It sounded like a challenge. No one answered.
“We’ve still got the afternoon. That should be enough time. We shouldn’t be out after dark. Whatever is out there will have an easier time getting close to us, and Lissa and I will have a harder time getting a clean shot if it does. Ben, do you know of anyone in your neighborhood who hunted?”
Ben, seeming overwhelmed by what appeared to be a military commander in their midst, nodded silently.
“Who?”
“Mister Gray. He lived across the street and up a few houses. He and his kids, Karl and Brady, were duck hunters. Brady was in my grade and used to tell us about going on hunting trips.”
Jackson nodded. “Then it’s possible they also had a handgun. If not, a hunting rifle will have to do. We should check as soon as we’re done with lunch, bring back weapons if we can find them, and then whoever wants to go with me to the hospital can come along. That’s what I mean by a game plan.” He looked at Zolzaya. “We’ve got to take charge of our situation, or we’re going to become prey ourselves.”
“To what?”
“There are two, possibly three, things out there that appear to be hostile. That’s not enough?”
“Ooh, scary,” Mikiko said, not sounding scared at all.
Zolzaya didn’t respond.
Everything he said was justified, but something about it was wrong. In spite of what they’d seen—and other than the burn on Gary’s arm—nothing had actually hurt them. Even Margo looked like she was asleep, and the burn was more a warning than a serious injury. Jackson, though—he was drawing up evil from around him, imagining it into being. Lissa would have laughed at her for thinking this, but Zolzaya was convinced that it was true. He was summoning thunderclouds.
But Lissa said, “It sounds grim, but I think you’re right.”
“I wouldn’t mind having a little firepower against anything else that tries to get into the house,” Gary said.
“How about Lissa, Gary, and I go to see if there are guns in Ben’s neighbor’s house, and the others stay here?” Jackson said.
Which split them right along party lines. The tough ones versus the peaceniks. Although he was leaving Olivia there, too. Why was that?
And she looked none too pleased about it. Her face had tightened into a mask, and she wouldn’t meet Jackson’s eyes.
Jackson patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll be right back.”
“I can come, too.” Ben stood. “I’ve been in their house. I know where things are.”
“I suppose that’d be all right. But stay with us and don’t run off.”
Ben scowled at him. “I wouldn’t run off.”
But Jackson was already heading toward the door. Having given the command, he assumed nothing less than obedience.
The front door opened, then closed.
Zolzaya looked over at Olivia, who still sat, face tense and closed, staring at the remains of lunch. Mikiko munched on a biscuit. She’d already eaten four of them, and showed no sign of slowing down.
“Olivia,” Zolzaya said softly.
She looked up, and for a moment there was undisguised hostility in her eyes. “What?”
“Whoa. Calm down. I’m not the enemy.”
Olivia took an uneven, ratcheting breath. “Yeah. I know. I’m under stress, is all.”
“We all are. We have to support each other.”
“You the resident psychologist?” Olivia gave a harsh laugh. “You sound like my ex-boyfriend. ‘Calm down, do you want to talk about it? Let’s see if we can work together on this.’ Well, there’s no together any more, there’s nothing to work on. Jackson wants to run around and act tough like there’s a way to fix any of this shitty situation. The rest of you are flailing around like a bunch of beached fish. I wish I’d disappeared along with the rest of fucking humanity.”
“Wow,” Mikiko said. “Chill out, bitch.”
Olivia rounded on her, and for a moment, Zolzaya thought she was going to strike the girl. “I wasn’t talking to you,” she said through clenched teeth. “Bitch.”
“Stop it,” Zolzaya said. “We don’t need this. Olivia, you’re allowed to feel how you feel, and Mikiko, you need to leave her be. Whatever is behind this, we have to stick together if we are going to have a prayer of a chance.”
Mikiko shrugged, and took another bite of biscuit. “Whatever. Is there any beer in the house?”
Olivia stared at her for a moment longer, and then stood, her hip banging against the table, making the silverware rattle. She stalked out of the room, and for a second time, the front door opened and then slammed.
“Whatever,” Mikiko said again. “She does need to chill. She’s gonna blow a blood vessel, or something.”
“Maybe. But telling her that isn’t going to help.”
“Somebody has to.” She looked over at Zolzaya and smiled. “Hey, you ever had sex with a girl?”
Z stared at her, dumbfounded for a moment, certain she’d misheard the woman. “What?”
“I said, have you ever had sex with a girl?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“I—uh... no.” Zolzaya swallowed, frowning, and shook her head. “No.”
Mikiko leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table, cupping her hands beneath her chin. “You sure? You don’t know what you’re missing. We could use one of the upstairs bedrooms. No one would have to know.”
Once again, Zolzaya was reduced to a silent stare, her brows knit. Her brain hazed over, its clarity slowly swallowed up like a fogged mirror. She had never thought of herself as anything but straight, and yet there was something alluring about this girl with her odd makeup and strange clothing and even stranger mannerisms. Her come-on had a certain magnetic appeal….
But Zolzaya’s fugue state was interrupted by a loud report, followed by three more.
It took her a moment to realize they were gunshots.
6
THEY TURNED AWAY from the Voice, and many looked back longingly toward the place where they had heard it speak. For they recalled its allure, and its promises of repose and peace were being exchanged, they thought, for uncertainty and the deep shadows of the woods.
They had gone but a little further ahead when they heard another voice, and a man stepped out into the path.
He was tall, and wore only a pair of brown trousers, knotted at the waist. Bare-chested and barefoot, he stood blocking their way, leaning against a tree with one hand pressed to the trunk and the other reaching out toward them. The top half of his face was covered by a mask made of shining bronze, carved and polished, that swept upwards into a pair of antlers.
He smiled at the travelers, and his eyes glittered behind the eyeholes in the mask; and he said, What brings you children here into the dark woods, so far from your homes and villages?
And one said, The Sibyl told us that change had come upon us, and the only way to find our way was to cross the forest.
Strange advice, the man said, and his teeth gleamed white in a broad smile. You never know who you might meet, friend or foe, here in the wild woods.
—
LISSA WAS FLATTERED at first by Jackson’s decision that she should be armed. It was a boost to her confidence and a sop to her vanity. She always wanted to appear tough. To have a brusque ex-military man like Jackson Royce think she should be trusted as one of the two people to have a gun was about as close to a compliment as he’d ever give.
But as she walked up the street toward the Grays’ house, her confidence leaked away.
They were being trailed by two—three, if you counted the old woman Z had seen—creatures who were so far outside the purview of Lissa’s familiar, rational world that she didn’t even know how to think about them. After seeing the many-colored light the previous evening, and witnessing what it had done to Margo, there was no going back to her comforting illusion that all of these weird sightings were the products of stress and overactive imagination.
But
she couldn’t quite accept the alternative, either—that there were monsters on the loose, something from beyond her ken.
She smiled to herself. She was not ready to jump into believing in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster quite yet. There was still a rational process behind all of this. She was certain of it.
But that rational process was proving elusive, and Lissa’s courage was ebbing fast. She felt an uncertainty she never had before, not about her own capabilities, but about the nature of the world itself.
What the hell was that about?
It was what she’d seen that morning from the bridge. And what she saw two nights ago, in Julia’s sink. But she couldn’t tell them about that. They’d think she’d lost her mind. Worse—they’d think that she’d somehow been convinced that all of this foolishness was real. It couldn’t be real. And that was that.
“It’s right here.” Ben pointed up at an elegant house, tan with shutters painted a rich French blue. Pots of wilting marigolds and nasturtiums flanked steps that led onto a front porch with a narrow railing. “You think we’ll have to break a window?”
Lissa smiled at him. “Let’s check the door first.” She turned the handle. It swung open soundlessly. “See? No need to be vandals, Ben.”
“Good. I don’t think we should break things.”
“Why not?” Gary asked.
“There’s enough that’s already broken.”
The dimly-lit front room was dominated by a stereo and a 48-inch flat-screen television. Video game controllers lay on an oval rag rug in a tangle of wires.
Lissa’s nostrils quivered. There was an acrid odor in the room. Cats. They must have kept cats. It smelled like cat piss.
“Where do you think they may have kept their guns, Ben?” Jackson asked.
“I know Mister Gray had his hunting trophies down in the basement. You know, deer heads, and ducks and stuff like that. I think there was a gun case down there, but I’m not sure. I’ve only been down there a couple of times. Brady and me weren’t good friends, or anything, and Karl was three grades older.”
“That’s good enough to start with. Where’s the basement door?”
“I think…” Ben raised one hand to point, but that’s all he got out.
The smell was stronger, a miasma of dank decay and old blood. Ben turned a white, terrified face up to Lissa.
The floor vibrated beneath them, thudding concussions that rattled the windows in their frames. With a crash and a roar a door from a side room exploded outward so hard it was nearly taken off the hinges. Lissa whirled around. Standing in the doorway was a slouching beast whose arms were so long its hands nearly dragged on the floor. Long, dirty nails tipped its fingers. It had golden eyes set in a face that was warped, twisted like a waxen mask brought too close to a fire. The thing leered at them, only for a second, then leapt toward Gary, who was closest.
It grabbed at his throat, the talons on its fingers clicking together only an inch from Gary’s windpipe as he ducked away. The thing swung its other arm around, in a loose, easy motion, and drew scarlet gashes across Gary’s upper arm.
Lissa suddenly had the ghastly knowledge that she knew what this thing was, and what that implied paralyzed her. All she could do was stare in horror and dawning understanding, even though she knew if she didn’t move, it would be her death.
It reached out splayed claws toward Ben, who stood, small and helpless, only ten feet from it. Gary dodged back, screaming, “Hey! Hey!” so it turned its grotesque face on him again.
The crooked mouth opened, and it said, in a perfectly clear imitation of Gary’s voice, “Hey. Hey.” Then it swiveled its head back toward Ben, its open maw revealing blocky, crooked yellow teeth.
Gary looped one arm around Ben’s waist and swung him upward into a fireman’s carry. The creature’s claw whistled through the space where the boy had been only a fraction of a second before. Gary fled through the open door.
The creature turned its misshapen face toward Lissa. It tilted its head, and then its upper lip curled in a snarl, as if it were teetering between curiosity and rage. Then there was an earsplitting report, and the thing wailed, and clapped one hand to its upper arm. Jackson leveled his gun for a second shot, but with a whining cry, the monster stumbled back into the room where it had come from, leaving a trail of blackish blood behind it.
Through all of this, Lissa had stood, goggle-eyed, unable to move.
“Come on!” Jackson shouted. “Lissa! Move your ass!”
Jolted out of her paralysis, she ran toward the still-open front door. Gary and Ben were nowhere to be seen. They must have already fled. Jackson backed onto the porch, keeping his gun at the ready, and Lissa followed. Finally the dam burst. The pent-up adrenaline dumped into her veins in a shuddering rush, and she ran, her shoes clunking hollowly on the planks of the porch.
Jackson had turned away and was already halfway down the stairs. Before Lissa could reach the top step, the monster burst out of the front door. Perhaps it saw their flight as its chance to attack, or it may only have been hurt and furious and filled with the desire for blood. One taloned hand struck Lissa’s cheek, rocking her head back. The other grabbed her arm. Their faces were close together, monster and woman, golden eyes staring into brown. It snarled in her face. Its breath was hot, malodorous. Then it swung its free hand toward her ribcage, as if it wanted to rip out her heart.
Lissa watched the arc of its approach. Time slowed down. There was a second gunshot, but it sounded weird and echoic and unreal.
This was it. It was going to end here. She was about to be killed by something that didn’t exist.
Then it struck her in the middle of the chest with the flat of one hairy, grubby palm, and Lissa was flung backwards. The deck railing broke as she struck it, and her body sailed over the edge, as boneless as a ragdoll.
The last thing she thought, before her consciousness fluttered away, was, What a ridiculous way to die.
7
WHO ARE YOU? one of them asked.
The man threw his head back and gave a booming laugh. He pointed a finger at the one who had asked the question and said, I am smart enough not to answer that question, that’s who I am.
Why does it matter if you answer the question?
Names are power. You find out someone’s name, and you can hem him in. You’ve drawn lines around his body, lines that you control. Answering with your name gives the answer to a great many other questions besides.
What sorts of things?
Strength, weakness, needs, desires, the man said. What lies underneath the mask.
—
THE SOUND OF gunfire broke the spell. Zolzaya looked away, Mikiko’s strange proposition forgotten. Mikiko herself started, her eyes suddenly alert, nostrils twitching like a fox scenting a hare.
Zolzaya jumped up, the chair legs squeaking on the kitchen floor, and ran from the room as Jeff came pelting down the stairs, shouting, “What’s happened? I heard gunshots!” in a breathless voice.
Through the living room, past Olivia, who was frozen, staring out of the window with her mouth making a perfect O. Zolzaya threw the front door open hard enough it banged against the wall and rebounded nearly closed.
Ben was running up the street, his feet thudding on the asphalt, flicking up little stones from under his sneakers in his headlong flight. His face seemed to be all eyes. He pounded up the stairs and rammed into Zolzaya, only saving them both from falling because he grabbed her around the waist and held on, his breath coming in jittery gasps.
There was another gunshot, echoing from the silent walls of empty houses. Then there was a splintering crash.
Two more shots, then silence.
“Ben, go inside. Now. Jeff, you and Olivia stay with him.”
Jeff nodded mutely. Without waiting to see if they’d follow her directions, she ran down the stairs into the street and sprinted up the sidewalk in the direction the shots had come.
Gary stood in the middle of the street, a stun
ned look on his face. He bled from a long cut on his left arm. Jackson Royce was in the immaculately-maintained front yard of a house three doors down and across the street from Ben’s. He knelt, leaning over, in a posture almost of supplication. Then he reached out, and lifted something hidden from her, and stood in one powerful movement.
Draped across his arms was Lissa George, her eyes closed, head back, long limbs dangling, blood streaming from a series of parallel gashes across her cheek.
Only then did he see Zolzaya, running up the sidewalk toward him. His face twisted with anger and panic. “No! Get back to the house! Now!” He looked over at Gary, who seemed to be in shock. “That means you, too, Suarez! Move your ass!”
Zolzaya looked toward the house. The front porch railing was splintered. Pieces of it lay in the front yard, looking out of place against that beautifully-landscaped backdrop. Blackish blood stained the rail, and a trail of it crossed the plank floor and went into the shadowed interior.
She turned and ran.
Olivia waited for them, standing in the front yard of Ben’s house, still wearing the same horrified expression as she watched them. There was a grating, gravelly snarl from the interior of the house behind them, and for a moment, the normal noises—the birds singing, the breeze in the sycamore leaves, the distant roar of the ocean—were suspended, as if the ordinary world around her had been held in abeyance. Olivia screamed, a drilling shriek that went on and on. A thought came into Zolzaya’s head, seeming to come not from her own mind but from a voice speaking in her ear, a voice full of high good humor.
Don’t turn, Zolzaya. Don’t look. You’ll regret it to the end of your days. Remember what happened to Lot’s wife.
She didn’t. She grabbed Olivia by the arm and propelled her back up the stairs and through the front door. A moment later, his footsteps heavy from the burden he was carrying, came Jackson. Then Gary crashed his way in, stumbling, colliding with the door frame, and slamming the door shut behind him. Then he half-sat, half collapsed against the wall, and slid to the floor.
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