It Came For Her Once More.

The beast that roamed the halls was awake again, and Isabella could hear its heavy footsteps drag slowly and deliberately toward the room where she had taken refuge for the night.

Isabella lay motionless under the bed, breathing slowly and quietly, the polar opposite of her heart, which was beating so hard that she needed to roll onto her back so that her body could absorb the constant drumming before it reached the floor.

The beast had incredible hearing, and she wasn't sure her current concealment was enough to keep her safe tonight. The beast had found her before in places far more hidden than she was now. So there was a chance that the beast would enter the room and it would hear the soft sounds of the bones moving under her skin from involuntary movements of her shaking hands, or the air moving from her nostrils to fill her lungs, or even the movement of her blood from her still increasingly beating heart.

Hiding and not being found was always a possibility. She had managed to avoid being caught in the past, but tonight Isabella was almost certain she would be discovered in her current hiding place, and then bled, just as she had been in previous encounters with this beast.

She learned the beast was in the building only moments before she heard it. If she had been given proper time to prepare — a day, a few hours, even one — then Isabella could have found a place the beast could not discover so easily. High places it could not climb to, low places it could not bend in, or faraway places it could not travel to.

Isabella suspected the beast's unannounced arrival tonight was to catch her unaware, before it was too late for her to act. It would not be the first time that Isabella had gone to bed, the beast far from her thoughts and her resting place, only to open her eyes in the middle of the night to see the dark shadow of the beast silhouetted in her doorway, its black eyes looking back into her light blue, as the door to her resting place slowly shut, trapping her in the darkness with nowhere to go.

She tried to calm the beating of her heart by taking slow, silent breaths in and out. She did this once, then twice, then ten times, and then she lost count. The breathing was all she focused on, the only thing in that present moment that was real to her. Not the itch on her knee she had been ignoring since she rolled under the bed, not the strange dust smell in her nose that made her want to sneeze, and not the sound of the footsteps of the beast just outside her door, and not the rattle of the doorknob that the beast tested by turning it left to right.

When the beast wanted to enter a room, it walked in or broke in, but it got in. Like smoke filling a small box, the beast had a way of entering rooms it had no right to enter. For this reason alone, the door wasn't locked, because it wouldn't have mattered even if it was.

When the doorknob turned the second time, Isabella stopped focusing on her breathing — in fact, she stopped breathing altogether. She turned her head to watch the door. A trail of golden light poured into the room as the door silently screamed on its hinge. There was no sound — there never was at first. But soon the beast's heavy, lumbering feet dragged across the floorboards, its loud shuffling as it turned, and then the light faded as it closed the door, trapping Isabella inside.

She had been here before. She would be here again. The beast would search for her, and it would find her, and then the beast would take blood from her just like it had done every night that it slid into her room. 

But just because it was going to happen didn't mean she was going to let it happen right now. So she stayed put, waited, and watched as the beast's clumsy feet dragged slowly across the floorboards, searching for her in all the places she had hidden before.

Isabella knew that the beast knew where she was. She could hear it in the drag of the beast's steps. It was looking for her in places it knew she wasn’t, all while it hummed a soft, sing-song child's lullaby from her infancy, like it was playing a twisted game of hide-and-seek.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, Isabella breathed out a little too heavily. This finally pulled the beast's full attention towards her. She lay still as its cold, wet hands reached into her hiding place. The beast's hand grabbed onto her wrist and pulled her from her hiding place and into the air. 

She didn't scream. No one would have heard her if she did.

Her eyes stayed shut as she pretended to sleep, but her body's rigidity betrayed her, and the beast let out a soft grunt of amusement at her predicament.

The beast set Isabella on the bed, on top of her covers, and touched her warm cheek with its cold hand. Only then did Isabella open her eyes to see the beast smiling. 

"You keep finding interesting places to sleep, don't you?" The beast's voice was as deep and cold as a bat-infested cave. Isabella nodded.

"One day you're going to find a place too secret for me to find, and then you'll be gone forever. You don't want to do that, do you?"

Isabella said nothing, then he moved closer and repeated it. "You don't want to be gone forever, do you?"

Isabella shook her head softly.

"That's okay, because you're safe and sound now... Aren't you?"

Isabella nodded again.

"Use your words!” The beast was closer now. Isabella felt the hot anger in its voice spill out as the beast's breath hit her face. The smell of whisky and tobacco finally hit her, and she closed her eyes. “I taught you to speak so I could hear you."

"Yes, Daddy."

"Good." Isabella opened her eyes and looked up at her father's face for the first time since he walked in and saw the beast looking back at her in his eyes. "Since you're safe and sound, let's play a game. But remember, what are the rules about the games we play at night?"

Isabella lay still and gave the answer the beast wanted to hear. "We don't tell anyone."

The beast — her father — smiled at her with crooked yellow teeth. He knew that she never would.