The Suburb Beyond the Stars Page 12

  No dice. He had the handle, but the pot tipped — and most of the hot liquid spilled.

  The monster dragged him down.

  Kalgrash slammed the boiling pot against the thing’s head and — while the flesh up there was still bunched up and hard — buried the hatchet in the monster’s lower back, enclosing him almost in an embrace. The thing cried out, flopped over liquidly, and pooled.

  Two down. More already in the door.

  And then he heard something in the hall. Something had climbed in the bathroom window. It was headed his way.

  At the front door, Brian was holding the monsters at bay. They wouldn’t come through, having seen the first two dispatched by Old Bess. Several of them loitered by the stoop, waiting for a chance to invade. They knew, clearly, that two of them could take Brian out before he could fire twice — but one of them would die in the process.

  “We need to be in a more secure position,” Brian shouted. He thought quickly.

  Something was headed down the hallway. Brian looked and saw a different horror — a collection of gray stumps fumbling toward him — something like a ball of truncations, wrinkled flesh, padding down the carpeted corridor.

  Brian had a choice. Stumps or vitreous humanoid. One or the other would get by him.

  He called out, “Kalgrash!” and, keeping the blunderbuss trained on the monsters outside the door, started to make his way down the debris-littered stairs. “Come on, Gregory,” he said.

  Gregory was only half sitting up. He kept wringing his hand in the air. He looked, confused, at Brian.

  The stump beast made it to the top of the stairs and flexed to throw itself on Brian’s head.

  Brian knew that if he took the gun away from the monsters at the door for one second, they’d be inside, gouging Gregory and him.

  Gregory slid to his knees and tried to rise. The monsters outside were gloating and waiting for their chance.

  The stumpy ball prepared to knock Brian down.

  And then Kalgrash’s ax buried itself deep in the gray, elephantine flesh. Kalgrash gave a whooping battle roar.

  “Kalgrash!” Brian yelled. “We’re going down to the safe room! With the symbols! It’s more defendable!”

  “Says who?” Gregory demanded.

  “It’s one door,” said Kalgrash. He bustled down the stairs. “I don’t know who thought of these open-plan houses. Awful for siege warfare.”

  Brian put his hand down to help Gregory up.

  “I can get up myself,” Gregory complained.

  “Well,” said Brian, eying the monsters outside the door warily, “then —”

  “Since when did you get so bossy?”

  “Since you’re just sitting there on the floor, Gregory!”

  “With a burned hand! From my Bob Barren trick! It turns out that a little old-fashioned ingenuity doesn’t go a long way.”

  “So come on and —”

  The monsters charged Brian. He raised the blunderbuss, fumbled the spell (surprised, unthinking), and the gun didn’t go off. Gregory fell down the steps. Kalgrash couldn’t swing his ax with Brian in the way.

  The monsters pawed at Brian’s arm. He cast the Cantrip again. The gun discharged. There was a blast.

  One had been beheaded, and sifted into grayish dust. The other still kicked at glass and tried to pull off Brian’s limbs.

  Kalgrash hit the thing with a solid blow.

  It did no good. The blow just locked the monster’s grip around Brian’s arm, solid as marble.

  Brian twisted the gun to get the muzzle pointing at the monster’s head.

  Gregory was limping down the final steps.

  Kalgrash hit the thing again, Brian shouted his Cantrip, and the gun blew the thing apart.

  The three ran for the room in the basement.

  They swooped in, careful not to disturb the amulets lying in rows on the floor. Brian stood by the open door. “Kalgrash, you watch the window.”

  The window had a sack of driveway salt crammed into it.

  Kalgrash stood there at the ready.

  Brian concentrated on thinking the Cantrip, so he would be able to fire in an instant if something appeared by the door to the protected chamber.

  There was no sound in the house. Everything that had attacked them so far was destroyed. All three listened carefully. No movement. No thumps in the halls. No heavy breathing of ugly maws on the landing.

  In the distance, at the crossroads, there was the singing of the children on their bikes, riding in their circles. They sang that nothing would come out right.

  “We should get those kids,” said Gregory.

  Brian shook his head. “I think they’re safe.”

  “They’re out there playing Duck, Duck, Goose with baby-killing ogres from another dimension.”

  “I think the Thusser are using those kids to spy on us. I think the Thusser can see everything those kids see. That’s why that ring of kids is posted there. The Thusser aren’t going to hurt them.”

  Gregory flapped his hand, trying to shake off the pain. “You always have to be the one to figure things out, don’t you?” he accused Brian. “Maybe I’m right for once.”

  Brian was tired and anxious. He demanded, “Why are you being like this?”

  “See?” Gregory said. “You wouldn’t have ever yelled at me before. Back — a year ago.”

  Kalgrash said, reasonably, “But you’re being a jerk.”

  Gregory retorted, “Says who?” And to Brian: “Just because you know a few spells, you’ve become completely bossy.”

  “It just seems like this room might be the best place to be if there’s another round of something attacking us.”

  “We can’t leave little children riding their bikes out there.”

  “They’re as safe out there as they’ll be near us,” said Kalgrash.

  “So you’re just going to let them ride around out there?” said Gregory. “Alone? With the monsters?”

  Brian thought about it. He really did believe the kids were safe for the moment, but he didn’t want Gregory to feel like no one listened to him. “Okay,” he said. “So what do you want to do?”

  “I’ll lead an expedition out,” said Gregory.

  “Who’s your expedition?” Kalgrash asked.

  Gregory thought about it. He looked from Brian to Kalgrash.

  “All three of us,” he said.

  Brian said, “So we’ll go out and get the kids to come in here with us?”

  “Right. So they’re safe.”

  Kalgrash said, “You want the Thusser listening in to our every word?”

  “I want to save the kids.”

  “No. You want to be the one shouting orders and with us all admiring you and your hair.”

  Gregory said, “A kresling tried to grab a little boy the other night.”

  “He’s right,” said Brian. “They did try to take one of the kids.”

  Gregory said triumphantly, “See?”

  Kalgrash closed his eyes, exhaled, and nodded.

  So, carefully, they left the room with its sigils on the floor.

  They went out into the hallway.

  No sooner had they stepped out of the safe room than they smelled something awful. Cat urine. Overpowering. A high, searing reek.

  Kalgrash sniffed. “What is that?”

  “Let’s go,” said Gregory, forging forward.

  “Look!” Brian said, pointing at the walls.

  The walls were growing hair. The nap of the rug was growing hair. The ceiling was growing hair.

  The three of them ran for the stairs.

  The stairs were covered in gray shag. It was waving. The three coughed with dander.

  There was no door, no window. They were vined and wound with fur.

  The walls now waved with long tendrils of gray hair. Brian’s shoes were entangled in the extrusions of the rug.

  Everything was fur. They were inside something. The house itself had become animal.

  The floor
shuddered.

  Kalgrash yelped.

  “Back to the safe room!” Brian screamed. He pointed back to where he could see the clean rug, the neat rows of protective signs.

  “Let’s try to get out!” Gregory said. “Kalgrash can cut through fur.”

  “Something’s wrong,” Kalgrash said, pointing at the floor.

  The floor trembled, then dropped.

  The boys screamed. The house was tilting.

  Or a pit was opening up.

  Or a gullet.

  Brian scrambled back into the safe room. He tottered on the threshold.

  He looked behind him and saw the whole of the house resolving into one long, furry throat. It was trying to swallow them whole.

  And suddenly, he knew this was what had happened to Prudence. She had been writing that e-mail, trying to warn them, telling them she’d be fleeing the suburb, coming down to Boston the next day. And as she typed, she had not noticed, in the shadows of her room, the fronds of hair growing. She had not noticed the prickly growths in the corners, the long mane hanging off the goose-necked lamp.

  She had not noticed until she looked up and found herself in the midst of the monster, swallowed whole.

  The room in which Brian stood, surrounded by army ranks of protective signs, was still stable. It was rectilinear. Outside, everything was soft and yielding and the floor sloped away toward someplace underground.

  Kalgrash and Gregory were slipping and stumbling toward the safe room.

  Brian seized hold of the doorjamb and extended a hand. “Come on!” he yelled. “Come on!”

  The house convulsed.

  Gregory screamed, fell over. He grabbed at the fur. Kalgrash gave a fierce yell and buried his ax in the wall. That gave him purchase — he reached out a hand. He tried to grab Gregory’s.

  “That’s my burned — ouch!” Gregory yanked his hand away.

  Below him now snaked a hairy throat. A straight drop. He looked down — he paled. He held out his other hand.

  Kalgrash, closer, reached for the fingers that quivered there. Just a few more inches. A few more.

  Kalgrash edged out, trembling, suspended on the slope by the haft of his ax.

  He reached out his mailed claw. His fingers were touching Gregory’s.

  Almost there.

  Almost.

  The house convulsed again.

  Gregory shrieked and, with his good hand, grabbed at the fur to hold himself up. The other was too badly burned. The fingers couldn’t close. They couldn’t clutch.

  “Give me your hand,” rasped Kalgrash. “Come on.”

  “I can’t,” said Gregory. “I can’t let go.”

  “Your other hand. Your bad hand.”

  “It’s burned.”

  “I know. Give it —”

  A tuft of hair, with the sound of grass pulled up, uprooted.

  And Gregory, suspended by those hairs, fell.

  He dropped into the hole.

  Brian screamed.

  Gregory tumbled.

  Kalgrash reached his arm after the boy.

  But Gregory was gone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mrs. Drake turned off the television. It was time for bed. Her husband was already upstairs, reading a magazine. Mrs. Drake got up from the couch and crinkled up the remains of a bag of corn chips. She threw it in the trash and headed for the stairs.

  She couldn’t believe she had just wasted an evening. A perfectly beautiful evening. The shows on TV were getting stupider and stupider, she thought to herself. Recently, they had just been rooms full of men with dark-ringed eyes and pointed ears sitting around, staring at the camera. They didn’t speak. They seemed to be waiting for something, which was why, she guessed, she kept watching. You never knew when something might change or arrive.

  She stopped on the stairs. She wanted to step outside. It was too beautiful an evening to have spent it inside on the couch. The air through the window screens smelled of summer and green and youth.

  She padded down the steps and opened the front door. She went out into the cool of the night. She wrapped her arms around herself and admired the peace of it all.

  There were a few lights on at the ends of driveways. They were embedded in stone pillars or were crafted to look like old-time lanterns.

  The first few crickets were starting to sing. In another few weeks, the night would be full of them. The houses all looked slumberous. The kids at the crossroads no longer wheeled on their bikes. They were silent, standing in a circle, their bicycles held upright in their hands. They were all staring at that ticky-tacky 1960s ranch-style house at the end of the street.

  She wondered, in passing, why her own children were in the street, perched on a tricycle and a Big Wheel, when they should be in bed. She did not think she had given anyone permission.

  Her brow creased; and then, suddenly, she blinked and smiled. She had recalled, in a rush, her childhood in Ohio: learning how to ride her bike with training wheels. Her father taught her, jogging alongside her. He would say, “That’s a girl!” She had pretended to be clumsier than she really was; she had pretended that she couldn’t stop the bike from tipping, just so her father would stay by her side, praising her, teaching her, holding her shoulder, and they wouldn’t have to go in.

  And now her own kids were there, outside, in a ring, at midnight, staring.

  With shock, Mrs. Drake saw that the windows of the ranch house were broken and the front door was open. Something had happened there.

  There was something awful about that little house. Something hideous in the jagged glass, the singed planks sagging in the window. Mrs. Drake, suddenly, was terrified.

  The kids should not be out.

  She called their names. “Cassie! Charlton!”

  All the kids in the circle turned. They all looked at her. Their faces were pale.

  There was no moon. Just stars.

  And the children of the neighborhood — Charlton, Cassie, and all their little friends — stared at her, as if to say, “Now we see you. You’re next.”

  Brian kept screaming Gregory’s name even as the hair in the house receded, even as the floor became solid and the rugs shed their fur.

  There were wisps of hair everywhere.

  Brian was down on his hands and knees, paddling at the cement. There was no give. No sign that Gregory had ever stood there next to them. Gray fur eddied through the hallway.

  Kalgrash was stationed with his back to the wall, battle-ax raised, awaiting some new monstrosity.

  “He’s gone,” said Brian. “They’ve taken him.”

  Kalgrash nodded vaguely.

  “We have to find him!” Brian demanded.

  “Some people really benefit from being held prisoner,” Kalgrash said. “They learn a lot of important lessons about friendship.”

  Brian scowled.

  “And survival,” Kalgrash continued, sighing. “And rescuing.”

  “We’ve got to get down there. Down to the castle.”

  Kalgrash nodded.

  “Let’s go,” said Brian.

  Surrounded by shards of glass and kresling, they raided the kitchen for crackers and cheese to eat while they walked. Brian hadn’t eaten for many hours. He went to Prudence’s room and picked up the magical lantern he and Gregory had been using for light in the room. He held it in one hand and hung the blunderbuss on its strap across his shoulder. Then he and Kalgrash sneaked out the back door. They knew the kids were watching the front. If the Thusser could indeed see through the eyes of the children, then they’d have to avoid the gaze of the tricycle circle.

  Silently, they eased themselves over the barricade in front of the sliding doors. They made their way across the lawn.

  “Toward the mountain,” whispered Kalgrash.

  Brian squinted. “Where is it?”

  Kalgrash pointed with one mailed hand. His night vision was excellent.

  “Not on the roads,” Brian said. “They’ll only lead us in circles. We just have
to cut straight across.”

  Kalgrash nodded, clinking.

  They headed up a rise. The previous year, it had been wooded, Brian thought — very steep — covered in old leaves. Now it was the lawn for a mansion. They carefully crawled up the slope.

  They passed through someone’s garden and came out on another street. This one didn’t go very far before it dead-ended in a circle around a huge stone monolith: the Crooked Steeple.

  It rose up, uneven and pitted, from shrubs. Brian recalled finding it with Kalgrash the previous fall. It was comforting to see something that reminded Brian of what the wood had been like. He was sure now that there hadn’t been any houses around it, except for Prudence’s. He was absolutely sure.

  They slunk past the Steeple, intent on the mountain above the blue trees.

  Through yards and along drainage ditches they ran, bent over, trying to stay out of sight.

  That night, there was a feeling of youth in the air in Rumbling Elk Haven. The shadows were wet with life and growth; the trees looked young and spindly. The new suburb was silent except for the distant grinding of earthmovers, the chirp of crickets and of trucks in reverse, unseen, at the perimeter of the neighborhood, where work was being done even in darkness: the flattening of the forest, the raising of new homes, the spreading of settlement upon the face of the Earth in all directions, the ceaseless devouring.

  Even as they ran, stooped, past pools, the neighborhood grew. The dominion of humankind shrank.

  They came to a region of mud, steep and sticky. No one had built above this line. They toiled through it. Kalgrash had a hard time in his armor. The weight of it pulled him down.

  “Look!” Kalgrash exclaimed. “Suckers!”

  Brian thought he was sneering, but discovered instead that Kalgrash was embracing young trees.

  “It’s the forest!” he said. “They haven’t knocked it down yet up here!”

  “I think the trees that were originally in the forest were bigger than that,” Brian said. “Weren’t they full size?” He couldn’t really remember.

  “But these are darling!” said Kalgrash.

  They climbed over boulders and through bracken. They followed old paths through the rocks on the mountain’s side. Brian couldn’t see well. There was hardly any moon. Kalgrash led him, sometimes heaving him up rock walls.