Hourglass Skull Novels & Stories

If he looked down, I was finished. But before his eyes could track the ground, a loud, violent crash echoed from the far end of the hallway. A large ceramic vase had been smashed to pieces. Standing right in the middle of the debris was the source of the noise. Through the gap in the fabric, I caught my first real glimpse of it. It wasn't human. It looked like a distortion of reality—a creature made entirely of thick, swirling black smoke, held together by a skeletal frame. Its fingers were long, sharp, and tipped with hardened gray wood.

A thin trail of salvia escaped from his mouth, jaw slack. "Bastard!" Babi jumped, punching the ground with his free fist. The crack in the floor opened wider and a long limb wound its way out. The arm was grey and contorted, as if the bones were made of rubber. It reached, snatched for the whirling bird who seemed to be enjoying the frustration below. Whatever the limb belonged to could not squeeze through, but the top of a withered skull was visible, covered in a few wisps of wiry, white hair, home to flies, crawling from the split that spanned from brow to back.

As it got closer, Blake could see the creature more clearly. The body was that of an oversized dog, no more of a wolf, with its straight and seemingly sharp black hair. There was a skull in the shape of a dog in place of its head with no eye sockets or mouth to be seen but a crack along the center of the skull. The creature was moving its head from side to side, and then the center of the skull head opened. Within were what looked like red membranes, and a mighty sonic shriek was heard from the opening. It reminded Blake of a movie he once saw with a similar animal called a Shrieker.

"This will become your final resting place, after the demons invade and enslave all if humanity. But you won't live long enough to see that happen." The obelisk pulsates faster and faster before it switches to a constant blue glow. The glow evolves becoming more solid than just light, before ultimately replacing the obelisk with a solid blue void. A large hand the size of two people emerges from the void, its skin looks like it has been severely burned. A second hand comes out, and together they push the void open wider. A large skeletal head with no skin or muscle slowly pokes its head through, with an eye still in its one socket and its tongue sticking out.

“A poor joke, I know.” He carefully lifted the skull in both hands and turned it so it faced Leesa. “Take a look,” he said as he gently set it back down on the cloth. It took a few seconds before Leesa realized what she was looking at. The skull appeared normal in all respects except one, but that one was enough to pull a sharp gasp from her throat. Jutting down from the upper teeth were two sharp, curved fangs! “Oh my god!” she exclaimed, her eyes fixed on the pointed teeth. “Is that what I think it is?” Professor Clerval smiled. “Yes, it is. I believe this is a genuine vampire skull.”

What would happen of I looked away even for a second? Slowly, the creature started to glide towards me. Its rasping increased in pitch. The closer it got, I could tell a little more about its features, but nothing about them relieved me. For one, it did have a face, but it looked buried behind a film of heavy darkness. Its skeletal face had sockets so empty that only darkness poured out of them, its chalk-white cheekbones were as sharpened as knives, capable of cutting, and the teeth…cracked and broken in places, misaligned in others.

I squinted, trying to make out my surroundings, but it was too dark to see anything clearly. The ground beneath me cracked ominously as I shifted, and I almost fell again. Curious—and horrified—I reached down, my fingers brushing against something smooth and cold. I brought it closer, trying to make it out in the shadows, and then froze as the shape became clear—a human skull, empty sockets staring back at me. A scream tore from my throat as I dropped it, the bone shattering as it landed on what felt like an endless layer of bones beneath me.

I said. He shook his head. “Defects don’t present symmetrically like this. And look here.” He moved the cursor to her rib cage. “The rib structure is slightly thicker. And her bone marrow density is far beyond normal human range.” I stared harder. “And this…” He shifted to her skull. “There is subtle expansion at the base. It resembles neurological reinforcement. Almost as if her body is built to handle transformation-level stress.” “That’s ridiculous,” I snapped. “I will say the same. I have not seen anything like this.” he replied. “How can her anatomy be so different from that of a human when she looked like a human?”

He sensed a very strange aura on the other side of this ‘end’. “Is there something fishy going on here?” Andrius tried to punch the wall of the cave. Crash! In an instant, the wall which was about a foot thick shattered into countless fragments, falling to the ground. There was indeed something else there. Andrius instinctively passed through the hole and stepped inside. As soon as he entered, he was deeply shocked. He saw a huge skull! The skull’s size far exceeded Andrius’ imagination. It was almost larger than any living creature he had ever seen. Just lying there, it was several stories tall. One could only imagine how huge its entire body was.

Above them, the ceiling cracked open, revealing a starless sky that pulsed like a beating heart. Nihareth lifted both arms. "Bring me the final relic." A female follower approached, cradling an ornate golden skull wreathed in thorns. She knelt and offered it forward, her hands trembling. "The Skull of Orun, taken from the old vault in the east." Nihareth took it with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He turned to the altar and placed the skull into the hollow at its center. The air turned colder instantly. The ground beneath them shook.