by P. T. Phronk
I should have looked for a weapon, but was there time now? Or would I feel that bullet tear apart my insides as soon as I let my guard down?
More doors creaked open on the floor above. The sounds seemed to be getting closer, but it was difficult to tell. That last thump could have been a footstep, or it could have been distant thunder.
Another thump was definitely in the house, less muffled than before. Somebody was coming down the stairs.
Thump, thump, thump as heavy boots hit each step. It was definitely one of the men. Only Jasmine, Marcus, and I were wearing shoes from our excursion outside, and the other two were either on the second floor or bleeding to death.
A flashlight lit up the corridor. It cast odd patterns of shadow from the irregular, deflated bouncy castle that we’d laid on the concrete floor of the hallway. I remembered my insane thought that the castle was alive with hungry rats underneath, and the shadows now writhing across its surface brought that thought to life. Except now I welcomed it. That particular fantasy had been recruited to my side.
I leaned back into the room so the man wouldn’t spot me.
His footsteps stomped closer. His voice sounded loud in the dark: “C-come on out, little girl. L-little boy too. You d-down here?” While he tried to project his voice, it wavered and stuttered as if he was cold, though surely he was only scared. This was the same man who attacked us on the way into the house, who I’d jabbed in the face. With the pink coat and the gas mask like a little cylindrical nose, I began to think of him as a piggy.
“Little g-girl!” He coughed, which made me want to do the same, with my lungs still stinging from exposure to the outdoors. “I’ve got a present for you!” Metal tapped against metal; I could picture the handgun I knew he had, tapping against his flashlight.
His boot squeaked as he took his first step onto the castle. “What the fuck,” he muttered, but he kept moving. Another squeak. Soon the trap would spring, and he’d be running out the door, never to come back. Just like in that movie Home Alone, I’d said to Caleb while we put the trap together, and he didn’t say anything, but from his half-disappointed expression I knew he was thinking about how the robbers in Home Alone kept coming even after Macaulay Culkin sprung all his traps.
Another squeak. How was he getting so far?
He drew close. Soon he’d be across the bouncy castle. He’d round the corner, pull the trigger, and I’d be dead in an instant.
There was no way out of here. No cellar door behind me, nothing to defend myself with. Except …
He took another step, and his boot hit concrete. He’d managed to avoid our trap. It was either extraordinary luck, or somehow he’d seen through it.
I was out of options. It was time to tackle this problem head on, like Jasmine said Trista always did.
I sprung from the doorway, with the knife raised. The plastic knife with the spring in it. But he didn’t know that.
It was enough to make him recoil. He raised his right hand, but he was already stepping backward, and the undulating folds of the bouncy castle seemed to reach for his feet. He went down sideways, trying to steady himself, but tripping again on one of the bricks we’d placed under the castle.
He landed on his back, and from the howl of pain, I knew he’d hit the right spot—one of the boards we’d put under the rubber, lined with rusty, corrugated nails that were now embedded in his back.
I leapt at him with the knife before he had time to raise his gun again, but I hesitated for a split second, perhaps out of fear, or perhaps distantly realizing that the charade would be over if he felt the plastic blade up close. My hesitation left him with time to dodge, but as he rolled to the side, his wrist encountered another row of nails.
The gun tumbled to the side. Rivulets of blood trickled through the folds and creases of the castle like little waggling rat tails.
“You c-c-c—” he stammered.
“Caleb! Time to go!” I shouted as I regained my footing and kicked the gun away from the man’s reach.
I grabbed the gun and tossed the plastic knife onto the man’s chest. It was so light it seemed to float through the air before clacking against his rubber raincoat. Caleb emerged, carrying his crowbar more like a baby than a weapon.
The man kicked and howled as he attempted to remove his impaled wrist from the undulating rubber. Squeal, piggy. Caleb ducked past me, away from his reach, only stepping on the castle’s blue-painted windows, which we’d designated as safe areas.
I only took my eyes off the man for a second to aim my own steps, but he moved fast, grabbing my ankle with his free hand. I went down. My knee hit the corner of one of the bricks under the rubber, and it made a very bad sound as I felt something snap out of place inside my kneecap.
I kicked forward, aiming for a window. The man held on for a moment, but he was still impaled. He let go when the hole in his wrist elongated, gushing more blood.
Jesus.
I hopped once, twice, and then I was on the other side of the castle. I aimed the gun at him. Behind his gas mask, marred by the rip where I’d jabbed him outside, wild, frightened blue eyes looked up at me. “What do you want?” I cried.
“W-what do you think? The house.”
I tried to keep the gun steady, but the pain in my knee was making my arms weak too. “And the girl?”
“The daughter? Tell her to keep away.”
Once again, he denied any knowledge of Trista, didn’t even know she was down the hall, dead. Everything suddenly felt colder. The gun in my hand was ice. “She doesn’t have the luxury of keeping away now. But you will.”
“It’s—it’s ours. The house. It doesn’t belong to you anymore,” he said. The grey walls of the rubber castle around him had turned red with smudged blood.
I flipped the safety off. “It never did, buddy, but now I’m the one with the gun. I’d say that makes me king of the castle.”
He laughed. “You weren’t supposed to be here. I don’t know who you are, lady, but maybe you get it.”
He tried to get up again, wincing in pain.
Something thumped upstairs.
“Let’s go!” Caleb said. And of course, we did have to go. I couldn’t shoot this man just because I had the gun. I turned and tried climbing the stairs, but it was like a rock was embedded in my knee, preventing me from straightening it. Caleb practically had to drag me with his skinny arms. We jammed a chair under the handle of the door at the top of the stairs, which would at least delay the man down there.
The house seemed eerily silent. I thought I could hear breathing, somewhere, but as always, it could have been sounds from outside, muffled by the thick walls. Or it could have been a ghost. But what I knew for sure was that one of the men who thought they owned the place was still wandering around inside, and it was time for him to get the fuck out.
Chapter 9
“Don’t cry baby, don’t cry, don’t cry,” Paul Simon sang.
The power had flashed on, and for just a moment, I’d seen the house as the family thought of it—bright, inviting, somehow more modern—before it went dark again. The power flash must have also reset the speaker in the lobby to the movie room and set it playing, because now Paul Simon was singing Boy in the Bubble. The droning accordion and uncommon South African cadence took on a menacing tone echoing in the dark, as if coming from somewhere further than down the hall. Somewhere further than Africa. When Paul Simon sang about distant, dying constellations, then pleaded his final “don’t cry,” there was a brief pause, then the song started again.
“This is Dad’s music,” Caleb said.
“You don’t say! This is the ultimate dad music. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that Craig would rock out to this.”
Caleb chuckled. “He used to listen to it over and over, when we were kids. Sometimes he still does. Trista and me make fun of him for it all the time. I hated this song. I don’t really hate it right now though.”
“Well, at least it makes for a password you can remember
. That didn’t keep you from writing it down anyway though, did it?”
DONT CRY DONT CRY. It was written on the sticky note on the fridge. Caleb didn’t seem to get what I was saying, so he just remained silent, which was probably for the best as we slowly searched each room, talking quietly enough that the music would drown out our approach. My heart raced and the pain in my knee introduced some delirium to my pounding head, though, and ideas raced so quickly in my mind that I couldn’t keep them inside. “It’s a Bluetooth speaker playing the dad rock?”
“Yeah.”
“The power surge must have brought it to life. It might not be long before we have light. And cell service. Then I can call in for the failsafe password, and we can find out what happened to Trista.”
Caleb stopped. His hand on my arm had been helping me limp along, but now it squeezed harder than it needed to. “They did. You believe they killed her, don’t you?” My heart leaped. Jasmine’s last words to me returned: let’s keep an eye on Caleb. Now his watery eyes focused intently on me, twinkling in the light of the candles that still burned around the kitchen.
“Sure,” I said. Dammit, I couldn’t keep my thoughts inside, even if it would turn Caleb against me, maybe even anger him. But I still had the gun. “On second thought, no. No. I mentioned Trista to the man downstairs twice, and both times he denied knowing anything about her.”
“They’re killers. Monsters. Of course they’d deny it.” Caleb’s voice was cold.
“They tried to kill Marcus, tried to kill us, they’ve broken into your house. What reason would they have to deny one more crime?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve seen this coming. I showed you that note. ‘Abandon this place.’ They warned us, and they’ve been around here for months. Did you know that? I saw them before, when they came up here in a white truck. Everyone else was out, so they thought nobody was home. They watched the house for half an hour, and I watched them from an upstairs window. Nobody believed me, but I’ve been watching for them ever since. Sometimes I don’t sleep. Sometimes I’ll see that white truck out there in the woods at night.”
I shivered. I thought I’d seen a truck in the woods on the way in, but dismissed it as an illusion, a phantom, just tired eyes making things up. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that Caleb was imagining things too—or lying—but a few too many coincidences were starting to line up. I urged him to ease me down into one of the chairs in the family room. I needed to rest for a moment, but it also allowed me to concentrate on monitoring the dark around us, in case our voices had attracted any attention. When I saw and heard nothing except the music, I lowered my voice and continued prodding. “It still doesn’t make any sense to me. They came and snuck in, without anyone noticing, killed your sister, then left, then came back later to kill us?”
“I don’t know.”
“And how did she get in the safe room in the first place?”
“She was on a tour of universities,” Caleb said. “Did you know? She didn’t come with me and Dad to go see my aunt, which made Dad a bit sour. She was supposed to come home at the same time as us, but she must have gotten home early, and someone put her in that … that place.”
“Okay, so they came when they thought the house was empty, but Trista was here. Why would they lock her in the room though?” I was only thinking out loud now.
Caleb’s nostrils twitched. Against Paul Simon’s wishes, he was going to cry. “I don’t know, okay?”
“Neither do I. That’s all I’m trying to say. We can’t assume that they’re guilty, and we can’t assume anyone else is innocent. Where were you when your sister was … attacked?”
He looked like he’d been slapped. Then he reconsidered, and his eyes searched the room, as if he were seeing into the past. “Fine. I was here. I was alone … Dad wasn’t feeling well, so he said he was going to bed. Marcus was cleaning up. I dunno where Ash went. I think I dozed off, then … then a minute later … I heard the scream … and—” He trailed off and buried his face in his hands, sobbing.
“Shhh!” I said, and it came out more like shut the fuck up than there there, so I tried again, cautiously stroking his wavy hair: “shhhhh, don’t cry.”
It seemed to calm him. The hair-stroking maneuver had worked with Todd too. Now I wanted to cry.
He sniffled. The candles behind him emphasized the round edges of his face, and how young he looked. He must’ve been … what? Seventeen? I’d thought of him as much older than Todd had been, but there were only a few years between them. If Todd had lived, he’d have been Caleb’s age soon. And like Todd, I had trouble believing Caleb could hurt anyone even if he wanted to.
I must have been looking at him strangely, because he stopped crying and withdrew into the shadows. After a few moments of silence, he changed the subject. “Did you actually see Mae?”
“Yes.”
“So where is she?” Now he was interrogating me. Perhaps he even suspected me when it came to Trista. I was the outsider here, after all. It wasn’t my family. Mine was gone.
“I don’t know where she went. I think she’s fine, though; she’s gotta be, right? We would have heard something otherwise, like a shout, or a gunshot.” I reached out and put a hand on Caleb’s knee, and looked him straight in the eye. “Mae’s waiting for the right moment, okay? She seems to know what she’s doing.”
We sat there for a few more minutes, catching our breath, preparing for what came next. I took stock of what we had. The gun felt heavy in my lap and I almost wished I had my plastic knife back. They served the same purpose, after all: convince others that you’re dangerous. I would never use the gun, so it was an empty threat, like the knife. Like fairy tales—stories we tell ourselves to convince us there’s hope, that we have control. Mae’s waiting for the right moment.
Like the security company lawn signs, which anyone could buy online for fifteen bucks, even if you don’t have a security system, because just convincing the bad guys you’re dangerous to them is enough. Except, that hadn’t worked today, had it? No, the world had flipped. Even unspoken rules no longer applied.
Something thumped against the floor down the hall.
“Give me the gun?” Caleb said.
I shook my head. I’d convinced myself that he didn’t kill Trista, but there was still something I didn’t trust about him. Instead, I gestured for him to help me out of my chair, and I limped as quietly as I could toward the source of the noise.
Another sound came from the dining room just off the foyer—the raspy whisper of a living thing rubbing against the inorganic house around it. I pointed the gun at the French doors. Through the gemlike pattern of the glass, I saw only dark fragments of the room beyond.
I jutted my chin toward the door. Caleb got the hint and swung it open, then stepped back as I turned on my flashlight. Chair coverings looked like shrouds over upright corpses, and I almost pulled the trigger before realizing the room was devoid of life.
There was a closet.
Was that the clearing of a throat inside? Or was I only hearing the rain gurgling in the gutters, interpreting the mechanistic movements of nature as the work of a conscious being?
I realized that somebody had stopped the Bluetooth speaker down the hall behind us. Paul Simon had been silenced. It hadn’t been playing long enough for the battery to have run out.
Something shifted in the closet. Either someone was hiding in there, or the house really did have rats. I gestured at Caleb again, and although his hands shook, he reached toward the closet’s doorknob and yanked it open.
I nearly shot Craig. He shouted in fear—only a sharp bark before he realized it was us, but loud enough that it echoed in the now-silent house, and would surely attract the attention of the intruder. And if that didn’t do it, Craig’s round of coughs surely would. When he regained his breath, he put his arms around Caleb.
“We need to go,” I said.
“Thank God you’re okay,” Craig said to his son.
“I’m f
ine.”
Craig ruffled Caleb’s curly hair and he gingerly gripped his son’s chin between his thumb and forefinger to move his head from side to side, looking him over, as if examining both sides of his head would result in a medical diagnosis. The little gesture tickled something in my brain. Remember this, I thought. Remember this gesture.
Caleb pulled away from his dad’s grip. “Have you seen anyone else? Mae?”
“No sign of Mae.” Craig briefly looked at me. He was still skeptical about Mae even having been here.
“Let’s go. Now,” I said.
Suddenly the house was alive with sound. From the basement, the trapped intruder pounded on the door and shouted for help. Heavy footsteps stomped from the other side of the house—footsteps that could only have come from the other guy’s heavy boots.
“New plan: back in the closet,” I whispered. We piled in, then I closed the door as quietly as I could. Craig clamped his hand over his mouth and his head jerked as he tried to suppress his coughing, but his breath still hissed as it escaped his nose.
The footsteps passed us, headed toward the basement. This was our chance.
We got back into the hallway, then ran to the foyer. The footsteps behind us stopped. Silence for a moment. Then he turned and stomped back toward us.
We couldn’t risk the rain, especially with Craig’s lungs already about to give out. “Up the stairs!”
We climbed, no longer caring about the noise we made. When Craig realized my knee was injured, he helped as best he could, and his skinny arms around my waist were somehow reassuring. At the top, I looked over the railing, and nearly fumbled the gun, sending it tumbling to the foyer’s tile floor. The intruder who had shot Marcus stood there. The big guy, wearing a jet black hazard suit below his gas mask. If the one in the pink rain coat was a piggy, this one was a black bear.
