by Young, D. M.
Gracie listened quietly as their mom climbed into bed. Then she reached under her bed and pulled out their treasure – a small box of candy and snacks swiped from the kitchen and leftover from lunches. Their mom never allowed food in the bedroom. So, the box was stored under Gracie’s bed where their mom was unlikely to find it. At twelve years old, she was expected her to clean her own side of the room without help, and their mother certainly wasn’t going to be crawling around on the floor digging things out from under Gracie’s bed.
She saw Emma sit up in her bed, waiting. Gracie tip-toed across the room and held the box out so that Emma could choose her treat. She looked at the packages of candy, snack cakes, and crackers and chose a snack size candy bar. When they had finished, Gracie carefully wrapped the evidence in toilet paper and stashed it at the bottom of the trash can. Then both girls snuggled into bed and fell soundly asleep.
CHAPTER 2
Sarah woke just after 6:00 a.m. Beside her, Nathan didn’t stir, and his breathing seemed too shallow. His skin was still hot, and his face was pale save for the flush across his cheek. She shook him, but he did not wake. Just as she began to panic, he mumbled something and rolled onto his back. Sarah relaxed a little and decided to wake him in a few hours and force him to go to the doctor.
She climbed out of bed and headed downstairs, not bothering to put on her robe. No one else would be awake yet. She thought about bringing Sammy in, but she knew that he would probably wake the whole house. She’d wait until everyone was up. As far as she could tell, he was still asleep in his dog house anyway.
In the kitchen, she poured a glass of grape juice, grabbed a cream cheese roll from the package on the counter, and sat down at the table to eat an early breakfast. With three kids in the house, this was probably the only time she would have to herself all day. She pulled up the web site for the regional hospital, wondering if the clinic was open on Saturdays. She’d like to avoid the emergency room, if possible. The site showed that the urgent care clinic would be open at 8 a.m. That would work.
Maybe she could get Rose Dennis to come over and sit with the kids while she ran him up there. She hated leaving Josh to babysit, and she knew he hated it, too. Gracie was fine, but Emma could be a real handful, and she particularly resented being bossed around by her older siblings. If she left them alone, they would all be fighting mad by the time she returned. She’d call Rose in a bit and see if she was free.
Sarah scrolled through her phone to pass the time. She checked Facebook and saw that her feed was filled with angry political rants and drama. Same as every other day. No surprise there. Sarah laid her phone down and just stared for a while, thinking of the day ahead of her.
She would go back upstairs and shower in a bit. She didn’t want to wake Nathan until she had to. He wouldn’t take long to get ready anyway. She put the dinner dishes away while she waited. Then she sat back down at the table, glancing at Sammy’s pen. He was still asleep.
* * *
Upstairs, Nathan lay alone in the bed. His dreams were wild and disturbing, but he didn’t wake. His breathing became faster and more shallow. Occasionally, the frantic rhythm of his breathing was broken by a great gasp, as his lungs struggled to take in enough air. His fever soared, and his body shivered as sweat soaked through his clothes and into the sheet beneath him. His eyelids fluttered. His hands clenched and unclenched. Suddenly, he drew in a deep, ragged breath. There was a soft sighing sound as he exhaled and slipped away. At 7:14 am, he lay still. By 7:17, his hands began to twitch again, and he opened his eyes.
* * *
Sometime in the early morning, Sammy woke with a sense that something was wrong. He needed to get in the house. He jumped at the side of the pen, and his paw came down on the rim of his water bowl, spilling most of it. The dog didn’t notice. The water bowl didn’t matter. He used his claws to pull at the welded wire trying to break it.
From inside the house, he heard a low moaning followed by a voice. Someone screamed. Sammy put more force into his efforts. He barked wildly as he pushed his head against a weak spot in the gate and felt it give. He tried to shove his head through the small hole, and a jagged piece of wire dug into his face. His feet were bloody where other wires had cut the pads of his paws as he tugged.
From inside the house, he heard a crash and another scream. He threw his weight against the gate, but it would not budge. As the sounds from the house continued, Sammy kept up his effort. He frantically pulled at the wire. Finally, the welds holding the wire to the frame of the pen’s door gave, and Sammy pushed through the hole and rushed toward the house.
He clawed at the glass door and barked, begging for someone to let him in, but no one came. He could see through the door that the kitchen was empty. He tilted his head, trying to see further into the house. His people needed him. Minutes passed as he stood listening. He could hear noise upstairs. There was a loud, quick crack from deep inside the house. Then all was silent. Sammy sat down on the doormat and waited.
A long time passed before he realized that no one was coming. He was hungry and thirsty. He checked the water bowl in his pen, but it was empty. The summer sun had risen high in the sky and was beating down upon him. He could not stay any longer.
Sammy went to the fence line and began to dig. He wasn’t supposed to dig here, but he had to get out. He needed water. There was a creek behind the house. He could drink there. Maybe his people would notice he was missing and come looking for him.
When the hole was deep enough, Sammy shimmied under the fence. On the other side, he shook the dirt from his fur and stood, waiting to see if someone would call him back and scold him for digging out. No one did. Sammy whined and made his way to the tree line. He turned to look at the house, but it was still silent. The creek wasn’t far. He’d go there and wait for his people to find him.
His paws hurt, but he limped along until he came upon the stream. The water was cool and fresh. He lay down on the bank and licked his paws, but the mixture of mud and blood wouldn’t come off. Occasionally, a bug wandered close enough and Sammy caught it. He was hungry. He waited there all day. As the light faded from the sky, he curled up in some brush near the bank of the creek and fell asleep.
CHAPTER 3
Monday, July 27
Matt Conner drove down the dry country road with the windows rolled up. The dust coated everything as he drove. There had been no rain for weeks, and the heat had baked every last drop of moisture from the soil as it often does in the middle of an Arkansas summer. The local news was forecasting thunderstorms for this evening, but he’d believe it when he saw it. Then again, in Arkansas, you can have tornadoes one day and a blizzard the next, so who knew?
Brody Martin sat quietly staring out the front passenger window. Brody wasn’t exactly friendly on a good day, but he had been moodier than usual this morning. He hadn’t offered an explanation, and Matt hadn’t asked. If Brody wanted to keep it to himself, Matt was glad to let him.
As they drove, Matt wondered about the situation at hand. A call had come through around 7:00 this morning. An elderly woman living in Tennessee had called to say that she hadn’t been able to reach her son, Nathan Roberts. According to the mother, this was unusual because he called her every Saturday. It was her day to chat with the grandchildren.
She’d left messages and tried their cell phones. By Sunday evening she was getting worried. This morning she’d finally called the police. Matt and Brody had been sent out on a welfare check. Neither officer knew the family so they had no idea what to expect.
“What do you think we’ll find out here?” Matt asked.
“Who the hell knows these days? Could be that the parents are laid up drunk or high. Could be that they’re just busy, and they didn’t bother to inform Grandma,” Brody replied without turning his eyes from the window.
Matt knew Brody was probably right. There was another possibility, but it would be silly to jump to those conclusions just because a grown man wasn’t returning his mom’s calls. Still, he�
��d been a sheriff’s deputy long enough to know that not every story had a happy ending. He always dreaded these types of calls. Most of the time they worked out alright, but, when they didn’t, they were really bad.
Matt stared ahead at the road. The small town of Hollow Springs was home to about five thousand people. Out here in the county, much of the land was wooded. Most of the rest was pasture with the occasional farmhouse nearby. As Matt drove, he thought that maybe he could see the appeal of living out here. It was quiet. There was very little traffic. No next-door neighbors to bother you. Though they weren’t actually far from town, the trees and hills made Main Street seem many miles away.
The Roberts home appeared on the left. The two-story, brick home sat down a winding driveway and was all but hidden from view by pines, maples, and oaks. The house looked well-kept, and the yard was neatly landscaped. The house was silent, and all the blinds were closed except for those covering one window over the porch. That window was closed, but the screen was missing. Matt glanced at Brody, who was standing near the door of the car.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Brody hesitated, “I don’t know yet. Let’s see if anyone answers.”
Matt stepped onto the porch and knocked on the door. He waited and then knocked louder. Still no answer. He was about to knock again when the blinds in the window beside the door moved – or did they? Matt drew his gun and motioned to the window. They waited. Nothing.
Brody motioned toward the back of the house, and he and Matt started toward the privacy fenced back yard. Near the gate they paused as they noticed a “Beware of Dog” sign. There was no sign of a dog here. With weapons drawn, they unlatched the gate and stepped through.
There was a pen near the patio, but the wire had been ripped open. The dog was nowhere to be seen. Inside the pen, the water bowl was empty. It wouldn’t take an animal long to dehydrate in this heat. If the dog was hungry or thirsty enough, he had probably damaged the door trying to get out. There were bloody paw prints on the patio and the doormat.
Matt looked around the yard. There was a deep hole dug under the privacy fence. Maybe the dog had made himself an escape route. He saw several dog toys scattered around. In the pen, there was a nice doghouse with “Sammy” written above the door. There was an expensive cooling mat inside the doghouse. These people had not just left him to die in the heat.
They approached the patio doors at the back of the house. The curtains were drawn back giving them a view of the breakfast nook. Matt peered through trying to find a reason to go inside. He could see that a glass pitcher had been knocked off of the counter spilling something that had long since dried. Beyond the breakfast nook, he could see the foot of the stairs and the front foyer. The inside of the front door was smeared with a dark substance in the vague shape of a handprint. That was all the justification they needed.
Both officers turned their radios down to avoid alerting anyone who might be inside. Matt moved to the side as Brody tried the door. Unlocked. As they stepped inside, they were hit with a foul odor. Matt gagged, but the officers continued into the house.
Brody checked the kitchen. The pantry door stood open, but the light was off. The kitchen appeared empty. Matt moved toward the living room and froze, motioning for Brody to join him. The back of the sofa and floor were stained with blood, as was the nearby recliner.
At the bottom of the stairs, Matt noticed a family picture hanging on the wall. A handsome, thirtysomething man stood beside a slim, attractive blonde. In front of the couple, sat a gawky-looking teenage boy and two young girls. Everyone was smiling. His stomach sank as he realized that, by all indications, this would be the last photo that this family would be taking together. The officers followed the trail of blood upstairs. A teddy bear lay in the floor near a large bloodstain on the floor of the landing.
The two officers continued to follow the trail of blood droplets toward the bedroom at the far end of the hall. The door was slightly ajar. Matt saw that the frame was cracked, as if the door had been kicked in. Guns ready, they pushed the door open. The body of a man, whom they assumed to be Nathan Roberts, lay just inside. He was face down, and the back of his head was missing, taken off by a gunshot at point blank range. The gun was nowhere to be seen.
The smell hit them again, much stronger this time. Brody turned away from the room and made it to the end of the hallway before vomiting. Matt joined him, gagging but managing to avoid throwing up. He suddenly thought of the blinds he’d seen move when they were on the porch. Mr. Roberts certainly didn’t do it, so maybe there was someone else – someone alive – in the house. It was time to get some back up in here. He tried his radio, but nothing was going through.
“Radio’s not working. We need to get to the car to call this in,” Matt whispered nervously.
Halfway down the stairs, they stopped. Footsteps. Someone was moving below. Had they missed someone down there? Matt leaned slightly over the banister and looked toward the bottom floor. Empty. Something clattered to the floor in the kitchen. Whoever was in the house had managed to cut them off from the back door. With their attention turned toward the noise in the kitchen, they did not see the small figure shamble out of the master bedroom behind them. Another crash from the kitchen, and then Sarah Roberts stumbled into the breakfast nook.
Matt stared in amazement at the woman who had looked so beautiful in the photo. Now, she was barely recognizable. Her blonde hair was caked with blood on one side. Her once bronze skin was now a grayish color, and there were dark circles under her glassy eyes. She was wearing a night shirt – also covered in blood – and her upper right arm and neck had nasty looking wounds. Dried blood covered the front of her shirt.
She spotted them and began to amble toward the stairs. Her gait was awkward and slow. Her mouth hung open. They watched, frozen for a moment, as she closed the distance. From the look of her, she was in no condition to converse, but Matt tried anyway.
“Ma’am, can you tell us what happened to you?” he asked.
The only response was a low moan. Her arms reached toward them as she drew closer.
“OK, Ma’am, stop right there!” Brody said, but she didn’t seem to hear.
She took two more steps. She was close now, and Matt stepped backwards. She gave another moan and lunged forward. Now, there was a rotten, sickly stench. Her flat, glassy stare made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. She locked eyes with him and growled. There was something wrong about the whole situation. Unnatural. That was the word that kept echoing in his mind.
“She’s crazy!” Brody said, unsure of what to do. Sarah took another step toward them and Brody raised his weapon, “Ma’am, stop or I’ll shoot!”
His warning was ignored as Sarah stepped forward again. He fired once into her chest. She stumbled backward but didn’t go down. He fired two more times with the same result. “What the hell?” he cried
Finally, Matt raised his weapon and pulled the trigger. The bullet caught her between the eyes. This time Sarah Roberts went down. The officers kept their weapons on her for several more seconds, but she did not move. Their ears ringing from the gunshots, they could not hear the child’s footsteps coming down the stairs behind them.
Breaking free of his shock, Matt nearly yelled, “Let’s get out of here now and get some backup in here.”
He stepped down the stairs, just as the child behind him reached out toward him. Matt watched as Brody turned and caught her before she could tumble down the stairs. “She’s so cold!” he said.
“We have to get out of here,” Matt said. “Cover her eyes.”
Brody holstered his gun and pulled the child to him. The girl lowered her head to his shoulder. As her arms locked around him, she sank her teeth in to his skin.
Brody screamed and struggled to pull the child loose. Matt watched, repulsed, as the child took part of Brody’s flesh with her. She chewed on it as he tore her away from him. Finally, Brody shoved the child down the stairs past Matt. She moane
d again and stood up. With blood smeared around her mouth, she growled and stepped toward them.
Matt froze. He couldn’t shoot a kid even if she was insane. Surely, they could restrain her until the ambulance arrived, and she could be sedated. As the girl drew closer, a shot rang out, and the child dropped to the floor. Brody, it seemed, wasn’t interested in restraining her.
Matt stood trembling, unable to comprehend anything that had just happened. Brody, by contrast, seemed to have fully accepted that they had just stepped into a huge pile of shit. His dark eyes were wild and bulging from his pudgy face as he grabbed Matt’s arm and dragged him from the house. It occurred to Matt that there were still family members unaccounted for. If they were in the same shape as these two, he wasn’t interested in finding them.
Once inside the car, Matt seemed to shake off some of his shock. He called for backup then took some gauze and patched the wound on Brody’s shoulder, neither of them taking their eyes from the house for very long. Soon, the driveway was full of police cars. Brody’s wound was bleeding pretty badly and would need further treatment. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance while Matt explained the situation and spoke with the coroner.
When he was done, he climbed into the car and headed for the sheriff’s department, dreading the conversation he knew would happen once the sheriff heard about this. As he was driving away, his mind replayed the events that had just occurred, trying to figure out how he would explain all this in his report. None of it made any sense. No one was going to understand what they had seen or how they’d felt inside that house. On top of all that, he couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the other two Roberts children.
CHAPTER 4
Ray Melton woke to the sound of his phone ringing. He brushed his dirty brown hair out of his face and looked at the clock. Shit, he’d overslept again. Should have been at work a half an hour ago. That was probably his boss calling to ask where he was. Well, fuck him. He wasn’t going in. He’d call in later and give him some excuse.