Stay Away

by Ike Hamill

  Lily heard her feet on the top stairs and then saw her eyes as she crouched down.

  “One more,” Eric said.

  “Whatever you’ve got,” Lily said. “You think the cabinet will hold it?”

  “I think so,” he said. “You really beat the piss out of it.”

  “I did,” Lily said. She felt a little satisfaction in the words, but it was mostly a declaration of the truth. She had beaten the thing nearly to death. Now, she was going to go upstairs and finish the job. As soon as Eric pried off the cabinet door, she would smash that demon into the corner of the cabinet until there was nothing left but a black stain and a handful of loose teeth.

  Then, she would figure out how to get everything back to normal.

  Eric drove another nail into the board. He had chosen well—the seal it made between the pipe and beam was nearly perfect. Unless the demon could squeeze through a hole about the size of a dime, it was trapped. With any luck, maybe some of the nails had driven through the floor and up into the thing’s weary body.

  Eric picked up the flashlight again. He backed towards the stairs, keeping his flashlight trained on the board.

  “There’s a chance that it might squeeze between the bottom of the cabinet and the floor. I don’t remember how much space is there—maybe three and a half inches? It’s probably too small to… Lily?”

  “What?” she asked. He had stopped right in her path, like he had forgotten what they still had to do. The flashlight moved to her face and she raised her hand to keep it from her eyes.

  “What, Eric? Stop that.”

  “Come on,” he said, and then the flashlight was gone. She blinked, trying to get the blue spots from her eyes and felt his hand on her elbow, guiding her. Climbing the steps, he was right behind her. Lily heard Nicky take in a sharp breath—she still couldn’t see right.

  “You fucked up my eyes with that goddamn light,” Lily said.

  “Come this way,” Nicky said. “Here. Sit down.”

  “No. What’s wrong with you guys? We have to finish that thing while it’s still reeling. We know where it is. Let’s go.”

  Their hands pressed her down in the chair.

  NICKY

  “CAN YOU SEE NOW?” Nicky asked. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “I’m fine,” Lily said, but she was still squinting and her eyes didn’t land on anything. Finally, she opened her eyes fully and Nicky took a step back. What she had seen at the top of the stairs was bad. Now that she saw Lily’s eyes in full light, it was horrifying. The whites of Lily’s eyes were completely black except where they were shot through with jagged red blood vessels. One pupil was cloudy. The other was enormous.

  “Can you see anything?” Eric asked. His voice was trembling.

  “Yeah. Of course,” Lily said, but her hand reached out and passed through empty air.

  “Open your mouth,” Eric said.

  Lily scrunched up her face with an objection, but then did as he said.

  Her tongue had a black streak down the middle. There were dark lines between her teeth. It looked like she had gargled with used motor oil.

  “What?” Lily asked at their silence. “What’s happening?”

  “Hopefully, nothing,” Eric said.

  Nicky looked at him. There was something that he wasn’t saying. Nicky always knew when Eric was trying to hold something back.

  “You stay here,” Eric said to Lily. He went down the short hall to the closet and came back with a pry bar. He handed it to Nicky. She started to put down the shovel and then decided to keep it as well. She had barely used it, but she was starting to think of the shovel as her good luck charm.

  “We’re going to take care of that thing in the kitchen and then you’re going to the doctor,” Eric said. “Okay?”

  “I can help,” Lily said. “I beat the piss out of it already.”

  “You did the hard work,” Eric said. “But it’s obvious you can’t see.”

  Lily started to object and then she lifted a hand and waved it in front of her own eyes. With a sigh, she settled back into the chair.

  “You’re going to finish it, right?”

  “Whatever it takes,” Eric said. He looked to Nicky and she nodded back.

  # # #

  When they entered the kitchen, Nicky’s eyes only glanced at the cabinet under the kitchen sink. That’s where the danger was, but it wasn’t her primary concern. More compelling was the side door that led to the driveway and then out into the night. The two of them could be far away by morning. She didn’t have much cash, but she did have a full tank of gas if they could get to her car. It was parked fairly haphazardly on the other side of the bridge. With any luck, it would still be there.

  Eric studied her for a moment.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Not for this.”

  “Eric, I’m not leaving.” The words came out automatically. There was no force or truth behind them. At odd times—this was definitely an “odd” time for her—she had bursts of thought enter her head that almost seemed like they were from an alien intelligence that wasn’t a part of herself. It was “adult Nicole” interjecting with a calmer, more rational opinion.

  At that moment, Nicole was saying, “Look around, Nicky. You’re not immortal. People are dying here.”

  Nicole was right, but survival wasn’t the whole story.

  “It has poison for blood,” Eric said. “Even if it’s as banged up as I think, it doesn’t have to bite you or claw you. Just a little blood and you’re done for.”

  “Then don’t get any on me,” she said. “I’ll pry open the door and you bash it in.”

  Eric started the pry bar between the cabinet door and the frame. He pulled it until there was a gap of almost an inch. Leaning close to her ear, he whispered, “One good jerk and it will open.”

  Nicky thought of a joke, but kept it to herself. She leaned her lucky shovel up against the counter and put her hands on the pry bar. Eric was holding Lily’s bat. His fingers squeaked against the tape that was wrapped around the shaft as he gripped it tight.

  When he nodded, she pulled.

  The nails popped free at once and the door swung freely. One of the nails caught the pry bar as Nicky retreated. The metal bar jerked from her hand and rattled to the floor. Before it had finished clanging, she was already three paces back with her lucky shovel back in her possession.

  Eric slid forward just as fast, kicking the cabinet door out of the way as it tried to bounce back closed.

  He quickly assessed the shadows and jabbed with the end of the bat. It already had thick black slime on the end. When he pulled it out after the second blow, there was fresh liquid on it. From the darkness, the creature screeched. Nicky wanted to cover her ears. The horrible crescendo made the nerves in her teeth sing and the hair on the back of her neck go up. Eric was relentless. As the sound grew louder and louder, he drove the bat harder into the cabinet.

  He must have hit one of the pipes.

  Water began to run out from the cabinet and spill onto the floor. Eric straddled the growing puddle—black ink swirled in the water. The screeching ended but Eric kept beating at it.

  “Get me a bag from that cabinet?” he asked, pointing.

  Nicky opened it and pulled a big trash bag. She gave it to Eric and he fluffed it open and then turned it inside out.

  “Careful,” she whispered.

  Eric reached towards her and she shrank back.

  “What?”

  “Can I borrow that?”

  He was pointing at her shovel.

  She realized that her attachment to it was absurd—still, she almost said no.

  When she offered it finally, he grabbed it and flipped it around, reaching into the darkness with the blade. The thing he pulled out from the darkness was a loose collection of mangled flesh. Threads of tendons connected shattered bones. A pile of gray goo was leaking out from a splintered skull. The teeth were still connected to the jaw, but the whole thing
was askew.

  What surprised Nicky the most was how big the creature was. She remembered it as being about the size of a large cat. Now, it looked as big as a rotted Thanksgiving turkey, run over by a truck.

  Eric pulled it onto the floor and it slopped down into the puddle of water.

  From a drawer next to the sink, he produced long dishwashing gloves and he donned those before he tried to push the evil mass into the garbage bag. Nicky turned and got a second and then a third bag. She fluffed them open so Eric could wrap the thing again and again. After tying the top, it sat in the center of the ruined kitchen. A bead of water rolled down one side of the bag.

  “I should have turned off the water when we were down there,” Eric said. “Doesn’t matter, I guess.”

  “No?” Nicky asked.

  “I’m going to burn the whole thing down,” Eric said.

  “Oh,” Nicky said. After considering for a moment, she pointed to the bag and asked, “What about that?”

  “Not here,” he said. “He doesn’t get to stay here.”

  # # #

  Nicky didn’t want to look at Jessie, but she couldn’t help it. On their way back to Lily, her eyes drifted down and landed on him. Pain and terror were mixed on his ruined face. His fingertips were curled into claws and rested on his still chest. Nicky froze, unable to look away until Eric put his hand in her back and guided her forward.

  “Lily?” Eric called as they started down the hall.

  When there was no reply, Nicky knew what they would find. It was still shocking.

  Lily was still in the chair, but just barely. Slumped all the way down, one of her hands was up at her own neck, and the other dangled with her fingertips brushing the floor. Black tears had run down from the corners of her eyes, and dark foam bubbled from her mouth and nostrils.

  Eric crouched and lifted Lily’s hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” Eric whispered. His voice was thick with his sorrow.

  Nicky watched the foam, looking for any sign that Lily was still breathing. After a full minute, she put her hand on Eric’s shoulder and said, “She’s gone.”

  “I know.”

  Nicky looked away and then around at the house that enclosed them. When she allowed herself to consider it, they were surrounded by the dead. Lily and Jessie were here, and their parents were in the back room. Upstairs, Officer Libby and Wendell had fallen. The thought of all those corpses was beyond impossible. It was so absurd that she couldn’t believe it.

  “We have to get them all out of here,” she said. “They have to be buried.”

  “No,” Eric said, standing up. He absentmindedly wiped his hands on his pants. “No, if they’re buried, they go back to the land. That’s no good here. And they might be infected. They need to be burned.”

  All Nicky could picture was the crematorium.

  “With the house,” he said.

  “Oh. Are you…”

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  # # #

  It wasn’t quite raining out, but the driveway was damp and the grass was coated with dew. Nicky looked down at the shuffling prints that Eric had left thought he grass. Whatever energy was driving him forward, it was almost tapped out.

  She glanced through the window of Officer Libby’s police cruiser. After fetching the keys from the corpse upstairs, Eric had unlocked the backseat and put the plastic bag there. The rear seat was caged in. If the thing in the plastic bag somehow untangled its destroyed flesh, it would be trapped back there.

  Eric came back from the shed with a gas can. He disappeared through the kitchen door.

  Nicky counted in her head, thinking that if she got to a hundred, Eric was probably dead too. If that happened, she really would go find her car and drive forever. He was the only thing tying her to this place now.

  She only made it to eighty-nine. Eric backed through the door, splashing the last of the gas onto the porch. One of his rear pockets bulged. She narrowed her eyes in confusion as he pulled a tennis ball from it and then leaned down. Finally, he descended the porch steps and joined her.

  “Got a light?”

  Nicky dug in her own pocket and produced a lighter. As soon as she flicked the flame to life, Eric moved the tennis ball to it. The thing burst into flame and he tossed it. She thought that the throw had snuffed the fire, but when it touched the stairs, the gas caught. A moment later, the trail of fire was rolling into the house through the kitchen door.

  “We better go,” he said. He was beating his shirt with his hands to put out a small blaze that had erupted from spilled gas. Nicky had snatched her jacket on the way out of the house, but Eric only had his shirt.

  Nicky moved around to the passenger’s door.

  “Why out there?” she asked when he started the vehicle.

  “Huh?” He glanced at her with weary eyes.

  “Why do you want to take that thing out to the Cornish barn?”

  She glanced over her shoulder to keep an eye on the plastic bag as Eric backed out of the driveway. Though the rear window, she saw orange lights begin to dance behind the kitchen windows of the house. He had left with nothing—Eric had walked out of the house with nothing more than the tennis ball in his back pocket and the gasoline can that he left on the porch.

  Nicky slowly turned in her seat and fixed her gaze on Eric’s hard features. The lights from the dashboard gave his skin a green glow. His eyes were locked on the road ahead.

  “What are you planning?”

  “I told you. I’m going to burn those remains once I find the place that Eddie and Brett put Lueck’s ashes.”

  Eric hadn’t even wanted her to come along, but Nicky had insisted. She couldn’t stomach the idea of trying to make it through the night alone after everything that she had witnessed. Without someone who had witnessed the same things that she had, it would be lucky if she ever slept again.

  “No, I mean after all that,” Nicky said.

  Eric took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.

  “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I want to get the hell out of here, but at the same time I need to stick around long enough to know that everything is over, you know?”

  Nicky breathed a little easier, hearing that. At least he had thoughts about the future. At least this wasn’t going to be his final act.

  “What about you?” he asked, glancing over before returning his eyes to the road.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’ll stick around for a little while too. Maybe after we could go somewhere together? Somewhere warm and sunny?”

  Eric nodded but didn’t reply right away. Eventually, he said, “Lily had good things to say about Houston.”

  “You think we could make it all the way down there?” she asked.

  “Not in this thing. We’re going to have to figure out exactly where…”

  A flash caught Nicky’s eye and she stopped listening. Spinning in her seat, she saw that the flickering glow was coming from the trash bag.

  “Eric,” she said. “I think maybe you better pull over.”

  The light coming through the trash bag was a weird color between green and black. It grew in both size an intensity. With a burst, it got noticeably brighter and the skin of the plastic bag began to shrink and curl inwards.

  A hole opened in the plastic and Nicky was slammed to the side of the car as Eric cut the wheel into a tight turn. He wasn’t pulling over—he was accelerating. Just as the smell of burning plastic reached her, the electric windows began to descend.

  The fresh air drove the flames harder.

  “What are you doing?” Nicky yelled over the roar of the wind.

  “We’ll choke if I don’t,” Eric yelled back.

  She was thrown forward as he slammed on the brakes. As soon as they stopped, Eric threw his door open. Nicky thought he was going to run—it was the only reasonable thing to do as the bag in back was fully consumed. Through the billowing smoke, she saw the pile of flesh bubbling.

  N
icky fumbled with the latch of her own door. Pulling herself out, her foot caught on a clump of dead weeds and her legs tangled. Nicky crawled and then rolled to free her foot, still scrambling backwards. Smoke gushed from the windows. Eric pulled a blanket from the trunk.

  Nicky’s eyes widened. The headlights from the cruiser lit up the old barn. It was all happening again—the fire, the blanket, and the barn. They were reenacting a smaller version of the murder of the Trader. The flames flared when Eric opened the rear door. She staggered around to the other side of the police car in time to see Eric dive in with the blanket between himself and the burning flesh. The light from the fire strobed as Eric beat it with the blanket. Coughing and wiping his eyes, he retreated after a moment. Smoke was still rolling out, but the flames had died down.

  He went back to the trunk and returned with a long flashlight. When he handed it to her, Nicky was surprised by the weight of it. Clicking it on, the beam cut through the smoke.

  “We have to find that path,” Eric said just before he ducked back into the back of the vehicle.

  “What path?”

  “We need to find where Eddie and Brett took the Trader’s remains. He’s going to take this thing back,” Eric yelled over the shoulder. Grunting and wriggling his way out, Nicky saw that he had wrapped the blanket around the remains of the monster and the burned bags. He carried them against his chest.

  “Why? Just dump it here.”

  The flashlight picked up the steam and smoke still coming off of the creature.

  “Mom traded this,” Eric said. “He has to take it back.”

  Nicky saw the hurt and sorrow in his eyes backed by a steel resolve. A year before, she had considered how much Eric had lost in his life. How many people had to cope with the loss of three parents before they were twenty years old? She almost never lost an argument with him, but she knew that if she pressed she would lose this one.

  “We’re never going to find where they put him,” Nicky said.

  She led the way, following the path of the headlights to the barn and then wrenched open the old door while the light pointed up towards the sky. The clouds were beginning to part and some stars shone through the gaps.