by Daniel Pyle
While his dad finished eating, Trevor took the Back to the Future DVD from its case and inserted it into the player on the shelf beneath the television. While the menu screen loaded, he went into the kitchen and pawed through the cabinet beside the stove until he found the half-full box of popcorn. Butter-flavored, which he liked, but not the movie-theater kind, which he liked more. Still, his mouth was watering already. He took a single pack and pushed the rest of the box back into the cupboard, accidentally knocking a can of olives off their shelf and into a frying pan. The can clanged against the pan and rattled to a stop.
“Everything okay?” Daddy asked from the living room.
“Yes.” He re-shelved the can and ripped the plastic off the popcorn.
“Let me know if you need some help,” said Daddy.
But Trevor didn’t need any help. It was just popcorn, and he wasn’t a little baby. He stood on his tiptoes to stick the bag in the microwave and pushed the button marked with the steaming popcorn bag. One nice thing about Daddy’s house was that the microwave was extra easy to use.
He was watching the microwave door when the face popped into the window on the other side of the room. He saw it only as a reflection, the way you saw yourself when you were brushing your teeth in the bathroom, but somehow that made it even scarier. For one terrible second, he thought he would make another mess in his pants. He had just enough time to think how bad that would be, twice in one day, and then the window broke and he was screaming.
—:—:—:—
Dave crept across the porch feeling like he’d stumbled into a tanning salon.
What was with all the lights?
On the floorboards around him, a splotchy, black puddle of shadows spread like spilled ink. His shadows, all starting at his feet and leaking away from him in different directions. Dave wondered momentarily at the physics of being at once both bathed in light and steeped in shadows, but gave up on the thought after very little real consideration. He didn’t care about the damn shadows, he just wanted the boy, and the lights meant the Pullmans had finally come home.
Things might not be working out as he’d originally intended, but he was making due.
He felt heat at his back and found red-hot coals in the grill pushed to the corner of the porch. Dinnertime. Hot dogs, from the smell of it. Little bits of meat still sizzled on the blackened grill.
Georgie and Manny stood in the grass on the other side of the porch railing. Dave looked at the boy and motioned for him to stay put. Georgie said nothing, made no returning gesture, only stood there with the leash twisted around his fingers and wrist and his hair blowing in the night breeze. His head had stopped bleeding, but his forehead and nose had turned black with the blood he’d already spilled. Dave wondered if he had any antiseptic back home. He’d have to get the boy thoroughly cleaned up.
On the grass beside Georgie, Manny looked from Dave to the boy before plopping down on his belly.
“Good boy,” Dave whispered and turned back to the house. He pulled one of the knives from his pants.
Dave pressed his face up against the nearest screen window, feeling the mesh material rub away at the caked blood on his nose. Inside, the boy stood in front of the microwave and watched popcorn through the small viewing window.
Dave watched Davy, thinking how strange it felt to spy on yourself, to see your replacement before he knew that’s what he was.
He could have stood there and watched for hours—it wouldn’t have been the first time—but his watching days had ended. He slammed the butt of his knife into the glass, and it tinkled across the kitchen floor inside.
Davy screamed. Dave smiled. He used the business end of the knife to cut out the screen and brushed away the remaining shards of glass. He hoisted himself up and through the shattered window and past the billowing curtains.
Where was the man? Daddy Pullman? Dave moved to grab the boy before things could get complicated, but the little sucker moved fast, and Dave slipped on the mess of glass with his first attempted step. If he had fallen, he might very well have impaled himself on his knife, ended everything right then and there when he was only halfway done, but he managed to throw out his hands and catch his balance. The glass beneath him cracked, crumbled, as if he were walking across the surface of a mostly frozen pond.
The smell of popcorn filled the small kitchen. The microwave whirred and kernels popped. He turned his head just enough to see the collection of crayon drawings on the refrigerator. He’d made those. Or rather, the new him had.
In the other room, he heard frantic scrambling, the sound of some heavy piece of furniture scooting across a bare floor. Tearing his eyes away from the drawings and cursing himself for losing his concentration, he pulled out his second knife and hurried into the doorway between the two rooms.
The Pullmans were gone.
—:—:—:—
Mike had never believed in the kind of instinct you read about in books and saw in the movies. In his football days, he’d learned to go with his gut, to dive right when he sensed the ball might head that direction, or to jump just before an opposing player dove for his legs, but that had been a cause-and-effect thing, reflexes more than instinct, movements he could perform only because he’d honed his body and his senses, but more importantly because he’d been a kid—sixteen, seventeen years old—and in his prime.
You sensed things, you reacted. Nothing more.
But on that night, hearing the sounds of breaking glass and Trevor screaming, Mike was on his feet and alert before his brain could possibly have registered the oncoming trouble, as if he’d been granted the temporary gift of precognition.
Trevor scurried into the room like he was on the run from a pack of wild dogs, and Mike didn’t hesitate. He pushed the coffee table out of the way, almost knocking over the TV, which wobbled dangerously before coming to rest pointing off at an angle. He was already running when he jerked Trevor off his feet and squeezed him to his chest. Behind him, whether because it had come unplugged or simply broken, the TV darkened, the Back to the Future menu fading into nothingness like a DeLorean doing eighty-eight miles an hour.
Mike carried his still-screaming son out of the living room and down the hall to his bedroom, the only room in the house with a lock. Trevor’s arms clutched Mike’s neck so tightly that for a second he couldn’t breathe. He reached up a hand and clamped it over Trevor’s mouth, not really understanding why, just wanting to keep the boy quiet, keep him from giving away their position.
Giving away their position? The thought was crazy. They weren’t at war. Yet still Mike ran, closing the bedroom door quietly behind them.
Locked inside the room, temporarily safe from whoever or whatever had invaded the house, Mike pried away the boy’s arms and sucked in a long breath.
Whoever was in the house? Whatever? What was wrong with him?
Maybe he had gone crazy. Couldn’t it have been a bird or a bat breaking through the window? Trevor had freaked out a little, and Mike could understand that (he probably would have done the same thing), but surely they’d overreacted a bit, the two of them locked in the bedroom and hiding from some unseen presence like a couple of idiot characters in a horror movie.
Except, as his brain caught up with his body, he realized he wasn’t crazy, that he’d simply reacted to something he only just now fully registered: footsteps.
Someone (or maybe more than one someone) had broken into the house, and he or she or they were moving this way.
Trevor whined, and Mike shushed him more harshly than he’d intended. Before the boy could start crying, Mike took him by the hand and led him to the other side of the room, to the window.
“Listen,” he said. He grabbed Trevor’s shoulder and used his other hand to hold the boy’s chin, making sure he was looking at him. “I want you to go to my workshop, okay? Don’t turn on the lights. Just go inside and wait for me to come get you.” He waited for some sign of understanding. “Okay?”
Finally, Trevor nod
ded.
Mike opened the window and pushed the drapes aside. The screen came off easily enough, but Mike didn’t bother easing it out of the frame, chose instead to simply kick it free. He could deal with the repairs later. Right now, he had more important things than window screens to worry about.
He lifted Trevor through the window, leaned his head out after him, and whispered, “The garage. Go now.”
For a moment, Trevor simply stood there, not moving, maybe in shock, maybe confused, certainly scared.
The footsteps came to the door and stopped just outside.
“Trevor, please.” Mike reached out a hand and prodded his son in the back.
After one last second of uncertainty, Trevor looked back at Mike and ran.
Behind Mike, the door burst open.
—:—:—:—
Zach considered letting the dog go. If he did, at least the animal would have the chance to return home, to run back to the girl whose nose the crazy guy had ruined. But Zach had no way of knowing what the dog would do. What if it ran into the house instead? And what if Crazy Dave realized something was going on before Zach could sneak up behind him? He couldn’t risk that, so he tied the dog’s leash to the porch railing with a good strong knot, promising him it wouldn’t be for long.
“We’ll get you home,” he said. “Just be quiet for me, okay?”
He didn’t expect the dog to understand, fully prepared himself for a barrage of barking the second he’d gone out of sight, but the dog almost seemed to comprehend the situation. At any rate, he didn’t bark, and Zach scrambled onto the porch and into the kitchen through the broken window still owning the element of surprise.
The kitchen smelled like popcorn, and Zach’s stomach growled against his will. He’d hardly eaten all day, couldn’t remember what, if anything, he’d had for lunch. He resisted the urge to open the microwave door, though the popcorn smell was obviously coming from inside, and it wouldn’t have taken him long to swallow a couple of mouthfuls. He had a chance to end this, to save himself and possibly others. He looked away from the microwave.
He moved as quietly as he could, for the most part dodging the scattered chunks of glass underfoot.
When he’d taken the knife from the girl’s kitchen, he’d tucked it into the waistband of his pants with the handle jammed between his buttocks and the wide blade flush against his spine. Now, walking through this second kitchen, he could have kicked himself.
A mile through the dark woods, a butcher knife centimeters away from shredding his innards, and for what? He could have grabbed a knife from one of these drawers just as easily .
But, of course, he’d had no way of knowing that. At the time, grabbing the knife had been a last-ditch effort at some kind of backup plan. For all he knew, it might have been the last time the psycho left him alone for days, or weeks, or ever.
If only someone would have picked up the dang phone. I was so close to getting real help.
He pulled up his shirt far enough to remove the concealed weapon, pulled the knife free and held it out in front of him with both hands like it was some sort of huge, heavy sword rather than a simple kitchen utensil. Where was everyone?
He stepped into the living room. The coffee table was pushed away from where it should have been. A couple of envelopes lay crinkled on the floor, a dirty shoe print on one and what could have been bright blood on the other.
He heard a loud bang from the other end of the house and thought, gunshot. At this point, he was pretty sure Davy didn’t have a gun, but maybe this Pullman guy had surprised Davy with both barrels of a shotgun. Could his abductor be lying gut shot right now against a hallway wall?
Probably not.
Zach’s sweaty hands slid around the knife’s handle, so slippery he was sure he’d drop the thing before he could ever use it. He moved from the living room to the narrow hallway leading off it. Splintered wood littered the floor ahead.
“Ggaahhhhh.”
Somehow, although it was just a strange sound that could have come from anyone, Zach knew it had not come from Davy. Screwing up what courage he had left, he ran for the doorway, holding the knife out in front of him, screaming a war cry and not even realizing it.
—:—:—:—
Dave’s foot tingled as the door flew open, and he had enough time to wonder if maybe he’d broken a toe.
The man at the window turned to face him, his eyes wide and his whole body trembling.
The boy was gone.
Dave saw the open window and rolled his eyes. Didn’t anybody ever just give up?
“Where’d he go?” he asked and advanced on the man with the knives pointed out from his hips like a pair of revolvers.
Pullman said nothing, but when Dave came close enough, the man threw a wild punch that hit Dave right in the space between his eye and his ear. Light flashed in Dave’s head, and for a second he thought he was back out on the porch. He shook himself and growled. Then, before anything worse could happen, he growled and plunged one of the knives into Pullman.
—:—:—:—
The blade ripped into Mike’s side just above his left hipbone. He felt heat and electricity, as if he’d been wounded not by a hunting knife but with some futuristic ray gun. The intruder pulled the knife back, grinning. It dripped Mike’s blood.
He tried to stay on his feet, but the combination of shock and agonizing pain brought him to his knees.
So this was it. The man swung the second knife into view, and Mike wondered how many cuts it took before you stopped sensing the pain.
When the slender young boy came running through the door with his own gleaming blade poked out in front of him, Mike wanted to scream, No. Get away, Trevor.
Except he wasn’t Trevor. He wasn’t his son. Mike didn’t know who in the hell he was.
—:—:—:—
Zach felt the butcher knife glance off Davy’s rib and knew he’d screwed it up.
Davy still screamed, but when Zach tried sticking the man with the knife again, Davy knocked the knife out of Zach’s hand and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.
—:—:—:—
Mike screamed.
—:—:—:—
Dave screamed.
—:—:—:—
Zach screamed.
—:—:—:—
And that’s when things got really crazy.
TWENTY-ONE
LIBBY WASN’T EXACTLY petite, but Marshall still had an inch or two on her and at least twenty-five pounds. Unfortunately for him, what he also had was a weak spot, the same weak spot every man had, a weak spot that didn’t currently realize it was weak and jutted into her hip instead of retreating turtle-like into Marshall’s pelvis like it should have.
Libby rammed her thigh into the man’s crotch so hard it hurt her; the ensuing crunch sounded very much like what you get when you stomp a cockroach.
Given the way Marshall had pawed at her breasts and dry-humped her leg, someone who’d missed the blow to his testicles might almost have confused the look on his face for one of orgasmic pleasure. His mouth opened into a wet, perfectly round O, and his eyes rolled up into his head as if looking for his own brain.
Nothing up there, Libby thought and pushed the pervert away.
Marshall stumbled back, and his facial features drooped to reveal the pure agony hiding behind the mask of ecstasy.
“Hhhhnnnnnn,” he said, rasping harder than an octogenarian. His hands found his groin and cupped it gingerly. He shifted from side to side, looking less like an old man than a little boy who needed to use the restroom, and although she would rather not have associated thoughts of her son with this disgusting situation, she couldn’t help but think of Trevor. Is this how he’d looked during his dash to the Mountain View restrooms? Had he danced uncomfortably before rushing away from the carousel?
Libby moved away from the counter, still holding the water-damaged paperback, feeling better, safer, though still not safe enough. She wiped a hand across her face an
d felt Marshall’s sticky saliva. Although he was no longer standing within arm’s reach, Libby still felt the man’s fingers on her breasts, his erection on her hip, his tongue in her ear and probing her lips. This sort of thing had never happened to her until today. Before Mike, she’d only ever kissed two other men (two other boys), and since the divorce nothing had gotten that far. No one in her life had more than looked at her inappropriately. Nausea, fear, and fury combined to create a single, horrible sensation. Her heart thumped more wildly than it had when she’d lost Trevor, and she had trouble breathing with any sort of regular rhythm.
Marshall had stopped his dancing but still clutched at himself and gasped. Libby circled around behind him. She’d had a scary thought. She’d hit him hard, but how hard? What if some of this was just an act, a ploy to lower her defenses while he prepared another attack? She’d never hit anyone in the crotch, except maybe for a cursory bump or two in the marital bed, and really wasn’t sure how much it might hurt. She’d seen a guy take a football to the groin on TV, had once heard a secondhand story from an elementary school friend who’d accidentally pushed her little brother into a doorjamb, but she’d never been there, never heard the groans and seen the doubling over and the swaying.
She wouldn’t take any chances. She sidled over to the knife drawer and slid it open far enough to get her hand inside, never taking her eyes off Marshall, simultaneously expecting him to stay where he was and preparing for him to spin around and lunge at her.
