Curt saw that Paul would die right there in front of him, only a few feet from freedom and Curt knew that his soul would go to the house. Deliberately, he pulled his foot off the brake and stamped it with all his force onto the gas. The car shot forward and took both Paul and the creature in the midsection. Curt drove straight and hard for the wall in front of him, and with the greatest crunch yet, slammed into it.
With a loud sob, he yanked the transmission into reverse and sent the car careening backwards. The garage door seemed to explode with the impact, pieces of it flew everywhere, but in a moment, the car was clear of the house and continued to drive backwards until it hit a large bush.
In front of him, the headlights picked out the creature. It looked as though the weight and velocity of the car had sent it partially into the wall. Its scabbed over arms waved feebly, for a few moments and then it seemed to dissolve into its mist and was sucked back into the house. Of Paul, there was no sign.
For a few seconds, Curt sat breathing hard, letting his tears come unchecked, while his hands continued to shake, he couldn't understand what happened to Paul. Next to him Amber wept, and bled. Her face ran freely with blood in a number of places. She looked at him in confusion. Against his better judgment, he hopped out of the car.
"Where are you going?" Amber said with pitiful fear in her still very quiet voice.
He didn't answer, but instead went to the front of the car not expecting the shock that awaited him. Paul's body was there. It seemed to have been fused to the front of the car.
"Oh God!" Curt rushed to the boy and gently pulled him back away from the car. Paul's eyes stared up at the night, but were blank and unseeing. "Oh God," Curt said again and began to cry hard. He put his head to Paul's chest and held him tight and there beneath his ear, Curt heard a heartbeat.
It was very faint, yet still definitely a beat. Curt laid the boy down and again listened, however as he did, Paul's heart gave only a few more weak thumps and then ceased all together. He was dead. But he didn't die in the house. And he didn't die being torn apart and eaten by the creature.
That was something. It wasn't much, but Curt held onto it. The house hadn't taken Paul.
"Curt!" Amber screamed his name in horror.
His head snapped up and fear shot through him at Amber's cry. In the garage something moved. A shadowy figure stepped from the kitchen door and walked brazenly forward. Curt jumped up, and began backing to the car door, but stopped when he saw who it was.
It was the mouse. In her hands, she held her cat puzzle box, it was stained with blood and flesh drops rained down upon it from a nasty would high up on her left arm. She didn't seem to notice it and Curt could only stare at her completely bewildered.
"We're escaping...tonight," she whispered as she came up to him. Ignoring the body of Paul, she calmly got into the back seat of the car and buckled her seat belt.
Curt shook his head again in amazement and then went to Paul. It took some effort, but finally he got the boy's body into the car and then with more care than he had shown previously, he drove away.
"We're escaping...tonight," the mouse whispered.
Epilogue-22 Days later
The Return Of The Thief
"This isn't how you said it would be," Dale Norby whined. The boy sitting next to him with the wild tangle of curly brown hair simply looked at him with steady blue eyes. "You said we was only going to take the truck," Dale continued, for some reason he felt unnerved by the boy.
"You need to listen closer next time," the boy answered in his usual quiet manner. "I told you that I would pay you to move the truck and to park it where and when I said to. This is where I want it parked; now if you are going to hit one of the walls, make sure it is the one on the left, closest to the house."
Dale looked in his rear view mirror at the fine suburban house. The truck would most definitely hit one of the walls and the ceiling as well.
"No! No, I won't! This thing will blow up, if I hit anything." The smell of gasoline in the cab of the truck was very strong; it was making him quite nervous.
"First off, the fuel truck is full and so it probably won't explode. It's when they are empty, you gotta watch out, because there is a buildup of gasses in the chamber and any spark could set it off...I looked into this. However, that being said, it will burn. I'll admit that." Smiling grimly at this the boy continued, "Now secondly, and I think you better put on your good listening ears for this...my friends won't be too happy with you, if you consider backing out."
The boy nodded, indicating one of three cars that had accompanied them. The other two were stationed further up the road, their occupants acting as lookouts.
Dale's guts churned at this.
When the boy had come to him with the job offer two days previous, he hadn't mentioned any friends coming along, nor had he mentioned that it was a fuel truck they were going to steal and certainly, he hadn't said anything about crashing it into a home.
"I...I don't know...I'm still on parole," Dale's voice sounded shrill even to himself, while the boy spoke with the quiet authority of a man.
"I know this. That's why we agreed on a thousand dollars and not a hundred." The boy slipped a large wad of cash from his pocket; many of the bills looked crumpled as if he had just pulled them from a piggy bank. "Now, I took all the risk getting the keys, and you've done half your job, but in order to get paid you will need to finish. All you have to do is back it up good and hard."
Dale looked a long time at the money. He had needs.
Ten minutes later the flames were a hundred of feet in the air and the pall of black smoke, invisible in the night sky, was far higher. Dale watched as they drove away, unable to take his eyes from the spectacle, but the boy...he refused to look back.
The end.
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Thank you for reading, The Punished.
Just a small note, my wife and I were foster care parents and over the years, a total of 55 children came through our doors. None were eaten and very few bitten. If you enjoyed this book please take a moment to review it on Amazon.
Fictional works by Peter Meredith:
The Horror Of the Shade
An Illusion Of HELL
The Punished
Pen(Novella)
The Haunting At Red Feathers(Short Story)
The Haunting On Colonel's Row(Short Story)
The Punished Page 41