by Brian Hodge
Their cold, glowing eyes had stared at him as he quivered in his bed as though they knew him, knew who he was, knew him maybe even better than he knew himself. Wasn't that what Dr. Fielding kept telling him? That if he didn't open up his memories, he would never really know himself.
A sudden, loud tapping rattled the kitchen window. Kip's stomach tightened and with a twisted shout, he spun out of his chair and fell to the floor, knocking the table leg with his shoulder so his half-filled glass of milk did a 360 spinout. A white fantail of milk shot across the table and then funneled onto the floor, making a loud, splashing sound as Kip looked, terror-stricken, at the window.
A looming black shape filled the glass. In his panic, it took him a second or two to see that it was his friend, Patrick. The expression on Pat's face was a curious mixture of concern and humor as he peered in at Kip.
Embarrassed, Kip stood up, waving for his friend to come in as he went to the sink for some paper towels. He got back down on the floor on his hands and knees and started to wipe up the mess. Pat walked in, letting the screen door slam shut behind him.
"What's the matter with you?" Pat asked, still looking like he didn't know whether to laugh or be scared.
"You surprised me is all," Kip said as he wiped the edge of the table to stop the trickle of milk.
"Why're you so jumpy?" Pat asked. He made his way over to the counter, grabbed a glass from the cupboard, and then opened the refrigerator to help himself to the milk.
"I was spaced out, I guess," Kip said. He watched without saying a word as Pat filled his glass and then turned to put the gallon jug back into the refrigerator.
"You want some more before I put it back?" he asked.
Kip shook his head. "Naw."
Pat put the milk away and then tilted his head back, taking several long, deep swallows. The milk left a white mustache on his upper lip, which he wiped away with the sleeve of his shirt.
"I was going to the mall with my mom," Pat said. "She has some shopping to do, and I was thinking maybe we'd check out a movie."
Kip cocked his head to one side and looked past Pat to the kitchen window, more than half-expecting to see something else out there. To disguise his discomfort, he made a little show of tossing the milk-soaked paper towels at the wastebasket.
"Three from downtown," Pat said when the soggy wad bounced off the rim and fell in. "Anyway, you wanna come?"
Kip shrugged. The idea of having something to do appealed to him; it'd be nice not to just hang around the house alone. Then again, if he really was running away from home tomorrow, he had to check everything out one last time, and he couldn't very well do that with anyone else around, even one of his best friends.
"What's playing?" Kip asked as he straightened out his chair and sat back down. He shoved the nearly empty package of Oreos over to Pat, who took a cookie, separated the halves, and started skimming off the white cream with his upper teeth. The gap between his two front teeth left a narrow ridge in the cream filling.
"I think a new Steve Martin movie opened, but it might be rated R."
Kip shrugged again and then reached across the table for a cookie. "I dunno," he said, trying to sound relaxed, even though his heart was still doing flip-flops in his chest. "There's some stuff I have to do, 'n I'd like to get it done before my dad gets home."
"Com'on," Pat said, snatching another cookie, this time chomping it whole instead of dissecting it. "My mother'll get us in even if it's rated R."
"I dunno," Kip said. He kept glancing at the kitchen window. "Like I said—"
"Okay, fine," Pat said. He drained off his glass of milk, got up, and went to the sink to rinse the glass before starting for the door. He knew Kip well enough to know that no amount of convincing would get him to change his mind. "Just thought I'd ask."
"Thanks, anyway," Kip said as they both went outside.
At the door, he leaned on the jamb as Pat vaulted over the porch railing to the ground. He ran down to the end of the driveway where he had left his bike, and with a quick running leap, got onto the seat and started pedaling. Within seconds, he was down the street and out of sight.
For a long time Kip stood in the doorway, staring down the road where his friend had gone. The slanting rays of the sun cast long, gray-speckled shadows across the road. Off in the distance, someone's dog was barking. It was a peaceful afternoon, but Kip couldn't push aside the thoughts that flickered like evil shadows in the back of his mind.
But he knew he had to do it.
He had to check out the side of the house and the windowsill. He was even ready to take his father's special magnifying glass—the one he had bought when he started his stamp collection a few years back—so he could give the siding and windowsill a thorough examination.
The first and easiest thing to do would be to go up to his bedroom and look at the sill from there. The morning after the dream, he had checked it, but he had been too scared. The dream was too fresh then for him to take his time and really study the sill. Sure, it had looked like claw marks in the wood, but he had dismissed them, trying to convince himself they weren't really claw marks. They had just been where the paint had chipped. And maybe some of the deeper gouges were where the ladder had scraped the wood when his father had washed the windows last fall.
Sure... That's all it was.
At least that's what he had been trying to believe for the past four days even now as he made his way slowly through the kitchen and living room, and started up the stairs to his bedroom.
When he thought about it—and he had thought about it a lot over the last few days—every rational shred of his mind told him there was no way something could have been up there. How could anything have gotten up that high without a ladder or something? There was no way that many things had gotten up there.
But then the memory of those eyes—so cold, so empty—came back, and Kip wasn't so sure.
His feet clomped heavily on the stairs, and all the time he thought he had probably been doubly foolish—once for even thinking what he had seen outside the window was real, and twice for not taking up Pat's offer to go to the movies.
But he had to be sure because if there had been something there, he damn well better know about it. If he was going to be camping in the woods, the last thing he needed to run into was—
He shivered as a buried memory tried to resurface.
"But what in the hell are they?" he said aloud just as his foot came to rest at the top of the stairs. He looked at his closed bedroom door as if it was the door to a jail cell on Death Row. Casting his glance back and forth from the bedroom door to downstairs to the door again, he bounced nervously on his toes. A hard lump was stuck in his throat, feeling like he'd swallowed a golf ball.
Ever since that dream the other night, he had carefully avoided even getting close to his window. The memory of those things outside floating in the night mist, clawing at his windowsill, stirred the water of deeper, darker thoughts—thoughts he knew he couldn't face... not yet, anyway.
His feet dragged heavily on the carpeting as he started down the corridor. He clenched both hands into bloodless fists and could feel the tips of his fingernails pressing into the heels of his palms. Breathing became increasingly difficult when he came up to the closed bedroom door and slowly extended his hand to the doorknob.
The metal was icy cold to his touch as he turned it slowly and pushed the door to let it swing inward.
His bedroom was suffused with dull, late-afternoon light. Soft gray shadows, like a wash of weak India ink, filled the corners by his bed and bureau. Above his bed, a dust-furred model of a Star Wars X-wing fighter hung, suspended by a thin black string. The gentle breeze of his entering the room stirred motes of dust that swirled like planets in lazy orbits. The stillness in the room, the absolute quiet whispered to him, not of calm and peace, but of danger lurking where the afternoon shadows deepened.
Kip took a gulping swallow of air that made him burp, bringing tears to his eyes. He
could leave right now. He could turn, get the hell out of there, slam the door shut, and never go back. What lurked outside the window could stay there and lurk all it wanted to; he wouldn't be there to feel those eyes and to see those floating, clawed things.
But he knew, too, like Dr. Fielding had said, that eventually he would have to face his fears because he also knew that's all they were: There weren't any real monsters. There couldn't be. What he had seen five years ago had been—
Real, his mind whispered, no matter how hard he tried to think otherwise.
His eyes bulged from his head as he fixed his gaze onto the window.
"No," he said aloud. "Not real." His voice, barely a squeak, did little to quiet his thoughts. He wanted to believe that what he had seen the day his mother died hadn't been real and that what he had seen outside the window hadn't been real. He had to look at the sill to prove to himself because if he could convince himself the things outside his window hadn't really been there, then maybe, just maybe, he could accept that he hadn't really seen those things kill his mother.
But as much as he wanted to believe all of this, he wasn't so convinced as he walked across the floor to the window.
A floorboard creaked under his feet—the only sound other than his sharp, raspy breathing. In the time it took him to make his way across the floor to the window, the shadows under the bed deepened. The white fringe of his bedspread rippled gently, but when he paused and looked at it, it was still. Nothing moved in the darkness under the bed.
The inside windowsill had been painted white years ago and was now a yellowing mess of chips and cracks. A Garbage Pail Kid sticker of "Sick Kip," which his friend Pat had given to him, was stuck in one corner of the window. Early morning sunlight had leeched most of its color. Every spring, as his father went around the house lowering the screens for summer, he'd washed the windows, but no matter how much Windex he used, he couldn't get rid of the milky film on the glass. The trees outside his window were rippled and distorted by the old glass.
Kip took a deep, shuddering breath as he twisted open the lock and then, gritting his teeth, pressed up on the sash. At first the window resisted, but then it gave, sliding all the way up the track. The counterweight inside the window frame drummed hollowly inside the wall.
A gentle breeze filtered in through the opened window, cooling Kip's face and arms and spinning dust motes in tiny tornadoes. Kip had been sweating, and the breeze made him shiver.
Even without looking hard, he could see on the outside edge of the windowsill something. He remembered seeing the same marks the morning after his nightmare—he was trying his best to convince himself that's all it had been, a nightmare—but now, as then, he tried to dismiss them as gouges that had always been there.
But in the setting sun, they did look fresh. The sill was powdery white, but these gouges hadn't been painted over. They must have been made after his father had painted the outside of the house.
"When was that?" Kip asked aloud. He shook his head, unable to remember if it had been two or three years ago.
He was so nervous he felt dizzy as he reached out both hands and undid the latches holding the window screen. As he ran the window up, his grip slipped on one side, and the screen caught halfway. He cried out when he skinned his knuckles on the aluminum frame. The sound of the latches snapping shut made Kip jump, so he didn't notice that his knuckles were bleeding until a bead of blood welled up and ran down between his fingers. Swearing softly under his breath, he put his fist to his mouth and sucked the blood.
After blotting his hand on his jeans, he snapped the latches open again and slid the screen the rest of the way up, giving it a little tug to make sure it wouldn't come slamming down when he leaned his head outside.
"Here goes," he said aloud.
He rested his hands on the sill and slowly ducked his head outside. The cool air felt almost like water as it washed over his face, driving the chill deeper into him. For a moment or two, he couldn't bring himself to look down, but finally, with a shuddering breath, he lowered his gaze to the outside sill.
His breath caught in his throat, and a low whimper sounded from him when he turned his head left and right, and saw that not only the sill, but the entire window frame was laced with a fine network of deep gouges.
Kip pulled back into his bedroom and, leaning forward, squeezed his head with both hands as though trying to stop the back of his skull from exploding.
"That can't be," he said, his voice wire-tight. "It can't be!"
But it was. By Jesus, it was!
He walked over to his bed and sat down, but the tension inside him was so strong he couldn't sit for long. He got up and began pacing back and forth; all the while slapping one hand into the other in time with his footsteps as he tried to accept that what he had seen was real.
Oh, sure, he could explain how the wood had gotten that way. He could tell himself some bird had clawed it up trying to build a nest there on the edge... or his father had made those marks with the ladder when he was washing windows... or that termites had tunneled into the wood. There were probably a dozen reasonable explanations, but none of them would wipe away the memory of seeing those tiny, brown faces with their lamp-like eyes peering in at him or of hearing those razor-sharp claws scraping against the bedroom window trying to get in so they could get him the way they had gotten his mother five years ago.
Panic welled up within Kip. He wanted to shout, to cry, to scream, but instead, he went back over to his bed and sat down, resting his chin in his hands as he fought for control.
If they were real and not just a product of his imagination, like Dr. Fielding was always saying, and if they really were after him—maybe because he had seen them kill his mother—he was going to have to fight back.
But what could one person do? he wondered.
There had been dozens of them, maybe hundreds that day five years ago. How could he fight them all?
Worst of all, who could he talk to about this?
He already was seeing a shrink one day a week because of what he had said he'd seen. If he told his father he'd seen those things outside his bedroom window, he'd get put away in a psych ward for sure.
So he decided he wouldn't tell anyone, and he wouldn't chicken out about running away. He'd face them and fight them if he had to, whatever they were. And if they got him... well, they wouldn't get him. That's all there was to it. One of the reasons he was "borrowing" Marty's hunting knife was so he would have protection.
He stood up, brushed his hands on his pants, and then went back to the window. After another glance at the gouges, he slid the screen back down. What he had seen at the house site had terrified him so badly he was still having nightmares, but he was five years older now. He wasn't going to give in to his fears anymore. He was going to run away, and if he encountered any of those things in the woods, then they'd just better watch their asses.
With a new feeling of confidence—maybe because he was finally facing his fears the way Dr. Fielding was always telling him to—he went downstairs and got a glass of milk and made a peanut butter sandwich. Tomorrow, he would leave home, and then he'd prove to everyone—to his father, to Marty, and if he had to, even to those goddamned things—that no one was going to torment him.
Not anymore.
4
The sun had set, leaving a dark sky with a dusting of stars in the V-shaped opening to the Indian Caves. Al and Jenny had been so involved with each other they hadn't noticed how dark it was getting. Now, both of them were slick with sweat and panting with exhaustion as they rolled away from each other.
"Oh, man, that was great," Al said, gasping for breath. "But we gotta be getting on back."
His expectations for the afternoon had been totally fulfilled—perhaps too much. He'd been planning to see how far Jenny would go, and as it turned out, she had been the one to take the lead and keep it all afternoon and into the night. He was feeling like a racehorse after the Kentucky Derby.
"D
o we have to?" Jenny asked. She groped in the darkness until her hand came to rest on Al's stomach; then she started to slide her hand slowly downward.
"It's gotta be seven o'clock already," Al said. "'N my mom really gets pissed if I'm late for supper."
"You're already late," Jenny said as her hand tightened on him. A trembling pleasure blossomed in his groin, but two orgasms in three hours were enough for him. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her hand away.
"Tomorrow, all right?" he said as he curled up into a sitting position. "We can meet here. Maybe come alone, without Marty and Cassie."
"Sure. That'd be great," Jenny whispered. Again, she groped around until she found Al's crotch and started massaging him gently.
"Jesus, cut it out," he said sharply. "You're driving me crazy."
"I'm supposed to."
Digging his heels into the dirt floor, Al pushed back against the cave wall. He was only a few feet from where the large stone blocked the tunnel that went back into the darker, deeper tunnels. Feeling around in the darkness, he found a pair of jeans, but they seemed too small for him, so he tossed them over to where Jenny was sitting.
"These aren't mine," Jenny said, laughing. "What would my parents think if I came home wearing a boy's jeans?"
Al snickered. He found what he thought was his T-shirt and pulled it on over his head. He'd have to check to make sure it was right side out before he got home.
"Did you find my panties yet?" Jenny asked.
"I think I might have eaten them," Al replied with a chuckle. "Hey, give me my pants back, will yah?"
"I thought you had some matches. Light one so we can see what the Christ we're doing."
Al listened as Jenny scrambled about in the darkness, her fingers raking across the cave floor. A soft whizzing sound went past his face, and he heard his pants slap against the cave wall and fall to the floor.
"Oh, great. Thanks. Now I'll never find 'em." He crawled over to where he thought his pants were, but something stopped him. A cold hand wrapped around his ankle and pulled back so hard he fell face first onto the ground. His nose smashed into the dirt floor as a jolt of pain shot to the base of his skull. A gush of warm liquid—either mucus or blood—ran down his throat.