by Harper Lin
“I’ll worry about that once I find him. Now, if I were Blake Samberg, where would I go first?” My heels tapped on the marble floor with each step. “Not to the basement. He’d have no reason to go to the basement. Right? Right. Yes, Cath, you are right. So where do we—”
Thump! Thump!
Looking up the grand staircase, I saw him. Blake looked half-crazed, dragging a huge wooden chair to the landing at the top of the steps. He was crying. And there was a rope hanging down from the light fixture over the stairs to the banister.
“It’s got him,” I muttered to myself. “He’s going to hang himself.”
I dashed toward the stairs but then stopped and slowly began to ascend them, one step at a time so as not to freak him out. “Blake! It’s me, Cath! Blake!”
He stopped and looked down at me. His face was so sad, my heart broke. I didn’t know what it had done to him. What could it have said or shown him that would make his appearance change so much?
“It’s me, Blake! Just stop what you’re doing and come talk to me.” I hoped the desperation didn’t come through in my voice.
He looked up at me and smiled a sad smile. “If only it was you.” More tears ran down his face as he looked at me. “If only it was you and not those things.”
“What things…” I saw them behind him. It was the same two children who had stood outside the café. They were grinning and panting, clenching and unclenching their hands as their black eyes seemed to watch Blake and me at the same time. I felt their evil trying to get into my mind as they stared, but just as I had done before, I concentrated on the space between their eyebrows. I wouldn’t fall into that darkness.
But as I took a step, I felt an invisible barrier pushing back. The children were becoming more and more animated the closer I got to them as I walked up the stairs. Then I looked past them down the hallway. I saw the cats, hanging, tortured. Only this time, their legs twitched and kicked with life. My heart broke in pain at the thought of the Greenstone felines, waiting to be saved but help not coming. A shroud of sadness started to collect on my shoulders, weighing me down.
The stairs started to feel like quicksand around my ankles, holding my feet and making them feel as though they weighed a hundred pounds each. I tried to steady myself against the banister, but it moved and swayed like a rope bridge instead of a solid marble staircase.
“It isn’t real. Blake!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Blake, look at me!”
“You’re not real,” he said sadly. “I let you die. Before I could tell you how I felt, I let you fall.”
“No, Blake.” I pushed with all my might against the wall of air that was slowing me down. “Blake, don’t do anything else. Just stand there and wait.” He looked so handsome in the suit he’d worn to work with a nice, quiet, conservative tie. His shoes were hard-soled, and I didn’t think Sam Spade could have looked any cooler than Blake did.
His eyes were red with tears. “If only you were real.” He cried as he began to construct the end of the rope into a noose.
I pushed and pushed until finally I had reached the top of the stairs.
“Blake! It’s me! I’m really here!” I yelled, tears running down my own cheeks. I saw the happiness and satisfaction in the movements of those demonic children out of the corner of my eyes but didn’t take my gaze off Blake. Instead, I took three more staggering steps toward him, pulled my arm back, and roundhoused him across the chin. “Snap out of it!” I screamed.
I then heard a terrifying rumbling from the first level. I knew what it was. Without leaning over the edge of the stair railing, I shifted my eyes to see what I had guessed was on the mosaic-tiled floor when I’d been there with Bea and Aunt Astrid. The octopus.
Gray Flesh
“Cath?”
“Blake! Look out!”
A cloying gray tentacle pulled itself from the tile and wrapped itself around the banister. Then another did the same and another as the beast began to emerge from the design on the floor. It was the same thing I had seen writhing after us down in the basement.
Before Blake knew what I was saying, he was jerked off his feet, landing flat on his back with one of those horrible tentacles wrapped around his ankle. It was trying to pull him over the railing.
Lunging forward, I grabbed his arm, holding on tightly with both of mine. “Hang on, Blake! I’ve got you!” I hoped I was strong enough to wrestle him out of the kraken’s grasp.
“Cath! Help!”
“I’ve got you, Blake! Just don’t let go of me! And don’t look over the banister!”
Of course, what does he do but look over the banister.
“What the hell is that?” he screamed, tightening his grip on my hands. “We’ve got to get out of here, Cath!”
“You’ll never leave!” I heard the children hiss from behind me. Both Blake and I looked in the direction of the black-eyed children. They were insane with excitement, as if they were watching a cricket getting slowly digested by a spider. Their breath was coming out in ragged pants, and saliva dripped over their chins. “You’ll never make it out alive!”
“Don’t look at them, Blake! Don’t you dare look at them, or I swear to heaven I won’t just punch you! I’ll beat the crap out of you! There won’t be anything left for that thing to eat! Don’t test me!”
Blake stared at me. His hands held fast, and I saw him clench his jaw as his resolve returned.
The tentacle was pulling harder. Then another wormed its way up and also secured itself around Blake’s leg. I swung myself around, holding Blake’s arm and bracing myself against the banister, desperately trying to pull him free. But with every tug, it tightened itself, digging deeper into Blake’s leg.
“Cath! I can’t hold on! You’ve got to run!”
“What? Are you kidding? I’m not going anywhere without you, Blake! I didn’t come all this way so I could let them get you!”
“You came for me?” he asked, his voice strong.
“Well, duh! Do you think I was just passing by this place and thought to stop in?” I tried yanking him back, making him cry out as the pain in his leg started to become unbearable. “Come on, man! Fight!”
Then I remembered something. “Oh my gosh! Blake! Do you have your gun?”
“My what? Oh my gosh! My gun! Yes! Yes!” He let go of one of my hands and tried to reach into his coat to get his firearm from his shoulder holster. That was a lot harder than it would seem considering he was practically upside down.
The two black-eyed children stopped their creepy dance and dove at me, trying to pull me away from Blake since I was only holding one of his hands.
“Ah ha!” he cried triumphantly. Taking careful aim at the tentacle around his leg, he pulled the trigger.
In an explosion of glistening gray flesh and putrid-smelling ooze, the first tentacle unraveled its wounded self from Blake’s leg, dropping him down with a thud.
Quickly sitting up, Blake took aim at the other one still wrapped around his leg. As he went to pull the trigger, the two children jumped on my back, and I felt a searing pain in my spine and on the side of my neck.
The whole room began to spin, and tears flooded my eyes. I tried to cry, but the pain was so bad, it overwhelmed me. All I could do was gasp.
“Get off her, you little freaks!” Blake yelled. He grabbed hold of the beast on my neck and tore him off of me. Instantly, I clamped my hand to my neck and felt the skin burning. There was no blood or open wound, which surprised me because I was sure it had torn my throat open.
There was still a weight on me, but as I tried to turn, I heard Blake screaming. As I looked over my shoulder, I saw him pull his good leg back and then land his foot squarely against the other child-monster that had attached itself to me. The creature flew backward and landed in a disgusting heap of twisted body parts, mangled at unnatural angles. But then, like its companion on the floor below, it twisted and writhed around until it was back on its feet in the shape of a small boy. It wasn’t done w
ith us.
“Come on, Cath. On your feet!” Blake slipped his arms underneath mine and yanked me to my feet. The whole room spun, and I leaned into him for support.
He smelled so good. Even after working up a sweat and having gross blood-stuff all over his leg, I thought if his cologne was the last thing I ever inhaled, I would be happy.
The pale children looked at us with hatred in the blackness of their eyes. We both could feel it. We turned to run down the hallway then stopped when we saw two more of the children, salivating and trembling at the idea of having us cornered. The other two Blake had torn off of me were also slowly advancing.
But it was the octopus I was most scared of. It roared and gurgled, its gross arms writhing and swelling over itself in grotesque gray waves only to reveal two jet-black eyes staring up at us.
“Oh, no,” I said. Without thinking, I slipped my hand into Blake’s and held it tightly. I leaned back and felt him pull me closer. “I couldn’t wait for Aunt Astrid and Bea. If I did, these things would have killed you. But because I couldn’t wait for them, we couldn’t finish the ritual, and we couldn’t stop this thing, and now we’re going to die anyways.”
“I don’t plan on going just yet.” Blake pulled me into him with one arm and opened fire into the creature, blinding one of its eyes with a bullet right through the middle. Then he turned and aimed at the children that weren’t really children and pulled the trigger.
Click! Click! Empty.
“Get ready to run!” he said.
“Run? Run where?”
“Run there!” He pointed past the children and down the stairs.
We’ll never make it. Those things would latch onto us as if they were leeches, and that would be the end of it.
“One!” Blake shouted. “Two! Three!”
Just then, the front doors blew open with such force that the heavy wooden doors came off their hinges. Within seconds, I saw three dark figures and was sure they were the things lurking around in the woods that I had felt watching me as I’d made my way inside.
But then I heard a sound so familiar, I didn’t think a choir of angels could have sounded so sweet.
“I will devour an entire feast! Let me start with this here beast!” The tiny spark swirling through the air got larger and larger, lighting up my Aunt Astrid, Bea, and Jake, as well as our trusty feline companions.
“The cavalry!” I screamed, nearly crying with happiness.
“What the hell is going on?” I could feel Blake's hand trembling in mine.
Jake opened fire and also wounded two of the creature’s dozens of arms, making all of them recoil into themselves and slither back out in another direction.
The tentacles that had been whipping around in a wild fury of anger, searching out the assailants that had dared cause it pain, had now slowed to an almost glacial pace. Aunt Astrid had used a simple spell that many witches had used throughout history to slow down a chicken or turkey in order to catch it and kill it for dinner.
One witch could slow down a turkey on her own. It took my aunt, Bea, and the cats to overcome this monstrous creature. The thing tried to flip over and maneuver its good eye into a position to see who had barged in and was causing its victims to get away.
The one remaining black eye seared into my family, and within seconds, those creepy children were inching their way toward them. The long, gross arms of the octopus tried to roll after us, but they were getting tangled and knotted around each other, clumsily feeling their way, hoping to latch onto a human appendage. For a second, it reminded me of how I had talked after getting a mouth full of Novocain at the dentist.
“Come on!” Jake yelled. “Run!”
I tightened my grip on Blake's hand and pulled him toward the flashlight, down the stairs, and into our witches’ circle. He was limping badly. I could only imagine what his leg looked like, but I could see the dark patches of blood that had soaked through his pant leg.
Treacle jumped up onto my shoulder and perched himself there, hissing at the children as they clawed and scraped their way toward us.
“They'll stop,” Treacle said. “They have a fear of cats.” He hissed wildly.
“How do you know that?”
“Because they tried to get in at the café. I thought you knew that. These guys will tear apart a dog or boil a fish in its bowl. But cats freak them out. Watch this.”
Treacle swiped his paw at them from several feet away.
The children froze in their tracks, their mouths pulled down in angry, terrified grimaces. Their hands clenched and unclenched, and they hissed back but made no attempt to come any closer.
Marshmallow and Peanut Butter were doing the same thing in the other directions, keeping those hateful siblings confined to the shadows, crying and hissing as if they were... well, a bunch of spoiled brats.
“Are we ready?” Jake yelled, watching behind them out the open door with his gun and flashlight raised.
My aunt and cousin and I all yelled at the same time, “Yes!”
Jake took Bea's hand. I grabbed Blake with Treacle still around my shoulders. Aunt Astrid kept the fireball burning overhead as she backed out with Marshmallow and Peanut Butter flanking her on either side.
As soon as she set foot on the front stoop, she waved her arms, and the doors flew back into position, wedging themselves into the doorframe. It would take the Jaws of Life to pry them open again.
The angry, loathsome sound of the children could still be heard outside as they scratched at the door with their little hands. They screamed and cried, but it was the grotesque rolling and slithering of those tentacles that stayed with me. They beat uselessly against the door.
All of us took off running down the cobblestone driveway.
“Why didn't you park closer?” I yelled while gasping for air.
“Are you kidding?” Bea yelled, her own breath coming out in bursts.
“If you'd like, you can walk!” Jake added.
“Maybe it’s because two numbskulls parked and blocked the gate!” Aunt Astrid said, keeping up with the pack but bringing up the rear.
I was smiling. The cool air, the sound of crickets, and my whole family together, running for our lives. This was living.
Finally, we reached all our vehicles and stopped, panting and doubling over to get more of the sweet, cool air into our lungs.
“We'll meet you at home, young lady.” My aunt took my chin in her hand and looked me straight in the eye.
“What about the house? Do we need to take care of anything before we go?” I wanted to help. It was my attempt to fix what I had ruined. The ritual would have to be started over. What should have taken three days would now take six.
“We've got a binding spell on it,” Bea said. “But one of us will have to come by and check on it every couple of hours to make sure there are no leaks or cracks.” Bea held the door open for her mom and their two cats to climb into the back seat.
“I’ll do that.” I wiped the sweat from my brow. “I can totally do that.”
“I know you will,” my aunt said. Her face wasn't mean or angry, but it wasn't happy either.
Jake patted Blake on the back. “You okay to drive?” he asked as if this were no different than stopping someone with an expired license plate.
“I think so. I… Jake?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Blake. I'm just going to say get some rest and see how you feel in the morning. We'll talk then.”
With that, Jake climbed into the driver’s seat of his car and drove my family back in the direction of home.
I looked at Blake and noticed he wasn’t looking at me. In fact, he was backing away from me.
“Do you want me to take a look at your leg?” I offered. “I might have some BAND-AIDs in my roadside first-aid box.”
He shook his head as he backed up toward his car, looking down at the ground.
“I’m sorry I had to hit you,” I said. “Maybe you’d like some ice or something?”
“I don’t need any ice.” He kept backing up, feeling along his car for the door handle as if he were afraid to turn his back on me. Like I might jump him or something.
“It's okay, Blake. Those things… well… they won't be able to get out and…”
“You need to move your car.”
I stood there for a second, then I smiled as best I could. “Hey, I know it's kind of overwhelming, but there is an explanation for all this. If you'll just give me a couple minutes—”
“Move your car, Cath.” He yanked the door open, climbed behind the steering wheel of his vehicle, and slammed the door shut. Then I heard him lock the doors.
Treacle, who had jumped off my shoulder while we were running, looked up at me from where he was sitting at my feet. When I opened my car door, he jumped right in and took his place on the passenger seat.
I swallowed hard, started the car, and slowly backed down the driveway. I pulled out onto the street and put my car in park, waiting for Blake to pull up next to me. But he sped out of the driveway without stopping.
Sitting there with the engine idling, I couldn't understand what had just happened. Didn't I save his life?
Treacle didn't purr. He didn't head butt me or meow. Instead, he just placed a paw on my thigh. His little gesture of kindness was probably the only one I was going to get from anyone for quite a while. I started to cry.
Trellis
About a week had passed since the incident at the house.
The first few days had been very rough. I had stopped by the house on Butternut about six or seven times a day. Each time, I found a weak spot where those things were working to push their way through back into the outside world. I wore the amulet my mother had worn, to which my aunt had added a little extra power, and I also brought Treacle.
“I hate to punish you for what I did, Tre. But without doing anything, you keep these things scared and away while I fix any breaches.”
“Do you really think hanging out on this beautiful bit of property is punishment?” Treacle asked. “Are you kidding? In addition to the scratching and gnawing of those things you’re keeping in there, I can hear the mice in the woods. Want to come with me and find a few?”
