“No, you’re not. You’re going back in the house.” Finn stooped down and plucked the keys off the ground. He pushed Michael’s shoulder, twisting him back toward the house and nudging him forward.
“Rebecca.” Finn gestured for her to follow Michael.
Rebecca wilted and started back around the car. Finn had escorted them halfway to the front door before Rebecca broke away and took off running across the gravel driveway. Michael took off after her. The flashlight and bottles of water in his backpack hammered at his lower spine. Finn shouted their names and chased them. Michael gasped for each breath, his heart pounding and his feet smashing down against the gravel. Rebecca stayed several yards in front of him. They jumped through the brush at the edge of the field and ran beside a ditch that paralleled the road. After a minute, Finn’s footsteps died away.
She ran ahead into the darkness and Michael lost her. Looking back, Finn was nowhere in sight. He slowed and caught his breath.
“Rebecca?” he called.
“Over here.”
Moonlight cast a faint glow across the fields and trees. Storm clouds had passed without a drop of rain. Her silhouette came into focus at the side of the road. He jumped through the ditch, and they hurried toward Rebecca’s farmhouse. He tried to keep his eyes straight ahead. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as her house caught the corner of his eye, the moonlight reflecting off the white siding, giving it an eerie glow. Her house transformed into a skull. The bedroom and living room windows were large dark eyes, the front door became the nasal cavity, and the steps formed rows of teeth. It had swallowed two people that evening. He glanced at Rebecca. Had she seen it too? If she had, it wasn’t slowing her down.
Before they turned into her driveway, a car’s engine whined behind them, the Cadillac’s engine. They passed the row of trees at the edge of Rebecca’s lawn and veered down through the ditch. Michael’s feet squished into the soft grass and back up the embankment. They wouldn’t make it to the house before the car caught up to them.
Rebecca pulled Michael toward the trees. She led him into the darkness of the thick branches and surged toward them faster until they confronted a wall of corn stalks behind the trees. Rebecca stumbled beside him as she rushed into the shoulder-high corn with her head hunkered forward and plodded on through the soft soil. They pushed into the cornfield a few yards, deep enough to hide from the road, the corn stalks whipping at their faces. They stopped and caught their breath. The Cadillac’s engine rumbled nearby, but the headlights were off. The car inched along the road as Michael stood motionless with a stray corn stalk tickling his cheek in the breeze. The Cadillac stopped at the end of Rebecca’s driveway, and a beam of light burst from the window, scanning the ditches and fields. For a moment, the light ran over his tennis shoes, which had been caked with mud.
“Michael!” Finn called from the open windows. “Rebecca!”
“We should go back to the house, Rebecca,” Michael whispered.
“Not until I find my mom.” She slipped further into the cornfield.
Finn called their names again before climbing out of the car. The flashlight flooded the area where they stood and he stepped toward them. “Michael?”
A moment later a white van raced up behind the Cadillac and skidded to a stop. Two men in white suits jumped out and wrestled Finn’s rifle away, almost knocking him to the ground. He cursed at them during the struggle, but calmed down after they thrust the barrel of the rifle into his chest. He backed away toward the car in slow motion with his hands up. They shouted commands at him as he got back in the car and drove toward Michael’s grandfather’s house. The van escorted him there, and then disappeared again down the road.
The night went silent again. Michael pushed aside the corn stalks, advancing toward the driveway until he stood one row from the open night air. Rebecca came up behind him. The light breeze rustled the leaves across the field in a chaotic chorus.
“They could have killed him,” Michael said.
Rebecca stepped forward out of the cornfield. “We have to keep looking.”
Michael hesitated, but then followed her toward the farmhouse. Her flashlight lit a wide path ahead of them. About halfway to the house, someone screamed in the distance. They stopped.
“Did you hear that?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes.”
Rebecca turned toward the sound and someone screamed again. A woman’s voice.
“That way.” Michael pointed down the road toward town.
Rebecca didn’t hesitate. She switched off her flashlight, and in the moonlight, ran down the road.
Michael chased after her and caught up. “We don’t have weapons.”
“I’ll rip it apart with my bare hands.”
“Rebecca,” Michael said. “Rebecca.”
She kept jogging, but craned her neck to the side. “What?”
“We need a weapon. You know what that thing can do.” Michael pulled on her backpack and she slowed down.
“We’ll just follow it then. Are you coming with me?”
He wouldn’t let her go by herself. “Of course.”
Their shoes smashed into the gravel. Their run slowed to a jog, and then to a brisk walk. Sweat coated Michael’s shirt, and the fields hummed around them, alive with a million insects. He swatted at the mosquitoes buzzing around his face.
“Just a minute.” He stopped and caught his breath. He pulled the hoodie from his backpack and slipped it on over his damp shirt, wrapping the hood around his head. At least it would keep some of them away from his ears. He’d never encountered so many bugs in his whole life. Rebecca seemed immune, focusing only on the source of the screams.
“I heard it again,” she said, pointing toward the farm across the field ahead of them. “Over there. I think it’s moving toward town.”
Michael looked behind them toward his grandfather’s house. A faint light lit the front yard, and a dark figure stood at the end of the driveway. They were too far away to run back now if they needed help. The white van was nowhere in sight. It still had to be there watching them somewhere in the darkness.
The woman screamed again at the edge of his hearing.
“That’s my mom.” Rebecca sprinted forward again. “I know it.”
Michael kept up with her to the edge of the farm where they’d heard the screams. Rebecca paused, and they both gasped for breath. He slipped off the hoodie and cooled down. The mosquitoes would soon attack him, but he was overheating from the run. He controlled each breath so Rebecca could hear him.
“I hear nothing,” he said.
They stared at the darkened silhouette of the farmhouse in front of them. A long driveway led to a two-car garage at the side of the house, and a white car sat in front of one garage door. The top of a barn rose above a group of trees at the far end of the yard.
“That’s the Miller’s farm,” Rebecca said. “I think they’re gone too.”
A woman’s weak voice cried out in pain from beyond the barn. Rebecca sprinted toward the barn.
“Rebecca, wait!”
Michael chased after her. His footsteps pounded against the gravel driveway, spitting out rocks behind him until he thumped across the soft grass. He switched on his flashlight, and the beam zigzagged across the yard.
Rebecca turned on her flashlight too as they circled the edge of the garage. The front of the barn faced them, its massive doors were wide open like a gaping mouth ready to devour them whole, but Rebecca slowed before getting close to the barn and turned back to him.
“It’s gotta be around here somewhere,” she said.
“Wait, we’ve got to find a weapon.” He looked around the yard.
Rebecca hurried to a door at the back of the garage. “Maybe in here.”
“Are you sure they’re gone?” he asked.
“No, but I haven’t seen them in months.”
She jiggled the handle. “Locked.”
Something knocked, bone against bone, within the darkness
beside the barn. The same clicking sounds he’d heard earlier that evening behind Rebecca’s house. He turned his flashlight toward the sound, but saw nothing.
“Did you hear that?” Michael asked.
“Yes.”
“We need a weapon. Something’s out there.”
Rebecca shined her light in the same area and spotted something shifting at the edge of a tree. The black snaking arms of the same creature that had taken Audrey and Ray, although both of its victims were gone. Its massive beak widened, revealing a throat the size of a human head, then and snapped shut again. A rush of air burst out.
“Get in the house!” Michael turned to Rebecca.
She screamed and staggered back.
He grabbed her wrist and led her around the side of the garage. He circled into the driveway and knocked his hip into the side of the white car. A jolt of pain surged up his side. He limped toward the side door of the house, towing Rebecca along, but before they could get to it, a black mass dropped and unfurled over the screen door. A tangled web of arms slinked down off the roof and reached for them.
They pivoted back to the car. A surge of energy propelled him to the door handle. If it was locked, they would need to run, and he was exhausted. He grabbed the cool metal handle and pulled up. The door swung open and Rebecca scrambled inside. She slid into the driver’s seat as he tumbled in behind her. He yanked the door shut as the clacking beaks outside smashed against the glass. The car swayed and shook under its efforts.
Rebecca shrieked. Monstrous tentacles draped over the windows and eclipsed the moonlight. Michael checked the ignition switch. No keys. He checked the floor, the seats, the overhead visor. No keys anywhere. He opened the glove compartment and discovered a screwdriver. It was better than nothing. He handed the screwdriver to Rebecca, switched off their flashlights and hunkered down.
The passenger side door creaked open next to him. Panic flared through his chest. He lurched at the door handle and yanked it in. The safety door latch clicked into place, but a finger-wide opening remained. The tip of one tentacle had gotten stuck along the side. He battered it with his flashlight until it slinked away. The door rattled against the latch as the creature tugged against Michael’s attempts to seal it.
“Lock the doors!” Michael said.
Rebecca fumbled with the switches on the driver’s side. A moment later, all the door locks snapped and locked. Michael heaved the door closed until the final latch clicked. The car’s metal frame groaned as the weight on the roof shifted. He and Rebecca pressed into each other at the center of the seats.
The black limbs slapped against the glass and slid from one side of the car to the other. The wheels squeaked and dark residue smeared across the windows. The creature’s tentacles explored every point of entry and slammed against the glass leaving behind a web of cracks, but the windows held. Rebecca slid over the center console between them and huddled against him in the passenger seat. The car leaned to the driver’s side as the creature descended. When it let go and crashed to the ground, the car sprang up and leveled out.
Rebecca trembled in Michael’s embrace. He shuddered in her arms and forced his eyes closed. Their shallow breaths filled the silence as he waited for the nightmare to return. They remained still and silent for several minutes before she spoke.
“I’m so sorry.” She tightened her arms around him.
“It’s okay. I understand. I would have done the same thing.”
“I have to get my mom back. I know she’s still alive.”
Michael nodded.
“I should have listened to Finn and Artie.” She pulled away a little, and their eyes met in the glow of the moonlight.
“We can’t go out there again tonight,” he said.
“I know.” She closed her eyes and leaned into him with her hair against his cheek. A few stray hairs tickled the side of his nose, and he broke into a weak smile.
They sank into the seat, embracing each other. Her trembling gave way to drawn out breaths, and she’d managed to fall asleep in his arms. He lowered the seat back until they lay almost horizontal. They didn’t say another word until they awoke the next morning to something scraping across the windshield.
12
Michael awoke and lurched forward at the sight of a black tentacle slinking across the windshield. He kicked the dashboard as he scrambled to sit up while Rebecca groaned as she tried to get comfortable in her new position. The teeth along the underside of the limb screeched across the windshield like fingernails across a chalkboard. He grabbed the screwdriver that had fallen into his lap and thrust it forward, ready to do battle. The sky brightened along the horizon, but the sun hadn’t yet fully risen. They had almost made it through the night.
The car shook again as the creature rose and slammed its weight against the side of the car. The explosive power of its torso flung Michael across the seat, knocking his head against the passenger side window. Rebecca shuddered as her eyes burst open. She screamed and pushed back against Michael. The hulking black mass backed beyond arm’s-length, and then rushed forward again, slamming its weight against the car with the same force as if a bus had hit them. Both of them were tossed forward and back again as the car rose onto the passenger side wheels and balanced on the brink of flipping upside down before crashing back down onto all four wheels. They launched upward and smashed down in their seats. Rebecca screamed again. The car slid and turned across the gravel driveway. When it stopped, they faced the front door.
Arms rose along the sides again and pushed into the cracks along the windows. The rear driver’s side window shifted down far enough for the tip of a tentacle to poke through along the top. It pushed and quivered until the glass shattered and its arm crashed in at them. The glass stripped away its flesh and black slime spewed across the back seat. Rebecca grabbed her backpack and used it as a shield.
“Get down!” Michael spun around with the screwdriver in his hand and plunged the full length through its skin. The arm recoiled a few inches, and then lashed back at him, striking the back of his hand. The monster’s head stuck up along the front of the car, its clacking beak snapping open and closed. Eyes, glossy black and flush against the sides of its head, stared at them devoid of expression.
Its feelers pushed farther into the car, slamming into the back of the seats and circling through the air. The tip of a tentacle lashed into Michael’s face, knocking him back. Rebecca reached forward over her seat and clenched the tentacle with her hands. She shoved it back against the bottom edge of the shattered window severing it nearly in half before it slipped away.
The dark form dropped out of sight, and they prepared for another attack.
“It’s leaving,” Rebecca said.
The creature’s silhouette now stood out against the predawn light as it scurried away beyond the trees, moving toward town.
“Where is it going?” Michael asked.
“Back to Hell.” Rebecca spun around and unlocked the car doors.
“What are you doing?” Michael asked.
“I’m going after it.” The driver’s side door flew open, and she hurried after the creature.
“Rebecca!”
She stopped at the edge of the owner’s lawn and hunched forward. He climbed out of the car and went to her side, still clutching the screwdriver dripping black sludge.
“Okay, I’ll listen to Artie and Finn this time.” She turned to him, and her arms hung limp at her sides. Her face held none of the joy and energy she usually radiated.
Michael glanced back toward the house. “Maybe there’s a phone inside. We should tell them where we are.”
Rebecca nodded.
They walked around the car on their way to the house. Every inch of the car’s body was scratched and dented as if it had been through a washing machine. Before they started up the stairs to the front door, a white van passed along the road and the driver caught Michael’s eye. The van screeched to a stop and backed up as they stepped up to the front door.
“Just act like we’re supposed to be here.”
She glanced down at the screwdriver in his hand. “Get rid of that.”
Michael tossed it over the edge of the railing along the porch. They must have seen him drop it. Rebecca pulled open the screen door and turned the handle. The front door pushed in and they went inside.
The interior of the house was in shambles as if a tornado had passed through. Someone had turned the kitchen table on its side with most of the chairs broken into pieces and scattered across the floor. Pools of blood were splattered across the living room floor and down the hallway. A long streak of blood ran through the center of the house. It was just like Rebecca’s house. Something had shattered the windows along the back of the house with only shards remaining along the edges.
“Mrs. Miller?” Rebecca called out.
Nobody answered. Michael hurried to the phone on the kitchen countertop. He pushed the call button, but the batteries were dead.
Rebecca looked out the window toward the road. “They’re coming here.”
“We can run out the back.”
Rebecca’s shoulders dropped, and she sighed. “I can’t run anymore.”
Michael hurried to the kitchen sink and washed the black blood from his hands. As he was drying them, the front door burst open and two men in white suits pointed assault rifles at them.
“Step outside.” They gestured toward the door.
“May I help you?” Michael asked. “This is our home. You can’t just walk in here.”
One of them stepped forward and slapped his hand on Michael’s shoulder. Michael twisted away, but the other man jumped in and threw him to the floor. Facedown, he stared across the kitchen tiles. Dried black blood streaked along a winding path and up the front of a cabinet. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, and Rebecca rushed to his side. The shorter of the two men shoved Rebecca back against the counter while the taller one grabbed Michael’s arms and hoisted him to his feet. Fingers dug into his armpits. Michael kicked and struggled as they dragged him out the front door and threw him down the cement steps. His sight flashed black as his right knee slammed into the first step. He tumbled through a whirlwind of pain to the sidewalk. Nothing had cracked internally, and the hoodie in his backpack had cushioned his fall.
Shadows Rising Page 9