Kill Creek

by Scott Thomas

  “This is all your fault!” Tears were streaming down Daniel’s cheeks. “You made us go there! You made us wake it up!”

  Wainwright stammered, a jumble of sounds trying desperately to form an explanation.

  “She’s dead!” Daniel screamed. “She’s dead because of you!”

  His tongue found its footing, and Wainwright pushed out the words. “I know she’s dead! Kate was—”

  “Not Kate!” Daniel leaned down to give Wainwright the full force of his voice. “Not Kate! Claire! Claire, you son of a bitch!”

  The name meant nothing to Wainwright. He stared up at Daniel, his face scrunched up in confusion.

  But Sam understood. He glanced over at Moore. Her expression confirmed what Sam feared: He’s lost it.

  Daniel reared back his fist, readying another punch. Suddenly Sam leapt forward, hooking his heavily tattooed arm around Daniel’s and yanking him back. Even though Daniel was still a good seventy pounds heavier, Sam was able to drag the blubbering man off the sidewalk and out into the street, slamming him roughly against the back of Wainwright’s car. “He didn’t kill your daughter,” Sam said in Daniel’s ear. “That was an accident.”

  It was all boiling over now; the deluge of tears that Daniel had held back for months coursed down his face.

  Someone was pushing Sam aside. It was Moore. She slipped in front of Sam and took Daniel’s large face her in hands. Her eyes glistened as she held his gaze.

  Daniel’s entire body began to quiver. Tears raced down his cheeks. But he did not look away from Moore.

  “She’s trapped,” he whispered. “It has her. It won’t let her rest.”

  Moore loosened her hold, resting her hand on his cheek. The rivulets of tears changed course around her fingertips.

  Sam stepped back. He held out a hand to Wainwright. “Let me help you up.” But the young man simply stared up at him, his eyes wet with his own fresh tears, his lips trembling.

  “Is that Adudel?”

  Sebastian squinted as he looked across the street. On the other side, a man stood at the curb, leaning his weight on a wooden cane.

  Wainwright and Daniel both got to their feet, their altercation momentarily forgotten.

  “What’s that crazy bastard want?” Moore asked.

  Adudel was yelling something, his head tilted back as he attempted to project his voice over the sound of the traffic.

  Sam frowned. “What’s he saying?”

  “I don’t know,” Sebastian replied. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out: “We can’t hear you!”

  A cluster of cars whizzed by, and then both lanes cleared in a sudden break in traffic. The wind, still carrying the last chill of winter, swirled around them and then it, too, died down.

  Adudel’s words found their way to the group: “You belong to the house now.”

  Sebastian waved a hand, motioning toward the other side of the street. “We’ll come back over!” he yelled. “Stay there. We’ll come to you.”

  Adudel let go of the silver lion’s head, and his cane fell to the sidewalk like a toppled tree. He seemed to take a large breath, as if preparing for a deep dive.

  “You will always belong to the house,” he said.

  Adudel stepped off the curb.

  “Oh Christ.” Wainwright gasped.

  The bus hit Adudel at full force. One second he was there, staring at them through those ridiculously large eyeglasses, and the next he was gone, slammed to the street and dragged under the bus’s front bumper. The brakes screamed as the bus tried, too late, to come to a stop. The crumpled form of Adudel tumbled out from behind the bus, arms and legs flailing as his body bounced along the street before coming to rest.

  He lay on his stomach, his cheek flat against the asphalt. His glasses were still on, but one lens was shattered, the other missing entirely. His eyes were bleached stones with a speck of black at the center. Half of his head was caved in. White shards of skull poked through hair matted with dark, thick blood. His right arm was twisted over the top of his body at an unnatural angle. A stalk of pale bone sprouted from his forearm. His hand was curled into a limp fist, but one finger was extended.

  Sam felt that finger pointing directly at them like the barrel of a gun.

  Nearby, someone screamed. Voices cried out. The street was filled with slowing cars and frantic pedestrians.

  Sam did not move, nor did Wainwright or Moore or Sebastian or Daniel. They watched in stunned silence as the mangled body of Dr. Malcolm Adudel was engulfed by the crowd.

  From a rooftop above them, a flock of pigeons scattered, black bodies disappearing into a sky bruised by dusk.

  They could flee, they could fly far, far away, but they could never escape.

  PART FOUR

  THE PHANTOM LIMB

  April 25

  What would I give to prove to you that the force within that house is real? What deal would I gladly strike if only I could convince you, dear reader, that what I experienced within those walls was not a figment of my imagination? Nothing. I would give nothing. Because I know in my heart that it is true. And if you still refuse to believe in the power of the house on Kill Creek . . . well . . . I can only urge you to visit it yourself. Once you have, once you’ve stepped through that doorway and walked its shadowed halls, you will believe. You will believe.

  —Dr. Malcolm Adudel

  Phantoms of the Prairie

  TWENTY-SIX

  9:15 a.m.

  SAM STARED OUT the window and watched as, thousands of feet below, a commercial airliner seemed to hang motionless in air. The world was a patchwork of roads and fields stretching out to the curved horizon.

  He closed his eyes.

  I’m safe up here, he thought.

  It felt true. Rocketing through the air at over five hundred miles per hour, forty-five thousand feet above the earth, he could not feel the pull of the house. It was a speck among specks somewhere far below.

  But eventually we have to land. We can’t stay up here forever.

  He tried to push that moment as far away from him as possible.

  No one had noticed when they left the scene of the accident in Brooklyn. Traffic was already backed up for several blocks in either direction. Horns bleated in a harsh, uneven rhythm. The street was filled with people, some comforting the ashen-faced bus driver, others forming a circle around Adudel’s mangled body. Faces peered out of the back windows of the bus, a wall of wide eyes and open mouths. In the distance, sirens wailed.

  It was Moore who said they should leave.

  At first, Sebastian refused. “We have to stay,” he insisted. “There must be something we can do! Something . . .”

  The sirens were getting closer. Wainwright and Daniel were already climbing into the car. Sam put a hand on Sebastian’s arm and said, “We have to go.”

  Wainwright took the first right. Sam glanced back and saw the flashing lights of a police car arriving, and then Wainwright took a quick left, and the horrible scene was gone from sight.

  For ten minutes, they rode in silence. There did not appear to be any rhyme or reason to where Wainwright was taking them, just a desire to put what had happened far behind them. Even Wainwright seemed surprised when, somehow, they made their way back to his apartment. They would spend the night there. They would try to get some sleep.

  They would talk in the morning. They needed a plan.

  To charter a private jet from LaGuardia to Kansas City International was over twenty thousand dollars, but none of them could stomach the thought of being crammed onto a commercial flight with the weight of their situation pressing down on them. Wainwright had a service he used, mostly for international travel. Luckily the company was able to accommodate their last-minute request.

  It was Sam’s first time on a private jet. He had always imagined he would be intimidated by the extravagance of the experience, but now he sat in a lush leather chair, staring out the small window at the world far below, and the entire situation
sickened him.

  He glanced over at Sebastian in the opposite seat. The old man was staring straight ahead, but it wasn’t the vacant look Sam had seen in his eyes last October. Sebastian’s brow was creased, his eyes fixed on the open space before him. He was not adrift in a mental fog; he was lost in deep thoughts.

  “Sebastian?” Sam called over.

  “Yes, Sam?” Sebastian tried to muster up a friendly smile.

  Sam looked around the cabin. Daniel and Wainwright were in the next row. Wainwright was cradling his head in his hands, his eyes closed, while Daniel had fallen into a shallow sleep, the exhaustion of the ordeal finally too much to fight. His body flinched slightly as unwanted dreams attempted to overtake him. Toward the rear of the plane, there were four seats, two side by side and facing the tail, and another pair opposite those, facing forward. Sam could see the back of Moore’s head, the ridge of her black hair rising up over the seat like a shark’s fin.

  Careful to keep his voice low, Sam leaned over closer to Sebastian. “What do you think we’re going to find?” he asked.

  The question seemed to catch Sebastian off guard. “At the house?”

  Sam nodded.

  Sebastian pondered this for a moment. “I truly do not know.”

  “But you talked to Adudel several times. He must have mentioned something—”

  “I know as much as you,” Sebastian insisted.

  I want to believe him. But I don’t.

  Careful not to draw the attention of the others, Sam quietly rose from his seat and crossed over to crouch down in front of Sebastian. The old man could not look away now.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Sam asked.

  Sebastian opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. He reconsidered and began again. ‘And the first brick broke free.’ The books you’ve all been writing, you said they stopped cold with that sentence.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That exact sentence is in my book as well,” Sebastian admitted. “I remember writing it.”

  “Because it’s where you stopped too?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “It was like the phrase exploded out of my mind, and the sheer force of it propelled me forward.”

  Sam cocked his head, confused. Forward?

  “I’ve always been a bit of a pokey writer,” Sebastian continued. “Not the ‘slam, bam, thank you, ma’am’ type like Moore. But this was different than anything I had ever written. Since November, the story had chugged nicely along.”

  Not how I would describe my writing experience the past few months.

  Sebastian held his hands out flat to mime pushing some unseen object. “But when I wrote that sentence, it was like something gave me a hard shove, and then I was racing to the finish line.”

  “The finish line,” Sam repeated. “Wait, are you . . . are you saying . . .”

  The old man did not need Sam to complete the thought. “My novel is complete,” he said. “I finished it a week ago.”

  The same time my story came to a sudden stop. When all of us stopped writing. Because it wasn’t necessary anymore, Sam realized. He beat us. Because the house had chosen him.

  Sebastian’s words echoed in Sam’s mind: the finish line.

  “How does it end?” Sam asked, his voice barely audible over the steady roar of the jet engine.

  “It doesn’t matter how—”

  “Sebastian, how does it end? How does your story end?”

  The plane arced softly just then, and the morning sunlight fell upon Sebastian’s face.

  “The evil wins,” he said, peering out the window at the field of clouds below. “They can’t stop it and the evil wins.”

  The leather chair gave a soft squeak as Sam sat down.

  Moore did not bother looking over as she said dryly, “Please, have a seat.”

  Sam glanced back to where the others sat. They had not noticed him moving to the rear of the plane.

  Good. I don’t need Daniel and Wainwright hearing this, Sam told himself. Not yet.

  His face must have betrayed his thoughts, because Moore turned to him, suddenly concerned.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Sebastian finished his book,” Sam whispered, his mind still reeling.

  Moore straightened up in her chair. “What?”

  “It’s done. He finished it on the same day that the rest of us got . . . whatever we got. Writer’s block.”

  “Did he tell you anything else? What happens in the story? What’s behind the wall?”

  “He doesn’t know,” Sam said.

  Moore stared at him, mouth agape. “He doesn’t know? He wrote the damn thing.”

  “He says that the wall falls free and whatever is there is so strange, so foreign, that the main character can’t make sense of it.”

  Moore snorted, annoyed, and looked back out the window. “Classic Sebastian Cole cosmic horror bullshit. Well, that’s convenient. Did he say anything else?”

  “Only that the evil . . .” Sam paused, afraid to say it himself, to make it true. “Let’s just say the good guys don’t exactly come out on top.”

  Moore sucked in a sharp breath.

  She’s scared, he realized.

  T.C. Moore, scared. Six months ago, he wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

  The jet turned slightly, and the sunlight that had been shining on Moore’s face shifted, a deep shadow cutting across her cheek. “I keep thinking about that night, at the house,” she said, her voice surprisingly faint. “I have this feeling like something happened there. But I can’t quite remember what it was.”

  Suddenly Sam could feel Moore’s body pressing against him, his fingers on her skin, his lips on her lips.

  A dream, he realized. I had a dream that night. About her. About us.

  It all came rushing back to him, sensations cascading out of the darkness. The taste of her mouth. The smell of her skin. His fingers sliding along her sweaty flesh as he fell deeper and deeper into the absolute blackness of her eye.

  And you told her. You told her everything. In that dream.

  In the house.

  His heart began to thud in his chest, like a wild beast in a cage.

  “How did it come to you?” she asked.

  Sam drew in a sharp breath. “How did what—”

  “When you would stop writing. What did it look like? I mean, when you actually saw it.”

  Tell her.

  She won’t understand, his mind warned.

  Yes, she will. You want to tell her. You need to tell her.

  Leaning forward, Sam clasped his hands. He took a deep breath but he did not speak.

  Not yet.

  She’ll understand, he assured himself. Because she’s known pain, like you.

  He stared down at his clasped hands. He used to hold his hands like that when he prayed, when we was a little boy, back when he believed.

  Tell her.

  “It looked like my mother.”

  Moore turned away from the window. She was watching him, her expression intense. “Your mother? She died in a house fire, right?”

  He did not immediately answer. Slowly, he began to nod. “Yeah. There was a fire, but . . .” He swallowed hard. “She didn’t die in it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  There was ten-year-old Sammy McGarver, standing before the inferno that had once been their simple country home. His mother’s body was inside, but the fire hadn’t killed her. She was already dead.

  And there was Jack, by his side. “We can’t tell anyone,” Jack was saying. “Not even Dad.”

  That was when Sam had broken away from his brother and run toward the flames.

  Sam rubbed his hand over the burned skin of his left arm.

  “My mom hated us, my brother and me. She blamed us for all of the unhappiness in her life. She wished she had never had us; she felt trapped, in a family she never wanted. So she drank and she yelled and she called us names. She called us ‘wor
thless.’ She called us ‘ungrateful little shits.’ And when that didn’t make her feel good enough, she would hit us.”

  Moore leaned forward, her face level with Sam’s. “What about your father?”

  “He was weak. Honestly, I think he was afraid of her. He would try to calm her down, to talk reason, but . . .” Sam gripped his arm harder, rubbing his thumb over the folded flesh. “I knew that my dad wasn’t going to save us. Even as a little kid, I think I knew eventually it would have to be me or Jack who stood up to her.”

  Sam’s eyes flashed to the front of the cabin. The others had not moved. Between the distance and the sound of the engines, there was no way they could hear him. Yet he felt as if everyone were listening—Sebastian, Daniel, Wainwright. Even the house, so far below, was hanging on his every word.

  Stop. Don’t let them in, his mind warned.

  Moore must have sensed that he was retreating. She reached up and pulled her black mane over her shoulder, clutching the end in one hand like a rip cord, as if she could pull it should things get too real.

  “For me, it was my ex-boyfriend,” she said, her voice intimate, almost a whisper. “His name was Bobby. I was young, barely out of high school, living in a shithole house in a shithole desert town northeast of Los Angeles. Back then, I wasn’t T.C. Moore. I was just a good Catholic girl named Theresa Catherine, and Bobby was everything. Until he did this.”

  She pointed to her ruptured pupil.

  Sam felt his mouth open to speak, but he had no idea what to say. “I’m sorry,” he offered finally.

  “I’m not,” Moore said. “I was used to Bobby kicking my ass. It’d just become a part of my life. But when I saw my eye in the mirror for the first time, when I saw how that darkness had opened up, it was like staring into another universe, one where I didn’t have to be good, obedient Theresa anymore. So one day I just left him. I moved to LA and ‘T.C.’ Moore was born. And I never saw Bobby again.”

  “Until now,” Sam said.

  Moore nodded. “I started hearing his voice, calling from somewhere in my house. ‘Theresa. Theresa.’”