by TJ Park
The floor bulged again, monstrously.
Doug scuttled down the sudden slope, a noise underneath like a tap hammer chasing him. This time several floorboards snapped, their splintered ends grinding together. The boards that remained whole slid back and forth along each other greasily, with a thin squealing noise. Doug felt the house beneath him start to shift sideways.
Doug had no doubt now. It was the familiar straining to lift the house. An impossibility, surely, even for something so strong. But all it needed was shift the floor supports out of alignment from the stumps to finish the ruin of the house.
The floor dropped out from under Doug and then it all came down.
Everything.
Doug dived down onto a floor that dropped faster than he could. The last thing he saw clearly was one of the house’s stumps thrusting up through the floor, launching slivers as broad as butcher’s knives.
Then nothing, but swirling black.
***
After a while Doug realised he was still alive, but only because he felt terribly uncomfortable. He was laid out wrong on a slight incline, the blood rushing to his head. He opened his eyes and immediately pinched them shut again. They were stuffed full of dust. Little use having them open anyway. He was in total darkness. Even the ambient light was extinguished.
He breathed in and then spat it out again. More harsh coughing nearby told him he wasn’t the only one alive. He tried sitting up and struck his head. He reached up, felt around, and found the ceiling hovering just above him was mostly intact. He dragged himself along on his side, following the sound of coughing and spluttering.
He bashed his head again, the ceiling having bowed lower in some places than others. Before long he came up against a wall. Prodding about told him it wasn’t a wall, but a place where the roof had dug into the floor.
The coughing trailed away in fits and starts. He heard Janet calling to her children: “Lauren? Scott?”
Doug followed her voice and found her further along the impromptu wall. He reached out and grasped a limb that brushed his hand. She screamed.
“It’s me,” he said.
He felt around again and handled what felt like Scott’s foot. A disturbing sensation. It brought to mind the unpleasant idea the children could be pinned between ceiling and floor. But then he heard them moving about.
He felt Janet’s hands pat his shoulder, then fly away at the recognition of him. From the many accidental touches she gave him, he figured she was gathering her children up, making sure every part of them could be traced.
“The kids alright?”
“I think so.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
Despite the absence of any protracted creaks and groans, Doug did not trust the house to afford them this space long, although something smacked of finality.
He wondered, with a chill, if the house was still charmed now that it lay in ruin.
The coughing, including his own, wound down, the dust beginning to settle. His eyes were adjusting, and he could roughly make out the indistinct grey ovals of the Clarksons’ faces, the gleaming orbs of their fearful eyes.
He was starting to see better around him. It was getting lighter as dawn approached. He could tell where the ceiling wasn’t broken and shoved into the floor, there were the vague humps of crushed furniture and the jagged barricades of wood that were once walls. He realised it was only the strong rustic furniture the Clarksons favoured that kept the roof from smashing them flat.
Chips of blue murk showed through the buckled timber. They weren’t completely buried, then. He saw Janet arranging her kids in front of a couch. She was trying to get a reaction out of her son, but he was unresponsive.
Doug shifted over to them. “Let me look.” Supporting the boy’s head, he held a palm close to his mouth, measured his breath. Faint, but still coming at regular intervals. He waved a thumb before one of the boy’s eyes. The eye did not track the motion. He faked poking at the eye. The eye remained open, indifferent.
Janet took over, cradling her son’s head in her lap. Doug massaged the boy’s limbs roughly, then slapped them to take the chill out and get the blood going.
“Shock,” he concluded. He said it offhandedly, as if it was something that was easily fixed, knowing full well you could die from it. Of course, that had more to do with physical shock. He had no idea how to deal with a mind that had been blown apart.
“Put a blanket on him. Keep him warm.”
It was all he could think of. He fetched one himself, tearing it free from a compacted piece of furniture, handing it to her. Janet swaddled her son like a newborn before manoeuvring what remained of her family into a closer huddle.
Small gaps leading to the outside revealed themselves and, like the larger gaps, they were vivid at first, but were quickly losing their intensity as the sky paled outside.
Morning coming.
Come on, come on, Doug sang under his breath.
Inside their closeted space, the dark was being replaced by a gloom that, strangely, made his eyes feel less certain. In the indecisive light, Janet’s pallid face almost seemed comprised of two layers. The top one resembled gauze, a mask. The face just underneath was the truer, more substantial Janet.
An old suspicion, lost in the heat of everything that had happened, came back to him. “Janet?” he said.
She looked at him and went rigid. She could see by his face to expect something bad. He proceeded softly, speculatively.
“Janet, what did you do after you buried your parents? I know you put your crosses away and everything else, but what else did you do?”
He knew he was on the right track. She was not bewildered or angry. She did not demand to know what he was talking about. She stayed very quiet, very still. Lauren pulled away from her mother’s grip. It was hurting her.
“What else did you do, Janet?”
A knock came from the floor directly beneath him.
He leapt like a spring, cracking his head a good one before scooting away over the floor on his hands and knees. He bumped into Lauren, who cried out.
He huddled alongside the Clarksons, watching the spot he had vacated. When nothing more happened, he looked around for a possible escape route to the outside. But of course, what would they do if they found one? The sun wasn’t up yet.
And it might not prove a threat to the familiar anyway. It needed only to stay under the house to avoid the daylight. But at that moment Doug didn’t really care about such things. He only wanted the sun to arrive so he could feel it on his face.
“Janet,” he said, “you didn’t answer my question.”
His eyes kept at her, wouldn’t leave her alone. He was positioned too closely for her to comfortably deny him outright.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But she didn’t look away.
“When you were alone in this big house, after the mourners and the well-wishers were gone, what did you do?”
Janet, staring. Just staring at him.
He gazed at her through the troubling, receding dimness with something almost like common humanity. “You didn’t seem too surprised that thing couldn’t get into the house. Your house, Janet. And you never bled, either. Not like your daughter. And I’m not flattering you when I say it’s too early for your change of life.”
“What are you saying?” Lauren suddenly cried out. “Shut up! Make sense!”
Doug didn’t want her to hurry him. He was trying to sort it out himself.
“What I’m saying, Lauren … is that I don’t think your mother is anything like the ones doing this. At least … not like someone who learned how to do it on purpose. But I get the idea that what makes magic so powerful – what drives it – is a strong will. And a strong will is something you have in spades, Janet.”
Lauren looked at Doug with unqualified disgust. But Janet didn’t. She was only thoughtful. He paused to consider his next words.
“Maybe it wasn’t what you did, but wha
t you didn’t do. Because you didn’t believe in anything any more. I think you didn’t just lose your faith. You shut it out completely, barred it from your life. You refused to have religion in this house any more. Any religion.”
Janet’s eyes, staring. Staring. Perhaps this was a revelation to her, too.
Doug continued, on firmer ground now.
“The monster was kept out not because of your daughter’s blood or your mother’s religious objects. It couldn’t get in because your curse was greater.”
“Shut up!” Lauren cried.
The bull’s horn punched up through a join in the planks, an ear-splitting squeal accompanying its forced entrance. The horn appeared between Doug’s legs and hooked his shirt, snagging him on its upward passage before he could jerk away, cloth tearing. Only blind chance saved him from being run through. His fault for talking so much. It gave the familiar cover, and a way to place him.
It came that close.
The fleeting touch of the horn’s span against his belly was cold. He sucked in his stomach muscles after scrambling away.
It came that fucking close.
Short screams followed, his included.
The horn remained upright for a moment, then slid back down in a graceful quarter turn. The noise it made receding into the floor was ugly, a merger of squeal and groan. The hole left behind was a splintered crown.
A brief pause, then everyone scattered, desperate to put distance between them and the hole. Doug clattered across the floor, his knee knocking hard.
The horn punched up through where he had passed. It struck the ceiling, then dragged back and forth across it doggedly, digging out splinters. Without a beat the horn slid back smoothly into the floor again, wood rasping as it went.
“Scott!” Janet hissed. But Doug was closer.
He hooked a hand into the boy’s belt. He intended to drag him into a corner … but hesitated. He looked at the floor, listening for movement underneath. He realised it was heading for where it heard the last sound.
“Janet!” he shouted. “Move!”
The floor was pierced directly beneath her, only the horn did not push through a join but struck a floorboard squarely, levering it up. It threw Janet out of the way instead of impaling her. The board broke in two and the horn continued into the ceiling. After a moment of deliberation, it sank back out of sight, the broken tip a jagged point.
Lauren scrabbled noisily to rejoin her mother. Doug cursed silently as he left Scott, thumping the boards as he went, hoping to confuse the familiar. “Spread out! It’s more likely to get one of you if you stick together.”
Shuffling noises travelled under the floor toward him. “And stay quiet!” he added, knowing it was time for him to move, too.
He rolled away, only to fetch up against the side of the horn as it was thrust up through the spot he was moving to, the tip driven deeply into the ceiling. Like him, the familiar was trying to predict movement.
Before the horn could slip out of sight, Doug swivelled and kicked as hard as he could with both heels. He was trying to snap it in two, but only managed to knock it aslant before it was sheathed into the floor again.
Why go to the effort anyway? The damn thing had a spare.
Doug needed a breather to collect his wits. But instinct made him dive again. He heard his last position skewered.
“Keep moving!” he shouted.
It was chaotic, bedlam, a terrifying game of dodge involving equal parts skill and luck. Mostly, the familiar followed the confused noises of scuttling and panic, jabbing through the floor where they were loudest. At other times – and worse by far – the familiar struck at random.
Their small advantage was that they could hear it coming. The tight space the familiar squeezed through did not allow for both speed and secrecy. Its eagerness to reach them could be heard, along with the shhhh of its coat sliding under the floorboards and the knock of the horn as it was positioned to strike.
Steadily though, it wore them down. They got slower, less vigilant. Doug was jabbed in the small of his back. Janet suffered a wound to her calf. Their injuries were superficial, but they were accumulating fast.
Lauren had youth on her side, but quick reflexes had its disadvantages. Her hands and knees were quilled with slivers from the splintered boards. Her menstruation had returned with a vengeance. Blood drops littered the floor and it became hard to know if anyone had been struck badly or not.
Doug knew it was a matter of time before the familiar got lucky, but he was just as frightened the floor between them and the familiar would give out. Sections were seriously weakened from the holes punched through.
Scott lay in a corner, untouched, while the rest of them flew about like moths in a storm. But a haphazard thrust caught his pants leg and flicked his foot away to thump against the floor. Janet cried out at her son’s close call and scrambled on all fours toward him. Halfway there, her arm plunged up to the elbow through a weakened board. She tried to pull out, but was stuck fast at the wrist.
Doug reacted quickly. He rushed to her, imagining an echo under the floor. He tore ahead of it, colliding with Janet and pulling on her arm. She let out a scream of pain and he saw the splintered wood she had levered down was now drawn up with her hand, and effectively manacled her wrist. He drove a fist into the floor beside her caught hand, never minding if he shattered his knuckles. But the wood was weakened and his punch forced a larger hole. Doug wrapped Janet in his arms, pulling her violently backward.
They crashed against a piece of smashed furniture, stuck. The horn followed them, passing between their faces. The tip, now blunt as a crayon’s nub, skidded off the ceiling with a dry spark. It swung around, seeking his eyes. It tapped Doug hard on the shoulder. Tag. Found you.
How had they believed something as simple as daylight would ever stop it?
The horn withdrew a little and pointed true, trembling with the handler’s anticipation, about to spear Doug through the throat.
But the killer blow never came.
The hole fell into a slant, propped up in the hole it made. The action was so marked, it could only mean the horn was suddenly let go from the other end.
Disbelieving, Doug kept Janet close in a tight clinch, his head over her shoulder, his ragged breath trembling the fine hairs on her brow. Some distance away, Lauren sobbed, as only a person could do at the conclusion of a cataclysmic event.
The horn did not shift again.
Something touched Doug, making him jump. But it was only sunlight coming through the gaps in the walls, thin shafts of gold bringing tears to the unready eye.
Morning had arrived.
***
Doug led the way out. If the familiar wasn’t gone he would be the one to take the brunt.
After pulling away a few smashed timbers, he found a way through to a window transformed into a skylight. He exited carefully, shuffling down a steep incline, staggering onto open ground. Timidly, the others followed after him.
“I need help with Scott,” Janet called out grudgingly.
“Wait,” he replied.
He lingered in place for a few moments, basking in the early morning sun.
It was clearing the low far hills, blinding him a little because his eyes were reluctant to turn away. Blinking, he gazed back at the destroyed house, then considered the burned lawn and the wreckage and debris and signs of some tremendous contest.
It all spoke of actions done and past. Nothing stirred.
The quiet motionless dawn impressed him.
“It’s gone,” he said, with something like wonder. He turned to the others so they could hear. “The bloody thing’s gone.”
Chapter Sixteen
While the Clarkson women tended to their wounds and looked after Scott in the workers’ cottage, Doug returned to the ruined house.
Using a chainsaw procured from the machinery shed, he cut through the roof and rafters pinning the opal crate. It gave him a mean pleasure to hack away rather than crawl ba
ck in through the ruins. He didn’t stay inside long. Though he brought sunlight in with him, he didn’t like being inside that close cavity with the unsteady floor beneath him. The perforations in the boards looked too much like peepholes. Sawing apart whatever got in his way, he brought the crate out by himself, finally sliding the damn thing down the collapsed roof to let it go thumping to the ground.
Next, he approached the ute, doing it as carefully as he would a ticking bomb. He looked over it, under it, in it, without touching anything. When satisfied, he opened the hood and checked the engine as best he could given his limited knowledge of mechanics. As far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong.
The familiar was quite a prankster. It had fooled them with the ute. The vehicle had been left alone. The engine turned over neatly when Doug tried it. No false starts. No booby traps. Rob must’ve corrected the sabotage he’d done before the familiar overtook him. Mick would’ve laughed.
Doug went back to the workers’ cottage for supplies and a change of clothes, giving the Clarksons ample opportunity to raise a weapon to him if they chose. Barring the pistol under his belt, he’d lost track of the firearms lying around the place and frankly didn’t care any more.
The family left him alone. They avoided going near him when they could. He understood that. They were indebted to him, yet he was the one who had brought this down upon them. He didn’t understand why, when he had the freedom to do or go where he wanted, he still felt trapped. At any moment he expected Janet to ask him to transport them to a doctor, considering the condition her son was in, but she never did. It made him feel both relieved and vaguely insulted.
Once he was set, he returned to the ute, not offering a goodbye. He’d done many horrendous things to their family, but that would be the greatest obscenity of all. They just wanted him gone.
But he didn’t go yet.
He had a sense of unfinished business. That was why he had hung around the workers’ cottage. Something left unsaid or undone, but he couldn’t think what. The Clarksons had no desire to say anything more, nothing that wouldn’t cause them more grief. Lauren had asked repeatedly where her dad was when they’d left the house early that morning, but stopped doing so after they’d stumbled across Warlock’s remains.