The Taking

by Becky Johnson

  Matt glanced over in horror, to voluntarily give oneself to the Takers? He had no response to that.

  “And after all that, I didn’t even have a chance.” She complained, shocking him even more. “I never even saw a Taker until I saw them take three of our neighbors at Town Hall.”

  “Three?”

  Ruth nodded her head. “Three.”

  “But it’s only supposed to be one. That’s what they do. They come and take one person.”

  Ruth’s voice was solemn. “Not tonight. Tonight, they took three.”

  Matt didn’t know what to think. The Takers were a horror he’d lived with his whole life, but despite the fear, there had always been predictability to it all. The Takers came once a month. No one saw them. No one heard them. They came. Took one person. And left. Now they came, and he saw them. Ruth did too, but neither were Taken. And then they took three.

  “Three.”

  “Matt,” her voice was quiet, disturbed. “I saw the people being Taken. I saw the Takers, too.” Matt didn’t know Ruth well, but her voice seemed off. Disquieted.

  “What did you see?”

  The silence stretched and then. “I was down the road from Town Hall. The Takers were surrounding the building and blocking the road. Someone opened the main door of Town Hall and threw three people out. I heard them scream. Then they were just gone. All of them. The Takers and our people just disappeared.”

  “Shit. I hate this town.” Only after he spoke did Matt realize he had just cursed in front of someone who was old enough to be his grandmother. “Uh, I’m sorry.”

  Ruth laughed. “I’ve heard shit before. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’ve had more reasons than you would believe to curse.”

  Matt gave an awkward chuckle in response as he drove. “Let me check in with Sarah and Henry, and I’ll drive you home.”

  Up ahead a strange glow suddenly filled the sky. He turned onto Sarah’s street and saw the source. Her house was on fire.

  9:22 p.m.

  The fire burned hot and fierce, but the whole room felt lighter. Safer. The Taker and the awful whine it had created was gone. The fire spread to the sofa, and the old stuffing immediately caught flame.

  “He’s gone.”

  It started as a whisper, but then Henry shouted. “We did it! He’s gone.”

  Sarah laughed. “We did.” They looked at each other and grinned.

  A whoosh of hot air from the living room stopped their cheering. The sofa was engulfed. Flames crawled toward the kitchen while smoke billowed across the ceiling.

  “Uh, we’ve got to go.” Henry’s fingers were cold in her own when she grasped them. They stumbled together toward the back door, smoke and soot getting thicker by the second. The fire was building fast, too fast. The flames that saved them from the Taker had quickly become deadly.

  The doorknob slid through Sarah’s fingers as coughs wracked her body. Henry pushed against her back as the flames crept closer and engulfed the entryway to the kitchen.

  A few more tries and her fingers gripped the knob and turned, spilling them out into the backyard. Smoke slid out behind them in hot fingers as they gasped the clean air outside.

  Henry stumbled across the grass and dropped to his knees, tears streaking through the soot on his face. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What?” Sarah grasped his shoulders and tried to focus on Henry despite the coughing wracking her chest.

  “I’m sorry. I set the fire. I burned down your house.” Henry wiped his face with his sleeve before whimpering again. “I’m sorry.”

  “NO, Henry, no. Look what you did?!”

  “I know,” he wailed. “I burned your house.”

  “No. You beat it. You stopped the Taker.” Henry shook his head. “Don’t you see? We can fight them. We can beat them now.”

  9:25 p.m.

  Matt slammed on the brakes. The house where he’d left Sarah and Henry safe, about an hour ago, was now engulfed in flames. Smoke poured from the windows. In the passenger seat, Ruth leaned forward, looking closer. “Is that house on fire?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We should call the fire station.”

  Matt wanted to laugh. Call the fire station, right. Heritage had a small volunteer fire department with one truck and three firefighters. On the night of the Taking, they weren’t going to respond to any fire alarms, even if the safe bell had sounded. In Heritage, everyone stayed in their homes until dawn. As much as the Mayor might make speeches about how Heritage was a town that cared for its own, most citizens would ignore everything today. People would pretend the world outside of their own home didn’t exist. Tonight, a house on fire would just burn.

  Matt stopped his truck and jumped out, ignoring Ruth’s call behind him. He ran to the front door, but the fire was so hot it pushed him back off the porch.

  “Sarah!”

  “Henry!”

  The crackle of the flames was his only answer. He heard Ruth shouting something behind him, but it didn’t register.

  “Sarah!” His voice cracked.

  “Henry!”

  No, no, no. This couldn’t be. “SARAH!”

  9:25 p.m.

  Reason returned slowly. Paul could hear voices, but he couldn’t make sense of the words. He blinked, opened his eyes and immediately closed them again when the light stabbed into his brain. His head throbbed. Briefly, his dinner churned in his stomach, and he thought he might throw up.

  He breathed in slowly and opened his eyes again. The light was still too bright, but it didn’t make his head feel like it was going to fall off.

  Slowly the voices around him started to make sense. “This is why we have a Taking! Even in Heritage, some people would rob us of our way of life. Rob us of our peace.” The Mayor’s agitated words woke Paul up faster. With the return of reason came a deeper understanding of his situation. Ropes were wrapped around Paul’s chest and secured him to chair. Tape over his mouth kept his voice silenced. The eyes of his neighbors, his friends looked at him with distrust. Paul wanted them to doubt the Mayor, and instead, the Mayor was using him to reinforce his position.

  9:26 p.m.

  “We beat them.”

  “Yes. We can fight.”

  “We can fight.” Henry’s words were quiet. Almost a whisper, but they held a foundation of truth. They weren’t stuck anymore. There was a way out, a way to fight back against the Takers.

  Sarah and Henry grinned at each other. They had survived. They had won.

  Over the crackling of the fire burning her house to the ground, Sarah heard something. A voice, yelling.

  She grabbed Henry’s hand and ran a wide arch around the house. In the front yard, they found Matt with his hands cupped around his mouth as he called for them.

  “Sarah!”

  “Matt!”

  Matt’s attention swung to meet Sarah’s gaze, and she ran toward him through the smoke with Henry in tow. In two steps they met, and Matt grabbed them both tight. They hugged, all smiling in delight that they were all still alive. Yesterday Sarah couldn’t have imagined the range of emotions she could experience in the span of a few hours from determination to terror, then to this moment of delight.

  They were safe, for now anyway, and the sheer joy of life made Sarah laugh out loud. She might have thought that seeing her home burn would bring grief. Instead, she was filled with joy. It felt like the fire was the past burning away. All the things that would keep her afraid. All the things that prevented her from moving forward. They were burning. And all the things that would keep her moving forward. The things that would keep her fighting were right here with her. Her best friend. Her family.

  9:27 p.m.

  After a brief discussion Matt, Sarah, Ruth, and Henry trooped away from the burning house that their neighbors were ignoring and through the backyards to Henry’s uncle’s home. Once safely inside they circled up around the table. The giddy delight of survival had translated into jitters, at least for Sarah. Under the table,
her knee bounced with barely contained energy.

  For several long minutes, they sat there while brief chuckles or bursts of conversations broke out before silence descended. They all had so much to say, but it seemed no one could find the right words to start the conversation meant to decide their fate.

  “At least it’s over now,” Ruth uttered the words, but Matt nodded his head in agreement.

  “It’s not over.”

  “Henry, sweetie it is. We’re safe.” The words were accompanied by Ruth’s hand gently patting his shoulder.

  “Henry’s right,” Sarah said. “It’s not over. You didn’t see them. We did. Takers were standing in front of every house. Those very same Takers entered every house, at least until we set the fire. And this was after the bell from Town Hall. After we were supposed to be safe. I don’t know why tonight is different, but it is. It isn’t over yet.”

  “But we don’t see any Takers now. It looks like they all disappeared.” Ruth might have felt overly hopeful, but now that she had decided to go home, that was all she wanted to do. She was tired and old. She wanted to do nothing more than crawl between her sheets and, for a few hours anyway, forget that her Sam was gone. Forget that she was alone. She’d been ready to die tonight, but they hadn’t Taken her.

  “We did. Henry and I did, but you are missing the point. We fought one. We chased it away.”

  “How did you chase it away? What made you think of fire?” Matt’s questions stopped the back and forth about if the Takers were still here or gone.

  Sarah looked over at Henry. “It was Henry’s idea. What did make you think of fire?”

  Henry squirmed a bit as three sets of adult eyes settled on him. “They move with the light.” His voice was quiet.

  “What do you mean?” Matt leaned forward, interest in every line of his body.

  “All night there have been these weird flashes of light or total darkness, and then they show up. But they don’t move how we do. They glide, or something. Did you notice when you saw them?”

  Matt sat back for a second. “Ok, let’s go back to the beginning. What have we all seen tonight? I saw them for the first time when I was looking for Henry. There was a dozen of them maybe. I could see them, but not really see them. They were foggy until I drove right into the middle. Then they cleared.”

  Sarah went next. “I saw them before I met up with you both.” She nodded to Henry and Matt. “They did move strangely. Sort of smooth but jerking at the same time.” She shook her head. “I know that doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, that’s what I saw too.” Henry’s interjection was enthusiastic enough to make Sarah smile despite the subject matter.

  “They moved together, but they kept blinking out. It’s almost like…” Henry paused.

  “Like what?” Matt asked.

  “Okay, so you know how sometimes when you watch a show on the internet the picture will stop, but the sound continues.”

  They nodded, and Henry continued. “It’s like they’re here, but not here, at the same time. They stop, and then they catch up to themselves.”

  They were quiet as everyone absorbed that. “Do you mean they are from a different dimension?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes. Exactly.” Henry became excited. “It’s like the multiverse. They are in another parallel world, but somehow they cross over to this one.”

  “So, the light. That’s how they cross over?”

  “I think so.”

  “So why did the fire work?” Matt’s question this time left them all silent. No one had an answer.

  Henry finally spoke up. “It’s not just the light. It’s also stillness, a heaviness. When I was by the school fields, and they showed up, it got cold, and still, and really quiet.”

  Sarah pipped up, “The same thing happened on the street. The whole world seemed frozen in time. The only thing that was moving at all was them.”

  Ruth spoke up, voicing her conclusions. “Maybe the reaction to fire doesn’t have anything to do with light, but everything to do with movement.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Fire is a chemical reaction, right? The speeding up of molecules. Maybe, somehow, that is what stopped them. Movement outside of their control.”

  Henry added, “When I was on the street I could hardly move. It felt like I was trying to run in water, only worse. If they can control that movement, why can’t they control fire?”

  No one had an answer. Matt finally sighed, “At least we know fire stops them. That’s something.”

  Sarah wondered aloud, “There was a Taker in front of every house, but we still haven’t seen anyone come outside or seen any houses with signs of life. If the Takers were inside of other houses like they were inside of mine, surely someone else saw them? And then the fire chased them all away?”

  “They were moving together. Maybe they are like the Brood!” Blank stares followed Henry’s exclamation. He rolled his eyes as only an eleven-year-old could. “A hive mind. They all think alike.”

  “Like bees.”

  “So, when Henry and I stopped one, we stopped them all.”

  A long, thoughtful silence came before Matt volunteered. “So, if we set one on fire, we could potentially get rid of them all.”

  They took a moment to let that sink in before Henry grinned. “Awesome.”

  Ruth got up from the table and moved toward the back door. She peered out for a second before turning back to the room.

  “We have a problem.” That got all of their attention. “The fire at Sarah’s house is going out.”

  9:39 p.m.

  A sound ripped through the night. In the woods outside of town, the Takers gathered. They started as three then ten and then 25. The air crackled with tension and stilled with the same dense quiet that had followed the Takers all night. They gathered and stared down at Heritage. They did not speak aloud but communicated all the same. As quickly as they appeared, one by one, they all disappeared until just one stood looking down on Heritage. That one stood there for a long minute, before vanishing like the Takers before it.

  9:49 p.m.

  Everyone joined Ruth at the window. The fire that consumed Sarah’s home still smoldered, but the three of them could tell that the fire was no longer blazing bright or spreading.

  “What happens when the fire goes out?” Henry tapped his fingers to a rhythm known only to him as he asked the question that was forefront on his mind.

  Matt’s hand dropped to Henry’s shoulder. “Maybe nothing.” Sarah shot Matt a look. Henry thought it meant she didn’t believe that nothing was what was going to happen. “Or the Takers come back.”

  That was what Henry was afraid of. His stomach squirmed. Right then, more than anything else, Henry wanted to run down the hall and hide in his small bedroom with the navy comforter and small wooden desk. He thought fondly of the bookshelf that was so shaky he used books to prop it up.

  He was tired. And scared. And done. All he wanted was to curl up under his comforter and read the latest Captain America by flashlight. He bet if he told Sarah, or Matt, or probably even Ruth that he was tired and that he needed to sleep, they would let him go down that hallway to his little room and curl up under his comforter.

  Instead, Henry tried to square his shoulders a little bit more. He eyed Matt’s casual sprawl against the windowsill and did his best to copy the man’s natural confidence. Sarah must have noticed his efforts. She reached out and brushed her fingers through his hair.

  “Hey, even if they come back, we are going to be okay. We’ve made it this far, right?”

  Henry did his best to return Sarah’s grin. He fought the urge to lean against her, wanting Sarah to wrap her arm around his shoulder and pull him close. Just like his mom used to do. He felt his eyes getting damp and looked down to hide it. He wanted so desperately to be one of them.

  Before Sarah could wrap her arm around him or Matt could call him Kid and make him feel better, Ruth spoke.

  “When I saw the Take
r near Town Hall it didn’t move toward me. It just blocked my path.”

  “What does that mean?” Sarah asked with interest.

  “Maybe they aren’t as mindless in who they take as we’ve always thought.”

  Ruth glanced between their faces, but they still gazed at her blankly. “When I first came to Heritage, my Sam told me about the Takers, how every new moon they came and that took the very first person they found. He warned me to stay home those nights. He told me all the rules we’ve lived by – don’t be out late, don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself, keep your home the same as your neighbors. We work so hard to be the same, to make sure that we are not different, but I’m about as different as a person could get in Heritage.” Ruth laughed a little. “I’m black, and I wasn’t born here.”

  Sarah and Matt both dropped their gaze in unison, uncomfortable with the idea of openly discussing difference. Another symptom of Heritage, differences were bad, breeding fear and discomfort.

  Ruth powered on, “Even though I broke every rule, I wasn’t Taken tonight. I saw the Taker before they opened the doors and threw those three poor souls out of Town Hall, but they didn’t take me.”

  9:49 p.m.

  Paul still sat in the front of the room. Ropes held him fast to a chair, and duct tape kept his mouth shut. The Mayor’s speech had roused the crowd, and now people gathered in small groups talking to themselves.

  The Mayor circulated the room, making the most of his influence. From group to group his attitude changed to fit the people. Paul watched him be sober and serious, then tense and angry, and then sad. He was a chameleon changing to suit the need of each citizen.

  From his vantage point, Paul saw everything that was happening, but he could only watch as the Mayor did what he did best, convince everyone that the source of truth, wisdom, and justice was found only through him.