Wait and See: Part Three
A Short Story in Several PartsI took a deep breathe. My car was still outside, ready and waiting with a good half tank of gas. If I could just get to it, I’d be home free. All I had to do was get past the hall, down the stairs, and out the door. The creature had been fast, but hopefully I was faster. I had to be.
I didn’t bother to change out of my pyjamas, just grabbed my keys off the bedside table and started pushing the dresser clear of the door. I hesitated, hand on the doorknob, listening. But the silence remained unbroken, and soon my nerves wouldn’t let me stay still any longer. Not giving myself time to think, I yanked the door open and bolted out into the hall.
The path to the stairs was clear. My footsteps seemed to thunder across the floorboards, but I thought I heard something behind me, a lurch, a creak of a door opening, someone stepping out to into the hall.
I shot down the stairs, stumbling as I took the steps three at a time. Then I was sprinting, running flat out for the door, trying not to hear the ceiling moaning above me as something made its way toward the staircase.
I practically slammed into the door, didn’t stop to slow down. I tugged on the handle, felt a moment of panic before I remembered it was locked. My hands fumbled with the lock, my sweating palms couldn’t seem to grasp the damn thing.
There was a heavy thunk as something took its first step down the staircase.
The door swung open, and I was outside, running through the rain towards my car.
I was about three miles away, just starting to feel safe again, when everything got shot to hell. The rain was still coming down hard, and I could barely see five feet in front of me. I barely had time to react, to slam on the brakes and keep myself from sailing off the edge of a muddy cliff.
The road had been washed out.
I sat there for a long while, staring dumbly out at the tumbled clods of wet earth and cracked ashfault. There was no way I was getting across that. It would take days to clear, let alone fix.
I clawed open the glove compartment, tore out a map. I could barely read it in the dim light, but I found the marked spot where the cabin was, traced the winding line of the road, figured out roughly where the break was.
There was no way around it. This was the only road in or out of the area.
I threw the map aside, pulled out my cell phone. Maybe, just maybe I’d be able to get a signal. I was closer to the station than I had been in the cabin; it wasn’t such a long shot.
No such luck.
I considered just staying there in the car, waiting until the rain stopped and the clean up crews arrived. But that could take days. If I didn’t starve by then, I might well die of cold. The car wasn’t warm, and there was a good chance it would drop below freezing that night. I might wake up to find the car frozen to the road, myself trapped in a casket of ice and steel.
I thought about it for a long time, but no matter how I looked at things, there was only one answer. I had to go back to the cabin.
Fine then, I thought, re-starting the engine and turning the car around. If I can’t run from that thing, then I’m going to have to face it. If it came out of the trunk, then that’s where it’ll go back.
I was going to trap that thing, or literally die trying.
There wasn’t anything in the car that I could use as a weapon, so when I stepped inside the cabin door I was empty handed, save for the key ring clutched in my fingers. I didn’t know how I was going to get the thing back in the trunk, didn’t really have a plan. But first of all, I had to figure out where the little monster was. It would have heard the door open, would know I’d come back. It had me at a disadvantage, and I didn’t want it catching me by surprise.
I gave the downstairs rooms a quick check, and though I didn’t see the creature, I did find some of its handiwork. The curtains had all been sewn shut, and the carpets were now stitched to the floor, the thread punched clean through the wooden boards. I didn’t have to spend long searching the second floor; I heard the creaking from the attic just as I got started.
My old broom had been sewn to the wall, the wooden handle drilled full of holes for the thread to pass through, so I was still weaponless as I headed up the stairs. I tried to step softly, winced every time the old steps groaned under my weight. I clutched the keychain tightly in my hand, tried to draw some reassurance from the cold metal against my palm. All I had to do was get the thing back in the trunk, and lock it in. Simple. If only I knew how to do it.
I inched the door open slowly, peering through the crack. I scanned the jumble of empty boxes, the haphazard piles of junk. Then my eyes turned to the wall where the doll shelf stood, hidden behind the folding screen. Silhouetted on the thin cloth was the creature, hunched over something it held in its hand. The needle was stabbing down and jerking up, trailing the thread behind it as the monster drove its frenzied stitches into the thing it clutched. I could hear its raspy breathing, its quite, croaking chant.
"Thread, thread, thread..."
I needed a weapon. My eyes fixed on an old an old golf club, lying in a pile of junk near the door. It was just out of reach; I’d have to step inside to grab it.
I eased the door open a little further, holding my breathe and hoping it wouldn’t squeak. I slipped across the threshold, eyes locked on the screen and its deadly silhouette. My groping hand closed around the metal club, the handle cold and sleek in my sweating palm. As I slowly began to lift it, something in the pile came loose and tumbled to the floor.
The creature’s head jerked up, its chant breaking off in mid word. Slowly, it lowered its hands, setting down whatever it had been stabbing at with the needle and thread.
A sharp jerk pulled the golf club free, and sent another jumble of odds and ends rolling noisily to the floor. I backed away as fast as I could, watching the silhouette turning its head to the side, as though coking an ear.
The back of my knees bumped into the edge of the trunk, and I knew I had to act fast. I spun round, flipped open the lid, noticing much thread was left in the box. How long could that thing go on sewing for, I wondered? The trunk didn’t seem any emptier than when I’d first opened it, when the creature had been lurking inside beneath the black tangles. Could it ever be emptied?
Thunk thunk came the sound of the creature’s feet as it stepped toward the edge of the screen.
The boxes I’d emptied out when I searched the cabin were still lying in a messy heap near the trunk, and I dived behind them, clutching the golf club with shaking hands. Peering out from behind my little cardboard shelter, I watched as the silhouette reached the edge of the screen. A leathery fist reached out, pulled back the folding wall of paper. Then I saw what the creature had been doing.