by Hamill, Ike
Amber jumped out when she had a chance. She knelt too and she and George managed to pin the creature with their beams of light until it was dispatched. Alan used his chunk of glass to reflect light up. He chased a couple of the creatures but couldn’t kill them until George and Amber helped. Their light was stronger and when the three of them converged their lights on the same spot it meant burning death for the monsters.
Ricky added his flashlight to their strength and saw movement in a corner. His light found the hole up in the top of the gable.
“They’re getting out,” Amber said.
The thumping outside warned them that there were still more of the monsters out in the night.
“We need to get out of here before Romeo finds a way to shut off these lights,” Ricky said. He looked at the patch of darkness they would have to cross to get back to the car doors.
“No,” Amber said. “He’s still in there. I’m going after him.”
“And do what?” Ricky asked.
He saw an answer in her eyes. It wasn’t the same thing that came out of her mouth.
“Justice,” she said.
“Agreed,” Alan said.
“You’re crazy,” Ricky said.
“They’re right, Ricky,” his brother said. “We have to press our advantage or else we’ll be looking over our shoulders day and night. While we have him cornered, we need to neutralize him.”
“But what does that mean?” Ricky asked. “Are you going to murder him?”
“Isn’t that what he just tried to do to us?” Amber asked. “He strapped us down to sacrifice us. If your mom and Alan hadn’t come along, we would be dead.”
“That doesn’t mean we can murder him.”
“He’s going to lead them to us again,” Alan said. “We can’t let him do that.”
Ricky looked between the three of them. Amber, Alan, and George didn’t look like anything would sway their opinion. If he had to, Ricky knew that he could make George back down. It wouldn’t mean anything if he couldn’t talk Amber and Alan out of what they were planning.
Ricky looked to his mother for help.
“You think they’re in there?” his mother asked. “Those things—are they inside?”
“I don’t know,” Ricky said. “I doubt it, but I can’t be sure.”
“Well, I think we should go have a conversation with Romeo,” Mary said. “Then we’ll know if he intends to be reasonable about all this.”
# # #
They didn’t have much. Amber found a few things in the truck—a stake and a couple of their flashlights that he must have lifted from George. Mary and George snapped a couple of the handles of tools they found in the garage. The only thing that Alan carried was the bag of seeds. He scattered them around as they assembled at the door that led from the garage to the shed.
Amber pushed the door open.
The hallway was black.
Tucker began to growl.
Amber crouched to point one flashlight upwards.
Ricky held his light high and pointed it down.
Alan pitched a handful of seeds down the hall.
“That’s supposed to do something?” Mary asked.
“Just don’t look, Mom,” Ricky said. “Don’t look at the eyes.”
“Heard you the first time,” she said.
Ricky started to move forward and Amber reached out and put a hand on his shin. She pointed her light straight up and Ricky understood.
Holding his position, Ricky waved his brother forward with a gesture. George slid between Ricky and Amber and thrust the shovel handle up—driving it into the ceiling several times before he backed away, slinging something from his hand.
Amber leaned forward to reassess and then nodded at what she saw. They all moved into the mouth of the hallway.
Mary closed the door behind them and they began to work their way down the length. Just before they reached the first window, Amber’s light picked up a shadow that moved. To get his light high enough, Ricky had to put his foot on a low shelf that was built into the wall. He rose up and they all saw it. For a brief moment, the two lights converged on a shape that hadn’t been there before. Then, an instant later, it was gone.
Alan tossed seeds down the hall.
Ricky didn’t see the point—so far the monsters had been clinging to the ceiling. He underestimated the draw of the loose seeds. Amber’s light picked up the movement as the creature worked its way down the wall so it could gather the strewn seeds.
He and Amber moved together. Ricky drew the thing’s attention. It focused its swirling eyes on him and he slowed as Amber kept going. Ricky knew what it was like to peer into those haunting eyes, but this creature seemed different. There was no confidence in its glare. Ricky believed that if he really tried, he might be able to look away. It didn’t matter. A moment later, the eyes were extinguished as Amber thrust her spear into one and then the other. It was dead before it could blink.
Moving as a team, they cleared the hallway of one more monster and reached the door to Romeo’s kitchen.
“Everyone turn away or shield your eyes,” Alan said. “The light is bright.”
He stood firm, looking directly at the door.
“What about you?” Ricky asked.
“In case there is no light,” Alan said.
He pushed open the door and flinched back as more of the bright purple light flooded the hall. The puddle of the dead monster began to vaporize on the floor. The group moved forward into Romeo’s kitchen.
Amber found the light switch and one of the bulbs buzzed as it warmed up. Over the sink, a clock ticked off the seconds.
The house was dead silent until Alan called, “Romeo Libby? Come on out.”
There was no answer.
Ricky grabbed Tucker’s collar as the dog tried to move forward to investigate the smells of the new place.
“Stay with me,” Ricky whispered to the dog.
“Romeo?” Mary yelled. “You have company.”
There was still no answer.
Ricky looked to his mom and then pointed to Tucker. “Keep him here. I’ll check the place out.”
“I’m coming too,” Amber said.
George tilted his chin up—silently declaring that he would be on the team.
“Watch out for traps,” Ricky said. “Tripwires, pressure plates, any floorboards that don’t look right, or cameras. He wired up the door and he’s pretty paranoid. There’s no telling what he has rigged up.”
Amber and George nodded.
“You kids stay together,” Mary said. “No stragglers. Alan, you stay and keep me company.”
They all agreed.
Ricky took the lead.
# # #
Ricky moved to the doorway that led to a sitting room. His parents would have called it a TV room, but Ricky didn’t see a TV.
He still had his flashlight on and he pointed it towards the corners of the room without thinking even though the lights were on. Over near a recliner, he saw the empty dog bed where Albert had left a depression and more than a few hairs. There was an overturned glass laying on its side on the table.
Ricky’s eyes roved around the room and he stepped carefully. The carpet was worn enough that he could see the path that Romeo and Albert usually took towards the stairs. Ricky was careful to stay on that path.
The front room had a dining table that clearly wasn’t used for its designed purpose. The table was stacked high with columns of books and there were more piles in front of the bookshelves along the wall. Ricky crouched to check under the table with his light. Amber circled left and scanned down some of the titles.
“Fiction,” she said. “French and Russian authors.”
“Depression and self-loathing,” George said. “Hey—what’s this?”
Ricky turned his light towards George and his brother squinted at the beam. Lowering his light, he saw that George was pointing towards the switch on the wall.
“Light switches,” Amber sai
d. “What do you mean?”
“There are three,” George said. “There’s one overhead light, and maybe this one controls the lights in the next room, but what’s this third one for, and why is it separate from the other two.”
Ricky was about to tell his brother to stop worrying about switches and start paying attention to what they were doing. Before he could, George flipped the switch and Amber reached out like she might be able to stop him before he did.
The switch flipped up and George flinched back from the sound that erupted from the other room. It was a low static sound, like a radio tuned to nothing.
“What is that?” Mary called from the kitchen.
George turned the switch off. “Nothing. Just static.”
Ricky looked to Amber and she shrugged.
“Please don’t turn on any more switches, George.”
“Okay.”
They exited through the other door to a stairway with a hall that led to a doorway under the stairs.
“Up or down?” Ricky asked.
Amber pointed her light down the hall. The door under the stairs had a dog door in it. She swept her light up. There were more lights on at the top of the carpeted staircase. Romeo had a chairlift to carry him up the stairs. It was parked at the top.
Ricky put a foot on the bottom stair and began to climb.
Amber reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
“Wait,” she said. “Before we go any farther, George, how did you get here?”
“Huh?”
“We left you near the headstones at the Prescott cemetery. How did you get here?”
George took a breath and looked down at his feet.
“I heard an ATV come through the woods. There was an old guy on it. He said he lived with Jan in the house and that it was their property. I told him we had permission and then…”
George glanced up the stairs and blinked, trying to remember.
“He had trouble getting out of his ATV. He wanted to see the markers, he said. Then I thought he stabbed me in the back, and I couldn’t move. Next thing I knew, his arm was around my neck. I could still breathe, but the world just went black.”
“He zapped you and choked you out,” Ricky said. “Same thing he did to me.”
George shook his head. “Must have been more than that though. I didn’t wake up until we were back at the car. I almost got a message off and then he smashed the satellite messenger.”
“How did you get in his truck?” Amber asked.
George shook his head. “I don’t remember. Next thing I was really clear about was being strapped to that table.”
Amber looked at Ricky. “Are we sure he’s working alone?”
“No.”
# # #
When Mary, Tucker, and Alan were positioned at the bottom of the stairs, Ricky started to climb. He paused with each step, listening. He knew that his mother’s attention was focused on the door under the stairs. She was eyeing it suspiciously, the same way that Ricky had been. It felt like there were secrets down there, waiting to come out.
Behind him, Amber moved silently.
George, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to help but step on the squeakiest part of every stair tread. Anyone upstairs would have plenty of notice before their arrival.
When he was still a few stairs from the top, Ricky leaned forward to point his light one direction and then the other. The second floor was like a dormitory. There were doors on both sides of the hall, spaced so close that they must have led to tiny bedrooms. Ricky remembered that the building had housed a commune. Apparently, communal living meant separate bedrooms.
Amber crawled up next to him and then pointed to the floor. Ricky understood. Years of travel had left clues to the direction of Romeo’s bedroom. She swung the seat of the chairlift over so they could slip by it and start down the hall to the right. Ricky waited for George to reach the second floor. He brought up the rear and faced backwards to make sure that nothing snuck up on them.
Amber tried the first door. She turned the handle enough to pop the latch and then gave the knob a nudge as she stepped back. The door creaked open. Ricky pointed his light through the doorway. Amber started to reach inside for the light switch and Ricky shook his head. He directed his light towards the window. A box was built around the window, framing it in. It was effectively boarded up. Swinging his light down towards the floor, they saw stains on the wood planks.
“Like the cave,” Amber whispered.
Ricky nodded. She turned her light towards the ceiling where a lot of the plaster had been torn down and they could see the slats. Amber reached in with her stake and pulled the knob until the door swung shut enough for her to reach it and latch it.
At the next door they didn’t open it all the way. With it cracked open just a few inches they could see that it was the same as the previous room.
“This is the real roost,” Amber whispered.
“So where are they?” Ricky asked.
They were standing at the end of the hallway. Amber crouched down to look at the floor and then she stood up on her toes while she pointed her flashlight at the ceiling.
She leaned close to George and Ricky and whispered, “I don’t think they travel through here—just Romeo. That means that maybe those windows…”
“Aren’t really boarded up,” Ricky said.
Amber nodded.
They opened the next door and swung their lights around to make sure that there were no occupants in the dark space. George stayed in the doorway as Ricky and Amber slowly crept in. They avoided stepping on the discolored spots on the floor. Ricky saw that the biggest spot was below the part of the ceiling that was most torn up. He pictured one of the creatures roosting up there and its waste dribbling down on the floor. Amber reached out with her stake and poked at the lumber that boxed in the window. The bottom of it swung in a little and then stopped.
She leaned down to see what was blocking it.
“There are wires,” she whispered.
Ricky crouched to look. He whispered to her, “That looks like a solenoid. The electric locks at the sheriff’s department have those. I’ve seen behind the panel when they were being repaired.”
Amber looked back toward the door and Ricky saw what had drawn her attention. There was a similar device mounted above the door. When he saw where they were looking, George leaned in to have a look for himself. The room was so dark, it was hard to really see the mechanism.
Absentmindedly, George reached in and flipped on the lights so they could see better.
The switch next to the door didn’t control the lights.
Behind him, Ricky heard a mechanical bolt move. The one above the door thunked a fraction of a second later. The lights in the hall went out at the same time. Except for their flashlights, they were in the dark.
A hinge squealed. Ricky whipped his light around to see the side of the window flap opening outwards. A talon was hooked under the lip of the board. When Ricky repositioned his light, the claw withdrew quickly or disappeared—he didn’t know which until the flap banged back into place.
“All the rooms must be open,” Amber said, grabbing his arm.
The reality of that dawned on Ricky. If she was right, in a few seconds they would be trapped in the room at the end of the hall with only their flashlights.
“Flip the switch, George,” Ricky said.
He heard his brother clicking it up and down. It wasn’t doing anything.
Amber was moving towards the door, practically dragging him along.
# # #
They picked up speed as they crossed the room. George saw them coming and turned to join them immediately. The three of them sprinted down the hall towards the top of the stairs. It seemed like an impossibly long distance back to where they had come from. Just past the stairs, one of the doors began to swing inwards. Ricky’s light disappeared into the dark rectangle that opened there.
Amber jolted to a stop.
&nbs
p; Ricky clipped her shoulder when she halted and the impact twisted his torso and made him tangle his feet. As he started to fall, George reached down to catch him. He and his brother locked hands and it was too much weight for George’s balance. Both brothers began to fall.
George caught sight of what stopped Amber and his body locked up as well. He was on his knees, looking past Ricky towards the doorway down the hall.
Ricky could almost feel the beam of paralysis that had captured them. It emanated from the far doorway and locked them perfectly still. They were only a pace or two from the top of the stairs, but from the look of things they wouldn’t be going any farther.
“Help!” Ricky yelled.
He kept his back to the open doorway past the stairs as he climbed to his feet. George was closest. Ricky pointed his flashlight directly in George’s eyes, hoping to blind his brother to the monster lurking in the dark. When he saw no reaction, Ricky grabbed George under the armpit and tried to pull him towards the stairs. George was like a stone statue and felt like he had been nailed to the floor. Ricky’s tugging did nothing.
“Help!” Ricky yelled again. He heard feet on the stairs and regretted calling anyone else into danger as he saw one of the other doors open behind Amber. The monsters were returning to their roost. Ricky knew that just behind him there must be a really strong creature approaching. He considered turning to attack, but fear and apprehension flowed through him. He remembered being mesmerized and he was desperate to not let it happen again. It was like sinking down into a pit of warm acid, where you feel so soothed that you barely mind the idea that you’re being dissolved into nothing.
“Grab him and grab my hand,” Alan said. He was a few steps down from the top, leaning towards Ricky.
Ricky ignored the order and instead focused on the strap over George’s shoulder.
George was carrying a bag and Ricky thought he knew what was in it—at least what one of the items was.
Ricky loomed over his brother and only let his eyes see the flap on the bag.
As he struggled to get it open, Alan said, “I can hear them.”
Ricky heard them too—their claws were clicking latches and prying open doors. He heard something scraping from the dark behind him, but Ricky tried to ignore all those sounds. His flashlight hit the mirror and it reflected the beam back in his face.