yourself if you wish to kill the real killer. It was your fault.'

I shook the thoughts out of my head unhappily, and then shouted out in rage as I threw the door open, racing into the room, shouting, "I'll kill you for what you did!"

The person yelped in surprise and jumped back, away from the sharp blade of my knife as I swiped it toward them.

"You killed him!" I cried, jumping forward. They caught my wrists and kept me at bay, but the person did nothing to hurt me, even after I knicked them with the point of my knife. "You killed him!" I seethed, feeling tears fill my eyes again. Tears of frustration and fear, anger and sorrow. "You killed him..."

"Bryan," the person said.

I raised my eyes to yell at them, to tell them not to ever call me by name unless they were my friend, and that they certainly weren't my friend because they had killed Elrick, but I stopped in my tracks, recognizing the face, not to mention the voice. I let out a strangled cry of surprise as the voice in my head echoed, "You're mine."