Storberry

by Dan Padavona

  He mulled the theory over in the blue light of Jen's bedroom. If he was right, and if they could determine who were the first to be infected in town and destroy them, theoretically they could eliminate the majority of their populace.

  Are you so certain that the laws of science apply to true evil?

  He shuddered.

  As the grandfather clock ticked through the hallway, the house was as silent as a tomb.

  A scream woke Randy.

  He bolted upright in the guest room bed and swung his legs over the side. Expecting to hear the others yelling and springing into action, he heard only the legato ticking of the hallway clock. They must have heard the scream. Had the scream come from within the house?

  His body was soaked in a cold sweat, but the heat radiating off of him was reminiscent of sun exhaustion. Whenever he moved his head, the room spun like the house was inside of a tornado. When did I become sick? He couldn't recall.

  He saw that he was fully clothed and didn't remember their looks of concern when Evan and Greg had carried him to the guest room.

  Odd that he could feel so cold on such a mild night. The window should have been closed and locked, yet the white drapes blew inward, like specter arms grasping at the air.

  As he shuffled from the bed to the open window, the grass below was barren and gray in the moonlight. Ground fog formed as the temperature cooled and the dewy grass saturated the air. From the second floor, it looked like a bed of cotton.

  Thin wisps of fog seemed to have a life of their own, curling against the trees like talons.

  He had started to push the window shut when he saw Benny.

  Randy blinked in confusion. The fever worsened, and at once the walls of the room seemed to advance and retreat with every breath. He burned from the inside, convinced that it was a dream, for it was impossible for Benny to be here.

  He blinked again. Benny stared up at him.

  A light began to pulse within the fog, barely perceptible. Randy watched the light grow and recede, as if it breathed. Now the fever was unbearable, sweat pouring off his brow in thin rivulets. Still his brother stared up at him, a lost child who had somehow found his way to safety.

  How did he know to find me here?

  The fog became alluring in its unearthly glow, and as he stood transfixed, he heard it whisper. The ethereal mist spoke to him through his mind, promising him that it was soft and cool. If he would only come to the fog and join his brother, his fever would break. Safety for both of them existed within.

  As the breeze thickened, thin tendrils of fog rose against the side of the house and licked at the window. The fog was so close he could touch it. He could grasp its wisps if he desired and make them his own.

  What little remained of Randy's sanity broke through the clouded fever and pulled him back from the window. He couldn't trust the fog’s promises.

  “Please help me.”

  Randy gasped. Benny's voice!

  He no longer held any doubt that his brother was in the fog. The boy stared up at him with pleading eyes. He was so pallid, sick, perhaps suffering from the same fever afflicting Randy. The fog roiled around the boy's legs.

  This is impossible. He can't be here.

  “You have to come. There's no one else.”

  There's no one else...

  Did Benny know his mother and father were dead, murdered at his hands? How could Benny know?

  The fever boiled within, and now he could barely remember what he had done to Calvin and Sue Marks. His own name escaped him. The only thing he could be sure of was that his brother was in need of him. Whispering promises of release from his agony, in ethereal voices only Randy could hear, the fog glowed below the window. The fog promised release from the fever, the truth, everything.

  No longer able to resist, Randy slid the screen up and bent through the opening.

  He was sure the cottony surface of the mist was soft enough to support him—he need only climb out. The fog promised it would catch him.

  He put his legs on the ledge first. As the mists caressed his skin, his feet dangled beneath him. But the second story window was so far above the ground, and he began to worry. Suddenly he felt something grip his ankles, as though the fog had grown claws.

  It’s pulling me out.

  Randy grabbed for the support of the window frame, but it was too late. He was yanked feet first through the fog. The ground rushed at him. Something laughed in the night.

  His legs shattered on impact. Pain tore through the fever's intoxication, and he was awake again, screaming in agony. He cried in anger, for the fog had misled him.

  As tears streamed down his cheeks, he was alone in the fog, body shattered. There was no sign of his brother anywhere. His legs were broken in multiple places, but the grotesque injuries were hidden under the fog's blanket. The glow ceased, but the fog continued to grope him with clammy fingers.

  The night went still.

  He heard no sound. Even the fog's gyrations slowed. The moon looked down at him, mocking his impotence.

  He lowered his chin and Benny was there, eye-to-eye with him. He stared into his little brother’s face, mime-white and bloodless, Benny’s eyes glowing like hot coals. Rows of fangs dripped with desire.

  Benny smiled a Cheshire Cat grin.

  Randy screamed.

  Five

  When the scream awoke the house, Rory scrambled to the kitchen and peered through a crack in the boards. Nobody was in the backyard, yet there was a strange fog receding up the hill toward the copse.

  Mary checked the upstairs rooms. It was there that she discovered the guest room window open and Randy missing. When the others joined her at the doorway, they called to Randy through the house. But they knew in the pits of their stomachs that he was gone.

  Mary pulled the window down and bolted the lock.

  “Did anyone see him leave?” asked Greg.

  They shook their heads.

  “He couldn't have survived the fall. He would have broken every bone in his legs,” said Renee.

  “Then where the hell is he?” Greg asked.

  Mary clutched her head in disbelief.

  “Why in the world would he jump?” Mary asked.

  “The fever,” Greg said. “Maybe he didn't know what he was doing.”

  “But he was fine up until a few hours ago,” said Renee.

  “He'd been acting strange all night. You saw him in the Grady's room. That was a hell of a lot more than fear,” said Rory.

  He spat and stalked down the stairs.

  Jen held onto Tom and sought out Renee.

  “Do you think those things could have made him jump?” she asked.

  “At this point, I believe anything is possible,” Renee said, glowering at Greg, “which is why we shouldn't even be here.”

  Greg's eyes flashed with anger.

  “What would you have done differently?”

  “I wouldn't have dragged everyone to their deaths.”

  “You could have said this before—”

  “I did! But you and your goddamn sidekick wouldn't listen to anything I had to say. Now Randy is gone, probably dead, and there are two teenagers trapped in here with those things outside. We could have driven through three states by now and gotten everyone to safety!”

  “I'm not going to sit back and let the town get slaughtered while I do nothing about it! I'm doing the best that I can.”

  Evan stepped between them.

  “Everyone calm down. This isn't getting us anywhere.”

  Greg shoved his way past Mary in the doorway. Renee seemed angrier with Evan for interceding.

  “Don't even think about telling me that I'm out of line,” Renee said.

  “I'm not going to. We should have thought this through better. But it doesn't help our situation. We need to hang on until sunrise. It's only another four hours. Then we can get out of here. For good.”

  When Renee realized she was crying, she wiped her tears away in disgust.


  “Sunrise, Evan. I'm taking these kids out of here. With or without you.”

  The grandfather clock chimed three times to announce the new hour when Rory finished his rounds downstairs. His anger simmered deep inside, like the slow push of magma that precedes an eruption.

  He didn't like being second-guessed, particularly by a female librarian who had never so much as held a gun, let alone defended her country. He knew they were in deep trouble and that time was the single most important dimension for all of them.

  But unlike in traditional war, the enemy would recede from the battle lines at sunrise. This knowledge gave him a decided advantage and increased his odds for survival.

  But it troubled him that Randy had somehow been coerced out of the house. Out of a second story window, for Christ's sake. All of their safety measures would be for naught if they could be influenced from without.

  I’ll lay down new rules. Greg will be on board, and the others will have to follow, like it or not. Nobody was to be on their own for the remainder of the night, and nobody was to be near an open window. I’ll keep the group downstairs where they can be supervised.

  Greg and he would watch for signs of trouble from outside the house. Evan might prove useful too, and he'd be damned if Mary didn't surprise Rory with her courage under fire. But the teenagers would be of no use, and Renee Tennant was becoming a problem that he might need to deal with.

  Then he had heard the whispers.

  The whispers came from the backyards, and at first he had thought it might be Randy Marks lying broken but still alive. Drifting indistinct and ethereal through the night, the voices bled into the kitchen for only Rory to hear. Greg had been filling a glass of water at the time, and the dreamlike sounds merged with the running faucet like a distant waterfall.

  “Did you hear that?”

  But Greg hadn't heard a thing.

  By 3:15 a.m. the group members were corralled in the living room. No one had protested the decision. Renee bristled at the way Rory and Greg were ordering everyone about. Her eyes glowered at Rory.

  The whispers came and went, as impossible to grasp as the will-o-wisp. If only I could hear what they are saying. The whispers seemed as so much white noise. That nobody else could hear the whispers troubled him. He knew that severe sleep deprivation could cause all sorts of hallucinations, and he couldn't afford to lose his composure now. Sunrise was so close.

  But the whispers were insistent. They came from all sides of the house, impossible to zero in on. They buzzed at his ear like house flies. Their messages grew in need, yet he could discern none of it. His agitation grew, and soon he was pacing through the downstairs with stake in hand.

  Mary was the first to notice that something was wrong. She confided in Renee, who in turn brought it to Evan's attention.

  “He's losing control,” said Evan. “Rory! Rory!”

  But the large man ignored him. As though he viewed a separate reality, he stalked from room to room with distant eyes. Evan's shout alerted Greg to the potential problem, but before he could intercede, the front door began to rattle.

  As Tom tried to cover Jen’s mouth, the girl screamed.

  They've found us.

  The impending danger snapped Rory out of his trance, and he and Greg were poised in the hallway with stakes raised. Mary stood in front of the teens, hands gripping the cross.

  “Evan. Kitchen,” said Greg.

  Evan ran to the kitchen and took up a position at the side door. A pall fell over him. As though meaning to snuff out the light within, he could feel the darkness of the night trying to slip under the door's threshold. His skin crawled, as though he believed that if he threw the door open, he would find the house deep within the hill forest, with its impenetrable blackness and gnarled limbs reaching toward him. Death had found them.

  The front door shook with building intensity. Racing and expanding, tiny cracks formed along the jamb. Mary took an involuntary step backward as the door threatened to explode off its hinges. The framing walls rattled and groaned, thin cracks spreading through the plaster like spider webs.

  As the sound built to a frightening crescendo, Renee clutched her ears against the fury.

  Then the shaking stopped, and the silence that followed seemed deafening in its absence. The muscles in his forearms standing out like cords, Greg gripped the stake.

  This was the silence before the storm. The seconds passed and then minutes. Nothing came.

  Rory was certain something waited outside. He sensed the intruder pressed against the house, as though it laid its icy hand upon his skin. He ran through the living room toward the boarded front window.

  “Where is it?” Jen sobbed with the knowledge that the darkness knew they were inside.

  Rory peeked through the cracks between the panels. His heart stopped.

  The pallid evil that was Evelyn Dickson stared back at him.

  Six

  The glass of the window pane shattered against the plywood. As though she swung a sledgehammer, Evelyn Dickson pounded her body into the barrier. Rory backed away, his face as white as January snow. His head shook from side to side, mouthing “no” silently.

  Greg ordered Evan to keep defending the kitchen and sprung to Rory's side. The look in Rory's eyes was that of a man who had seen the unfathomable. He had walked through Hell itself and come through a shell of his former self.

  A great crash splintered the wood. Whining sickeningly, the wood screws were wrenched from the window frame, and the plywood imploded with the next blow.

  Evelyn Dickson leaped through the open frame, wretched fangs dripping with hunger. Greg stumbled backward at the sight. He had been prepared for almost anything, but not this.

  She sprang toward her husband, but Mary had been waiting. She drove the stake into Evelyn's belly.

  Evelyn screeched and threw Mary backward into the dining room table with inhuman force. Greg thrust the stake through Evelyn's back, just as Renee attacked from the front. The third stake went through Evelyn's eye, into her skull cavity. Bones crackled like twigs underfoot.

  The thing collapsed in a twitching mess.

  “No!” Rory screamed from the floor.

  Ignoring the viscous gore which bled across the floor, he scrambled to his wife’s side.

  “Why?”

  His question hung in the air like a volatile substance that the others were certain would explode if they answered.

  Evelyn's limbs trembled as he cradled her in his arms. Gone was the piercing red of her eyes. Like a magician’s ruined illusion, the doll-like face morphed to something decrepit. Then the corpse tissue evaporated, and she appeared no different from when he had last seen her.

  Her human features returning like the fecund earth after winter's snow melt, she looked up at him.

  “I tried...tried...to save him...I—”

  “Shhhh,” Rory quieted her, his tears flowing freely. “You did the best you could do. You have always done the best you could do.”

  Her lips quivered and tried to form words that she no longer had the strength to utter. He saw her say I'm sorry in silence.

  “I'm the one who should be sorry. It isn't your fault. I should have been there for you.”

  Her body convulsed, her eyes rolling back in her head. White pearls stared back at him, lifeless. She was gone.

  Rory rocked Evelyn in his arms, his shoulders shaking with each sob. Tom choked back his own tears, as though seeing his mother's dying eyes again. Rage rippled through Rory’s body, seeking vengeance for all that had been taken from him.

  Rory was surprised to find Renee at his side, holding him and quietly urging him to let his wife go.

  Rory looked into the Renee’s eyes and saw something unexpected. It was more than empathy. They spoke of reprisal and resolution.

  “I got all of us into this. My God, look what I've done. I'm so sorry,” said Rory.

  “You did it for all the right reasons. There's nothing to be sorry for.”

  �
��I thought we could stop them. I thought we could...”

  As the flickering glow of the streetlamps flowed through the shattered barrier, Greg watched the window warily. More monsters would come now, and they could be anywhere in the night. No one talked for the next minute, everyone lost in his or her own remorse.

  Then Tom spoke.

  “There might be a way to kill them all.”

  Seven

  Darkness pressed through the broken window of the Barrows' lower floor. They felt a desperate need to escape the house's confines, but the argument put forth by Tom Kingsley had been a compelling one. Maybe they had embraced his theory because it offered the first ray of hope in their never-ending night. Or perhaps it was the logical connections he formed.

  The infestation had to have begun with one. If the original vampire could be identified and destroyed, theoretically their entire population could be snuffed out with one precision strike.

  “The theory that they are linked by the spread of the infection makes sense based on what we saw at the Grady home,” Evan said. “It also rules out blood relations, since they were married. But it's possible that the links are weakened, and even broken, at some point once you get far enough away from the original vampire.”

  “I've considered the possibility,” said Tom.

  “Kill the king, and the kingdom falls,” Renee said.

  “Every one of those things that we have encountered has been someone we recognized from town or at least something that looked like it was once human,” Evan said. “All but the one that attacked Mary. Approximately what time did it come for you?”

  “A little after 10 p.m.,” Mary said.

  “Greg, what time did the wind come out of the hill forest?”

  “After sunset. Probably close to 8:15,” Greg said. “You still think they are linked?”

  “I'm positive of it. If it came with the storm, that gave it plenty of time to traverse the town. Maple was the first street it encountered on its way.”

  “Which explains why there are so many of them here.”

  “What if the vampire was here all along?” Jen asked, eyes wide and distant. Suddenly the riddle of the crawlspace being boarded shut from the inside made sense. There had been a monster hidden outside her bedroom window her entire life.