Summoned

by Anne M. Pillsworth

  “Who’s Sweetie Pie?” Sean asked.

  Hrothgar jammed his head between the front seats of the van and huffed, like, who the hell didn’t know Sweetie Pie? “He’s Trudy’s dachshund,” Beo said. “Oh, plus me and Dad found this dead raccoon near the baseball fields. Good thing a girl didn’t find it. A girl would’ve freaked.”

  “Sexist generalization,” Joe-Jack said severely.

  “Well, maybe not Eddy,” Beo conceded. “But its head was ripped right off.”

  Sean let Hrothgar scarf down his donut. The idea of animals getting killed along the river (near the industrial park) gave him a stomach-churning pang of guilt. Again, crazy. Hallucinations couldn’t hurt anything.

  “I’m not sure it’s coyotes,” Joe-Jack said. “Could be feral dogs. Or something rabid. I called Animal Control, but they probably won’t do anything until some kid gets mauled. That’s how government works.”

  “Right,” Sean said, dutiful.

  “Listen, Sean. You better not walk on the river trail until this gets straightened out. I’m not letting Beo go alone. Plus we’re keeping Hrothgar on the leash, and we’re keeping the gate shut, so he doesn’t wander off. Right, Beo?”

  Beo squirmed. “I never leave the gate open! Besides, know what I think it really is? I think somebody let loose a terrarium of giant Argentinean toads. Sean, you should’ve seen these humongous webbed prints near the coon.”

  “Swan tracks,” Joe-Jack scoffed. “That’s all those were. But you stay off the trail, Sean.”

  No worry—he hadn’t been near the river since the ritual. “I’ll stay off,” he promised.

  Friday the fourth of August, a week and three days post-ritual, Sean took the afternoon off and hung out at the Hope High tennis courts with Eddy and Phil. What with his still-sore left hand, Sean lost every set. He didn’t care. Playing made him feel normal again.

  Though he was really sleepy after dinner with Celeste and Gus, Sean didn’t want to stay over at their house. Dad would be home Sunday, which left only Saturday for Sean to clean up. After Gus drove him to Edgewood, he took a shower and sat down to watch TV. Two hours later, he woke up and gimped to bed, where he fell asleep without any of his usual agonizing over the ritual, and the Reverend and Geldman, and web-footed coyotes by the Pawtuxet, and …

  Eddy and Phil. In kayaks on the river, slamming a red tennis ball back and forth. They never miss a return: The ball is strung through a cord stretched tight from racket to racket. Slam. Sean can’t play because he is in the water. His kayak has already gone over the falls by the Broad Street bridge. Any minute, he’ll go over, too, because while the current flows upstream for Eddy and Phil, keeping them stationary, it sucks hungrily at Sean. He snatches at underwater weeds, but there are things in them that bite, and he has to let go. The foam of the falls catches him up. He yells for help. But Eddy and Phil just keep slamming that ball. Slam. Slam, slam—

  With a choke, Sean jerked awake. Was he drowning? No, he couldn’t drown in his own bed. He sat up, and he was dry, and breath rushed back into his lungs. Outside the wind was slamming something around, probably one of the genuine working shutters Dad had installed on the carriage house. They worked, all right—worked at getting loose and banging themselves to death. Funny how the wind was ignoring the leaves of the maple outside Sean’s window. They hung still in the humid air.

  Slam, followed by the clink of metal falling, followed by a sound Sean had made often enough himself: the whack of the porch door flung open so hard it rebounded off the aluminum glider. Besides, there wasn’t any wind—it wasn’t just the leaves hanging limp, it was the gauze curtains in the open windows. All that slamming had been something pounding on the porch door, and at last the door had given way.

  Instantly Sean’s heart tripped into high gear. He checked the clock radio on the bureau, as if it mattered what time it was: Two Fifteen in the morning, in the night, and that did matter. Night made it a million times worse to hear the intruder thumping around on the back porch. His first thought had to be right: It was a something, not a someone. A burglar would try to be quiet, unless he was a drug-crazed nut, like Geldman or the Rev. But they didn’t know where Sean lived. Well, he didn’t think they knew.

  His cell phone was on the charger, on the bureau. He could call the police. That was the kind of advice he and Eddy always yelled at the TV when some idiot started down the stairs to the basement, at midnight, or 2:15.

  Sean slid out of bed and padded to the bureau. What was he going to tell the police? An intruder. A trespasser. That was enough. He wasn’t falling into any macho traps—let the police think he was a coward for not looking into the details for himself. And hell, he was still just a kid, right? Technically. Sort of.

  Wait, it was quiet now. Though maybe that was scarier than the noise?

  He stood in the blue glow of his flipped-open phone, listening. His heartbeat still pounded in his ears. Why should the thumping stop? The intruder was tired after breaking in? It was considering its next move? Or it had gone away again.

  Gone away would be good. Maybe he’d better peek out and at least see whether the porch door had been busted open. What if he’d dreamed the racket? What if he’d had a drug flashback? What if he was going crazy?

  Damn.

  He tucked the phone into the waistband of his boxers. He stuck his feet into his flip-flops, then kicked them off. Bare feet were the ticket for sneaking around your house, checking out bumps in the night.

  Sean took a long listen at the top of the stairs, another on the landing halfway down, shorter ones in the living room and dining room, a last long one at the swinging door to the kitchen. Slowly he pushed it inward. The blissful silence was broken—he heard the porch glider squeak. One squeak, as if something had knocked into it, not the cacophony you got by sitting on the thing. Another squeak. Then a scratching at the screen of the kitchen storm door, down low, where a cat or dog would scratch it.

  He let out the breath he’d been holding. Okay. It was a stray cat, or a raccoon come after some sandwich scraps or pizza crusts he’d left on the porch. Coons were strong enough to push the door open if it wasn’t on the latch. They’d done it before.

  But he’d heard the latch break? A raccoon wasn’t strong enough to do that.

  He didn’t know the latch was broken. He wasn’t even sure he’d latched the door. Yes, he had been latching it every night, and locking all the downstairs windows and doors. But tonight he’d been so tired, he could have forgotten. The coon was there, he heard it, stretching up to scratch the screens of the kitchen windows. Little bastard. It would tear the fabric. At least he hadn’t called the cops, hadn’t totally assumed it was a burglar, or a druggy perv, or, admit it now, what had been at the back of his mind and worming its way toward the front: his Servitor come home.

  He slipped into the kitchen and fumbled through the utility closet for a broom. Weapon in hand, he snuck across the cool tiled floor to the light switch by the back door. Sometimes throwing on the porch light was enough to scare coons away. This one seemed bold, but unless it looked rabid, Sean would sweep it the hell off the porch.

  He flipped the switch. The coon hissed and thudded into the glider, squeak. Sean reached to open the back door, but shadowy movement made him look left. The movement was a shadow, hunched lumpy shadow thrown by the porch light onto the checked curtain of the nearer window. If it were the shadow of a coon, the coon was over five feet tall and its upflung paw, big as a man’s hand, had tiger claws.

  The next thing Sean was sure of was the solidity of his bedroom door at his back; the memory of his dash through the house was a quick-cut montage of furniture rearing up and bushes leering in at windows and stained glass bleeding red streaks down the landing wall. He still clutched the broom from the utility closet. That was proof he’d been to the kitchen.

  He hadn’t unlocked the kitchen door, had he? No. He hadn’t had time before he’d seen the shadow. What about the other doors and windows downstairs? Ha
d he missed locking any? He wasn’t going back down to find out. He was going to lock the windows in his room, and then he was getting into bed, where he might even pull the covers over his head before calling the police. Or Celeste and Gus. Or Eddy to talk him through this flashback from Geldman’s powders.

  Oh God, though, his phone. It wasn’t in his waistband. He clapped his boxers all over. No phone. His panicked run between kitchen and bedroom must have jarred it free. He’d have to go look for it, but first the windows. Sean shut and locked the one by his bed, then the nearer of the two that overlooked the front-porch roof. The third window stuck, its frame swollen with humidity. Sean shoved it up, trying to loosen it. Bad move. One of the sash cords went off track, leaving the window stuck open.

  He needed a screwdriver to fix it. The flat-head driver in his Swiss Army knife would work.

  His backpack. He’d stuck the knife in there, in case he needed it during the ritual, but he couldn’t think about the ritual, he had to think about the pack, next to his desk.

  Something dropped onto the porch roof from the overhanging maple. It sounded way heavier than a cat or raccoon. And it was white. Frozen at the open window, Sean saw that much from the corner of his eye. Then he made himself look straight at the intruder.

  It was pallid, lumpish, around the size of a ten- or twelve-year-old kid. Moving with agonizing deliberateness, it climbed the mild pitch of the roof to crouch in front of the locked window. Dense-leafed boughs hung between it and the streetlights, mercifully shading out details, but Sean could see it reaching for the window. He heard scratching and a low whine. He smelled the stench of a neglected reptile house.

  His heart had crawled into his throat, like it would be safer there than in the ribbed fortress of his chest. It cut off his breath, and he was going to pass out if he didn’t get away. He was turning at the moment when, with intolerable speed, the thing scuttled from the closed window toward the open one—all he saw was a white blur and a spasming of tentacles around a needle-packed mouth.

  He screamed seconds later, simultaneous with the slam of the bedroom door. He was in the hall, clinging to the knob, listening to screen fabric tear, and, God, he couldn’t lock the bedroom door from the outside. The door opposite led to the third-floor guest room. Sean flung it open, flung himself inside, flung it closed. No lock. He tore up the stairs, tripped on the last one, and sprawled into dead darkness. Below he heard his bedroom door creak.

  Still on his knees, he slammed the guest-room door and scrabbled at the lock tab until the dead bolt shot home. Claws clattered up the stairs. Sean ran. He barked his shins on an unseen coffee table and teetered over it. Flesh hit the door behind him; something hissed. Pinwheeling his arms, Sean stayed upright. He limped toward the faint light of the bathroom. Its door, like the guest-room door, was solid maple, original to the house. Joe-Jack had refinished the doors, because Dad didn’t believe in flimsy modern crap. Thank God for Dad and Joe-Jack.

  Sean locked the bathroom door behind him. There was one small gable window across from the toilet. He sank onto the lidded seat. The window was over the driveway. From it to the blacktop was a sheer drop and no trees nearby, for things to climb.

  If only he could call Dad, he’d spill every crazy damn thing he’d done since chatting with the Reverend. Too bad Sean’s last crazy act had been to lose his phone somewhere below, in the part of the house the thing now ruled. Maybe if he yelled out the gable window, Mrs. Ferreira would hear. He would yell, too, if the thing got through the guest-room door.

  It tried to get through for a while, scratching, thudding, rattling the knob. Sean huddled on the toilet and kind of whimpered. Finally, though, the claws clacked back down the stairs, and the house was still.

  In the dark of the bathroom, Sean listened. He didn’t dare turn on the light. It might attract the thing’s attention and tell it exactly which window its prey was hiding behind. It couldn’t get to the window, though, not unless it could fly.

  He could only pray it had no wings, nor the ability to sprout some.

  9

  The rest of the night Sean listened for another assault on the guest-room door. He heard nothing until dawn, when a frantic yowl jolted him from dozing. It came from outside the house. It wasn’t repeated. Soon after, the birds started singing, and presumably he was safe, because lumpish white things with needle-teeth couldn’t stand the light of day—wasn’t that a universal given?

  His hope that the thing was a powders flashback dissolved as he opened the guest-room door. A reptilian smell hung heavy in the stairwell, and the varnish around the outside knob was gouged to the raw wood. In his bedroom, where the screen in the stuck window was rent top to bottom, he could barely breathe without puking. The stench came from his bed—congealing gray-green slime splotched his pillows as if something had drooled on them.

  In the kitchen he found his dropped phone. On the back porch, the screen door hung open, and that metallic clink he’d tried to convince himself wasn’t the latch breaking? The latch hook lay on the floor, wrenched right out of the door.

  He’d have to fix the screen from his bedroom window and replace the latch. It was crucial to get things back to normal before Dad came home. No, even sooner: before night came again.

  Sean hurried to his bedroom with a garbage bag and shoved his contaminated pillows inside. Then he wrestled the torn screen out of the window. He’d get Joe-Jack to help him with it, say he’d been air-guitaring and put his fist through the fabric. Air-guitaring to the Grateful Dead, yeah—that would get Joe-Jack’s sympathy like Green Day never could.

  Juggling the screen and garbage bag and trying to decide whether he’d been listening to “Truckin” or “Friend of the Devil,” Sean stepped off the back porch stairs onto the corpse of a cat, shredded and slime slippery.

  The slaughtered cat did it. Sean couldn’t stay in the house one second longer. He even put off calling Eddy until he was on the street. Her parents had taken the car to the farmers’ market. She’d have to bike over to Edgewood. But if it was a three-alarm emergency—

  It was a five-alarm.

  She’d be there in an hour or so.

  While he waited, Sean sat in the Broad Street Café, cutting untasted pancakes into smaller and smaller bits. The Saturday morning crowd chattered around him as if the world hadn’t changed overnight. The Mandells were there, having a great old time, even after Ethan spilled grape juice on Zoe. Yet they had been right across the street from the house where the world had changed. If they had looked out their windows around two thirty in the morning, they would have seen the thing on the porch roof. Of course, they weren’t the sort of people who’d look out windows in the dead of night. Good for them. They were sane, unlike Sean “Let’s Summon Monsters” Wyndham.

  At best, he was crazy. Maybe it showed: Mrs. Mandell stopped at his table while Mr. Mandell herded Ethan and Zoe outside. “How are you doing, Sean?” she asked.

  “I’m great, Mrs. Mandell.”

  “Zoe said you hurt your hand. Is it bothering you?”

  “No. It’s not one hundred percent, but it’s okay.”

  “Isn’t your father coming home tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, he’s supposed to.”

  “Well—”

  Mr. Mandell knocked on the window. Mrs. Mandell gave Sean a quick smile and left the café. A couple minutes later, it was Eddy knocking on the window, still straddling her bike.

  Sean gave her the evidence tour. She turned pale when she sniffed the bagged pillows and she didn’t look at the mutilated cat any longer than she had to, but she stayed sharp enough to spot drops of dry blood on the flagstone walk. They followed the trail to the back fence. More blood smeared the gate that opened onto a shortcut to Roger Williams Park. A few yards down the path they found a puddle with webbed prints on its muddy margins. Some were coming, some going, and they were the size of Sean’s hand, no swan tracks. Huge old yews bellied in on the path, casting midday twilight; after Eddy phone-snapped pictures
, the two of them retreated from the claustrophobic green alley.

  Back in the garden, they sat on the bench that had been Mom’s favorite, the one surrounded by delphiniums, daylilies, and floribunda roses. Mom had told him the roses were named after fat bumblebee-winged fairies who tended them. Following the point of her finger, he’d seen leaves stir and flowers brighten, which meant the Flori Bundas were flitting among them. For days afterwards, he’d combed the beds, trying to get a closer look at the fairies. Jesus, fairies. Still, if he’d stuck with them instead of moving up to Outer Gods, he’d be better off now.

  “Okay,” Eddy said. “The evidence is real. You’re not crazy.”

  It was sad how sorry he was to hear that. He tried to make Eddy rethink his sanity: “Unless I zoned out and did it all myself.”

  “Like you were playing monster at the same time you were hiding from the monster? I doubt it.”

  “So? Was it a Servitor?”

  Eddy stared at the sundial opposite the bench, as if it might shadow-point to the answer. “Let’s not go there.”

  “Where else can we go?”

  “To a hoax.”

  Hoax? The unexpected punch of the word rocked him. “What’re you talking about?”

  “A bitch-mean joke. The Reverend’s scamming you.”

  “How? He doesn’t even know where I live.”

  “But he knows your name.”

  “No, he doesn’t. Well, just ‘Sean’. I never told him the rest.”

  From a back pocket, Eddy produced folded paper. “It wasn’t during the chat session. It was this.”

  Sean flapped open a printout of the e-mail he’d sent to the Reverend and blind-copied to Eddy. What was the problem? He’d used his Lord Grayfalcon account and signed it “Lord G.” But—