Rushed by Brian Harmon Page B

circling around, looking for another way up here.
    He stood up, retrieved his lost shoe and made his way back up to the peak of the roof, where he sat down.  He was still trembling, his heart still thumping.  He couldn’t seem to quite catch his breath.  He didn’t feel like he’d ever be normal again. 
    He looked down at his leg and found that his khakis were torn.  There was a long cut visible through the rip.  He was bleeding, but not profusely. 
    His shoulder, he found, was worse.  Blood trickled down his arm, soaking the sleeve of his tee shirt and dripping from his hand.  And his face was bleeding, too.  A shallow, but freely flowing cut ran from beneath his left eye to just under his left ear. 
    How he managed to not get his entire face peeled off was beyond him. 
    He’d received other, smaller injuries as well, including a gash in his ankle, which he received when he lost his shoe, and two bloodied elbows from rolling around on the rough shingles.  He had friction burns all over his stomach and lower back.  His face was scraped up, his nose and forehead raw. 
    There was a first aid kit in the glove box of the PT Cruiser, he recalled.  As if that would do him any good. 
    He pulled his cell phone out, confirmed that he still had no signal and then pocketed it again. 
    He was on his own up here. 
    The cuts on his shoulder were the ones he needed to worry about.  He rolled up his sleeve so that the fabric covered the entire injury and then pressed his hand against it and stood up. 
    The first thing to do was find a way down from here.  He couldn’t go back the way he came, obviously, but perhaps there was another way down.  Preferably one that didn’t involve breaking both his legs. 

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Eleven
    Circling around the taller, middle section of the building’s roof, Eric finally located a window he was able to break. 
    Slipping inside, he found himself in a small, unfurnished bedroom.  It was dark in here, gloomy, despite the white walls and the bright sunshine outside. 
    No one came to investigate the sound of breaking glass, but he hadn’t expected to be confronted.  The overgrown yard had suggested that no one had been here for a very long time.  And if all the noise of the monster’s horrible cries, his own screaming and cursing and the stomping around on the roof hadn’t alerted anyone to his presence, much less the deafening cacophony of the collapsing scaffolding, then it was fairly safe to assume that no adequately concerned homeowner was currently present. 
    In his defense, however, he was courteous enough to at least knock at the window before kicking in the glass. 
    Besides, anyone who could afford to build a place like this certainly wouldn’t miss the cost of replacing one window.  Insurance would probably cover it anyway. 
    Still, he couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. 
    Quickly, not caring to linger any longer here than was absolutely necessary, he made his way through the door and into the hallway. 
    Like with the roof, nothing here was remotely familiar.  Perfect, reliable, two-days-ago Eric, who didn’t put off getting in his car and driving to Weirdness, Wisconsin just because that was an insane thing to do, never had to break into this building to get down off a roof.  Two-days-ago Eric never got into situations like this.  He was on time, he did everything right the first time and he was always Mom’s favorite. 
    And he didn’t get his ass handed to him by nine-foot-tall towers of yowling teeth and claws, either, apparently.
    He tried to recall the things he’d remembered about the yards outside.  Everything he’d seen had suggested that this building was empty, deserted.  But it wasn’t completely rundown.  It was relatively clean in here.  Just a heavy layer of dust and a few small cracks in the plaster. 
    For the most part, the house still looked new.  But as he peered into one room after another, he found them all