by Jeremy Bates
Its quills, all standing on end, fanned out from its body, creating the illusion of the small face, while at the same time making the rodent seem larger and more threatening than it was.
Rex’s muscles unwound with relief.
Just a porcupine.
He continued forward, giving the animal as much space as he could. It turned cumbersomely to follow his progress, clattering its teeth, or perhaps its erect quills, in warning.
“Take it easy,” Rex told it, surprised to see it had a white stripe down the middle of its back, most likely to mimic the look of a skunk to help deter predators.
Less than a minute later the trees lining the road thinned, then retreated completely. Without the canopy to shelter him, the rain struck Rex’s face with stinging force. Even with one hand shielding his eyes, he could barely see a few feet in front of him.
He ran the final stretch to the Mazda with his head down. The dirt road boiled around his feet. An earsplitting peal of thunder exploded above him, causing him to instinctively duck. He leapt over a pothole overflowing with water, sidestepped a long furrow, then he was at the car.
He already had his free hand in his pocket, thumb jabbing the unlock button on the remote key. The coupe’s headlights and taillights winked. He yanked open the driver’s side door and dropped in behind the steering wheel, slamming the door shut behind him.
Grabbing his cell phone from the glove compartment, Rex dialed 9-1-1, pressed Speaker, and set the device on his lap. He jammed the key into the ignition, turned it. The engine revved to life.
“Nine-one-one operator,” a curt female voice said. “What’s your emergency?”
“I’m on Pavilion Lake,” he said. “There’ve been two murders out here. We need help.”
“Pavilion Lake?” He could hear the clicks of a keyboard.
“Did you hear me? There’ve been two murders.”
“I heard you. Now don’t hang up. Is the perpetrator still around?”
“Yes!” He shifted into Drive and hit the gas. The car lurched forward.
“Can you describe the person to me?”
“I didn’t really see him. But two people are dead, and a cop has been injured, badly.”
“A police officer?”
He banged over a pothole, flicked on the headlights and windshield wipers. The latter thumped back and forth on full speed yet were unable to clear the rain faster than it fell.
“Yes! A cop! Send someone!”
“I already got a call started and help on the way. What’s your name?”
“Rex.”
“Rex, what’s your last name?”
“Chapman.”
“Chapman. And you said Pavilion Lake—”
“Forty minutes past Lillooet on Highway 99. We’re at 5 Lake Road.”
“I’ve got an officer on the way—”
“What?”
“I’ve got an officer coming, sir. If anything changes before we get there, just give us a call right back—”
Rex hung up.
CHAPTER 17
Bobby kept his mouth shut while Ellie’s mom spoke to the policeman. He was too scared to speak. Part of this was due to seeing how beat up the policeman was. Blood was even coming from his mouth! Bobby had never seen that before. He’d seen a bloody nose—like when a girl a year older than him jumped from the top of the castle in his school’s playground, instead of using the slide like you’re supposed to, and smashed her knee into her nose—but he’s never seen a bloody mouth, and he knew that must mean the policeman was badly hurt, because the blood wouldn’t be coming from his teeth but from way down inside him.
The other thing scaring Bobby was seeing how frightened Ellie’s mom was. He could hear the fear in her voice, in the way she was asking questions, and she was an adult, so if she was this frightened of the monster, then it had to be super dangerous.
Which meant he could no longer pretend the monster wasn’t going to get him. It probably was. And it might not just kill him, it might eat him too. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be eaten alive, but he knew it would hurt a lot.
And if that happened, and he was eaten alive and went to heaven, what would happen here on earth? Would everything continue as usual? Would his friends keep going to school? Miss Damond might say a prayer for him in the morning before class began. And Tom Harrity would probably miss him because they always played Superheroes at recess (and Bobby had promised to trade his Silver Surfer action figure for Tom’s Ant-Man if it came with the helmet and all the other pieces). But what about everybody else? Would they even notice or care if Bobby didn’t come to school again? Would someone else get to sit at his desk? Would they get rid of his nametag taped to the top of it that had taken him an entire afternoon to design? It seemed really weird not being there. And what would happen to all of his toys? Not just his Silver Surfer, but his Nerf N-Strike blaster and his remote control car and all of his Legos and, most important of all, his Nintendo Switch? He wouldn’t need them in heaven if he could just wish for new ones. So who would get them all?
Nevertheless, what bothered Bobby the most about dying was that his mom would keep on living wherever she was without him. He wouldn’t even be able to say goodbye.
Then again, maybe he could tell her from heaven that he was okay? Maybe he could send her a sign through the TV, or peek over the clouds and smile at her?
The bottom line, he decided, was that he didn’t want to die yet. He liked his house and his room and Brett Huggins who lived next door and all his other friends at school. He liked having Cap’n Crunch for breakfast on Saturday mornings (he was only allowed to have plain old Shreddies or Corn Flakes the rest of the week). He liked when his dad took him to McDonald’s or KFC or Burger King for a special treat. He liked Christmas and Halloween and his birthday parties. He liked eating cake and opening presents. He liked a whole lot of things he didn’t want to change—
Suddenly the cabin door burst open and cold air and rain swept inside.
Along with his dad!
“Daddy!” Bobby cried, springing to his feet. He ran to his dad, who hiked him up into his arms and gave him a big hug and a whisker kiss before setting him back down on the floor.
Ellie’s mom was also on her feet. “Rex! I didn’t hear the car!”
His dad hugged her next. “Driveway’s thick with mud. Didn’t want to get stuck.”
“Nothing’s out there?”
He frowned. “No. Nothing, nobody. But let’s not dally. Help me with the cop.” He was already moving toward the police officer. “Take his arms.”
“What about Ellie and me, Dad?” Bobby asked, already forgetting about death and the afterlife and all that stuff.
“You guys stick right next to us—”
“Where is she?” Ellie cried suddenly. She was patting her pockets frantically.
Bobby looked at her. “Who?”
“Miss Chippy!”
Ellie’s mom looked in the wooden box where the chipmunk was supposed to be. “Did you take it from there?”
“Yes!”
“I told you—”
“I didn’t want her to sleep by herself!”
“She’s probably upstairs,” Bobby said.
“Can I borrow your flashlight? Please?”
Bobby handed her his keychain with the flashlight even as Ellie’s mom was shaking her head. “You’re not going anywhere, Ellie. There’s no time—”
“But I don’t want Miss Chippy to die, Mommy! I haven’t even played with her yet!”
“I’m not arguing about this—”
Ellie sped from the room.
“Ellie!” her mom shouted. “Ellie, dammit, come back here!”
She didn’t come back. Bobby heard her feet running up the stairs to the attic.
“That girl!” her mom said, scowling. “Doesn’t she know we need to—”
“Forget it,” Bobby’s dad said. “We’ll be back in a minute. Bobby, you wait here for Ellie. Make sure she’
s ready to go as soon as Tabs and I return. Got it, bud?”
“Okay!” he said, happy at being treated like a big kid for once.
His dad took the policeman’s legs, Ellie’s mom took his arms, and together they carried him awkwardly into the night.
***
Ellie scrambled up the staircase so quickly she bent to all fours so she didn’t lose her balance and fall backward. When Rex said they were leaving, she touched her pocket, to make sure Miss Chippy was still there—and she wasn’t! The zipper on the pocket was open. She had forgotten to close it earlier. Which meant Miss Chippy had fallen out. Ellie was betting it happened when she somersaulted out of the fort.
Ellie knew she was probably going to get grounded when they got home for running off to look for the chipmunk. Her mom hated it when Ellie “dawdled,” especially when her mom was late or rushed. But Ellie couldn’t leave Miss Chippy here by herself. They were best friends now, and best friends helped each other.
“Miss Chippy?” Ellie said, hurrying toward the two beds, sweeping Bobby’s flashlight back and forth across the dusty floor. Rain pounded the roof. Thunder went off like firecrackers. Outside the window, lightning flashed, momentarily blinding her. When the dancing stars cleared from her vision, the dark seemed even darker than it had moments before.
Ellie slowed, suddenly hesitant about being up here alone. She stopped at the first bed and was about to look under it when a cold breeze blew past her face, smelling of damp and earth.
She shone the flashlight at the window.
It was open.
The tattered curtains on either side of it fluttered as if disturbed by unseen hands. Rain soaked the window ledge and the floor before it, creating a shadowy stain on the wood.
Neither she nor Bobby had opened the window.
So who did?
The wind, she thought. The wind blew it open.
Only it wasn’t a window that opened sideways. You had to push the windowpane up.
The wind couldn’t do that.
Could it?
Go back downstairs!
A squeak.
Miss Chippy!
Ellie peeked under the bed—
(the monster lives there)
(I don’t care!)
—and staring right back at her was the chipmunk.
“Miss Chippy!”
She reached her arm under the bed and grabbed Miss Chippy in her hand, careful not to squeeze too tightly. The chipmunk didn’t run. Miss Chippy was a good girl. Or maybe she was just too injured. Either way, Ellie had her now.
Withdrawing her arm and sitting up, she lifted the chipmunk to her face, touched noses, and said, “Silly little chippymunk! We almost left you behind!”
Ellie stuck the chipmunk in her pocket—and secured the zipper tight.
All of a sudden she heard a buzzing sound from somewhere in the attic. It reminded her of the whirling her mom’s electric toothbrush made, only it was much, much louder, and angrier.
Ellie peeked up over the bed—and screamed.
***
Tabitha and Rex had just laid the police officer’s limp body across the Mazda’s back seat and were returning to the cabin when Ellie’s scream cut through the night.
No! was Tabitha’s first and only thought.
Anesthetized with terror, she burst past Rex and entered the cabin. Snatching the Maglite and Glock from the coffee table, holding one in each hand, she plowed through the afghan and took the steps to the attic two at a time.
She had no plan of action. When she reached the top of the staircase, she was simply going to charge straight into the killer, fighting tooth and nail to drive him away from her daughter.
Only it wasn’t the killer who awaited her.
At least, not the killer she had expected.
It was a creature whose improbable reality caused her to come to an abrupt halt.
Tabitha’s eyes took in the monstrous abomination all at once. Then, as if unable to accept what they were seeing, they played over it a second time in slow-motion horror.
Two compound eyes, alien and emotionless, protruded from the creature’s small, round head like grotesque tumors. A pair of feathery antennae sprouted between them, probing the air. Where the mandible should have been located was a tube-like proboscis, as long and deadly looking as a rapier.
The ghastly thing—Mosquito Man, her mind whispered, a moniker that could have graced the neon marquee of a 1980s movie theater showing a midnight creature-feature special—stood upright on two absurdly long, thick legs. Filling the space between them was a plump, insectoid abdomen that bypassed a pelvic region to connect directly to a barrel-chested, black-furred thorax. It was from this truncated middle section that the legs originated, along with four arms that tapered into slender pinchers.
Two of those pinchers held Ellie in a secure grip.
“Mommy!” her daughter screamed, kicking and squirming futilely.
“Ellie…?” she said, her voice faltering in the face of the abomination that stood before her.
“Mommy! Help me!”
Tabitha found she could not move. The creature’s eyes held her in place as securely as a tractor beam. They exhibited no evil, no gleeful malevolence. Yet it was this stone-cold indifference to her presence that made them so utterly horrifying, that stirred within her not only revulsion and fear but ineffable despair.
She was nothing but food to it.
“Mommeeee!”
“Baby…?” she murmured.
The creature took a herky-jerky step forward, a bassy, strumming sound emanating from somewhere deep inside its body. It raised its two free pincers before it in the prayer-like manner of a praying mantis.
“Mom-meeeeee!” Ellie wailed, the word disintegrating into a keening shriek.
Tabitha’s paralysis shattered. She raised the pistol, aimed high for the creature’s head so she didn’t hit Ellie, and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flash briefly illuminated the darkness, but the bullet missed its mark because the creature didn’t even flinch.
Tabitha squeezed the trigger a second time, but realized belatedly the gun was no longer in her hand. One of the creature’s pincers had knocked it free. At the same time she realized this, a jolt of pain shot through her head.
Pincer again.
So fast.
Tabitha collapsed to her knees, dazed. The creature loomed above her—
Something smashed into it, and she grasped groggily that Rex was beside her, swinging the wooden golf club. He struck the monstrous thing again, but this time it slashed back.
Rex grunted in pain.
Then the creature—Mosquito Man, Tabitha reminded herself deliriously—turned and scuttled across the attic to the open window, great transparent wings unfolding from its back.
Tabitha struggled to her feet and stumbled after it, still holding the flashlight, the yellow beam painting the attic in hysterical patterns.
The creature flitted through the window into the storming night, wings buzzing, whining.
“No!” Tabitha cried, slamming into the window ledge. A burst of sheet lightning backlit the thunderheads, and in the purple light she watched helplessly as the creature touched down gracefully on the ground.
Tabitha couldn’t fully comprehend what had just happened. Did the Mosquito Man, the goddamn Mosquito Man, just steal her daughter? Where was it taking her? What did it want with her?
During a subsequent flash of lightning, she saw the creature moving into the forest, and heard Ellie’s screams fading beneath the roar of the rain.
Rex gripped her shoulders, spoke to her, though she couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“Tabs!” he said, shaking harder. “Tabs!”
The bubble she’d been in suddenly popped. The dumbed-down sounds and sensations she’d been experiencing snapped into crystalline clarity. The underwater-viscosity of time fast-forwarded to its normal speed. Blood pounded in her temples while fear the likes of which she had never known iced
every fiber of her being.
Ellie’s gone. It took her.
“You’re cut!” Rex told her, brushing hair from her forehead.
“I need to find Ellie!” she cried.
“I’ll go! I’ll get her!”
“No—”
“Stay here! Watch Bobby! Fix that cut!”
Bobby. Bobby was still downstairs, she thought. And Rex was right. She couldn’t help Ellie in the condition she was in.
“Go!” she sobbed, tears flooding her eyes. “Go get my baby.”
CHAPTER 18
Rex charged through the dark, wet forest. The Maglite illuminated glimpses of the vegetation he was trampling, but he was moving so quickly and recklessly, his visibility was so impeded by the rain, he was nevertheless getting flayed alive by branches, twigs, and other woody hindrances.
He barely noticed.
He was moving on auto-pilot, his mind on fire.
It’s real! he thought wildly. Jesus Christ, it’s real!
And not only this, he remembered it.
He remembered everything now.
“Take your brother, Rex, and go hide right now. You boys are good at that.”
She went to the door.
“Mom!” Rex cried. “Don’t leave us!”
“I have to lead him away.” She pushed her dark hair from her dark eyes, which were looking at Rex but didn’t seem to be seeing him.
“Hide with us,” he pleaded.
Attempting a smile that trembled and became a frown, she left the cabin, closing the door behind her.
Rex turned to Logan, whose mouth was twisted in pain. “Did he have a knife?” he asked.
“It wasn’t a person,” Logan mumbled, and then he began sobbing.
“What?”
“I’m scared, Rex.”
“What was it, Loge?”
“I don’t know!”
Although Rex was the little brother, he knew he was going to have to make the decision where to hide. Logan was acting way too weird.
Upstairs under their beds was the first spot that came to his mind. But he quickly dismissed this possibility. That was the first place where people looked when they wanted to find where you were hiding.
