by Howard, Bill
I reached over and we wrapped our arms around each other, and Thom cried into my shoulder.
I stood up and offered my hand to Thom, who took it and stood beside me.
“Let’s get out of here before someone sees us acting like little girls,” he muttered dryly.
I laughed. Thom almost laughed. That was good to see. We went downstairs where everyone in the living room was fast asleep. Max’s head rose as we walked in the room, but quickly dropped back to the floor. I offered to stay up and keep watch, but Thom said he had gotten some sleep at the church, and that he would stay up. He offered me his room, for which I was grateful. A bed was more than welcome to me. I thanked him and headed upstairs. My eyes were closed and the dreams had begun before my head even hit the pillow.
I am standing in a field. A steady wind caused a soft wave through the tall grass. I recognize it to be the field behind my house. But there’s a large red barn. Old, battered. My house doesn’t have a barn. I walk through the grass until I reach the back of the towering crimson monolith. The smell of hay and animals permeates my nostrils. I walk around the side, running my hand along the bumpy stone foundation. I stop at the old wooden door, barely hanging by old, rusted hinges. I put my hand through the hole cut into the planks and pull the door open. Inside, shafts of sunlight cut through the darkness in a thousand places, giving the air a dazzling crystalline effect. The barn is empty; there are no animals, no equipment, and no tools. Just scattered hay. As I proceed further into the barn, I notice something at one end, but I can’t make it out. I walk closer, the hay crackling beneath my feet. The thing is small, maybe two feet high, if that, but still enveloped in darkness. I think I see movement. I step closer still. The end of the barn comes into view and I see a baby, sitting on the floor in the hay. It is very small, almost newborn. It’s just sitting there upright, as if in an invisible chair. Its tiny fingers are moving ever so slightly, its head slightly lowered; I can’t see its eyes. I take another step. The baby’s head starts to rise and its eyes meet mine. The barn around me begins vibrating, but so fast, it doesn’t seem to be moving at all. I can just feel it. The baby just continues to stare at me, and I see now that its eyes have a faint tinge of yellow to them. The baby seems to be vibrating now too, even faster than the barn. I can feel an intensity in the baby, as if the vibrating is going to lead to something. Something bad. The baby now seems to be on the brink of losing control, and yet is not even moving. Its eyes are all I can see now, and I’m frightened. I’m terrified to my very soul, more scared than I have ever been. I scream without opening my mouth, but I cannot hear it. I can feel the scream inside me, but I’m unable to move or make a sound. The baby. I can’t stop looking at it. I can’t close my eyes but I don’t want to look at it anymore.
My eyes snapped open to gaze upon the stucco ceiling in Thom’s room. The sheets beneath me were damp from the cold sweat that encompassed me. I wondered why I woke just then. I didn’t even want to think about the dream I had, I still felt uneasy from it and I didn’t want any of its images in my head. I got up and went into the bathroom, drank some water, and stared into the mirror at my own face. I barely recognized myself. My eye sockets were sunken; my skin looked grey and old. Is this what a few days can do to a man? I heard a noise from the hallway, went through the bedroom to the door, and opened it, coming face to face with Thom just as he was reaching for the door.
“There’s something outside. I don’t know what, and I don’t want to panic everyone for nothing, but I thought you might be able to check it out with me?”
I agreed and picked up my gun. We went downstairs. Thom said the noise came from the front of the house, but he couldn’t see anything through the window. I told him to check the windows and doors to make sure everything was still closed and locked, and I would check out front. He took off into the back as I unlatched the front door. I opened the door slowly, peering through as I did. There didn’t seem to be anything there. I opened it further and stepped onto the porch, checking either side of the door then standing on the porch. It was quiet. There were no sounds of distant traffic, no crickets chirping, no dogs barking. Nothing at all. I took one last look around, then went back inside, locking the door tight behind me. I poked my head into the living room; everyone was still sleeping. Max raised his head once again and stared at me. I walked over to him and lifted the end of the large coffee table, pulling the leash handle out from under it.
“You gotta go pee buddy?" I asked quietly.
I walked Max through the dining room and into the kitchen, looking for Thom. I didn’t see him anywhere, so I took Max into the mudroom so I could take him out back to do his business. As I entered the small mudroom, I noticed the door to the backyard was wide open. I put my hand on the door and looked outside; hoping Thom was standing out there. He was, about ten feet from the door, on the lawn. Max started to growl.
“Its okay buddy, its just Thom.”
I stepped out towards Thom and thought I heard him crying again.
“Thom? Are you okay?”
I approached him and stepped to the side, coming up on his right. He had his gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, pointed to the ground.
“Thom. What’s wrong?”
He turned his head to me and tears soaked his face.
“She's back Denny.” he sobbed.
His hand holding the flashlight raised and shone into the backyard. The beam of light settled on a person standing about twenty feet from Thom. As the light went across the grass and up the legs of the person, it settled on the face, and Thom let out a quick whimper. It was Isabel. She just stood there, filthy, dried, caked blood all over her face and covering her arms right up to the elbows. Max barked loudly and lunged, yanking the leash out of my hand. In two seconds, Max reached Isabel, and jumped towards her. Isabel raised one arm and smacked Max right out of the air, sending him rolling through the grass. In the same moment, she ran right towards us, arms outstretched. I raised my gun and fired a shot, but it flew right over her shoulder and into the bushes--she was moving too fast for me to react. Within moments she was on top of us, striking me in the chest and sending me backwards into the wall of the house. She grabbed Thom by the jaw and looked him in the eyes for a split second. Thom dropped the gun and flashlight and they both disappeared from my view, all I could see was a cylinder of light rolling through the grass. I could hear some struggling, and then a bright light blinded me and I turned my head away. A loud shot thundered right beside my head and I fell to the ground, covering my ears. Dazed and startled, I sat back up and looked over my shoulder. The back door light was on now, and Stephen stood in the doorway with a rifle leveled to his eye. Behind him stood the others, and Ellie called back a limping and whimpering Max. Everyone shone their flashlights in Thom's direction, lighting him up like a marquee. Thom was standing in the yard, holding Isabel in a sort of headlock. Thom looked calm, but Isabel was snapping and waving her arms around.
“Thom. Jesus Christ, Thom. Are you okay?”
Thom just stood there with Isabel to his chest.
"I need some rope, some duct tape, and a stick or broom handle or something."
We all just stood there staring at him.
"NOW."
Stephen jumped when Thom said this, and ran back into the house. Ellie remained in the doorway holding Max's collar. Max didn’t seem to want to bark at anyone anymore, he had enough for today. Stephen returned a few moments later with the materials Thom had asked for, running out to the lawn and throwing them on the ground in front of him. Thom pushed Isabel to the ground and got on top of her, his knee on the back of her neck keeping her face in the dewy grass. We all stood in puzzlement as Thom started going MacGyver on us, roping this, taping that. When he was done, he had fashioned what looked like one of those poles that animal control uses for out of control dogs. He looped the thick rope around Isabel's neck and stepped back. Isabel instantly jumped up and turned, lunging for Thom, but the pole held and jerked her wh
ole body as she realized she couldn’t go anywhere. Thom had full control of Isabel through the pole and stood there with it in both hands, looking into Isabel's face. I moved the flashlight beam over the rest of Thom and could see now that she was away from him that he was covered in blood. I shone the light to the side of his neck, where the oozing blood from a massive bite wound glistened as it pumped out and down, soaking his shirt.
"Thom. Your neck. We have to take care of that. What are you going to do with her?" I asked, genuinely curious what the point of the contraption was.
Thom turned his head slowly and looked at me, still holding Isabel at a safe five-foot distance from him.
"She's coming with us."
CHAPTER 32: DAMAGE CONTROL
We all stood around the kitchen table as Clive cleaned the large wound on Thom’s neck. Stephen was tearing through the bathrooms getting any medical supplies he could find and Ellie was prepping some bandages. Thom had an oval-shaped hole in his neck, encircled by small, jagged teeth marks. The blood was flowing fast. His face had originally gone white as a linen sheet, but now was starting to turn a pale, sickly yellow. He was still lucid and kept staring at me as I sat beside him and held his hand. No one said a word. Isabel was locked in the mudroom at the back door. It had taken some convincing to get Thom to let go of the pole, and there was no way he was going to sit still and let us take care of the wound unless Isabel was secure. Maneuvering her into the room was easy enough with Thom's makeshift control pole.
Clive seemed to think the best way to keep the wound from bleeding out was to cauterize it. The thought of trying to do that in a kitchen scared me. Clive took a long narrow bread knife and laid it on one of the gas burners of the stove. As it heated up and the metal started to turn a glowing autumn orange, Clive held Thom’s hand, looked into his eyes, and very quietly uttered a prayer with him.
“It will be fast." Clive assured Thom. “The pain will come and go quickly, but it will be intense.”
Thom nodded and held tight to the seat of the chair. I stepped beside him and pried one hand off, putting it in my hand instead. Thom looked at me and gave me a very faint smile. He squeezed my hand tight as Clive went to the stove to retrieve the knife. Thom’s grip got tighter the closer Clive got to his neck.
“Okay, here we go." Clive warned.
Clive pressed the long flat side of the scorching knife blade against the cleaned wound. There was an brief, audible sizzle as it burned the flesh, quickly drowned out quickly by Thom’s agonizing scream. Max howled with him, either feeling his pain or just joining in, which one it was hard to tell. Isabel started going crazy, banging her hands on the wooden door into the kitchen every time Thom screamed. Clive moved the knife blade two more times over the wound until the entire surface had been burned and the wound was sealed. Smoke rose from Thom’s neck and the horrible stench of burning flesh filled our nostrils. Thom stopped yelling and had gone limp in the chair, passed out. Clive and I lifted him up and moved him to the couch in the living room. Clive dressed the wound and we covered him up, letting him rest after his ordeal. Max and Isabel both calmed down once Thom was out.
The remaining bunch of us huddled back into the kitchen for an impromptu meeting. For a short while, we just sat in silence. Stephen had found a bottle of Crown Royal and was pouring each of us a glass, walking slowly around the table behind us like a waiter, his hands shaking but still managing to get the whiskey into the glasses. After he was finished pouring, Stephen took his place at the table and we all downed our drinks. Ellie was the first to speak.
“So, do we know what happens now? Do we know how long it takes, or if it will even happen to him?”
No one at the table had an answer. This was new to all of us; we didn’t have the experience or knowledge of this new phenomenon to know what we had to do.
“There’s no way to know how to handle this,” I said. “We just have to play this one out and see what happens. But we have to be prepared for any possible outcome. ”
With that, dramatically, I laid my handgun on the table. Thom was my best friend. The last thing I want to do was shoot him, but if that was what I had to do to save him, I would. We then moved forward and devised our plan from this point. We would get some rest, taking turns watching over Thom and the house. In the morning, assuming Thom was better, we would head back out. If Thom was not up to it, we would determine at that time who would stay and watch him until he either got better, help came, or the other eventuality that we didn’t care to discuss right then. We would also leave Isabel where she was for now, as we didn’t know how Thom would react if we got rid of her. She didn’t pose a threat as long as she was contained.
Stephen volunteered to take the first watch, sitting in a large armchair across from Thom with a Colt Government Model 45 tensely laid in his palm. The remainder of us split up into separate rooms around the house and tried to get some rest.
I layed in Thom’s bed staring at the ceiling. I thought about my life up to this point and the relationship I had with Thom. I thought about Nicole and Sam, about how happy they had made Thom and how devastated he had been after the accident. It wasn’t fair that someone should go through trauma like that and have to end up where Thom was now. Life was assuredly a bitch; there was no doubt about that. My thoughts then turned to Diane and Jordan. It felt like I hadn’t seen them in years. I wondered what they were doing right now. Were they sleeping? Were they safe? Was Jordan scared? It tore my heart apart that I didn’t know the answers. My eyelids grew heavy while their images still lingered in my mind. The air was humid, the room dark. I could feel the air pressing against me as I drifted off, the strong smell of dirt and grass in my nose from the open window. I was walking down a street I remembered from my childhood. My parents and I lived on a quiet family street during my pre-teen years. As I walked, I could still smell the dirt and grass. I could hear kids playing in the neighborhood, cars on adjacent streets, parents yelling at their kids somewhere in the distance. As I got to the end of the street, I came to an abandoned lot with an old building that used to be a school many years before. It was old enough that it was gender separated, a stone brick with ‘Boys’ over one door, and on the opposite side of the building, an identical door with ‘Girls’ over it. The lot was concrete and overgrown, weeds as tall as I was breaking through the man-made earth and having their way with the property. The windows and doors on the ground level were all boarded up, but the ones on the second and third floors were not. Most of the glass in these windows had been shattered by rocks, thrown by boys who had the inexplicable desire to see something break. Above the third floor was presumably some sort of attic or storage area. On either side of the building there was a small roof peak with a window below it, these ones still intact thanks to their height. As I walked past the lot, I always debated with myself as to whether or not to look at these attic windows. Something about the windows told me not to, when I had looked at them in the past; something about them terrified me. I could never place why. It was almost as if I could hear some child left behind in that attic years before, calling out for someone to help him, to get him out. This time as I walked by I stopped. I hadn’t looked yet, but something was calling to me, something was pulling me to the window. I decided I was a big boy, that I could handle a stupid window. I turned towards the old school with my eyes closed and angled my head to where I knew that window was. I stood there for a second, my eyes closed; double-checking with myself that this was what I wanted to do. I opened my eyes and looked at the window. It was dark and empty. At first, I didn’t even get the creepy feeling. I was victorious; I had triumphed over the window. But just then the feeling started to crawl up my back. When it reached my neck, I shut my eyes tight. I stood there for a moment in a cold sweat and turned away from the school. After catching my breath, I opened my eyes again. I was looking down from somewhere high, disoriented as to why I was not standing on the sidewalk anymore. I could see a small boy standing by a chain link fence on a sidewalk
, his back to me, just standing there, alone. I was looking at him through an old window that warped my view of him, made it rippled like I was looking through water. I looked around below me and recognized it as the abandoned schoolyard. That would mean that I was …no. I couldn’t be. I turned slowly on my heels, my body cold yet feverish, my hair damp on my forehead. As I turned in the room, I looked at the walls; they were old, dusty, covered in cobwebs. Once I’m fully turned around, I bring my eyes up and look into the room. It is dark, but the light through the two peaked windows provides enough illumination for me to make out a girl just slightly smaller than myself. She is crouched on the floor just off to the side of the opposite window. Her back is to me and she seems to be weeping, her shoulders shuddering. I step closer and ask if she is okay, but I get no response. There is nothing else in the attic, just the girl and I. I am standing right behind her now and I place my hand on her shoulder; I can feel it shaking. Her head starts to turn towards me. It is Jordan. She has been crying. She opens her mouth and starts to form a word.
