Thor ran right alongside Rhiannon. Occasionally he would stop, look back, and glare at Simon. Then he’d wait for Emily and the boy to catch up and then run on to catch up with Rhiannon, who was quickly increasing the gap between Emily and her brother.
“Rhiannon,” Emily yelled between panting breaths. “Head for your dad’s car.” She wasn’t sure the girl had heard her, but Emily saw her change course away from the house and head toward her father’s parked car. Rhiannon reached the car and pulled open the unlocked passenger side door. Instead of jumping in and slamming the door she stood in the V of the open door and waited.
“Give me my brother,” she demanded, holding her arms out for the boy as Emily caught up with her a few seconds later.
“Here,” said Emily, lowering the boy down to the ground. Ben immediately grabbed his sister around the waist, burying his head into her stomach. “Don’t let him out of your reach,” she warned the girl.
Emily looked back to where Simon was. He was still advancing toward them, inexorably placing one foot after the other, but he was terribly slow, plodding almost. It was as if the dynamics of walking were alien to whatever had taken hold of Simon, which, she surmised was probably closer to the truth than she cared to admit. Emily had a sense of something dark looming in the shadows just out of sight, but it kept to the darkness as though trying to convince them that it really wasn’t there. That was fine by Emily. It gave her time.
She ran around to the driver’s side of the car and pulled open the door, feeling for where the ignition should be and, hopefully, the keys. The ignition was empty. She slipped her hand between the center console and driver’s seat, checked the cup holders and glove compartment, just in case. Finally, she flipped down both sun visors, hoping Simon might have stashed the keys there. He hadn’t of course. And why would he have? They were probably in his pants pocket.
There was no way she was going to head back through the woods in the dark with whatever this thing was on the loose. Under its control, Simon was barely able to move at the pace of an eighty-year-old, but who knew how fast it really was? And who was to say what would happen if it suddenly decided to drop Simon and come after them directly? She had to get the kids to safety, and the only thing resembling that was the Jeffersons’ home.
“Come on, Rhiannon. Bring your brother. We’re heading to the house,” Emily said as she jogged back around the vehicle to the passenger side. Ben was back on his feet and standing next to his sister; her hand was clamped firmly around his. He seemed to have calmed down a little but refused to look at Emily, shrugging off her hand when she ushered him gently in the direction of the house, allowing his sister to lead him instead.
Emily walked behind the kids, occasionally glancing back in Simon’s direction, as she and Thor herded the two children in the direction of the front door of the house.
Ben clung to his sister, his legs unable to keep up with her faster pace. He had to give a little skip every other step to keep up with her. Emily was surprised at how quickly Rhiannon had seemingly accepted the situation and adapted; gone was the prissy “Valley girl” demeanor, and in its place was a cold determination, almost a fatalistic acceptance. Emily wondered whether the whole attitude thing had simply been a coping mechanism for her, a cloak to cover her fear and a wall against the reality that existed just beyond the safety of her family’s valley.
Their feet crunched over the gravel path leading up to the front door of the house. Emily sprinted ahead and tried the door; it was unlatched. She pushed the door open and turned on her flashlight, illuminating the hallway.
“Thor,” she called. The dog sprinted from the kids’ side and into the house, disappearing into the darkness beyond the reach of her flashlight. Emily looked back at the kids stumbling toward her. She stopped them at the threshold. “Let Thor check the house for us first, okay?” She did not want to risk trapping them all inside the house, only to find there was another of whatever that thing behind Simon was waiting for them.
Thor reappeared at the end of the corridor; tail wagging, he rushed to the kids’ sides and wheeled around them.
“Okay, move, kids. Get inside now.”
Rhiannon pulled Ben inside, and their two shapes disappeared into the blackness of the corridor, quickly followed by Thor. “Turn on your flashlight,” Emily called out, her voice echoing through the empty house. A second later she saw the faint
orange glow of Rhiannon’s flashlight flowing back to her as the children moved through the house.
Simon had stopped moving and was standing about a hundred feet or so away, his hands back at his sides in that strange stance of attention, his body swaying slowly back and forth, his eyes staring directly at her, framed by an expressionless, emotionless face. Behind Simon, backlit by the moonlight, the silhouette of something huge blotted out the tree line. Emily caught a glimpse of long angular arms articulated at odd angles like the legs of a praying mantis. The shadow towered over Simon; it looked as though it was stooped at an angle, leaning down toward the man. The tentacles were still attached to him. She could see them move slightly in the darkness, but could not make out any more detail, as the thing hid itself in shadow.
As she continued to stare, Simon’s head turned slightly to one side, his eyes fixed on hers, and he smiled, a wide, shit-eating grin.
Emily closed the door, flipped on her flashlight, and sprinted into the house. In an anteroom off the living room, she found a large wooden desk. It weighed a ton, creaking and complaining as she dragged it down the corridor. She pushed it flush up against the front door. It should at least slow Simon down and give her advance warning if he tried to force his way inside the house.
She had to think clearly. If she had been alone, she would have tried sneaking out the back door and avoiding Simon and whatever the thing in the shadows behind him was, relying on her own ability and Thor to avoid contact. She could have headed back to Simon’s house and hid out until dawn. But with the kids there, she couldn’t risk it, and there was no way she was going to leave them behind. They would just slow her down if she tried to escape and sneak away.
There was only darkness and the woods beyond the four walls of the home, and Emily would bet her last can of peaches that the alien was better equipped to find them than she and the children were at avoiding it. Besides, Ben was too upset. The kid just would not shut up. They wouldn’t get ten feet before Simon heard them making a run for it.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. For now, the children were safe in the guest room—it was the only place in the house that was not directly adjacent to an external wall—with Thor standing guard over them. Neither of the kids had spoken a word to her since they had entered the house. By the light of the flashlights, she had seen Rhiannon’s frightened, accusing eyes staring at her as she cradled her baby brother in her arms.
The front door had a five-by-ten-inch glass window with fake leading set into it at about head height. Switching the flashlight off so she wouldn’t be seen, Emily clambered up onto the desk and shuffled forward on her knees until she could see out through the tiny window into the front yard.
Simon had not moved from where she had last seen him. He was still swaying back and forth. The disconcerting grin had been replaced with that emotionless nonexpression. She could see the moon glinting off his eyes as he, unblinking, continued to stare at the front door. She felt a chill run down her spine, chased by a frigid drop of sweat. Even though she was sure it was impossible for him to see her hiding there in the darkness, she had the distinct impression that he was aware of her presence. It was almost as though the door and the walls and the distance did not matter; she could feel his awareness of her. She supposed it should scare her. Instead she found herself angry, pissed off at the thought of yet another one of these intruders on her world trying to frighten her, trying to kill her and the kids.
If it wasn’t for the fact that the man standing out there was the children’s father, she would risk storming outside with the Mossberg and facing off with the thing that hid in the shadows behind Simon. That was, of course, assuming the thing even had a face.
She had to curb her instincts to blow the thing away and think about the safety of the children. She had no idea if Simon was still alive or dead, but after her past experience, she would not place bets on the first option. There was no way she was going to jeopardize the children, and she surely didn’t want to be seen as the person responsible for Simon’s death in the kids’ eyes. At this point, she had to consider Simon a lost cause and concentrate on figuring some way of getting the children to safety.
Emily looked up to check on Simon one final time and screamed. Simon had moved, and he had moved fast. Now he was standing just a few feet from the house, directly in front of the door, staring through the window at her.
“Oh, shit!” she squeaked as she stared back at the man outside the door. This close she could see the three tentacles, each as thick as her wrist, snaking up over Simon’s head. Jesus! The thing must be on the roof of the house, she thought as her eyes followed the barbed tubes up until they disappeared above the rain gutter running along the edge of the roof.
Simon continued to focus on the little window. Emily stared at Simon, unable to look away, fascinated by what she was watching. As she continued to watch him, she saw the muscles in his face convulse once…then again. His dry, chapped lips began to move, only slightly at first, but then his mouth opened and closed repeatedly. Emily could see his tongue, white and flaccid, begin to twitch behind the wall of his teeth.
Simon spoke.
At least, he tried to speak. What came out of his mouth was a weird half yell, half-slurred cry, like a deaf person trying to enunciate clearly or a child trying to grapple with a particularly difficult word for the first time, sounding out the vowels and consonants individually.
“Chaaaaadaaaaannn.”
Whatever it was he was trying to say was utterly indistinguishable, the word too slow and slurred for her to understand. Simon’s mouth contorted asymmetrically, the right side of his upper lip moving upward while the rest of his mouth stayed rigidly still. She watched in horrified fascination as Simon tried again; this time he seemed to have more control of his lips.
“Chaalldraannnn.”
There was no look of frustration or annoyance on the man’s pale face. His eyes remained facing forward, his body unmoving. Another pause, and then he spoke again. This time, although still distorted, Emily understood exactly what he was saying.
“Chhilldrennn.” The single word came out as a whisper, as though he was checking the feel of it against his tongue and lips. Her mind raced to grasp the implications of the situation: was he trying to lure them out there? The shadow of the thing she had seen standing behind Simon in the darkness, the owner, she presumed, of the tendrils attached to him, had seemed massive, far too large to get into the house. But why would it need to use Simon to lure them to it? Maybe it was too slow, or wanted to take them alive? Simon had taken forever to stumble jerkily across the lawn when they’d first arrived, but he (and whatever was controlling him) had made it from his stationary position on the gravel to the front door as fast as a normal person while she had been distracted. So maybe the thing was getting used to operating its host, like a human becoming familiar with a new
car. Whatever the reason, this thing was able to control a human and assume complete authority of his mind and functions, controlling him as if he were a puppet. It spoke of a whole new level of weird…worse, it spoke of a dark intelligence, an intelligence that was motivated.
“Children,” Simon yelled suddenly, the word enunciated perfectly this time, shouted rather than whispered. Simon’s voice had returned, and that single word held all the warmth and emotion that she had heard whenever he’d spoken to Ben and Rhia over the past couple of days. But his face remained as impassive and unemotional as a statue, the black tubes attached to his back a hideous reminder that the words were not his own. It was like he was simply repeating a recording; he was a mechanical entity regurgitating the words perfectly.
“Children,” he called again, his voice rising to the point where there was no doubt the two kids could hear him. “It’s Daddy. Come on out here.”
Emily stumbled back from the door. She could still see Simon’s silhouette through the small glass window.
“Ben? Rhee. Ann. On? Come out. It is okay. Daddy is here.” Simon’s voice echoed down the hallway and into the house, pushing the silence aside. While it reached the same emotional amplitude she had heard Simon use with his children, it sounded false, almost robotic, to Emily.
A gruff bark from Thor and the padding of paws and feet alerted Emily to the children heading her way.
“Daddy?” Rhiannon’s voice called from behind Emily. She turned and illuminated the little girl with her flashlight at the opposite end of the corridor. Ben was next to her. His sister’s arms wrapped around his fragile frame as they both blinked in the beam of the torch.
“Jesus,” she muttered, realization flooding her mind. This thing wanted the kids, and it was using their father to lure them out. It must know that she was here with them, and there was no way she was going to surrender either herself or the kids, and there was no way it could get to them while they were holed up in the house. So it would pull the kids to it, knowing that she would not be far behind. And if it couldn’t lure them outside? Then it would be only a matter of time until it figured out how to get inside.
An even more frightening thought crossed her mind: What if he was still aware of what was happening to him? What if behind those eyes he was aware of the pain of each cracking bone as his body was reorganized to his captor’s will? What if he was aware of the motivation of this thing that wanted to use him to lure out his children and…what? Kill them? Consume them? Make them like him? And what if there was nothing he could do about it as he was bent and molded to the will of the thing controlling him?