Blood of Gato Chapter 40: XL

For a heartbeat, the thing lifted its head.

Its eyes—if such things could be called eyes—blazed into view. They weren't human orbs but cold beacons, two frozen torches burning with the color of shattered ice, blue so bright and pitiless it pierced the world like shards of the dead winter sky.

William felt the gaze skewer him. It stripped him bare, scraped marrow from bone. His soul turned over on itself, brittle as glass, cracking under the weight of that stare. Every thought, every shred of willpower emptied out of him. He was smaller than he had ever been—an insect before a predator's fangs, a squeaking mouse flattened beneath the shadow of a hungry beast.

The creature said nothing. Yet the silence was worse than screams. It swelled, pressed into his skull until it humd in his senses, vibrating beneath his skin. It wasn't an absence of sound—it was a chorus of whispers, a murmur born from every shadow in the room, all tugging at the edges of his sanity.

And then—it raised its hand.

Only now did William register what it held. A cleaver. Monstrous in size, its blade wide and heavy, coated in thick blood that shone oily-black in the light of the dead fire. The gesture was lazy, effortless.

A hiss cleaved the air—tal swiping through the silence.

The weapon ca down toward him, slow and unstoppable, and ti congealed into tar.

William flung up his arms instinctively, though he knew flesh and bone couldn't stop that arc of steel. His heartbeat detonated in his chest, like his veins were seconds from tearing open. Blood in his ears thundered like a sea against the rocks. No… I don't want to… I don't want to die… was his only thought.

And then—nothing.

Silence. Absolute, suffocating.

No impact. No bursting pain. Not even the whistle of air.

The entire world bent out of shape around him, like fabric being drawn into a black hole. Space crackled silent and void, and the cabin dissolved into absence.

His lungs convulsed, and he exhaled brutally—dragged back into his body.

Face down. Concrete. Bitter cold, biting through his cheek, burning like ice against skin. His body shuddered uncontrollably. His breath ca ragged, too fast, as though he had sprinted miles. His heart pounded with such violence it filled his skull; he was certain it would split like rotten wood and stop entirely.

"Ch—Christ…" he rasped. The voice sounded wrong, aged, cracked—like it didn't belong to him anymore.

Slowly, trembling, he dragged an arm beneath himself and shoved against the floor. Every twitch of muscle sent knives of pain stabbing through him. His skull throbbed with a single nail-splitting ache, as though a spike had been driven straight into the back of his head. His left hand jerked, trembled—a drunkard's palsy—and he almost couldn't command it to move.

"This is… a dream," he whispered hoarsely, rocking unsteadily on his knees. "It's just a goddamn… dream."

But the concrete against his palms was real. The dust caked beneath his fingernails was real. And the copper tang flooding his teeth—blood—was too sharp, too raw to be imagined.

He pressed himself back against the wall, hard enough that his shoulder blades scraped. His face vanished into his hands as sweat slickened his skin. It wasn't hot sweat, but sour, sticky, stinging his eyes. He laughed once—broken, ragged, a sound closer to a death rattle than a laugh.

"Couple more of those… 'visions'—" His voice cracked into a sob. "—and I'll lose it. I swear to God… even Stephen King wouldn't set it up like this."

He spoke aloud, grasping onto his own voice like the last fraying rope keeping him tethered to himself.

The rope slipped.

A sharp crash shattered the silence. William flinched violently, almost toppling over. A dead light bulb, long screwed into the wall socket, snapped free as if struck from inside. It smashed into shards only steps away from him.

"Who's there?!" His voice splintered into a ragged scream. "WHO THE HELL IS THERE?!"

No reply. Only the wet rasp of his own breath.

The box lay spilled across the floor. Its lid had popped open, the photographs fanned in a scattered heap. He froze when he noticed them. They had—changed.

No smiling grandparents now. Instead, the figures in the photos stared directly out at him, all of them with pupils burned white, their eyes blank and empty as corpses.

His mouth went dry. His gaze snagged on one particular picture—the one of the "Three Wise Monkeys." It had changed too. The monkeys were gone. In their place stood three faceless people, skin smooth and featureless where eyes, nose, and mouth should have been.

William's lips quivered. His head swayed side to side, tiny motions of denial.

"No… no, this… this isn't real… I'm not… I'm not looking at this…"

But he was still looking. Unable to blink. And in the molten silence, he felt it—pressure at the back of his skull, colder than ice. A gaze. The sa gaze. The cold, burning blue fire drilling straight through him.

William couldn't tear his eyes away from the photographs. They seed to breathe—the paper itself quivering faintly, as if a living heart pulsed just beneath the glossy surface. His grandparents' faces, once warm and familiar, had warped into grotesque parodies. Their mouths were dragged sideways into impossible grimaces, eyes stretched too far toward their temples. Their noses were simply… gone. What stared back at him now were not human faces at all, but masks—monstrous, inhuman masks.

"N-no… no…" The words scraped out between his teeth, but his gaze was locked, nailed to those images.

Then—crack.

Sowhere deep in the basent, wood groaned under strain, the sound of sothing bending past the point of breaking. William jerked his head toward it. In the darkest corner, where the thin light from the high window could not reach, sothing… shifted.

"Is… is soone there?" His voice trembled as it left him, and he imdiately regretted asking.

Only a hiss answered him. Long, wet. Predatory breathing.

Overhead, the dead bulb sparked to life for a single breath, spilling pale light across the basent. And in that pulse of illumination, William saw it: a stretched, faceless body, clinging to the ceiling beams like a nightmare insect. Its limbs were too long, jointed in ways that burned the eyes to look at, the skin slick, glistening. And in the blur of its head, two lights—two blazing blue fires—flared and struck him full in the face.

The bulb flickered, spat shadows, and went out. The basent swallowed everything back into darkness.

But William knew. It was still there.

He staggered backward, bumping into shelves with his knees trembling so badly it felt like they'd quit beneath him.

"It's… it's a hallucination. I'm dreaming," he whispered, his voice thin, desperate. "I'm still asleep. I haven't woken up…"

But another thought slid coldly through the cracks of his mind, sly and rciless: What if this is being awake? What if the dream is everything else?

Then sothing prodded from beneath his feet. At first, gentle—just the faintest shiver through the floor. Then harder, lifting, forcing the concrete to bulge, the boards to rattle. Sothing was pushing through. From below.

"No… dear God, no… not that…"

The scream ripped out of him, raw and animal, bursting from his throat until it broke into a sobbing rasp.

"NOOOO!"

When his eyes snapped downward, the photographs were no longer scattered—they had been stacked into a neat pile at his feet.

And the one on top was turned face-up.

It was him.

William.

The picture showed his own body bound in ropes, stomach split down the middle, eyes bleached white like his grandparents', the cleaver buried in his chest.

A low grinding sound echoed from the shadows. Then ca the whisper—not through the air, but through his skull itself, sliding needle-sharp into the soft folds of his brain:

"You are already chosen…"

William clamped his eyes shut and clawed at his scalp with white-knuckled fingers, as if he could rip the vision from his head. His ragged breath ca in shuddering bursts, throat raw with the effort. Dust and damp stench filled his lungs, harsh enough to anchor him, if only for a mont.

"Breathe, William. Breathe…" he murmured into his palms, pressing them to his face until his bones creaked.

A beat of silence. Another. Slowly, cautiously, he forced his eyes to open—and looked down again at the scattered photographs.

They were normal.

Perfectly normal. Grandfather, grandmother. Smiling, laughing. Morocco bazaars, Egyptian pyramids in sunlight, misty streets of London. All smiles. All warmth.

William exhaled, the release almost a groan. His legs buckled and he sagged into a crouch, clutching his head with a nervous, broken laugh that tasted of hysteria.

"Jesus…" he moaned. "I really have to end this insanity…"

He lifted a single photograph in shaking fingers, turning it higher, peering for distortions. But there were none. Just paper. Just ink. Just mories. He almost believed it now. Almost.

"Today," he muttered to the empty room, gathering the stack with trembling hands. "I'll deal with the cops today. That's it. No more of this supernatural bullshit. No more books, no more visions, no more… anything. I'm done. I swear it."

But even as he spoke, his skin crawled. Because part of him knew—the choice had never been his to make.

He shoved the photographs back into the box, fumbling as if even one more glance would break him. Slamming the lid shut, the dull thud of cardboard echoed eerily through the damp basent. William flinched, every nerve twitching, but forced himself to ignore it.

"Enough. That's it." His voice ca louder now, as if sheer volu could make it true. "It's over."

Snatching up the box, he hurried it across the basent and dropped it against a far shelf, then spun toward the stairs. His feet struck the wooden steps in a frantic rhythm; each one groaned beneath him, brittle and warning. He didn't dare slow down. He couldn't. With every upward lunge he felt the weight of sothing behind him—sothing pulling at the air, stretching out unseen hands to claw his heels.

He burst through the basent door in a single motion, slamming it shut as though surfacing from black water. His palms clung to the handle. He hung there, chest heaving, trembling so hard his teeth almost chattered out of rhythm with his breath.

"Never again… you hear ?" he muttered, half to himself, half to the house that creaked around him. "Never."

But deep down—in the hollow of his chest where his heart still throbbed with erratic, painful beats—William knew he had said it too late.

Sothing had heard him.

And it had taken his vow… as a challenge.