Sunblocked Summerhouse

by Mixi J Applebottom

  "There is a boy here,” said Wynne hesitantly.

  "Okay,” said Pear. "Did you try toast?"

  "Gregory is my friend. He thought that there was a monster inside me." Wynne swallowed nervously. "Do you think there's a monster inside you?"

  Aurora caught her breath loudly. And Barnett snapped, "Wynne, we've decided not to speak of this."

  "Yes,” said Pear. "Is there any toast for me?"

  Wynne quickly sliced the bread and threw it in the oven. Not three minutes later, there was toast for Pear. "Do you think they'll ever leave us alone?" asked Wynne, her tone flat as though she had already given up.

  "What do you mean a boy?" said Barnett. He was already taking off his suit jacket, rolling up the sleeves. He was ready to fight. He looked more muscular than the last time she had seen him, if that was even possible. All of his years doing movies, he'd always been fit. But now he looked downright dangerous.

  Aurora was wearing a long, thin dress, her breasts nearly popping out of the top. Her hands were dry, and for the first time that Wynne could remember, her nails were not perfectly done. Wynne handed her a piece of toast too. She nibbled like a mouse. Her eyes were shell-shocked and she seemed completely incapable of participating in any of the discussion.

  "What are we fighting,” said Barnett. Even though his phrase was like a question, it was more like a statement. Like the calm resolution that this was life now, ghost fighting was what they did. They no longer made movies; they fought the afterlife.

  "Gregory is the groundskeeper here. He's a young man, Mike came for a séance. He's supposed to be able to commune with the dead. However, I don't think he ever has before,” said Wynne sadly. "They were trying to talk to…" She looked nervously at Pear. "Um, so what happened is we met a little boy. He wants us to play a guessing game. If we get too many wrong answers, we can never leave here again."

  "How many questions so far?"

  "We have two wrong,” said Wynne. But both she and Barnett already understood the gravity of the situation. It was not like they expected a random spirit to abide by his own rules.

  They weren't even sure that spirits could abide by their own rules. Because it seemed to them that children, whether dead or alive, did as they pleased.

  Pear included.

  She was happily munching toast, seemingly disinterested in the grown-up conversation.

  They all heard a loud scrape in the hallway. And not a moment again before they heard it for the second time. Scrape. Thump. And not three minutes later before it happened again, only longer and louder. As if it was getting closer. Scrape. Thump.

  Aurora started to whimper, "Not again. Not again."

  Barnett put a heavy hand on her shoulder, attempting to comfort her, while his right hand was clenched, ready to fight.

  And they heard a muffled scream.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  "You only get one chance to answer my questions. And when you get them wrong, I will break something of yours,” said the boy with a big grin.

  "What you talking about?" Mike said nervously. His knuckles were growing white around the club he had made. He was ready to swing.

  “What is my mother's name?" said the boy. "I've been waiting too long for you to answer this one. What. Is. Her. Name!" His solid black eyes were flashing as his teeth seemed to grow bigger and shinier with every shouted word.

  Mike cringed back. He desperately tried to think through what he had seen on the drawings, or if he had seen anything, anywhere to describe who his mother was.

  "A… I don't know." whimpered Mike.

  "Her name is Agatha," the little boy said and he leapt upon Mike.

  Mark was swinging his club as quickly as he could, trying to fend off the boy. But it happened so fast. The boy grabbed his arm twisted it behind his back.

  His left arm was now twisted, and his right arm was still clubbing at the boy.

  The little boy turned his wrist and pressed his knee on his forearm. "This is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me," whispered the little boy with a naughty sneer, and pulled up on the man's wrist as hard as he could.

  His forearm had no chance, and both bones snapped.

  Mike screamed, a full-on, loud, hallway-echoing scream.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  "I have no idea how to help you,” said Pear.

  Wynne frowned. "But why did you come?" asked the girl, completely confused.

  "I wanted to see my cat,” said Pear. "Where is he?" She took a loud, crunchy bite of toast.

  Wynne stared at the little girl, hope suddenly fading away. What did she think this child could do? "But you have powers… I thought. I thought you could help me."

  "I wanted to see Calleo,” said Pear. "I know that you don't like the boy, and I know the boy doesn't like you. But I don't care about any of it. I want my cat."

  "Please? Please help us. The boy… he's not going to let us out of the house. We are trapped here, Pear. Just like when we were trapped at the penthouse. That was awful," whimpered Wynne. She was hopeful that “please” would crack the incredibly uninterested attitude of Pear. But she just frowned.

  "Pear, honey, listen to Wynne. If you can help, you should help,” said Aurora. She was scratching nervously at her arm. Wynne realized that her forearm had been scratched bloody. It was like Aurora was a completely different woman than the one that she used to know. A perfect manicure, completely trashed. She even seemed slightly heavier. As if she hadn't been obsessively dieting and working out. There was something about it that particularly terrified Wynne, watching the famous actor's wife fall apart.

  "I just want to see Calleo,” said Pear, and this time, her voice took on a threatening tone. Immediately, Aurora shrank back. Wynne wondered what had been happening while they had been apart. What exactly had Pear been up to? Was she safe?

  "Why are you afraid of your own daughter?" whispered Wynne.

  Aurora looked up at her, her eyes wide with clear surprise. She opened her mouth but then closed it. And then she opened it again, but before she spoke, Barnett interrupted.

  "No one is afraid of Pear,” said Barnett firmly. "If she doesn't want to help you, she doesn't have to. She's a small child. Why did you force her to come here? Why did you force us to come here! Pear, are you ready to go?"

  But even with this interaction, Wynne could not help but notice that Pear was being politely asked, not ordered. It was like neither parent had any grip on the child anymore. It turned Wynne's stomach. A thin layer of fear ran through her.

  But before she could respond to either Aurora or Barnett, or even the idea that Pear was not going to help them, the situation turned.

  "This cat?" asked the boy.

  All three of them turned their heads nervously. He was holding Calleo by the scruff of his neck. And the cat was not fighting. Instead, he was hanging limply with his eyes shut, as if he had given up entirely.

  Aurora let out an audible gasp of terror and shrank back into the wall, cringing, sliding down it into the fetal position. Wynne could immediately hear her muttering, "This is not happening. This can't happen again."

  Barnett stood, his hands clenched and his arms lifted from his sides. He was ready to fight.

  The boy smiled, his sharpened teeth glistening with blood. Wynne whimpered, "What did you bite?"

  But then Pear stood. "I'll help you now, Wynne!" Her tiny foot planted itself on the table and she launched into the air at the boy.

  He opened his mouth and swallowed her whole.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Gregory woke up. He could hear a muffled sob.

  His shoulder was killing him. It took him a while to remember why. The boy had bitten him. But not only that, he was now lying in a bed. He was tucked in and the dresser was slid partway in front of the door.

  He looked around the room, and there was a purple mug sitting on the nightstand. It looked like someone had been using this room. His ears perked up as he heard another unfamiliar soun
d in the hallway.

  He stood slowly. His left arm was hanging limply now. Carefully, he took his T-shirt off and ripped it. He tied his shirt into a sling and gently slipped his arm into it. It helped with the immediate pain, taking the sharp screaming feeling down to a steady and serious ache.

  He opened the door a crack and peered out into the hallway. Mike was lying face down on the ground. His arm was twisted behind him.

  He wasn't moving.

  Gregory listened quietly before finally gathering up all his courage and whispering, "Mike?"

  Mike didn't respond. Greg started to wonder if he was still breathing. He pushed the door open a little bit further and nervously stepped into the hallway. He looked left and right, scanning the rest of the hallway for signs of the boy. But he saw nothing.

  Quickly, he hobbled over towards Mike, leaned forward, and pressed his fingers to the man's throat, feeling for a pulse. He carefully looked around like a terrified gazelle.

  He didn't feel for a heartbeat because he could feel the man breathing. He gently shook his shoulder. "Mike! Wake up. What happened?"

  It took a few minutes, but Mike finally roused. The first thing he did was let out a cry of pain. Gregory seemed to be holding his breath, waiting for the other man to slowly sit up. His arm looked dislocated. He helped the other man gently untwist his arm. The forearm was badly broken, and Mike was shivering with shock or pain.

  "We're gonna have to stabilize this," Gregory said.

  Mike nodded. He didn't seem up for speaking, seemingly putting all of the effort into keeping the tears and the cries of pain from escaping his lips. But he motioned for Greg to follow him, and they went to the front door. The side table was still broken in pieces. Gregory had only one good arm himself, but he wasn't forced to hold his other arm as carefully as Mike had to carry his.

  He took the splintered pieces of the side table, breaking off two long, flat pieces of trim. He hoped this would be enough for a splint. Then they hobbled back to the bedroom that Gregory had woken up in. It took both of them to tear the sheet into long strips, each man using his one good arm while carefully trying not to further injure the other. As soon as they had it in strips, Gregory carefully took his T-shirt back off so he could wear it. They fashioned a splint for Mike's broken arm and a new sling for Gregory's mutilated shoulder.

  "Is that helping?" Gregory asked.

  "Now I can't feel the bones rattling,” said Mike miserably. "He asked me his mother's name."

  "Shit. Are we still playing?" asked Gregory.

  "Playing what? Did you agree to play a game with him? Now we’re going to be stuck here until we lose. Because there is no way in hell he's going to let us win,” snarled Mike, suddenly viciously angry at the younger man.

  "It's not like we have a choice,” said Gregory, immediately hostile.

  But then they both clearly heard noise in the kitchen.

  "We should go help,” said Gregory.

  "No,” said Mike. "If he wants to kill me, he'll have to come here and find me."

  "We are better off together," whispered Gregory, and he stood and left the room.

  But Mike refused to follow.

  Chapter Sixty

  Everything was silent. It was like the entire room was holding its breath.

  Then Wynne started to hear it, the loud thumping crash of her heart in her ears. It was a whooshing thump, whooshing thump. In between each loud, crashing thump was a scream. As she looked up, she could see Aurora, her hands in her hair, tearing out chunks as she screamed.

  Wynne couldn't believe what she was seeing. The boy ate Pear. The boy was smaller than Pear by at least a foot. Yet he swallowed her whole! The corners of his mouth had torn from the intense stretching that his jaw had to do to accommodate a tiny frame. For a moment, he looked almost inflated like a balloon. Wynne could see her tiny little feet kicking in his belly. And then he snapped back to normal size.

  His eyes seem even darker, even shinier. His teeth were still dripping with red blood. Wynne was frozen; she couldn't seem to move her body.

  Barnett lunged for him with a shout. Aurora's scream was high-pitched and terrified, Barnett's was more like one of a warrior. It was low and it was angry. "Give me back my daughter!"

  Both hands shoved between those sharpened teeth, trying to yank the boy's mouth back open. But Barnett quickly screamed with pain as those teeth chopped down and broke through his fingertips. Seconds later, the boy was standing farther away from all of them. Wynne found her feet and she ran over and grabbed Barnett. "Wait,” she whispered.

  The shock was setting in. Barnett was shivering from head to toe, his fingertips broken on nearly every finger. Blood was dripping down his hands.

  "If you win, you can get her back. And you guys can all leave. But for now, we play the guessing game," the boy said snottily. "She can't play; she's not normal."

  And with that, he started to back out of the room. He paused, leaning on the doorway and holding up Calleo again by the scruff of his neck. "If you get this one wrong, I will kill this cat. I don't like him,” said the boy. "Where did I die?"

  Then he vanished.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Gregory could hear a loud wail. It was like a woman screaming. Not a scream of pain, the scream of… something different. Something more maternal.

  For a moment, he wished it was a scream of pain; at least that would make sense to him. At least he could understand pain. But what could the boy have possibly been doing to Wynne to make her scream like that? He had a momentary image of the boy explaining his shoulder bite. Perhaps Wynne's shrill wail of despair was about him. It was funny to be hoping, here in this terrible house. Hoping that Wynne was worried about him.

  But hope is something strange; it wasn't just hope that she cared, but hope that he wasn't forgotten. He wanted her to still be trying to keep him alive just like he was walking down the hallway looking for her. Would she still be in the kitchen?

  It didn't take long for them to find it. The hallway suddenly let them through. The smell of fresh baked bread was prominent in the air. There was a plate with toast on it, at the small kitchen table. Something seemed incredibly wrong with the scene before him. The way one of the chairs was pulled out from the table, it looked hasty. "Wynne?" said Gregory rather quietly. He wasn't sure if the boy was listening. He wasn't sure where the boy could be. The boy was growing more violent. And more dangerous.

  As he stood there, he saw the chair slowly push itself in. The hairs on the back of his neck stood tall. How many spirits were here?

  He reached out his hand and nervously touched the air, but he felt nothing. Then he heard it again, the cry of a woman. It seemed absurdly close, in the corner of this very room. He walked towards it, looking around confused. "Wynne?”

  "We will get her back." A man's voice. It was muffled and trembled.

  "Who took Wynne?" asked Gregory, louder.

  "My baby,” said a soft shrill voice, obviously the one that had been screaming. She was softer now, and more muffled like the man.

  "Can you hear me?" Gregory suddenly shouted. He was getting frustrated; this conversation was ridiculous. He had no time to talk to ghosts. He needed to find Wynne, find out what was going on. Maybe he should try the book Witchcraft and Demons.

  "Gregory?" Wynne said, incredibly muffled but definitely her. Her next sentence, or paragraph, or whatever it was she said next was a blur of mumbles. It was like she was fading out of tune.

  Like an old radio.

  "I can't hear you!" Gregory shouted. He tried walking towards her voice, which was on the other side of the table, he thought.

  But then she shouted, "Do you know where the boy died?"

  He could hear Wynne.

  They had another question to answer.

  "I'll go look,” shouted Gregory, and his thought of exorcism vanished.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Mike shoved the dresser back in front of the doorway. He was frantically pacing bac
k and forth. His arm ached.

  He wished there was some alcohol, then he would drink until he couldn't think, until he couldn't breathe. Then he contemplated that if he had enough alcohol, he wouldn't have to wait for the ghosts to kill him because he could do it himself.

  He didn't have any other methods to end it. He briefly contemplated hanging, but he didn't think he would be able to get it set up with his arm like this.

  He didn't particularly want to die; he just didn't want to be killed by the ghosts.

  Was there a difference?

  He certainly thought so. Especially if one was the death of a thousand cuts, broken bones, a clunk on the head, a bit of electricity.

  He didn't want to think about what would be next.

  He had seen the bite marks. The boy’s teeth were sharp.

  That black smile.

  He was the kind of thing that could make hell freeze over and somehow put the sinking feeling in your stomach, make hair stand on end, all at once. The big final show.

  And he was absolutely sure that death would come tomorrow, if not today.

  He closed his eyes and he started to think he tried to set the boy’s room on fire. But…

  He hadn't tried to set this room on fire. He checked his pockets and found the little box of matches. And he already had a torn up sheet.

  He carefully set to work shredding a few more spots the flame had somewhere to catch.

  Eight matches.

  Maybe he could still burn this house down.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Gregory tried to hustle but accidentally clipped his shoulder into the door frame. He let out a pain-filled scream and clamped his good hand over his mouth. The pain was crawling through his body so violently, he dry heaved. Then his stomach suddenly let loose.

  Vomiting didn't make the pain go away, but it did give him back his brain. He walked slowly at first, and then finally, he was so nervous he might walk his sore, dripping shoulder into a wall again, that he started to lean his good right shoulder against the wall. There was comfort in the smooth wood paneling. If his good shoulder was pressed to the wall, he couldn't possibly hit his other shoulder into anything. That was what he kept telling himself, so that he could will himself to walk faster. Every time he increased his speed, a little bit of fear ran down his back.