Threshold

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  Past the clearing, the ruined cabin sinking swiftly into night and the fairy flicker of a hundred fireflies, and he’s almost all the way to the Chevy before he stops and looks back. There’s no sign of them, nothing but the darkening forest and the dirt road, no hitchhiker or ruby eyes slinking towards him through the gloom. Not even the pursuing noises they made. He’s breathing so hard it’s only a matter of time before he starts throwing up again, heart pounding and a stitch in his side, and Deacon has no idea how long it’s been since he’s run, really run. Probably not since he was a kid, since before he took his first drink.

  “There’s nothing back there,” he says, says it loud and angry to make himself brave, loud so the night slipping over Shrove Wood can hear him, so anything hiding in the night can hear. “Nothing at all,” and he walks the last fifteen or twenty feet to the car. Deacon lays the pistol on the roof of the Chevy and reaches into his pocket for the keys, but he keeps his eyes on the dirt road, on the trees, because it’s one thing to shout at the night and another thing altogether to believe a word of what he’s said.

  And the keys aren’t in his pocket.

  He bends over, squints through the driver’s-side window, and there they are, still dangling from the ignition switch. Too busy with the glove compartment and the gun, too worried about the time, to remember to put the goddamn keys in his pocket, and he swears and punches the glass hard, but it doesn’t break. More likely he’s broken his knuckles, broken his hand, and then he hears them again. Footsteps on the road and their eager, panting breath. He looks up, and the hitchhiker is standing in front of the car, still standing on two feet, but looking more like the twiggy dog things than any sort of man, and he laughs a thin and hollow laugh.

  “Is there a problem?” he asks, and Deacon thinks that it must be hard to talk through the knotted mess of wire and sticks that his face is becoming as the deceiving flesh peels back in dead and brittle ribbons to show what’s underneath, what was always underneath. “Have we been careless again, Mr. Silvey?”

  And right now what seems far more incredible to Deacon than anything he’s seen, or imagined that he’s seen, since turning onto Eleanore Road, since leaving Birmingham, is the calm and perfect clarity that washes over him as he stares into the hitchhiker’s face. Clarity even through the smothering migraine, so maybe a stingy smidgen of strength locked away somewhere inside him after all, or this is simply how insanity feels. This detachment, and he reaches for the revolver lying on the top of the Chevy.

  “I told you not to come here,” the hitchhiker growls. “I showed you the cards and told you to get your ass back home,” and then he can’t say anything else because there’s nothing left inside his mouth but bare bone and dog teeth, straw and copper wire. Deacon slams the butt of the pistol against the windshield, everything he has behind the blow, but the glass only cracks, concentric, spiderweb ring of a crack no bigger than a silver dollar. The hitchhiker’s claws scrape loud against the hood of the car, as he clambers forward and leans towards Deacon, that skull loose and lolling on trashheap shoulders, and for the second time Deacon cocks the pistol.

  “I don’t have time for this shit,” he says, squeezes the trigger and the Chevy’s window explodes, diamondshard shower of safety glass and the slug buries itself deep in the passenger seat. The shot louder than he ever would have thought from such a little gun, and the boom echoes and rolls away through Shrove Wood. Deacon unlocks the door and slides in behind the wheel, already turning the key in the ignition before he looks up at the hitchhiker again. But there’s nothing out there now but the trees silhouetted against the indigo sky, a violetred rind of sunset above the forest, and he puts the Chevy into reverse and bounces backwards onto Eleanore Road.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In the Water Works

  DAWN, and Chance sits alone on the floor of her attic bedroom in the big white house that her great-grandfather built, sits with the loaded shotgun across her lap, a half-empty box of shells beside her, and listens to the sounds still coming from the other side of the door. The restless, snuffling animal noises from the narrow stairs that lead to the attic and the fainter, infrequent voices and less-recognizable commotions from downstairs. Outside, the sky is finally turning blue again, palest grayblue from first-light mauve, and the sun is beginning to dapple the leaves with a shifting wash of warmer colors, honey and amber against the summer greens; in the wide and cityclogged valley below the mountain, the sun glints bright off the distant windows of the downtown skyline, the high and sensible, unhaunted glass office buildings of another world.

  Not like the zombie movies, surviving the night and now a clean, new day to drive away the monsters. Not like that at all. But she didn’t expect it to be that way, because the voices have been telling her for hours that the sun makes no difference to them. Something that they’d rather avoid, but nothing that can stop them, and Chance has no reason to doubt the things they say. They told her that Sadie and Deacon wouldn’t come back, that she was alone, and they were right about that, so why wouldn’t they be right about the sun, as well? The slanted yellow shaft of morning light through the bedroom window means nothing more than the time since Deacon left her here, at least twenty-four hours now, though she can’t be sure exactly how long it’s been. Deacon and Sadie both already gone when she woke up on Monday, and she called Deacon’s apartment and let the phone ring fourteen times before she finally hung up. Chance didn’t bother calling again, because she knew there wasn’t any point.

  So all day Monday come and gone and nothing stranger than the persistent sense that she’d finally awakened from a long nightmare. She might even have been able to persuade herself that was the truth, every bit of this a bad dream, if not for the undeniable bits and pieces scattered around the house, all the inconveniently tangible remains: her ruined car, Dancy Flammarion’s mangled duffel bag on the kitchen table and the marked-up copy of Beowulf on her chest of drawers, Sadie’s bloodstained clothes in the bathroom, her grandmother’s ledger. These grim souvenirs to give her madness form, to validate insanity, and, finally, the message that Alice Sprinkle left on her answering machine after she found the things Chance drew in colored chalk on the walls and ceiling of the lab.

  “No, I won’t call the police,” she said. “I won’t do that,” but she would have the locks changed immediately, and she left the name and phone number of a psychiatrist.

  “Please get help, Chance. I’m sorry there wasn’t more I could do for you.”

  And that’s what Chance was thinking about when it started, when it started again, not long after midnight, sitting in the front porch swing drinking a Coke, sitting there in the dark, staring at the buckled place where her car was still jammed beneath the warped and broken boards: how quickly and completely her life had slipped away and how there was nothing she could ever do to get it back. Thinking about Alice’s message and everything it meant, when she noticed the red eyes watching her from the edges of the yard. Eyes like hot, fireplace embers, and at first she only stared back at them, not quite comprehending, too numb to feel the threat. And then, moving slow as stalking cats, cats stalking small and helpless animals, they began to come closer to the house, and she could make out the rough shapes behind those eyes, but even then Chance didn’t move, sat still and watched as they crept across the lawn towards her.

  Come on, she thought, wondering if maybe they could hear the unspoken things inside her head. Come on. You’ve already taken everything that matters to me anyway. Get it over with.

  Something like peace in that thought, something merciful in the simple, hopeless finality of it, but then they were near enough that she could clearly make out their faces, what they had instead of faces caught in the light of the living-room windows, and Chance stood up and walked very slowly to the front door. Because it was plain enough to see these things had neither peace nor mercy to offer her, and she remembered Elise’s face, Elise trapped in the writhing arms of something that would never die and would never
let her die, either.

  “It’s only your memories keeping her there,” one of the voices whispers from the other side of the bedroom door, a sexless, dogthroated voice like dry ice and burning straw. “Or don’t you know that?” and Chance pumps the Winchester once and points it at the door, the door and the makeshift barricade of furniture.

  “Your guilt,” it says, and downstairs, far away, there’s laughter.

  “Shut up,” her finger on the trigger, and she wants to shoot, but there would be a hole, then, a way in, a way for her to see out, and so she only stares at the door down the long, single barrel of the gun.

  “If you truly want to help her, then you’re pointing that shotgun in the wrong direction, little pig,” the voice says; downstairs, the laughter is growing louder, getting hysterical, a lunatic’s laughter working its way up through the floor and filling the bedroom like bad air.

  “But all you have to do is turn it around. Open the door, and we’ll show you how. Open the door, Chance, and we’ll do it for you.”

  And then something begins to scratch at the bottom of the door again, determined scritch, scritch, scritch of steelsharp claws against the old wood, and without lowering the Winchester she scoots backwards, away from the sound, moving instinctively away from the door, towards the window and the brightening morning sun.

  “It only hurts for an instant, and then nothing ever has to hurt again.”

  “You can die, too,” she says to the voice, the scritching thing, and that’s true. She knows that’s true because she’s already killed two of them downstairs. Just enough time for her to get to the gun before they found a way into the house, the gun and the box of shells from her grandfather’s room, loading it as quickly as she could and when she looked up two of them were watching her from the hallway. The buckshot tore them apart, roared through the house, and all these hours later her ears are still ringing.

  A sound from the other side of the bedroom door like a deep, hitching breath or the wind pushed out before a summer storm, and downstairs the laughing ends as abruptly as it began. The scritching stops, too, but Chance doesn’t lower the shotgun. Her arms are aching, her arms and shoulders, and the Winchester seems almost as heavy as if it were carved from stone, but she keeps it trained on the door, the white door and a chair stuck under the knob, the chest of drawers and the headboard of her bed.

  “Little pig?” it whispers. “Can’t you hear me, little pig? Aren’t you listening?” and Chance slides a couple of feet farther away from the door, breaking the sunbeam now and it pours warm across her face, no idea how cold she was until that light touches her, no idea how tired, and she turns her head, lets the day wash pure and brilliant across her face. She shuts her eyes, drinking it in like medicine, strong and sobering medicine against madness.

  That’s what this is, isn’t it? That’s all this can be, she thinks, all of it too absurd to ever possibly be anything else. A crazy girl locked inside her house with a gun, locked up alone and hearing voices, seeing shit that isn’t there. If she’d really fired the shots she remembers firing, someone would have heard, Mr. Eldridge next door would have heard and called the police. None of this anything but her life finally catching up with her, Elise the last straw and then Dancy just enough to push her over the edge. Just like Alice said, and hell, even Deacon didn’t believe her.

  “Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” the voice whispers eagerly from behind the door. Chance opens her eyes and glances towards it, the muzzle of the shotgun dragging along the floor, and she smiles, a weak, sick smile for her delusions, all the loss and hurt she’s bottled up, hidden away, fucking lived through, and these sad and shabby horrors are the best that her mind can conjure.

  “No,” she says. “I know what you are now,” and turns her face back to the sun.

  And the staring, misshapen thing pressed against the attic window smiles back at her, a shadow clinging tightly to the roof by spiderthin legs or arms, and Chance screams and raises the Winchester. The clinging thing opens its jaws wide, a silent, straining yawn to mock her, and there are eyes inside that mouth, wild eyes, an albino’s white rabbit eyes looking out at her. Chance pulls the trigger and the windowpane disintegrates in a deafening spray of buckshot and glass and stringy black flesh.

  Driving all night, drinking cup after scalding cup of sour truckstop coffee to stay awake, bottles of Mountain Dew, and finally two foil packets of red ephedrine tablets that made his stomach hurt, made him feel like he was going to puke but kept his eyes wide open. Everything that might have already happened to Chance and Sadie to keep him moving and keep him from thinking too much about whatever he saw at the cabin, at the sinkhole, whatever chased him through Shrove Wood and all the way back to Eleanore Road. And then sunrise, and Birmingham, and Chance’s house doesn’t look any different than it did when he left.

  He parks the Chevy halfway up the gravel driveway, cuts the engine, and sits there for a moment, gazing out at the house through the dirty windshield. Trying to see clearly past the adrenaline and cheap speed, the caffeine and fear, past jangling, strung-out nerves that want to color everything the same ruined shade of gray.

  You just chill the fuck out, Deke. Get your goddamn head together before you go barging in there, scaring the shit out of them. And that’s a good thought, Sadie and Chance safe and asleep in the musty sanctuary of that old house and he’s the worst thing they have to fear, a very good thought, indeed, and he grabs hold of it like a drowning man clutching thin air and hangs on. He reaches beneath the seat, and there’s the pistol, still four bullets in the cylinder, and it’s not like he’s going to need the damned thing, but a little insurance never hurt anyone, just in case. Deacon tucks it back into the front of his jeans and gets out of the car.

  He makes it almost all the way to the front porch before Chance screams, has just enough time to look up before he hears the gunshot and the attic window explodes. Deacon ducks, covers his head with his arms, nothing but his own flesh to shield him from the jagged rain of glass and splinters, and one shard carves a long gash near his left elbow before it buries itself like a knife in the dewdamp grass at his feet. The blast echoes and fades as it rushes away from the house, escaping, losing itself at the speed of sound in the smoggy morning air, and Deacon stares down in surprise and shock at his own dark blood, blood to stain the glass that sliced his arm and the blood dripping steadily from his arm to the ground. A stickywet crimson puddle of himself and the grass all around him littered with sparkling fragments of the window, and then Chance screams again.

  Deacon forgets all about the blood and the pain, forgets the desperate, stupid fantasies that this house and those inside have somehow been spared, and he crosses the remaining distance to the porch in three or four long strides. No front steps, so he uses the wrecked Impala instead, clambers onto the trunk and from the trunk to the car’s roof, rusty metal that pops loud and sags beneath his weight. And that’s when he sees all the ugly scrapes and gouges in the porch boards, and the front door busted in and hanging crooked and half off its hinges.

  He calls out for Sadie, shouts her name twice at the top of his lungs, three times without a reply, before he draws the revolver, steps off the Impala onto the porch, and the wood creaks underfoot. Behind him, the roof of the car pops back into shape, and “Sadie!” he shouts again. “Goddamn it, somebody in there answer me!” but the morning is quiet and still, no birds or insects, not even the sound of cars down on Sixteenth to break the spell.

  Deacon cocks the hammer and takes a step towards the door, another step and from here he can see that the gouges don’t end at the threshold; the doorsill torn completely away, and the scrape marks disappear into the house, as if someone’s dragged the tines of a heavy iron rake across the wood.

  Or claws, he thinks. Claws could do that, remembering the marks the hitchhiker left on the hood of Soda’s car. He holds the gun out in front of him, both hands around the butt of the pistol, cold steel and plastic slick against his sweaty p
alms, and he follows the marks into the house.

  Chance sits with her back to the wall, squeezed into the corner where her bed used to be, before she pulled it apart to build the barricade. From here she can see the window and the bedroom door, so no more nasty surprises. No more misdirection, getting her to look the other way while something comes sneaking up from behind. There are a few tatters of flesh and gristle the greenblack of ripe avocado skin draped across the windowsill, a few oily spatters on her face and arms, but most of the thing went over the side. She has the box of 20-gauge Federal cartridges in her lap now and takes turns pointing the shotgun at the door and the shattered window, rests the barrel on her knee, trying to take a little of the weight off her arms.

  The scratching and snuffling noises have stopped, nothing at all from the stairs since she pulled the trigger, so maybe they’ve gone. Maybe three’s her lucky number, and they have better things to do than getting picked off one by one. Or maybe she just can’t hear them anymore, the ringing in her ears so loud now that she might be deaf for life. Her right arm and shoulder hurt like hell from the recoil, and there’s probably already a bruise, something in there dislocated or broken for all she knows.

  “Listen to them, Chance, please,” and Sadie is standing in the shadows on the other side of the room. Sadie just like the last time Chance saw her, the green shirt from her grandfather’s closet, the borrowed boots too big for her feet, her black hair like it’s never been introduced to a comb. And blood. Her skin and clothes slicked with dried and clotting blood like she’s bathed in the stuff, like someone drowned in blood and come back, slaughterhouse Ophelia, and when she opens her mouth to speak, it leaks from her lips and runs down her chin.