The rainstorm was heavy that night as lightning flashed through the dark sky like a glaring white wound on ebony skin, and thunder roared as though the world were reaching its end; an end that, unfortunately, had come fifteen years earlier than expected.
Dark cumulonimbus clouds had rolled in without warning, blanketing the horizon. Usually at this hour the sun would be paling into dimness, the world suffused with a serene, orange-tinged light as dusk crept in. Instead, rain hammered the town with a violence that felt wrong for the usually dry midsummer.
Lisa Ravendell dashed onto the terrace of her home, her umbrella clasped tightly as the wind threatened to rip it from her grasp. There wasn't much point in using the umbrella anymore: she had been drenched from head to toe, her yellow sundress clinging to her body.
"Goddamn it!" Lisa swore as she walked onto the porch of her home. She closed the battered umbrella, set it against the rocking chair, and shivered as a cold gust blew in.
The door wasn't locked. She twisted the knob and stepped into the gloomy living room, lit only by the flashes of lightning. Fishing through her waterproof purse, Lisa flipped open her old phone; the faint screen glow guided her hand to the light switch which she promptly turned on.
"Fuckin' hell!" Lisa swore, suddenly frightened by a silhouette sitting in the living room. The poor lighting had not allowed her to notice that someone else was there initially, and when she finally did, she was absolutely terrified.
"Ryan! Why are you sitting in the darkness like that? You frightened me!" Lisa pressed her hand against her chest, feeling her heart throb. She took a deep breath to calm herself and closed the door behind her.
Ryan Ravendell was a middle-aged man: plump, bald, and slightly unkempt. His round face, filled with fat, gave him an unremarkable appearance. He slouched on the couch, a half-empty bottle of alcohol in his hand and several empty ones sprawled across the floor, as he stared at his wife. He was not sober; it was clear he was extremely intoxicated.
"Wh-where are y-you coming from, w-woman?" Ryan drawled as his hazy gaze settled maliciously on Lisa.
"I'm just coming ba—"
BANG!
Ryan threw his half-empty bottle at Lisa from across the living room; it barely missed, striking the door behind her and exploding into fragments.
Lisa's body froze up when she suddenly heard the sound of something shattering behind her and shards of the broken bottle falling on the ground—some even brushed against her legs. Her face was deathly pale as her eyes widened. She was stunned and shaken by what had just happened.
"I SAID WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN, WOMAN?!" Ryan roared as he stood up and began walking toward the frightened Lisa.
Ryan's steps were unsteady, evidently because he was so drunk. He staggered, but he still reached Lisa.
"P-please… Please, don't do this…" Lisa trembled as she slowly backed away from her husband.
Ryan reached out with his left hand and grabbed Lisa by her wet hair, jerking her head toward him and causing her to scream in pain. Yet before the scream could fully leave her throat, a sound rang out loudly amid the cacophony.
SMACK!
Ryan slammed his right hand into her face, causing it to twist under the violent force. He released his grip on her hair and allowed Lisa to tumble to the ground.
"Barren bitch!" he yelled as he kicked her in the stomach. Lisa screamed from the terrible pain that assaulted her body.
"Can't even give me a fuckin' child!" he spat as he kicked her again, prompting another agonizing scream.
"Twenty-five years and this is what I get?! Useless piece of shit! You'd make a great slut, useless thing! But not a great wife. Never!" This time, he kicked her in the jaw. There was no scream.
Lisa lay motionless on the ground as her body stopped twitching. Ryan didn't bother to look at her any longer; he walked past her toward the fridge.
Lisa's shoulders trembled as she quietly sobbed. She heard her husband open the fridge and already knew what he was grabbing; another bottle of beer. Always another bottle of beer.
This wasn't the man she knew. This wasn't the man who had crossed three countries and spent an entire week on the road just to propose to her. But people change, especially when life hits them painfully.
She remembered being loved by him; how happy he had been on the first night they'd shared, when they joined as two halves. A year passed, and they were still together. Rumors began to spread: whispers among families and friends. Then two years passed, then three, then four, then five. Ryan had been eager to become a father, to hold his own child—their child—in his arms; he had longed for such an experience, and she felt the weight of having deprived him of that.
Despite how much Ryan tried to hide it, tried to behave as if he couldn't hear the whispers from everyone around him, tried to act as if it didn't matter whether they had a child or not, Lisa could still tell. Ryan had been disappointed. For twenty years, he pretended: always smiling, always so loving. No, maybe it wasn't all pretense. Maybe he had truly been that way: loving, caring, supportive—everything the perfect man was.
But something happened five years ago. Ryan changed. All the love, affection, and care, the "perfect man" illusion, vanished. He stopped being the man she had known. It was as if someone else had stolen her wonderful husband's face, though that wasn't the case. The change had built up over the years; five years ago, he could no longer hold it in.
Sometimes Lisa wanted to run away; from the abuse, from the pain, from the regrets, from everything. But she couldn't. She blamed herself for the way Ryan, once hearty and like a ray of sunlight, had become a sprawling, drunken mess of misery and self-loathing.
She lay there for an hour in silence, disturbed only by the falling rain and occasional thunder, with pain still coursing through her body.
A soft, persistent knocking pulled her back to the present.
"Who's there?" Lisa tried to sound normal as she gathered herself from the floor with great effort. She wiped at her face and peered through the peephole.
Lisa saw the silhouette of a small child, drenched and shivering, knocking on her door.
She murmured, "My God," as she grabbed the doorknob and opened the door. Light from the living room poured out, driving the shadows away from the little child.
Lisa's gaze fell on the child's face. He was a little boy, about four or five years old, shivering at her doorway. The boy was extremely pale and his lips were bluish, but it wasn't his complexion that stunned Lisa: it was his hair and eye color. His hair was like glistening gold, and his eyes were blazing orange embers that seemed to push away the darkness around him.
The little boy was so unsettling that, if it had been any other person in his place, she would have invited them in, warmed them up, and called for their parents. In the case of this child, however, Lisa didn't immediately feel prompted to offer such kindness. Still, the kindness in her heart ultimately triumphed over her unease.
"Where are your parents, child?" Lisa mustered the courage to ask.
The little child didn't answer. His bizarre eyes stared at Lisa in silence.
"My God! Who'd be so careless as to let their child wander off in such weather?" Lisa said, no longer caring about the boy's strange eyes. She was far more worried about his condition; his pale blue lips were a clear sign of hypothermia.
"Are you sad, Grandma?" the little boy finally spoke. Even his childish voice couldn't diminish the weight of his words.
Lisa froze, her hand still outstretched as she had been about to pull the child inside.
"What are you doing standing at the damn door, woman?" Ryan said, irritated, as he staggered into the living room with a beer in hand.
"Is he the cause of your sadness, Grandma?" the little boy asked, pointing at Ryan with one small hand. "Should I make all your pain go away, Grandma?" His face was completely blank as he spoke.
"Who's that at the—" Ryan never finished.
Before Lisa's horrified eyes, Ryan's body lifted into the air. The veins around his neck popped as if he were being choked by some unseen force.
"I'll make all your pain go away, Grandma," the boy said. Then Lisa saw the flesh around her husband's neck tear. His entire head separated from his body. Blood sprayed in all directions like a broken fountain, splattering the walls, the furniture, and Lisa herself. Before she could make a sound, his stomach ruptured open; his innards exploded outward as the rest of his body imploded into a ball of bloody paste that fell to the floor in a wet lump.
AHHHHHH!
A shriek of pure horror tore from Lisa's throat as tears welled up. Her body collapsed limply to the ground, landing atop the blood that had sprayed across the living room.
"Now, Grandma…" The little boy stepped into the house, his orange eyes igniting like a blazing inferno. He stood before the horrified Lisa, who tried to crawl as far away as she could from the small fiend. "You are no longer sad and in pain. Okay, Grandma?" He looked so innocent when he spoke, which only terrified Lisa even more.
"G-GET AWAY FROM ME, Y-YOU DEVIL!" Lisa screamed, choking on her own tears.
The little boy suddenly froze. He seemed affected by her scream. He stared at the fleeing Lisa blankly, and then, before her horrified eyes, his entire head split vertically in half. A blinding light burst from within the grotesque opening and instantly suffused the entire room.
THE GREYLIGHTS
Lisa's eyes turned completely white. Her expression emptied as her body slowly floated into the air.
"You love and cherish me, Grandma," the boy said, his voice coming from all directions like a disharmonious choir.
"I love and cherish you, Andrew," Lisa monotonously repeated after him, as if her entire existence were being rewritten.
Two entities—one human, the other something incomprehensible—stared at each other in a living room painted in blood and gore. A bloody head, lacking a body, lay atop the couch, its dead eyes fixed on them. The horror Ryan had felt before death was eternally etched in that lifeless gaze.