by Hamill, Ike
It felt like forever, waiting for his dad and Paulie. As soon as he took his post at the front door, he decided he had to pee. With every second he stood with his back to the door, his need to urinate grew exponentially until he could think of nothing but peeing and monsters coming out of the kitchen doorway, or zombies lumbering down the gloomy staircase.
The lantern on the coffee table began to sputter again. With each pop it flared a little brighter, but then dimmed even more when it fizzed. Robby knew what to expect—they kept nearly the same lantern at home. It took liquid fuel, white gas, and required pumping it up to keep it going. But his dad pumped it earlier, so it would need a refill to stay lit. He knew he only had a few more minutes of light before it would sputter out.
At least the failing light gave him something other than his bladder to worry about. Robby almost welcomed the distraction. The shadows throbbed with each sputter of the lamp; they became deeper, like they were gaining strength. The ebb and flow of the shadows made the door to the kitchen look like it was swinging slightly.
Pop-hissssss-POP-hiss-pop-hisss, Robby felt himself swaying with the rhythm of the lantern. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from the kitchen door. It looked like the swinging gained momentum. Robby imagined that soon it would swing open all the way, and Irwin would be standing there.
Robby shook his head and tried to look away from the door. It had to be an optical illusion making it look like the door was swinging; just a trick of the wavering shadows cast by the failing lantern. When he first heard the squeak, he almost ignored it. It made perfect sense—it sounded like the squeak of a rusted hinge, in perfect time with the apparent movement of the door. But that would mean the door was moving. Robby tried to remember if the door squeaked when they entered the kitchen earlier. He couldn’t recall.
The lantern would fail at any second, and he would be alone in the dark with the squeaking door and whatever was making the door swing in and out. Robby straightened up and stood tall. He didn’t especially want to know what was behind the door, if anything was, but if he had to, he wanted to find out while there was still enough light to see. He took a step towards the kitchen door and then stopped.
“The wind,” he whispered to himself. That was the answer—the wind must be blowing through the back door enough to swing the kitchen door. That would also explain the throbbing of the lantern. It would react to the breeze in the same way. Robby relaxed for a tiny fraction of a second before he remembered his dad closing the back door tight. There shouldn’t be any wind.
“Robby?” his dad called from the hall.
He was afraid to respond. He was afraid that as soon as the thing on the other side of the door heard his voice, it would come for him.
“ROBBY?” his dad called.
He kept his eyes glued to the kitchen door and started to move sideways towards the hall. From his new angle it looked less like the door was moving. He shuffled a little faster.
The lantern went out.
Robby felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. Robby gasped and struggled to not piss himself.
“Come on, Robby, your dad wants to talk to you,” Paulie said from the darkness.
“Okay,” Robby said. It came out as a whisper.
Paulie led Robby down the dark hall. His eyes adjusted quickly, and Robby could see the outline of the doorway to the privy and his dad’s feet sticking out into the hall. He expected his dad would yell at him for not answering. Instead, he found his dad sitting on the floor with his legs straddling the hole to the cellar. He pointed the light down into the hole.
“I want you to see something, Robby,” his dad said. “I would just take a picture, but we didn’t bring a camera. I figure your memory is just as good as any camera.”
“Okay,” Robby said.
“But there’s some other stuff down there I don’t want you to look at,” Sam said. “I’ll go down first, and then you’re going to look in this direction,” he waved towards the back of the house.
“Okay,” Robby said. “Hey Dad, there might be something in the kitchen.”
“Paulie, can you go check out the kitchen?” Sam asked. Paulie nodded and headed off.
Sam swung his legs through the hole and dropped down into the cellar. He held his arms up for Robby like when Robby was a little kid. Robby sat down on the edge of the hole and slid towards his dad’s arms. Sam set Robby down on the dirt floor and turned him towards the back wall.
The little cellar was carved out of the rock ledge that ran up their street. They stood on a dirt floor and hunched beneath the low ceiling. Sam pointed the flashlight at the stone foundation. On top of the ledge, to even out the dips and sways of the rock, a stone wall held up the back wall of the house. Below the stacked rocks, on a big flat slab of ledge, dark red shapes had been painted on the stone. Robby studied language. Letters and numbers from different cultures fascinated him, but these were nothing he recognized. They looked like a cross between Chinese characters and hieroglyphics. The symbols weren’t in lines, or divided up into words, they were just spread out across the bottom of the wall in random groupings and sizes.
“What do you make of that?" Sam asked.
“I don’t know,” Robby said.
“They go from here, all the way to over here,” Sam said. He swept his flashlight across about twenty feet of rock. In places, the symbols were so densely packed, they almost looked like a picture.
“Is it words?" Sam asked.
“I don’t know,” Robby said. “Could be, I guess. But I don’t recognize any of it. Except this one here. This one that looks like a guy with his knees up. There’s an Egyptian symbol that either means a god or a young woman, depending on the context. It looks like that.”
“Huh,” Sam said. “Does it just look like it, or do you think that’s what it is?”
“And these two here,” Robby said. “These look like Japanese kanji. Slightly different than the Chinese versions of the characters that mean supernatural power.”
“Is it a code, or a message?" Sam asked.
“Could be,” Robby said. “But I think it would take a while to figure out if it is.”
“Can you remember it?" Sam asked.
“There’s too much. I can memorize parts of it, but I don’t think I could memorize the whole thing. At least not quickly.”
“Well, get what you can and let’s get out of here,” Sam said.
“Dad? What was it you didn’t want me to see? Is this blood?” Robby asked.
Sam put his hand on Robby’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Don’t worry, Robby. Nothing important. Just see what you can figure from these pictures. Take a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Robby said. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let his shoulders drop. He cleared his mind. It was easy to do with his dad right behind him—he felt safe. It would have been easier to do with an empty bladder, but he managed to relax. When he opened his eyes again he tried to take in the whole picture; he tried to see the whole foundation as one big image. He couldn’t make out the far edges, they weren’t well lit enough, but the center of the wall burned a picture on the backs of his eyes. He opened his eyes wider and let it all sink in.
Robby forgot about the storm, and the house, and the kitchen door, and Thanksgiving, and just saw the wall. His heartbeat slowed and his eyelids dropped slightly. The next thing he knew, his dad was shaking him gently by the shoulder.
“Robby? You got it?” his father asked.
“I think so,” Robby said.
“Good. Let’s go,” Sam said.
Sam backed up and led Robby over to the ladder. He shone the flashlight at the bottom rung, so Robby could place his foot. When he lifted his head to look up, Robby caught something out of the corner of his eye. It looked like a big pile of rope and a bunch of sticks. He didn’t see any colors. The dim light and his peripheral vision turned the objects black and white, but they looked shiny and wet. He climbed up into the dim bathroom and saw Paulie standing in th
e doorway. His dad followed right behind him up the ladder.
Sam brushed off his pants and then replaced the floor panel and the throw rug.
“Can I use the bathroom first?” Robby asked.
“Will it be quick?” his dad asked.
“Yes.”
“Make sure it is,” Sam said.
He set the light on the counter and stepped into the hall with Paulie. Sam left the door open and waited for Robby to start urinating before he conferred with Paulie. Robby couldn’t hear a word they said.
“You done? Let’s go,” Sam said to Robby.
“Okay,” Robby said. He didn’t flush or wash his hands—standard operating procedure when the power was out. Sam went first down the hall, followed by Robby and Paulie. “So there was nothing in the kitchen, Mr. Carver?” Robby asked Paulie.
“Nothing but the wind,” Paulie said. “I think it blew the back door open.”
Sam stopped. “You didn’t say that before,” he whispered to Paulie.
“Yeah I did,” Paulie said.
“Was the outside door open, or just the one to the mudroom?" Sam asked.
“Both,” Paulie said. “But the outside one was just open a crack, like you left it. And there were no tracks in the new snow that blew in.”
“Good enough then,” Sam said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Sam swept the flashlight around the living room one more time before turning it off. He opened the front door. Outside, the sky had grown darker but the snow wasn’t falling as heavily so they could see a bit better. The wind worked at filling in their tracks from earlier; the trudging was difficult.
Robby grabbed the back of his father’s jacket, and Paulie grabbed a handful of Robby’s. They formed a train and slogged up the hill towards the house. Their feet fell in rhythm. Robby pushed back his hood and looked to the side as they marched. He could make out the outline of their neighbors’ house.
They followed the picket fence of Mrs. Lane’s yard. Only the tops of pickets still poked through the snow drifts. Robby watched this house closely when he passed. He hated this house. It expanded through the years, long before Robby’s time. It started out as a just a summer cottage, and you could still its humble roots in the structure. A big belt of a beam wrapped around the middle where the first floor roof had been raised to two stories, and then two-and-a-half. On each side of the roof, dormers poked out, looking like angry devil horns.
The cottage belonged to the Lanes and had since settlers moved to the island. In fact, Robby’s road used to be called the “Lane Cottage Road,” but constant postal errors shortened to “Cottage Lane.” The Lanes never appeared on the island after Labor Day, but Robby watched the house carefully anyway. Its big black front door, surrounded by windows, looked hungry.
The roofline of Lane Cottage cut a black shape out of the gray sky. As Robby watched, a giant black form rose from one of dormers and floated across the peak of the roof and settled on the other dormer. Robby stumbled and fell into his dad’s legs. Paulie, still gripping Robby’s coat, came down on top of the boy.
“Straighten up back there,” Sam said. He turned and hauled on Robby’s arm, pulling him to his feet. Paulie pushed himself up and brushed the snow from his jacket.
“Dad, look,” Robby said. He pointed to the dormer of the cottage. He looked as he pointed and saw what his father saw—nothing but the dormer.
“What was it?" Sam asked. Paulie leaned in close to hear too.
“I saw a big black thing up there,” Robby said. “But it’s so dark, I guess it could have been nothing.”
“Move fast,” Sam said. He took Robby’s right hand and moved with determination. Paulie grabbed onto Robby’s hood and they trudged double-time. Robby’s only choice was to keep up. He felt like if he lagged, his father would pull his arm out of its socket. Sam drove his legs up and down, pumping at a furious pace.
Paulie tugged on Robby’s hood, pulling the zipper into the boy’s throat. Robby reached up with his free hand and tried to pull the jacket forward to release the pressure, but Paulie was pulling too hard. He tried to look around to see what was wrong, but suddenly the zipper was being pulled up into the underside of his chin, making Robby gag.
He sucked in a ragged breath through his compressed windpipe. He squeezed his dad’s hand, afraid to let go, and flailed with his free hand at his dad’s back.
Robby’s feet lifted off the ground as Paulie’s tug on his hood lifted him off the ground. He tried to yell, but he couldn’t get enough breath to make a sound. Robby’s eyes bugged out, and the world started to fade out as the pressure built up in his head. He was now pulling his dad’s arm upward, but his dad still trudged forward, intent on getting home.
Robby’s grip on his dad’s hand started to fail. He felt his glove starting to pull from his hand. Robby now dangled almost a foot off the ground, pulled up by the zipper and under his armpits. With the last of his grip on his fathers hand, he yanked upward.
Sam turned and immediately leapt for Robby. He nearly climbed his son, pulling the boy’s arm, and then pushing down on Robby’s shoulder to get to Paulie’s hand. He managed to grab Paulie’s glove, but it came off in Sam’s hand and he collapsed to the ground next to Robby.
Sam didn’t waste any time to figure out Robby’s condition. He looped his arm under Robby’s shoulder and jumped to his feet. He drove his feet through the snow, sprinting across the street towards their house. At first Robby just flopped alongside his dad, still struggling for breath. He pawed at the zipper with the hand that still had a glove hanging half-off. When it gave way it tore a chunk of skin from Robby’s neck. It burned, but the relief of a deep breath more than made up for cut. He got his feet to the ground and ran alongside his dad as they found the driveway. Sam ducked and ran the last twenty yards in a low crouch. Robby ducked too, but couldn’t see what they were ducking from.
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
THE ONLY FINISHED room in their basement was the laundry room. Haddie Norton put her boys down there on an inflatable bed. Robby stayed upstairs in the kitchen with the adults. Sam closed all the blinds and even moved the rocking chair so they could close the door to the living room. The lantern burned so low that a candle would have given off more light.
When Sam and Robby had burst through the back door, Sam immediately called out orders. Sarah and Haddie didn’t raise any questions—they heard the urgency in his voice. After securing the house the best they could, they wanted to know the details. Sam insisted Robby join the conversation, even though Sarah pushed for him to go downstairs with the other boys.
They sat at the small kitchen table.
Sam took a deep breath and lowered his shoulders. “Paulie’s gone,” he said.
“Where?" Sarah asked.
Sam raised his eyebrows. A look of surprise dawned on her face, but Sam repeated anyway—“He’s gone.”
“Oh no,” Haddie said. Everyone knew Haddie loved tragedies, and especially seemed to enjoy the misfortune of others, but she made a good show of looking shocked and saddened.
“What happened, Sam?" Sarah asked. She touched her husband’s hand.
“I can’t say for sure,” Sam said. “It’s beyond my understanding or experience. That’s the best way I can put it.”
Robby rubbed the cut on his throat. His mom slapped a bandage on it before he had his coat all the way off.
“By the time I turned around,” Sam said, “the only thing I could see of him was his hand holding on to Robby’s hood. I tried to grab his hand, but I only got the glove.”
“He didn’t make a sound,” Robby said.
“What about the rest of him?" Sarah asked.
“I couldn’t see him,” Sam said. “Just his hand. It wasn’t even very dark, or snowing very hard, I can’t explain it. It’s beyond my understanding.”
“I didn’t hear anything either,” Robby said. “Except the wind.”
“That’s true. It was completely silent,” Sam said.
“Should we go look for him?" Sarah asked.
“It’s not safe,” Sam said. “I think something was stalking us. You could feel it on the back of your neck, and Robby saw something on top of the cottage.”
“We can’t go out there,” Haddie said. “It’s not safe.”
Sarah didn’t acknowledge Haddie’s comment with even a glance. Instead, she addressed her husband again—“So what do you figure we do?”
“I think we pack up the Jeep, wait until morning, and then head for the docks,” Sam said.
“Wouldn’t it be safer to hole up here?" Sarah asked. She glanced around their kitchen, as if she’d misplaced something important.
“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “For one, if there’s something here taking people, I don’t think we could hole up good enough to stave it off. Second, if this is a local problem, our best chance is to try to get away from it. Irwin Dyer’s place was empty—it’s like he just decided to wander off. I don’t know what got him, but I don’t think being inside helped protect him at all.”
“I’d just as soon get to my husband,” Haddie said. “He’ll know what to do.”
“What boat will we take?" Sarah asked.
“We’ll take Carl’s old boat,” Sam said. “He’s always said I can use it any time, and I think he’ll understand. It will take a few of us to handle that thing properly. She’s a beast. Brandon’s got some experience, doesn’t he?” Sam asked Haddie. “He can help get us launched and landed?”
“Certainly,” Haddie said.
Robby kept his face still, but inside he flinched because his father immediately thought of Brandon. Boating terrified Robby—not because he thought he would drown, but because he got so sick every time they went on the water. They’d tried every remedy, from drugs to ginseng root, but nothing could stop Robby from vomiting if he even set foot on a boat smaller than the ferry.
Sarah took charge—“You guys pack some rations and plenty of water. I’ll get all the first aid stuff together. Who knows what we’ll need once we’re underway.”
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