And so he fell, crashing to Earth and engulfed in flames. Reality reached through the façade that had been built by his true love’s smile. Reality reached through the façade and punched him square in the eye. He tried to deny it. Tried to erase the blasted thought from him mind, but it was too late. The thought was planted, and its roots were digging deeper with every passing second.
He frowned up at Goldilocks, and her smile faltered, turning into a look of confusion.
“You’re married.”
Goldilocks looked away for a moment. A look of guilt mixed with a pinch of shame crossed her face as she said, “Yes. Once. A long time ago.”
“A long time ago? But, you’re still married?”
“Technically.”
“Technically? What’s that mean?”
Goldilocks, who still leaned over the Beast, sat back. “It means that on paper, yes, we’re still married. Legally speaking.”
“Legally speaking?” he sat up. He noticed that the bears had walked a short distance away, giving the two a little privacy.
“I may be married to him in the legal sense,” she said. “But I divorced him in my heart years ago.”
“Okay, so why not get a legal divorce then? Why stay married to him all this time?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is.”
“No,” her voice raised in anger. “It isn’t."
“Explain it to me then. Explain to me how you could spend all that time with me, pretending to love me, pretending to care. Lying to me the entire time. Good Lord, Golds … we got married. But that was a lie too!”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“You didn’t tell me you were married.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Seriously? That’s what you’re going with? I didn’t ask?”
“I was scared, okay!” Goldilocks stood, wrapping her arms around herself and turning her back on him.
He rose and stood behind her. “Scared of what?”
She turned and looked up into his eyes. “Scared that you wouldn’t want to be with me if you knew the truth.”
“I’m here, aren’t I? Talk to me. What’s the truth? Who is this guy?”
“I was young and naive when I met him,” she said. “I was just out school. He was a musician.”
“Oh, please,” he rolled his eyes.
“Do you want me to tell you the story or not?”
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
“He spoke to me, I mean, really spoke to me. He knew just how to get inside my head. How to make me care. He said all the right things. Made all the right moves. But he was a liar. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was a monster. He lied and put on a show and I fell for it.” She started to cry. “I fell for all of it.”
The Beast took a chance and pulled her into his arms. She accepted and fell into him. He held her as she cried.
“Oh, Lucy!” a voice called distantly from below. The voice of a man calling his dog in for supper. “Here Lucy-Lucy-Lucy! Where are you?”
Goldilocks froze. “It’s him. It’s Doc.” She started to tremble in the Beast’s arms.
“Hey,” he said, trying his best to sooth her. “It’s okay. Who’s Lucy?”
“No it’s not!” She started to struggle against him. Tried to break free. “It’s Doc. He’s here! He’s going to hurt me again!”
“I won’t let that happen. Who’s Lucy?”
“You don’t know him like I do. We need to hide!”
At that, the big male bear walked over.
“Look,” the bear said to the two of them. “I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, and I hate to interrupt, but if you’re looking to hide, we happen to be in the right place.” He pointed to the giant door at the end of the hallway.
“What’s behind that door?” the Beast asked, his question to Goldilocks forgotten by the curiosity of the door.
“Come on,” the bear said. “I’ll show you.”
The three walked toward the door. The other two bears were already there, waiting.
“I’m Burt, by the way,” the bear said, offering his hand.
“I’m the Beast – well, Tim,” he said, shaking Burt’s hand.
Burt introduced Tim to his wife and son, then punched a code into the keypad on the wall next to the door.
There was a loud clank from within the wall as the lock disengaged and the door swung outward a couple of inches. The door was all steel, as was the jamb and wall around it. The door reminded Tim of the door to a bank vault. Burt reached in and pulled the door open just enough to allow the five of them to enter the room beyond.
The room beyond the door was actually quite small and sparse. There were two beds, a table and chairs, a few shelves full of canned goods and bottled water, and a computer with a bank of monitors. The monitors showed off various areas in and around the house.
“This is our panic room,” Burt said as the door shut behind them.
The locks engaged with a sense of finality that Tim found a little suffocating.
“What do you think?” Burt asked.
“Well,” Tim looked around and smiled. He didn’t know what he had expected to find, but a cramped room wasn’t it. “A little anticlimactic, actually.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
OFFICER CARL FRIENDLY APPROACHED Griswold House with a mixture of feelings that, taken as a whole, could easily be described as ‘having the creeps.’
He checked his weapons one last time as he stood looking into the house from the stoop. Normally, Carl mused, he wouldn’t have been able to see into the house from the stoop, but the fact that the door, and about two feet around it, had been blown completely away, it wasn’t much of a chore to look in. He sighed, resigned himself to his task, pumped a shell into the shotgun, and stepped into the house.
It was like stepping into Hell.
The quiet slumber of the outside had been replaced by the screams of a million voices. The warm spring air turned to the scorching heat of a colossal oven. The interior décor of the house remained, but everything was either on fire or crawling with maggots, cockroaches, or spiders. The smell in the house was that of old meat and a dead elephant’s digestive tract.
Once inside, all five of his senses were treated like the equivalent of a back alley mugging. They were beaten and left for dead.
He back-peddled, almost running backwards out of the doorway behind him and onto the stoop. Carl tripped and fell back on to his bottom, and to his complete embarrassment, fired a round from the shotgun into the wall of the house, a few feet above the gaping hole in the wall where the front door once stood.
Carl rose and found that he was crying, tears rolling down his cheeks like they were fleeing in terror from his body. He couldn’t do this. It was too much. He hadn’t even made it through the first few steps into the house.
He turned and walked away. He decided to give up on the whole thing. It suddenly struck him that he’d much rather be at home with his dog, Max.
Max was a great big black Labrador with nothing but love for Carl. Max needed Carl. What was he doing here, getting into someone else’s business?
He had made it to the end of the drive before he stopped himself. The spot on his forehead, where the little girl had kissed him, began to radiate with warmth. A warmth that he found comforting. He turned back and had just taken a step toward the house when a voice spoke in his mind.
“Where you going, boy?” the voice asked. It was the man in black.
“I’m going into that
house,” Carl said aloud as he took another step.
“No, son. You don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?” Carl took another step.
“Well, you might go and get yourself killed. You want to die?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Of course not. So why don’t you just turn on around and go home to your dog.”
“I can’t do that,” Carl said, taking another step.
“And why is that?”
“I’m supposed to stop you.”
The man in black laughed inside Carl’s head. “Stop me? Boy, you sure are a funny one. What makes you think that a hick cop like you can stop someone like me?”
“You do.”
“Me?” the man in black laughed again. “Son, do you have any idea who am I?”
“No, not really. But I know that you don’t want me in that house. That tells me that you’re afraid; afraid of me, and of what I might do.”
“Afraid!” the man in black laughed some more as Carl moved closer and closer to the house. “Son, you really are a dumb kid. You know that? I have power. Real power. You’ve see what I can do.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen you kill my friends.”
“Then just what is that you think you’re gonna do, son?” the man in black chuckled.
“That’s easy,” Carl said as he stepped up onto the stoop. “I’m going to come in there. I’m going to find you. And then I’m going to kill you.”
The man in black was silent.
Carl touched his forehead. “Give me the strength,” he prayed.
The duffle full of ammunition hung heavily on Carl’s right shoulder as he stepped back into Griswold House.
Hell had been replaced by modest furnishings that contrasted with the lavishness of the home’s sprawling size. Carl had never been inside Griswold House before today and expected a dwelling of such grand proportions and magnitude to be filled with only the most expensive treasures, the rarest of art, and the finest in technological achievement. And while he did find some of this as he stepped over the threshold and into the front room of Griswold House, he found it to be subtle and sparse instead of garish and in your face.
Carl moved deeper into the house,
It wasn’t long before he began to pick up the familiar scent of smoke in the air. He sniffed, tasting the scent, looking about him for any hint of fire. Yet – he sniffed again – this wasn’t the kind of smoke that came from fire. Not a house fire anyway, this wasn’t wood smoke. Nor was it the smoke of a cigarette, cigar, or any other tobacco. No, there was something dark in this scent. Fire and brimstone. Unholy. Like the fires in the very forges of Hell itself. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. But that’s why he was here, right?
Carl pumped a round into the shotgun and continued further into the house, seeking out the origin of the unholy stench. It didn’t take long. Carl stepped into a room so full of books that it had to be the library. Shelves that stretched to the ceiling lined the walls.
Carl had never seen so many books outside of a Barnes and Noble. He wanted to stay and browse through the collection, but he didn’t stop … or at least, he hadn’t planned on stopping. He was somewhat forced to halt when the owner of the smoky stench strode into the library from the opposite door.
It wasn’t at all human. Carl could see this by the way the creature’s curled black horns scrapped along the ten foot high ceilings. It was blood red and covered in fur. The smell of brimstone and rot emanated from the twin plumes of smoke that rolled slowly from the thing’s nostrils which were perched unnaturally at the end of its wide, squat snout. Long dark teeth protruded upwards from the creature’s massive under bite. It held twin swords in arms that were thick with muscle and were bigger than Carl’s torso. Its goat legs ended in coal black hooves. Its only adornment was a small gold pendant, a circle of gold, which hung around the thing’s neck on a leather cord. Carl began to sweat from the heat that rolled off of the monstrosity in waves.
“You must be Officer Friendly,” the thing spoke in a voice so deep and menacing that it put Darth Vader to shame.
“What gave it away,” Carl said in a clear, unwavering voice, his confidence surprising even himself. “The police uniform with the name patch?” Carl gestured with his chin toward the patch that said ‘Friendly’ sewn just above the left breast pocket.
“Sarcasm,” it said. “Nice.”
“I need you to move.”
“I can’t do that, meat. I have my instructions. You aren’t to pass.”
“Well,” Carl looked around nervously. “Maybe I’ll just back on out of here and take another route.”
“Sorry, meat. I can’t allow that either.”
“Well, I can’t allow you to keep me here.”
“Look, it’s really simple,” the thing said. “I’m to keep you here in this room. You try and leave and I will kill you, and I won’t do it quickly. And believe you me, if there’s one thing I know about, it’s killing people. The name’s Ed, by the way.”
Carl shot Ed in the face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“WE CAN KEEP AN eye on pretty much everything that’s going on throughout and around the house from this room,” Burt said as he showed Lucy and Tim around the panic room. The tour lasted about thirty seconds and ended with the computer and its bank of monitors.
At the end of the tour, Lucy realized how tired she was. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept.
She glanced over at the beds in the back of the room. They were currently unoccupied. Beatrice and Danny sat at the table putting a puzzle together, and Burt and Tim continued to scrutinize the security monitors. So Lucy made her way over to the beds, hoping to get the chance to take a little nap.
There were two beds total. A toddler-sized bed – a bear-sized toddler bed, and a large queen-sized bed. The toddler bed looked just the right size for Lucy so she gave it a try. But like most toddler beds, this one was nothing more than a metal frame and thin mattress. It was just a bit too uncomfortable.
The queen sized bed looked nice and plump, so Lucy climbed up onto one side, lay down, and to her disappointment, found it to be a little too soft. She was about to give up on the idea of sleep when she noticed that this bed wasn’t a typical bed. This bed was a Sleep Number bed. So she rolled over to the other side and gave it a try. She sighed with content. It was just right. She wasn’t sure who this side was made for, Burt or Beatrice, but Lucy realized that she had just found her Sleep Number.
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift. It wasn’t long before sleep tracked her down and threw a dark bag over her head, shutting out the rest of the world.
She entered the world of dreams where she did the kinds of activities she was never able to do in real life. She flew under her own power. She swam the depths of the oceans with no breathing apparatus. She made a goulash that most found quite tasty. She climbed Mount Rushmore and picked George Washington’s nose. She saw it all and she did it all. Then, at last, she woke, feeling rested and content.
She sat up in bed and looked over at the clock on the wall. She’d only been sleeping for about five minutes. She sighed, stretched, yawned, and got out of bed to join Beatrice and Danny at the table. It looked like they had finished the puzzle that they had originally started with before Lucy took her nap, and were now deep into another one.
“Would you mind a little help?” Lucy asked, sitting at the table.
“Well,” Beatrice said, smiling. “That’s up to Danny, he’s the puzzle master.”
Danny seemed to be ignoring both of them as he picked up pieces and fit them togeth
er with nothing more than a quick look over the table with each piece.
“What do you say, Danny?” Lucy asked. “May I join in?”
“Sure,” Danny said enthusiastically without looking up.
Lucy studied the pile of puzzle pieces, realizing quickly that they all looked alike to her. She was about to give up when Tim walked up to the table.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” He asked Lucy.
“Sure,” she said, rising. “Sorry I wasn’t much help, Danny.”
“That’s okay,” Danny said, still not looking up. “You tried, and that’s all that matters.”
Beatrice smiled with pride and ruffled the fur on top of Danny’s head. She looked up at Lucy and directed the smile at her.
“He’s a good kid,” Lucy said.
“He’s the best,” Beatrice replied.
Lucy followed Tim over to the closed door. Tim took her right hand in his and spoke.
“Who’s Lucy?”
Well crap , she thought, but aloud she said, “I am. That’s my real name.”
“Your real name?” Tim looked hurt. “What else have you been hiding from me, Golds?”
Golds, his pet name for her.
“Just that, Tim.”
“Just that. Just your real name and your marriage. Those were the only two things you hid from me?”
“Well, you already know about my hair.”
Tim smiled, “You can’t be together as long as we have and not know that one of us has been bleaching their hair. And I knew it wasn’t me.”
“I guess not,” she smiled too.
“But, come on, Golds. Your real name? Your marriage? Those are two pretty big things to hide from someone. Especially someone you claim to love.”
“I do love you, but-”
She had to stop talking. It wasn’t guilt that made her stop. Or fear. Or even anger. No, it was none of those things. Her reason for stopping midsentence was simple. She couldn’t talk because Tim was kissing her.
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