Storberry

by Dan Padavona

  “Here, as in Maple Street?” Greg cast a doubtful look at the girl.

  “Dormant...” Evan reasoned it through. “Waiting for the forest to make the first move.”

  “Come on, Evan. The trees awakened it?”

  “It sounds no less crazy than vampires taking over the town,” said Renee.

  “That would better explain the infection rate on Maple Street,” Evan said. “It would have needed somewhere to conceal itself all these years, out of the sunlight.”

  “I know where it sleeps,” Jen said.

  As Jen explained the conundrum of the crawlspace, she told them of the night sounds, which seemed to come in warm springs such as the one they were experiencing. The doubt on the others' faces was unmistakable, but it shifted to fear when she recounted hearing something break out of the crawlspace the night the wind struck. Tom had heard the boards snap, too, and it had taken until this moment for him to admit it to himself.

  “My God, that thing could be above the garage right now,” Mary said, “right behind us.”

  With the chill force of ocean waves in winter, the possibility that the vampire had been here all along crashed into Rory and nearly drowned him. He grasped the stake and stood among them.

  “If that thing is here, then I will kill it now.”

  “You haven't seen this thing. It was never human, Rory.”

  “It will die like the others. It has to come to the crawlspace before sunrise. I'll wait for it.”

  “The hell you will,” Renee said. “You can't do this alone. You'll be killed.”

  It was too late. Rory heard nothing more. He pulled the plank off the front door and stepped into the night air.

  The others followed after him onto the front porch. The shadows of Maple Street were as black as pitch, seeming to shift with malevolent movement. The unlit houses spread away like silent crypts.

  The windshield of the police truck gleamed under the lamppost. Did they dare break for the truck?

  “Greg, do something,” Renee said.

  “She's right, Rory. Better we get into the truck and drive the hell out of here while we can.”

  But Rory didn't listen. He descended the steps to the sidewalk and followed its path to the Barrows' driveway, whereupon at the end of the dirt and stone path he found the garage. As the moon crouched beneath the roof’s edge, its glow spread up to the peak as though an alien sun had risen.

  The front window to the crawlspace stared back at him with one lifeless eye. He felt the eye watching him, and it was then that he was certain the girl had been right. This was where they would find the vampire. This was where the horror would end.

  The truck was tantalizingly close now, just one house away. A katydid rasped along the side of the house, Nathanial Hawthorne’s sound of moonlight. They could feel the eyes of the night upon them.

  When the blunt end of the stake struck Rory in the back of his head, stars spread across his vision, and he fell into Evan's arms. Greg stood over his friend with a look of guilt on his face.

  “Give me a hand,” Evan said, struggling to hold the limp body.

  Greg and Evan supported Rory under his arms as Renee lifted his feet off the ground. Grunting as they pulled the heavy body toward the truck, they felt the sands of time pour out of the hourglass against them.

  A dark consternation fell over them. The truck, its windshield a glare under the lamplight, offered a false salvation. Something was wrong. They could feel the darkness closing in.

  Tom opened the truck’s back door, and they had slid Rory onto the floor where he flopped lifelessly between the front and middle rows. As they climbed inside with Greg in the driver's seat and Evan next to him, Greg saw the wires torn free from underneath the steering column, as though someone had thought to hot wire the vehicle but instead had disabled it.

  “Shit!”

  Greg fumbled for the dome light. He needed to reattach the wires to make the truck drivable, but so much damage had been done.

  A scuffling noise came from out of the dark, and Evan yelled at Greg to duck his head. Jen screamed from the backseat.

  As Greg looked up, Dell Lawrence swung the sledgehammer against the windshield.

  Eight

  As the explosion of hammer against glass rang in their ears, pellets of safety glass rained down on Greg's chest and legs like a king's ransom of diamonds.

  Dell stalked to the driver's side, whey-faced and crazed. He reared back with the weapon. Before the side window burst, Greg and Evan dived out the passenger door.

  Dell sprang toward the front of the car, seeming to glide on air. Leaping upward with a swiftness that bellied his sickly pallor, he landed standing on the hood of the truck, his eyes red prisms that caught the starlight and drank in its power. A wicked grin spread across his face.

  “Been looking for you, piggy...piggy...piggy...”

  Evan jutted his stake outward in warning, and Dell's laughter echoed off the empty shells lining Maple Street. Renee and Jen climbed from the truck to stand behind the two men. Rory lay unconsciousness inside, and Greg felt a pang of fear that he might not get to his friend in time if Dell climbed into the truck.

  Evan's eyes questioned Renee. There was no sign of Mary or Tom, who had disappeared in the gloom. Renee shook her head, not having seen them slip away.

  “Back off, Dell. There's too many of us for you to handle alone,” Greg said.

  Dell leaned back and laughed at the night sky, like a vile hyena in the light of the moon.

  “Oh piggy...pigggy...the big bad wolf always travels with a pack.”

  Trees rustled outside of the Grady residence.

  “You never could find my Katy. But I did, little pig. I did.”

  The look of confidence on Dell's face disappeared. For a moment, panic flashed in his eyes, as Tom led Katy Lawrence out of the trees with the spike of his stake pressed against her back. As Mary held the cross in front of the girl's face, the holy symbol pulsed with a light which could not be explained by the reflection of stars or streetlamps. Katy hissed, averting her eyes whenever the cross came near.

  Dell was too fast. He flew over the truck toward Jen and Renee. Tom heard Jen cry out, and then Dell pulled her away from the others.

  “Drop the cross, whore.”

  Gnarled fingers ended in razor sharp claws fixed to Jen's throat. Dell's eyes were wild with hatred.

  “And the weapon. I'll rip her throat out.”

  Tom's hands trembled. It wouldn't take more than an easy swipe of Dell's nails, and Jen's neck would be torn from ear-to-ear. He saw her lips quiver, her face wet with tears. He had already lost his family. He couldn't lose her, too.

  “Let my Katy go, and I'll let your little friend live.”

  Greg lunged forward with the stake, but Dell was quicker. His free arm whipped against the police chief's head. The force of the blow threw Greg against the truck, pain rocketing through his back and neck, as he moaned on the pavement.

  “Long time coming, little pig. Long time coming.”

  Dell fixed his gaze on Tom, and the boy felt something more frightening creep through him.

  Doubt.

  Doubt that he was as intelligent as everyone thought him to be. Doubt that he had figured out how to fight these things. Doubt that he could save Jen any more than he could have saved his family.

  “Drop the stake, boy. Or she dies.”

  “Why did you allow your daughter to do this to you?”

  “After I tear out your throat, you will understand why. You will live forever, my friend. Forever.”

  Tom had his confirmation but was out of time. Jen would to die, and he was powerless to stop it. He glanced away from the menace and looked into her eyes one last time. Her face was a mask of fear.

  Then for a split second, he saw her eyes change from horror to resolution. As if a tunnel had formed around the two of them, her eyes centered on his, and she saw only him amid the carnage.

  She nodded.

  As T
om thrust the stake into Katy's back, there came a terrible scream, animal-like and vaguely human. In a gush of crimson, the point jutted through her heart, and she shrieked against the Stygian sky.

  Before Dell realized what Tom had done, the strength departed his body. He crumbled to the road, his head smashing against the pavement. His head swam in confusion, not knowing what was happening to him. A blackness that was much larger than the night engulfed him.

  Evan plunged the stake through Dell’s heart, and the thing that was Dell Lawrence convulsed like an eel washed ashore. Blood oozed around the stake in syrupy black.

  The tremors ceased, and he lay silent at their feet.

  Renee's breath caught in her throat when a third body hit the pavement behind them. She turned around to see an unknown woman convulsing in the center of Maple Street. The woman had crept up on them without anyone hearing, and a moment later she would have killed them all.

  The woman gasped for air that was no longer there for her to breathe. Her jaws snapped at them with disturbing clicks, misshapen fangs jutting outward.

  Her eyes went glassy and the convulsions ceased. The stranger rolled to her back, spittle running down her cheeks. She stared lifelessly into the depthless night.

  Renee broke free of her fear and confusion. She picked up the pill bottle which had rolled out of the woman's pocket.

  KENT, ERIN

  TAKE TWO CAPSULES BY MOUTH AT BEDTIME

  Chapter Eight

  For once fate had been on their side. In the ten minutes it took Greg to repair the steering column wire damage under the faint glow of the streetlamps, no further attacks came. But Mary felt the dark watchers within the shadows, as though the night pressed against her skin.

  The truck raced eastward to Blakely Hill, intent on flattening anything which would challenge them.

  Once, in the blood red of the taillights, Mary saw a small group of the monstrosities following the truck through the darkness. As shadows shifted and took form just beyond their vision, tree limbs bent and rustled, vile faces peering through darkened windows. But none came for them this time.

  At the bottom of Blakely Hill the group split up to commandeer the departed vehicles. Renee drove the teenagers in Doug Masterson's truck, while Evan and Mary took Rory's truck. Locked in a fitful sleep, Rory lay sprawled on the floor of the police truck. The lights of Washington Street whipped past them like wraiths. The chief heard his friend sob and speak his wife's name, lost somewhere within sleep's murk.

  It was after 4:30 a.m. when the three vehicles pulled into the farmhouse driveway. Looming in the night like a hollow giant, the great barn blotted out the moonlight. Evan saw the tool house standing empty against the blanket of stars. He remembered Randy and tried not to imagine what fate had befallen the boy.

  They declared the house safe several minutes after and slept the sleep of the dead. They slept long past the rising of the sun, which ascended the eastern sky in sundry reds.

  Shimmering as a mirage under thick haze, the sun was a blurry orb when they awoke after nine. The atmosphere was palpable with humidity, and a gusting southerly wind flew over the hill forest, whipping fields of rye into motion. When Evan stepped outside to taste the gulf air, he knew that the false summer was about to end.

  Late morning was spent in quiet solitude. Rory hadn't remembered losing consciousness, but Greg told him what he had done, and Rory agreed it had been the right move, considering his state of mind. Yet nothing altered Rory's desire for vengeance, for he intended to return to the Barrows’ garage.

  By noon, as the smell of hamburgers in the kitchen reminded them of their need to eat, they gathered together for perhaps their final meal.

  Once their stomachs were full, it was decided that Renee would take Tom and Jen out of Storberry. Feeling the same roiling need for revenge that burned through Rory, the others protested. But it was agreed that if a strike were to be made on the crawlspace, a small group could move with greater stealth.

  “We go in during the daylight, while we are reasonably sure that thing will be asleep,” Evan said. “If we are wrong and the crawlspace is empty, then there is nothing left to be done. We'll come back here, and all of us will leave town together.”

  Renee agreed to wait for their return before sunset. If they did not return by dusk, she was to drive the teenagers across the North Carolina border and catch the interstate to Rocky Mount, stopping for no one until they reached safety. A dark cloud formed in her mind. She wondered if the rest of the world still existed. Is the horror confined to Storberry?

  By 3:30 p.m. there was a foreboding sense of finality. Their eyes met, and knowing it was the last time they would see one another, an empty sense of loss grew within them.

  Greg's police truck pulled out of the driveway and headed west on Standish in a cloud of dust. Like a monstrous castle in a faraway kingdom, a cumulus formation exploded ahead of their path. As the wind whipped against the farmhouse with dangerous intent, Renee followed the truck's path until it wound out of sight near downtown. Shutters rattled, and plumes of brown dust skirted the dry fields like swarms of locust.

  She felt very much alone.

  Two

  As the truck hummed up Blakely Hill, humidity fogged the windows until the air conditioning barely kept the windshield clear. Overgrowth framing the road swayed against the strengthening wind.

  The truck came around the bend to find the road littered with leaves, as though they had been sprayed from a lawnmower. The beaten path toward Becks Pond, and beyond that the hill forest, came into view at the corner of Maple Street.

  Evan's stomach sank. He had waited for this moment for twenty years, and there was no turning back.

  As Greg turned the police truck onto Maple Street, Evan couldn’t help thinking that at this time of day there should have been children playing in the front yards, the sound of lawnmowers buzzing, and the savory aroma of family cookouts. The houses stood empty and skeletal. Unattended vehicles littered desolate driveways, yellowed from pollen like a smoker's fingers.

  The sun disappeared behind an eastward-moving canopy of overcast, as though a stage curtain had drawn closed on the premature summer. As thunder rolled across the land with ominous intent somewhere in the distance, the wind came in increasing gusts that sent eddies of dust swirling across their path like miniature twisters.

  The Barrows' home appeared on the left, two-thirds of the way down Maple. Greg turned the truck into the driveway. A hostile edifice against the darkening skies, the garage loomed before them. He backed out and parked the truck facing away from the western dead end. In his heart, Evan didn't believe that he would ever set foot inside the truck again.

  The first raindrop fell from the sky as they stepped into the driveway, splashing against dirt and stone where it left a wet shadow of itself. Thunder groaned in the distance, this time closer. Rory and Greg led the gang of four. The garage pulled them forward.

  The front window to the crawlspace was boarded securely. As they rounded the structure and checked the back window, they found two planks warped with recent signs of removal. The vampire slept within—there was no longer any dispute. Mary shivered as if remembering of the thing that had pursued her out of the basement.

  The garage’s back window rested several feet off the ground with no way to reach it, but they found the side room unlocked.

  The ceiling inside was a maze of spider and cobwebs. Wilted from lack of water, flowers and vegetable plants were spread across a table in containers. As something small scurried into the garage at their arrival, they found vermin droppings covering the floor. A wooden ladder in the near corner led to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  Rory grasped the rungs and began to climb.

  “Slow down,” Greg said. “Let's be smart about this.”

  “You haven't lost anyone,” Rory said. “I don't expect you to understand.”

  He threw his weight into the trap door, but it wouldn't budge.

  “Shit! Locked.�
�

  “This thing is careful. I'll give it that,”said Evan.

  “We're gonna have to pry the door open,” said Rory.

  “Easier said than done,” Evan said, and pointed to the rusted nails which protruded through the ceiling boards. The door was nailed shut from within.

  As though to remind them of their insignificance under the angry sky, thunder shook the room. Wind buffeted the structure, and the west window rattled within its pane.

  As a dark consternation came over Mary, she clutched the cross in her hands until her knuckles turned white, turning the strangely glowing symbol over in her hand. When Greg centered his eyes on the cross, goosebumps broke out across his skin.

  Evan checked the vacated garage and found a pry bar on the far wall.

  “That should do the trick,” Rory said.

  Rory reached for the tool, but Greg snatched it away.

  “We're going to take this nice and slow Rory,” Greg said. “There are more than three hours til sunset. It's not going anywhere.”

  Greg located a small picnic bench tipped against the wall and placed it under the ladder. The added height and stability underfoot gave him the leverage that he wouldn't have had hanging from the rungs. He fitted the end of the pry bar into the crack between the trapdoor and the ceiling and carefully tested its strength. The seal was tight.

  “I'm going to put some force behind it. Be ready.”

  As Greg strained against the pry bar, the door, warped by decades of hot and cold cycles, budged a quarter of inch. The wood squealed like fingernails on a chalkboard, the surrounding ceiling boards splintering and cracking.

  “Dammit. This whole thing could come down on us.”

  Greg wiped the sweat from his eyes. Evan stepped onto the bench.

  “Let me give it a try.”

  As the room flashed with hot light, thunder exploded very close to the garage, like a bomb. It shook the walls and sent their hearts racing. The storm struck the garage with torrents of rain and hail that beat against the windows and walls like artillery fire. As though their trunks were made of rubber, trees bent against the wind's fury.