Jessica let go of the lock and looked at Claire. Claire looked back at her gravely, having come to the same conclusion. “It’s jammed,” Claire said.
“Yeah.”
Jessica turned from the front door and looked desperately around the great room. The room was much darker with the patio lights off, but thankfully the moonlight pouring down from the skylights lit the area enough for them to search for weapons, or a place to hide. Jessica scanned the dark patio, now only lit by moonlight. Nothing was there—no dark shapes, no sentinel guard with gray skin and bared teeth.
Her eyes swept the room and went up to the fireplace. The dark, elongated shape was still stretched across the bricks. In her panic, she had forgotten about the gun. Claire’s words echoed in her mind: Of course he had a gun, he’s from Texas. She should have taken it down then, before the chupacabra arrived. She hadn’t thought they were going to need it, though. But an open window and her own ignorance had led them to this moment, and now that mounted gun might be their only chance. God, please let it be loaded.
Jessica rushed out of the foyer and catapulted into the great room. She collided with the bricks of the fireplace, her palms making a smacking sound as they hit the hearth. She extended her arm as high as it would go, but she couldn’t reach the gun. It loomed above her in the dark. Fucking vaulted ceilings . . . everything is too high up, she thought. First the window and now this. Jessica jumped, trying to knock the gun off its mounting, but she was still unable to reach it. Claire ran into the room and grabbed the chair closest to the fireplace. She pushed it a foot toward the fireplace, then stopped. Jessica turned to see why Claire was taking so long. “Claire, I need that cha—”
Claire stood frozen in place next to the chair, staring out at the expanse of windows. Her body trembled in the moonlight. Jessica followed her gaze to the patio. A dark shape had materialized by the fire pit. The chupacabra was back, standing in roughly the same spot as before. Only this time, without the reflection from the landscape lighting in the glass, Jessica was certain it was looking directly at them. It could see them now—see them and smell them. She doubted its vision was impeccable, but it appeared to be decent enough for it to see them standing inside Cameron’s great room.
She wondered if it recognized her from the canyon. Maybe it remembered her smell, just like she remembered its stench wafting on the breeze. She could smell the sweat and fear pouring off her body—it smelled like battery acid. Was it smelling her right now as it watched her?
“What’s it doing?” Claire whispered.
The chupacabra launched at the window. It collided with the glass and fell backward onto the patio. A spider web of fractures spread across the window, glimmering in the silvery moonlight. Thank God for dual-pane windows, Jessica thought. The chupacabra took a step back and shook its head. It arched its back, flexed its legs, and looked up at the web of cracks along the glass surface. It sunk down into a deep crouch.
“Get away from the window,” Jessica ordered. She grabbed Claire’s hand and pulled her toward the foyer, away from the living room and the fireplace. They were out of time. If they had gone for the gun immediately and not wasted time on the front door—maybe they would have been able to move the chair, climb up, grab the gun. But she had made the wrong choice again—another fatal error. Taking the time to scale the fireplace was no longer an option.
Jessica dragged Claire out of the living room. Claire stumbled backward up the steps, never taking her eyes from the creature outside. “It’s gonna come through the glass, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is. We have to go. Now.”
The muscles in the chupacabra’s flank rippled. It came up onto its hind legs, making it look fearsomely tall, then fell back to all fours. It’s judging the distance, Jessica thought. It’s deciding where to hit the glass.
Jessica and Claire stood in the foyer, staring in horror at the wall of windows. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, although only a few seconds had managed to tick by. The chupacabra rose up onto its hind legs, came down to reposition, then rose up again. Jessica noticed two dark shapes lying on the white carpet next to the couch in front of the window. Phones. We left them there when we tried to run away.
“Claire,” Jessica said through gritted teeth, “we left our phones on the floor.”
“Fuck, I’ll go grab—”
“No, no time.” Jessica looked down at the phones on the ground, then up at the chupacabra that was no longer getting positioned. It was crouched low to the ground, about to spring up at the window. There wasn’t time anymore. All that was left was to get it to go after her instead of Claire. It wouldn’t be all that bad in the end. At least she would get to see her daddy again.
“Claire, go down that hallway,” she pointed to the hall behind Claire. “I’ll go down this one,” she threw a thumb behind her. “I’ll make noise and get it to go my way. You find a way out. Run straight for the car, you understand? Do not wait for me.”
“But Jess—no. I’m not leaving without you. We can hide in a closet—”
Jessica’s mind flashed to 1987, and to the children who were attacked in their closet. “No! No closets. No hiding. You have to run. Break out of a window and run. For the car. Now!”
“No, Jess—I can’t—”
The wall of glass shattered. The sound was all-consuming—a cacophony of crackling that sounded like icebergs breaking and wind chimes during a hurricane. Both girls turned to the window, holding each other, and watched as the entire wall turned into a million sparkling pieces of moonlight. And then the moonlight was melting—the glass plummeting toward the ground. Glass burst as it hit the floor below, new explosions of sound that muted everything else—except the snarling, which somehow pushed its way past the smashing glass and penetrated Jessica’s eardrums. The stench of the chupacabra hit her nose just as the sound of its snarls made its way to her ears. The whole world was filled with shattering glass, wreaking rotted meat, and snarling rage.
Jessica could see a dark figure emerge from the sparkling moonlight of a thousand broken moons. It was in the living room, the glass continuing to shatter all around it. It seemed to be waiting for the glass to fall before it rushed toward them, although she wasn’t sure why. Jessica grabbed Claire, pulling her roughly away from her transfixed gaze at the exploding window. “I love you, Claire,” Jessica said. She turned Claire toward the hallway and shoved her in that direction. Claire stumbled, regained her footing, and ran down the hallway until she disappeared around a corner at the far end.
Jessica turned back to the dark form standing in the center of the living room, surprised it wasn’t on top of her already. Its heavy, gray body stood out in stark contrast to the lightly colored carpet and furnishings. It seemed to be disoriented, waiting for the deafening sounds of the crashing window to cease.
Jessica pivoted on the marble floor and ran down the hallway opposite of Claire’s retreat. She planned to yell as she went, luring the chupacabra down her hallway so Claire had a chance to escape. However, as she ran down the hallway, she realized yelling would not be necessary—her CAM boot emitted a loud clunk! with every step she took.
Chapter 54
Time slowed down even further—if that was possible—as Jessica ran down the marble hallway, moonlight sweeping across her bare shoulders as she passed underneath the hallway skylight. The hallway was wide with pictures of the desert hanging on either side. She felt like she was in a canyon, in the canyon. The movie reel played in her head—the one that always played as she ran through the desert. Only this time instead of full length memories running their course as she traversed the trail, the projection screen in her mind was only showing flashes of different memories. Every time her boot clunked on the marble a new memory flashed by. There was a flash of her dancing in the rain as her father watched. A flash of her getting her first kiss on a swing set, their swings shifting back and forth in unison as they pressed their lips together. A flash of her having her first beer in
college, Claire by her side. A flash of her crying in a bathroom stall of a restaurant right after her dad told her they had found a mass in his lung. A flash of what was left of her dad lying in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of him. A flash of her mom’s face on the caller ID at two-thirty in the morning. A flash of her keeled over on the hiking trail, trying to run for the first time. A flash of Cameron’s feet, lying motionless across the trail. The memories flashed faster and faster, running together into a blur where she couldn’t discern one memory from the next.
The hallway came to a T-junction, and Jessica veered to the right and down a new corridor. There were doors on each side of the hallway. It was darker here—the skylights didn’t run into this portion of the house. Jessica grabbed a doorknob and yanked it open, revealing a linen closet. No closets, she thought. Anywhere but a fucking closet. She ran to the next door and yanked it open. A bathroom. Beautifully tiled and the size of her childhood bedroom. She rushed into it, whirled around, and shut the door. She expected an immediate collision into the doorway from the other side, just like the front door, but eerie silence followed instead.
She could smell it, though. The rancid, putrid stench filtered under the door of the bathroom, filling the room and making her head swell. The same smell from the canyon, and the same smell from the carnivore exhibit at the zoo. Jessica gagged. The smell was overpowering in such a small space. She stifled an unexpected urge to laugh. A small space? she thought. This is the biggest bathroom I have ever seen. In comparison to the great outdoors, she supposed it was a much smaller space, though. She pictured the waves of green stink that cartoons have when something smells bad. She imagined the entire estate, magnificently pristine as it was, covered in a great green cloud with little black flies buzzing around the top.
The smell was getting stronger—it had definitely come down this way. Jessica prayed that Claire was creeping out a window somewhere on the other side of the house. She would get to her car and start driving, throwing dust out behind her as she sped toward safety.
Jessica struggled not to gag again. She didn’t want to make a sound. The longer it took for the chupacabra to get to her, the longer Claire had to escape. It hunts on hearing and smell, she thought, then added: I’m so fucking stupid. She should have known it never had to do with the lights. Why would something that survives only in darkness use lights to hunt by? All those people back in ‘87—how many of them had their windows open? A lot of those homes in that neighborhood probably didn’t even have air conditioning. And after a monsoon storm, with the temperature dropping from one hundred to seventy-four, who the hell wouldn’t open their windows to enjoy the cool breeze and the smell of wet desert soil? Jessica suspected that every single house that was attacked had at least one window open, if not all of them.
Something fell over in the hallway to the left of the bathroom. There had been a small decorative table at the T-junction—the chupacabra had probably just knocked it over. Searching? she thought. Or doing the same knock-something-over routine that it usually does to lure someone out? Why would it need to do that? Can’t it smell me? Jessica sniffed the air. She couldn’t smell anything other than the rotting stench of the chupacabra. The battery-acid smell of her own fear had been overpowered by the rancid odor coming from the hallway. It can’t smell me anymore, she realized. This space is too small, and its own smell is too much. It can only smell itself. Jessica took a long, slow breath through her mouth, trying not to make a sound. Sound was what it was relying on right now. Only sound.
Jessica took a step back, away from the closed door. She glanced around the bathroom. Moonlight poured onto the white marble, coming from a large picture window over the garden tub. A double vanity was on the left side, next to the doorway. On the right were a toilet and a bidet. Fancy stuff for fancy butts, she thought. A walk-in shower, surrounded by glass, was next to the vanity on the left. She saw that the shower head had a small leak. In the silvery glow of the moon, it looked like a sparkling diamond welling up at the head of the faucet and then plummeting into the darkness of the shower. Even rich people have plumbing issues, she thought absentmindedly. Everything in the bathroom was white, including the towels. In the moonlight, the room looked like icicles.
Jessica went to take a step toward the tub, then stopped. Her damn walking boot was going to clunk on the tile if she took another step. She held her breath and listened. After all the shattering glass, the silence felt horrifying and complete—like she was already in her grave. The bathroom was a mausoleum made of marble and porcelain, and she had just shut the door to her own tomb. She heard a grunt coming from the hallway, which brought her back to reality. She wasn’t in a tomb; she was in a very extravagant guest bathroom. And she was in peril.
Heavy breathing was coming from the hallway. God, she could actually hear the thing breathing now. And something else. A clicking? A tapping? Jessica’s stomach churned as she thought, Claws? Those are its claws on the tile floor. With every step it took, its claws tapped and scratched across the marble. She strained to discern how close it was to the bathroom. When it grunted again, closer this time, she no longer had to wonder.
Jessica sat down on the cool tile and scooted backward away from the door. She didn’t dare try to walk across the bathroom with her boot on. She slid backward on her rear, her left leg hovering in the air. Once her back touched the cold edge of the garden tub, she gently lowered her left leg onto the bath mat that was outside the shower door. From this angle, she could see under the crack of the bathroom door, although all that was beyond the door was darkness.
How much time had passed? A minute? Probably less. She wondered if Claire had time to escape yet. Probably not. The picture window in this bathroom wasn’t even capable of opening. She wondered how many windows were on Claire’s side of the house, and if there was one she could open and crawl through. Not just crawl through, but be able to do it silently and undetected. She wanted to warn Claire that the chupacabra was hunting by sound alone now, and that she needed to keep absolutely quiet.
Wood suddenly cracked in the hallway, accompanied by snarling and a guttural growl that sent shivers down Jessica’s spine. It’s tearing down the closet door, she thought. Banging gave way to splintering, and splintering gave way to breaking. All the while the chupacabra snarled and growled. I knew the damn closet was a bad place to be.
Jessica sat with her back against the tub, listening to the destruction of the closet door. If there is any time to break a window and escape, Claire, now’s the time. Wood burst and exploded in a frenzy beyond the bathroom door. Jessica listened, paralyzed with fear. This room was next, she was sure of it. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck, although her body had broken out into gooseflesh. Any minute now. Wood clunked and cracked as it fell to the marble floor in the hallway. Thorough son of a bitch, isn’t it?
The movie reel played in her head, one memory repeating again and again. She had just danced in the monsoon downpour, ran under the dryness of the porch, and hugged her dad, soaking his clothes in the process. Her dad’s words ran on an endless loop in her mind as she watched the moon-splashed bathroom door. Look Jess, you made me a mess. Look Jess, you made me a mess. Look Jess, you made me a mess. His voice had sounded so quiet, drowned out by the deafening afternoon downpour. If she hadn’t been hugging him at the time, she wouldn’t have heard him at all.
Jessica looked at the dripping showerhead in the glass-enshrouded shower stall. She could see the showerhead through the top portion of glass, which was clear and devoid of water splashes. The lower portion of the glass stall was opaque and twinkled in the cool, blue light from the window like freshly fallen snow. Jessica watched the showerhead drip, unable to pull her eyes away. It welled up, dripped, welled up, dripped.
Something tugged at her mind. It felt like a word on the tip of her tongue that she just couldn’t manage to remember. Or like the frustrating feeling of walking into a room, only to not remember why you went there in the first place. Look
Jess, you made me a mess. Look Jess, you made me a mess. Her dad’s words barely audible above the noise of the raging storm. Drip, Jess, drip, mess.
And all at once, like a ray of sunshine shooting through the moonlight in her mind, she knew. All the puzzle pieces had finally fallen into place. Jessica knew why the chupacabra had left the canyon. She knew the connection between the monsoons and the attacks. And—God willing—she might just know how to get out of this alive. Thank you, Daddy.
Silence fell in the hallway. The chupacabra had given up on the closet. The tapping of claws on tile resumed, heading in her direction. She heard grunting sounds coming from directly behind the bathroom door. Claws slid through the dark gap under the door and protruded rudely into the pristine bathroom. Jessica held her breath and waited.
Chapter 55
The monsoons came every summer in the southwestern United States, bringing much-needed moisture to the plants and animals that relied on its arrival. Flowers bloomed, the beige desert turned green, and animals flourished. Most of the year’s rainfall occurred during only those few summer months. And then the storms would fade, the humidity would lessen, and the dry desert heat would return.
This summer had been different, though. The El Niño had increased the amount of tropical storms in the Pacific, leading to unprecedented amounts of rainfall to the area. The Sonoran Desert was being berated by an onslaught of rain on an almost daily basis. The clouds would roll in during the early afternoon, the sky would turn yellow with the approaching storm, thunder would rumble, and by mid-to-late afternoon the rain would begin. Flash floods rushed down washes and water flowed through the streets. Tucsonans chattered endlessly about how they had never seen so much rain in a single monsoon season. Some of the old-timers would chime in then, recalling one other particularly wet season that could rival the likes of this one. And that was the summer of 1987.
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