The storm whipped around the trees outside and Carolina Rose Bates huddled deeper into her quilt. She shivered, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. The thunder clapped like a cannon, and then the lightning's illuminating flash.
But Carolina loved storms, so she wasn't frightened.

Carolina Rose Bates was eighteen years old. She lived with her parents in Dayville, Virginia – classic suburbia. She was a freshman in college and truly didn't care what anyone thought. Her long blonde hair often went uncombed and was in a constant state of dishevelment. She refused to dress up for anyone or for any occasion, and wore more along the lines of oversized hoodies, pajama pants, and flip flops. Carolina was fiercely independent and deeply curious. Her curiosity had gotten into trouble many a-time.
Last fall, for example, she had tried to climb the tall, tall sycamore tree that grew on the edge of her neighborhood. She had gotten caught on one of the upper branches and ended up tearing her shirt and breaking her wrist.

Carolina got out of bed, taking the quilt with her, and went to the window. She pulled open the curtains to watch the storm. A faint glow from the red and white "fairy-lights" that hung on her back wall cast a warm glow around her.
Outside, through the storm, she could see the brilliant red beacon that was the light of an electrical tower far in the distance.
Carolina smiled.
Hope, she thought to herself.
Carolina loved looking at things metaphorically. She watched the rain beat down on the windowpane, listening to its loud drumming on the roof. After a while, she got tired of watching and shut the curtains.
Carolina went to her bookshelf and pulled out a book. She sat down in the huge leather wing chair that faced away from the window. She flipped the switch and her large metal reading lamp flooded her world with light.
Carolina glanced at the clock.
2:53, said the huge red letters.
She opened her book and started to read.

The bright light of day flooded Carolina's room, cutting through even her heavy purple curtains. Carolina picked up the book from the floor – where it had fallen when she fell asleep the night before. She shut off the lamp, threw off the quilt, and stumbled downstairs, her mind still a bit addled from sleep.
She had been having a very pleasant dream about walking on an empty beach.
Carolina loved solitude. She could almost smell the salt air.

In the kitchen, Carolina found a note tacked to the refrigerator.
"Gone to the movies with dad," it said, "Love, Mom."
It was Saturday and the sun was shining.
Endless possibilities, thought Carolina.
After eating breakfast, Carolina went back upstairs and brought down a canvas and her paints.
Today is a good day for art, Carolina thought to herself.
She lay out newspaper on the floor so as not to spill paint on the carpet. She went to the stereo and put on some music, then began to paint.

"Last night I dreamt
that someone loved me…" sang Morrissey, the lead singer of Carolina's favorite band, The Smiths.
She smiled as she put the finishing touches on her painting – a bit abstract and modernist, but Carolina liked it. She left the painting to dry in the sunlight that streamed in through the window.
Carolina decided she would go to the beach. She got dressed, and left a note, in case her parents got home before she did.
Carolina spent a few hours at the beach, basking in the sun and sea air. She sat in the sand and watched the sunset.
A beautiful end for a beautiful day.
When it got dark, Carolina walked home.
Her parents still weren't back yet. She wasn't worried. They were known to go off on spontaneous trips without saying a word to anyone. She changed out of her wet clothes and got something to eat. She called her mom's cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail.
"Turn on your phone, mom!" Carolina muttered.
Oh well, she thought to herself, wherever they are, I bet they're having fun.
Several more hours went by with no reappearance. Carolina turned on the TV and played some video games, a little level-grinding on Final Fantasy XII. About an hour later, she saved, shut off the system, and went to bed.

Sunday went much the same way.
Carolina slept late, explored the woods near the house, watched "Donnie Darko" for probably the fiftieth time, but still no word. She was getting a little worried now. They usually would have called by now…
She called her mom's cell phone – no answer. Calling her dad's phone produced the same results. She left messages for both of them.
There must be a simple explanation for this, Carolina assured herself, and went to bed.

Monday, Carolina got up a bit earlier, threw on her clothes, and went to class – English 101. Afterwards, she went home and ate lunch. She tried calling her parents again, but still no answer.
Carolina read, watched a little TV, called them again (still no answer), and finally went to bed.
That night, she slept in her parents' big, warm bed. It was a bit comforting.
A terrible thunderstorm raged on that night.

The next morning, Carolina awoke from unsettling dreams, dark nightmares from the corners of her mind.
It was surprisingly dark for noon, if the clock was to be trusted.
Carolina walked down the stairs into shadows that filled the air. She stumbled to the garage, unlocking the door. She knew her father kept a tool kit there, and a flashlight was in it.
She stepped down into deeper darkness.
A leap of faith, she thought.
The concrete floor of the garage was cold beneath her bare feet, unusually cold for early September.
Carolina fumbled for the light switch, but it did her no good. No light came on when she flipped the switch.
Even a blackout wouldn't cause this much darkness, she said to herself, Not at midday…
Carolina felt her way to her father's toolbox.
Her foot landed in something wet, something warm, and sticky.
Carolina stuck her hand out in front of her and her fingers clattered against the cool metal of the toolbox. She found the latches and opened the lid. Searching by feel, Carolina found the flashlight.
She clicked it on, and a beam of light, like a spear, cut through the darkness.
Like a light from heaven, Carolina thought, even though she didn't believe in God.
Carolina cast the flashlight beam around the room, checking out the garage. She screamed when the beam fell on her feet – what she had stepped in was a pool of blood!
She jumped away, but then quickly regained her composure. Carolina trained the flashlight's beam on the blood puddle. She followed it with the beam, tracing the stream of blood back to a shelf on the back wall of the garage.
This is just a dream, Carolina told herself, with growing panic, I'll wake up before long. I'll be in my warm bed. Mom and Dad'll be here. It'll be Saturday again.
But coming from somewhere in the back of her head was an idea that, for some reason she couldn't explain, was beginning to feel much more likely.
Carolina walked forward cautiously, terrified, but much too eaten up with curiosity for that to stop her. She heard a low sound, a cracking, an exhalation of breath, and she panicked. The narrow flashlight beam spiraled around the room as Carolina spun around, searching for the source of the noise.
She stopped dead in her tracks.
And then, silence.
Carolina Rose Bates watched the back wall of the garage in rapt terror as blood began to literally pour from the shelf.
Or whatever lay in the dark, behind those boxes, on the shelf, rather.
A box fell from the shelf, spilling its contents – lightbulbs – on the floor. They shattered as they hit, with a loud crash that momentarily distracted Carolina from noticing the fact that the trickle of blood had turned into a veritable blood waterfall.
Cracks began to form in the wall, and blood began to spurt, splattering all over.
The blood was filling the garage, up to Carolina's ankles, before she remembered that she could move. She turned and ran, sensing somehow that the blood flow was continually speeding up. It had reached her knees by the time she made it to the door.
Escaping the garage, Carolina slammed and bolted the door behind her, hoping to trap what, if anything, was causing this.
A small trickle of blood dripped from the keyhole and ran down the white paint of the door.
I've got to get out of here, Carolina reminded herself.
She navigated her way through the darkness, to the stairs, and up to her bedroom. She stripped off her blood-stained pajama bottoms, quickly pulling on a new pair, slipping her feet into a pair of brown flip flops that sat beside her desk.
Then she heard a crash from downstairs, a crash like breaking glass.
She saw from the stairs that the garage window had shattered. Blood was flowing in through the empty pane. The blood had filled the garage to the point of bursting and was now about waist-level in the kitchen, and steadily rising. Carolina knew she had to reach the front door, the closest exit from the house, but still two rooms away.
She ran down the stairs, stepping into the veritable sea of blood, wading her way towards the door with much difficulty. She felt a moment of panic – the blood was rising quickly, she feared she would be drowned before she could reach the door.
Carolina waded her way into the living room. The furniture floated around her, like empty life boats on an ocean. The blood was hot and sticky on her skin. She felt like it was closing in on her, as if it meant to crush her.
Carolina knew that screaming would do her no good; no one was around to hear her.
She heard a sort of a ripping sound, like fingernails on a chalkboard, mixed with human screams, amplified five-hundred times. Blood splattered down from the ceiling, across Carolina's face.
She pushed her way forward, finally finding the door with her hands, the flashlight trained behind her, searching for, but hoping not to see, whatever had caused this.
She grabbed the doorknob, turning it roughly, but nothing happened.
Carolina turned, training the flashlight beam on the door, met with massive steel chains, thicker than Carolina's arms, that crossed it and attached to large metal bolts on either side of the door; a huge padlock with no keyhole lay where the chains crossed.
The blood was now at chest-level.
Carolina wanted to scream, to just bang on the door with her fists in anger, but she knew that would only make things worse. She moved along the side of the door and into the dining room, where she knew there was a large picture window. She made her way to it and, finding it locked, grabbed a heavy brass candlestick from the floating table and smashed the window, striking again and again until she had made a hole large enough to climb out of.
Carolina climbed through the hole in the cold night air. A small waterfall of blood trickled into the flowerbed and then stopped. Hardly the torrent Carolina had expected. She pushed her way through the bushes and into the driveway. The darkness covered not only the house, but it seemed to Carolina as if the sun had been blotted out altogether.
The silence was a shock, after the cacophony of noise that had been going on within the house. She looked around outside for any outside signs for a cause, checking the side of the garage and the backyard – nothing.
It's as if the house itself was bleeding, Carolina thought to herself.
The air was neither hot nor cold, but instead a sort of unnatural-feeling equilibrium. Carolina felt dirty, having been almost completely doused with blood. She walked down the driveway, and to the house next door. She knocked on the door – no answer. The house seemed almost to growl at her.
Carolina walked down the driveway, and into the street. There wasn't a car in sight. The darkness was absolute around her. Even the flashlight beam only cut a circle of light a few feet ahead of her.
Carolina walked down the street cautiously, following the median.

Twenty minutes later, Carolina turned onto Fulci Street, Dayville's answer to a Main Street.
She still hadn't seen a single person or car. It was like the town had died and taken all its people with it.
All its people besides Carolina Rose Bates, that is.
She saw the large sign that said "Dayville Police Station".
When she was a little girl, her mother had always told her that if she got lost, or was in trouble, to find a police officer.
Carolina hoped that wisdom would carry over into this situation, but if not, it was just as good a place as any to find… well, she didn't know exactly what she was trying to find. Her parents? "Answers" was the best answer she could come up with.
Carolina walked up the stone steps to the door. She thought for a second about what the police would think if a girl covered in blood came waltzing through the door.
But then again, she thought, the way things are going, there'll be nobody there…
She reached for the doorknob, half-expecting it to be locked. It wasn't, and Carolina stepped into the total blackness of the police station.
The first thing that surprised Carolina when she walked into the police station was the fact that she saw a light shining, through the small window of a door behind the front desk.
Carolina wondered why she was now finding what she presumed to be the only working light in all of Dayville. She climbed over the desk and opened the door.
A single beam of light fell upon a sheaf of papers that sat atop a desk. Carolina picked up the folder, which was filled with a thick stack of papers. Leafing through it, Carolina learned of a series of bizarre and grotesque murders that had occurred in Dayville eighteen years ago.
There were newspaper articles, and letters, and police dossiers, all headed from April to October of 1990. There had been a spree of serial murders unparalleled in Dayville history that year. It had been the workings of a Mr. George Derhan, a middle-aged schoolteacher who had been brought up on the charges of the murder of twenty-seven young women in under six months. Their disappearances were traced to Derhan, and a search had been made. The rotting corpses were found piled in an abandoned warehouse near Derhan's home, all in a state of advanced decomposition and mutilation.
He had been taken to the electric chair on October 31, 1990.
At the back of the file was a photograph. It was of a plain white wall, with, written in what appeared to be blood, a message: "They're in the warehouse."
Carolina assumed that this had been Derhan's final crime scene, his confession, almost. The odd thing was, the photograph's time stamp was three days ago. A recent reprint, Carolina assumed.
She closed the file and continued further into the station.
Carolina passed through an empty room and then into what seemed to be an employee locker room. Police uniforms hung from hooks on the wall, like specters of former law-enforcers. The locker room opened onto a long room with six showers. She pulled aside the curtain of each, making sure no one, or nothing, was waiting there to pounce on her. The room was empty, and quiet, save for Carolina's heartbeat.
She reached for the knob of the shower on the furthest end, expecting it to not work, like everything else.
She half-expected it to start spraying blood.
Carolina turned the knob slowly, and, much to her surprise, a cool spray of water shot out. She set down the flashlight outside of the water's reach and stepped under the flow. The water was refreshing, and Carolina stripped off her clothes, letting the water rush over and wash the dried blood away.
After finishing showering, Carolina shut off the water, took a towel from the nearby rack, and dried herself. Then, wrapping it around her body, Carolina stepped out into the locker room. She didn't want to put the blood-stained clothes on again, and no amount of water could make them clean again. She took a police uniform from the wall. She let the towel fall and pulled on the navy-blue shirt, buttoning it slowly and methodically. The sleeves were much too long, but Carolina rolled them up. She pulled on a massive pair of pants, the smallest she could find, but still huge. She cinched a belt tight around her waist to prevent them from falling down. The rolled up the legs so they didn't drag the floor.
Carolina couldn't find a pair of shoes that even came close to fitting, so she put her own shoes back on, after holding them under the water for what felt like an hour, scrubbing with her bare hands.
She found a holster and gun, in the locker room, which Carolina strapped onto her belt. She didn't know how to use it, but she figured that if someone, or something came after her, she could learn pretty quickly.
Carolina went back, past the showers, and out a large steel door that opened onto a long alleyway.
The flashlight beam illuminated graffiti on the wall, but it looked to be either gibberish or a language totally unknown to Carolina. If she had been able to read it, however, she would have known what awaited her at the end of the alley and would have turned back now. But she kept walking.
The alley was incredibly narrow, barely wide enough to prevent Carolina's shoulders from scraping against the sides. The brick was a dull shade of red, and battered, as if some one had taken a metal bat to it. It was long, improbably long, 30 or 40 yards, Carolina estimated. The further she walked, the more uneasy she felt. Carolina slipped the flashlight into the pocket of her far-too-large police shirt, and pulled the gun from its holster, checking to make sure it was loaded. She pulled back the safety, and the bullet slid into the chamber. Carolina gripped the gun tightly as she walked, as if she was afraid someone would appear from nowhere and try to steal it from her.
The darkness seemed to grow more palpable, the further she walked, and Carolina's uneasiness grew. She heard noises now, a sort of groaning, a breathing, almost, a mechanized sound, like some sort of large machinery, and a far-off sound of a tornado siren.
Or one of those British air raid sirens, Carolina thought.
She felt like someone was watching her. Carolina could hear her flip flops slapping the ground with every step that she took. She slipped her feet out of them. She would come back for them later if nothing waited for her at the tunnel's end. She padded along, silently now, barefoot, the gun pointed straight out in front of her.
The alleyway opened up onto a large grassy courtyard. Carolina couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched, but the courtyard was empty, except for a large fountain, a huge stone dog-like creature sat atop it. The water was stagnant, stinking of rot.
She walked past it, and into the street. Suddenly, an utter silence came over everything, surprising after the sounds of the alleyway. Then she heard a horrible snarling, barking sound behind her.
She whipped around, and running towards her was a horrible beast, a nightmare version of the fountain-head. A massive dog, taller than Carolina, and ten feet long from nose to tail, foamy spittle dripping from its huge teeth, stained with what Carolina hoped wasn't blood, rushing towards her at a full run.
Carolina pulled the trigger. The gun went off with a bang, and she missed by a mile. She tried a second shot, and missed again. Carolina realized she didn't have time to attempt another shot. Unless it hit, she'd be dead. She took off running down the street, as fast as her legs would take her. She could hear the creature's heaving breath behind her as she ran. She reached the end of the street, running against a chain link fence that she had never noticed before. She turned and fired into the darkness. Silence, and for a second she thought her bullet had hit its mark, but then she heard the barking again. Carolina knew that every moment she didn't move, the beast got closer and closer to her. She saw an opening, the large metal door of a warehouse, and ran through it, using all her strength to pull it shut behind her, barring it with a piece of metal piping that lay on the floor. She heard the monster crash against the door, barking louder than ever. Carolina only hoped the door would hold out long enough for her to find a way out.

The warehouse was huge, and the pungent smell of decaying meat hung in the air. The concrete floor was cold, freezing, beneath Carolina's feet. She shivered; the whole room was cold, unbearably cold. Her breath came out in clouds of mist before her face. Casting the flashlight's beam around the room, Carolina realized she had stumbled into a meat locker, a gigantic freezer. A snarling beast waiting for her outside, and death from cold in here. She still held out hope that there might be another exit somewhere. She walked further back into the locker. Huge meat hooks hung from the ceiling, large slabs of meat that Carolina could only pretend weren't human hung from them, blood dripping into now-frozen puddles on the floor. She touched one of the hooks, and it pricked her finger, cutting it as easily as paper, a single bead of blood welling up. Carolina wiped it on the leg of her pants and kept walking.
She knew that if she died here, a simple teenage girl, trapped in a meat locker, it would be years before any one would find her. If there was anyone left in the world alive to find her…
Near the back wall of the meat locker, Carolina found exactly what she had been dreading. A supreme sorrow overtook her.
Hanging from two large hooks were the bodies of Carolina's parents. They were limbless, shapeless, almost. Nothing was truly intact except for their faces, just enough to identify them. Plastered on their faces were looks of supreme shock and horror, as if when seeing it, they knew their deaths were imminent.
Carolina Rose Bates felt the tears welling up inside her, a burning pain in her chest, and aching hole, and the cold still closing in. Nothing was as it should be. She begged her emotion not to betray her, to cloud her thinking now.
Carolina expected to cry, but what came instead was vomit, splattering onto the concrete floor. She fell to her knees and vomited a second time, again and again, until all that was left was a sort of racking dry heave that made her feel as if her throat would burst. Then she heard the sound of tearing metal, and the hellish barking was louder than ever. It had broken through the door and was coming for her. The beast's glowing red eyes were brilliant pinpricks in the darkness, like shining rubies. She heard its bark echoing around the meat locker, but didn't move. Seconds later, the creature was upon her, grappling for her throat, held back only by Carolina's weak arms. The creature, shoved her down, pushing her face almost into the puddle of vomit. Carolina knew she would die here, but still thought it worth trying. With an unexpected burst of strength, she shoved the beast off of her, throwing it two arms-lengths away.
It got up and leapt towards her, headed right for her face.
Before Carolina knew what she was doing, she grabbed the gun from the floor, leveled it, and fired, three times, point-blank, into the monster's head. Three points of blood and bone and mangled brain tissue erupted from its head, like geysers, splattering across the floor behind it, sickeningly. The dog fell to the ground, without even a whimper. Carolina got up and delivered a swift kick into the beast's head, her bare foot smashing easily through nearly-nonexistent skull and soft brain tissue. A dark reddish blood trickled onto the floor from the dog's smashed-in skull.
Carolina looked down at it, and almost felt sorry for the beast, but then she reminded herself that mere seconds ago, it would have killed her even more easily than she killed it. She slid the gun back into its holster. She shivered, remembering the cold again.
Carolina left the warehouse through the mangled remains of the door, torn nearly to shreds by the beast's vicious attacks. She searched the area, making sure there was nothing else stalking about, waiting to tear her to shreds. The coast was clear.
In the middle of the street, Carolina collapsed, breaking down, sobs racking her body.
"They're in the warehouse."
The picture was intended for me, she thought, that's why the time stamp was so recent…
It had been a message just for her, a sort of warning, a clue intended for her.
Everything was coming together a little now. But there were still too many missing pieces…
But all of these thoughts left Carolina's mind before long, consumed entirely by the pain. She wished a car would come by now and flatten her, but she knew that there were no more cars. She wished something would come by and crush her between its jaws, a flood would come and drown her, anything. She knew she didn't have the strength to end her own life.
Luckily, before long the pain was overtaken by sleep.

Carolina Rose Bates awoke. She had no idea what time it was, no idea how long she'd slept, or even what day it was. All that was irrelevant. All that she knew was that it was still pitch-dark, and that was all that mattered. Carolina forced herself to her feet, picking up the gun from where she had dropped it, hanging it again from her belt. She walked down the street, not even caring any more where she was going.
She only hoped it was the direction of the Dayville City Limits.
Anything to get out of this town. Anywhere, just to escape this.
Unless, the nightmare was everywhere, unending, a possibility she refused to even consider.
I normally would search for something good in this darkness, she told herself, a symbol, or something to give me hope.
But what do we do when there's no hope left? a more rational part of her brain told her.
She kept walking.
A few miles later, a sound broke through the silence. A normal sound – rushing water.
Carolina told herself that she had to investigate. It was better than this, at least. Some sort of purpose to keep back the despair for a few moments.
She glanced around for the source of the noise, and found a storm drain. She leaned down, shining the flashlight into it. There was indeed water, a rushing river of clear water, running beneath the streets.
She carefully lifted the drain cover and set it aside. Lowering herself down carefully, feet-first, Carolina jumped onto a small ledge, only about two feet wide, but her balance had always been good. A long tunnel stretched out before her. Carolina began walking in the direction the water was flowing, determined to find a source.
The cold, hard stones beneath her feet were slick, as if covered in some sort of slime. She ran her hand over the moss-covered wall, soft beneath her touch. Suddenly, the room shifted, the mossy wall, grass-like, beneath her feet, a refreshing change from the dirt and concrete she had been walking on, the ceiling beside her, the other wall above her, and the raging torrent opposite her, racing along the wall, as if held there by some invisible force.
Carolina kept walking, and about fifty paces later, the room righted itself again. She turned a corner and saw a shaft of light streaming down from above. Carolina ran to it, almost slipping on the slick stones in her excitement.
What she found was a grate, a small doorway to the world above, small beams of sunlight shining through. Carolina could see people moving overhead, the first living people she had seen in far too long, and could hear the bustling noises of the city.
Carolina smiled.
The real world, the world that once was, the world she realized she was just seconds from returning to. An escape from this nightmare.
On the wall beneath it was a ladder, which Carolina climbed quickly, gripping the rusty rungs with her fingers and toes. At the top, she found the latch which held the grate shut, and unlocked it. The grate moved easily upward at her touch, and Carolina stuck her head out of the sewer.
She was met only with darkness and the same dark world she was trapped in. Carolina wanted to cry. Instead, she began to climb grudgingly down, taking each rung slowly now. About halfway down, the ladder's struts burst from the wall, sending the ladder and Carolina sprawling in the water.
Drenched to the skin, Carolina struggled her way out of the waterway and back onto the small ledge. She shivered, noticing for the first time the slight chill her in the depths, but she kept walking.
Forward movement was all that was left. No escape was in sight. No answers were within dreaming.
Further along the subterranean track, a corpse floated past Carolina, bloated and bloodied, entrails hanging out.
Carolina didn't even react. Seven more corpses floated by, in quick succession, and then stopped as quickly as they had started. Carolina thought she could hear a sort of singing deep in the tunnel behind her, where the corpses had floated.
She walked on through the labyrinthine tunnels for another twenty minutes, while nothing else happened.
Carolina rounded a corner and saw a tall figure, roughly human-shaped, but much larger, waiting for her at the end of the dead-end tunnel. It stood stock-still, watching her, its labored breathing echoing through the tunnel. Carolina kept walking. About twenty feet from the creature, she stopped.
Carolina Rose Bates pulled the gun from its holster, and pointed it at the creature. But then, instead of firing, she turned the gun away. She tossed it into the water, and watched as the stream carried it away. Her flashlight had gone dead miles ago and she threw it in as well. She looked at the creature and nodded as she began to walk forward again.
Carolina Rose Bates didn't stop moving until she stood face-to-face with the giant hulking monster. She couldn't make out its features in the darkness.
"At the record company meeting," she sang, looking up into where she knew the creature's eyes ought to be. It lifted her in its great hands and looked her over.
"On their hands – a dead star," she continued.
Blinding pain, as the creature ripped off her arm, her warm blood soaked the side of the too-large police uniform, cascading over her soft flesh.
"Oh, the plans that they weave…" she whispered, through the pain, and died with Morrissey's words on her lips.
The creature threw her lifeless body into the stream, with the others.

Somewhere in the universe, a deep and all-consuming voice laughed.
"Well-played," it said, "But checkmate…"
The figure that sat on the opposite side of the table reached out a long bony hand and picked up the knucklebones that lay next to the marble board.
"New game," another, darker voice said, "And this time, I move first…"
And the figure cast the knucklebones across the table.

.