The Protectors (Night Fall ™)

by Val Karlsson

  The creaking stopped again with a thunk! I heard the door swing open and bang against the basement wall. Next came the sound of feet landing on the ground. Then footsteps. I could see a flashlight leading my stepfather toward my mother. My heart was pounding, but I felt paralyzed.

  16

  Where is he?” I heard my stepfather shout. “I

  know he’s down here!”

  “Please, Sal . . .”

  “You always take his side, don’t you? You and that boy—you always wanted to push me out!”

  Chains were rattling and dragging across the floor. My mother screamed, “No! Sal, please, it’s not true. We never—”

  “Shut up!” he shouted. “Where is he?”

  I heard a muffled thud as he threw my mother onto the floor. Something inside me snapped. Now that I knew she was alive, I couldn’t let him hurt her anymore.

  I raced toward the enclosure. It was dark, but the faint light from my mother’s lamp shining through the now-opened door was enough for me to see what was in front of me—my enraged stepfather. He was holding something long and metal in his right hand.

  My reflexes kicked in. I tried to whip past Sal to get to my mother, but he grabbed me by the shirt collar with his left hand. He raised his right hand. I could see the metal object better now. It was the trocar—the sharp, pointed instrument we used to drain bodies.

  I kicked one of Sal’s knees as hard as I could. He buckled to the ground, losing his hold on my collar. I rolled away. As he righted himself, I groped in the darkness for something—anything—I could use to hurt him.

  He was coming toward me, the glinting trocar still in hand. He shouted, “I’ve had enough of this, enough of you!” I could feel his saliva spraying my face. “She always loved you more than she loved me! Always!”

  “She could have loved both of us!” I screamed back at him. “Don’t you see? You pushed yourself out. You did this to yourself!”

  “No, no . . .” he said, panting. He sounded like he was getting tired. But then, without warning, he lunged at me, tackling me to the ground. I thrashed about, throwing punches at his eyes and nose. He dodged me every time. I tried sliding out from under him, but he was too strong and heavy. He grabbed both my hands in one of his. “You want to take her from me? You can never take her from me!” He held the trocar against my throat.

  “Help us!” my mother wailed. I glanced away from Sal and saw that my mother was halfway out of the enclosure, at the end of her chain. Her whole body was shaking. Her eyes danced in their sockets. It looked like she was having a seizure. Sal followed my gaze, never lifting the trocar from my neck. “Help us!” my mother whispered.

  “You shut up!” Sal yelled at her. Then, turning back to me, “I told you to stay out of my business! I told—” Sal’s eyes widened. The trocar in his hand dissolved into grains of metallic sand. I could feel it slipping through his hand and onto my neck. Sal loosened his grip on me. Then, as if lifted by invisible hands, Sal’s entire body rose. I scrambled up and out of the way as an unseen force slammed him hard against the wall.

  The Protectors! Sal struggled against the invisible hands, screaming at me to help him.

  I ran to my mother. She had stopped shaking but lay exhausted on the ground. Her eyes were barely open. “Mom?” I pulled her into a sitting position. “Mom, are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I was so afraid. . . . I called for the Protectors. I’ve never been so close to their world. . . .” She collapsed against me. I glanced at Sal still struggling against his invisible enemies. I didn’t know how long it would last. I had to get my mother out of there. I needed something that could break her chain.

  I felt along the wall, frantically looking for a tool. Suddenly, I heard something clatter to the floor, as if it had been pushed off the wall just a few feet in front of me. I raced to pick up the object—an ax. I grabbed the ax and rushed back to my mother. I began hacking away at the chain until one of the links cracked and I was able to free her.

  We raced to the dumbwaiter, and I pushed my mom inside. I knew it couldn’t hold us both.

  “You can work the ropes and get up there, right?” I asked.

  She nodded with tears in her eyes. “I’ll hurry,” she said. “I don’t know how long. . . .” She glanced at Sal still pinned to the wall.

  “I know,” I said. “Quick, please go!”

  She started pulling herself up, and I picked up the ax again.

  “Let me go!” Sal yelled, thrashing his arms and legs at the unseen hands.

  A moment later I heard my mother make it into the house. As I reached to grab the dumbwaiter ropes and pull it back down, something tackled me from behind. On the ground, I turned to face Sal. The Protectors had lost their grip on him. Now it was up to me. I was still clutching the ax. I tried to swing it at him from the floor, but my arm wasn’t strong enough.

  Sal must have been surprised by my move, because he let go of me long enough for me to get back on my feet again. But he soon regained his composure and his full strength. He grabbed my right arm, squeezing and twisting it until I dropped the ax. Quickly, I kicked it away with my feet. Sal let go of my arm and raced to retrieve the weapon. With all my strength, I leaped at him from behind, knocking him to the ground. He rolled around and started punching me. I heard a faint wailing sound somewhere above us. Police sirens, I thought just as everything went black.

  17

  I opened my eyes to a blur. Two figures hovered over me. Slowly they came into focus. It was my mother and Aisha.

  My mother saw me blink and yelped. She came closer and smiled the warm, wide grin that I remembered from years ago. She had already regained some color in her face.

  “Luke! Thank goodness!” She bent over and kissed me. “You’ve been out cold for three full days!”

  That’s when I realized I was hooked up to an IV in a hospital room.

  “What happened to Sal?” I asked.

  “He’s alive. But the police took him away,” my mother explained. “There will be a trial. He’s probably going to spend the rest of his life in jail.”

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Aisha said. She kissed my forehead.

  “Mom . . .” I could barely talk, my throat was so dry. “What happened? How did Sal capture you?”

  My mother sighed deeply and began to tell her story. Sal had followed her to Mrs. McKenzie’s house, but she hadn’t realized he was behind her. On the way back, he’d called her on her cell phone.

  “He told me he was driving behind me and that he wanted to talk. I could see him in my rearview mirror. I agreed to pull over,” she explained. She had pulled over on a back road. But when she got out of the car, he attacked her. He tied her up and put her in his car. Then he pushed her car into the wall and set it ablaze with a few matches and some lighter fluid.

  “He hit me in the head and knocked me out,” she said, shuddering. “When I woke up, I was chained in the lower basement. But I called to my Protectors to help me, Luke. And they did. They sent you.”

  Suddenly, it all made sense. The weird tracks on my iPod, the song on the radio, Sheila speaking, the rash on Alice, the letters on my pancakes—they had all been messages from my mother’s Protectors. The creaking in the walls at night had been Sal going up and down in the dumbwaiter! That was probably how he’d managed to get giant Frankie down to the prep room too. And, I really had heard my mother scream at night. I’d heard her chains rattling. I thought about Sal’s drawing of my mother in his sketchbook. He had drawn her alive among the dead. And here she was in front of me—alive!

  A few weeks later, I felt like myself again. My mother and I loaded up the back of a truck with our bare essentials—we’d sold everything in the house, including the hearse. We moved to a small house across town. It was less than a block from Aisha’s. After he heard what had happened with my mother, Lincoln showed up to help us move. It looked like we would be friends again after all.

  I called Bert and apolog
ized about running out on him at the Chowder Hut that day. By the end of the call, I’d told him everything. He calls me from time to time. I’m going to meet the rest of his family when I visit him at his cabin this summer.

  I’ve started going back to school, and my mother works as a cosmetician, doing the hair and makeup of living people. We’ve left the whole death business behind us, although my mother continues to hold séances and other rituals. I know that our Protectors are always following us, always watching us, and it doesn’t creep me out. I am protected.

  Everything’s fine in Bridgewater. Really . . .

  Or is it?

  Look for these other titles from the

  Night Fall collection.

  THE CLUB

  The club started innocently enough. Bored after school, Josh and his friends decided to try out an old game Sabina had found in her basement. Called “Black Magic,” it promised the players good fortune at the expense of those who have wronged them. Yeah, right.

  But when the club members’ luck starts skyrocketing— and horror befalls their enemies—the game stops being a joke. How can they end the power they’ve unleashed? Answers lie in an old diary—but ending the game may be deadlier than any curse.

  MESSAGES FROM BEYOND

  Some guy named Ethan Davis has been texting Cassie. He seems to know all about her—but she can’t place him. He’s not in Bridgewater High’s yearbook either. Cassie thinks one of her friends is punking her. But she can’t ignore the strange coincidences—like how Ethan looks just like the guy in her nightmares.

  Cassie’s search for Ethan leads her to a shocking discovery—and a struggle for her life. Will Cassie be able to break free from her mysterious stalker?

  SKIN

  It looks like a pizza exploded on Nick Barry’s face. But bad skin is the least of his problems. His bones feel like living ice. A strange rash—like scratches—seems to be some sort of ancient code. And then there’s the anger . . .

  Something evil is living under Nick’s skin. Where did it come from? What does it want? With the help of a dead kid’s diary, a nun, and a local professor, Nick slowly finds out what’s wrong with him. But there’s still one question that Nick must face alone: How do you destroy an evil that’s inside you?

  THAW

  A July storm caused a major power outage in Bridgewater. Now a research project at the Institute for Cryogenic Experimentation has been ruined, and the thawed-out bodies of twenty-seven federal inmates are missing.

  At first, Dani Kraft didn’t think much of the breaking news. But after her best friend Jake disappears, a mysterious visitor connects the dots for Dani. Jake has been taken in by an infamous cult leader. To get him back, Dani must enter a dangerous, alternate reality where a defrosted cult leader is beginning to act like some kind of god.

  UNTHINKABLE

  Omar Phillips is Bridgewater High’s favorite local teen author. His Facebook fans can’t wait for his next horror story. But lately Omar’s imagination has turned against him. Horrifying visions of death and destruction come over him with wide-screen intensity. The only way to stop the visions is to write them down. Until they start coming true . . .

  Enter Sophie Minax, the mysterious Goth girl who’s been following Omar at school. “I’m one of you,” Sophie says. She tells Omar how to end the visions—but the only thing worse than Sophie’s cure may be what happens if he ignores it.