The Incredible Melting Man by Phil Smith

wife’s voice from the darkness nervously. “Why don’t you go in?”
    Matt paused, distractedly wiping his hand against the leg of his trousers.
    “I don’t like it,” he said. “There’s something odd going on. You wait here while I check.”
    He slowly turned the handle and pushed open the door. He stood poised on the threshold listening keenly. Nell watched him as he crept noiselessly inside. Halfway down the hallway he stopped and she saw his head turn on one side as if he’d caught a sound but wasn’t sure what it was. Then, his mind made up, he stepped into the darkness of one of the rooms. In the same moment there was a loud thud that shook the passage wall and the door of the room slammed shut.
    Nell’s heart lurched sickeningly.
    “Matt!” she screamed. “Matt!”
    She was answered by a silence that spread round the house like a shroud. Then, slowly, out of the closed room came the sound of lapping, like a giant cat drinking.
    Appalled at her own temerity, Nell edged towards the room. Only an overwhelming dread for the safety of her husband drove her trembling limbs. As she wavered in the doorway, from within a dry rasping sound began to punctuate the lapping noises. Her shaking hand clasped the handle and she gradually pressed open the door.
    A pale band of moonlight slipped past her into the darkness. It traced a dim path of light through a trail of broken furniture and came to rest on a grey shape crouched over something in the corner.
    The lapping stopped and it turned slowly to look at her.
    She’d interrupted its meal. Blood dribbled down its chin and daubed the riven edges of its rotting mouth. From its fist hung warm entrails, smoking faintly in the cool air of the room. It shuffled awkwardly, trying to shield what it was doing from her horrified gaze, shame burning in the hunted eyes.
    But she had seen the human saucer into which it dipped its dripping mouth: the sprawled form of her Matt with his bowels torn out. She let out a howl of anguish.
    The red rage leapt back into its eyes and it stumbled to its feet. Nell’s paralysis dissolved in a panic of flight. She sprang across the hallway into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her. The door had no lock and she cast about despairingly for something to wedge against it as the dreadful rasping noise followed her into the corridor. With it came the moist furtive pad of damp footsteps. They stopped outside the kitchen door.
    With a superhuman effort she dragged the dresser in front of the door. As she wedged it into place the handle began to turn. She felt the pressure grow as the thing became frustrated. She had to use all her strength to hold the dresser in place, but still it began to move. Her grip was being lost on the polished tiles of the kitchen floor and her feet began to slide.
    Then suddenly the pressure stopped and the door slammed shut. The thing had given up and she heard the broken breathing retreat. It was going away. Her heart pounded a tattoo of relief.
    She grabbed the phone from its wall hook and urgently dialled the operator. It rang interminably. Her eyes never left the door, her body coiled like a spring waiting for it to return and renew its efforts. After an age the cheerful voice of the operator replied.
    “Get help to the farm,” she cried hysterically. “Matt’s been murdered!”
    There was a long pause before the operator replied. “Who is this?” she asked suspiciously.
    “It’s Nell Winters at the farm. We’re being attacked. Help!”
    She could stand it no longer. Her ears were deafened by the drumming of blood, and the image of her mutilated husband burst over her mind in a spasm of delayed shock. She flung down the phone and pulled open a drawer, arming herself with a meat cleaver. It was wickedly sharp, and she’d never before been able to bring herself to touch it. Matt used it when they killed stock. Matt.
    She was blinded by the hot tears. Panic and despair fused to throw out burning sparks of