Ben dragged the body with its moving eyes and torn throat out through the door and to the very edge of the back porch. He considered the dangers of what he had in mind, and knew that it might be safer to pull it further out into the yard. But the others were closing in, so he’d take his chances with the lesser evil.
Squatting beside the body, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his book of matches.
Casting about with a weary eye, he struck the match and touched it to where the body’s clothes were loosest — its untucked shirt, an inverted pants pocket, along the cuff of its sleeve ...
The others were drawing closer. He was almost out of time.
When the flame finally took in earnest, he was caught off guard by its sudden intensity — one moment he feared that the clothes might not catch well enough, the next he nearly lost his eyebrows. He stood and kicked the body off the porch into the grass, grateful that it rolled far enough away that the flames weren’t licking at the wooden steps.
And just as he had hoped, the others held warding hands and arms before their faces and retreated — not far, but he would take what he could get. Just as he had seen at Beekman’s, they might not have much else going on upstairs, but they did not like fire.
Then the smoke — and the stomach-churning stench — forced Ben to retreat himself. He returned to the house, shut and locked the back door. Then for good measure, he grabbed the small breakfast table and shoved it up against the door.
As before, he allowed himself the luxury of a brief respite, leaning against the little table and wiping the sweat from his brow.
The girl stared at him from the kitchen doorway, saying nothing. If she had seen what he’d just done, she gave no indication, passed no judgement one way or the other.
Then Ben’s gaze fell upon something across the kitchen, and he realized what they had to do next — the only thing they could do, until some kind of help arrived.
Moving across the room, he opened the toolbox and tried rooting around, but he couldn’t see a damn thing in the dark. Then again, as he had pointed out before, their presence was no longer a secret, so why hinder their efforts further?
Flicking on the kitchen light, he dove back into the toolbox as he told the girl, "Get some more lights on in this house."
The girl appeared dazed by the sudden illumination, but she tottered around without comment and headed back into the next room, presumably to follow his suggestion.
That wasn’t a suggestion, Ben. You just gave her an order.
Fine. He had given her an order — so be it. He had always known when to put his foot down, and until she snapped out of her daze, now was the time.
So Ben collected tools: A screwdriver from this toolbox; a hammer from the box next to it; then he rooted through drawers and found what he really wanted — nails, lots of nails.
Gathering them in his hands, he glanced up and saw the girl had returned, her knife again within close reach on top of the refrigerator. He had no idea how long she’d been back, or if she had followed his suggestion (his order) to turn on more lights. So he tried a different tact.
"Why don’t you see if you can find some wood," he told her as he worked, "some boards, something there by the fireplace. Something so we can nail this place up."
But when he looked up again, all she had done was wander further into the kitchen, still looking at him with that lost, confused expression on her face, asking him without words to take care of her, to make it all better.
Throwing down the tools, he snapped, "Look, goddamn it—!" before catching himself. No excuse — he might have decided to take charge, but she wasn’t a soldier, either.
Taking a cooling breath, he walked over to her and took her by the shoulders again, gently this time. "Look ... I know you’re afraid. I’m afraid, too. But we have to try to board the house up together. Now I’m going to board up the windows and the doors. Do you understand?"
Still that blank stare, but at least she appeared to be listening.
"We’ll be all right here," he continued, slow and emphatic. "We’ll be all right here until someone comes to rescue us. But we’ll have to work together. You’ll have to help me. Now I want you to go and get some wood so I can board the place up. Do you understand? Okay? Okay?"
On the second "okay," she finally, and thankfully, responded with a nod. It was a little unfocused, her head bobbing a little too loose on her neck, but at least it suggested that she was absorbing what he said to her. She turned around on her own, and Ben gave her a slight, soft push as she again left the kitchen. Sighing, he returned to his scavenger hunt.
Shuffling her feet, Barbra soon found herself back in the study. Not as dark now with a few more lights on, she found the mounted animal heads less intimidating. She stood for a moment, looking around, trying to remember why she had come in here ... and then the mantle over the fireplace brought it back to her. Yes, she had seen the fireplace earlier, and the man in the sweater had told her to ... to gather wood, yes.
He was a nice man, really. She didn’t mind that he was a little harsh at times. She had known far harsher men, like her grandfather. Why, if she and Johnny ...
Johnny ... something about Johnny sent a chill up her spine, and she pushed it away. Where was Johnny right now, anyway? And ... why had she come in here again?
Confused though she was, Barbra was not completely out of touch. She knew that danger lurked outside, she knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong with these people, these creatures, even though she did not understand what was wrong.
Perhaps she should pray. Yes, that’s what her grandfather would have told her. Pray to God for forgiveness of her sins, for deliverance from this punishment for ... for ...
For what? What could she possibly have done to deserve this night? Even Johnny, who hadn’t been to church for a while, didn’t deserve—
Her hand, which had been absently trailing along a table, dragged across a doily and onto a music box. Striking the button atop, it opened little doors and began turning as its sweet, tinny melody played away.
Far from startling her, it took Barbra a moment to realize that she was hearing it at all. She had been thinking about Johnny ... something about her poor brother Johnny...
Round and round the music box turned as Barbra stared at it. Round and round, round and round ...
In the kitchen, Ben had just finished removing one of the inner house doors from its hinges. Rather than just nailing random wood across the entrances, he figured the weight of the door would serve as a greater barricade. He added the ironing board to his pile, and then noticed that the bottom shelves of one of the cabinets had been crudely boarded up at some point. He grabbed hold of the plank and tugged until, with a screech of dragging nails, it ripped free, revealing something of a jackpot — more planks of wood, stored within along with other odds and ends; the owners must’ve done most of their own handiwork. He gathered all of it up and dumped it into his growing lumber pile.
The increasing noise finally jolted Barbra from her reverie. She looked around, becoming aware of her surroundings once more, and her gaze fell upon the fireplace. Yes, that was why she was in here — not for the music box, but for the fireplace. Wood. She was supposed to gather wood.
Crouching before the fireplace, she gathered a small pile in her arms. She then stood, looked back at the music box and around the room, and — determined to prove herself of some use — returned to the kitchen where the man in the sweater was making so much racket.
He was hefting a door upright — where in the world had he found a loose door? — as she walked in. He glanced at her, then carried the door over to the outer wall, placing it longways across the back entrance. Why was he—?
Then Barbra figured out what he had in mind. Slowly, the wheels in her head were starting to turn again; she wished she were recovering faster, but didn’t know what to do about it. She placed her rather pathetic pile of wood atop the refrigerator and shuffled across the room to hel
p him.
He had his hammer and nails ready, so Barbra reached out to steady the makeshift barricade for him. He again glanced at her, this time offering a slight, reassuring smile, then he began to pound nails.
The sharp noise was an instant bane to Barbra, driving through her ears and even, it felt, through her eyes into her brain. She wanted to help, she tried moving around him as he worked back and forth, tried to brace the door for him wherever she could while he hammered. But that noise! It unsettled her more than it should have, reminded her too much of the rock slamming into the car window as the creature from the cemetery tried to get to her.
Before long, she was just standing there again — feeble, useless.
Thankfully, the man finished his work in short order. He tugged at the barricade a few times, his demeanor satisfied. He muttered, "That’ll hold," then turned and said directly to her, "They’re not that strong." He picked up a little plastic box from the kitchen counter and pushed it into her hands. She looked down and saw that it was filled with nails and screws, thumbtacks and paperclips. "I want you to find some nails," he told her, "pick out the biggest ones you can find."
Then off he went, on the move. Barbra followed, determined to help.
Time blurred somewhat as Ben lost himself in the work. He focused on the simple tasks, boarding, nailing, hammering, not allowing himself to dwell on recent events. If he thought about those details, he might start to wallow in it, and he didn’t have that luxury. His hands started to feel the burn, the early warning of blisters to come, but he didn’t care — better to grow some calluses doing this than ... other things.
The girl remained quiet, but she followed along with him and pitched in when he needed it. He could tell that the noise bothered her, but she voiced no complaint. As they ran low on stopgap lumber, he decided to try and coax her further out of her shell.
"Yeah, this room looks pretty secure," he commented as he leaned through the next doorway and turned on the lights. "If we have to, we can run in here and board up the doors."
A trickle down the back of his neck revealed that he was perspiring from his efforts, something he’d failed to notice until now. As he spoke, he stripped his sweater from his white dress shirt and gathered their meager supply of wood. "Won’t be long before those things come back, pounding their way in here, but they’re afraid now."
As he moved into the living room, he looked around and realized just where to get more wood. Setting his armload to one side, he began rolling up his sleeves.
"They’re afraid of fire. I found that out."
Pushing chairs away from the modest dining table, he rolled the table cloth around the centerpiece and removed the whole bundle, setting it to one side.
"You know a place back down the road called Beekman’s ...?"
As Ben upended the dining table and used a hammer to remove the legs, he told the girl about his experiences at the diner, the events which, for him, started this God-awful night. He left out many of the details, didn’t bother to share the demise of the old man or the janitor, but he did tell her about the gasoline truck, about the things’ reaction to the fire, the way they stared at him, and how he reacted by running them over. And though it brought up some of the very thoughts he wanted to avoid, he had hoped to find the sharing at least somewhat cathartic ... but instead, it just upset him more and more as he spoke. He finally had to turn away and regain control of himself.
But his tale did accomplish one thing — Barbra listened to him.
Barbra had folded the tablecloth and, as she found her way to a nearby chair, sat with it in her lap, listening. She liked his voice, which could be as gentle as it was forceful. And his tone, the emotions therein, like a sincere confession to clergy, prompted her to want to share as well.
So Barbra began telling her own story, of her and Johnny’s trip to the cemetery.
Ben was glad that the girl was talking again, but she didn’t seem to realize how disjointed her own narrative came across. She spoke of Johnny, which Ben soon deduced was her brother, and then began complaining of the heat and tugged at her coat without actually removing it. As Ben muscled the dining tabletop over to the nearby windows, the girl’s story continued to build — whereas his sharing had drained him, hers was working her up. By the time she got to the part where a man approached them in the cemetery, Ben finally caught her name — Barbra — but he did not care for the sharp edge in her voice.
Fearing hysterics, he suggested, "Why don’t you just ... keep calm?"
But the girl was on a roll now. She described the man’s attack, and the very hysterics Ben had dreaded threatened to overtake her.
"I think you should just calm down," he repeated, putting more steel into his voice.
As she reached the climax of her story, the part where her brother fought her attacker (and Ben could guess how that struggle probably ended), she did lose some steam, but only to turn in another direction.
"We’ve got ... we have to wait for Johnny," she said.
Ben avoided eye contact as he bustled around the room. What was there to say? He had hoped that getting her talking would help focus her, but now he doubted that it was a good idea after all. Because if she went where he next expected—
"We ... we’d better go out and get him."
Ben swallowed a sigh. Sure enough, there it was. Her talkative shift was misleading — she still didn’t understand what her own story meant.
"We have to go out and get Johnny," she insisted.
Not sure what else to do, Ben made a big show of how busy he was and ignored her. He moved the ironing board toward the front door of the house.
"He’s out there," Barbra continued, her voice getting shrill now. "Please, don’t you hear me? We’ve got to go out and get him. Please! We have got to go get Johnny!"
Then she was on her feet, following him. He glanced at her, at the pain and dread on her now-livid face. He saw that, somewhere deep inside, she knew the truth. Then he looked away.
But Barbra wasn’t having it. "Please, help me!" She grabbed him by the arm, yanking him back around with surprising force. "PLEASE!"
"Don’t you know what’s going on out there?" he demanded, his frustration getting the better of him. "This is no Sunday school picnic—"
She threw herself at him; he caught her arms before she grabbed at him again. "Don’t you understand? My brother is alone!"
As gently as he could, Ben told her, "Your brother is dead."
"NO!" Barbra ripped her arms free. "My brother is not dead!"
And with that, she bolted for the front door.
Ben caught her before she could open it, lifting her whole body in his arms and pulling her away.
She struggled free with an offended grunt, stared death at him for about two seconds, then slapped him across the face.
Ben took the slap, glared back for about the same amount of time, then hauled off and returned what she had given him, with interest.
Barbra moaned and looked up at him in surprise ... then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed. For the barest moment, Ben considered letting her hit the floor, but then his better nature got the best of him and he caught her in his arms. He carried her to the sofa, setting her down with care. He took a few steps back, then bent over again to open her coat for her.
Should he do more? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t have the luxury of pampering her right now. Part of him felt guilty for it but the fact was, he was relieved that she would be out of his hair for the time being.
Leaving her there on the sofa, he returned to boarding up the house ...
Time blurred again for Ben, especially without his having to keep a furtive eye on the girl — on Barbra. He moved from window to window, bracing, hammering, testing, hammering some more. The mundane activity crept over his nerves, soothing them, but at the same time it almost whispered that surely what he had experienced this night had been nothing more than his imagination. Perhaps a hallucination, brought on by ea
ting a spoiled hamburger at Beekman’s Diner — there was more of gravy than of grave about those things! They couldn’t be real. Could they?
But for better or worse, he was too practical to give in to that sweet temptation.
As he was finishing up the living room windows, he noticed for the first time an old-style radio through the study doorway. He hadn’t seen one like this in quite a while, and his enthusiasm was tempered with concern that it might no longer work. Still, he had to try — anything to gain more information, any information, about what was happening.
Kneeling before the oversized, wooden-shelled device, he turned it on, and sure enough, it remained silent for several long seconds. He was ready to give up when he finally heard a whine and some static, and adjusted the controls — after a few more false starts, he found a clear signal.
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