by Julie Jansen
Susan howled in pain.
The gnome pointed at the book bag.
“Take it off, Mom! But slide it to me!”
Susan did. Slowly, she unwrapped the strap of the bag from across her chest and shoulder.
The gnome inside had been quiet, but now let out a series of owl-like hoots.
Susan slid the bag across the floor to Reynir, and the mother gnome charged over Susan and toward the boy. Reynir ran into the living room and straight into Arnaldur.
The mother gnome stopped. Her mate lay dead on the floor, suffocated. She screamed at Arnaldur, a horrible raging scream, and ran at him, her dagger aimed at his knee.
Thunk!
She stopped in her tracks, looked around the room confused, then found the arrow in her chest.
Reynir had fired and hit his target. The gnome fell to the ground dead.
“I got her! I got her, Dad!”
Susan limped into the living room.
“Mom!” Reynir ran to his mother. “I got her!” He pointed to the female gnome who lay motionless near the male.
“Wait! Don’t move!” Arnaldur said.
They turned and saw the female kit in the hall, her face smeared with pickled herring. She’d just seen her dead parents. She yowled and ran back toward Reynir’s room.
Her brother wailed from the book bag.
Arnaldur ran after her, but he was too late. The little female lifted the papers and hopped into the hole in the floor and under the house.
“No!” Susan yelled and hobbled on her still bleeding ankle. “We’ll have to go under the house.”
But Reynir had got there first. His voice sounded from under the floor. “I’m down here!”
“Reynir!” Arnaldur and Susan shouted.
Then Reynir screamed.
Arnaldur and Susan rushed out the front door, Susan grabbing the book bag on the way out.
Arnaldur pushed the branches of the rhododendron aside and shimmied his way through the opening and into the crawl space.
The baby gnome smell was stronger here. Arnaldur was glad that the further he moved under the house the darker it became. That way he didn’t notice as many of the giant spiders that scuttled about on the boards.
“Reynir!” he called.
Reynir’s voice was weak. “Dad…help…”
Arnaldur found the boy on the opposite side of the house, in a spot of light that came from a screened vent. He lay on his back, his hands and ankles spread, bound by clothing and linens that had been patched together to form rope.
He heard a hiss. The little girl gnome was there. Another hiss came from his left, near Reynir’s head. It was another female kit.
Reynir was wounded. Arnaldur could see blood on his shirt near his stomach and a rosewood arrow protruding from the boy’s gut. Another arrow had struck him in the shoulder. Yet another had sunk into his ankle.
“It hurts, Dad,” he said.
Arnaldur was shocked at how fast the juvenile gnomes had taken the boy down.
A scream sounded from the crawlspace opening. Arnaldur turned to see Susan in the light coming through the opening, holding the male gnome in her hands.
“If you want your brother,” she shouted, “let my son go!”
The two females moved carefully toward Susan, their long skirts dragging in the dirt, their tall pointy hats bent at the top where they touched the ceiling.
Arnaldur worked to untie Reynir, keeping an eye on the female gnomes. He saw them both reach up at the ceiling and put something in their pockets as they approached Susan.
“Susan, they’re up to something!”
Before he could warn her, they threw handfuls of spiders on her face. The spiders scurried up into her hair and down her shirt. She screamed and dropped the male gnome.
Reynir crept slowly on his hands and knees behind his father. Susan shrieked as she tried to get the spiders out of her hair, her shirt, wherever they’d crawled.
And in all the commotion, the three juvenile gnomes escaped out the crawl space. Arnaldur rushed as fast as he could to the opening and saw them running across the street. The male turned back toward him and hissed, showing an impressive set of canines he must have inherited from his mother.
Arnaldur called an ambulance as soon as he got his family out from under the house. Reynir would require minor surgery for the wound in his abdomen, and stitches for his other wounds. Same for Susan’s foot. The EMTs, when they arrived, gave Arnaldur the heavy duty antibiotics, the same kind they’d used on him before. As expected, the medical bills were triple what they had been the previous summer when the gnome shot the arrow into Arnaldur’s calf.
They secured the crawl space opening and any other areas where the gnomes could squeeze in, and they patched the hole in Reynir’s floor. Reynir still had a problem keeping his room clean, but it was getting better. He spent a lot of time in the backyard practicing his archery skills and had gotten quite good.
Several weeks later, Susan plopped a picture in front of Arnaldur. He studied it while he crunched down on his toast. Three gnomes, not quite full grown, were running across the street toward Mr. Harrigan’s juniper bush. Each of them carried a small animal.
When Arnaldur looked up, he saw that Susan held two wooden cutting boards and was dressed in thick padded clothing with a shirt that looked made of chain mail. She slid one of the boards across the table to Arnaldur.
He was quiet until Reynir appeared, dressed all in black with the same chain mail tunic, gloves, knee pads, ankle boots, and a face mask. His bow was slung over his shoulder.
“I’m ready, Dad.”
“He’s ready, Arnaldur.”
“I guess Mr. Harrigan is ready for us to take them out?”
“And willing to pay us for our work.”
Arnaldur finished his breakfast, then they headed out the front door.
Two concrete gnome statues stared out from under the tree at Arnaldur, Susan, and Reynir, just under the bird cam. The camera snapped a shot of the three of them walking toward Mr. Harrigan’s juniper bush. Beneath the bush were also three sets of glowing yellow eyes.
About the Author
Julie Jansen lives in Olympia, Washington where she spends rainy northwest days writing creepy stories when she’s not teaching Italian. She’s an associate editor for Dark Moon Books.
http://www.juliejansen.blogspot.com