It Runs

By A. Anders

What would you want to experience if you knew that no matter what happened you would be safe? The Red Reaper is a supernatural creature that forces its victims to live their darkest fantasies. If they resist, they die.

In a college town during a record cold winter break, Jon Morris, a professor, wanders the empty campus struggling to hold on to his sanity. Unable to stay awake during the day, he sees a red hooded creature in the shadows at night. What is it that Jon desires in the still quiet moments of his heart? What will the Red Reaper try to bring to life? And can Jon escape his own twisted desires before the Red Reaper kills everyone around him giving Jon exactly what he wants? Jon doesn't know, but his time is running out fast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RateABull Publishing
• Release date: Oct 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005420994

Book preview

Prologue

S ilence.  A single breath cuts through the silence, and then again silence.  Two labored breaths begin a rhythmic pant that strips away the silence, getting louder until you wish the silence would return. But it is too late. The silent is gone.

In, out. The breathing is heavy. It’s measured and patterned. It purposefully inhales and exhales. It is in control.

‘Just breathe. Just breathe,’ the runner thinks.

A crackle joins the breathing. It’s a crisp crunch of dried something; wheat, perhaps? Maybe stones?

‘It’s the sound of stones cracking under my feet,’ the runner thinks. ‘I’m running away from something and I have to keep running,’ the runner realizes, before he wonders why and slows to a stop.

The exhausted runner leans over to catch his breath. From above, he is just a dot, a speck of stillness in a field of movement. The grass around him sways. The air thickens with a red haze that slowly creeps toward him.

Feeling a chill, the runner stands. Terror washes white across the runner’s face as he remembers why he was running. He quickly looks around. It’s too late. The horizon has faded away and the grassy field is following. In a second, the entire earth vanishes and all that’s left around the runner is darkness.

‘It’s coming,’ he realizes as the darkness rumbles.

Turning toward the sound, he sees it. It is like death. In its majesty and feel, in its shape and size, it is like death. But it isn’t death. Instead, it glows red. It is like death but red.

The runner fights his panic and again runs. That-which-is-like-death disappears. The earth and sky return. The darkness is replaced by running and the runner again feels free.

With no one chasing him, he begins to understand. Running is freedom. To stop running brings death. No, it brings something like death. Running is freedom; not running is like death.

He must keep running and running. When he is tired, he must keep running. When all hope is lost, he must keep running.  

‘I can’t keep running,’ he thinks.

The runner looks ahead and sees a building. It’s a factory in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a fence. Knowing he can’t keep running, he plans his escape.

Approaching the chain link, he jumps. Grabbing the jagged metal, he climbs. It tears the flesh from his hands leaving the links blood-soaked. But moving up is not moving forward, so everything around him fades.

Darkness returns. With it comes the rumble that thunders like a stampede. The Red Reaper, that’s all like death but not, all like fury but not, approaches. With its sickle in hand, it aims. But when the runner throws himself forward over the fence, it again fades away.

The runner, crawling forward, leaves a blood trail as he escapes the darkness. In front of the factory’s wall, he stops. The darkness returns, but this time the Red Reaper isn’t alone. Scores of black-cloaked, mini deaths line up beside the runner and attack.

The runner spots a ground-level window. Crawling towards it, he forces his attackers away. Breaking the glass with his shredded hand, he wriggles through.

The runner stares into the dark building and remembers the rules: never stop moving forward because forward movement brings the light.

As he stands scanning the darkened space, the building fades and the deaths reappear. With the building gone, the Red Reaper and all of the little deaths pour towards him.

Remembering the rules, the runner gets up and runs. This time, when the building returns, the Red Reaper goes away, but the mini deaths remain. He panics.

‘Stairs!’ the exhausted runner notices. ‘I can’t keeping running, but maybe if I can get high enough they won’t be able to reach me.’

The mini deaths follow him to the stairs but only the runner goes up. Ascending, he remembers the rules: never stop moving forward, even when it’s up.

‘I’m so tired,’ he thinks. ‘Why must I keep running if I’m so tired?’

But he continues to run. At the top of the stairs, he breaks through the door and then stops. The room is small and has no other doors. With no space, he runs in a circle. It works. The room remains lit.

Realizing he can’t circle forever, he peers through the windows.  Through them is a hanging catwalk and beyond that is a smelting press. So instead of circling, he throws himself through the glass window onto the catwalk.

Looking up from the bloody glass shards around him, the runner scans the catwalk. The Reaper’s mini deaths wait for him on both sides. He’s trapped. But remembering the rule to never stop running, he turns to the smelting press and climbs in.

As the runner touches it, the machine turns on. Steam billows as it threatens to crush him. But as the top plate lifts, the runner sees his escape.

First crouching and then jogging, the runner stops at the edge of the press. Forced to crouch by the lowering plate, he frantically scans for another escape. Five feet ahead is a horizontal pole that extends towards a window. Now on his knees with no place to go, he launches himself off the plate onto the pole.

‘Never stop running,’ he thinks and then shimmies across.

At the end of the pole is a track. From the track hangs chains attached by rollers. Reaching the end of the pole, the runner lunges at a chain.

Got it, he gasps.

Letting go of the pole, his momentum rolls him forward. When the rollers reach the end of their track, he’s close enough to grab a chain on the next track. Transferring across, he again glides forward.

Staring in front of him, his heart soars. He sees that he is about to get away. The window ahead frames his escape. The only thing that could stop him now is luck – horrible luck.

When the chain hit the end of its track, the rolling came to an abrupt stop. Swinging forward, the runner throws out his hand. He grabs desperately at the window but misses. His heart sinks. He is still three feet away. Hanging thirty feet in the air with nowhere left to go, the window is just out of reach.

As the runner’s swinging slows, his heart pounds. Terror rips through him as he realizes that there is finally no escape. Helpless, he watches as his world disappears.

When a chill ratchets up his spine, the runner thinks that death is approaching. It isn’t death that approaches, though. It is that-which-is-like-death that approaches.

Standing in front of the runner, the Red Reaper reveals its sickle. Frantic, the runner looks down into the darkness. He reaches his toes hoping that the ground will appear. It doesn’t.

The runner looks up as the Red Reaper lifts its sickle to the runner’s chest. The empty darkness swallows the runner’s whimpers. In the painful silence, that-which-is-like-death steps back and aims. When it steps forward, it swings its sickle and the runner’s body jerks on impact.

Stunned, the runner looks down in time to watch his severed legs disappear into the darkness. Staring at his bloody stumps, the runner screams. There is no use, though, because the silence remains deafening and the Red Reaper has won; that which is like death has occurred.

Overcome suddenly by heart-wrenching despair, the runner loosens his grip on the chain. He has nothing left to live for. Slowly consumed by the darkness, he lets go of everything and follows his legs into the void.

Once again moving, the earth reappears. The runner hits the ground with a jolt and coughs.

Uhhh!

When he opens his eyes again, things are different. The red haze is gone and the surrounding night sky is as normal as any other night.

The runner fights to recognize where he is. He is in the driver’s seat of his car. He looks around and finds the passenger seat empty. Looking forward, he sees a white light approaching him.

‘What is that light?’ he wonders.

But as soon as the light is close enough to recognize, there is no time to react. The cars crash.

Chapter 1

J on Manor clutched onto his steering wheel when he heard the crash. Startled out of his quiet appreciation of Bach, he turned to Nicki. Jon and his passenger craned their necks searching the dark country road for what had occurred.

I think someone hit a deer, the fit, thirty-two-year-old man guessed.

Their curiosities were soon quenched when a pair of intertwined cars appeared around the bend. One had only lost a bumper, but the other was a