Until... | Book 3 | Until The End

by Hamill, Ike

  “There’s a third option,” he said.

  Liz looked confused.

  “The third option,” Alan said again. “I could bite the bullet and go along with their high-risk approach, trying to keep everything as safe as possible.”

  She blinked several times. He knew what she was doing. Sometimes Liz was like a computer, systematically walking through all her possible responses, analyzing each one for its ability to deliver her point, and then firing off a reply.

  “If you decide that, you know I’ll do whatever I can to help,” she said.

  He couldn’t tell if this was intended as earnest or some new guilt trip. Alan decided that he had to believe she was being supportive. He couldn’t deal with her if she wasn’t.

  “I’m going to sleep on it,” he said. “They’re planning to leave at sunrise. I’ll get up before then and make my decision.”

  Liz nodded.

  “Sounds like it will be a restless night either way.”

  “True.”

  # # #

  The second time Liz got up, Alan knew that he was wrecking her sleep. While she was in the bathroom, he put on his robe and slippers and headed for the stairs. Their house had been safe for years. After all the trouble they had after they first moved in, everything had calmed down. The house was still alive in a way that Alan wasn’t comfortable with, but the spirits that inhabited the place all seemed to be on their side at least.

  He took a left at the bottom of the stairs and doubled-back towards the kitchen.

  It was just before three when he clicked on the light and sat down.

  He found that he couldn’t sit at the table. Sitting there just brought back the conversation from the night before. The discussion went back and forth in his head. Each time he felt like he couldn’t really articulate what he wanted to say, and Liz would never really understand.

  Alan wandered back towards the living room.

  The floor creaked as he made his way to his favorite chair. Settling in, he knew he wasn’t going to be comfortable there either.

  Alan folded his hands together and propped them on his stomach as he leaned back and closed his eyes.

  Sleep would be impossible—he knew that—but he could still relax and try to focus on his breathing.

  He thought about that night in the hotel.

  When they got back from that horrible trip, he and Liz hadn’t talked about it much. It wasn’t just their fear that talking about something paranormal would somehow help it manifest itself. Alan knew that those things at the hotel didn’t adhere to those same weird rules of engagement. He and Liz hadn’t discussed it because they both knew that to move on they had to allow themselves to forget. Healing would take time. Dwelling on it didn’t make it better, it only made it more difficult.

  Since then, Ricky had forced them to confront their memories.

  Alan remembered the fear of sitting in the hotel room, knowing that there were monsters outside in the dark. The tapping, coming through the door, the windows, and even the walls—it was enough to drive a person insane. That wasn’t the only purpose for it though. The tapping wasn’t just mental warfare. It seemed that the monsters could use the tapping strategically in order to manipulate things that they couldn’t get access to.

  For most of the winter, Alan had been obsessed with the idea. How did the tapping work, and how could it be defeated?

  Sitting in his chair, waiting for dawn, Alan thought about the tapping again.

  When he really focused on the memory of that hotel room, it was almost like he could hear it.

  # # #

  The alarm shrieked and Alan jumped up out of the chair before his eyes were even open. All the lights in the living room were on. As he crossed the room to pull the curtains, the lights in the TV room came on too. Everything would run off of the battery pack for thirty seconds and then the power would transfer over to…

  The generator fired up. Its distant hum was something they heard every Sunday afternoon when it put itself through its paces.

  Alan heard a flurry of steps rumble down the stairs and then Joe trotted down the hall.

  “Dad, is this a…”

  “No. Not a drill. Take your position.”

  Joe darted around him and slipped through the closet to move through the door in the back. Alan continued his way through the house, closing the curtains on the lower floor. Liz came down the stairs at a measured pace.

  “Where’s Joe?” she asked.

  “Already in the safe,” Alan said. He lowered the bar over the door to the cellar and put the bolt through the latch.

  Liz nodded. “How many?”

  “I don’t know,” Alan said, shaking his head. “I haven’t gotten that far.”

  Together, they retreated to the closet. Liz pressed the button and spoke to Joe, who opened the door from the inside. Alan closed the door behind himself.

  “You see anything?” Liz asked their son.

  Joe didn’t look frightened at all. His face was lit up by the screen in his hands as he flipped through views that were fed from the system. Alan almost wanted to grab his son by the shoulders and tell him that this wasn’t a game. Whatever the security system had detected, it was likely a real threat to their safety. Instead, he looked up at the clock. They had more than three hours until sunrise. The little room was the size of a walk-in closet.

  Alan patted his robe pocket.

  “My phone’s upstairs,” he said.

  Liz shook her head with a frown—she hadn’t brought hers either.

  “Send a message, Joe, would you? One to Ricky and one to Robert? Tell them that…”

  “It’s too soon, isn’t it?” Liz asked. “This could be a false alarm.”

  “It’s not,” Alan said. He didn’t have to consult any of the cameras or look to see what had triggered the system. His heart rate alone told him that this wasn’t a false alarm. It felt like a balloon had been inflated inside his chest, putting pressure on all his organs.

  Instead of sending the message, Joe handed Alan a cellphone.

  Alan scrolled through the contacts and found the one for Robert first. Next, he sent a message to Ricky.

  Joe sucked in a surprised breath.

  Liz pulled the tablet from their son’s hand. She squinted, adjusted the view, and then brought it close to her face. When she handed it to Alan, she whispered, “What in God’s name is that?”

  Alan’s hands went numb as his eyes scanned over the image.

  He was looking at a mostly blue view of the side yard. On that side of the house, there was about twenty feet of lawn before the woods started. Right at the edge of the trees, a figure stood, completely still. Normally, a person would show up with a bright colored face and hands—their thermal signature against the cold backdrop. This outline was just black.

  Alan switched to the enhanced night vision version of the same shot. In that view, the thing’s body didn’t show up at all. Only the eyes were visible. They were like two points of flickering light. Alan didn’t want to look directly at them. There was no telling how much power they would have through the video.

  “It’s a trick,” Liz whispered.

  Alan switched back to the thermal view. It was impossible. Even the grass and the trees appeared to be warmer than the creature standing there. It had the shape of a man, but if it was a man, the body had to be ice cold in order to appear that way.

  “It’s a trick,” she said a little louder.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a trick, Alan. He wants us to fixate on him. Switch the view, quickly.”

  Alan hit the button to move to the next camera. This one pointed out at the road. After all their troubles, years before, they had invested in every security measure they could think of. It didn’t start because of a fear of supernatural entities. They just wanted protection in case the Prescotts—the evil sorcerers—came back for revenge. But Alan eventually had to admit to himself that it was more than that. If something ever came to thei
r house, be it a human or otherwise, he wanted documentation of the visit.

  Now, they had it.

  There was nothing on the road, from any of the views or camera types. He didn’t see anything else until he finally got to the camera that was mounted on the side of the barn. On that thermal view, their metal roof was nearly black. When he adjusted the range of the colors, he saw the outlines of several of them. They had somehow climbed up the side of the barn and were trying to scale the roof of the shed. One of the dark shapes slipped and took out another one. Alan had a brief flash of hope that the metal would prove too slippery for them to navigate, but then one of the creatures made it to the peak and started to work its way towards the house.

  “It’s okay,” Alan said. “Even if they’re on the roof, there’s no way in. The second floor glass is upgraded as well.”

  “That tapping thing they do…” Liz said.

  “The latches are electric. I think we’re okay. And even if they’re able to break the glass, remember that the pieces will slow them down,” Alan said.

  “What about the chimney?” Joe asked.

  Alan and Liz looked at each other with wide eyes.

  # # #

  “No,” Liz said. “You’ve been out risking yourself this whole time. I’ll go. I’ll light the fire and be back in two shakes. The lights are all on anyway.”

  “Liz, the fact that they exist isn’t my fault, but the fact that they’re here? That has to be my fault. I’m going. No more arguing. We’re wasting time.”

  She clearly didn’t agree, but she didn’t move to stop him when Alan went for the door.

  “Stay safe, Dad,” Joe said.

  Alan nodded.

  He slipped through the door and closed it behind himself. Alan didn’t move away from it until he heard it latch. The speakers in the living room were humming. Joe had opened up the channel so Alan could hear them breathing. If something got inside the house, they would alert him.

  He slipped along the interior wall, around the corner, and made his way to the fireplace. They had a brass basket that held decorative chunks of birch. On the other side, there was a newspaper waiting to be recycled. Alan shut the flue with the lever and started crumpling paper as he kept his eyes on the window. The curtains were shut but he still saw a flicker of something moving out there. He turned away fast, remembering that it wasn’t safe to look.

  The eyes would be hypnotic.

  Alan added birch on top of the piled paper. He couldn’t remember the last time they had used the fireplace. When they first moved in, they had stacked wood in the shed and enjoyed a good fire almost every weekend. It turned the living room into a cozy hideaway. Then, the porcupines had invaded their shed. The only way to get rid of them was to stop keeping wood. Now, the only logs were the decorative ones in the basket. Alan could only hope that there was enough wood to last until dawn.

  He reached for the box of matches and knew it was empty as soon as he picked it up.

  “Dad,” Joe’s voice said through the living room speakers, “they’re coming.”

  Alan dropped the matches and ran. In the kitchen they had candles in one of the drawers. He lit one from the stove and cupped his hand around the flame as he walked as fast as he dared back to the living room.

  Liz’s voice came through next. “They’re climbing up the wall and they’re… They’re on the peak.”

  Dropping to his knees, Alan touched the candle to the paper and it burst into quick flames.

  “They’re coming across. It’s hard to see, but we think they’re almost at the chimney,” Joe said.

  Alan leaned forward and blew to fan the flames. The smoke stung his eyes. He could close the glass doors. That might give them a fraction of a second more before the creatures came into the living room. Aside from that, he didn’t know what else to do. Smoke was rolling out from the chimney and Alan finally remembered.

  “The flue!” he said.

  He reached in over the flames, ignoring the fact that the hair on his arm caught, and he pushed the lever to open the flue. The draft blew over the fire and it flared. The bark of the birch crackled as it lit. Smoke billowed upwards. He could only hope it was enough. Alan shut the glass doors, making sure the vents were fully open and he ran for the closet. They anticipated his arrival and the door to their safe room opened and Liz pulled him inside as Joe slammed the door behind him.

  It locked into place.

  His robe was still smoking.

  “Are they coming down?” Alan asked.

  Joe activated the screen and turned it so Alan could see. Their shapes on top of the chimney were dark holes in the picture. The smoke from the chimney showed up as glowing vapor, dissipating into space.

  “The furnace,” Alan said to Joe. His son understood immediately. They all had the app on their phone. Joe used his to crank up the heat so the furnace’s exhaust would add to the smoke from the chimney. Sure enough, the creatures backed away.

  “I can’t believe it’s working,” Liz said.

  “What about him?” Alan asked. He scrolled through the cameras until he found the stationary image of the man against the woods.

  “Him?” Liz asked.

  “It’s SE Prescott,” Alan said. “I’m sure of it. We disturbed his rest and that’s why he’s here. He caught my scent.”

  “How would he get here so quickly?” Liz asked.

  Alan shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  # # #

  For a couple of hours, everything was quiet.

  They didn’t have much to make them comfortable in the small space, but Joe was curled up with a blanket and a pillow and he had managed to fall asleep.

  Alan had Joe’s phone.

  Robert sent a message back, “What can I do to help?”

  Alan and Liz conferred before they decided on the reply. “Don’t come near until dawn. If you don’t hear from us by then, see if you can find us. Depending on what you find, do whatever you need to.”

  “Better not to leave specific instructions,” Liz said, “in case anyone ever checks his phone. You’re sure that he understands?”

  Alan nodded. “I told him what they would turn us into, and he knows how to get rid of us if he needs to.”

  Liz nodded. “Robert is a good friend. I know he’ll see it through.”

  “Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.”

  Alan pulled up the screen again.

  Hot smoke was still coming from the chimney. After a brief argument, Liz had won the right to stoke the fire and she had done so without incident. On the roof, the creatures had moved away from the chimney. The fire was a good deterrent. They spotted some of the others trying the windows and even trying to get through the bulkhead into the cellar.

  “They can probably get through that lock,” Liz said. “Remember the hotel room?”

  “Yeah,” Alan said. “But even if they do, so what? There’s a lot they’ll have to get through to get up here.”

  Liz sighed and lowered her head.

  “How did we get ourselves into this position again?”

  “It’s not like that,” Alan said. “Don’t say it like that.”

  She glanced at Joe and then looked to him, keeping her voice at a raw whisper.

  “Like what, Alan? We knew this was a possibility and yet we…”

  Liz trailed off, shaking her head.

  “There are dangers everywhere. We prepared. We got everything ready and it’s working just the way we planned. We’re safe in here. What more could you ask for?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m just frustrated. How long until the sun comes up?”

  “Twenty-five minutes,” Alan said.

  She dragged her hands down her face, started to yawn, and then shook it off.

  “So? What do we do?”

  “You get everything ready, and I’ll go see if Ricky and his family survived the night,” Alan said.

  “Ready?”

  “We’ll go down to Portland and sta
y at Sarah’s until we find something more permanent. That’s out of their range and I can drive Joe to school so you won’t have to change your hours.”

  “Out of their range? What are you basing that on, some hunch that you and Ricky came up with during your research?”

  “It’s far enough.”

  “Alan, look at that screen in front of you. You were the one who thought that they wouldn’t even come as far south as here, even though we know they were at Amber’s last summer.”

  “I said that I didn’t think they would get here this quickly after only coming out of hibernation recently. I never said they wouldn’t make it here.”

  “Regardless, one of them stowed away in Amber’s trunk and made it down to Virginia last year.”

  “We think,” Alan said. “She was a little crazed after everything, and even she admitted that she didn’t really have any strong evidence that what she saw wasn’t a hallucination.”

  “That’s not the way evidence works. It’s up to the evidence to show that she wasn’t a reliable witness. Given nothing to refute her account, we have to take it as fact.”

  Alan frowned and was about to argue that point, but he realized that there was a bigger question on the table.

  “So, what are you thinking? How far do we go? Farther than Virginia? What about your job? What about the rest of Joe’s school year?”

  “Neither of those things matters one bit if we’re infected and turned into blood-sucking monsters, Alan.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  Alan looked back at the display. The creatures were holding their ground. The one near the woods hadn’t moved more than a foot since they first spotted him. The ones on the roof were occasionally pacing, but didn’t want to challenge the hot smoke coming up from the chimney. For whatever reason, the creatures had never ventured into the cellar, although it should have been within their capabilities.

  “Moving away…” Alan said. “Everything we’ve been through here. Moving away…”

  “We need to think long term.”

  That sparked a memory.