Storberry

by Dan Padavona

Fifty yards.

  As she broke out of the meadow, he gasped, for there was no mistaking the tattered sundress, nor her face, which he would have recognized from anywhere, even washed colorless by the moonlight. His heart rose into his throat as he made out his daughter's features. She had come home to him after all.

  If she is injured, I will tend to her. She will see that I only meant to protect her.

  At thirty yards he could tell something was wrong with her face. Her facial features were familiar, recognizable from her childhood, yet bloodless in a sickly whey coloration. A terror he couldn't comprehend pulled at him, but he ignored the growing perception of danger and shuffled forward to meet his daughter.

  The gap closed, and then she stood before him. The alabaster skin had vanished. Dried flesh flaked away on her face, scarred and decrepit. He couldn't register what he was seeing.

  But as he gaped, an understanding of her nature emerged out of an unused corner of his mind, burning through the haze of alcohol. The hideous truth of what she was loomed before him, her head cocked to the side as she appraised him—not the outer drunkenness or the reek of his bile, but what lay deep inside of him. She looked through his skin, past the hurtful, cowardly exterior, to his true nature.

  He saw the hate in her eyes. As he wept, her eyes transmuted to something more dangerous. They were the color of red wine, burning with a fire that he was sure could penetrate his soul. For a fleeting moment, he fully understood what she was, and he didn't care. He was paralyzed by the emotion of seeing Katy before him and the black horror that gripped his bones.

  His mouth worked in silence. Her lips parted to reveal a wicked grin, and then she opened her arms to him

  “Miss you...Daddy.”

  “Katy. Baby, I—”

  “Shhhhhh. Come.”

  He stepped warily into her arms, and her chill embrace wrapped about him like a winter's gale. Time seemed to stand still. At one with the waving grass of the meadow, her dress fluttered ghostly in the wind. Their shadows became one in the moonlight, stretching across the lot like spilled paint. He rested his arms on her back and peered into the meadow beyond, resolute and unafraid.

  He still held her when she bit into the soft flesh of his neck. His eyes rolled back into his head, searing pain giving way to fluid warmth. He saw himself in another world at another time, holding his baby girl in their old home in Storberry. He heard her lapping at his flesh, just as she once supped at her mother's breast.

  As though the nape of his neck had caught fire, he felt the pain return in a black agony that was somehow glorious and altering. His body convulsed in her arms.

  “Shhhhh. Sleep Daddy.”

  His body filled with intoxicating power, his mind alive as his body drifted into slumber. Then he was on his back, with the sensation that he floated on water. Stars blinked overhead like distant streetlamps from another world.

  He embraced the shadows that closed over him, and then he was gone.

  Nine

  When the police chief's face came into the headlight beams, Tom exhaled. Greg Madsen gave a disarming wave, and Tom noticed that the man next to him was Evan Moran.

  Still uneasy of the group that blocked their path, Jen hunkered down in the passenger seat.

  “Tom?”

  “It's okay.”

  “What if they are—”

  “They're not. It's safe.”

  Keeping the motor running, Tom opened the truck door. As he circled around the front of the vehicle toward the two men, she peered over the dashboard.

  “The two of you okay?” Greg asked, looking over Tom's shoulder at the girl in the passenger seat.

  “Yeah, we're fine.”

  “Jen? Is that you?”

  When Renee stepped out of the vehicle directly across from them, her familiar voice disarmed the girl, and Jen stepped out of the stolen truck.

  “My God, what are you two doing out here by yourselves?”

  Jen braced herself as the other members piled out of the vehicles. A police chief, two farmers, a former military man, the head of the public library, and a café owner. She recognized them at once, but thought them an odd combination. The boy she identified as Randy Marks stood back from the group, his eyes centered on Doug Masterson's truck. She found his unwavering stare odd and troubling.

  Renee saw from the fright on Jen's face that she had been running, and it was not difficult to discern what the two teenagers fled from.

  “It's okay,” Renee said, and gathered the girl in her arms.

  It didn't take long for Jen to lose herself, sobbing into the woman's shoulder.

  “Believe me. I know. You're safe now.”

  Tom looked from Evan to Greg for confirmation that they understood the truth of what was happening in Storberry. He didn't need to speak, for his eyes told tales of nightmares come to life. Evan nodded to him.

  “I don't suppose that's your truck?” Greg asked.

  Greg recognized the vehicle as Doug Masterson's, for he had written the man a speeding ticket no more than a month ago.

  “No, sir,” Tom said. “But it was our only way out of Maple Street.”

  Greg nodded in understanding.

  “The important thing is that you got yourselves to safety. Well done.”

  Like silhouettes on an alien runway, they stood amid the beams of the headlights at the bottom of Blakely Hill. They related their stories, hardly able to conceive that the others believed and understood. It was Jen who told them what had become of Tom's parents and what the boy had done to survive. A pall fell over the group, and empathy for the tragedy that had befallen Tom sobered them.

  “I'm sorry, Tom,” said Greg. “I knew your father well. He was a good man.”

  “So you learned how to kill them,” Rory said, and Renee shot him a disapproving look for his lack of tact in addressing a boy who had just lost his family.

  “What I mean is, you know that guns won't do a damn thing against them. I give you a hell of a lot of credit for figuring it out on your own. I sure as hell didn't.”

  “We need to get them to safety,” Renee said, her eyes centered on Rory.

  “Define safety,” Greg said. “I couldn't get the police station on the radio earlier tonight. For all I now, it doesn't even exist anymore.”

  “We don't know how many of these things are out there or where safety can be found,” Rory said.

  “Not on Maple Street,” Tom said.

  “What if I told you that we were going back?”

  Unzipping a duffel bag, Rory revealed two sharpened stakes and a wooden cross.

  “Why would you go in there?” Jen said. “You'll all be killed.”

  “How many did you see?” Rory asked.

  “None tonight,” said Tom.

  “That sounds like pretty good confirmation if you ask me. They hide during the day, only come out at night.”

  Renee stood between Tom and Jen.

  “After what they have been through, we can't ask them to go back to Maple Street,” she said.

  Tom thought of his parents, and a fury built through his chest like a lidded pot boiling within.

  “I want to kill all of them.”

  “You can't, Tom. Don't do this,” Jen said. “It's suicide!”

  She looked to Renee for support, praying the woman would intervene.

  “I'll take the kids out of town,” Renee said.

  “I'm not leaving. If you think we can destroy these things, then I have to try. They took my family,” Tom said.

  “If we don't stop these things, what happens when they reach the next town. Or, God forbid, a city? We're wasting time standing here,” Rory said.

  “We have one thing going for us,” Greg said. “Isolation. It's a long walk to the next town, and I've yet to see one of these things driving a car. Maybe they don't remember. We can keep them contained to Storberry if we act now.”

  Renee's protests fell on deaf ears. Even Jen, who also found the heroics to be delusional madne
ss, refused to leave Tom's side.

  As his mind sorted through the possible outcomes, Randy's eyes were black and distant. The danger would be great, but if he could find a way to survive their suicidal rush, when they fell, he would finally have the means to escape.

  I'm coming, Benny.

  They abandoned Doug Masterson's truck at the bottom of the hill, and after some debate, opted to leave Rory's truck with it. The group, now eight strong, loaded into the police truck and traveled up Blakely Hill toward the shadowed passages of Maple Street.

  Chapter Seven

  The police truck held two rows of seating behind the front driver and passenger seats. As Evan Moran sat in the back row with Renee and Randy, he felt conflicted over a growing sense of responsibility for Tom and Jen. Am I dragging them to their deaths?

  He saw Mary and the two teenagers in the middle row. Greg drove the truck, and Rory filled the shotgun seat. The other group members appeared as silhouetted mannequins to him, silent and unmoving. Ahead, the high beams washed across the rising slope of the pavement. The outline of trees and darkened homes whirred past to either side, a reminder of what crept unseen.

  The road leveled off and swept to the right, then curved back in a hairpin and turned into Maple. To the left was the path to Becks Pond and the forest beyond. The vehicle slowed as it reached the vacant neighborhood.

  The road stretched two hundred yards ahead toward a dead end. Houses extended westward at regular intervals, darkened and forbidden like silver crypts in the moonlight.

  The truck edged forward, and the group members watched the shadows with trepidation. Midway down Maple, Evan glanced behind him. The taillights painted the blacktop in an eerie red glow—the gates of hell. All else was darkness.

  It was then that Evan felt a dread veil fall over him. He no longer felt the hunter, as much as the hunted. As his eyes strained against the blackened windows, trees, and backyards, he realized the evil could be anywhere and everywhere in the night, converging on the truck as they rode blindly forward.

  Tom's head turned and watched his house sweep past. He could see the light from the kitchen beyond the darkened front hall, and then in his mind's eye he saw his father's head boiling on the stove. And then he was pulled back into the Kingsley home by the icy grip of his memory...

  The kitchen door is still closed. The bloody reflection of red flame spills under the threshold. If I reach for the door knob, I will feel the evil beyond radiating through the metal. And if I open the door, the thing that was my mother will be whole again, eyes accusing and sanguine with hatred, feet swishing across the linoleum.

  Jen saw the faraway look in Tom's eyes and put her hand on his, as the truck pulled to the left and came to a stop two driveways shy of her own house. She choked back tears.

  Greg and Rory stepped out of the truck first, scanning the unmoving shadows before signaling for the rest of the group to emerge.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Mary asked, climbing out of the truck and dropping to the grassy curb. Dew-covered blades licked at her ankles.

  “Look,” Greg said.

  He pointed toward the empty windows of a brick-faced colonial. At first the windows looked blank and depthless to her, but as her eyes adjusted she noticed a fur-like texture beyond the shimmering glass. The front windows were covered with thick blankets.

  Jen recognized it as the Grady residence. Gordon and Bev Grady were an elderly couple her family had known since before she was born. They always brought a plate of Christmas cookies at the holidays and gave her a wave across the backyards on summer days. Jen couldn't bear to imagine them any other way.

  Rory nodded, and they filed toward the porch with Greg in the lead, Tom and Jen grasping stakes with apprehension.

  As Rory took up a watch position at the base of the driveway, Greg crept up the front steps. A concrete walkway led along the side of the house past a side door and disappeared into the darkness at the rear. The humidity was as palpable as pool water. The sound of katydids masked the rustle of brush from the backyards.

  Rory detected movement at the edge of his vision. Recalling the importance of protecting flanks in battle, he wondered how he could do so when the enemy could be anywhere?

  Stake in one hand, Greg placed his other hand on the storm door and pulled. Evan glided to his side and held the storm door open as the remaining members filed behind. Rory continued to watch the darkness, and for the first time he began to fear the unseen.

  The main door was wooden and sturdy with two bolt locks, but they were not thrown, and the door slid open when Greg pushed his weight against it. The interior air was stagnant, like an unventilated attic. He cringed against the acrid stench from within.

  The door opened to a darkened foyer, beyond which a hall led to a living room on the right, and a staircase rose into darkness ahead. A walk-in closet with slatted doors bordered left. Greg nodded toward Evan, who flicked the light switch. The foyer and staircase filled with light, which seemed to exacerbate the darkness beyond the closet slats.

  As Evan took up position outside the closet with the stake lifted over his head, Greg grabbed the sliding door. Evan indicated he was ready, and Greg threw the door open.

  Coats hung from the closet rack and shoes were neatly arranged along the floor. The foyer light spread into the interior. Nothing waited within.

  Rory entered from the porch and locked the door behind him. Turning on corner table lamps until the shadows receded, he led the group into the living room,

  Wool blankets covered the living room windows. Evan reached toward blankets as though to tear them off, but Rory signaled him to stop, as the blankets concealed them from eyes in the night.

  Beyond the living room was a dining room with a cherry wood table large enough for an extended family. The room opened to a darkened kitchen on the left, beyond their view.

  “What do you think?” Evan said.

  “The basement must run off the kitchen,” said Greg.

  The downstairs was stuffy and warm from the daytime heat, but Renee wrapped her arms about herself and shivered.

  “I don't like this. I feel like we're sitting ducks.”

  Rory didn't respond, not wanting to admit that he had the same feeling. Now that they were on the front lines, this whole eradication plan was beginning to unravel.

  “Rory. Randy. Check the kitchen, and throw the lock on the basement door. I don't want anything sneaking up on us,” Greg said.

  Randy and Rory disappeared around the corner into the gloom. From the living room the rest of them could hear the rattle and crunch of an ice maker and what they thought were the low groans of footfalls across the kitchen. After a tense moment of silence, the kitchen light flickered to life. Next came the click of the bolt latch on the basement door.

  When Randy and Rory returned to the living room, they saw fear on the others' faces.

  “It ain't gonna make a difference. If anything is down there, that door won't hold 'em back,” said Rory.

  There was something else under Rory's voice. A noise from somewhere in the house.

  “Shhhh.” Renee motioned above them. “Do you hear that?”

  As they stood within the indistinct shadows of the living room, they heard nothing but the pounding of their hearts. A distinct squeak emanated from the second floor. Then another, this time from a spot on the ceiling some distance away from the original sound. The sounds became rhythmic and echoed one another from above.

  “Upstairs,” Greg said.

  Reeek. Reeek.

  Greg and Evan led them to the staircase. The wooden steps stretched upward to a landing fronted by a linen cabinet, which jutted outward like a standing coffin. Shadows poured off the landing. At the top of the landing, the hallway turned right and disappeared from view.

  They ascended the staircase, like mice sneaking past a sleeping cat. Gone was the brazen desire to rid the town of the scourge. In its place was a creeping terror of what lay beyond their vision.

>   Reeek. Reeek.

  At the landing they found a beige hallway with three doors: one open door on each side, one closed door at the end of the hall. The first open door was an empty bathroom, the second a master bedroom.

  As the strange squeals became louder, Randy no longer saw the hallway. His eyes saw the kitchen on Randolph Road. The radio was on, the sunroom was ahead. He had buried his parents in the bloody veneration of sunset. Yet they had returned here, undead on Maple Street, rocking in their chairs and waiting for him.

  Reeek. Reeek.

  The noise from beyond the closed door grew louder.

  Greg motioned for Evan to move to the door and for Randy to join him, weapons ready. The rest of the group stayed back a few paces, while Rory watched the staircase for an attack from behind.

  The fear that they were making a grievous mistake was never stronger for Randy than when he placed his hand on the silver door handle. It was frigid, like metal on the darkest night in December. He imagined his parents waiting beyond the door. He saw their eyes amid the darkness, accusing and baleful.

  Reeek. Reeek.

  Greg signaled him to open the door. Ready to plunge the point into the milky flesh on the door's other side, the police chief held his stake at shoulder level.

  Randy came to believe that what lay beyond the door was not another room but another world. Into that world he would go, and may God bring them all back from it. As he nodded to Greg and Evan, he turned the handle and pushed against the door.

  The door flew open, and here were Mr. and Mrs. Grady. They sat in rocking chairs in opposite corners of the room along the far wall, the room dappled in strips of light and darkness. Like a tranquil pool, moonlight poured through an open window and shimmered across the floorboards.

  Gordon Grady was a tall man. He was dressed in a black suit which could have passed for his Sunday best or as undertaker garb. Bev wore a flower-printed nightgown. Her hair, normally pulled into a tight bun, was loose and frayed. Their heads were lowered to their chests, and were it not for their metronomic rocking, they might have looked to be asleep.