by Hamill, Ike
“It was probably just that I saw him for what he was,” she said. “Or maybe because I was staying in my uncle’s house.”
“You saw him?”
“Before John completely changed,” she said, “I saw him in transition. His hand was changing into a claw and his eyes were already pretty hypnotic. When I visited, it was by candlelight, but I still caught a glimpse of what he was becoming. I believe that’s why he came after me. He didn’t want to leave any witnesses.”
“Maybe,” Ricky said. “Maybe. He killed two police officers though. I think it’s likely that if he was able to kill two armed officers, he could have killed you if he wanted to. I would be inclined to conclude that he tripped up and was more vulnerable with you because he wanted to infect you instead of merely killing you.”
“You’re saying that I’m too weak to survive? I did just as well as anyone that night after the wedding.”
“Yes, better than most, in fact. Again, though, those monsters were trying to feed from us and probably infect us rather than just kill.”
“I think you’re giving them too much credit,” Amber said. “They were transformed into dumb animals.”
“Maybe,” Ricky said.
The conversation died for several seconds.
Amber broke the silence.
“You’re not convinced that John only wanted me because I suspected him.”
“I think you’re avoiding the original question,” Ricky said. “Something happened to you, didn’t it? Before you even thought about coming to Maine.”
“I’ll say yes if it will make you drop the subject,” Amber said. “And I don’t think it matters either way. How about you just assume that something happened to me when I was younger, it left its mark on me, and John could sense it.”
“Okay. But…”
“What?” she asked with another sigh.
“If we take your story and add it to the others, maybe we get a clearer pattern. Maybe we can learn how to better predict who they’re going after. There were some rooms in the hotel after the wedding where the creatures didn’t bother the people at all. We could really benefit from knowing why.”
Amber stayed silent. They drove through the night and the terrain changed. The farther east they went, it seemed like everything around the car shrank. The trees were shorter and the hills were flatter. In Maine, the coast remained jagged and rocky right down to the water’s edge. Down here, it was like the whole landscape sloped down until it transitioned into water. The bridge that crossed the sound was so low that it looked like the water might swell over the sides and wash them away. The road swung north and they were headed towards Nags Head.
“Where are we going?” Ricky asked.
“I know a spot.”
# # #
Amber parked next to a sand dune that was covered with scrubby grass. Ricky pulled his jacket tight against the wind and followed her up and over the sand. The ocean was a black line against the horizon, but he could hear it and smell the salt. Amber seemed to be walking aimlessly for a bit so he followed close so he wouldn’t lose her amidst the twisted pine trees. Ducking under some low branches, they came to a path and Amber followed that to a place where the dunes rose at the their back and there was no breeze. Without the wind, it felt cozy. She settled down to the sand and leaned back against it. Ricky followed her example.
The sand felt fine and soft. It met his body and supported him like a comfortable chair.
They looked up at the sky through a hole in the clouds where stars peeked through. Behind them, the clouds were glowing, reflecting lights. To the east, there was nothing but black ocean. It was an unknowable void and they were perched right at the lip of it.
For the longest time, neither of them said anything. Ricky didn’t feel the need to fill the night with any more questions. The sound of the waves was enough.
“I grew up farther inland,” Amber said eventually. “We didn’t have anything like this. It’s hard for me to believe that people who live out here have any real worries. When I come out here, the ocean takes them all away.”
Way up near the stars, Ricky watched the flashing lights of an airplane as it passed over.
“Do you have anything like this where you live?” she asked.
“My family doesn’t go down to the ocean much. We have lake people and ocean people up there. We’re lake people.”
“Probably the same thing,” Amber said.
The waves were quiet for a moment and then a giant wave crashed furiously. Ricky wondered how high the tide would get. He wondered if they fell asleep if they would wake to find the water tugging at them, trying to pull them into the void.
“I don’t know,” Ricky said. “Sometimes the tourists relax on their boats and it looks like they’re in another world, but I hardly ever see locals do that. It’s, like, because they’re around the beauty all the time, they can’t see it. I guess I feel that way too.”
“Serenity is only for tourists?”
“I guess,” Ricky said.
“You should try to be a tourist then,” she said.
Ricky put his hands up behind his head and thought about that. They did do some of the things that tourists would do—they went fishing sometimes and picked blueberries along the shoreline. It always seemed like their recreation had a goal though. It was never just to relax and enjoy the sun. He decided that he was going to do that. He was going to set aside time and go out on the boat with Tucker and just sit.
Ricky felt heavy footsteps through the sand.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Someone is coming. Are we trespassing?”
“Shhh!” Amber whispered back.
She stayed perfectly still so Ricky did too. He couldn’t afford to get arrested for trespassing. When he got home, he would catch hell at the sheriff’s office.
Ricky’s muscles tensed up when he saw the giant shape emerge around the side of the dune. It wasn’t a person—the thing was way too big. He was trying to formulate a plan—attack or run?—when the animal snorted.
In a low voice, Amber said, “It’s okay. It’s just us. We’re not scary.”
Another horse snorted a few paces away.
“They’re wild horses,” Amber whispered. “They roam around on these beaches.”
Leaning forward, Ricky could see the rest of the herd that Amber was talking about. The one closest was as wide as she was tall. There was a little one between her and the next. Then, tossing his head and striding with high feet, the stallion came around the herd to investigate. He squared off with Amber and Ricky, lowered his head and snorted.
“Are they dangerous?” Ricky asked.
“Only if you run out of treats,” Amber whispered.
She dug in her pocket. The horse seemed to understand the sound of crinkling plastic. His ears were high, silhouetted against the stars as he stepped forward. Amber only moved her arm as she held out her offering. The horse sniffed at it and then took it from her hand.
Ricky smelled the peppermint as the horse chewed it. His nose was immediately back to her, looking for another.
“You’ve had one,” Amber said. “Give someone else a chance.”
The horse tossed his head but seemed to understand. Amber pulled her legs in as one of the mares came forward. She gave that horse another peppermint.
“I only have one more,” she told the horses.
“Wait, you said they’re dangerous if you run out of treats,” Ricky said.
Amber laughed at him. The horses shied back at the sound.
“Come here, little guy,” she said, gesturing towards the smallest horse. He stayed near his mother. Amber ended up giving the mint to one of the other horses.
“I have more,” she said, putting a couple of wrapped candies in Ricky’s hand. “Try it.”
He did. When he finally got one of the horses close enough to sniff at a mint, he had a hard time staying still as its whiskers found his hand in the dark. The horse snatched the candy with its dexterous l
ips and it was off. The rest of the herd grew bored with them and were moving off. When the stallion tossed his head again, he seemed to chase them down towards the water.
“You really think it might help?” Amber asked.
“What?”
“My story. I don’t like to think about it, and I’ve never told it to anyone. I’ll tell you, but only if you think it really might help.”
“I mean, I can’t guarantee anything, but every piece of information could be important.”
Amber sighed.
Seven: Amber's Story
In the movies, there’s always a starting point. People move into an old house that nobody else wanted, or a sudden tragedy puts everyone on edge. With us, everything began so slowly that, at first, it didn’t seem like anything was happening at all. There wasn’t one event where you could put your finger on it and say, “This is where it all began.”
I thought we had a perfectly normal family. There was a lot of yelling, and family gatherings were never a thing that I looked forward to, but I guess I thought that everyone lived that way. We certainly had a lot of family around—cousins, and aunts, and uncles—so I guess that conflict was just a way of life.
With all the bad moods, I guess it seemed natural that the house would have bad moods too. They just got worse and worse over time. Eventually, things escalated. Nobody really seemed surprised when one of those bad moods ended up with my grandfather dead.
Grandpap got into a fistfight with my father one time, but that didn’t kill him.
My mother threatened him with a knife another time when my dad wasn’t around, but everyone walked away from that incident too. It was the house that got him, and it should have been impossible, but I was there. I saw the whole thing. He came over one night and he wanted some earrings that his wife had given to my mom. He claimed that they were a loan, not a gift, and he was the one who had given them to my grandmother initially, so they were his to take back now that she was dead.
Mom didn’t give him anything, but she didn’t threaten him with a knife—not that time. She stood there, screaming and dialing the phone to tell my father to get home while Grandpap dug through her jewelry box, looking for the earrings. Mom had hidden them. I think maybe she knew that they weren’t hers to keep, so she had squirreled them away in a pill bottle in the medicine chest.
If Grandpap had asked me where they were, I would have told him just to get him to leave.
He was so angry when he couldn’t find the earrings that he threw the jewelry box on the floor and he left the bedroom, slamming the door behind himself. I was watching from my room through the door. Mom was yelling for him to get out. A wicked smile grew on his face and he said, “You know what? I’ll just take the rest of your cheap jewelry and I’ll trade them back when you remember where Dinah’s diamonds went to.”
I had seen them. I knew they weren’t diamonds. Grandpap was making that up so that even if she did give him back the earrings he could claim that it wasn’t enough. It was all a game.
At the time, I thought the house was mad at him for slamming the door. Now that I’ve thought about it more, I wonder if what happened was a kind of reflection or amplification of what he did. Maybe the house wasn’t really mad after all, but it was a like an echo chamber. If you shouted, your voice would come back two-fold. When he went to go back into the bedroom, the door came back at him two-fold. He threw it open, started to step through, and the door bounced back and hit him in the face before he could get his hand up. Grandpap staggered back and then kicked at the door. It looked like there was someone on the other side, pushing it back at him, but there was nobody in there.
The second hit made him fall and the third time the door hit him, it snapped his leg.
We all heard the bone break.
Mom actually laughed.
She must have thought that a broken leg was a good payback for his tirade. I knew the house wouldn’t stop until Grandpap was seriously injured. He started moaning and pulling at the leg of his pants. Mom took her time dialing the phone this time while Grandpap groaned and tried to pull up his pants leg. The door was still mostly closed, pressing on his broken bones. There was no blood that we could see. It was all leaking out inside his skin. It was swelling so fast that I could see his leg bulging out, pressing at the seams of his pant leg.
Dad got home just before the ambulance came.
Grandpap was out by then. Dad just said that he was playing possum. Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, whispering, but I could hear them. I watched Grandpap the whole time. I knew he wasn’t playing possum, even though I barely knew what that meant at the time. Grandpap wasn’t playing at anything, I knew that much. His moans and groans had been real, and I could see the vein on top of his head that normally pulsed when he was mad. It got weaker and weaker. While Mom and Dad talked about what their story was going to be, the vein stopped pulsing completely. He was dead before the people arrived with their bags. Mom and Dad didn’t really have to worry about having their story perfect because there was nobody to contradict them. Grandpap didn’t have a say in it.
As far as I know, Mom and Dad never said a word about what actually killed Grandpap. It just didn’t come up. All of us knew that the house got angry sometimes, and if you slammed a door or kicked a wall, the house would find a way to get you back. You would trip going down the porch stairs or a cabinet door would swing open silently while you were bent over so you would slam your head when you stood up.
It was a normal part of life. Never occurred to me that other people didn’t have the same kind of problems.
# # #
Amber was silent for so long that Ricky thought the story was over.
The wind kicked up more and they settled deeper into the sand to keep warm. In the distance, the horses raced back north along the surf. Ricky wanted to ask a million questions, but he guessed that if he said anything she would never continue.
He waited.
By the time she spoke again, his eyes were beginning to drift shut.
# # #
By the time I was a teenager, I was trying to avoid being at home as much as possible. I would go stay with my friends whenever I could get away with it. There was a counselor at school though who started to become concerned about my welfare. She would always corner me between classes and try to sound casual as she asked me questions.
“That’s a nasty limp you have there, Amber, did you get that playing softball?” she would ask.
If I said yes, then she would reveal that the coach ratted me out and told her that I had stopped coming to practice. If I said no, or that I didn’t know how I had gotten hurt, she would just ask more and more questions. I don’t know how she found out that I was staying over with friends all the time, but that added more fuel to her fire. She was convinced that I was living in an abusive household and that I needed help. In a way, I guess I was. But my abusive household was the house itself.
Maybe if she had been older and more experienced, she wouldn’t have pressed as hard. This lady wanted to be my savior. I was the poor kid being victimized by my parents and she was determined to ride in on her white horse and save me. The only thing was that I wasn’t poor and my parents didn’t victimize me. Those things didn’t matter. She came poking around and suddenly I wasn’t allowed to stay over at my friends’ houses anymore. I had to stay at home for appearances and that meant that I had to behave all the time so that the house wouldn’t give me any more bruises or sprained ankles.
It didn’t matter how good I was though. If any of us acted up, the house would take it out on all of us. A shouting match in the living room might lead to a nasty shock the next time I plugged in a radio, even if I wasn’t the one shouting.
I felt like a prisoner. I couldn’t talk to anyone else. The few times I tried, that’s when I found out that the rest of the world would consider me crazy if I told my story. My parents wanted me to pretend that everything was okay so the guidance counselor wouldn’t show up at the house
again. That put me into the role of arbiter. If I didn’t want the house punishing me, then I couldn’t let any fights happen in the house because that’s mostly what would make it angry. Whenever my parents would start to get worked up, and they loved to argue, it would be my job to get them separated and stop the fight before it could happen. I was miserable all the time until I just couldn’t take it anymore.
The first time I ran away, that’s when things got really bad.
# # #
When Amber paused again, Ricky knew he couldn’t stay silent.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I don’t need you to explain my life to me,” Amber said.
“Are you sure?”
Even though it was too dark to see her clearly, Ricky could feel the anger coming off of her in hot waves.
“Amber, the way you’re telling your own story, you put yourself at the root of all the issues. It wasn’t your responsibility to keep the guidance counselor off your back. Your parents weren’t justified in saying that you couldn’t go stay with friends, and it certainly wasn’t your job to make peace in the house. You’re telling yourself that you’re not taking the blame, but the way you tell your own story is pretty revealing.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do, just cry and weep because I was a victim, or take control of my own fate? Control comes with blame. I would rather take the blame than surrender control.”
“Sure. I get that. But you also have to recognize that your parents had a responsibility to provide you with a safe and secure home. They didn’t do that. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.”
“Sorry to interrupt. You ran away?”
“Yes. I ran away. That’s the end of the story.”
“Come on,” Ricky said. “Tell me the rest.”
“Nope—no need. You figured it out, Ricky. My parents were horrible and I ran away and that’s it.”