9111 Sharp Road (4 page)

The cold was travelling from my cheek down the rest of my face and down my neck
, and on down my arm
. I could feel the skin pulling away from the pipe
, but I didn’t feel the pain
because, by then,
I was numb.

I tried to call out for Lori again, but I couldn’t move my tongue.
It was frozen completely solid.
I struggled. I cried. But there was no getting Lori away from the window. She was still screaming for Mom.

But then she stopped. She was silent.
I could clear
ly
hear the hissing of air through the pipe—freezing air that seemed to be the source of this unearthly cold.

Lori was looking down,
her hair hanging
in
her face.

I could see
brown, leathery skin, a bat-like snout through her long hair
.
Again, I tried to speak, but couldn’t.
Lori began lifting her head, and I could see her eyes, her red eyes, just like the eyes of those creatures. Her face had no expression, but she was breathing hard, almost as if
she were ready to lunge in anger
or fear
.

And that is exactly what she did. She leapt through the air, sprouting wings as she did so, and slammed right into me, breaking me free from the pipe, and
smashing through
the door
, shattering it to countless pieces
.

My face burned, and my
tongue felt like it was on fire. I sat on the floor, unable to move, watching the pipe grow
red hot
,
and then just as suddenly, it
cooled.

The pain in my face was gone. I put my fingers to my lips and felt around to my cheek. I felt no evidence
of what I had just experienced
.

And then I heard a voice, this time sounding like my dad:
“Amanda…let us out.”

I stepped out of Lori’s room, stepping lightly
over the debris from the shattered door
so as not to attract any sort of unwanted attention from anyone who might be around.

Marks were burned into the floor, possibly
foot prints
.
The prints headed straight
down the hall, toward the stairs
.
Smoke rose up from the scorched footprints.

I felt nauseous
and light-headed as I ran down t
he stairs and out of the house.

The air
outside
was muggy, almost like
a sauna. I could clearly see the trail through the grass from the porch.

I didn’t care how sick I felt. I just ran, although a part of me wonder
ed
what I would do if I actually did catch up with Lori.
She may
have
only be
en
six years old, but she now seemed to be one of those awful creatures.

I followed the trail. The grass w
as scorched black beneath my fee
t and crunched as I walked.

There was no sign of wild life around, which I found a bit strange. It was my second day here at 9111 Sharp Road, and
I wasn’t
sure if I’d even heard a single bird, and come to think of it, I don’t think there were any insects around either. I’d walked in long grass before, and knew there were usually all kinds of things jumping every which way. The lawn, with the exception of basic plant-life, seemed to be completely devoid of any of the usual occupants. Something wasn’t right here.

As I
continued down the trail
, it became quite apparent that there
we
re graves bordering the trail
.
I didn’t stop to examine
the tombstones
,
not then anyway
.

“Amanda! Amanda!”
I heard Lori scream, jerking me out of my thoughts
.
Where was she?
I couldn’t see her
anywhere
.

“Where are you?”
I called, nearly in tears.

“Amanda! Amanda!”
Her cries were hysterical, almost like she was dying.
She sounded as if she were in severe pain.

“Lori, where are you?”
I called again.

She just co
ntinued screaming my name, which was good because the trail came to an end with no sign of where my sister may have gone. Luckily, I had
the sound of
her voice to follow.

I finally found her in a kind of clearing. We were probably a quarter of a mile from the house. Except for the fact that she was crying and looked dirtier than I’
d ever seen her before, she looked okay. Her face was smudged with dirt; her hair looked like ragged strings of filth.

“Lori,
”
I said as I embraced her. She was shaking.

“I’m so scared, Amanda,” she said.

“I know. I am too.”

I looked up at the hou
se, that awful, dreadful house and shuddered. Why did we have to move here?

“Amanda, can
we
get out of here, please? I want to go home.” I knew the
“
home
”
she was referring to wasn’t
the one I was looking at
.

“We have nowhere else
to go, Lori.” I held her tightly
, not caring about her filth. I just loved her so much.

Then, s
omething caught my eye
, something
I could barely see through
the grass
—a small grave marker set into the ground.

I let go of Lori so I could investigate the stone further.

I
pushed away the grass
with my foot
. “Oh no!” I gasped as I saw something I didn’t at all expect
.

The name on the stone was
Roy Gates—my father.

Chapter 4

Lori and I
never mentioned what happened that day, nor did we mention that we had found a grave bearing Dad’s name
.
We were frightened and confused. I was almost sure that what Lori
had momentarily transformed into was nothing other than one of those creatures we had seen that night.

When we got back to the house, Mom was sitting in a rocking chair, knitting something and staring at the wood-burning stove in a daze. Both Lori and I tried talking to her, but she was like a dummy. There seemed to be no life in her at all.

The rest of the summer before the start of school followed a simple routine: Lori
and I would stay in my bedroom except for meal times and bathroom breaks, activities we engaged in together.

We shared my bed and held each other
while we listened to the creature’s screeches through
the night. “Shh,” I would whisper to Lori. “Just stay under the blanket.”

And occasionally, we would both hear voices, some coming from Lori’s room—presumably the pipe—while they mostly came from the door to nowhere.

Luckily,
Lori
never had another transformation…not until the first day of school, anyway.

On the first day of the school in early September,
I didn’t exactly make the best first impression at my new school. Fifth grade. I was at
Orchard Hills
Middle School,
while Lori went to the elementary, second grade.

I had two teachers—
Mrs.
Knopf in the morning and
Mr. Hatch in the af
ternoon.

The beginning of the day went
by
smoothly
enough
. I had math and science. Then we had lun
ch. It wasn’t until after lunch
when I switched over to Mr. Hatch for
English and Social Studies
that
the day turn
ed
into a complete disaster.

Orchard Hills Middle School was smaller than my old school, with fewer students than I could ever have imagined. And they served the worst kind of lunch, or so it appeared. The smells that socked me when I
first
stepped foot into the cafeteria made me want to
get on my knees and thank the L
ord I brought a sack lunch
.

The cafeteria
smelled like sour milk mixed with old gym s
ock
s.

I managed to scarf down my turkey sandwich and a small bag of Pringles before being approached by a couple of kids from my class. Audrey and Joey wer
e their names. They were nice
, if a little strange
.

“It was Aman
da, right?” Audrey said, sitting across from me. She had a tray full of something green and steaming. I had never seen anything like it, and was afraid to ask what it was. Her long hair was done up in pig-tails, which looked rather silly to me, but I wasn’t going to say so.
She also wore dark make-up around her eyes and black fingernail polish.
Joey, on the other hand, wa
s cute. He had short brown hair
and
had
an athletic look about him. He didn’t have a lunch at all as he sat down next to Audrey.

“Yeah, I’m Amanda.” There was an awkward moment that passed between us as they presumably expected me to talk about myself.
When neither
of them
spoke, I finally got the hint. “I just moved here with my sister. My dad died…
and….” My mind went back to
the gravestone that read my dad’s name.
Could my dad really be buried there
?

“I know, Amanda. We know all about you,
” Audrey said
and
reached across the table
, grabbing
my hand. It was
meant to be a
comforting gesture, I supposed, but the earnestness of it was unsettling, so I drew my hand back
with a sharp intake of breath
. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “How did you know about my dad?
About us?
”
What exactly did these kids know?
To my knowledge, neither my mom or gramma talked to anyone, so it’s hard to
believe the rumor mill could have spre
ad the
news
of the Gates-
family patriarch’s untimely death.

Audrey and Joey looked at each other nervously. I could tell they were uncomfortable, as if they wanted to let me in on some sort of dark secret that I wasn’t supposed to know.

“You live at 9111 Sharp Road, right?” Audrey asked.

“Uh…yeah.”

“That house…
will you
….” Her voice trailed off as if she were scare
d
to ask the question.

“What were you gonna say?” I asked. Instead of answering, she wrung her hands
nervously.
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter,” I said, trying to relieve the tension.

“You’re right. It doesn’t,” Joey said with a half-hearted laugh.
The two of them got up and left without saying
another word
, and I waited out the res
t of the lunch period by myself and
wondered
how
Lori was
doing
.

A
fter throwing away my lunch bag
, I headed to my locker.
I was
checking my hair
i
n the small mirror-magnet I
put
on the inside of the door.
My
brown
hair
looked stringy
, almost as if I hadn’
t bothered
washing it
that
morning. It kind
of
reminded me of how Lori’s hair looked after that transformation, a fact that got my heart racing. I looked into my face, pulled down the skin under each eye, and studied my nose and teeth, looking for any sign that maybe I was transforming into one of those things.

“
Amanda
! What are you doing?”
Audrey
cried, startling me.

I screamed like I had never screamed before, making myself look like a complete idiot in front of all the other kids.

“You’re g
onna be late for
Mr. Hatch
.” Being late
seemed to be
the
absolute worst thing in
this
school
.
From what I heard, if you were late for Mr. Hatch’s class, he
w
ould
make you wish you were never born.