He forced himself not to look.
Slipping between the support rods and onto the highest platform, he immediately began to crawl on his hands and knees back toward the far end of the structure as it wobbled beneath him, praying it would continue to support his weight.
Another crash. Another reverberating clang of metal against stone. Another sideways lurch.
His heart thundered in his ears. He swore loudly, his voice cracked and shrill. If he survived this, hopefully he’d recall this moment in a manlier light, but right now, he just couldn’t make himself care about that sort of thing.
Rising to his feet, he surveyed his surroundings. He saw that he was standing just under the guttering, within reach of the roof. He also saw that the beast was climbing over the far side of the scaffolding.
Something beneath him finally gave way. The scaffolding jerked, tilted. A thunderous clattering rose up. The wooden platform snapped. The monster dropped with a shriek. Eric felt it move beneath his feet.
The very next instant he was clinging to the edge of the roof, his shoes scraping the brick surface of the wall, trying to find a footing as the entire structure beneath him collapsed into a pile of metal and wood with a clamor that might have carried for miles.
He could almost imagine hundreds of those coyote-deer things lifting their oversized heads and looking this way.
Desperately, he clawed his way upward, trying to pull himself to safety.
He glanced down to see what kind of mess waited beneath him, hoping there wouldn’t be a half-dozen steel bars jutting upward at him, waiting eagerly to run him through. What he saw was the monster rising from the wreckage, its horrible face glaring up at him.
“Oh come on!”
Freshly fueled by the panic of realizing that he had failed to break the beast’s focus and therefore remained in imminent mortal danger, Eric somehow managed to hook his leg over the edge and pull himself onto the roof.
Gasping for breath, he dragged himself away from the ledge as huge, yellow claws sank into the shingles and that grotesque face peered over the gutter at him. Its bloody eyes were filled with rage.
“Just go away already!”
He scrambled to his feet and ran up the slope of the roof to the peak, scanning these new surroundings. None of the rooftop looked remotely familiar. Apparently, if he’d come the first night, he would not have found any reason to climb up here and enjoy the view. He would have simply wandered through the grounds around this building, strolling leisurely.
This must be karmic payback for all those times he crabbed at his students for procrastinating on their papers.
Looking back, he saw that the monster had already climbed onto the roof and was now moving toward him, its teeth gnashing horribly. He still couldn’t quite make out how the thing fit together. Its huge arms hung at its sides, its claws almost dragging at its feet. Those other limbs seemed to slither strangely around it. They weren’t quite tentacles, but they weren’t quite arms, either. He couldn’t seem to comprehend them. Its green and black skin reminded him of tree bark, as if the thing were nothing more than a particularly ugly old tree come to life.
There was nowhere to go. He was now stranded on the rooftop with no way down. He might as well have locked himself in a room with the thing.
Out of ideas, Eric simply ran. He made his way across the rooftop, toward the far side of the building, where the taller portion of the structure met the two shorter wings, hoping desperately that he would find a window he could escape into or a ledge from which he could climb safely down.
The monstrosity followed him, snatching at him with its claws. Its strange, unearthly cries filled the air at his back, drowning out all other sounds, even the thunderous pounding of his heart.
Something caught his foot and he fell. Kicking and thrashing, he tore free of his shoe and rolled down the slope of the roof. The rough surface of the shingles ground against his exposed skin, but he barely noticed the pain. His only conscious thought was that he had to keep moving. He had to put distance between himself and this monster.
Coming to a stop, Eric tried to lift himself onto his hands and knees, but the thing was already upon him again, its terrible cries right on top of him.
He threw himself out of the way.
It seized his arm.
He kicked at it, yanked his arm free and rolled again.
The shingles bit his elbows, his forehead, his nose. They burned his belly and back where his tee shirt rode up.
His left hand slipped over the edge of the roof and he found himself looking down at a four-story drop. Hard concrete waited patiently to break his bones.
Built on a slope, the building was much taller on this side than it was on the side he’d climbed. There was no way down and nowhere he could go that this thing couldn’t follow him.
Out of places to run, he rolled onto his back and looked up as the monster leapt atop him, its huge foot crushing down on his thigh. He cried out, his voice tinged with sharp pain and numbing terror.
The world around him swirled into a chaotic blur.
This seemed to be it. He was out of places to run. He was going to die.
A huge mass of yellow claws passed over him. His ears were filled with the howling and yowling and shrieking of the beast. A hot flash of pain painted itself across his face, his shoulder, another across his leg.
He felt himself sliding closer to the ledge. He clutched for something to hold onto, but his arm flailed uselessly at the air high above the ground. His shoulder inched out over the drop.
If the creature didn’t tear him apart, he would fall to his death.
The creature’s weight shifted. Its foot rolled across his thigh, threatening to break his leg.
Claws dug into the shingles beside his head. The gutter tore away beneath his shoulder with a great screech of shredding metal.
Teeth snapped before his face and he jerked his head away, closed his eyes, braced himself for the agony to come.
Then the creature’s foot was no longer on his thigh. Its unearthly yowling suddenly and rapidly receded.
A heavy thump, a clanking of aluminum as the gutter followed the beast down.
Eric lay there, gasping with fear.
He could hardly believe it. In all the commotion, the monster’s foot had slipped over the edge.
It fell.
And by some miracle, he didn’t.
Carefully, he pulled himself away from the edge of the roof and then rolled onto his stomach. He was trembling badly. He did not dare try to stand for fear that he might yet manage to fall to his doom.
Seconds passed. Then minutes. Everything remained quiet.
The monster was silent.
Finally, he crept back to the edge and peered over.
He could see the shredded guttering lying on the pavement, precisely where it had landed, but the monster was gone.
Apparently, a four-story fall was as effective at breaking a monster’s focus as a charging tractor.
Yet he hesitated to believe that he was really so lucky. It couldn’t actually be over. That he should survive by nothing more than a simple misstep on the part of the monster was utterly absurd. Surely the thing must simply be 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.