Keep in a Cold, Dark Place

by Michael Stewart

  The eyes had retreated into the skull and peered out at her, no longer sad, but menacing in their darkness. The worst thing was the jaw. A circular bone fanned into a trumpet shape and then contracted again as it breathed. With each expansion it showed its multi-rowed teeth. Even from where she stood, she could see the holes in each tooth. Holes for the draining of blood.

  She screamed.

  Deep, throaty, demonic laughter chugged from its throat. It hopped to the floor as Limpy brandished her knife and felt behind her for the doorframe and escape. But Ghost didn’t attack. It leapt to her bed and then shot to the wall, four sets of claws piercing the fabric of her art.

  “No!” she cried.

  Slowly, while staring at Limpy, it slid down the wall. Razor claws sliced through stitches and burlap, leaving terrible rends. First the thorns, then the road, the town, the farm. It hit the floor and leapt again, landing on the ramparts of Hillcrest, shredding it to a rubble of twine.

  With the wall of her potato sack art stripped, Ghost’s head turned on its side and it took a clawed step toward her, trampling the tatters of her dreams.

  Limpy backed out the door and into the living room. “Daddy!” she shouted, but outside she heard more yells of pursuit and gunshots. No one would rescue her.

  In a flash, Ghost squatted upon the couch. She had barely seen it begin to move. Again the red head twisted. This was the one that had hatched without her. Had never felt the kind touch of a mother. The one that had eaten the chickens and bitten her father’s toe.

  Its eyes flickered to the door to the yard. And with that she knew what she had to do. When the springs of the couch squealed as it lanced forward, Limpy ran, not for the doorway which it suddenly darkened, but for the cellar. It growled an angry chup as she dived through the cellar entry and smashed into bags of potatoes. Pain bloomed in her chest, but she forced herself to twist, leap forward, and haul the cellar door closed.

  The chupacabra crouched and leapt as the door came down on her. Its body slammed against it, the tips of talons piercing through gaps in the boards.

  Limpy shrieked and held the door handle tight. She rattled up and down before finally the creature gave up and all she could hear was the crashing of pots and cups in the kitchen, and the shattering of picture frames as it rampaged into the living room.

  Shaking, Limpy slumped onto the potatoes and withered bunches of carrots. She dared not shout for her father again, nothing to attract attention. She’d dropped the knife in her flight and all she had to defend herself with were limp vegetables.

  A shadow traced the edge of the cellar door.

  “Chup?” Limpy whispered in a voice so thin she barely heard it herself.

  Meow.

  It was Spud.

  Limpy swallowed.

  The house had gone silent. Ghost hunted. It hunted the family cat.

  Chapter 27

  “Go away, Spud!” Limpy whined. “Run!”

  Meow. A plaintive call.

  With nothing but bags of potatoes, Limpy couldn’t protect him. She peered through a crack in the boards. The chupacabra guarded the doorway, its eyes trained on the cat. Could she open the door and grab Spud before the monster caught them both? She didn’t think so, but she had no choice but to try. If she did nothing, Spud would be an empty fur sack.

  She clutched the handle of the cellar door and shouted a war cry—Ghost sprang.

  The chupacabra thudded against the door. Limpy fell back against the cellar wall.

  “Spud!”

  Immediately Limpy hurtled forward, unthinking—angry—and slammed against the door, pushing the creature up and backward, while it wrestled to free talons from the wood. She crushed it against the wall. With one hand, she scooped the cat into her arms and sprinted. She scrambled out through the back door to tumble into the dust. Spud bounded away. Dylan ran over, lifted his gun above Limpy’s head and fired, once, twice, three times.

  Limpy sobbed. “Bullets are no good,” she said.

  Her father gripped his axe. His eyes had opened so wide that she could see the whites all around. He stood before the broken windows to their living room. As if in reply to Limpy, the chupacabra hurled something out. Her father ducked. A potato sack sailed through the air. It spiraled and, as it turned, the angry stare of her mother flashed. The sack landed in a puff of dust, bursting at the seams. The yard clouded with fine gray mist. It drifted over them all.

  “Elsabeth,” her father said.

  “Mommy,” Dylan screamed.

  Limpy realized what had happened. Father had kept her mother’s ashes within the potato-sack-effigy, ashes which had exploded in the yard.

  Her father dropped to his knees, scooping the ash now mixed with earth and straw back into the silver urn. He turned the sack over, so that the image of his wife stared up at the heavens.

  Limpy placed her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  He turned on her, face fracturing in pain. “You . . . you brought this.”

  Limpy jerked away.

  “No, no, how can you say that?” Although she knew it was true, she also knew that it was unfair. Anyone would have opened the box. Pandora would have. Everyone.

  “This is your fault,” he said, clutching the sack with the image of his wife to his chest.

  Limpy understood that her father wasn’t really talking about the chupacabra. He was talking about the death of his wife—her mother—and for that, she would no longer take the blame.

  His face turned to the ashes. “Off with you.”

  “No.” She gritted her teeth. “I’m sorry Mom died, Dad. I am, but you can’t keep blaming me. And I can’t replace her, either. I’m not her. I don’t want to be her.” Limpy dropped to her knees beside him. She reached down and scooped up some ash and dusty soil and threw it up into the air so that it scattered. “She’s gone. And I’m here.”

  Connor came and stood beside her; tears trailed down his cheeks and her father’s. At first her father’s face purpled with blood, and then a cry burst from him. He leaned on his knuckles, drawing deep, braying breaths. Finally, carefully, gently, he scooped up what remained of the ash of his beloved wife into the sack. And he nodded to it.

  “Not here,” he said, and standing, he began to walk into the fields, crossing over the lush green of the potato plants not yet harvested to stop in the shadow of a craggy hill. The sun had dropped behind it. “She loved it here,” he said.

  While the chupacabra emptied the house of furniture, Connor fetched a shovel and began to dig at the base of a large boulder. It didn’t take long—five minutes, no more—but Limpy could see the reverence in her brothers and father. They remembered. Each shovelful for them was the burying of a moment of laughter, a moment of joy, of trial, of love.

  But Limpy had no memories; she was as empty as the hole Connor dug. And she never wanted to hear the whispers of her mother again.

  When Connor rested the shovel on the toe of his boot, her father bent and laid their potato-sack mother in the hole. A tear fell to splat on the picture, right at her mouth.

  “Bye, luv,” he said, and he leaned down to kiss it. “All the bells in Ireland are ringing for you.”

  As the family held hands over their mother’s grave, the chupacabra tossed the last of the kitchen chairs out of the farm windows and Spud yowled from his perch in an elm. It was growing darker.

  Night was chasing the day away.

  Chapter 28

  While Connor filled in the grave, her father faced Limpy. “I’m sorry, Limphetta.”

  His expression seemed so lined and sad. A choking sob broke from her chest.

  “No, no,” she said. “It is my fault. I freed the chupacabra, I let this happen.” She felt selfish. Was selfish, but with her art in shreds it hurt to lose the chance to follow her heart. She understood how her father felt.

  “No one can blame you for wanting something more, lass. No one. The only thing we can do is lift you up or stand in your way.” Then he sighed and
dusted off his pants. “But right now there’s something in all of our ways.”

  She’d never seen him so grim.

  With his last word, the family couch crashed halfway through the window and teetered on the edge of the sill.

  “I hate them,” he said.

  “I say we get off the farm, Pa. Call in the police or the Army,” Dylan said, his face white. “We could watch from the neighbor’s. Bank says it’s not our farm anymore anyway.”

  “I can’t leave,” Limpy said. “We’re what’s keeping them here. If we leave, we free them. They’ll leave and we’ll never find them. We face them or we free them.”

  “If they leave, then we don’t have a problem no more,” Dylan said, and gave her a shot in the shoulder.

  “Mr. José said—” she began, but Dylan interrupted.

  “Where’s Mr. José now then, if this is so important, where is he? We have to run. You said it. We’re the food. We are!”

  They both looked to their father for the final word. He worked something over in his mouth.

  “Nah, Dylan, that’s not how this family works,” her father said. “This is still our farm until they come and take my keys. This is ours to fix.”

  “Limpy’s to fix,” Dylan said. His father gripped his son’s shoulder.

  “We’re Limphetta’s family, and there’s nothing more important. No one would believe us, not until it was too late. Every farm, animal, or person these whachamacallits hurt will be on our hands. Limpy’s right. We need a way to stop them now. Before they destroy the farm. And the town.”

  The shadow of the hill had crept across the yard to swallow the farmhouse.

  “Getting late,” Dylan said.

  “Keep in a cold, dark place,” Limpy whispered, an idea dawning on her.

  “What’s that you’re saying?” her father asked.

  “That’s the writing on the box in the cellar. I think that’s what we need to do. Put them back where I found them. A cold, dark place.”

  “Easier said than done, girl.”

  “What’s that smell?” Dylan had his nose stuck in the air.

  It was acrid and sulphurous. Limpy knew the smell. She’d smelled it at every gas station.

  “Gasoline,” her father said.

  “Oh, no,” she cried. “The barn!” It was just like what had happened to the stables. And if it burned down, there wouldn’t be a cold, dark place to put them in.

  As she sprinted across the field she tripped over the furrows of potato plants, landed in the soft earth, and scrambled to her feet to run again. She could hear the shouts of her father and Dylan behind her.

  “Stop!” her father called.

  “Not worth dying for,” Dylan added.

  Rage filled her. Rage that these terrible monsters—even Chup, although it seared her heart—had decided not only to eat their chickens and terrorize their home, but to destroy her father’s dream. They’d destroyed the dreams of the last owners, and they meant to destroy hers and her father’s too. There would be no keeping the farm, if the barn burned with their harvest and the equipment inside. The farm might not be her dream, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth protecting.

  Ignoring the shouts of her brothers, Limpy burst in through the barn door and let it slam behind her. Gasoline fumes burned in her nostrils. Something rocked against the planks above. She gripped the ladder and climbed, pulling out her flashlight when she reached chin height with the loft floor.

  In the glow of the flashlight beam, Tufts wrestled with a fuel drum, trying to push it over. At least she assumed it was Tufts, because where his puffs of white fur had been, now protruded great ivory tusks and a horn. Another drum was already shoved over, but only a thin trail of gasoline trickled from its mouth. That drum had been nearly empty, but if they spilled the full one, nothing could be done. The fire extinguisher hanging on a wooden pillar wouldn’t be enough.

  The fan of the chupacabra’s teeth bloomed. The noise through the fangs was like a hundred hissing snakes.

  “Get away,” she screamed and shimmied the rest of the way up the ladder until she stood level with it. “Get away! Bad, Tufts.”

  She didn’t know what she’d do if it attacked. Slowly, she edged toward the fire extinguisher. Another chupacabra chittered in the darkness. Strangely, it didn’t attack. It remained hidden. “Podge?”

  Something rasped and light flared.

  “Oh, no,” she said, fear twisting her guts. “Not you.”

  The chupacabra gripping the match seemed to swell and grow as she shied away. It was Chup. The last of its fur drifted to the floor, leaving only slick yellow scales that shone gold in the light.

  The match arced as she stared helplessly on. And then snuffed out as it landed, bouncing harmlessly into the puddle of gas.

  With another angry chup, it shuttled forward and shook dozens of matches from a box. Limpy lurched for the extinguisher as Chup scraped its fist over the wood and the matches burst into flame. She shouted her rage and frustration as a cascade of lit matches fell into the fuel.

  Whump.

  First came the burst of light. The wave of heat drove her behind the thick pillar. A heart-beat later, the empty drum exploded. Shrapnel cut into the walls and thudded into the wood shielding her. She had clenched her eyes shut and opened them to small patches of fire burning in the straw, on beams, and along the planks of wood near the full drum. Tufts had been thrown back by the explosion. It shook its head groggily as she brought the extinguisher around and pulled the trigger. Foam sprayed over the full drum, the hay, and the kindling fires. The barn plunged back into darkness.

  Then Connor was there and had her over his shoulder.

  “Get the fuel drum.” She beat at his back. “Get it.”

  She flailed enough that he gave up and set her down. He stared at Limpy and after a moment he nodded. In a feat of strength that even surprised Connor, judging by the look in his round eyes, he hefted the fuel drum, hugging it like Limpy did the sacks.

  “Go, run!” she screamed.

  Tufts recovered and hissed from the corners of the loft. At the ladder, Connor used a rope and pulley system to lower the barrel to the ground floor and then leapt down on top of it. Left alone, Limpy took up the dropped extinguisher and emptied the rest of it over the chupacabra so that they looked less menacing with all the foam. She didn’t really know why she did it. It was all she had to defend herself with—that and the sheer will to protect her brother long enough for him to escape with the fuel drum.

  In a spray of white bubbles, the heavy Tufts flew toward her as she swung around on the ladder. She braced for impact. Suddenly, Chup slammed into Tufts and drove it back, giving her time to scuttle down. Tufts screeched from the upper floor and lashed out at Chup so that it dashed into the shadows. Tufts dropped down, crouched and sprang over her, landing to block her escape. But just as it let out a hissing laugh, Connor kicked the door back open and shoved it aside. It wasn’t much of a distraction, but it was enough for her slip through. A talon cut across her shoulder as she jumped into the evening gloom.

  Outside, in the cool air, she felt the heat of her burns, as if she’d spent far too long in the sun. Hottest of all was her shoulder, where she felt the trickle of wet. Connor grabbed her by the hand and they ran into the potato field, rolling the drum before them, to where her father and Dylan waited. Nearby Ghost stalked, snout to the air, as if sniffing her blood. It burst into hisses and chitters that raked shivers down her spine.

  “You okay?” her father asked, placing an arm around her neck.

  She nodded as best she could. How could she be okay?

  “Now what do we do?” Her father appeared to be looking to her for direction.

  Limpy had an idea, but it was crazy and she was afraid. She couldn’t face a chupacabra again.

  “I . . . ,” Limpy began, turning to her father, whose flesh had gone pale. They all looked to her. She had to help. She had to swallow the paralyzing fear that filled her belly a
nd her mind. “Dad, you and Dylan bring the freezer to the barn, and then fix the stitcher. Connor, you get me all the old potato sacks you can.”

  Maybe the dreams with her mother had a purpose. Maybe all the sewing of potato sacks and art had led to today.

  “What’s your idea?”

  “Mr. José kept his chupacabra egg in a freezer. Maybe the box of them was in the cellar because it’s like a freezer. I’m hoping that I can make a net out of the potato sacks.”

  “A cold, dark place,” her father said. “You’re gonna need electricity to run the stitcher.”

  “I’ll have to do it by hand then,” she agreed, rubbing her thumb against her forefinger and already feeling the pain.

  “But how do we get them into your big tater sack and freezer?”

  “And keep them there,” Dylan said.

  She knew they grew fast, and she could hope that they shrank just as quickly. Twenty years ago, they’d been reduced to eggs. She only needed to figure out the trick.

  “You leave that to me,” Limpy said. If she told them what she thought, they’d never agree. “But you’re all going to need shovels.”

  As they discussed Limpy’s ideas, Podge slipped from the living room window and crouched. Tufts was silhouetted on the rooftop. Limpy’s father pointed back to the barn, and there in the doorframe hunched Chup and Ghost—which fanned its teeth.

  “I don’t think we have time for plans,” Dylan said, lifting the rifle to his ear. The gun bucked and the chupacabra on the roof jerked back a few steps before returning to the ridgeline.

  Her brother dropped the fist he’d pumped into the air when he’d thought he had hit it.

  “How are we going to get past them?” Dylan asked, shuddering.

  “Each one alone is too big for the freezer,” her father said. “Going to have to be a mighty big sack.”

  And he was right. They’d grown too big. Her plan would fail. All the creatures but Podge tilted their heads back so that they looked to the moon and chittered. There was no question now; they were laughing.