Simon had stopped moving and was standing about a hundred feet or so away, his hands back at his sides in that strange stance of attention, his body swaying slowly back and forth, his eyes staring directly at her, framed by an expressionless, emotionless face. Behind Simon, backlit by the moonlight, the silhouette of something huge blotted out the tree line. Emily caught a glimpse of long angular arms articulated at odd angles like the legs of a praying mantis. The shadow towered over Simon; it looked as though it was stooped at an angle, leaning down toward the man. The tentacles were still attached to him. She could see them move slightly in the darkness, but could not make out any more detail, as the thing hid itself in shadow.
As she continued to stare, Simon"s head turned slightly to one side, his eyes fixed on hers, and he smiled, a wide, s.h.i.t-eating grin.
Emily closed the door, flipped on her flashlight, and sprinted into the house. In an anteroom off the living room, she found a large wooden desk. It weighed a ton, creaking and complaining as she dragged it down the corridor. She pushed it flush up against the front door. It should at least slow Simon down and give her advance warning if he tried to force his way inside the house.
She had to think clearly. If she had been alone, she would have tried sneaking out the back door and avoiding Simon and whatever the thing in the shadows behind him was, relying on her own ability and Thor to avoid contact. She could have headed back to Simon"s house and hid out until dawn. But with the kids there, she couldn"t risk it, and there was no way she was going to leave them behind. They would just slow her down if she tried to escape and sneak away.
There was only darkness and the woods beyond the four walls of the home, and Emily would bet her last can of peaches that the alien was better equipped to find them than she and the children were at avoiding it. Besides, Ben was too upset. The kid just would not shut up. They wouldn"t get ten feet before Simon heard them making a run for it.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. For now, the children were safe in the guest room-it was the only place in the house that was not directly adjacent to an external wall-with Thor standing guard over them. Neither of the kids had spoken a word to her since they had entered the house. By the light of the flashlights, she had seen Rhiannon"s frightened, accusing eyes staring at her as she cradled her baby brother in her arms.
The front door had a five-by-ten-inch gla.s.s window with fake leading set into it at about head height. Switching the flashlight off so she wouldn"t be seen, Emily clambered up onto the desk and shuffled forward on her knees until she could see out through the tiny window into the front yard.
Simon had not moved from where she had last seen him. He was still swaying back and forth. The disconcerting grin had been replaced with that emotionless nonexpression. She could see the moon glinting off his eyes as he, unblinking, continued to stare at the front door. She felt a chill run down her spine, chased by a frigid drop of sweat. Even though she was sure it was impossible for him to see her hiding there in the darkness, she had the distinct impression that he was aware of her presence. It was almost as though the door and the walls and the distance did not matter; she could feel his awareness of her. She supposed it should scare her. Instead she found herself angry, p.i.s.sed off at the thought of yet another one of these intruders on her world trying to frighten her, trying to kill her and the kids.
If it wasn"t for the fact that the man standing out there was the children"s father, she would risk storming outside with the Mossberg and facing off with the thing that hid in the shadows behind Simon. That was, of course, a.s.suming the thing even had a face.
She had to curb her instincts to blow the thing away and think about the safety of the children. She had no idea if Simon was still alive or dead, but after her past experience, she would not place bets on the first option. There was no way she was going to jeopardize the children, and she surely didn"t want to be seen as the person responsible for Simon"s death in the kids" eyes. At this point, she had to consider Simon a lost cause and concentrate on figuring some way of getting the children to safety.
Emily looked up to check on Simon one final time and screamed. Simon had moved, and he had moved fast. Now he was standing just a few feet from the house, directly in front of the door, staring through the window at her.
"Oh, s.h.i.t!" she squeaked as she stared back at the man outside the door. This close she could see the three tentacles, each as thick as her wrist, snaking up over Simon"s head. Jesus! The thing must be on the roof of the house, she thought as her eyes followed the barbed tubes up until they disappeared above the rain gutter running along the edge of the roof.
Simon continued to focus on the little window. Emily stared at Simon, unable to look away, fascinated by what she was watching. As she continued to watch him, she saw the muscles in his face convulse once...then again. His dry, chapped lips began to move, only slightly at first, but then his mouth opened and closed repeatedly. Emily could see his tongue, white and flaccid, begin to twitch behind the wall of his teeth.
Simon spoke.
At least, he tried to speak. What came out of his mouth was a weird half yell, half-slurred cry, like a deaf person trying to enunciate clearly or a child trying to grapple with a particularly difficult word for the first time, sounding out the vowels and consonants individually.
"Chaaaaadaaaaannn."
Whatever it was he was trying to say was utterly indistinguishable, the word too slow and slurred for her to understand. Simon"s mouth contorted asymmetrically, the right side of his upper lip moving upward while the rest of his mouth stayed rigidly still. She watched in horrified fascination as Simon tried again; this time he seemed to have more control of his lips.
"Chaalldraannnn."
There was no look of frustration or annoyance on the man"s pale face. His eyes remained facing forward, his body unmoving. Another pause, and then he spoke again. This time, although still distorted, Emily understood exactly what he was saying.
"Chhilldrennn." The single word came out as a whisper, as though he was checking the feel of it against his tongue and lips. Her mind raced to grasp the implications of the situation: was he trying to lure them out there? The shadow of the thing she had seen standing behind Simon in the darkness, the owner, she presumed, of the tendrils attached to him, had seemed ma.s.sive, far too large to get into the house. But why would it need to use Simon to lure them to it? Maybe it was too slow, or wanted to take them alive? Simon had taken forever to stumble jerkily across the lawn when they"d first arrived, but he (and whatever was controlling him) had made it from his stationary position on the gravel to the front door as fast as a normal person while she had been distracted. So maybe the thing was getting used to operating its host, like a human becoming familiar with a new car. Whatever the reason, this thing was able to control a human and a.s.sume complete authority of his mind and functions, controlling him as if he were a puppet. It spoke of a whole new level of weird...worse, it spoke of a dark intelligence, an intelligence that was motivated.
"Children," Simon yelled suddenly, the word enunciated perfectly this time, shouted rather than whispered. Simon"s voice had returned, and that single word held all the warmth and emotion that she had heard whenever he"d spoken to Ben and Rhia over the past couple of days. But his face remained as impa.s.sive and unemotional as a statue, the black tubes attached to his back a hideous reminder that the words were not his own. It was like he was simply repeating a recording; he was a mechanical ent.i.ty regurgitating the words perfectly.
"Children," he called again, his voice rising to the point where there was no doubt the two kids could hear him. "It"s Daddy. Come on out here."
Emily stumbled back from the door. She could still see Simon"s silhouette through the small gla.s.s window.
"Ben? Rhee. Ann. On? Come out. It is okay. Daddy is here." Simon"s voice echoed down the hallway and into the house, pushing the silence aside. While it reached the same emotional amplitude she had heard Simon use with his children, it sounded false, almost robotic, to Emily.
A gruff bark from Thor and the padding of paws and feet alerted Emily to the children heading her way.
"Daddy?" Rhiannon"s voice called from behind Emily. She turned and illuminated the little girl with her flashlight at the opposite end of the corridor. Ben was next to her. His sister"s arms wrapped around his fragile frame as they both blinked in the beam of the torch.
"Jesus," she muttered, realization flooding her mind. This thing wanted the kids, and it was using their father to lure them out. It must know that she was here with them, and there was no way she was going to surrender either herself or the kids, and there was no way it could get to them while they were holed up in the house. So it would pull the kids to it, knowing that she would not be far behind. And if it couldn"t lure them outside? Then it would be only a matter of time until it figured out how to get inside.
An even more frightening thought crossed her mind: What if he was still aware of what was happening to him? What if behind those eyes he was aware of the pain of each cracking bone as his body was reorganized to his captor"s will? What if he was aware of the motivation of this thing that wanted to use him to lure out his children and...what? Kill them? Consume them? Make them like him? And what if there was nothing he could do about it as he was bent and molded to the will of the thing controlling him?
Emily had read about a bird called a shrike. It would impale its prey on thorns and wait for it to die, slowly consuming it over time. She glanced back at the tentacles extending from Simon and the row of barbs running along its length. She searched Simon"s pale face for any sign of the man she had met, but all she saw were his lifeless eyes and marionette-like stance.
She made an instant and unemotional decision.
Emily stalked down the corridor and crouched down in front of Rhiannon and the boy. Ben still refused to look at her, hiding his head in his sister"s shoulder, but Rhiannon stared right back at Emily from the dimness of the shadowy corridor. Emily could see that the child understood what was coming next-maybe only on some subconscious level, but she understood.
Emily took a deep breath and spoke, not even sure what words to use. "Your daddy is very sick," she began. "I know you can hear him outside and I know you want to go to him, but he"s not feeling very well and I"m afraid that he might"-she paused as she searched again for the right words-"I"m afraid he might make you sick, too. So, we"re going to get out of here and, when your dad"s better, we"ll come back for him, okay?"
Ben"s sobs grew louder. Rhiannon pulled her brother closer. "It"s all okay, Benny," she whispered. "It"s okay. Daddy"s going to be fine. We have to go with Emily right now, though."
Ben"s sobs stuttered and finally stalled. Emily"s heart wanted to break for these two kids whose life she was sure had been changed forever this night. She resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the little boy"s hair; that would probably set him off again. His cries had faded to the occasional sniffle, and she was not exactly the flavor of the month with him right now. Instead, Emily smiled at Rhiannon. "All right, kids. We have to be really quiet from now on. Let"s go."
Emily held her breath and shone the flashlight into the corridor, searching for the hook with the car keys she thought she had seen when she"d first arrived.
There it was. She could see the glint of the keys hanging from a hook plugged into the wall. She plucked the keys from the hook, noting the embossed Dodge logo on the black plastic fob. These had to be the right ones.
Emily turned to the children and moved her forefinger to her lips. Both kids nodded they understood, and Emily was relieved to see that Ben"s tears had dried up, his big hazel eyes, bloodshot and pitted in the beam of the flashlight, gazed back at her with just a hint of trust behind the fear and pain. She pushed the door to the garage open. The former owner must have been handy with the WD-40 because the creak of dry hinges she had expected never materialized. She ushered the children and Thor past her as she held the door open. When they were all safely inside, she closed the door again as quietly as possible.
The big Dodge SUV was exactly where she had seen it when she"d first arrived at the house.
The handle was locked. Her thumb was hovering over the alarm disable b.u.t.ton on the key fob when she stopped herself. If she used the key fob to turn off the alarm, wouldn"t it make that whoop-whoop sound she"d heard so many times on the streets of New York? She couldn"t risk any noise alerting the Simon-thing to the fact that they were at the other end of the house.
If she used the key to unlock the door manually, would that have the same effect? She had no idea, but the door had to be opened. She slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The locks unlocking sounded like gunshots in the silence of the garage, and the sudden illumination from the automatic interior lights sent flashing motes zooming across her eyes, but there was no alarm.
She reached back and pulled open the rear pa.s.senger door. "Come on, kids. Quickly, jump inside," she hissed.
Thor didn"t need to be asked twice. Tail wagging frenetically, he leaped into the back row of seats and positioned himself behind the front pa.s.senger seat. Rhiannon helped to get Ben up onto the kick plate with a push on his b.u.t.t. He clambered the rest of the way inside and was met with a barrage of licks from Thor that teased out a giggle from the little boy.
Well, that was a good sign. At least he was not irreparably damaged. Rhiannon pulled herself up into the backseat next to her brother and immediately pulled the seat belt across him, fastening it into the receiver, then clicking her own belt into place. Sure that the two children were safely locked down, Emily pushed the door closed as quietly as she could.
Climbing into the driver"s seat, she pulled her own door quietly shut behind her. Now came the hard part.
She had no idea what any of these dials, switches, and levers did. She mentally kicked herself in the a.s.s again for not having taken any driving lessons. At least she knew what the steering wheel and gas and brake pedals were supposed to do. She looked down between the driver"s and pa.s.senger"s seats-thank G.o.d it was an automatic and not a stick shift.
"Okay," she whispered. "Now what?"
Emily found the ignition on the steering column and slotted the key into the receiver. She turned the key and felt it slip into the first position with a rea.s.suring click. Instantly the interior lights turned off, replaced by a neon-blue glow from the dashboard instruments. Emily breathed a sigh of relief. Part of her had been sure that the battery would be dead.
She took a few seconds to familiarize herself with the layout of the c.o.c.kpit. The gearshift handle was on her right, a lever jutting from the left of the steering column. It had some kind of a twistable selector at the end of it, covered in white icons. They obviously represented headlight settings, so she turned the selector to the first position. The interior of the garage lit up, pushing back some of the shadows. She twisted the switch to the next setting and was pleased to see the headlights become even brighter, illuminating the entirety of the garage and the flat metal of the retractable garage door in front of her.
The garage doors...s.h.i.t!
How was she supposed to open them without any power?
If this were a movie, she would probably just start the car, rev it up, and burst through them before speeding off into the darkness. This wasn"t a movie, though, and the shuttered metal looked pretty strong to her. There must be some way to manually open them, she reasoned. After all, what would happen if there was a power outage? Were people expected to be locked out of their garages?
"Stay in the car, kids," she said, turning to face the children. "I"ll be right back."
Emily took a deep breath to steady her breathing and exited the vehicle, her heart thumping in her chest. She made sure the SUV"s door was ajar, then checked that the door leading from the interior of the house was still closed securely; she didn"t want the Simon-thing creeping up behind them.
A large plastic box was fixed to the ceiling right above the Durango"s roof. A thick chain, much like the chain of her bike, ran from the box along a metal beam to the door. Fixed to the garage door was a curved arm that extended upward, connecting to the pulley system that raised and lowered the door. That was how the door would open normally, but how the h.e.l.l was she supposed to raise it now? She spotted two aluminum handles at the base of the door, near the floor. She grasped one and gave it a gentle tug. The door rattled, moving up about an inch but then hit resistance and refused to budge any farther. Looking up at the arm attached to the door and the pulley illuminated in the beam of the SUV, she could see there was some kind of hook attachment that meshed into the chain like the spokes of a gear. A nylon cord with a red plastic handle at the end hung from the arm, swinging back and forth gently.
The handle screamed, "Pull me!"
Again, she found herself holding her breath as she grasped the plastic handle in her hand and tugged. There was a very distinct click as something disengaged from the chain, but there was no other indication of anything else happening. Was that it? Only one way to find out, she told herself. Emily moved back to the door and, ever so gently, pulled the same handle.
This time the door continued to move past the stop, rumbling and rattling along its tracks. When the door was a foot off the ground, she stopped. What if Simon was outside right now? Waiting for her. He could grab her legs and pull her under the door, and that would be it. She let the door drop to the floor with a clang of rattling metal.
There was no doubt in her mind that whatever controlled Simon was going to hear them trying to escape. When it did it would do whatever it could to get to them. What would happen if she opened the garage door and it was waiting outside? She would have a matter of seconds at most to get to the vehicle, figure out how to drive it, and get out of there. And then what? Where would they go? They had no supplies. Everything, including her bike, backpack, and sat-phone was at the other house.
That was the least of her problems.
She needed to figure out whether she should lift the garage door first and then hope the car started before Simon found them. Or did she start the car first and hope the garage door would open?
"Jesus," Emily hissed. Despite the cool night air, she felt sweat trickle down the insides of her arms.
It made no sense to raise the barrier between them, she reasoned, only to find that the Dodge would not start. That would leave them completely exposed. Car first. Then worry about the garage doors. She climbed back into the driver"s seat and looked at the kids. "Okay, you two, here we go." Reaching for the ignition keys, she twisted them all the way forward.
Nothing happened.
"s.h.i.t," she cried and thumped the steering wheel. The engine was dead. They had been through all this only for the f.u.c.king SUV to not start? You had to be kidding.
"You have to step on the brake," said a voice from the backseat. Emily flashed around to face Rhiannon, trying to keep the anger and disappointment from her voice.
"What?"
"You have to step on the brake to start the car," Rhiannon repeated. "It"s a safety feature," she added proudly, probably repeating some tidbit of information she had learned from her dad.
Emily looked down at her feet. Which pedal was the brake? It had to be the larger of the two, she reasoned and pressed her left foot down and twisted the ignition key again.
The big V-8 engine of the Dodge Durango exploded into life. It was incredibly loud in the enclosed s.p.a.ce of the garage. Emily flipped around and shot a huge smile at Rhiannon, all anger dissipating with the deep roar of the engine. She could already smell the acrid stench of the vehicle"s exhaust seeping through the open driver"s door and gave a little cough. It wouldn"t do to breathe this c.r.a.p in for very long, but she needed to leave the door open, every second would count. Sorry, kids, she thought as she leaped from the driver"s seat and ran over to the garage door.
She grasped the metal handle again and began pulling with all the strength she had. If there had been any doubt that Simon would not be alerted to their escape attempt, it was quickly dispelled as the door rattled along the tracks, even louder, it seemed to Emily, than the rumble of the SUV"s engine. With the door halfway up, Emily dipped her head under the gap and scanned the area beyond the garage. The light from the SUV illuminated the ground directly in front of the garage, pushing the darkness away. There was no sign of anything waiting outside to grab her. Thank G.o.d.
Flipping her grip on the handle she began pushing the door up rather than pulling it. The door was almost at its zenith when Emily heard the clattering of dislodged roof tiles as something huge scrambled over the roof toward her.
"Oh, s.h.i.t! Oh, s.h.i.t!"
What was she supposed to do now? The door was still only three-quarters of the way up. She let go of it for a second and watched as it began to slowly slide back toward the ground. She grabbed the handle again and began pushing. There was no way she was going to get back into the car in time to figure out the controls and get out of the garage before the door closed on them again or the thing scrambling across the roof reached her.
Run, her frightened mind screamed. Just leave the kids and run.
No way! There was not a chance in h.e.l.l that she was going to do that. She would rather just- She felt the metal garage door click into place. Looking up, she could see the hook had engaged itself again onto the stud on the pulley. She let go of the handle and the door settled back slightly but stayed exactly where it should be, suspended above her head.
"Thank you," she sighed and sprinted back to the SUV. She was about to clamber into the driver"s seat when a cascade of adobe-colored roof tiles fell to the concrete just outside the entrance of the garage, shattering like broken plates across the drive. Before the last broken piece had skittered across the concrete, a shape dropped from the roof, landing low to the ground just on the other side of the door, red eyes staring unblinking into the lights of the SUV.
"Simon," she whimpered as she leaped into the driver"s seat, slamming the door behind her.
"Rhiannon," Emily yelled. "Cover your brother"s eyes...now!"
Emily pushed the accelerator to the floor and slipped the gear stick into the drive position. There was a squealing noise, and, in the rearview mirror, Emily saw smoke begin to fill the garage. What was she doing wrong? Why weren"t they moving?
Through the windshield, Emily could see Simon, and for a second her heart seemed to stop. He had undergone a stunning metamorphosis. His arms had rotated 180 degrees in their sockets and now jutted forward from each elbow. His legs were impossibly twisted at the knees, so he now walked on all fours rather than upright. The tentacle trailing from the back of Simon"s head pulsed once as it pushed something dark and viscous down its elongated length. Whatever that stuff was had an instant effect on Simon; his neck began to stretch inch by inch until, finally, it had grown in length by six inches or more.
"Oh no," she squeaked as she fumbled with the gear stick, pushing it back into Park. What the h.e.l.l am I doing wrong? What? She chanced another look outside.
Simon"s head arced back on his newly elongated neck, like a snake rising to strike. A trickle of black liquid that could have been blood, or spillover from whatever s.h.i.t the thing controlling Simon had pumped into him, dribbled from the corners of his mouth. And then he leaped into the air, pushing himself into the air like some weird, alien gra.s.shopper.
He landed with a resounding thud on the hood of the SUV.
Emily screamed and pulled the gear stick back into drive. The screeching of tires and the roar of the engine filled her ears again, but still they did not move, and with only a quarter inch of gla.s.s separating them, she stared into the black dead eyes of a monster that had once been Simon Keller.
"You have to take your foot off the brake," Rhiannon yelled from the backseat just as Emily realized her mistake and yanked her foot from the pedal. The SUV shot forward, and Emily was pretty sure everyone inside the vehicle screamed at the same moment. It was hard for her to tell because her attention was completely focused on Simon; his twisted body blocked her view ahead of her.
He flew forward, hitting the windshield face-first, leaving a smear of black fluid behind as his body rolled up and onto the roof of the SUV. A second later and his misshapen face appeared at the pa.s.senger door window, his eyes searching for some way into the vehicle.
"Don"t look," Emily yelled as she fought for control of the rapidly accelerating vehicle, but the warning came too late as she heard Rhiannon"s sorrowful scream of "Daddy?"
Anger flowed through Emily. She was going to end this...right here...right now.
She took her foot off the accelerator and hit the brake. The Dodge came to a sudden, jarring halt, and Emily saw Simon"s body fly through the air, the three tentacles trailing behind him like marionette strings. He landed on the concrete driveway in front of the car, rolled three times, then flipped to his feet and began to scuttle toward them again.
Emily floored the accelerator, and the SUV lurched forward.
Simon froze midstep, caught like the proverbial rabbit in the lights of the rapidly accelerating SUV. A fraction of a second before the vehicle would have flattened him, he leaped into the air and landed on the hood of the Durango, one misshapen hand clinging to the seam of the hood below the windshield wipers.
And then he was gone, as his fingers lost their grip and he tumbled sideways off the hood.
In the rearview mirror, Emily saw Simon"s body disappear into the white bank of smoke from her tires and then even that vanished as the SUV was swallowed by the darkness.
"Oh my G.o.d! Oh my G.o.d!" Emily yelled as the SUV continued to accelerate, careening along the gravel driveway, sending stones and rocks flying into the dark as the back end fishtailed wildly from side to side, its tires scrabbling for grip on the loose rock. The children"s screams from the back row of seats rang in her ears, but they were nothing compared to the screaming in her own head as she careened into the darkness.
Technically she had never learned to drive, never even been behind the wheel of a car or a truck before. But as her mind raced to find some kind of previous experience that might help her out, she remembered a visit to Coney Island and the b.u.mper cars attraction. The principle had to be the same, right? Press the pedal to go and release it to slow down while using the steering wheel to point the SUV in the direction you wanted to go.
In the fear-induced clarity of the moment, her mind seized that little bit of knowledge and held on to it like a shipwreck survivor holding on to a life preserver in the middle of an angry ocean. Who had she been trying to fool all this time? How freaking hard could it be to drive one of these things? After all, it was just an oversize b.u.mper car at heart. Right? She glanced down at the speedometer; the arm was just below the forty-five miles per hour mark. In the second or so that she stared at it, the speedometer climbed up to just under fifty miles per hour.
Outside the rapidly accelerating vehicle, it was as though someone had dropped a curtain of black all around them as it plummeted through the darkness. She could see nothing on either side of her but vague shadows; the only light was the swath cut ahead of her by the powerful headlights. Emily had no idea where she was going, but for now the gravel path led only one way: forward. Away from the house and the Simon-thing that she had left there.
She glanced in the rearview mirror to check on the kids. She could hear both of them whimpering in the backseat, but she couldn"t tell if they were hurt or just frightened. Looking back over her right shoulder, she saw the two kids huddled together, still strapped in by their safety belts. Thor had disappeared from the seat, and she could not see him. A whimper from somewhere behind the pa.s.senger seat told her he had decided the floor of the Durango was probably a safer place to be for now.
When she turned back, the gravel road before them had disappeared, replaced by blacktop that curved away at a ninety-degree angle to the right. In that split second of recognition, she already knew she was going too fast to make the turn, and before she could even decide whether to hit the brakes, the SUV had left the road and was in flight.
The Dodge smashed through a corrugated aluminum barrier that had been placed there to stop just such a thing from happening, although she was sure whoever had erected the barrier had never antic.i.p.ated a nondriver with a vehicle full of kids being chased by their late father under the control of some shadowy alien. The SUV exploded off a gra.s.sy berm, and for a few long moments Emily knew what Commander Mulligan must have felt when she first experienced the weightlessness of s.p.a.ce.