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The woman was scrambling at the locks, flinging them each open with a loud clang. Mr. White desperately looked for the paw - He couldn’t let that thing inside, it wasn’t his son! - his hand had just closed around the paw, and he quickly raised it above his head.
He opened his mouth and-
Mrs. White flung the door open, and it hit the wall with a bang.
A cold breeze blew into the room, and Mr. White dropped the paw with a cry - It moved, he could’ve sworn it’d moved! But he hadn’t made a wish yet, why had it - He realized his mistake of dropping the paw just a moment too late, when Mrs. White suddenly bent down and grabbed it.
“I won’t let you kill our son again,” she whispered, her voice sounding labored and raspy, like each word had to fight its way out of her mouth before it reached his ears. “Not when he’s finally back!” Her voice suddenly took on a joyful lilt, a crazed, but joyful tone. “Our son, he’s back! Our Herbert!” She grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him to his feet, her wide eyes meeting his own.
She dragged him towards the door, telling him to look at their son, to look at Herbert. He refused to, he knew that whatever was there, it wasn’t Herbert. He knew that refusing to look wouldn’t work, he knew that she’d make him eventually. But it would buy him some time before he was forced to look at the monstrosity, at the abomination that posed as his son.
Mrs. White stopped suddenly, and spoke once more. “Look at him! He’s alive, he’s back!” She said, that same insanity hidden in her voice, buried amongst the joy. Like a sharp blade covered in honey. An ever-present threat that could be turned on him in an instant.
“Look at our son.” She snapped, the happiness from before long gone and replaced with a cold and sharp tone. She reached towards his face as he resolutely stared at the ground, refusing to look up from the old floorboards. She grabbed his chin and forced him to look up, to look towards the doorway.
The creature standing there was every bit the monster he had imagined.
The monster in the doorway was wearing Herbert's clothes, and it dared to look just like his son had when he died. Its form was mangled, parts of it barely recognizable as a living being. Crushed and torn, rotting and decayed. It wore the appearance of his son like a mask. A crude, horrid mask.
Bones were visible in so many places, where the rot had gotten through the flesh it pretended to have. A crushed bit of a skull here, a shattered femur there. Every bit of its false body was ruined, just like Herbert’s had been.
But this thing wasn’t Herbert. He refused to believe that it was, because if he let himself believe that this was Herbert, he would be walking the same path as his wife. The path of a madman, a grieving madman too far gone to move on, too far lost in his own mind to realize that this being was just a cruel reminder of the past.
He wouldn’t believe that this was Herbert. No, he would get the paw back, and use his last wish to send this monster back to wherever it came from.
He just had to greet his son first.