“Maybe they’re still asleep,” I said. “Maybe they don’t know anything’s wrong.”
At my side Cassius and Princess whined uneasily, and I hushed them.
“Stay here,” Patrick said to the kids. Then to me, “Make the dogs stay with them.”
I gave the command, and they sat. I looked Zeus in his yellow-brown eyes. I always thought of him as my warrior, his face marred with scars from play-fighting with the others or driving coyotes off our property. Having fathered five litters in his seven years, he occupied the top of the hierarchy, the others falling in behind him whenever he gave a directed stare or showed his teeth.
“On guard,” I said, and his ears flattened back against his skull. Then I looked at Rocky. “You see anything, tell him to S-P-E-A-K, and he’ll bark like crazy. You guys are our lookouts. Got it?”
He nodded, but his face was pale with fear.
I followed Patrick across the open front yard. We took a turn around the house, peering in windows. Behind us an empty hammock squeaked at the swivels. Patrick went up on tiptoes to peer into Alex’s bedroom, and I saw his back stiffen.
“What?” I whispered.
He gestured for me to look. Her bed was empty, the sheets smeared to one side, half on the floor.
As if she’d been dragged off the mattress.
The rest of her room looked normal enough, her closet door ajar, a big leopard-print beanbag in the corner, a vintage steamer trunk pushed up against the footboard of the sleigh bed.
Behind us the hammock squeaked and squeaked.
Patrick stepped away from the window, shotgun in hand. My own hands cramped around the baling hooks. A sprinkler leaked at our feet, turning the flower bed to mush.
We eased across to the next window. Sheriff Blanton’s bed was empty, the duvet thrown to one side.
Two ghostly faces peered at us from the far wall. I lurched backward, the realization hitting only a moment later—it was our own reflections thrown back at us from a mirror.
I needed a moment to catch my breath, but Patrick was already moving to check the other windows. The house appeared to be empty. We hit the tall fence at the edge of the house and circled back in the direction we’d come. Patrick walked briskly, his body tense. I had to pause in front of Alex’s window to tug my boot out of the mud caused by that leaky sprinkler.
Through the pane I heard a faint rattle.
With mounting dread I turned my head and looked through the window.
Nothing.
Then the lid of the steamer trunk jumped, the latch jangling.
I started. It banged again, even louder, the metal loop rattling against the hasp.
My mouth had gone dry. I looked up, but Patrick had already vanished around the corner.
The next bang nearly sent me airborne. Patrick reappeared at the edge of the house, staring back at me. I could barely make out his face in the gloom. He mouthed What? and I gestured furiously for him to get back over here.
A moment later we stood shoulder to shoulder at the window. The steamer trunk lid lifted, an inch of black showing at the seam. A hand flashed into view, four fingers curling over the lip, pale in the shadows. Then they pulled back into darkness, the lid banging shut again.
Patrick was breathing hard. “The hell was that?” he whispered hoarsely.
I shook my head.
The trunk made a noise like a heartbeat. Thump-thump.
We were frozen, our breath fogging the glass. Then Patrick said what I was dreading he might: “We have to go in.”
He set his palms flat against the pane and shoved gently upward. The sash window rose, squeaking in its tracks. He swung one leg over the sill, then eased himself through.
I gleaned that this was something he’d done before.
Gathering what courage I could, I followed.
Side by side in Alex’s room, we stared at the steamer trunk.
Thump-thump.
We drew near. Patrick readied the shotgun in one hand, seating the butt firmly against his shoulder. With his other hand, he reached for the latch. His fingers trembled. I’d never seen them tremble before, not even after Mom and Dad died.
His fingertips reached the latch. Curled beneath it.
Then he flung it up over the metal loop, freeing the lid and skipping back with the shotgun raised.
A form exploded up out of the trunk, screaming, long hair fanning out. Two hands drew back and swiped the air, moving as one piece. Long nails whisked so close to my face that I felt the wind against my cheeks. Metal glinted around the wrists.
I waited for the boom of the shotgun, but Patrick wasn’t firing. The person lunged forward to attack again, her face falling into a band of moonlight from the window.
“Alex?” I said.
All the tension went out of her body. Her shoulders curled in, and her hands fell to her waist. Handcuffs cinched her wrists.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Chance?” Her gaze immediately moved past me. She squinted into the darkness, and then her lips parted. “Patrick,” she said. She moved by me and hooked her arms up around his neck. He lowered the shotgun to his side and held her.
“What happened?” Patrick asked. “Who did this to you?”
“My dad.”
“Where is he now?”
A clicking sound rose, barely audible at first but growing louder.
It was coming from the closet.
ENTRY 9
From the darkness of the walk-in closet, two spots glowed a bluish white.
Eyes.
Or—I realized somewhere through the wave of panic crashing over me—eyeholes.
The sound continued, a wet, irregular, throaty clicking.
I swallowed. We turned slowly to face the closet head-on.
The glow illuminated the interior, enough for us to see Sheriff Blanton standing stiffly between the racks of hanging clothes, his head tilted slightly back to face the ceiling.
The glow faded, and the clicking stopped. His chin dipped down, and then those empty tunnels stared at us. It was as though he’d been sleeping and we’d woken him up.
Sheriff Blanton leapt from the closet.
Patrick stumbled back, trying to raise the shotgun, but Alex’s cuffed hands were still tangled around his neck. The two of them fell down, clearing the way to me.
The sheriff jumped over their bodies, one hand grabbing a second set of cuffs from his belt, the other reaching for my throat.
There was barely time to react.
I dropped, and as his hands clenched the air where my head had been, I whipped the hook at him, the point sinking into the meat of his thigh.
It was a deep blow—I felt the shock tremor of the tip striking bone—and he froze, staring down as blood soaked out through his khaki uniform pants.
For a moment everything stopped.
Then the shotgun exploded. In the confined space of the room, the sound rattled my teeth.
Patrick had managed to untangle himself from Alex. Not wanting to injure me or her, he’d fired straight up into the ceiling.
Sheriff Blanton tore himself free, ripping his leg off the hook. Patrick was on his feet now, the gun leveled, but before he could fire, the sheriff bounded across the floor and sprang at the window. He balled up, going sideways through the panes, glass shattering all around his curled form.
He hit the ground, rolled through the mud, and popped up onto all fours like a wolf. We crowded around the window, watching with disbelief. Sheriff Blanton galloped for the high fence, somehow transitioning from all fours to his legs without slowing. Then he jumped.
His haunches pulled up as he rose, his heels skimming the top of the fence. For an instant he was in clear view, silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
Patrick had the Winchester raised, the sheriff in his sights.
Alex slammed her palm down on the top of the shotgun as Patrick fired. The shot blew up a cluster of marigolds in the garden.
Her father was gone.
She whirled on Patrick. “What are you doing?”
“You saw his face, Alex. His eyes. That thing handcuffed you and shoved you into a steamer trunk.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “That thing is still my dad.”
Blood dripped from the baling hook in my hand, tapping onto the floor. Alex’s green eyes lowered to the curved steel protruding from my fist. She took in a gulp of air. I felt my face burn as if I’d done something wrong, even though I knew that I’d had to do it.
From the front of the house, we could hear the dogs barking ferociously. I sprinted out of the room, Alex and Patrick following me. Bursting through the front door, I jumped over the porch steps, running for the detached garage.
Around the corner, Rocky and JoJo huddled against the wall. The dogs had formed a protective ring surrounding them, Zeus snapping at the air, barking so hard that flecks of saliva sprayed from his mouth. I settled the dogs.
Only then did we realize that Alex’s hands were still cuffed. She shuddered and Patrick wrapped his arms around her.
“My dad keeps a spare key in his nightstand drawer,” she said.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
“Will you grab her a jacket and some clothes, too?” Patrick said.
I nodded and headed for the dark house.
Behind me I heard Alex ask, “Where are we going?”
“We’re heading into town,” Patrick said. “We have to get out of range.”
“Of what?”
I was glad I didn’t have to explain that one.
I walked through the halls of the Blanton house, the floorboards groaning beneath my feet. Cold winters and hot summers warped the wood, making our town a creaky place. Any other time that felt homey.
I found the sheriff’s spare key in his nightstand. Nestled in the drawer beside it was a framed picture of Blanton’s ex-wife. I lifted it to the light. The shot showed Katie Blanton at a backyard barbecue. Her blouse was unbuttoned at the top, not too much but enough to show a sliver of tan skin beneath her collarbones. She held a beer and was laughing, her teeth flashing in the sun.
She looked a lot like Alex.
As I lowered the picture back into the drawer, I saw what the frame had been covering. The sheriff’s holstered revolver. It was heavier than I thought it would be. I clipped it onto my jeans and headed into Alex’s room.
I’d been too scared to notice before, but it smelled really good, like shampoo and citrusy perfume. In the corner leaned a hockey stick—Alex was a tough-as-nails forward with a wicked slapshot. Standing in her room with those scents washing over me, I felt as though I’d stepped into some other dimension.
I put the baling hooks on her bed and went to her walk-in closet, looking for a jacket. I found one, looped it over my arm, and started emptying her drawers into her hockey gear bag. Shirts. Jeans. Socks. I opened the next drawer and froze.
Bras.
They were black, white, or skin-colored. Embarrassed, I shoveled them into the gear bag, doing my best to look away, down at the floor. My eye caught on two big boot prints in the carpet.
Sheriff Blanton had to have been standing here for a long time to leave footprints as clear and deep as that. I pictured him motionless with his eyes glowing and his head tilted up, like he was meditating or something. That clicking sound returned, a memory echo, and I shuddered.
What had he been doing?
“Chance?”
Mortified, I looked up to see Alex leaning in her doorway. I pivoted my head to the bra still grasped in my hand. I released it. It fell into the bag.
“Um…,” I said.
Her lips pursed—not a smile, not tonight, but maybe something close. She came toward me and held out her cuffed hands. I dropped the bag.
Standing this close, I had a hard time focusing on the tiny key. It was hard to believe she was still just sixteen. I remembered the full-faced kid she’d been, all braces and laughter. How, before Mom and Dad died, me, her, and Patrick used to pile into the hammock, all three of us, and stare up at the stars. We’d name the constellations or make new ones up. Orion. Aries. Girl Walking Her Puppy. Angry Hobo. Giant Broccoli. Then one week it was like a breeze blew through Alex’s house and everything changed. She started to wear undershirts beneath her blouses. Some new sparkly lotion made her cheeks glitter here and there in the sunlight. We started taking turns on the hammock. Patrick would sit in the tall grass and watch her sway, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was so fascinating about that.
Until I did.
As I struggled to unlock her cuffs now, she flicked her head to get her long hair off her face.
“Chance,” she said, cupping her hands over mine. “It’s okay.”
She thought my hands were shaking from fear. But that wasn’t it.
I concentrated on fitting the key into place. The cuffs fell away, and she rubbed at her raw wrists. I picked her bag up off the floor, and it gaped wide, the bras showing inside. She gave a little smirk.
“Why don’t I take it from here,” she said, tugging the bag from my hands.
“I was just grabbing whatever—”
“I know,” she said. “And thank you.”
She finished in the closet and headed into the bathroom for a few more things. When she was done packing up, she slung the gear bag over her shoulders like a backpack, then paused.
She walked over and plucked her hockey stick from the corner of the room.
I picked my baling hooks up off her bed.
We looked at each other a moment, then headed out.
We walked down her stone front path. On the far side of the white picket fence, Patrick waited with the kids and dogs. Alex reached down to unhook the latch on the thigh-high gate, and we stepped through. There was something so civilized in the gesture, given everything that was going on.
She closed the gate and looked back at her house. Her eyes shimmered. She lifted her hockey stick off the ground, gave it an expert twirl, and brushed past us.
“To town, then,” she said.
We pressed on, avoiding streets and houses, taking a winding route through the trees. From time to time, Cassius snuck forward and licked my palms. JoJo got tired, and I carried her again, and when my arms started aching, Alex took over. At last we came up over the wooded hill behind Main Street and saw the warm glow of streetlamps through the tree trunks ahead.
Our two-traffic-light town was little more than a few square blocks of stores and restaurants. In the center a big church sat behind a grassy square filled with benches and squirrels. The high school at the edge of town was large for the town’s population, because Creek’s Cause was lousy with kids. Most ranch-and-farm communities need hands and backs, and folks here have kids early and often. It wasn’t unusual to see families of six or seven roll into church on a Sunday morning. What with all the cattle and crops, it was easy enough to fill mouths, and the sprawling countryside provided more space than anyone knew what to do with.
As we wove through the pines toward the familiar lights, we heard the movement of people in action, machinery whirring, doors opening and closing. Everybody was probably preparing to face the threat, like when an F2 tornado blew through last July and the town gathered in the church basement with food and supplies, battening down the hatches. I felt a flicker of relief that we’d lived through the worst and had finally arrived back in the world as we knew it.
We stepped out of the woods and scrambled down the gentle slope onto the tar-and-gravel roof of the general store. Creek’s Cause spread out below us.
For an instant, everything looked perfect. Folks in motion, working together, hauling wheelbarrows, moving back and forth across the square.
Then it all came into horrific focus. It was like some elaborate windup toy, everything running according to a precise but mysterious order, driven by invisible cogs and wheels.
The adults of our town toiled down below, too many to take in with a sweep of the eye. The men were walking their squared-of
f spirals or loading guns into wheelbarrows. They’d rolled back the rear door of the Bob n’ Bit Hardware store to reveal the stoked-up blacksmith forge where Bob Bitley hammered out his old-timey mailboxes and weather vanes. They were feeding handguns and hunting rifles into the roaring flame, melting the weapons into useless metal.
The women restrained screaming children, binding their arms and legs. Some of the men paused in their tasks to help. In the middle of the road, Don Braaten had pinned Janie Woodrow, the girl who sat next to me in Dr. Chatterjee’s biology class, to the asphalt. Still wearing his splattered overalls from the slaughterhouse, he was on top of her, mashing her cheek to the dotted yellow line. His knee pressed into her back as he wound duct tape around her wrists. Beside him the Durant brothers worked a pair of jackhammers into the road, sparks flying around their muscular forearms. Another Host had scaled a telephone pole outside the two-story hospital and was going after the junction box with an electric saw.
Over on the lawn, a number of PTA moms were on their hands and knees, laying out various items—zip ties and belts, lengths of rope and neckties. The church buzzed like a hive, bound children being dragged inside. Six-year-old Sam Miller’s grandparents carried him like a sack up the broad stone steps, gripping him by his wrists and ankles. Other kids bucked and fought, but they stood no chance. The Hosts were everywhere, tunnels of light bored through their heads, toiling away like brainless slaves.
The Dusting hadn’t affected some of the adults.
It had gotten all of them.
ENTRY 10
We stood there on the roof of the general store with the woods to our backs, looking down at our town. Rocky lowered his head and cried hoarsely, doing his best to hold it in. The dogs whinnied like horses, brushing up against our legs.
The horizon glowed with the faintest tinge of dawn. On the one hand, I couldn’t believe it had taken us all night to reach town. But on the other, it felt like the night had lasted a lifetime. Fog shrouded the road running east, out to our place and the water tower. A bull of a man emerged from the wisps, leaning forward, shoulders straining beneath a red flannel shirt. It took a moment for me to recognize Afa Similai, a Tongan farmhand who sometimes helped McCafferty during harvests. His eyes were gone, and his thick black dreads swayed from side to side, making the light tunneling through his head flicker. He strained, his hands behind his back, pulling something.
The Rains Page 5