Shane went to the front door and cocked it open. Then he raced all the way to the back where Sid watched him plunge out the window they’d left open, as if doing a trial run. He landed on his feet, wobbled. and then found his balance.
Sid looked at his watch. Seven minutes had passed since Ashley had raced into the woods. He didn’t know how long it should have taken her, but definitely no more than ten minutes.
He paced to the front of the house and then to the back again.
Shane had disappeared, and Sid heard a rustling overhead. He looked up to find Shane in a tree.
“Do you see her?” Sid asked, voice catching.
“No.”
Shane jumped down, opened his backpack and handed Sid a hammer.
“Get ready to nail the door closed. We won’t have much time,” Shane said. “We’ve got to position ourselves so we can see her get here, but still have time to close the window before the monster escapes. You watch from here and yell a warning when she and the monster are in the house, get it? If you yell too soon, the thing might come after you.”
Sid stared at Shane, piecing together his words. He glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes had passed.
“Get it?” Shane repeated, and he eyed Sid wearily as if he knew Sid would screw up.
Even if everything went perfectly, Sid would somehow be the reason the whole plan failed.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it. I’m fine,” Sid assured him, though he wasn’t fine, the situation wasn’t fine, and it took all his strength not to plunge into the woods and race for home.
Fifteen minutes had passed when he heard the first crunching of branches, a stampeding through the forest as if a herd of deer were headed their way.
When Ashley broke from the trees, her face was red and her eyes were narrowed on The Crawford house.
“Ash,” he called out.
He couldn’t help it. His relief at seeing her nearly sent him to his knees.
She glanced sideways. “Travis is behind me,” she yelled, but didn’t have time for more because she was already pounding up the steps and disappearing into the blackhole at the front of the house.
Travis was seconds behind her, his eyes black and sharp as he took the stairs three at a time.
For a moment, Sid thought it was only them, Ashley and Travis, no monster at all, but then it emerged.
Sid stepped back, heart leaping from his chest into his throat. He held his breath.
The boy, for clearly that’s what he’d once been, lurched from the forest. He walked upright a few steps only to fall forward and use his hands. He moved fast. His hair looked grimy and thick with twigs. The skin of his face and arms appeared gray and sore looking. Scratches and welts ran up his arms and over his neck.
The boy crawled up the stairs and slipped into the house.
Two seconds, and then five more, passed, and finally the Sid who wasn’t a total bonehead yelled the warning call to Shane.
He ran to the front of the house, pulled the boards hanging loose into place, and started hammering nails into them.
“Stop, wait,” Shane yelled, running around the house.
He was waving his arms, but Sid couldn’t stop the hammer.
Bam-bam-bam, one nail in. Three to go.
“Sid,” Shane shouted, bounding up the steps and ripping the hammer from Sid’s hand.
Sid’s eyes bulged, and he started to grab for the hammer.
“Something happened to Ashley,” Shane shrieked. “She didn’t come out. I heard her inside. She screamed.”
Sid started to shake his head, to refuse his words, but Shane had stopped paying attention to him. He ripped the boards off and threw them to the side before running into the house.
Sid stood on the porch, frozen. The sticky heat of the day plastered his shirt against his soft body. His breath lay trapped in his lungs, full to bursting, and when he finally exhaled, the Sid who wasn’t a coward urged him into the house, whispering in his ear as if he were a little baby.
Come on, Sid. You can do this. Save Ashley, Sid.
But of course, he couldn’t do it, not really. But Shane could. Shane could save Ashley and punch Travis and defeat the monster, and afterward they’d all walk home and share a Dr. Pepper. And this time Sid would take a drink.
Except that was the plot for a Halloween special on television. In real life, monsters ripped out kids’ throats and left them in the woods to die.
ASHLEY STOOD IN THE CORNER, paralyzed as the monster, who she realized had once been Vern Ripley, attacked Travis.
Vern clawed and bit at Travis’s back. The boy had curled into a tiny ball and shrieked for help.
Ashley had made it to the window and had almost jumped through when she’d heard Travis’s scream of pain. She could have left him. She almost did.
“Damn you,” she spat.
She grabbed the leg of an old chair, jerking and smacking the chair down to break the leg free. She hit the monster in the back.
It howled and turned to face her, its mouth red with Travis’s blood. It lunged, grabbed her leg in its teeth and bit down. She screamed, feeling a hot burning as it tore through her skin.
Shane burst into the room, an aluminum baseball bat raised above his head. He swung at the monster.
It released Ashley’s leg, and she stumbled back, her ankle oozing.
The monster’s hands, curling into claws, grabbed the bat and jerked Shane forward.
Shane let go, but the monster had brought him close enough. It jumped, animal-like, and Shane toppled over. Shane put up his hands, but the monster’s face darted around them and bit into the side of Shane’s head.
“No,” Ashley screamed, grabbing the rest of the broken chair and struggling to stand on one knee as she bashed it into the thing’s back. It lifted its head and snarled, jumping onto Ashley.
A rock flew from the hallway and hit the monster in the chest.
The rock bounced off and landed near Ashley’s head.
“Come on,” Sid screamed. “Come get me.”
44
Sid scrambled down the stairs and into the tile room, which had once been used as the embalming chamber.
His breath hitched, and he pressed himself to the wall. Across the room, something moved behind a dirty pane of glass. The room contained a small window that looked into another room. As Sid watched, something pressed close to the grimy glass.
Sid saw its sunken face, mud streaked hair hanging limp on its translucent forehead. The eyes in its skull were as black as midnight.
Walking backward, bumping numbly against the wall, Sid opened his mouth and began to mumble.
“No, no, no, please, no, no.”
The thing in the window pressed its face closer, its mouth against the glass now, bloody from Shane.
Shane was probably dead. And the thing that had killed him stood only a pane of glass away from Sid.
Sid ran from the room, but he couldn’t reach the stairs without facing the monster. He ducked into the room filled with coffins.
Outside, the sun had gone down and soon he’d be surrounded by blackness and trapped in a room of coffins with a child-eating beast.
He cowered behind a coffin as the monster stepped into the room, walking as if he were half dog, using his hands as if they were feet.
Sid crouched and scurried to another coffin and then another until he spotted the open doorway.
He ran for it, the boy monster let out a shriek of rage, but Sid willed his legs up the stairs.
He burst through the front door into the open air, the oncoming night thick with the sound of crickets.