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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 940956" data-attributes="member: 12332">Cabin Fever Pt. 4"Don't let it come down the stairs."  Brickel thought, his hands sweating around gun and flashlight.  "You don't want to come down here, man.  I mean it!"  He yelled.Scott edged forward and started to help Frank back to the car.  The larger man didn't look good;  one leg looked broken, and up close Scott could see rents down his chest and stomach.  There was a long gash on his scalp that ran down his forehead and opened one cheek.  Frank looked like he'd lost a knife fight, or had been mauled by a bear.  Above came the creaking of someone on the stairs;  slow, purposeful, and heavy.  Wiley pressed himself farther against the wall and pulled his Zippo from his pocket, turning off his flashlight.  The thing on the stairs continued down, unafraid ... like something hunting.  Brickel shifted his weight and got ready to fire. Whatever it was  stopped on the last step, just out of sight, but he could see it was huge.  It had taken the steps so slowly because it could barely fit in the stairwell.Finally it stooped and began to shoulder into the room, and Brickel fired.  In the muzzle flash, everyone could see the creature detailed in stark light and shadow.  Later, no one could decide what had been more frightening, how human the thing had looked, or how obviously inhuman it had to be.  Dark eyes gleamed from beneath a Neanderthalish brow-ridge, its face planes and sharp angles.  Two dark braids of hair hung on either side of its head, draped over hunched shoulders like a gorilla's, and it's arms stretched long and strong, with great hooked claws at the fingers.  It seemed to be wearing clothes, the shredded remains of blue jeans and a few tatters of a shirt along the collar and part of the chest and one arm.  It roared in the after-black, surprised and hurt.  It withdrew into the stairwell."Help me get him in the car."  Scott hissed and Penick moved from where he had crouched, frozen, by the rear of the Explorer.  As he edged forward, Scott could see the shadowy glint of a sword in his hand.  They put their weapons down and Penick opened the back door.  Together they heaved their friend into the vehicle.  On the stairs, the thing began to creep back toward the upper storey."We've got to get out of here."  Wiley said.Brickel stood, indecisive.  He didn't want to lower the gun, but the keys were in his pocket.  The creature seemed intent on leaving, however, and in a few seconds would be outside.  "Get in."  He said, and clawed the keys out of his pocket.  Wiley lept into the passenger seat and Scott and Penick crawled in over Frank's bloodied body.  Matt handed the gun to Wiley and started the car.  With almost casual ease he rolled forward a few feet, then slammed it into reverse and floored the gas.  The Explorer surged backward in a squeal of tires into the garage door, and through it.  The back hatch glass burst with a report and the fiberglass door panels cracked and fell away as they shouldered the metal supports aside.  As they scraped into the gravel drive, Wiley saw the thing on the front porch of the cabin.  It vaulted the railing like an athelete, dropping easily to the ground ten feet below.  Wiley scrambled to point the gun its way, but it bounded for the trees along the lane, loping with the wide-swinging gate of a Sasquatch.  Brickel turned the car, braked, and shifted into drive ... but didn't move forward.  He'd seen it too, and the trees put it between them and the road down the mountain.  As it ran past he'd seen it upright, and realized it had to be eight or nine feet tall and heavy with muscle.  He had a sudden vision of the thing barreling from the trees and rushing the side of the Explorer like a linebacker, flipping them effortlessly over the side of the road and down, down the mountain. In the darkness they heard a crack like a mortar round ... a tree breaking in the forest."How much you want to bet there's a convieniently-felled tree now blocking the only road out of here?"  Penick asked.Brickel punched the steering whee hard once, twice.  Whatever it was, the thing was smart.</blockquote>

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