"Help me!" Tom screamed. "God! Help..."
But shock had overcome her.
As Theresa ran, she could hear her lover's plea's mixed with the wicked laughter. The beating had resumed.
"Oh, no! God, No! Someone help!" she cried as she threw the front door open to the house and ran for her life towards the road. Her screams were lost in the night.
She was half way to the street when she heard glass shattering. A thousand pieces showering onto the ground behind her. The fiend came through the old window, right to the ground below, bounding after her like a demonic toad.
He began playing with her, like a cat with a mouse. He would land almost on top of her, claw at her back, just barely breaking the skin....then when she would fall to the ground, he would bounce off again.
All the while he uttered the most disgusting vulgarities, taunting as he laughed like a rabid hyena.
He allowed her to make it down the long gravel driveway, passed the trees, the row of bushes and onto the main road in front of the old house. All the while whispering from the shadows what he would do to her when he finally got her.
Theresa ran along the road screaming at the top of her lungs like a maniac. Cars indifferently zipped past her, some honked, others cursed.
Soon the road was black. No one was coming.... but him.
"Come here you little bitch!" his rotted throat cackled.
She was out of breath. Her throat felt like she had swallowed a handful of razor blades from the screaming.
She fell to the ground gasping, her lips still mouthed unheard prayers.
Then, as if an angel had answered her pleas, she saw headlights coming around the bend. With all of the strength she had left, she forced herself up from the street a half second before her pursuer landed on the exact spot she had been laying.
He ripped at her hair as she fled away towards the car.
The woman driving the car was trying to find something on the radio when she noticed someone running directly in front of her car. Theresa waved her hands frantically and screamed.
The driver turned the wheel hard. Tires squealed on the road as brakes locked up.
Theresa received a glancing blow from the front fender of the silver Toyota. It shot her down to the ground. She held her hip, squirming in pain.
"Oh fuck!" the driver yelled, "God, no!"
She put the car in park and threw the door open as she jumped out onto the street.
"I'm so sorry! Oh my God!" she repeated. She ran to Theresa. She was in a fetal position, grimacing in pain.
"I'll get some help! Hold on...." the driver told Theresa as she began to go back to her car for her cell phone.
Laughter....an insane cacophonic roll erupted from the shadows. It froze unsuspecting woman in her tracks.
Theresa, shaken from her agony, began to plead...."Don't let him get me, please! He's coming!!"
"What? Who are you talking about?" the woman started to ask.
She turned her head. The woman saw him. He was squatted in front of her headlight watching them. His long black cape trailed behind him in the wind.
His face was revealed by the beams of light. It was horribly wrinkled like a prune, twisted into a malevolent grin which revealed his glaucous rotting teeth.
He had an old fashioned goatee and appeared to be wearing some kind of black armor. On his head was a devilish horned helmet.
The woman froze in disbelief.
The last thing she heard was snickering as he sprang high into the air.
Jack came down hard, crashing with all of his weight onto the woman, flattening her to the street with a sickening sound.
Theresa watched him rejoice as he bounced up and down on the fallen woman as if she was a trampoline. Again and again he bounced, smashing the life from her as she begged in vain for mercy.
Her bones popped and cracked beneath his feet on the hard pavement as blood began to shoot out of her mouth.
The woman fell silent but he continued to bounce on her lifeless body until there was no doubt she would ever rise again. He calmly walked off the woman, stopping to give a chivalrous bow to Kelly.
He made a regal sweep of his arm before lurching out at her like a madman.
She raced to the woman's car. Jack taunted her, raking her back with long, deep strokes that felt like fire on her skin.
Suddenly, he was gone. She looked around. Nothing...
She opened the dead woman's car and hurriedly pulled her self into it. It was still running.
A clawed hand grabbed the door as she tried to shut it. He began a sadistic game of tug a war with her
She put her feet against the door and quickly pushed it open with all her strength. It caught him off guard and knocked him to the road.
"You addle pated wench!" Jack cursed.
Theresa put the car in gear and floored the gas, spinning the tires again as she pulled away. She quickly shut the door and locked it.
"Come on!" she yelled as she floored the car.
The engine roared as she sped off. A loud metallic thump came from the top of the Toyota. "What?"
A loud sound of ripping metal came from overhead. Something had pierced the roof. She looked up, and to her amazement the roof was being peeled back revealing his enraged face.....
"Bastard!" she cursed as she slammed on the break. Tires squealed. The devil's body flipped forward in front of the car.
It landed on the side of the road ahead of her. She watched the grotesque ghoul push himself up off the road. She punched the gas down to the floor.
The lunatic made no attempt to move; he seemed to be sneering at her as her headlights came closer.
At the last second he jumped high up into the sky. Theresa saw the tree on the side of the road too late.
Metal crunched as she struck the huge tree. She was thrust toward the windshield. Her head bounced off hard.
Theresa could see the man approaching as she began to lose consciousness....He was shaking his head at her.
#
Theresa awoke to feel herself being carried by a couple of strange men. Blue and red flashes illuminated the scene. She heard many voices discussing what had happened.
Theresa tried to sit up from the stretcher but she was tightly secured and very weak.
The paramedics began to questions as they loaded her onto the back of the ambulance. Theresa's face was blank as they tried to talk to her.
Finally, she forced her head up. "Where is he?" she demanded. "Did they catch him?" A fat gray haired policeman poked his head into the open back of the ambulance, he gave her a puzzled look.
"He got away didn't he?" she asked, her face falling in disbelief.
"You rest now," he told her in a cold voice, "We'll talk later...."
Although the police could never piece together what happened, the general consensus was that the young woman was somehow responsible for the murders.
Her impossible tale of a monster from an old chest that murdered her fiance and two other people did not sit well with the authorities.
Her protests fell on deaf ears and the decision was made to put her into an institution.
She never wavered from her story about the mysterious devil man and he cases were never solved.
Many nights Theresa would get out of bed and walk to the barred window of her room. Her terrified eyes would scan the darkness outside, watching for something...someone moving in the shadows.
Some nights, all at once she would erupt with blood curdling screams that woke up everyone on the floor.
She would tell of two red flaming eyes that watched her from the trees....a black cloaked figure that would sometimes appear at the window, scratching at the glass and taunting her.
He would bounce away before anyone could see him, only to return later dancing on the grounds outside where he would make impossible leaps and gracefully dance about, mocking her, reveling in the moonlight.
The nurses would look at each other with wide, compassionate eyes.
She was put on heavy medication and moved to a room without a window. She would jump at every creaking sound and every movement outside her door.
She stayed there for many years, until one morning the nurses found Theresa's door open.
They found her inside. Her pretty face was slashed to ribbons. She was catatonic, her mind collapsed, hopelessly lost to the numbing embrace of merciful madness....
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