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“Sam!” Ben called once more, but then
Sam was there in his pajamas, rubbing his
eye.
“What is it?” he asked sleepily. “What’s
going on?”
“Alright, Sam,” Ben squared him by the
shoulders, “I need you to listen to me. It’s
back. Somehow … it found us.”
“What?”
“Just … ” Ben scrambled. “Here, help
me with this.”
They flipped over the kitchen table so
that it blocked the soiled picture window
where Ben had first seen the creature. They
pushed a couch against the table that Ben
had already levied against the front door
as the creature continued to pound. Then it
stopped, and the rain swelled in Ben’s ears.
He looked around wildly. There were
too many entry points to secure. He settled
on the basement door. He remembered see-
ing a hammer in one of the built-ins filled
with machine parts and used it to shuck
the deadbolt from the jam. The ancient air
that puffed from the basement musked with
the sharp stench he’d been ignoring since
Thursday, and as he coughed he had the
sensation of opening an Egyptian tomb.
He blindly searched the wall until he found
the light, then grabbed a kitchen knife and
Sam’s hand, and made down the stairs.
Surprisingly, the basement had been
finished before it had become undone. It
was arranged as a studio apartment, a bach-
elor pad. With a kitchenette, Murphy bed
cocked against a wall and flannels hangered
on a pole above a few pairs of dusty boots,
it was obvious that someone had lived
here. Beneath the cobwebs, the furniture
was about ten years out of style. There was
a large saw blade hoisted onto one of the
cinder-block walls. A vibrating mass of
fruit flies hovered over a heaping pile of
bloodied bandage scraps. On an end table,
Ben found a framed photo of a younger
Earl Sloane embracing a woman he had
never seen and a boy he didn’t know.
Oh Earl, Ben thought, what have you
done? This is Earl Sloane’s house. This is
Billy Sloane’s room. He is always looking
for a ride home.
Sam shuddered as they heard glass
breaking upstairs. They stacked the stair-
case with what little furniture was around,
then slid the mattress off the Murphy bed
as a final act of barricade. They heard the
kitchen table effortlessly slap against the
basement’s ceiling, then heavy footsteps
squirting creeks off the floorboards.
“I’m scared, Dad,” Sam whispered.
“I know you are, buddy,” Ben said. “I
love you, and you need to know that Earl
was wrong. That thing is his son, but it’s
not a ghost. It breathes. Which means it’s
alive. And that means we can kill it.”
Ben clutched the knife in his slick palm,
to say if he would even be alive right now
to lunge at this demon, or to have met Jes-
sica, or to have sprouted first Audrey and
then Sam into his life, or to have held his
son’s cheek after he gave an eye, or to bury
his wife. What became clear in his first mo-
ment of combat is that he could have used
some training mano a mano as the creature
backhanded him cold before he could even
jut the knife into its breast. He went dark
across the carpet, his vision blurring on a
pair of boots.
• • •
fretting if this wobbly Goodwill find would
do much to anything larger than a spider.
The footsteps paused before the thresh-
old of the basement door. Ben could hear
only the faintest trickle of rain over Sam’s
Lamaze. Then, the door batted open with
such force that it rebounded, slamming
shut again, only to volley open once more,
slowly this time on a nasal hinge. Ben
could now hear the creature moaning like it
meant something.
Just one push sent the barricading furni-
ture cascading down the stairwell like dom-
inos and Ben and Sam had to retreat against
the cinder block to avoid being crushed by
so much plaid. Ben saw one boot emerge
on the stairs, then another. The creature’s
stench worked as a force field, leading Ben
and Sam to choke on their tongues as its
sour aura spread throughout the room.
As it reached the bottom of the stairs,
Ben realized he had never seen it lit. It
stood on the carpet, dripping, as Ben
covered Sam’s one good eye. Its bandages
wept darker than he had expected, per-
colating with muck and debris, as if the
wrappings were the only thing holding this
abomination together. If that were the case,
it should make it easier to spill this thing.
“Okay, Sam,” Ben whispered. “Like we
talked about. Hide.”
As Sam scurried into the closet, Ben
stood, knife in hand, wondering how each
separate failure in his life had led him to this
moment. The creature’s eyes were rimmed
with red honey. This was it, he told himself.
Ben Driscoll hadn’t served in Vietnam.
He had been born three months early
enough to slip the draft. He had always
crossed this off as a blessing. And it’s hard
He will not remember dragging the
boy in the pajamas from the closet, but he
does know this room. The boy will shake
and whimper as he notices the man on the
ground. The man on the ground will not
move but to breathe. He will not under-
stand why these people are in his room. He
will never know how he got here.
He will not recall the boy standing up
to face him. “Hey,” the boy will say. “Hey!
Look at me!” He will follow the boy’s
volume the way a moth tends a lantern.
“Look!” the boy will say, peeling back the
patch on his face to reveal a pale crater of
socket. “Look! I am a monster just like you.”
He will peer sideways at the loud boy.
“This isn’t where you live anymore,” the
boy in the pajamas will say. “Let me take
you home.”
He will not remember the boy extend-
ing his hand and leading him out of the
basement. He will stop four times as the
boy drags him through the cold, wet rain as
they approach an old wooden house up the
block. He remembers cleaning this house as
a teenager.
Who is this boy leading him up the steps
to the porch? The boy will knock three
times on the door. He will not understand
what they are waiting for. Yet he will
recognize his own father opening the door,
though he’s older, and more crooked slump-
ing against the gun.
“Oh my,” his dad will say. “What’s all
this?”
“He’s alive,” the boy will say. “Don’t
you see? He’s breathing. He has always
been alive.”
His father’s face will fall into limp dis-
belief. His dad will take his free hand and
set it over his soggy heart just to know that
it beats.
“Well, come in,” he will say. “Come
in.”
There will be a fire burning and the
room will squeak underfoot. He will get
hungry when he sees the dog even as the
boy drops to his knees and calls it King.
His father will direct him away from the
dog with one hand on his chin. He will not
remember meeting his eyes.