Aura stopped first, just outside the main entryway. All five tails rose slightly, her fur bristling. “It’s definitely not the Shadow-Cat; what I’m smelling isn’t feline.”

  Nate’s hand brushed over the hilts of his kukris. “How far inside is it?” He asked her quietly.

  Lindsay lifted her halberd, sweeping the ruined entryway. “It doesn’t want to show itself.”

  “Or it wants us inside,” Angie muttered, tightening her grip on the loaded sling. She looked at Nate pointedly. “Tell me again why this isn’t the dumbest thing we’ve done recently?”

  Nate didn’t answer right away. His eyes were locked on the black gaps inside the structure, the broken windows and torn sheet metal. There was a pressure inside the building. It didn’t feel hostile, his skin wasn’t pricking in that way. It was more like—whatever was in there was curious.

  They approached the main bay doors by the regular entrance, massive slabs of rusted, corroded steel that had long since slid off their tracks. One hung sideways, resting on twisted rebar that had been placed there for that purpose. The other lay collapsed into the weeds, half-buried in mud and gravel.

  In front of them, the cavernous interior was dark and gloomy, broken by stuttering columns of rainwater dripping from the roof.

  Aura stepped in first, shaking the water from her body and fluffing out her many tails. At the same time, her tails brushed the air, sending faint ripples of qi that lit dust motes and traced shifting trails through the gloom. “It’s farther in. Whatever it is, has moved away from the windows,” She informed them. “There is more… There is something warping the area inside.”

  Nate felt it now too—a subtle hum in his bones. It was the same sensation he had come to associate with dimensional zones. Not strong, but present. “Dimensional portal? No, that can’t be right,” He murmured in confusion as he turned on his wrist computer and quickly navigated the menus. “There is nothing here. The closest dimensional zone is the one that I believe the Shadow-Cat came from. There aren’t even any cracks in the area either.”

  Lindsay looked up at the beams overhead, rusted through, some swaying faintly as they barely remained in place. “If it’s not a dimensional zone, or a half-formed crack… what is it?”

  “Could it be something like those floating jellyfish?” Angie asked. “Just instead of using the space affinity, it’s using a dimensional affinity of some sort?”

  “It’s possible,” Aura admitted, her eyes narrowing. “The odds of running into such a creature outside of their dimensional zone are remote, but not entirely impossible.”

  They moved in deeper, their eyes adjusting to the darkness. Angie kept glancing at the darker shadows along the walls, her face firm.

  A sudden scrape echoed from deeper within the mill. All five froze. It wasn’t the sound of shifting metal or dripping rain. It was deliberate. Claws against concrete. Slow. Measured.

  Aura’s ears turned. Her voice slid into their minds. “I can see its eyes. It’s watching us. Directly ahead, near what I am guessing are the old furnaces.”

  Nate raised his hand, signaling them to stop. “If it still doesn’t seem hostile, then let it come to us,” He whispered.

  Aura didn’t say anything as the sound stopped. Mika’s tongue flicked out nervously as she tightened her hold on Lindsay’s shoulders.

  A few moments later, two eyes appeared in the darkness, shocking the humans. They weren’t glowing, but reflecting light back at them like polished mirrors, catching the faintest traces of light. There was a layer at the back of the eyes that did it. They knew cats and a few other animals native to Earth had them naturally.

  Aura had already said this wasn’t the Shadow-Cat though. Regardless, the eyes were too high off the ground for even a mountain lion. Whatever this beast, or monster was, it was big.

  The reflective eyes did not blink. They hovered at the far end of the dark, ruined factory space, just beyond the gutted furnace and old rusted pipes. The mysterious beast remained still, its massive form hidden in the darkness.

  “Can you see it?” Nate asked Aura as he slowly reached into a hip pouch for a flashlight.

  Aura nodded her head. “It’s not quite as large as me, but it’s still rather big. I don’t recognize what sort of being it is though. It vaguely resembles a dog, but one that was assembled wrong.”

  A growing sense of unease rippled through the group at her description.

  The dog thing? Whatever it was, still hadn’t moved, or even blinked, it was just standing in place, watching them.

  Gathering up his nerves, Nate withdrew the flashlight and flicked it on. The sudden light shocked the being, and a horrible screech came from its suddenly visible chitinous lips, sending them to their knees as the noise overwhelmed them. With a sudden pop of displaced air, the thing vanished, taking the noise, and the fear it had induced in them with it.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The three humans remained on the knees, and Aura on her belly, trembling for several for more minutes. Lindsay had developed a suspiciously wet spot on her shoulder beneath Mika, but under the circumstances, wasn’t saying anything.

  “Did you see that thing’s shadow before it vanished?” Angie asked once she was able to somewhat shakily stand.

  Nate nodded, choosing to sit instead of trying to stand. “That dog abomination that we were seeing was some sort of illusion. The shadow was huge, and it was standing on two feet with long arms.”

  Did he know of any creatures or monsters that fit that description? Used illusions, had a massive frame, with long limbs, possessed dead eyes, and chitinous material, assuming those hadn’t just been part of the illusion. Most importantly, it also had dimension hopping abilities.

  Actually, that did sound familiar, and not in a good way. He didn’t need anything related to Eldritch horrors showing up. Granted, shamblers weren’t quite there, but they were close enough in his book.

  He glared at Lindsay. “No more stopping for no reason like this. This is your fault. I don’t know how, but you summoned that thing by stopping here, I just know it.”

  Lindsay breathed out and flipped him off. “I think you’re the one to blame, but, uh, yeah, let’s just keep going. We’re close enough to getting back home at this point that there is no reason to push things.”

  Nate stayed seated on the cold, damp concrete, the flashlight still in his hand, trembling faintly despite himself. The mental impact of the encounter was larger than he wanted to admit. Monsters and beasts were one thing, dimension hopping eldritch abominations were another entirely.

  His throat felt dry, but his eyes kept drifting back to the shadowed furnace space where the abomination had stood—or at least had pretended to. His mind replayed that mind-rending screech again and again, a sound that had somehow clawed through his skull and dug down into his bones. Even now, minutes later, he could feel its effects lingering, like an echo that refused to fade away.

  Aura eased back onto her paws, every hair on her tails still standing stiff. “That was no common monster,” She said at last. Her telepathic voice was lower than usual, and the images she no longer needed to use with them were making a reappearance. They were fragmented and odd, almost reverent, though her claws flexed against the floor, creating deep grooves. “Illusion or not, the qi residue it left behind is unlike anything I’ve felt before.”

  Nate frowned. “Can you tell how strong it was?”

  She shook her head slowly, turning her head as if still sniffing for traces of its scent. “It’s too different, and it changed after it vanished. It’s like its qi was hiding itself as well. Right before it vanished, I got the clear feeling that nothing we were seeing was real. As though it had appeared here only half-formed. Its body wasn’t what we saw. It was trying to mislead us.”

  Angie crossed her arms tightly over her chest, eyes darting between them. “You’re saying it was lying to us with its body?”

  “Exactly,” Aura said.

  Mika shifted uneasily on Lindsay’s shoulder, little paws clinging tighter. “Predators trick prey. That is normal. This was worse. This one enjoyed the trick.”

  That comment silenced them. Nate finally pushed himself up with a groan, brushing dust and grit from his knees. His hands were steady again, but he couldn’t shake the chill in his chest. “I’ve seen enough for today. Let’s get back in the Overlander and forget about this place and what happened here today.”

  “Seconded,” Lindsay muttered. She swung her halberd back onto its harness, though her eyes kept flicking to the dark corners. “I’d rather deal with another dozen bandits than whatever that was.”

  They didn’t waste time retreating. Each step out of the ruined mill felt like prying themselves free from a trap. By the time they hit the drizzle outside, the damp air almost felt like freedom. Nate shut off the flashlight before climbing back into the RV.

  Inside, the mood was brittle. Angie sat in the passenger seat and wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the floor, while Lindsay sat stiffly in the driver’s seat, hands gripping the wheel even before she started the engine. Aura curled up near the window, but her tails stayed restless, never settling into stillness. Mika pressed closer against Angie’s collar, unusually quiet.

  The silence stretched until Nate finally broke it. “What we saw in there wasn’t just a monster,” He said, low and firm. “It didn’t attack us. Which means it was curious about us. And if I’m right, it can move between dimensions, worlds, and places. Which means it could show up again.”

  Angie’s head snapped up, eyes sharp. “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m not saying it to scare you. I’m saying it because if it does show up again, we can’t be caught unprepared.” He looked toward Aura. “You said before that the area felt warped. Does it still feel that way?”

  Aura’s ears flicked back. She hesitated before answering, taking a moment to remember their final moments inside the factory. “No, the warping disappeared along with it. That thing, it didn’t belong here. The portals in the dimensional zones, they mark anything that comes through them. In essence, naturalizing them as part of the world they appear on. It changes us in small ways, makes it so we can breathe the air, and eat the food on whatever world we end up on. But the way its presence bent the qi…” She stopped, tails lashing, as she turned to Nate. “It was wrong. It didn’t come through a portal. You’re right. It came here on its own.”

  The weight of her words settled heavily over the RV.

  Lindsay finally spoke, voice tight. “So we just ran into something that doesn’t even belong in this world at all. Fantastic.” She rubbed her forehead. “You know what that sounds like to me? Trouble. The kind that could follow us home if we’re not careful.”

  Nate exhaled slowly and sat at the table. There were several things about this encounter that were bothering him. He didn’t know much about the eldritch beings, only that they were considered powerful, madness inducing being.

  Lindsay finally broke the heavy quiet. “You don’t think that it was waiting in there for us, do you?”

  Angie shivered and hugged her knees harder. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

  Lindsay started the engine and quickly turned the Overlander around, bringing it back onto the cracked road, and leaving the rusting skeleton of the mill behind. The drizzle turned to steady rain, hammering against the roof in a relentless rhythm.

  They didn’t speak much for the next hour. Each of them was caught in their own thoughts, replaying the moment when they had seen the shadow stretching out behind it. When the shadow had revealed itself as something impossibly tall and wrong.

  As Nate stared out the rain-streaked window, watching the gray blur of Ohio’s wilderness crawl past, one thought kept nagging at him—something the others had said.

  ‘It was watching them. And if it was watching, it might not be finished.’

  Thank you to all the people who have taken the time to rate the story and to my latest Patrons! I have other stories up on my Patreon, including my current WIPs. Which are now Created G.H.O.S.T. System(My Cyberpunk story), WetWorks2, plus The Restaurateur and His Daughter and DungeonFall. :)

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