The shape of the blood on the wall DE2020

What was that shape of blood against the wall? Was it human shaped? I tried hard to remember as I bent over to reach for the machete underneath my bed.

Whatever it was, it wasn't happening again. Fear tinged my spine. I felt the gooseflesh beginning to rise on my arms. I stopped to listen. The freezing cold night-time winds were howling outside but the sound of my heart beating faster and faster was even louder in my own ears.

A cold droplet of sweat ran down my arm. The moaning and banging I'd been hearing a few moments before had stopped.

"Please God, don't let it be her." I whispered to myself, but I knew it was.

I knew my fourteen year old daughter wasn't herself anymore and the timing was right. It was exactly five years to the day I had made a deal with a demon, for just one more year with my sick wife, in exchange for my daughter, Stephanie's soul; but that had ended four years ago already.

I reached under the bed and felt my hand touch the cold steel of the machetes sharp blade.

The moaning and banging started up again. I thought that by moving myself and Stephanie out to this remote house in the heart of a forgotten woods we'd be safe, but we weren't. The writing was literally on the wall now in blood. The blood of Mary.

Now I recognized the shape in blood smeared against the wall. It was the Madonna and child. I hope they'll be with me.

"Stephanie, Lilly, I'm sorry." I said to myself quietly.

I reached the long machete by the handle, slid it out and then with it firmly in my grip I stood up and faced the door. I heard my daughter scream.

"What have I done?"

I tensed. The strong, cold wind outside, if anything, had picked up. I watched the locked door with steely eyes. I strained my ears. What was that, a soft scratching?

Suddenly the door burst open and there in the doorway with eyes as black as night, and skin as pale as ash, was Stephanie. Her chest was heaving through some unknown strain.

"It is time." She said to me in her otherworldly voice.

"No! " I said. "Please.. ." And dropped to my knees.

"Ha ha ha." She laughed. "You are coming with me to hell!"

"Please give me just one more year." I pleaded.

"And what will you give me in return?"

"I will give you what you want most. I will let you possess me. It's your way to stay in this world for a year."

"I accept." The demon retorted.

Suddenly Stephanie's body slumped limp to the floor as the shadow of black smoke traversed the void from inside of her, to inside of me.

"Thank you God." I said as I rushed over to where she'd fallen.

She was still breathing but it was shallow. I looked towards the blood smear on the wall in the shape of the virgin Mary and her child but it was gone.

Sitting on the floor I nestled Stephanie safely in my arms.

"I've bought us another year." I whispered into her unconscious ear, "but they'll be back, then God save me because I don't know what I'll do."

THE END.

a reply to: HD3DSURROUNDSOUND

That really was well written. A proper case of Caveat Emptor!