James jumped in, hearing and feeling the bugs crunch beneath his shoes. Grimacing, he kicked them to the edges and cleared a space before the tunnel. He knew it was crazy even as he did it, but he couldn’t seem to help himself, and he dropped to his knees, then ducked down and pushed his way into the opening headfirst.
It was pitch-black. He couldn’t see a thing. For all he knew, there were bugs galore in the space ahead. Beetles. Worms. Or something worse.
But he pressed on, wriggling into the narrow tunnel, arms at his sides like the Grinch slithering and slinking through one of the Whos’ houses. The earth smelled good, and he breathed deeply, the scent of the soil and its olfactory lure overriding the utter lack of light and helping him overcome his trepidation. He wriggled in farther—
And dirt fell on his rear end and the backs of his legs—the only parts of his body still sticking out into the hole.
He waited in place for a moment, not moving, thinking that his squirming feet must have jostled free some loose earth. But though he remained still, soil continued to rain down on the lower half of his body.
“Hey!” he cried. “Stop it!” But his voice sounded muffled even to himself, and he doubted that the sound of it even escaped the tunnel.
The dirt continued to fall. Faster.
Someone was trying to bury him.
Someone or something.
In his mind, he saw the terrible grinning man from his dreams, the one he’d spotted in the window of his dad’s office, furiously throwing dirt into the hole in an effort to entomb him here forever. This was a trap, and he’d fallen for it, and he wondered whether the dirt would be packed down, the grass replaced, everything put back perfectly just the way it had been so that he would never be found. His parents would search for him, the police might think he’d been kidnapped or had run away, and all the time he would be buried here in the backyard, rotting.
Turning into a skeleton like the animals he’d found.
James tried to quell the panic rising within him.
He had to get out of here.
Now.
With a burst of energy, he shoved himself backward, using his shoulders to propel his body, since his arms were pinned uselessly to his sides. In the hole, his shoes dug into the beetle-coated earth, and he tilted his ankles, providing enough leverage for his knees to find purchase. As dirt continued to fall heavily down, he squirmed and twisted his body rearward through the confined passageway until finally his hands were out of the tunnel and able to help push him free.
He was half-submerged in loose dirt, and a huge clump of soil fell on top of his head as he emerged from the tunnel, nearly knocking him flat. Grit stung his eyes and got in his nose, and now the dirt in his mouth did not taste good at all. He shook his head to get it out of his hair and used a hand to wipe off his face. The sides of the hole were collapsing, and he clambered unsteadily to his feet. He could see no one in the yard, but he didn’t have time to look around, because one entire section of the pit fell in on him, knocking him sideways and forcing him to his knees. He was pinned by the heavy earth in an awkward position, with one hand above his head and the other trapped beneath his tilted body.
He was going to die.
He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. One more shovelful of dirt or one more collapsed wall and he would be gone.
Frantic, he bent his free arm and began desperately clawing at the surrounding soil in an urgent attempt to free himself. Luckily, the side of the wall that had him pinned was solid, not loose, and he was able to pull out one chunk and then another, tossing them onto the ground above. The earth was shifting around him, almost like a miniquake, but he managed to liberate his other arm, and then both hands were feverishly yanking out hunks of dirt as his legs tried in vain to kick themselves out from under the weight holding them down. His efforts revealed a fault line in the compacted soil, and his clawed fingers pulled the two halves apart at that point, allowing him to wriggle up and out, just as the rest of the hole fell in on itself.
He emerged breathless and weak, flopping exhaustedly on the ground, alive only because he had managed to escape at the very last second. If he had been even a hairbreadth slower, he would be dead right now.
Breathing heavily, limbs shaking from both exertion and fear, he looked around the backyard, trying to see whether he could find out who—
what
—had tried to kill him, but the yard was empty.
James hurried into the house. He wanted to tell his dad what had happened. Well, he didn’t want to, but he had to. Something was going on here, and his parents needed to know about it. Maybe they could do something; maybe they could—
Protect him.
He felt reassured just thinking the words. His mom and dad probably still weren’t back, but he intended to wait for them inside, and as soon as they returned, he was going to tell them everything, from the man in the window to the secret compartment in the headquarters to the animal skeletons to the dirt eating to the mysterious hole that had lured him in and then tried to kill him. He didn’t know what they could do about it, but they were adults; they would take care of it.
He walked through the back patio, pulled open the screen—
—and the kitchen door slammed shut.
It barely missed hitting him in the face, barely missed crushing his fingers against the doorjamb. If he hadn’t moved his hand at the last second, he would have been seriously injured. Angrily, he turned the knob and threw the door open again, already shouting out Megan’s name.
But she wasn’t there.
James stopped, looking around, confused, but not as confused as he would like to have been. His sister hadn’t been the one who slammed the door on him. No, someone—
something
—else had done it. And it hadn’t been a prank. The door pusher had wanted to hurt him.
James stepped carefully into the kitchen, looking around. “Megan!” He called his sister’s name not out of anger this time but out of need, a desire to have her nearby. Maybe she couldn’t protect him the way his parents could, but she was older and braver than he was, and with two of them, they’d be better able to defend themselves against … against … whatever it was.
“Megan?”
There was no answer, and he moved forward, calling her name again. From the corner of his eye, he saw movement, and when he looked to his right, he saw the door to the basement swing slowly open. He wanted to scream, wanted to run, but he was frozen in place, and in the silence of the house, he heard footsteps, the heavy, deliberate footsteps of a man coming up the cellar stairs.
The grinning man from the corner.
Now he did run. He didn’t want to leave Megan all alone, but his mind tolerated no such conscious considerations. He was acting on instinct, pure animal fear, and he dashed out the door the way he had come, filled only with the need for self-preservation. Ahead of him, past the patio, was the collapsed hole in which he’d almost been killed, and at the sight of it, a bolt of terror shot through him.
Afraid to remain in the backyard for even a second longer, he dashed around the corner of the house as fast as his legs would carry him, speeding down the driveway and out to the front yard, where, hopefully, his parents would be just pulling in. They weren’t. But Megan was sitting on the front stoop, looking down at her iPhone. She looked up at him as he hurried over. She’d obviously been out here for some time, and a cold shiver passed through him.
She hadn’t been inside at all.