She was knocking at the door.
She kept at it, on and off, for maybe three, four minutes. Then she opened the screen door, the inside door. Ben’s protests went unheard. She walked right in. He had no choice but to follow.
First thing that struck him was the smell.
It wasn’t the usual household bouquet of lingering food odors, tobacco, pets, room deodorizers. This was heavy, pungent. A strange, heady chemical brew almost like ammonia.
He caught a good whiff of it and then it was gone.
He had to wonder if it was ever there.
“Hello?” Nancy called out.
Her voice echoed and died.
Ben felt the flesh on his arms begin to crawl; he didn’t like this in the least.
“Hello?” Nancy called out again. “Is anyone here?”
The heavy echo of her voice told them the place was empty.
Funny, Ben was thinking, but the very quality of an echo can tell you so much. It can tell you that a house is empty. It can tell you that something is wrong, that something nasty is about to happen.
They walked from room to room to room. Bedrooms were empty. Living room ditto. The TV was on, but there was nothing but static on the screen. Nancy picked up the remote, clicked a few channels. She found the Weather Channel.
“See?” she said. “Cable’s working.” She tossed the remote on the couch. “Where the hell is everyone?”
There was a blanket on the floor at the foot of a rocking chair. Next to it was a side table, an ashtray sitting on it. A cigarette had burned down to ash long ago. A pack of Marlboros and a lighter were next to it.
Nancy shrugged, put one in her mouth, lit it. “It’s cold in here, Ben. It’s so cold in here,” she said in a low voice.
Ben was going to remind her that she’d quit smoking six months before, but he didn’t; he had an urge to light up, too, and hadn’t smoked in eight years. Right now, he needed something.
In the kitchen, the back door was open to the night, frigid air funneling in. Ben closed it, the texture of the darkness outside somehow unsettling. There was a ham sandwich on a plate, a pile of chips at its side. A bottle of Coke, opened, sat on the table, untouched.
It was eerie.
Like the fucking Mary Celeste, he thought.
Except this place wasn’t out in the middle of some gray, empty ocean. It was just an average house in an average town in the upper Midwest in the very average state of Michigan. Yet, hehad a pretty good idea now—if he hadn’t before—that something extremely un-average had swallowed this place whole and spat something back in its place, something sinister, something malevolent.
“Lets go,” he said, barely able now to contain the horror he felt.
But Nancy, stalwart and self-deluding, maintained her sense of normality. She tried the phone, shook her head. Then she started leafing through bills by the phone. “Gerald and Shiela Bricker,” she said. “I wonder where they’ve gotten to?”
“I’m leaving,” Ben announced.
“Oh no you’re not,” Nancy informed him. “There’s a truck outside. Help me find the keys. Then we’ll drive out of this mess.”
“We can’t steal their truck.”
Nancy raised an eyebrow, looked him dead in the eye. “Oh yeah? And why the hell can’t we?”
But he couldn’t seem to come up with an objection. He’d never stolen anything in his life. It wasn’t in his make-up to do so, but right now grand theft auto sounded perfectly fine. He started rooting through drawers, but quietly, as if someone might hear.
And maybe that’s what he was afraid of.
He found a cell phone on the floor. Looked like somebody had purposely smashed it. He picked it up, but it was useless.
Nancy searched around in the living room, checked the hall closet. The Bricker’s bills in hand, she went to the back bedrooms. The last one was not a bedroom at all, but a computer room. She sat down at the desk. The screen was black, but she clicked the mouse and it came up. Somebody had been chatting.
“Ben, come here,” she called, afraid now, too.
He came in, his usual windburned, hearty complexion wan and sickly.
“Look,” his wife said. “Shiela8. That must be Shiela Bricker.”
Shiela had been at the keyboard trying desperately to reach the outside world apparently. She’d last logged-on some two hours before.
6:28 P.M. Shiela8: help me
6:31 P.M. Shiela8: help me
6:39 P.M. Shiela8: help me please is there anyone
6:42 P.M. Shiela8: is anyone out there
6:55 P.M. Shiela8: alone am alone am alone help me out there
7:02 P.M. Shiela8: last one am i the last one am i the last i
7:07 P.M. Shiela8: nobody nobody help me help me godhelpus
7:11 P.M. Shiela8: youareout areyou out help meeeecan you
7:14 P.M. Shiela8: happeningnowhelpmememe helpmeee
7:15 P.M. Shiela8: help usssss
Ben cleared his throat. “What the fuck happened here?”
“Look,” Nancy said then. “Somebody answered her.”
8:35 P.M. XXX: where are you
8:37 P.M. XXX: tell me and i’ll come for you yes
8:40 P.M. XXX: i’ll help you tell me
“I wonder who the hell that was?”
Nancy shook her head. “You never get out and chat, Ben. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“Sure I do,” he said, crossing his arms. “Chat rooms are full of dipshits with too much time on their hands.”
“Sometimes.” She shrugged. “Maybe this XXX person was trying to help.”
“Probably thought it was all a joke.”
“Let’s find out.”
“No.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s find those keys and get out of here.”
“Ben. This might be our only contact with the outside world.”
He looked angry. “I said no. Let’s find the keys, get in that truck and get the hell outta Dodge.”
“And if we can’t find them? Then what? We go house to house looking for a car to steal?” She fixed him with those dark eyes of hers, that don’t-be-so-fucking-stupid stare. “Let me try this, get a message out there. Then we’ll go.”
He didn’t like it, but he submitted. “All right. Whatever.”
Nancy typed a message.
9:31 P.M. Shiela8: Hey, is anyone out there? This isn’t a joke. I need help.
The minutes ticked by. Ben stood there, feeling superior but not enjoying it at all. They were wasting time. For some reason, he felt time was very precious. They had to get out of this mess now. They couldn’t afford to wait.
9:34 P.M. Shiela8: Please we need help. We’re in Cut River Michigan. Something’s happened here. We’re trapped. We need assistance immediately.
9:35 P.M. XXX: cut river yes where are you
9:35 P.M. XXX: where are you
“Don’t answer that,” Ben suddenly said. “There’s something wrong about this.”
“Oh, quit it for godsake,” Nancy said and typed.
9:36 P.M. Shiela8: We’re at 809 Kerrigan Street. The Bricker’s residence
9:37 P.M. XXX: yes i’m coming yessss
9:37 P.M. XXX: coming through the rye yessss
Nancy kept staring at the screen, slowly shaking her head. “It’s a big joke to them.”
Ben grabbed her by the arm, pulled her roughly to her feet. “It’s more than a joke, you dumbass,” he snapped at her. “Whoever XXX is, they’re in this town. Don’t you see? They’re here and now they know where we are.”
Nancy began to argue, but Ben didn’t give her the chance to do more than cuss. He dragged her straight through the house and out the front door. He pulled her down the porch, nearly tossing her into the yard. She fought with him, made to slap him, kick him. It did her no good. He clamped a hand over her mouth and put a wristlock on her he’d learned in high school wrestling. It wasn’t until they were hidden behind a row of cedars that he let her loose.