Tired of Running

Photo by cottonbro studio

Analiese’s chest burns from lack of oxygen as she turns the corner of the dark church hallway. Her thoughts spiral as she runs towards the end of the hallway.

Am I the only one who can see this thing?

Why is no one helping me?

Sweat slithers down her spine as she dares a glance behind her. The coast seems clear. At the end of the hallway, she finally comes to a halt. It’s gone; she’s found reprieve. She leans against the wall, steadying her breath before looking back where she’d come from. To her surprise, it’s no longer empty; her mother, Romona, is standing behind her.

Romona’s salt and pepper hair appears to be more salt and less pepper, but is it the dark hall or the strange being chasing after her first born child? Nevertheless, the nagging fear that drove Ana’s feet so quickly subsides at the sight of her mother. Her arms wrap around Romona tightly. “I’m so tired. What is it? What does it want from me?”

Romona’s arms encircle her without hesitation. “You. It wants you,” she responds, making Ana pull away from the embrace. “We should leave. We can take Nana’s car and get you out of here,” she suggests, as if this thing wouldn’t bother hurting Ana’s grandmother.

Ana thinks about it for a moment before shaking her head. “We can’t leave her here. We don’t know if this thing is dangerous.”

Her mother all but rolls her eyes before shoving her hand into her back pocket and pulling out a set of car keys. “Here, you hold the keys and I will go get her.” Analiese nods and takes the keys, nervously shaking them. The clinking sound of the metal keys calms her; it sounds like safety.

“Okay, and you’ll meet me at the car?” Ana asks as they walk slowly to the front door. There is solace in the soft sound of her mother’s footsteps behind her as she waits for a response, but there isn’t one. “Or, I can wait in the foyer?” Anna suggests, but again nothing.

The comfort washes away by dread as fear trickles back into her body. She slowly turns around to check if her mother is still there, but as she does, She’s faced with an empty hallway-- just the wall she had leaned against but no sign of her mother anywhere.

Except these keys.

Anna nervously shakes her hand to hear the comforting sound of the chinking metal, but they’re gone. Her hand is empty.

Fear consumes her body instantly at the realization, and just as it does, the echoes of growling fills the space around her in the hallway. Ana freezes at the sound, not daring to look back at the darkness at the end of the hallway again until she realizes the growling is growing closer. She turns around to face the creature, backing slowly away from it as her eyes adjust to the darkness and she can see the source of the hostility: two large dogs, as tall as her hip, standing side by side in the dark. Either Ana’s eyes adjust to the darkness to allow her to see the spiked collars and drool pooling in the corners of their mouths or she can simply imagine it -- either way Ana knows for certain, by their tiny steps towards as she shuffles back away, that they’re here for Ana. They’ve been sent by the thing.

Finally, her feet get the message and Analiese takes off. Exhausted, she runs down the hallway, turning down another in an effort to get away from the carnivorous beasts, but the barking and growling at her heels and the nails scraping the tiles of the floor don’t fade away. Even if Ana does find safety, manage to escape from this shapeshifting monster and its guard dogs, she’d be in so much physical pain it might feel better to simply die— if that’s even what will happen if that thing gets ahold of her.

“Please, please, please, please…,” Ana mumbles helplessly. Tears slip down her face as she whispers what had become somewhat of a song, a prayer, but on its face value is simply her dropping her guard and begging to any higher being that could offer aid.

Analiese wipes away her tears and decides to find my grandmother so they can get the hell out. “Nana?” She calls out as she runs past dark room after dark room, no longer echoing the sounds of the beasts chasing after her . She risks a glance behind her to see nothing but the dark, empty hallway, but when looking around her, she’s met with even more confusion. Everyone in the dark rooms seems to be frozen in time. They are sitting in the rooms, not paying attention to the screaming and frantic running. They don’t seem to notice the ongoing chase happening around them, or they simply didn’t care.

“Nana!” Analiese calls louder, nearing the end of the hall when sheI hears a voice beckon her from the last room.

A sigh of relief slips out as she closes the door behind her, leaving her alone with Nana. “What is going on? Why are we running?” She asks, looking confused as Ana wraps her in a hug.

Ana shakes her head, not really having an answer. “I’m not sure. I don’t even know how we got here, but I know that I don’t want to go with whatever that thing is chasing me.”“We need to get you out of here,” she demands. The insistence to leave reminds Ana of how fast Romona demanded the same thing.

“We should find mom, first,” Ana retorts slowly, waiting for a response. Will it be a caring answer like Nanawould give, or will it be dismissive like the shapeshifting monster?

She says nothing. She just looks towards the closed door and changes the topic. “It’s pretty crazy, isn’t it? It’s like they can’t hear us or see us at all.”

Ana nods slowly, growing confused. “Yeah, it’s like they don’t see me running or hear me screaming,” she responds, looking towards the darkness surrounding the closed door, remembering the blank expressions passing by in a blur as she was running down the hallway.

“That’s because they can’t. I told them that I was here to get a girl and that they were to go about their normal Sunday routine,” a voice rang back, but not Nana’s voice. It was a voice that sounded so incredibly familiar, but one that she couldn’t quite place.

Ana turns back to look at her grandmother, squinting to see what resembled her in the dark, but still, the voice that she heard was not her grandmother’s. Ana jumps to her feet, backing away from the form. “Why are you doing this?” she asks, watching as the body of her grandmother rises to its feet.

“Because, you belong to me. It will be so much easier if you just let go and come with me,” the voice insists, reaching a hand out, almost like an offer, an olive branch. She shakes her head, and watches as Nana’s face falls from a devious smile to a deep frown. “But since you’re being so difficult…” and just like that, the growling is back but this time, it is coming from either side of Ana.

Ana panics and takes off running before the voice can say anything more or the dogs can decide to pounce, and once more, Ana is running down a dark hallway with the echo of the voice calling out, “I will win this. You won’t be able to leave without me.”

She runs down the hallway feeling a combination of confusion, lost hope, and agony. As she nears the front of the church, she turns the corner blindly as tears cloud her vision completely. She didn’t expect there to be a body heading in my direction, but there was, and now they’re both sitting on the ground.

“Oh my gosh! I was looking for you! Get up, let’s get out of here!”

It was a voice that she would know anywhere, Nana.

She looks at her grandmother confused and shocked and crawls back away from her as she processes how or if it could be real.. “How did you… I just saw you… There’s no way that you… Nana?”

Her grandmother nods slowly as Ana mumbles her way through the reality around her. Around the corner comes another person, Romona, and together they slowly edge closer to Ana and help her stand. The shapeshifting monster has always tried to get Ana alone, but now there’s two of them.

They must be real. “Let’s go.”

Ana follows them out the front door. Nana gets in the driver's side as Romona opens the passenger door, and ushers Ana to get inside. She closes the door after declaring,, “I have to go back in there and get something. I’ll be right back.”

Ana shakes her head at the idea, rolling the window down to stop her as she heads back for the building. “That sounds like a bad idea. Let’s just leave.”

Romona smiles softly at her, not saying anything as she stops between the truck and the church building,“You’ll be safe out here. I’ll be right back. Keep the car running,” and when she turns back to the church, Ana sees on the other side of the glass the two dogs. They’re sitting now, watching out the doors, still as gargoyles. Ana reaches out for her mother, aching to stop her from offering herself up to the creatures, but when she opens the doors and heads back in, the dogs remain still.

Immediately, Anna realizes that wasn’t really her mother and turns her head to exclaim, “Go! We can’t stay here!” Nana obliges, not asking questions before putting the vehicle in drive and leaving the parking lot.

“Shouldn’t we wait for her? She said she would be right back?” Nana inquires after a few beats of driving in silence. Ana shakes her head slowly, working out what is really happening.

“Those dogs were chasing me too. They’re aggressive and they look hungry. They wouldn’t have just let mom walk in. They didn’t even glance at her as she walked by… that wasn’t mom. That was whatever hideous thing has been causing all of this.”

There’s a moment of silence in the vehicle after she says it. Nana doesn’t say anything as the thoughts continue to roll over in Ana’s head. Suddenly, the expressionless face alters on her grandmother’s face. A crude, wicked smile takes over her face as she looks at Ana and the voice from before speaks again, “Do you really think I’m hideous?”

Ana looks over at her, looking for Nana, her grayed black hair, her tanned skin speckled with age spots and freckles, but that’s not what she finds. She looks across from her to the driver’s seat to see herself. Her eyes, her hair, her nose, her skin-- it’s Ana sitting there. It’s Ana’s voice. It’s herself that Ana had been running from. It’s been her chasing after her. Ana’s head aches at the revelation. The Other Her chuckles at her dumbfounded expression and says, “Just sit back and let me handle it from here; you look tired.”