The Group (pt. 1)

It was a dark and rainy night in Westbush Close, time was around 8:30 pm, it wasn't the scary time yet, but it was close and people were already either heading home or locked inside with the blinds down and the TV on, ready to put up the volume when it was needed. An old lady with white hair and wrinkles was knitting with red and black wool, she was sitting in a rocking chair and swinging back and forth at a slow and soothing pace; a young lady with black hair was talking on the phone to someone, her voice merely a whisper, accompanied by some shakiness and teary eyes, as every night. 

"Darling I'm telling you, stay there. You will be fine with Larry, lock the door and pull down the blinds, I will see you in the morning." The young lady,  Eleanor, said. After a sigh from his husband on the other side of the line, he agreed and told her to be careful, then he hung up. She put the phone down and looked at Mrs. Carrigan. They were a strange family. Carrigan had lost her husband three years ago when all of the madness started, when no one knew what was going on, and it was such a shock that she didn't want to be alone. Her daughter had decided to let her live with her and her Husband, Morgan, given that her daughter was starting school and she couldn't take care of her because of work. 

That night seemed to be similar, and Carrigan knew, but she couldn't bring herself to warn her daughter, she had known that her husband was stranded with a work colleague, Larry, and that Eleanor knew the dangers, so as much as she wanted her husband, it couldn't be. There was a nervousness in the old lady, but Eleanor just brushed it off, thinking that everybody was nervous and scared about that night. It was the same as every night, but no one had really gotten used to it, and they had to be extremely careful: it wouldn't be the first time that one of the creatures had tried to get into a house and had stolen one or two kids from the hands of their mothers. However, Eleanor was calm, she knew that her daughter, Michelle, was in her room with her brother: Peter, and that no matter if they tried to enter, they were safe up there. Her son was only 16, but he was the best big brother and a very responsible child, probably due to the situation they had to live in, where he couldn't hang out with friends as much as a child that age should, and Eleanor felt guilty, but it was the best they could do.

“He is stranded with Larry?” Carrigan asked as she paused the knitting to look at her daughter, whose facial expression showed that she too knew the resemblance of that night in 2018. Eleanor just merely nodded and stood, grabbing her empty wine glass and heading to the kitchen to refill it. “Drinking won’t make him be here darling, you know that.” Her mother said she couldn’t tell the woman what to do because she had her age, and in this situation that was the only way Eleanor could keep her cool and be calm for her kids. “It will be fine, it won’t happen again. That night was pure casualty, we didn’t know what we were facing, we didn’t have previsions, and I am fine.” Mrs. Carrigan said, trying to calm her daughter down. 

“You don’t understand, mother. What if they don’t lock the windows? What if whatever is out there breaks in?” she asked, looking at the woman from the open kitchen. “Then we pray that they know how to defeat those things.” The elderly replied, not knowing what else to say. Lying and feeling petty wouldn’t make the creatures disappear and stop bothering. It wasn’t how it worked. They came to search for something and they wouldn’t stop until they got it. 

Eleanor just sighed deeply and agreed, walking back to the living room and sitting on the red couch. They didn’t have the biggest house in the city, but it was enough to give their kids space. They never struggled financially, Eleanor was a doctor, which a lot of people were thankful for because it was hard to see doctors willing to help in those situations; her husband was a lawyer, but his job situation was a bit harder due to the crime mostly having stopped since the creatures arrived in the city. It was a two storey house placed the closest to the park, it had a beautiful garden perfect for their kids to play with their dog, Anbur. The house was mostly white, but the roof was black and had small details also in black and grey tones. The inside was a bit different, it didn’t look what most people would expect such a house to look like. The walls were a light caramel color and the furniture was a rustic type. They weren’t a family that was always with technologies, they were more traditional.

Eleanor looked at the clock on the wall, it had been twenty minutes, they had until 10 pm before things started, so she stood again and began putting on her jacket. The creatures stuck to a “schedule”. Those three years they had always come at 10, not earlier, and even sometimes later. So Eleanor just decided to walk Anbur now. She headed upstairs and knocked on the bedroom door, walking in. Peter was reading a story to Michelle, who was hugging a stuffed bear and was wrapped in blankets. “Sorry to interrupt, I’m going out to walk Anbur, so if you need anything ask your grammy, okay?” she asked. She kissed both their heads and smiled, leaving the room and standing there briefly, hearing how her son kept reading the story.

She went back downstairs and grabbed the house keys, putting them in the left pocket of the jacket before she put her mask on. Some people said that the creatures left a toxic gas that got into people’s lungs and killed them with pneumonia or with its own toxins. Some even had heart attacks, and no one knew how long the gas stayed in the air. However, there was no way of running away from the place. The closest city was miles away, crossing a desert, and it was too dangerous to go out there, given that the creatures chased whoever moved at night, and there was no way of crossing the desert in one day. Those that got the free treatment were victims that had been attacked and not killed, and even then, there was not a single soul that had survived to explain what the creatures looked like. A lot of artists had made illustrations, representing their own ideas on how the monsters would look like. Some drew them as outer space visitors: aliens. Others drew them as faceless monsters that resembled the creepypasta of Slenderman, and others simply drew them as a group of lunatics from a gang that wore masks and used weapons to kill. But no one had seen one and survived and the Police organisations didn’t allow anyone to go try and search, knowing it would be a lost battle