He had no idea that Tub lived with his grandmother and I only had one parent. Depressing thoughts usually, but for the moment the joke was on Lempke. We burst from a service entrance onto a loading dock, laughing like mad, and we didn’t stop running until we were back on the road. We hung on to each other for a few minutes until we got to the first intersection, reliving the escape through gasped sentence fragments.
We gathered our breath and grinned at each other. Our wounds from the long day no longer looked so pathetic. They looked like tattoos shared by warriors of the same tribe. I felt great. Then I noticed the sky. It was dark, almost full night. We must have spent more time in that parking lot than I had thought.
Tub grabbed me around the neck and expelled an affectionate sigh.
“I know your pop’s uptight,” he said. “But, seriously, how worried could he be?”
A siren squelched. We looked down the perpendicular road and were bathed in swirling red-and-blue light.
Word on the street was that Sergeant Ben Gulager had been born with that lush mustache, and many a playground bounty had been placed on photographic evidence. It was just Gulager’s third most notable physical feature. His hairpiece was also awe-inspiring, though only in its ineptitude, a black bowl-cut mop that always looked as if he had put it on sideways.
Yet no one dared laugh at Sergeant Gulager. The hairpiece existed to conceal his most defining characteristic, a gruesome, puckered scar on his right temple. Ten years before he had been the first responder to a domestic disturbance on the south side of the city, a garden-variety case of plate-throwing between husband and wife. But after Gulager arrived, things turned ugly, and the father whipped out a gun and started waving it at the triplets huddled behind the sofa. Gulager had not hesitated to throw himself in front of the girls, taking a bullet to the skull at nearly point-blank range.
His survival had been one of those miracles of physics at which doctors shrug. Surgeons judged it too risky to remove the nine-millimeter bullet from its position halfway between skull plate and brain matter, and six months later Gulager was back on the force, no different except for a relentless stutter. The hair around the wound never grew back.
The mustache, though, that was pure style.
I can tell you from experience that one thing worse than being handed to your dad by a cop is being handed to your dad by a cop who is a local hero, a man who has never, as far as anyone can tell, done anything wrong in his entire life, and would certainly never come home late enough to make his family worry.
“You realize, Mr. St-St-Sturges, that this can’t go on muh-muh-muh-much longer.”
Released from Gulager’s grip, I slunk across the kitchen and leaned against the refrigerator. Through the open front door, I could see Tub slumped in the back of the police cruiser, looking despondent behind the fiberglass.
Dad threw me a baleful glance before giving Gulager his most chastened look.
“Sergeant, you have my word. Jim Jr.’s a good boy, but in this matter I’m at a loss, same as you. I have told him, again and again, emphasized to him, stressed to him the importance of getting home on time. Nighttime is dangerous for everyone, but especially boys of Jim’s age—”
Gulager cleared his throat.
“Sir, it’s not J-J-Jim that I’m talking about.”
Dad adjusted his glasses by the Band-Aid and squinted.
Gulager drew a report book from his back pocket and flipped it open.
“May the twenty-sixth, seven-oh-five p.m. We picked him up a bluh-bluh-bluh-bluh-block away—”
“Well, that’s two blocks, really, if you count Oak Street—”
“June the fifth, seven-ten p.m., two huh-huh-hundred feet away—”
“It was raining that night. Anything can happen in the rain—”
“July the ninth. August the tenth. September the th-th-th-th-third.”
“Sergeant. I’d like to stop calling you. I would. But the world is a dangerous place. Surely, you of all people…”
Gulager raised an eyebrow and a portion of his gnarled scar dipped beneath the edge of the shaggy toupee. For a few seconds Dad looked obstinate before his shoulders sagged.
“I know,” he whispered. “I apologize.”
While he wasn’t being looked at, Gulager’s eyes flitted about the room, taking in the steel shutters, the three control panels’ worth of blinking lights, the front porch security camera buzzing above his head. Lastly his eyes landed on me and I read his sympathy. I felt both grateful and offended. I stuck out my chin and Gulager sighed.
“Luh-luh-look, Mr. Sturges.” He crooked a thumb at his cruiser. “I need to drop off the portly one. I’m not going to raise any k-k-k-k-kind of official stink about this. But I want to explain something, and I wuh-wuh-want you to pay attention. There are dangerous things out there. And those dangerous things n-n-n-n-n-need our attention. That’s why you are not to call us again. Not for something like th-th-this. We cannot spare the manpower. Am I muh-muh-making myself perfectly clear?”
“Of course.” Dad’s voice was soft. “Thank you.”
Gulager held our eyes for a moment longer as if showing his willingness to listen if there was something else we wanted to say. But one thing we Sturgeses were good at was keeping our mouths shut. Gulager nodded briskly enough that his boyish wig shimmied, snapped shut his report book, and turned away, donning his hat. The security camera tracked him on his way to the cruiser.
Dad closed the door and began the safety song of the ten different locks, though this rendition was more maudlin than I’d ever heard it: Click. Rattle. Zing. Rattle. Clack-clack-clack. Thunk. Crunch. Whisk. Rattle-rattle. I held my breath for the final note, the conclusive thud. But Dad’s hand had quit working. His thumb slid off the deadbolt and dangled at his side.
When he faced me, his lips were quivering.
“I have my reasons, Jimmy. I know it seems unfair. All I’m asking is that you honor my request. Be home before dark. Son? Please? Be home before dark?”
I felt anger. I felt frustration. I felt pity. All were emotions I didn’t like feeling about my dad. He was losing it. Year by year, day by day, he was getting worse, and it reminded me too much of myself in the school parking lot that afternoon, jumping at shadows and hallucinating monsters.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “I just don’t get why.”
He leaned in, so close I could smell the salt of his welling tears.
“Because it is not safe.” His jaw shook; the teeth rattled. “I’ve lost too much already, and I promised myself it wouldn’t happen again. And it won’t, not on my watch.”
I don’t know what he saw when he looked at me. It wasn’t the cheekbone bruise from my trash compacting or the blisters on my hands from the gymnasium rope or the scuffed knees from the parking lot chase. As always he was distracted by his own murky memories of the older brother who once called him “Jimbo.” He turned, punched complicated codes into all three control panels and waited for the varied automated responses: Residence Secured. Total Lockdown Achieved. Safety Mode 3-A Initiated. He flicked a switch and nighttime floodlights bathed the front and back yards. Neighbor dogs to both sides of our house howled their nightly disapproval.
Dad moved down the hall in his slippers, not making a sound. He entered his bedroom, closed the door, and after thirty seconds I heard the soft sounds of a familiar song playing from his old speakers, a syrupy tune I’d been hearing all of my life, some song by an oldies group called Don and Juan.
“I stood on this corner, / Waiting for you to come along, / So my heart could feel satisfi-i-i-ied.…”
When midnight came, I learned it from pop-up warnings on my phone and laptop. I had set the alarms to make sure I got some sleep after the long day, but I dismissed both of them in disgust. All the lights in my room were off and my eyes were straining at the screen, yet sleep wasn’t going to happen, not anytime soon.
I wasn’t making it any easier on myself with the subject of my surfing. Inst
ead of studying math, I’d been scouring the most popular video sites, and some lesser-known ones, too, on a hunt for anyone else who’d seen what I’d seen. My initial searches, limited to subjects like “sewer drains” and “locker rooms,” came up empty, but after ninety minutes of tweaking I’d found a second layer of content, videos so unpopular and poorly indexed that you had to learn a new language of misspelling to have a shot at uncovering them. Most of these were blurred snippets of absolutely nothing, while drunken voices hollered off-camera, “Look at that! Look at that right there!”
It was when I began noticing location tags that I started to sweat. I found no less than six videos posted within the past six years uploaded from right here in Saint B. To call these videos amateur would be putting it nicely, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something moving through those dimly lit alleys and behind those distant dumpsters. The videos were marked with only one or two “likes” and underscored with comments along the lines of omg so fake. But to someone who’d seen hands and feet and shoulders of unimaginable dimension, the shapes looked eerily familiar.
It got so I couldn’t take any more. I tore out my earbuds. Right away I wished I hadn’t done it. The stillness in the house was unnatural. I can’t put it better than that. It was as if there were new mouths in the house sucking up our supply of air. I could hear things I normally couldn’t: the buzzing from the front porch security camera, Dad’s breathing from his bedroom.
The idea that someone could be inside, though, was insane. The place was a fortress. You couldn’t get through our doors without a chainsaw and blowtorch, not to mention the screaming of multiple alarms and the arrival of three different security company vans. Through the crack in my door, I could see the proof on the other side of the living room: two red lights signifying that the various security systems were armed. I had been watching those two lights from bed all my life. So why did they seem wrong to me?
The two lights blinked.
Yes, that’s what was bothering me.
They weren’t console lights at all. They were eyes.
I lay there, unable to breathe, as the red eyes shifted about. Floorboards moaned beneath a great weight. I heard an exhale like the nickering snort of a horse. And then the red eyes moved from the far edge of the living room, revealing the much smaller security console bulbs behind it. Whatever it was, it was coming toward the bedrooms. It was about the worst thing I could possibly imagine. Until the next thing happened.
More eyes opened: three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Each of them swam in the same space of air as if connected to the same head, though each operated independently, some snaking to the left, some to the right, some glancing backward, and the rest straining right at me. Whatever this thing—or things—was, it filled the entire hall. I looked over the edge of my bed for some kind of weapon, but all I could see was kids’ stuff: half-built models, unfinished homework, and random other evidence of a guy trying to figure out what he was good at. None of it had helped me before, and it wasn’t going to help me now.
The first door it reached was Dad’s. Like me, Dad kept it cracked open and all I could do was hope that he was already crouched for attack. A few of the red eyes disappeared from view as they entered his room. I heard a jangling, as if the thing were reaching into pockets filled with change, and then an unpleasant, moist noise that continued for a good minute: Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp.
My shoulders shook so violently I grabbed the laptop to steady them. Yes—the laptop! The screen had gone to sleep but all I needed to do was jog the touch pad and it would fill the room with white light. I reached for it but hesitated. Something warned me that what I might see would haunt me forever. I might end up like my dad. If I was too afraid to do it, though, wasn’t that just as bad?
A shadow fell over me. I know that seems strange, as the house was completely dark, but this dark had weight: I could feel it cover my body like a layer of mud. It had texture, too: scaly, cold, slithering across my skin. And it most definitely had a smell: a brackish funk like a dead animal rotting at the bottom of a well. Though the slurping noise was still emitting from my father’s bedroom, several of the eight eyes had squirmed their way through the crack of my bedroom door and orbited the foot of my bed like slow, radioactive bugs.
Faces filed through my mind: Tub, Claire Fontaine, Dad. It was a good-bye, I think, because, in a way, I was doing this for them. I spun the laptop around and swiped the touch pad.
There was no moment of adjustment; light was everywhere. My eyes, so wide and frightened, instinctively shut, and I had to blink and blink and blink before the spots swam away and I could see beyond the foot of my bed. I saw the closet at the other end of my room, the door, the hallway outside, the living room.
Nothing was there.
Here is the truth. I didn’t feel relief. I didn’t feel joy. I shoved the computer off my lap and sunk my head into my hands, clawing my fingernails into my scalp. This was it, then. My sanity was bidding me adieu. Impulsively I threw back the covers. I would get out of bed, turn on all the lights, and scour the rest of house. I had to. Maybe there would be some evidence that absolved me from my derangement. I swung my legs around and was about to stand when my eye caught the closet.
Like I’d told Tub, it had been my closet that had scared me the most when I was little. Still, it was awful small for the thing I had seen drifting through the house—though with all those eyes moving around it had been impossible to accurately gauge its size.
My heart was hammering as I put one foot down. The floorboards creaked. I winced at the noise but kept my eyes on the closet, trying to catch any motion behind the slats. Then, carefully, I put my other foot down. Again, the floor creaked. Still no movement inside the closet. All the fears of my childhood came rushing back. I had no choice but to go up to it, fling it open, and take whatever came next.
I stood and craned my neck for a better look.
The computer’s light revealed that the closet was empty.
Then two massive furred paws shot out from under my bed and locked around my ankles, sinewy palms greased with hot sweat, jagged yellow claws cold as a river. After the paws yanked but before my head struck the floor, I had but a single, rueful thought:
Tub was right. Under beds, that’s where the monsters live.
Water dripped into my eye. It was acidic and stung. I rubbed at it and became aware of stiff needles of straw poking at my skin. More drops of liquid splashed down, and I sat up, wiping at my face with an elbow. I saw that I still wore my bedtime sweatpants and T-shirt. A pile of dirty straw, though, had replaced my bed, and a cave had replaced my room.
On unsteady legs I rose, brushing off the straw. The room looked to be carved from rock, though what I could see of the ceiling was threaded with the bottommost layer of the real world: gurgling, ancient water pipes; openings of moss-coated sewer canals; and scorched electrical grids covered with soot. Orange rust water dripped steadily from a dozen outmoded joints. A single passageway led out of the room into a hallway. A claustrophobic instinct told me to take it.
My sight adjusted as I walked, and I began to make out piles of junk all around me. Had it been random trash, I would have been less frightened. Instead, it was painstakingly organized. To my left was a hill of typewriters, old-timey ones with manual return carriages as well as models from the 1980s featuring miniature display screens. The whole pile reeked of ink. To my right was a wall of microwave ovens stacked like brickwork—black ones, white ones, brown ones, red ones—some of them old and dusty, others newer and still spattered with the remains of their last meals. All of them were unmistakably broken.
I moved into the hall. To my surprise it was illuminated by oil sconces hung higher than I could reach. Lamps didn’t light themselves—I reminded myself to walk softly, though it didn’t much matter. The place was loud with the hissing of the lamps, the babbling of water through the overhead pipes, and a subterranean rumble that must have been the foul-smelling
air churning through the underground passages. This was worse than any Trophy Cave I’d ever imagined.
The hall branched off into several rooms, each stocked with other detritus of human life. One room contained a quicksand of watches: digital, analogue, calculator; men’s, women’s, kids’; and so many of them that you’d have to wade waist-deep through the glittering moat. Another room was filled with fans: dust-coated ceiling fans, plastic desk fans, big industrial fans that stood on thick metal poles. Cords from a few wreathed up into the tracery of pipes and wires, and those fans were on, the blades clanging and the gears grinding with every oscillation. The last room I dared look inside was the worst: refrigerators, maybe fifty of them in every condition, standing like headstones in a grassless graveyard.
The end of the hall opened into a spacious cavern lit by a bright fire, though I struggled to make out any details through the rain of fetid water dripping from the towering entryway—a stone arch that looked as if it had been grafted from a sixteenth-century church. I began to pass through but paused in astonishment, the oily water weighing down my hair.
It was a cathedral of junk. Everywhere I looked, piles were gathered against grimy brick walls, these artifacts even more frightening because they were the stuff of kids. There was a mountain of cheap toy weapons. Jumbled in a corner were a thousand mismatched roller skates, one or two of which were squeaking as they rolled across the uneven floor. There were two dueling towers of lunchboxes emblazoned with happy cartoon faces. Most disturbing of all was the gigantic pyramid that dominated the room: bicycles, hundreds of them dissolving into rust, tangled together and reaching twenty feet into the air.
Clusters of flickering fluorescent lights were bundled together with wire and rigged into some source of stolen power. But their sick blue glow paled next to the hot white fire that burned from an oven at the far side of the room, crackling as if recently fed. I could not resist walking toward it as humans had done since the dawn of time.
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