Authors: Dan Poblocki
in chaos. The lit le light in the darkness. The
words were a comfort. They gave him hope.
Timothy opened the bathroom door and
peered into the hal way. A few footsteps
echoed through the now-quiet corridors of the
school, but he couldn’t see anyone. With
nothing and no one to stop him, Timothy
zipped up his jacket and hiked his book bag
high onto his shoulders before making his way
toward the school’s front entrance and out into
the wet afternoon.
Paul Revere Middle School was a redbrick
Victorian monstrosity of a building that sat on
the edge of downtown New Starkham, wel
away from the river and the bridge, past
Col ege Ridge, bordered on the east by
numerous factories and warehouses.
As Timothy pushed his way into the
blustering wind up Johnson Street, he could see
the silhouet es of the seven gothic spires, which
marked New Starkham Col ege, peeking over
marked New Starkham Col ege, peeking over
the hil ’s horizon. New Starkham students
passed Timothy on the sidewalk in smal
clusters, bundled against the unseasonable chil .
They laughed at nothing in particular as they
made their way up the street.
In a couple of weeks, their final exams would
be done. For the col ege students, graduation
happened at the beginning of May. Lucky,
thought Timothy. Classes at Paul Revere didn’t
let out until the end of June. As he turned right
onto Edgehil Road, Timothy shuddered at the
realization that only a year ago, Ben had made
his own trip across the stage in the high school
auditorium to receive his diploma. So much
had changed since then.
Timothy trudged several blocks along the
tree-lined street, continuing up the hil , passing
the quiet houses on either side, until he reached
the wooded area on the left that dropped away
from the road. A bat ered silver guardrail
hugged the sharp curve—the “edge” part of
Edgehil Road. From there, a long, covered
Edgehil Road. From there, a long, covered
staircase descended the steep wooded hil to
the col ege’s athletic fields at the bot om.
At the end of the guardrail, Timothy came
upon the entrance to the stairs. The blu s
across the river looked as sul en and cold as
Timothy felt, the clouds above darkening in
papier-mâché strips. The only color Timothy
could see came from inside the stairs’ gra ti-
covered wal s.
The staircase had been nicknamed the
Dragon Stairs by students and faculty who lived
o campus in Timothy’s neighborhood. Several
years ago, someone had painted an immense
Chinese dragon onto one wal , stretching from
the bot om stair to the top, where its swirling
eyes rol ed back into its head as if in the throes
of a terrible dream. Timothy thought the
dragon was cool, but its eyes were creepy. He
felt like he might fal into them and keep
fal ing forever. It was an irrational fear, like in
nightmares, the way everyday objects can
instantly become ominous. Stuart teased him
instantly become ominous. Stuart teased him
about it, pretending to chortle in the dragon’s
high-pitched voice, tel ing Timothy, “I’m going
to eat you up.” Then they’d laugh together, turn
up Beech Nut Street, and race home.
Now, at the top of the stairs, the monster’s
black-and-white pinwheel pupils reminded
Timothy of the thing that had been watching
him from inside the jar back in Mr. Crane’s
classroom. He suddenly found himself thinking
about the new girl, Abigail Tremens, who
would be his project partner during the eld
trip to the museum tomorrow. In his head,
Timothy could see Abigail’s eyes boring into his
own, only now, instead of brown, they had
turned the black and white of the Chinese
dragon. Stay away from me, they growled.
Timothy shook his head and turned away.
Why had she been so angry? he wondered.
Maybe invisible things don’t like being seen.
Timothy was nearly soaked by the time he
reached the front porch of his smal gray house.
reached the front porch of his smal gray house.
He thought of the last time he walked home
alone from school. Last week, when Stuart was
at a doctor’s appointment, Timothy had found
a big black car parked in his driveway. Inside,
the men in uniforms had already told his
mother about Ben’s injuries.
Today there was no car. Timothy brushed a
drip of water from his forehead. A cough came
from the house next door. He didn’t even need
to look to know that Stuart was watching him.
He took a deep breath and turned around,
ready to confront his best friend, once more
hoping they could just laugh it o the way they
usual y did.
But Stuart had already gone. The slam of the
screen door rang out across their shared yard.
The Chens’ front porch was empty. Unless
Stuart had gured out a way to become
invisible himself, he wasn’t there, wasn’t
watching.
4.
Inside, Timothy ripped o his wet jacket and
threw it over the banister at the bot om of the
stairs. Then he dropped his bag onto the
wooden bench in the hal way. Timothy noticed
his mother standing in the kitchen down the
hal , leaning her head against the cabinet next
to the sink. “Hi, Mom,” he cal ed. “Guess
what?” He waited for her to turn around, but
she didn’t, so he continued, “I saw a girl light
her foot on fire today.”
“That’s nice, honey” was his mother’s mu ed
reply. A few seconds later, when she did turn
around, her face was drawn. “I’m going to
make dinner,” she said. “Your father should be
home soon.” She looked older than usual and
terribly sad.
“Mom?” Timothy tried again. She turned on
the sink. “When can we talk to people about
what happened to Ben?”
what happened to Ben?”
“Soon, honey.” She turned away from him.
“When we know a lit le more about …” She
washed her hands.
“About what?” he asked cautiously. He
waited and waited, but the only answer that
came from the kitchen was the sound of
clinking dishes.
Later that night, when Timothy was in bed,
through the wal , he could hear his parents
arguing. Outside, the wind had blown away the
clouds, so the moon shone brightly onto his
quilt. The house rocked against a particularly
powerful gust.
His parents were talking about Ben. Timothy
was upset that they had each other to con de
in but he had no one. And when he tried to
talk to them about it, they pretended he wasn’t
there.
It was after midnight, and he was awake,
huddled under his blanket, thinking about the
afternoon’s events, trying to block out his
afternoon’s events, trying to block out his
parents’ voices. If he didn’t get to sleep soon,
he might sleep through his alarm in the
morning. Despite Stuart and Abigail, he was
actual y looking forward to the field trip.
In his parents’ room, the closet door
slammed, and Timothy heard his mother say,
“Quiet, you’l wake him up.”
He noticed that his own closet light was on.
At the base of the door, a smal white line
re ected onto the dark wood oor. The light
had not been on when he’d got en into bed an
hour earlier.
Someone ushed the toilet down the hal .
“Mom?” Timothy cal ed. No answer. “Dad?”
Ordinarily, Timothy wouldn’t have thought
twice about get ing up and turning o the light,
but recently he’d begun to notice things he’d
never noticed before. Invisible things. And what
if one of those invisible things was behind the
door?
“Mom?” Timothy tried again. But the rest of
the house was now dead, and he was left alone
the house was now dead, and he was left alone
with the moonlight, and the wind outside the
window, and the weight of his quilt. And the
light behind his closet door.
Barefoot, shivering, Timothy stepped out of
bed. No one and nothing would be in there, he
told himself. Scary things never happened
when you were expecting them to; scary things
always came out of nowhere to surprise you.
He grasped the doorknob and slowly turned it.
When it wouldn’t turn any more, Timothy
heaved a sigh and swung the door open. What
he saw made him nearly wet his pants.
Inside the closet was a large glass jar like the
ones from his history classroom. The jar was
tal er than Timothy, covered with dust and
l ed with a cloudy yel ow liquid. A large
black lid was hanging loosely over the rim.
Something dark oated near the bot om of the
jar. The object began to move.
Through the smudged glass, drifting in the
liquid, two arms and a leg came into view.
They looked human. After a few seconds, the
They looked human. After a few seconds, the
thing inside the jar nal y came close enough
for Timothy to distinguish the military emblem
on its decaying sleeve. Suddenly, as if blessed
with life, the dark shape raised its hands,
pressed them to the jar, and brought its face
against the glass.
It wasn’t an It.
It was a He.
Timothy’s brother, Ben, opened his mouth
wide and showed him his purple swol en
tongue. Timothy screamed.
Ben stared at him with big eyes the same
color as the Chinese dragon, the same color as
the specimen in Timothy’s classroom. Swirling.
Black. Mad.
Ben reached up and knocked the lid to the
ground. It clat ered against the hardwood oor
and spiraled past Timothy in a long, continuous
cymbal crash. With pale wrinkled hands, Ben
grasped the rim of the jar and pul ed himself
up from the liquid. He raised his head above
the rim, took a deep howling gasp, and smiled
the rim, took a deep howling gasp, and smiled
wide, showing a mouthful of dead brown teeth.
Timothy jerked awake. He sat up. His room
was dark. The closet door was closed and the
light was o . It had never been on. His
bedroom wal s solidi ed and the furnace
hummed somewhere below the oor. Timothy
could hear his father snoring in the next room.
Sheesh.
He’d been having nightmares ever since Ben
went away. This was by far the scariest. But it
was just a nightmare. Not real. And that was a
comfort.
After a while, the moon moved back behind
the clouds, and the nightmare began to fade
away. By the time Timothy’s head hit the
pil ow again, he’d nearly forgot en al about it.
Nearly.
EDGE OF DOOM
INTERLUDE
NEW STARKHAM HOSPITAL—
NEW STARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS
Byron Flanders had su ered several heart
at acks since retiring from his career as the New
Starkham district at orney twenty years ago, but
this most recent one had been the worst. The
night before his bypass surgery, he was having
trouble sleeping. He lay in his private hospital
bed hooked up to al sorts of tubes and wires,
the weak uorescent light on the wal barely
il uminating the smal mat ress. He was cold.
The pulsing of the heart monitor was like
water torture. Beep. Beep. Beep.
He’d paged the nurse for the third time in
several minutes to try and get an extra blanket,
but no one had responded. He’d already
but no one had responded. He’d already
struggled to close the curtain that surrounded
his bed to stop the air conditioner from
blowing at him, but it was not helping. Byron
Flanders was not used to waiting, and he was
becoming annoyed.
Throughout his life, Byron got what he
wanted. In the courtroom, he’d earned himself
the nickname “the Hammerhead,” as in shark.
If you were accused of a crime, and the
Hammerhead decided you were guilty, he
usual y found a way to put you away. His
tactics were usual y legal, but not always. He
gured, when you have a job to do, you do it.
You get it done. No mat er what.