Fetch

by Scott Cawthon

  Raj held it up like a talisman, its screen glowing blue in the dark bathroom.

  “Save the light,” said Oscar. “Just call for help.”

  “Right,” said Raj, catching on. He quickly dialed 9-1-1 and waited for the relief that would come in the form of the operator’s voice.

  “What’s taking so long?” said Isaac, eyeing the handle as it began to wiggle in its loosening support.

  “Nothing’s happening,” said Raj, trying again.

  “What do you mean? It’s 9-1-1. Someone has to pick up,” said Isaac.

  “I mean the call’s not even going through. Like, there’s no service or something, I don’t know!” said Raj, growing desperate.

  “Okay okay,” said Oscar, trying to think it through, but the Plushtrap’s teeth were starting to show through the door again. It was leaving tiny green threads on the splinters around the doorknob. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to open the door—”

  “Bad idea,” Raj said, panic lacing his voice. “Horrible idea.”

  “Wait,” said Oscar, trying to keep his cool. “I’ll open the door, and I’ll hit it with the light to freeze it. You two get out while I’m shining the light on it and go to the kitchen. You can call for help using the landline.”

  “So you’re saying we should just leave you alone with this thing?!” said Isaac.

  “Unless you want to stay here with me,” said Oscar.

  “No, no, no, we’ll go to the kitchen,” Raj interjected quickly.

  “On my mark,” said Oscar, absolutely not ready to call the mark, but it was happening one way or the other; the knob was about to drop.

  “Three … two …,” said Oscar, and he grabbed the doorknob before it lost its place in the door. “GO!”

  Oscar flung the door open. The Plushtrap Chaser burst through and went stiff in the light. Its eyes were so muddy under the close beam of the flashlight that it was difficult to remember they used to be green. The featureless orbs were somehow more terrifying than normal live eyeballs. Its mouth hung open hungrily, the teeth even bloodier than they had been the last time Oscar had looked at them closely. Its jointed arms extended straight in front of it, ready to push through the door.

  Shallow breaths filled the tiny bathroom as Isaac and Raj jockeyed for space as far away from the Plushtrap as possible, but it was standing in the doorway. They’d have to squeeze past.

  Isaac sucked his stomach in, but the wiry hair of the rabbit still grabbed at his shirt. Raj winced and did the same, the top of the rabbit’s arm brushing his ear as he scooted past and stood on shaking legs in the hallway with Isaac.

  “You’re sure about this?” Raj asked Oscar.

  “Nope,” Oscar said. “Just hurry.”

  The boys scampered down the hall and yanked the receiver off the phone’s cradle in the kitchen. But as Oscar stood eye to bulging eye with the Plushtrap, he could tell by the way his friends were arguing that they weren’t getting through to 9-1-1 by the landline either.

  When they reappeared in the doorway, Raj was the one to deliver the bad news.

  “The phone lines must be down.”

  As though as confirmation, wind whipped against the house, rattling the space behind the walls where pipes snaked through insulation.

  “So to recap,” said Oscar, his light carefully trained on the bunny. “We’re trapped in my house with a mindless eating machine with exactly one working flashlight—”

  “Two if you count my phone,” Raj interrupted.

  “During a storm that’s knocked out the power lines and the phone lines.”

  “And the water,” said Isaac, and the two boys waited for explanation.

  “I got thirsty. I tried the tap.”

  “It can chew through almost anything, so …” said Raj.

  “… so what happens when our lights run out of batteries?” said Oscar.

  The boys all stared at the Plushtrap as though it might provide an answer. It merely stared into the light Oscar didn’t dare take away from its face.

  “Hey, Oscar,” said Raj, and Oscar didn’t like the tone of his voice; it was obvious some new horror had just occurred to him.

  “What?”

  “How are you going to get out of there?”

  “What do you mean? Same way you guys did.”

  “Uh uh,” said Raj, shaking his head slowly. “We got out because you were shining the light on its face.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re not facing it anymore. We’re behind it.”

  Oscar finally understood. The light didn’t just need to be on the rabbit.

  “It needs to see it,” he said, shuddering at the prospect of those horrible dead human eyes seeing anything.

  “Hang on,” said Isaac. “We can use the mirror.”

  The boys tried to angle the Plushtrap toward the counter while Oscar’s hands made the beam tremble.

  “Hold it steady,” said Isaac.

  “I’m trying. Do you know how hard it is to hold something level for this long? My arm is killing me.”

  “Would you two shut up!” said Raj, leaning hard against the Plushtrap. “Isaac, help me with this thing.”

  “Dude, it’s not that heavy.”

  Raj stood away from the rabbit. “You try.”

  But Isaac couldn’t make it budge either.

  “It’s like its gears are locked in place or something.”

  They were quiet for another minute.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” said Oscar. “One of you is going to hold the flashlight over its head, between the ears.”

  “Not it,” said Raj.

  “I’ll sneak past, and then we’ll all make a run for it.”

  Raj nodded. “Yeah, that could work. As soon as it turns around, we just back away, keep the flashlight on it for as long as we can.”

  “Exactly. It’ll buy us time to at least get down to the end of the hall.”

  It was the best idea they could muster. And it might have worked if the smaller, cheaper flashlight hadn’t begun to flicker in that exact moment. The Great Power Outage of May had drained the batteries prematurely.

  “Nononononononono!” said Oscar.

  “Why do all your flashlights die??” accused Isaac.

  “Shut up and hold it!” said Oscar, and they were all beginning to panic. Isaac cringed as he held his arm between the scratchy fur of the rabbit’s ears, angling to beam into its bulging eyes as Oscar flattened himself against the doorframe.

  “Lemme in, I’ll use my phone light,” Raj said breathlessly.

  “Too late,” said Isaac. “No room to switch places.”

  Then, just as Oscar was pinned beside the Plushtrap, they heard a voice from the front door.

  “Little man, I need your help!”

  “Ms. Avila!” Isaac called over his shoulder. “Stay there, don’t move!”

  But it was Isaac who moved, just a little as he turned, but enough to move the beam of his light.

  “Isaac, the light!” Oscar yelled.

  “Sorry!” Isaac refocused the light on the rabbit, but his arm shook, and the beam began to falter, creating a deeply unsettling strobe effect. Now, the rabbit’s head slowly turned in increments, during the dark intervals between the flashlight’s beam.

  When Oscar was nose-to-nose with the rabbit, the flashlight failed completely.

  “RUUUUUUUUN!” screamed Oscar, and the others followed suit, shrieking in unison as the Plushtrap lived up to its name, chasing them in freakishly smooth mechanical strides down the narrow hallway of Oscar’s house.

  Raj tried to aim his phone screen behind him, but the beam of light wasn’t bright enough.

  “The flashlight!” yelled Isaac, and Raj tried, but in his panic, the thin phone slipped right through his sweating hands.

  If there was any hope that the phone had survived its fall, the immediate crunch that came afterward extinguished that hope. The rabbit had stomped it.

  “The gara
ge!” Oscar managed to gasp as they fled the biggest regret of his life.

  Throwing the door closed against the lunging rabbit, the boys listened in horror as it once again began to attack its obstacle with ruthless efficiency.

  “This is the world’s worst toy!” Raj gasped.

  “How did it know your mom’s voice?” Isaac wheezed.

  “Who knows?” Oscar said, throwing his hands in the air. “Maybe it overheard her on the phone?” He laughed hysterically. “The possibilities are endless!”

  Isaac clapped a hand over Oscar’s shoulder. “Snap out of it, man. You’re losing it.”

  Unlike the other rooms of the house that had at least the benefit of shadows to see the space around them, the garage was pitch black, and as the boys groped for something they could use against the intruder, they managed only to knock tools off of shelves and trip over stored Christmas decorations.

  “I suppose it’s too much to ask if you have another flashlight in here somewhere?” Isaac asked, his voice raspy with fear.

  “Even if there was, I wouldn’t know where to find it,” said Oscar.

  Raj slapped at the garage door button frantically, but with the power out, it was no use.

  “Don’t these things have an emergency release?” he asked, logic finally prevailing.

  Fur and teeth were beginning to emerge through the chewed hole in the door to the garage.

  “There’s a lever!” said Oscar, groping toward where he thought the middle of the garage might be. “It should be somewhere right …”

  He began jumping, stretching his hands high overhead as he swiped at the air, searching for the knob tied to the rope that released the emergency lock on the garage.

  Raj joined him in the hunt, taking a different place in the garage.

  “Guys,” Isaac said, and his voice was unsettlingly calm.

  “Hang on, I think my finger just hit it!” said Oscar.

  “Guys,” said Isaac again.

  “Where?” said Raj.

  “Over here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Here!”

  “Guys!” said Isaac, and this time, they both paused to listen. The sound of scraping began to grow louder as the Plushtrap made quick work of the thicker wood of the garage door.

  “What?” they answered in unison.

  “Where are we gonna go after this?”

  Oscar understood at some primal level why Isaac sounded so defeated. With no light anywhere to be found, all they could do was … run.

  “So what, we just hang out and get ground up into hamburger?” said Raj, resuming jumping.

  Oscar’s terror reached a new level when Isaac didn’t have an answer.

  And to think—less than an hour ago, their most vexing question had been about which end of the train tracks to start their trick-or-treating on.

  “The train!” yelled Oscar, and just as he did, he heard Raj’s hand connect with the wooden knob and string attached to the garage’s emergency release. The knob slapped the metal of the garage door. Raj jumped again, and again he sent the knob swinging.

  “There it is!”

  “You guys!” Isaac yelled, urgency finding him once more, and they watched wide-eyed as the doorknob in the door began to wobble.

  “He’s almost—” said Isaac.

  “I’m almost—” said Raj.

  Isaac’s voice laughed from the other side of the door.

  “This is it. I’m putting you out of your misery in three, two, and you’re de—”

  Raj’s fingertips caught the wooden knob, and this time, he yanked hard on the string, releasing the automatic arm holding the garage door in place.

  “Get on that side!” said Oscar, and Isaac grabbed the ridge of the garage door on one end while Raj took the middle and Oscar took the left.

  They flung the garage door up with enough force to make it hit the top of its track and come crashing back down. Just as it did, the handle from the door leading to the garage dropped to the concrete floor, and the door swung wide to reveal the Plushtrap Chaser, set on its mindless destruction.

  The boys threw the garage door open with the same amount of force, only this time, they ducked underneath before it came crashing down again, putting them on the driveway and the rabbit in the garage.

  It slammed into the door, dragging its teeth across the metal as they winced under the sound.

  “This isn’t going to hold it for long,” said Raj, and while the Oscar from yesterday might have doubted that even a functioning Plushtrap could cut through metal, the Oscar of tonight had every reason to believe it. It wouldn’t stop until it had a reason to.

  “The train,” he said again, then took off running, taking it on faith that the other two would follow him.

  They’d barely reached the end of Oscar’s block before they heard the squeal of twisted metal and knew their borrowed time had expired.

  They hurdled over bikes left abandoned in people’s yards and electrical transformer boxes, swatting away dead leaves and trash that swirled in the air and assaulted them, all to the soundtrack of a steadily moving mechanical rabbit, its jaw opening and slamming shut to the increasing speed of its chasing legs. Oscar dared to look behind him only once, finding the Plushtrap closer than he’d feared it might be. Close enough to see the glowing whites of its vacant eyes.

  As the rabbit gained speed, Oscar and his friends lost theirs. The train tracks were still a quarter of a mile away.

  “Do I even wanna know how close it is?” Raj asked, his breathing quickly transitioning to wheezing.

  “Just keep going,” said Oscar. “Whatever you do, don’t slow down.”

  Oscar’s legs burned as he pumped his arms, but even Isaac was starting to peter out. They just needed to make it a little farther.

  “How …” Isaac panted, swallowing before trying again. “How do you even know there’ll be a train?”

  Isaac had guessed the plan Oscar didn’t have time to explain.

  “I don’t,” said Oscar, and Isaac didn’t say a word after that. He understood.

  If there wasn’t a train, then there wasn’t any hope.

  Dipping into the clearest path they could find in the wooded land leading to the train tracks, Oscar, Isaac, and Raj raised their hands over their heads, shielding their faces from low-hanging branches as they listened to the Plushtrap crash a path through the trees, making quick work of any branches that dared to get in its way.

  When the path began to incline, Oscar knew they were getting close. His lungs were on fire, and Raj was beginning to cough and sputter in pain.

  When they crested the hill, Oscar saw the most glorious of all sights.

  Light.

  “I told you!” Isaac panted. “They never lose power!”

  But as they tumbled down the slope leading toward the tracks, they once again lost sight of the east side of town, and the dreadful realization struck Oscar that without a train to intervene, they’d never make it to the east side in all of its lighted glory.

  The sound was faint at first, nearly impossible to hear over the howl of the storm and the buzz saw of the Plushtrap gaining on them. But when Raj and Isaac looked in the same direction, Oscar thought he heard it; he knew it wasn’t just a phantom noise.

  “The train horn. It’s coming. It’s coming!” yelled Isaac, and they yelled a collective whoop, filled with relief at hearing their savior approach.

  But they couldn’t see it yet. And when they turned around, what they did see froze Oscar’s blood in his veins. The shadow of a rabbit loomed tall across their feet before the bunny ascended the top of the hill.

  “It’s not going to come in time,” whispered Isaac.

  “It’ll come in time,” said Oscar.

  The Plushtrap tipped forward at the hill’s peak and launched, sprinting down the hill with expert, deadly precision.

  “We’re gonna die. This is it, we’re gonna die,” said Raj.

  “It’ll come in time,” said
Oscar, never taking his eyes off the rabbit.

  It was halfway down the hill before Oscar heard the beautiful sound of the train’s horn cutting through the whir of the storm.

  The rabbit’s eyes bulged, its ears stuck straight in the air at an unnatural angle. And as it pounded down the second half of the hill, Oscar could even see shards of mangled metal from the garage door sticking out of its jagged teeth like chicken bones.

  Oscar dared to take his eyes from the Plushtrap just long enough to catch sight of a small circle of light at the visible end of the track.

  “Go,” Oscar said to them.

  “No way, man,” said Raj. “All of us together.”

  “Just trust me,” said Oscar.

  “Are you nuts??” said Isaac.

  “Get across the tracks,” Oscar said, a strange calm washing over his body as he measured the distance in each periphery of his vision—the oncoming Plushtrap and the oncoming train. His brain was doing calculus he didn’t even know it was capable of.

  The horn blared through the air. The train was mere seconds away. So was the Plushtrap.

  “Guys, it’s going to work. This time, it’s all going to work out. Just go!”

  Raj and Isaac took one more look at the oncoming train before diving over the tracks and tumbling to the other side.

  Oscar could hear them screaming for him to cross, too. He could hear them, but he wasn’t listening. All he could focus on in that moment—in that split second between possible life and certain death—was the crackling but stubbornly alive voice of Mr. Devereaux.

  Sometimes you have to know when to go for it, even when it doesn’t look possible.

  And in that impossibly small and infinitely huge space of time, Oscar finally understood what the old man meant: Sometimes luck isn’t found. Sometimes luck is made. And when it is, you had to know when to grab hold of it.

  To the chorus of his friends’ screams and the blaring of the train’s horn and the grinding of the rabbit’s teeth, he took three giant steps to the right toward the train, stepped onto the tracks, and waited for just the right second when the Plushtrap Chaser raced onto the tracks and turned to face Oscar and the bright beam of the train’s light.

  Oscar had a split second to register the sinister eyes. From its ravenous, bloody mouth came the voice of Oscar’s mom: