The door wouldn’t hold up long under the crashing blows it was receiving, in fact, as I watched the middle of the door bowed inwards, warping under the strain. I backed up hastily, straight into a pile of boxes against the wall. There was nowhere to go.

Panic made my breath short and fast. Why did I think the attic was a good place to go? It was a terrible idea. I’d backed myself into a corner and made it easier for them to get to me. For a second I eyed the dusty window at the other end of the room. Was the idea of falling to my death more terrifying than the prospect of having my soul ripped from my body?

No. I turned toward the window at the same moment the door finally gave way, crashing inwards, splintering the wooden doorframe. The scythe came up automatically, wobbling in my shaking hands. I stared at the glittering blade that curved back towards me, fixed my eyes on it as my throat constricted and my mouth went dry. If I looked straight at the soul suckers I knew my body would seize up again, and I wouldn’t be able to move. Wouldn’t be able to breathe, or fight.

Even with my gaze locked firmly on the scythe, I could still see the black silhouettes in the doorway. The way they moved was jerky and sporadic. Surging forward and then dropping back, hunched together, sniffing the air. I knew they had picked up my scent, because their nostrils flared and their mouths hung agape. They had human shaped skulls, the soul suckers, with pointed ears and a pair of nostrils in the center of their faces. Their mouths were unnaturally large, lipless, a ring of sharp teeth circled just inside the gap. Cavern-like mouths.

All the better to suck out your soul with, my dear.

I realized it was too late. My gaze was drawn to them and I couldn’t look away. My bones felt frozen, brittle and ready to crack. Any minute I would fly to pieces, explode like heated glass.

                They have no eyes.

I’d hidden in this same attic and watched them take my parents. It had been so fast. I hadn’t paid close attention to the creature’s faces. Fixating on my parents, paralyzed by their screams. But the soul suckers drew my attention now, and held it.

They crouched on scrawny hind legs, snuffling and snorting, hesitating. I stared at them with the kind of morbid fascination usually reserved for things like car crashes. I knew I was about to die, but for some reason I wanted to study them, to see what they really looked like, even through the thick haze of fear.

The reporters had speculated they might be some kind of evolutionary fluke, a “freak of nature”. Some kind of mutation that had occurred in…what, dogs? Ridiculous.

We all knew it was ridiculous, but we’d gone along with it because the only alternative was something far more disturbing.

Now they were right here in front of me, and it was so obvious. These things weren’t any kind of mutated earth creature. They didn’t belong here.

The nearest soul sucker limped forward, and the rest fanned out behind it. It turned my stomach to see them acting like some kind of organized pack. It meant they were at least marginally intelligent.                 The creature opened its cavernous mouth, and I jumped as it screeched. A high pitched cross between a woman’s quavering scream and nails on a blackboard. It was a noise I’d heard echoed outside the safety of home until now, and it had always sent a chill through me. Now I was hearing it up close.

My entire body was shaking. 

It moved, faster than I’d anticipated, ducking under the scythe, batting at me with long, thin arms. I shrieked as it hit me in the gut, sending me backwards over the boxes. The scythe clattered to the floor, and I hit the wall, cracking my head painfully and knocking my elbow so hard it went numb. The soul sucker towered over me, and I found myself staring into the abyss of its mouth, breathing in the stench of rot. It still had blood in its teeth.

Gagging, crying, I peddled myself sideways, digging my heels into the floor. As it advanced I groped around me, desperate to find something to throw at it. My searching fingers closed around something cold and hard, and I brought it up, lobbing it at my attacker.

A blur of white and black, and the object struck the soul sucker in the mouth. A crunch of teeth breaking, and the monster jumped back, shrieking. The object fell to the floorboards with dull clunk, landing on one end.

An hourglass. Sitting upright.

The white sands began to trickle through the thin gap, slowly filling the bottom. Maybe it was counting down the seconds I had left to live.

Scuffling noises as the soul sucker drew closer, and I groped around again, desperate to find something else to throw at it. I found an old lamp and brought it back over my shoulder, winding up to throw it right in its ugly face.

Nothing.

The soul sucker wasn’t moving. It was just standing there. Balancing on one foot like it’d been frozen. I hesitated, still clutching the lamp I’d picked up. Nothing in the room moved. The soul suckers were completely still.

My pulse was drumming in my ears. I took a deep, shaky breath, trying to understand what was going on. Why weren’t they moving? The one that had been trying to eat me was standing on one leg like some kind of deadly flamingo?

What the hell is happening?

In the center of the attic the sands of the hourglass sparkled in the silver light.

Oh come on. There was no way it could be the hourglass, right? That was ridiculous.

I eyed the scrawny bodies of the soul suckers standing in the doorway of my attic. Was it any more ridiculous than these things walking off the pages of a horror story and into my reality?

It took me a minute to muster up the courage to creep forward. Every step I took made me cringe. What if the vibrations of my foot hitting the floor made the soul suckers wake up? But none of them moved as I inched towards the scythe that I’d dropped. I reached out slowly, hand shaking, and grasped the handle near the bottom. Clenching my teeth so hard it made my jaw hurt, I dragged it closer, picking it up near the middle.

Still no movement. I held my breath. Darting forward, hovering over the hour glass. Should I leave it here? Was it really freezing the soul suckers to the spot?

I had to get out of here. I could take the scythe and run, but…what if the hourglass was…magic? The thought would never have occurred to me a few months ago. But now, face to face with what looked like monsters out of a fairy tale, my mind was pretty much open to anything.

My hand hovered over the top of the hourglass, fingers twitching and jumping. Did I dare touch it? Would moving it trigger the soul suckers again? Unfreeze them and send them after me? But if I left the hourglass behind I would never know.

I had to make a choice. I couldn’t stay in the house any longer. Trying to find safety out there would be dangerous. If this thing really did freeze the soul suckers, I would need it.That decided me. Still trembling, I closed my hand around the top, picking it up delicately, making it hover an inch off the floor. I held my breath.

The sand still trickled through. The monsters still crouched in the doorway.

I let out a great huff of breath and tucked the hourglass under my arm, making sure it stayed upright.  Then, still gripping the scythe so tightly it hurt, I crept forward. Edging my way toward the door. And the soul suckers.

I couldn’t help holding my breath, somehow afraid that it would stir across the surface of the monster’s oily skin and wake them. Wake them all, so they fell on me screaming and tore me to pieces. I was forced to get close to them while I edged past the ruined doorway. Their stench made me recoil in revulsion. They smelled like rotting meat and swamp cabbage. Up close, I could see the surface of their black skin shining. It felt like my throat was closing and I would choke to death. Literally die of fear and collapse right there in front of them.

But I didn’t. I kept going, kept edging past them, desperate and frightened. Every inch I moved felt like an eternity, and when I glanced down at the hour glass and saw the tiny amount of sand left in the top section it nearly froze me in terror.

That can’t be good.

Time was running out, and it made me move faster. Made reckless by fear, I accidentally bumped one of the creature’s arms and stifled a scream of horror as its black body moved. I turned and ran down the stairs. The handle of the scythe wacked the wall a few times as I threw myself bodily down the staircase, sending a wave of shock up my arm. I ignored it and kept going.

I reached the living room, ran into the dining room, making for the front hall as fast as I could. The sound of my heartbeat in my ears was joined by that same crashing Tock, Tock, Tock.

That burning in my chest was back, warming my body, lending me strength I didn’t know I had. Somehow, when the last of the white sands trickled down into the bottom of the hourglass, I felt it. I knew in my heart that time was up.

A hideous scream from the attic confirmed this. I put on another burst of speed, passing through the front hallway and the shoe closet. Just as the monsters came crashing down the stairs I was out the door, bursting into the cold night air.

My sneakers were muffled on the dry grass of my front lawn. I was sprinting, heading nowhere. Anywhere.

Howls of frustration rent the night, and I chanced a look over my shoulder. Two of the soul suckers were hunkered in the doorway, and the third was stumbling down the steps. They weren’t fast, at least, not as fast as I was. I hope.

I sprinted, head down, lungs burning. My thighs ached, but I didn’t stop or slow down, not even when I rounded the neighbour’s house and was out of sight. The best thing would be to get to that small patch of forest up the hill. There was a stretch of land with no houses on it, still thick with trees. I played there when I was little, splashing in the ditch water and pretending it was a crystal stream, dreaming up unicorns and knights to save me.

There was no knight to save me this time. It was all me.

Clutching the hourglass to my chest I kept going, legs pumping, hot breath sending up silver columns above my head.  The streetlights had gone out long ago. The entire city had fallen into darkness, but I could still see by the light of the half-moon that hung in the sky.

And whatever was out there could see me, running full tilt down the middle of the street clutching a grim reaper scythe and an old fashioned hourglass.

It was time to get off the road.

I remembered what the neighbourhood looked like before. Green lawns, that’s what stuck out in my mind. Such green, perfect lawns. Our neighbours watered them religiously, hired gardeners to shape the hedges and rake the bark mulch. Even during the drought three summers ago, they’d refused to stop watering their perfect front yards. It was the type of neighbourhood that drove my dad crazy, neighbours ringing the door, asking ever so sweetly if he could park his “eye-sore” truck somewhere else.  

Now look at it.

If only the neighbours could see their houses now. The pretty green lawns turned brittle and yellow. Their bright, cheery houses in shambles, peeling paint and smashed windows. Garbage littered the porches, doors were smashed off their hinges. I shuffled from the middle of the road to the sidewalk, trying not to look at the splintered door of the green and white house I was passing. There was a wide, rust colored patch on the front porch, and around it…footprints. Drag marks that led off the porch and onto the driveway.

I took a deep breath and kept going.

At least the air was fresh and clean. The night sky above me was beautiful, a stretch of velvety darkness pricked by glittering stars. Ironic, that in the last month there had been an incredible drop in pollution. The decimation of man saw the end of our machines. The factories had fallen silent, no more oily black smoke pumped out into the sky. Cars lined the street, rusted and broken down. No more electricity, no more waste.

Just the black, silent night stretching endlessly before me. I’m going to die.

When I passed the cross section between Larkspur Lane and Green Park Drive I saw the first one. A soulless human. A woman, tall and blonde, probably in her thirties. She limped down the sidewalk toward me, staring straight ahead. Judging by how torn and dirty her clothes were, she’d probably been soulless for a little while. Her eyes were dark blue and glassy, and the way she stared…it looked like she was staring straight at me. A chill dropped down my spine.

I paused, making my movements careful and slow, the way you’d move around a wild animal. Don’t spook it, don’t provoke an attack. I moved off the sidewalk, and my sneakers crunched on the dry grass. My heart was drumming wildly against my rib cage. The only soulless I’d seen had been my parents. They hadn’t looked at me. Not even when I’d screamed their names. This one wouldn’t be any different, would it?

The woman continued shuffling past me, still staring straight ahead, and I let myself breath again. She didn’t know I was there. She probably didn’t even know where she was. I stared at her, horror and fascination warring against one another. Her face was slack, almost like she was dead. But she was still trudging onward, aimlessly. Still moving and breathing. Like the muscle memory remained and it was the only thing she knew how to do.

The sound of glass breaking from somewhere down the street made me jump, whirling around, fingers tightening on the handle of the scythe. The soulless weren’t the only things out there.

 I’d be okay. I was almost there. The patch of forest I was heading for was only a minute away. I’d make it there on time. I had to. I was passing the last house on the block, a big two story Victorian with a wide front porch, when the crashing sound came again, closer this time. I jerked around, scanning the road behind me, gripping the hourglass to my chest.

The light of the moon didn’t illuminate much. Anything could be lurking in the long shadows between houses. Instinctively I backed up, finding myself in the middle of the front lawn, the house towering over me. I’d already made up my mind. If I heard another noise…

The sound of breaking glass came again, closer this time, and now I could hear scuffling. My shoulders stiffened, and I began to back up slowly, moving as quietly as I could. My knuckles were white as I brought the scythe up in front of me. Where was the noise coming from?

Something flickered in the shadows two houses down, and my chest tightened. There was definitely something there. Whatever it was slunk low to the ground, keeping against the fence. It was blending in with the darkness. I pictured the sinuous, black shapes of the soul suckers and found myself unable to breath.

Maybe it hadn’t seen me…heard me, whatever. Maybe I could get into the house on time. I could hide there…I gasped as my heel smacked something hard, sending pain shooting up through my leg. I was up against the front porch of the old Victorian now.

My eyes were locked on the fence down the street as I backed up, climbing the stairs backwards one step at a time, fear choking me every time the shadows stirred. I was on the front porch now, and the door was open…well, it was torn off the hinges, and I stepped through carefully. The insides of the house weren’t much darker. I had stepped into a wide front foyer with marble tile. Beyond it was a living room with picture windows that went from the floor to the ceiling, moonlight spilling through the dusty panes.

It smelled musty, probably from all the antique furniture crowded in the room. Draped with white sheets, it looked like a congregation of hulking, silent ghosts. I shivered, lingering by the door, wishing I could move on and find the shelter of the forest, the crisp scent of pine and the trickle of the little river. I didn’t like this, cowering in the dank remains of someone else’s life. It almost felt like there where ghosts in here. Staring at me, wondering why I was intruding on their territory. But that wasn’t right, because the previous occupants were out there, wandering the streets aimlessly.

I peered out the splintered doorway, searching the street for any sign of the soul suckers. But there was nothing. It was still…

Wait…my only warning was the prickle on the back of my neck. Then something grabbed me from behind and my arms were trapped at my sides in a grip like iron. I found myself unable to even lift the scythe, struggling uselessly. A hand clamped down over my mouth, cutting off my scream. There was no sound behind me, only the loud huff of air I ended up exhaling between the fingers that trapped my shriek. I wrenched my head around in panic and managed to bite down on the hand, tasting dirt on the fingers.

A hiss from behind me and then a low voice whispered in my ear, “Owch. Geeze.  Calm down. I’m just hiding like you. Now keep quiet. There’s one out there.”

Burning irritation joined the fear. If he wanted me to be quiet then why had he grabbed me like that?

Idiot. I didn’t say it, mostly because he kept his hand firmly over my mouth. I scowled at the wall, repressing the urge to do something disgusting like lick his hand. Probably not a wise move, since his hand was apparently filthy. Plus the lingering fear was still there, he could be a nutcase.  

Still, the presence of another human being…it was exciting. I’d been alone for so long now it had felt like I was the last person on earth who still had a soul. But now, here was someone in my own neighbourhood. He was hiding, just like me.

It was a bit unnerving, being pressed up against whoever he was. His cheek was right next to mine, and I could feel the rasp of whiskers rubbing my sensitive skin. We stayed that way, his arms locking me in place, for what seemed like forever. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest on my back, feel him shaking ever so slightly. He was just as scared as I was.