Prey

by Stefan Petrucha

  Chelsea shook her head. “No. She’s not in.”

  “I hope you understand I’m not making light of any of this. Bad things do happen. We’ve talked about it. But the important thing to realize is that your imagination can’t predict it. When we write, when we draw, when we”—he cast a glance at Derek—“when we play, the imagination is an amazing tool. But if it says that this telephone pole is going to fall on me if I don’t recite the names of all the episodes of Battlestar Galactica, that’s something else.”

  Chelsea nodded. She’d heard it all before. “But you do believe me about the dog leash?”

  Gambinetti nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. But just so I can tell your parents that I checked, why don’t we go inside and have a peek?”

  He turned toward Eve Mandisa’s house and looked as if he was going to march right on over, but then even he hesitated.

  “It’s in a cage, isn’t it?”

  Derek and Chelsea nodded. “Yeah.”

  The snow fell just a little heavier as they crossed the street. Unlike Ms. Sullivan’s dark house, the scant light from the open basement door reached into the living room, giving the windows where Chelsea had opened the drapes a yellow aura as if someone were watching a small yellow television somewhere inside.

  As they made their way across the yard, Dr. Gambinetti, apparently a little drunk, thumped along like a big bear, barely getting out of the way of the brush and piles of leaves he encountered along the way. He kept his voice cheerful and upbeat as he talked. “Fear of reptiles runs deep. It’s a natural reflex, hard-wired into our animal brains. But it can be conquered. Otherwise, how could we live in the modern world, the way it is? We don’t hunt, we don’t gather, and there are seldom real reasons for fight or flight, not in Bilsford, anyway. But our bodies don’t know that. They just do what they’re built for.”

  On the porch, Chelsea fished out the keys and focused on the doctor’s voice. It was strange to see him, to hear him talk like this outside his office. She couldn’t quite decide if it made the world seem somehow safer, or his words less useful. For now, it seemed to comfort her. Her hands weren’t even shaking when she put the key in the lock. She figured Derek must be bored out of his mind, though.

  “Take driving. Every time you drive your car, every time you brake, see a red light, or get stuck in traffic, adrenaline rushes into your system and your body thinks it’s out on a grassy plain, fighting for its life, not sitting behind a wheel. That’s why road rage is so common.”

  She pushed the door open and waited for the two men to walk inside first. Gambinetti hesitated again, but when Derek simply walked in, he followed, smiling at the décor in the living room. Chelsea hung back at the door and flipped a switch on the wall. As she hoped, it turned on some of the lamps in the living room. But they were low, on tabletops, and cast tall shadows around the couch and the large reclining chair with its back to the hallway.

  “Koko is in the basement, yes?” Gambinetti asked. Chelsea nodded as she closed the door. “Fine. Let’s talk up here a moment. I want to go through a few things. Part of everyone’s brain, the reptile brain, if you will, is constantly scanning the environment for threats, for food, for mates.” He eyed Derek. “Yes?”

  “You bet,” Derek said.

  “The brain sees something, a shadow, a funny-shaped branch, that it thinks might be a threat, and it sends a ‘threat alert’ to the brain so the body is ready.”

  As he spoke, Chelsea thought that one of the shadows in the hallway had moved. But no, it was just the curved back of the reclining chair projected up on the wall by the lamp. She fought an urge to count something. Seeing where she was looking, Gambinetti unbuttoned his large leather duster and sat on the chair, revealing his jacket and Snoopy tie. It creaked loudly as his bulk pressed into it, and the shadow of the chair on the wall moved just as it was supposed to.

  “The brain then takes a closer look and decides whether the threat is real or not. If not, it sends an ‘all clear’ signal to the body, and the body calms down. In the OCD brain, the alarm keeps coming, over and over, until the frustrated brain feels forced to imagine a way to make itself feel safe again, by washing, by counting, by checking the doors it already knows are locked. Until what, Chelsea?”

  “You bring your adrenaline level down by breathing and change the focus of your mind by imagining something else,” Chelsea recited. Feeling warm, she slipped off her heavy coat and laid it on the couch.

  “Yes. Calm the physical body with relaxation techniques, train the mind to switch subjects. If you do that often enough, you literally build new neural pathways. It’s a good reality versus a bad use of the imagination.”

  Chelsea exhaled. “What might be owes its deepest debt to what is.”

  Gambinetti smiled. “Perfect.”

  “But what if the threat is real?” Chelsea asked.

  “Then?” He smiled. “Well, then you fight or run away.”

  Still smiling, Dr. Gambinetti leaned back in the squeaky lounge chair, just as two massive claws reached up from behind and clamped onto his shoulders.

  He was just saying, “Huh?” when Koko’s broad head appeared above his own, at first looking like a comical hat. The huge shadow that lay against the wall behind him—the one Chelsea had spied and feared all on her own, without the interference of the OCD—writhed as if stretching its muscles.

  In seconds the large man and the large chair were pulled backward, tumbling over, down to the floor, where they lay beneath the mighty lizard. Gambinetti’s arms flailed as Koko snapped his jaws open, downward, and attached himself to a part of the therapist’s body obscured by his coat and shirt. Finding the spot, the jaws shut like a rattrap; the head twisted and pulled, yanking up some large and fleshy body part mixed with torn bits of coat.

  Gambinetti never even screamed. Even now his arms and legs didn’t flail so much as twitch. He was breathing, but it didn’t seem right. It was too fast, too mechanical. Koko, meanwhile, most of his body still hidden in shadow, climbed up and put his great claws on Dr. Gambinetti’s heaving chest.

  The massive lizard raised his head toward Chelsea and Derek and opened his mouth, revealing two saw-like rows of teeth. Then Koko hissed, long and loud, as if to say, “I found my dinner. Go get your own.”

  7

  Things happened quickly after that.

  Heeding her doctor’s final words of advice, Chelsea spun, prepared to flee. She reached the door, only dimly aware that Derek was right behind her. She yanked out the keys, but her hands were shaking terribly. Finally, with the sound of harsh breathing mixing with a terrible tearing noise at her back, she found what she thought was the right one and plunged it into the lock. It didn’t slide in as easily as she remembered it doing mere moments ago, but when she pressed harder it went in.

  “Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea!” Derek shouted at her back. “Hurry up!”

  The room was filling with an even more awful noise. It sounded like it came from Dr. Gambinetti, or at least from his throat—but it wasn’t a sound you’d expect any animal or human to make. It was as though someone had connected a bellows to Dr. Gambinetti’s vocal chords, then stepped on it. It sounded like a wind, like a rush of water, like an engine’s roar.

  Chelsea refused to turn around, but she felt Derek turn.

  “Oh crap,” he said into the din. But then the sound was cut off, swallowed by that terrible tearing, snapping and chewing.

  No longer interested in being delicate, Chelsea twisted the key in the lock. It broke off in her hand, as if the only thing attaching it to its body had been butter.

  Chelsea slammed her fists into the door, crying, “No! No! No!” The voice inside her whispered, Told you so.

  Her slamming grew weaker, then stopped. Where was Derek? She no longer felt him behind her. She couldn’t turn her head or even open her mouth to scream. She pictured Koko slithering away from poor Restrooms’s body, scuttling, winding closer and closer.

  Count your tears
and you’ll be safe, the OCD said. But she knew, really knew, that it was lying. Nothing was going to save her now.

  It wasn’t until she heard another hiss and placed it, not right behind her, but much farther back in the room, that she realized the lizard was not right behind her. Koko was either still busy with his dinner, or he had taken Derek.

  Chelsea’s choice was obvious: She could either stay here, staring at the door, at the little glass window in the top and the snow that seemed to be falling harder and harder—or she could turn around and see what was really going on.

  She put a bit of her cheek inside her teeth—tender and rough—and bit down hard, hard enough for it to bleed. A salty taste rushed onto her tongue. It hurt, just badly enough to jolt her nervous system out of its terror-inspired catatonia, and she turned.

  In their rush for the door one of them had knocked over a lamp, so the grisly sight of Koko and Gambinetti was cloaked in blessed shadow. There was light though, down the hall and in the kitchen. Derek was standing there, waving frantically at her, mouthing, “Come on! Come on!”

  Had he found a way out? The door in the kitchen was locked, too, all the windows barred. Maybe she had a key, or maybe the key she’d just broken off in the lock was the one that worked the back door.

  Derek was getting frantic. She wanted to run to him—really, she did, but it meant crossing Koko’s path, and that she could not do.

  Down the hall, she saw Derek heft a heavy kitchen chair, thick with white paint, as if he were hoping to beat the giant lizard to death with it. Realizing it was useless, he put it down and rifled through a kitchen drawer, pulling out one long knife after another, instantly realizing that each was hopeless for the task.

  Finally, he just stood there, his hands grabbing at his hair, and could not remain silent anymore. “Chelsea! Will you run already?”

  The moment he shouted, the chewing stopped. Koko’s massive head reared and looked, first in the direction of Derek, just out of his sight in the kitchen doorway, then at Chelsea, perfectly visible from the living room. It looked like the lizard was deciding what direction to head in. So Chelsea ran, not toward Derek, but up the stairs to the second floor, all fourteen of them. She took them two, three at a time. There was a door near the top of the stairs, but instead of trying to open it, she whirled onto the landing and squatted behind the banister that ran along the second-floor hall, the whole of the stairs and just a bit of the landing below visible.

  She felt briefly free, like an astronaut traveling between earth and the moon experiencing a few true moments of zero gravity, like maybe she had left all the horror down there, behind her, like maybe it was all a dream and she was just a little girl, fleeing her mother or father in a wonderful game of hide-and-seek.

  It didn’t last. She pressed her head against the wooden support posts holding up the railing and panted, marveling at how she had no control over her fast breathing. She looked down. The wobbling light from the fallen living room lamp spilled through the posts, making long, black bars of shadow against the staircase wall.

  Being ever so gentle with herself, she twisted and tried to peer over the banister, straight down the stairs. She could see the frayed welcome mat and even a small bit of the living-room floor. Koko was nowhere in sight. She didn’t hear any struggling, so she assumed Derek was safe.

  He’ll die if you don’t count the posts.

  She started counting. 6, 8, 12, 14. But stopped herself when she heard a rustling sound below. A big shadow shifted in the living room. As she stared from behind the railing, Koko’s head appeared at the base of the steps. She could see his thick, forked tongue swiping out at the air, trying to taste the scent of fear.

  She heard Derek’s voice, muffled by distance as he shouted, “Hey! Get away from there!” But Koko’s head kept on coming, up the steps, pulling his shoulders and his thick body behind it.

  The lizard was climbing. Of course it could climb. How else could it get out of the basement? How did it get out of the basement? Was it something she had done? Something she’d forgotten to do? Something she didn’t count?

  Oh my God!

  It was a third of the way up the stairs and its body still was not completely visible. As the lizard emerged and she measured it, she knew for a fact that Eve Mandisa had either been wrong or hadn’t measured her pet in many years.

  It wasn’t six feet.

  Six feet. Seven feet. Eight feet. Nine feet. Ten. And a healthy amount of tail left over.

  How? How could it be that big? The only monitor lizard in the world that size was the Komodo dragon. Ms. Mandisa couldn’t have one of those for a pet.

  Could she?

  The skin was the right color. The head was the right shape.

  Was it real, or was it the OCD?

  Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  “Get away!” she heard Derek scream, louder, nearer.

  She heard something splinter loudly. Wood? It sounded like maybe Derek had smashed the chair against the floor, to get the lizard’s attention. If so, it worked.

  Koko turned his head back down, toward the hallway and the sound.

  No, Derek! No! It’s a frikkin’ Komodo dragon! She wanted to scream, but the only thing that came out was a whimper. Images of Derek, arms flailing as Koko sat on his chest, ripping out his throat, flooded her brain.

  Koko turned, maneuvering the thin space with snake-like ease, and headed back down the stairs.

  Derek! No! As the lizard, and then its shadow, slunk out of view, Chelsea’s throat tightened as if a tourniquet were twisting around her neck. She could feel the blood rushing out of her face, feel her heart reach a whole new level of jackhammering. Finally, just as little swirling spots filled her field of vision and she was about to pass out from anxiety, the panic yielded a rational thought:

  Call 911!

  Shaking more than she had when she reached for the keys, Chelsea slipped her fingers into the tight pocket of her jeans and wiggled her cell phone free. She flipped it open, comforted by the blue glow of its tiny screen, pressed the three magic numbers and hit the call button, counting the four seconds until someone answered.

  “Emergency services,” the voice intoned.

  Inside, Chelsea was thinking, Phew! But outside, her body would not cooperate. The words rushed out of her head, only to be clogged in her throat. What came out wasn’t even a sentence; it was more like panicked breathing.

  “Ahhhhh…ahhhhh…ahhhhhh…”

  “Hello?”

  “Ahhhhh…ahhhhh…ahhhhhh…”

  An audible tsk was heard, followed by a clicking. In a few seconds, a recorded voice came on the line. The voice was deep, male, and obviously reading from a prepared script.

  “This is John Trent, Bilsford chief of police. Hobson Night creates a number of real emergencies as well as a massive amount of prank phone calls. If this is a real emergency, please stay on the line, and we will get to you as soon as we can. If not, please do everyone in the community a favor and hang up now.”

  She counted the seconds. 15, 16, 17.

  Downstairs she heard more wood splinter, then a yelp of pain and what sounded like a door slamming, followed by heavy, animal scratching.

  “Derek!” she shouted. She pulled herself up to her feet and stood at the top of the stairs. “Derek!”

  How many seconds had she been on hold? 32, 33, 34?

  She looked down at the phone. The line had gone dead. Maybe she had accidentally hung up. Or maybe they picked up, didn’t hear her, and thought it was a prank. It didn’t matter.

  She hit the first number on her speed dial: home. After seven rings, nothing, which meant Dad was probably on the line with Uncle Frank and not bothering to answer call-waiting.

  She hit two, her mother’s cell. The phone was powered off as usual, putting her into call answering after three rings. She didn’t bother leaving a message, since she’d probably be eaten by the time her mother turned on her phone again.

  She hit three. The phon
e rang. A familiar voice answered.

  “You okay, Chelsea?” Derek whispered.

  She exhaled at hearing his voice. “I’m fine, fine. You? I heard…”

  “Yeah, I kinda swatted at Koko with a kitchen chair. He didn’t like that much, but it got him down off the stairs.”

  As he spoke, Chelsea noticed he was breathing funny, not just panting, but weakly, like he was tired. He laughed a little, but even the laugh didn’t sound good. “Damn, that big son of a bitch is fast, isn’t it? Got me in the hand pretty bad, but I managed to shut the kitchen door before it got in. Pushed a…pushed a table up against it, but it was scratching at the base of the door like it was a dog or something. It almost got through. But I’m okay now, I think. I don’t think Toilets is okay, though. He didn’t look too good. He looked…Chelsea, you stay where you are, or lock yourself in a room somewhere.”

  She heard some scraping on the line as he spoke, as if Derek was moving things around in the kitchen. How bad was he bitten? Komodos were venomous, she remembered reading. They’d bite their prey, and then wait for them to die. Maybe that was why Koko didn’t bother tearing down the rest of the door. She pictured the lizard outside the kitchen, listening, waiting for Derek to drop.

  He had to get to a hospital.

  “Did you try the police?” she asked.

  Another laugh. “Yeah, all I did was mention a giant lizard eating people and they put me on hold, then hung up. I think Hobson Night’s got them too busy to believe something this weird. My folks are gone and my useless friends are all out partying. Don’t worry, though. We’ll get out of here.”

  “How?” she said, near tears.

  He slurred his words as he spoke. “It’s a freaking house, L. C. We’re not in a submarine, or stuck on a plane with snakes. There’s got to be a way out! Smash open a window! There can’t be bars on everything!”

  He was wrong. She remembered counting all the windows and the bars. She remembered being very thorough. Twenty-one windows, all barred. Even the basement window that Aristotle sneaked through.