by Brian Harmon
He took another step back and then dared a quick look toward the street where he’d parked. Immediately, he saw two more moving toward him from behind.
He was surrounded.
He said that very bad word again. It didn’t carry much authority. He sounded less like a heroic action hero than a whimpering child. If they had any doubts about their ability to take him down, the sound of his shrill voice surely must have bolstered their confidence.
The PT Cruiser was definitely not an option. He glanced back toward the house and saw that the creatures there had advanced several paces while his back was turned. When he looked back at the ones behind him, he saw that they, too, had advanced. Then the ones in front again. They were taking advantage of his distraction. Each time he looked away, they’d slink closer, using their numbers against him.
At this rate, they would be on him in seconds.
He surveyed the land around him and found a single ray of hope: the apple tree. It was only about ten paces away, forked, with a massive limb that stretched out low over the weed-choked lawn.
He had just one chance.
He took it.
As soon as he began moving, all of the creatures bolted after him. They were fast. Too fast for him to make a single mistake. But if he was quick enough… And limber enough…
He propelled himself up the base of the tree and onto the low limb.
The quiet lot was now filled with the chaos of snarls and strange yipping noises as the creatures converged on the tree below him.
The things did not appear to be built for climbing. Their legs, while fast, were too long and slender to claw their way up the trunk of the tree and the large branch was just high enough to prevent them from jumping up to him.
That was a stroke of luck.
But he was still stuck in a tree. And the creatures had no intention of giving up. They clawed at the bark, snarling and jumping. They were so close… If they wanted him badly enough, it was only a matter of time until one of them found a way to reach him.
His heart racing, Eric rose to a crouch and began inching farther out onto the limb, away from the trunk of the tree and a little higher off the ground.
His cell phone began vibrating in his pocket. Squatting down and wedging himself firmly between two fat, jutting branches, he fished it out of his pocket, mashed the button and pressed it to his ear. “Isabelle!”
“Who’s Isabelle?” replied a familiar, slurring voice.
“What?”
“Hey buddy, it’s Gerry.”
“Gerry?” Gerry Nesby was an old acquaintance from way back in high school. At one time, they were pretty good friends, when they were in the same classes and ate at the same lunch table and had a mutual fascination with video games. But beyond that, they had almost nothing in common. Gerry never went to college. He never cared about literature. In fact, he hated to read, except for those weird, graphic, underground comic books he used to have. Eric didn’t even know where he used to get those. These days, he was a body shop mechanic and a notoriously heavy drinker. He was also a raging UFO fanatic. In short, he was everything Eric was absolutely not.
He couldn’t understand why this man still wanted to stay in touch, yet Gerry called at least twice a year, just to shoot the breeze. These calls usually came at inconvenient times…
“Hey, thought it was time I called to see what you’ve been up to. What’re you doing?”
Eric stared down at the sleek, black creatures beneath him. “Um…”
“Is it a bad time?”
“You have no idea.”
He tried to count the things beneath him, but it was difficult. There was something strange about the way they moved around. It was as if they kept jumping around whenever he wasn’t looking directly at them.
“I already did.”
Eric lifted his gaze, confused. “What?”
“Sorry, I was talking to Maggie.”
Eric had no idea who Maggie was and didn’t care to ask.
“I will in a little while.” That was apparently to Maggie, too, since Eric hadn’t asked him to do anything.
He looked out over the brushy yard toward the PT Cruiser. A car drove by without pausing. It still struck him how strange it was to come across such obviously vicious creatures in the middle of a city, even a small one like Creek Bend. Across the street, he could see a swing set in the back yard. What kept them from wandering over there at night? What if the children who used that swing set put up a tent right next to it? The very idea made him sick to his stomach.
On the phone, Gerry said, “Sorry about that. What’s that noise?”
That noise would be the snarls and queer yips of the strange, black creatures currently trying to climb up to him so they could eat him. But Eric only replied, “Nothing. Just the television. Look, I’m kind of busy right now.”
“Sure. Yeah. I was just going to tell you the good news.”
“I really need to keep the line open.” He needed to talk to Isabelle. Now. But if Gerry wouldn’t hang up…
One of the beasts finally managed to reach the branch, but it slipped and fell again. It was only a matter of time now…
He looked up into the boughs above him. It was hard to think.
“I got married.”
Eric took the phone away from his ear and looked at it as if it had malfunctioned. “What?”
“I know, right? It’s crazy!”
Eric looked down at the creatures beneath him. “You seriously have no idea.”
This was a lot to deal with already. He really couldn’t handle the idea of any woman willingly marrying Gerry Nesby. The last time he saw him, the man still had the ugliest teeth he’d ever seen.
“I just met her a few weeks ago, but I’m telling you, I’m totally in love with her.”
“That’s…um… That’s great… But I really have to—”
“No, it’s Eric Fortrell.”
Eric snapped his mouth shut and fought back the urge to scream obscenities into the phone.
“Fortrell. No, he’s the school teacher. Yeah. Creek Bend High.”
A second creature scrambled up to the branch, using another creature for a stepstool, but although it clawed valiantly at the bark, it fell back to the ground like the first, disappearing into the swarming pack.
Eric rose to his feet. He seized the next branch up and held on, ready to climb higher as soon as one of the creatures succeeded in climbing onto the limb.
“Oh, hey, there was something I wanted to ask you about.”
He stared down into the angry pack beneath him. There was still something odd about their movements. He couldn’t quite follow them. It was disorienting.
“What was it now?”
Eric took the phone away from his ear and silently screamed.
Hold it together, he told himself. If you break the phone, you can’t talk to Isabelle. “Really, I—”
“In a minute.”
“What?”
“Not you. Just wait until… Okay, fine. Hey, can you hold on a minute, I have to let the dog in.”
“I really can’t hold on, actually.” But Gerry had already put the phone down and walked away.
Eric banged his forehead against the branch he was gripping with his free hand. Had he already died and gone to hell? Was that what was happening?
Beneath him, the creatures were still climbing toward him. Their persistence was impressive.
On the phone, he could hear Gerry yelling, “Jeanie! Come on, Jeanie! Jeanie!” to a dog that clearly did not want to come into the house. “Hey! Get over here!”
With a frustrated cry, Eric took the phone from his ear and mashed the button to end the call. In the process, it slipped from his fingers and he fumbled it. For a brief instant, he had it, but then it slipped through his hands and fell all the way to the ground.
Eric made up a new swear he didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone use before. It didn’t make much sense, literally translated, but it was definitely vu
lgar enough to fit his mood. If he survived this, he was definitely changing his number. And for Gerry’s sake, he hoped he didn’t bump into him around town any time soon.
Now he was really trapped. He couldn’t ask Isabelle if she had any advice about these things. And he couldn’t call for help.
He looked out at the street again, then around at the surrounding homes. Through the dense limbs of all these old trees, he could just make out the manicured lawns of the neighbors, but in spite of all the noise these things were making, no one was coming out to see what was going on.
When he looked back down, he realized that one of the creatures had hooked its claws into the branch and was slowly scrambling upward. He looked up at the branches above him. He should be able to climb higher, but he wasn’t sure he could do it from here. He needed to be closer to the trunk. He wasn’t left with much room to fight, but if he played this right…
The thing righted itself on the limb and crouched there for a moment, sizing him up. Then it began moving toward him, its terrible teeth showing.
Eric stood where he was, both hands gripping the limb above him, his knees bent, loose. He waited, watching.
Still, there was something odd about the creature’s movements. It seemed oddly unnatural somehow, yet he couldn’t quite tell why. Nor did he have the time to consider it further.
With a horrid snarl, the beast lunged at him. At the same moment, Eric thrust his leg out, kicking the thing in its shoulder and knocking it off the limb. But it was faster than it looked. It snatched at his foot, caught the leg of his jeans and dangled there, growling.
He kicked his foot violently, crying out in fear and revulsion, but the thing’s jaws were powerful. It held fast to the fabric. It had no intention of letting go.
Fortunately, the fabric was less stubborn. The denim ripped and the beast dropped to the ground and landed with a sharp yelp that stirred in him not an ounce of pity.
Eric regained his balance and stepped back toward the trunk of the tree, where the upper branches were closer and stronger. As he did so, he called out for help, hoping to draw the attention of a neighbor, but no one called back to him. No one came out to investigate. In spite of the cars parked in the driveways, no one seemed to be around.
He gripped the branch firmly and swung himself upward with all his strength, hooking his legs over the branch and pulling himself onto it. He was surprised by himself. Even as a child, he’d never been all that good at climbing trees. Clearly, nothing motivated him to get physical like abject terror. He rose shakily to his knees and then reached up and seized another.
He glanced down again as two more of the creatures scrambled up onto the branch below him. They were beginning to learn. Apparently, they were channeling their inner squirrels.
He heaved himself up onto the next branch, stood up, side-stepped to another and pulled himself up onto the next.
How long could he keep this up? How long could he stay ahead of them?
He stood up again and heaved himself up onto the next branch, determined to keep moving upward until he could climb no higher, hoping the creatures would just give up and leave him alone.
But then the branch snapped.
He fell.
His butt landed hard on the branch below him and he tipped backward. He tried to grab the limb, to hold himself up, but he flipped over, lost his grip and fell. Another limb caught him in the stomach, forcing the air from his lungs, then he slipped, held, cursed, slipped again. Twigs and leaves and hard, abrasive branches slashed past him in a confusing storm as he plunged downward.
Then he hit the ground hard on his back. His breath was gone. His vision blurred, doubled. His whole body ached.
Quickly, he curled himself into a ball, protecting his vital parts, unable to even scream, and waited for the worst.
But it didn’t come.
Trembling, gasping for breath, he dared to blink open an eye, then both eyes.
They were gone.
He lifted his head and looked around with a painful grunt, but there was no trace of them anywhere. The yips and snarls were replaced with the quiet, droning background noise of the modest city. A dog was barking somewhere nearby. Someone was using a lawnmower. A noisy truck roared by on the street, going about its usual business. It was as if they’d never existed at all, as if it had all only been inside his head.
“Huh…” was all he could manage.
What happened? Where did they go? They had him. They should be tearing him apart right now. Surely his fall hadn’t frightened them away. They obviously weren’t nearly that timid. And they were certainly real. The proof was right there in his tattered pants leg.
But then he felt something else…something deeply unsettling…something that filled his aching gut with ice. Slowly, he rolled onto his back and looked the other way, toward the remains of the ruined house. There, standing in that dark, broken doorway, clothed in a filthy, ragged housecoat, was what appeared to be a very old woman.
She wore a gray scarf over her head and it cast an unnaturally deep shadow over her face. Even in the shade of all these trees, the day was too bright for such darkness. It gave her the appearance of a reaper.
There was something terribly wrong about the woman.
His phone lay somewhere in the tall grass nearby. It began ringing, but he ignored it. That would be Gerry again, most likely. Isabelle would know he couldn’t reach it.
Instinctively, he knew that it was time to leave.
He rose carefully to his feet, still trembling, and took a step backward.
Then the old woman was moving toward him. She wasn’t running, exactly. She seemed to glide toward him instead. Her feet didn’t quite touch the ground somehow.
She lifted her hands and black, skeletal claws as long as carving knives glinted in the mottled sunlight.
Eric turned and ran.
The woman followed.
A strange, unearthly shriek filled the air right behind him and a white-hot streak of pain shot across his back.
He screamed.
The PT Cruiser was right there beyond the sidewalk, yet it was too far away. He’d never make it.
Again something hot flashed across his back.
Those claws! The woman was going to flay him alive!
Pain streaked from his left shoulder to his right. Then from the right side of his ribcage to his left shoulder. Then up and across his spine. He cried out in pain. He was going to die here, sliced open and gutted and left to rot in the summer sun.
But then he reached the sidewalk and raced around the front of his vehicle. Seconds later he was inside, the door slammed closed, locked. He thanked God for the foresight to leave the engine running and the doors unlocked.
And then it was over.
He looked around, but he was alone. No one was there. The lot was empty. The old woman and all her nasty pets had vanished and no one seemed remotely disturbed by all the chaos that had erupted in the middle of this quiet neighborhood.
Panting, his heart still racing, he stared back at the ruined house. What the hell was all that?
Clearly, whatever Aiden Chadwick was doing, it was far stranger than he’d ever imagined. He doubted now that those maps had anything to do with burglaries.
He needed to talk to Isabelle. She was the only one he knew who could possibly help shed any light on these bizarre events for him. But his phone remained beneath the apple tree.
Karen wasn’t going to like that he’d lost another one. But he sure as hell wasn’t going back for the stupid thing.
He stepped on the brake pedal and reached for the gear shift, but he hesitated when his eyes fell on a plain, white envelope that someone had slipped under the windshield wiper. He didn’t have to leave the car to read the message. It was not inside the envelope, but written on it, scrawled before his eyes in thick, black letters:
DEAD BEFORE SUNSET
Eric glanced around once more, but of course there was no one lingering in the vicinity. Any
one could have left this note for him without being seen. He’d taken his eyes off the vehicle more than once, certainly leaving more than one window of opportunity for the mystery messenger to come and go.
Dead before sunset… Eric didn’t like the sound of that. Who would be dead before sunset? Was this about Aiden? Was he in trouble? He recalled the panic that flashed across the young man’s face when he realized that Eric had seen him.
Wary for any more angry hags, he opened the door and snatched the envelope off the windshield, but it was empty. There was nothing more than the three ominous words.
His back stinging from the bite of the old woman’s demonic-looking claws, he shifted the PT Cruiser into gear and drove away.
Chapter Three
Karen and Diane were in the kitchen when Eric entered the house and crossed the living room.
“What took you so long?” Karen called. “We were starting to think you’d decided to take your chances with Brooke.”
“I’m telling you,” said Diane, “she’ll eat you alive.”
Karen turned to meet him as he stepped through the kitchen door and took the daisies from his hands. “Those are perfect!” Then she looked at him for the first time and her expression fell in an instant. “Oh my god! What happened to you?”
Diane had been leaning against the counter, licking frosting off her fingers, her long, auburn hair obscuring half her face. Now she was standing straight, her dark eyes wide and alert and sweeping him head to foot. Lean and tall, she possessed an almost exotic silhouette, a striking contrast to Karen’s average height and perfectly curvy, full-figured form.
Eric didn’t even know where to begin. He was dirty and sweaty and his right pants leg was torn and flapping around his shoe. He set the plastic bags with the sparkling juice carefully onto the counter and merely gave them a weary shake of his head. Then the telephone rang and he snatched it off the wall before Karen could reach for it. “What the hell was that?” he asked without bothering to say, “Hello.”
“I have no idea!” replied Isabelle. “I’ve never heard of anything like those creatures before. They were terrifying!”