Meddling Kids

by Edgar Cantero

  “Does anyone else think it’s strange that someone lives here, yet the door is still locked from the outside?” Nate polled.

  “I don’t know.” Andy shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “It kind of appeals to the detective bit in ‘Blyton Summer Fucking Detective Club,’ doesn’t it?”

  “Right.” She nodded. “Well, we’ll make sure he fills us in during his hog-tied villain exposition. Up we go.”

  “Wait!”

  Andy froze halfway to the first step.

  KERRI: This guy wants us to come upstairs and find him.

  ANDY: Yup. Pretty much my plan, coincidentally.

  KERRI: We shouldn’t be doing his bidding. He knows we’re here; he’s got the light on to entice us. He’s expecting us. We should do something different, throw him off-balance.

  ANDY: Good point. Nate?

  NATE: (Shrugs, points distractedly at Kerri.) Brains.

  ANDY: Right. (Gazing around.) Okay, got it.

  She stepped back from the stairs and led them through the double doors on the left, into the living room. Dead hanging curtains and embarrassed furniture squinted at their light beams.

  Andy lit a match, okayed the flame, then stumbled upon an oil lamp on the mantelpiece and chose not to let the match waste. The colors of the room (bright hues, even conservatively joyful) stirred back to life in the tottering light.

  “Nice,” Kerri sarcasm evaulated. “Good to be home.”

  Even though the house had been officially abandoned in 1949 (except for a bout of illegal squatting from Wickley in ’77), it had obviously fallen behind with decorating trends back in the early 1920s. The present tenant was clearly uninterested in catching up. In fact, the whole room was uncannily identical to their memory of it. Kerri could have sworn that no one had stood below the breeze-rocked chandelier since their own terrified teenage selves—and the impression it made on her was exactly the same. That bone-ringing familiarity was more unsettling than every haunted house cliché.

  Nate even jolted when he peeked over his shoulder and recognized the face over the mantelpiece. Above the dead fireplace hung the somber oil portrait of Damian Deboën, the founding father. The man posed in flamboyant 1860s fashion, leaning on a crescent-bladed sword, like an ambiguous yet proud symbol of a previous career that had granted him the present status. He was the only thing in the room not to seem intimidated by their intrusion. Still, Nate could detect the scandal in his black eyes: the hateful, cryogenic look a Reconstruction-era gentleman would reserve for punks and lesbians.

  The likeness, however, wasn’t nearly as frightening to Nate as it had been to his eleven-year-old self—not even in the dim light of the oil lamp and the candelabra that Andy had just kindled. It was just brushstrokes on canvas. And the room, he noticed, wasn’t that big. Rediscovery shrinkage.

  Kerri checked the painting, then looked across the room at an ornamental shield on the wall. Visual memory or imagination placed two swords crossed on top of that shield, not dissimilar to the one in the portrait, but there was only one now. She spotlighted it, and she could outline the ghost of its twin in the dust.

  She was about to point this out when she saw Andy sliding a vinyl record from its sleeve. She delicately alighted it on the gramophone (one of those with an external horn like something a Tolkien character would blow into and expect horsemen to rush in), wound up the device, tampered with some switches, and carefully landed the needle on the first track.

  It seemed miraculous enough that the old contraption sputtered any sound at all—that of dust and scratches and the tungsten needle coughing. When the music came, it could hardly compete with the noise, but it came nonetheless, in the shape of a forgotten soprano’s rendition of Tessera.

  “What the fuck are we doing?” Kerri inquired in the name of pretty much every living and inert thing in the house.

  “I bet you he wasn’t expecting this,” Andy answered confidently.

  She propped the shotgun next to a sofa and sat down, spraying disgruntled dust into the cosmos. Tim did not hesitate to follow suit.

  It was dark, and hostile, and downright frightening, but they had camped in worse places. Even lived in worse places. And the broken opera was starting to get comfortable in the room, and Andy loved camping anyway.

  Nate browsed the bookshelves, picked something that seemed both ancient and innocuous, and took it to his newly assigned armchair.

  Andy had pulled out a book too. Kerri, sitting across, pointed her flashlight at the back cover.

  “Why are you reading ‘another inspiring entry in our favorite pop-Gothic series,’ according to Sapphic Readers Quarterly?”

  “It was a gift,” Andy said.

  Then Tim raised his head.

  The soprano quivered.

  The books convulsed in their shelves, windowpanes rattled, paintings clopped, furniture neighed and furiously stamped the ground.

  And then it all ceased.

  The gramophone needle had drifted off the disc. Four pair of eyes checked one another.

  “Okay. That’s our vacation done,” Andy gathered.

  “Is this it?” Nate asked Kerri. “The limnic eruption?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was expecting something more dramatic.”

  She pulled a curtain back to reveal a window and peered through the shutters. The isle’s lush plant life blocked her view of the lake. Andy had better luck with the window she chose. She could see gentle ripples surfing across the waters.

  “It looks calm enough. It should explode like a Coke, right?”

  “I’ve never seen it happen,” Kerri argued. “I don’t think anyone’s seen it happen.”

  “ ‘Should explode like a Coke,’ ” Peter quoted, from the armchair opposite Nate. “Really, man, why is she replacing me?”

  “What was that noise?” Kerri wondered.

  “I mean, Kerri is the logical choice. She’s got the looks and the brains, no arguing that.”

  “What noise?” Nate asked, fighting to ignore him.

  “God, I would even understand you taking over,” Peter went on. “But Andy? I won’t deny she’s got initiative, but—”

  Tim snarled at the window; Kerri instantly knelt beside him and tugged his neck.

  “Shh. Quiet, Tim. Quiet.”

  PETER: See? Even the dog is smarter.

  NATE: (Rounding on him, hissing.) Will you shut the fuck up!

  SOMETHING: Ggguh.

  Nate sprang to his feet. Kerri looked back at him, nodding, That noise.

  Andy, spying through the shutters, muttered, “Oh fuck.”

  From the vaguely defined shoreline between vegetation and still water, half a Greek alphabet of gray, malformed figures was arduously and determinedly emerging. And then, staggering, undecided on which pair or pairs of extremities to stand on, they were approaching the mansion.

  Andy tiptoed back from the window, readying her shotgun.

  “Foyer,” she whispered, luring them with a finger.

  They retreated back to the entrance hall, and Andy picked up a chair and stealthily propped it to hold the door while Kerri and Nate aimed their rifles at it. The occasional shy wheezing had turned into a frank, raspy choir of a tortured, yet relentless anthem.

  (All in whispers.)

  ANDY: (Side-glancing the room they just left.) Shit. The lights.

  KERRI: It’s okay. They have no vision from living underground.

  PETER: Really? Wonder Tomboy hadn’t figured that out?

  NATE: (Appalled.) I hadn’t figured that out!

  TIM: (Stares at the door like an X-raying Superman, all muscles ready to jump forward and attack.)

  This standoff went on for longer than expected. Andy was able to count two full drops of sweat paragliding down her face while she stared at the door handle, daring it to budge.

  It didn’t. But the wheezing didn’t cease either. Instead, it grew louder and lumpier and raspier than ever.

  Andy couldn’t
tell where it was coming from anymore.

  She backed away from the doors and signaled the others to follow, the floorboards squeaking treacherously under her feet.

  “Where are they coming from?” she wondered.

  “Below the lake,” Kerri said. “They follow the CO2.”

  “What about below the isle?”

  That was the cue a wheezer was waiting for to slam open the door under the stairs and grab Nate by the neck and try to bite his head off. It would have succeeded had Nate not managed to jab the rifle into its mouth. The wrong end.

  Tim was faster than the girls and managed to grab hold of Nate’s jeans, but the creature was already dragging him down to the basement. In a single second Nate screamed for help, his jeans ripped out of Tim’s mouth, he was yanked down the stairs, and the door slammed shut.

  It stayed closed for the quantum time length before Andy swung it open again, but in that unnamable lapse everything beyond the door was gone. Struggling shapes and screams. Light and sound. Kerri and Andy and Tim found themselves peering into a flat black rectangle of darkness and interplanetary silence.

  “FUCK THIS,” Andy spat at the intended end of the chapter, pulling out the flare gun from her pocket and shooting into the dark.

  A wheezer at the bottom of the stairs opened its foul mouth to shout back, just in time to allow the flare to fly into its throat and burn inside its torso, the rubidium flames shining through its slimy translucent flesh like a bright red, black-smoking Halloween pumpkin of pain.

  By the light of which Andy saw fit to jump downstairs, shoot a second wheezer charging for her, spot Nate’s rifle on the floor, bat the skull halfway off a third wheezer, let the charging Weimaraner finish him off, and run for Nate as he was being dragged to the dark end of the room, the creature that had seized him preferring to secure a meal before the fight.

  Had Nate not seen a pillar to grab on to by the light of that howling, sparking wheezer-lamp still spasming on the ground, he wouldn’t have delayed the wheezer enough to let Andy jump on its back, sink her cannon into its spine where its four shoulders seemed to join, and pull the trigger, blowing up the concrete below.

  Tim was latched on to the third wheezer’s leg, just waiting for Kerri to come downstairs and take a swing at its head. A substantial part of the skull did come off this time.

  The wheezer-lamp had stopped moving. A bright red light burned inside its abdomen, its skin blazing white and crawling with overexposed blood vessels.

  Andy held Nate’s head up. “Nate. Nate. Look at me.”

  His face was drained white, the way living people, or even the recently deceased, never look. He had blood left inside him, though. It showed through his T-shirt, in groups of three parallel slashes at his chest and neck. Andy checked for arterial bleeding; there was none. Kerri was now trying to pry a word out of him.

  “Nate. Can you walk?” she asked, propping him up. “Nate? Nate, speak!”

  “CO2,” Nate fitted in one breath.

  “What?”

  (Facing Kerri, quivering.) “Flares…produce CO2.”

  A change in the lighting marked the wheezer-lamp suddenly standing up, red light pouring out of the many holes in its torso and its mouth as it threw a ground-rippling, marrow-thirsty, pure carbon dioxide–fueled screech and crawl-ran on all six toward them.

  Andy and Kerri both raised their weapons, aimed vaguely, and fired. The lamp exploded like any lamp would, throwing a wave of guts and severed limbs across the room to splatter off the wall.

  “Upstairs,” Andy ordered, helping Kerri with the wounded, her sneakers squishing on monster pulp.

  The foyer was clear. The front door still held.

  And yet the gurgling wheeze of the creatures surrounded them.

  In the crowded penumbra, Andy struck a match. Yellow fleur-de-lis wallpaper ululated at the still-healthy flame. She cocked the rifle and gave a quiet military signal to head upstairs. Tim understood it perfectly and took the lead, while Andy helped Kerri help Nate upstairs.

  The dog stopped on the sixth step, tail stiffening to DEFCON 1. Two of the dozen wheezer-voices around them raised in tone and manifested, jumping onto the landing ahead, both on all sixes.

  ANDY: Sheep smuggler rugsweep!

  (Kerri swiftly grabs the carpet and yanks, causing the wheezers to slip off the landing and tumble down to Andy’s feet, right in time for her to take the gun and blow the first one’s head off, dodge three claws, step on the second wheezer’s chest, and shove the cannon inside its gaping mouth and fire.)

  PETER: Why didn’t she just say “carpet”?! Like the fucking thing’s gonna understand!

  ANDY: Go! Get to high ground!

  They rushed upstairs, crossed a hallway, flashlights sweeping the rooms frantically, trying to catch sight of the invisible wheezers that stood cheering around them, crawling all over the house, outside, beneath, above, a stereophonic choir crescendoing to homicidal ecstasy.

  Andy gritted her teeth and swept the gore off her face to confront the inevitable conclusion: there was only one room to go.

  She hurricaned up the third-floor staircase and hit the attic door. It wouldn’t open.

  “No way!”

  The wheezer audio track around her grew into what sounded like sadistic laughter.

  “NO WAY! (Banging the door.) Open up, motherfucker! We’re here! Open up!”

  “Andy! In here!”

  She spun on her feet and ran back toward a second floor room, shutting the door behind her. Nate was there, and Tim, and Kerri, her flashlight pointing at the peculiar furniture.

  Oxygen tanks. Tens of them in assorted sizes, the smallest ones as big as fire extinguishers, a couple of canisters looking like they’d barely fit through the doorway.

  “What…?” Andy stuttered. “These are the same kind we found under Sentinel Hill. He was smuggling oxygen here? Why?!”

  “There.” Kerri pointed for a close-up shot. One of the largest tanks was connected to a duct pipe that slithered into a vent in a corner. “He’s oxygenating the attic. He holes up there while the whole lake is leaking gas!”

  A high-pitched, overreaching shriek rose from the chorus; Andy and Kerri turned to face it. Their lightbeams hit a bare wall.

  On the other end of the room, Nate slid down the flowery wallpaper, his anxious panting barely audible over the pandemonium.

  PETER: (Whispering.) We’re as good as dead here, Nate.

  NATE: (Really loud.) You are fucking dead!

  “What?!” Kerri shouted. “Nate, what are you saying?”

  Tim growled at the door, claws ready to pry off the floorboards.

  “They’re right outside,” Andy announced, aiming her gun.

  “They’re pouring in through the east wing,” Kerri said.

  “Nate.” Peter was breathing hard too, like he actually had something to lose. “Listen to me. We’re not gonna make it.”

  Nate could feel both icy sweat and lava blood dripping down his spine. The wheezer-voices were accordingly dropping in volume, from warcry to drumroll.

  “Look at this, man. This is her plan? Just walk into ground zero and fight? It’s insane.”

  Andy pushed Kerri aside and let Tim take the middle of the room with her, both facing the entryway with gritted teeth and quivery trigger fingers, all eyes on the door handle.

  It never moved. Wheezers couldn’t handle handles.

  So they blasted the door open.

  Andy fired a welcome shot through the frontrunner of the horde, switched to the pickax, and jumped forward, her and Tim both roaring like face-painted warriors. The doorway was immediately taken over by a new creature digging its claws on the doorframe, and then another, and another, and another, and another.

  Andy and Tim stopped halfway to the door, astonished, watching the five wheezers struggling to fit through at the same time. A ridiculous number of arms bashing at one another, mouths snapping in the air.

  “Take note,” Andy told Tim. “People
wonder why bad guys charge at Jackie Chan in a single row. This is why.”

  In response to that, wheezers blasted two new doorways, one on each sidewall.

  Drooling, hissing, claw-waving creatures poured inside like a tidal wave of sulfuric acid.

  In amazement, Andy saw Tim jump at the first one and be flung across the room while she herself shotgunned one creature and pickaxed an eye socket into another one’s face at the same time, all while watching Kerri move to defend Nate and fight off the second wave with a stick.

  “Kerri! It’s a gun! (Pickax through something’s ribcage.) Fire the gun!”

  Kerri bashed the front wheezer, gaining room to aim the pump-action rifle and fire.

  All action stopped for a fraction of a second, if only to admire how the blast went through no less than three screeching devils, silencing them instantly and making them fall to their knees and sideways like tux-clad dancers domino-diving in a swimming pool.

  Nate staggered to his feet, cocked his rifle, and stepped forward into the three feet of ground Kerri had conquered against the quickly regrouping creatures, when something crashed through the dormer window on his right. Thorn-shaped teeth snapped an inch away from his cheek. He fired as he fell to the ground, and the gun blast knocked the wheezer out the window and off the roof.

  Andy silently approved while she fired her shotgun at Lambda, felt Mu clutching her jacket and slipped out of it, nailed Nu onto the wall with her pickax, surprised Omicron with a butterfly kick while it complained that Xi go first, shot Xi’s head off, ducked to dodge Mu again, grabbed one of its medial limbs in midair, and shoved it into the pickax point coming out of Nu, impaled four lines above.

  KERRI: Nate! Ammo!

  Andy’s gun clicked empty. She threw it at somebody’s eyeless head, grabbed an empty oxygen canister, dug in her heels, and spun. She swung the bottle around, knocked Pi and Rho off their feet, and kept spinning, off-balance and losing control, knowing she would fall eventually, but hopefully not before she’d broken at least one more neck, and indeed she heard a scream cut short by the sound of the canister striking one o’clock on Sigma’s skull before crying out, “Duck!” and letting go of the bottle, which by sheer luck hit Tau right as Kerri was blasting a hole through its abdomen.