Gatekeepers (6 page)

“Back door, then.” Lance's eyes were the size of half-dollars.

Sam could tell he wanted a straightforward explanation for the noises. The guy might get a kick out of reading about boogeymen, but he didn't want to end up in the
Midnight Sun
's next issue under the headline S
HERIFF'S
D
EPUTY
M
AULED TO
D
EATH BY
A
LIEN
D
OG
-B
OY
.

“Maybe,” Sam said, not believing his own word. All the breaking twigs and thumps had come from the area in front of the house. Kids would have run off when Sam had started exploring, and he'd have heard them making tracks toward the back. “I think I'll—”

Something smacked down on the roof of the cruiser.

Lance screamed. He fumbled for his pistol.

Sam grabbed the man's arm. “Don't,” he said. “If the kids are out there . . .” He didn't even want to think of what could happen if Lance started plugging away at the shadows.

“That's no kid,” Lance said. “Something landed on the roof.”

Sam scowled at him. “What are you thinking? Something
living
?” He shook his head. “A rock maybe.”

“It was big,” Lance said.

“Well, I don't hear anything now. Nothing's moving up there.”

“Waiting.”

“Hey,” Sam said. “A light just turned on in the house. I can see the windows on either side of the door. Couldn't see them before.”

They watched the house, but nothing else happened. No more lights, no movement.

“Turn on the headlights,” Sam said.

Lance squeezed his eyes closed and flipped on the head-lights. The woods between the end of the road and the house sprang into Sam's vision. The nearest trees seemed to glow in the brightness. Farther trees caught their shadows and appeared to multiply as they approached the house. The lights barely reached the front porch steps.

“Hit your spotlight,” Sam said, reaching for the handle on his side of the car. The brighter spots, Sam's and Lance's, came on at once. New shadows snapped into place. Sam's roamed over the right side of the yard—if that's what you'd call the woods in front of the house—Lance's over the left.

“There!” Lance said.

The leaves of a large bush were shaking.

“Wind?” Lance said, hopefully.

“Not the way it's moving back and forth like that.”

The shaking stopped.

“Hold the light on it,” Sam said. He positioned his own light on the porch and opened the door.

“Wait!” Lance said. “The roof.”

Sam stepped out, rising slowly to peer at the roof. A large branch lay over the cruiser's red-and-blue light bar. He looked up. The top of the tree leaned out over the car's hood. He grabbed the branch and showed Lance.

“See?” he said. “Probably just fell. Keep your eyes peeled.” He shut the door and headed for the woods. His shadow stretched out in front of him, reaching almost to the house.

CHAPTER

twelve

W
ESNESDAY 12.50 A.M.

“Xander!” David said. He was standing at the junction of the second floor's main hallway and the smaller one that went to the room they were using as a Mission Control Center.

Xander was shining a flashlight on the secret door at the end of the short hall.

“It's still latched,” Xander said, running his hand over the wall.

“There are lights shining in from outside,” David said. The glow flickered in the main hallway, brighter than the dim overhead fixtures.

Xander stepped up beside him and switched off the flash-light. He brushed past David, who once again grabbed hold of his brother's shirt. Xander edged closer to the staircase.

“Is it the cops?” David whispered.

As Xander eased forward, the light caught him, flickering like a fire. He said, “Probably. But what are they doing?”

“Maybe they spotted something,” David said, thinking of the creaking floorboards.

They stopped at the top of the stairs. The light was coming through the windows by the doors. Something moved in front of the beams, causing a bobbing shadow. It grew larger and darker. The porch stairs creaked.

“Xander?” David said.

Xander sidestepped behind the wall. They both crouched low. Xander craned his head around the corner; David bent around Xander to see. The shadow took the form of a per-son: head, shoulders, arms. Footsteps clumped on the porch. The door handle rattled. The person moved to the side window and peered in. He was silhouetted with light radiating from behind.

Xander pulled back behind the wall. He nudged David. “Get Toria,” he whispered. “We have to be ready to get out of here.”

David looked down the hallway to the chair that they had replaced under the linen closet handle. “The closet?” he said.

“That's the plan,” Xander said. “Now, go.”

CHAPTER

thirteen

W
EDNESDAY,12.52 A.M.

At the window, Sam cupped his hands against the sides of his face. The upstairs lights were on, but he didn't see any-one. The rest of the house was dark. The door was still locked. Probably one of the kids had gone to the bathroom. He turned away from the window.

The cruiser's lights glowed at the end of the road like a four-eyed spider waiting to pounce. Mist snaked slowly from the side of the house, swirling around trees and billowing up against the bushes.

He looked at the big clump of bushes Lance's spot was on. From his perspective it was mostly a shaggy black mass. He went down the steps, treading softly. As he approached the bush, it shook.

He stopped. “Who's there?” He unsnapped his holster and moved closer. “Trinity County Deputy,” he announced. “Come out with your hands up.”

The bush rattled. Something growled, low and guttural.

Sam stepped back.

A twig cracked, closer to the cruiser—no, no, not a twig. It sounded like something had smacked against glass. He squinted at the car. Had Lance got out? The thing in the bushes growled again.

A loud
crack!
came from the cruiser, and Lance's spotlight blinked out.

What in tarnation?

“Lance?” he called.

A screech made his blood run cold. He swung his head around. That blasted weather vane!

The headlights and his own spot were pointed not at the bush, but at the house. The bush was now illuminated only by the backsplash of light bouncing off the ground and trees. Somehow that made it appear even darker, bigger, and a whole lot scarier than it had looked in only the moonlight.

The leaves rustled. That deep-throated growl reached his ears, getting louder.

He pulled his pistol. “I got a gun,” he said. “You hear me?”

Movement drew his eyes to the side of the house. The mist drifted among the trees. Sam's breath froze in his lungs. The clear shape of a man stood rock-solid near the rear of the house.

“Who's that?” Sam said. “Come here . . . slowly.”

The figure didn't move.

Sam swung his gun toward it. “I'm not kidding, buddy!”

The bushes shook. The growling continued.

Sam held the gun on the unmoving figure and raised his free hand to shield himself from whatever might rush out of the bushes. He didn't know what to do. He wasn't going to shoot at the figure: Not when the guy wasn't even moving. Not when there were kids around, and he couldn't be absolutely sure the figure wasn't one of them—though the man in the mist seemed a lot bigger, more
solid
than any kid he'd ever seen.

Still . . . should he approach the creepy dude? That would put his back to the bushes—and whatever was in them.

Behind him, he heard the car door open.

“Sam!” Lance said. “Sam, get back here, man! Get out of there!”

That decided it. He took a step back. The ground here was spongy with soft soil and decomposing leaves. He began to tumble, caught himself, and shuffled in reverse.

The car door slammed shut. The trees erupted in flames—that's what Sam thought for a few seconds, until a blue light pushed away the red and he realized Lance had turned on the police flashers. The red light swung around again. Blue. Red. Blue. They flashed against the trees but didn't reach the figure in the mist. To Sam's eyes, they made everything worse, making shadows jump up and fall back. He couldn't tell what was real movement, from which he had to protect himself, and what was merely the dance of light and shadow. He swung his gun between the bushes and the figure and backed away, backed away.

His own shadow became blacker and sharper on the ground as he neared the car. When his heels touched the dirt road, he spun and ran for the passenger door. He hopped in, panting. He scanned the woods through the windshield. He thought the figure was gone, but it was hard to tell, between the darkness way back there and all the lights doing their thing.

“What's going on?” Lance said. He sounded panicked.

Sam looked over at him. The door window behind Lance's frightened face was broken: a dozen cracks fanned out from a small hole in the glass. “What happened?”

“I think someone shot at me! They hit the light!”

“Get us out of here,” Sam said. “Come on, start the car!”

Lance cranked on the key. The engine roared. He slammed the shifter into gear, and the cruiser reversed away from the woods.

Sam watched through the windshield, half expecting some-thing to chase them. He held his pistol up, ready. “Did you call it in?” he asked.

“No, I—” Lance grabbed for the radio.

Sam clutched Lance's hand. “Forget it,” he said. “Just go, go.”

“But—”

“What are we going to say?” Sam said. “That we got scared away?”

“Someone shot at me!”

“That's not a bullet,” Sam said. “See the way the glass is crushed around the hole? I've seen it a hundred times. It was a rock.”

“Then why are we taking off ?” Lance turned the car toward the side of the road and put it in drive.

Sam realized Lance had not seen the figure or heard the growling. He said, “Because I don't know what's going on here, but it ain't no good.” He shook his head. “It ain't no good.”

“What about the kids?”

“If they're the ones throwing rocks, they don't deserve our protection,” Sam said. “If they're inside, they're safe.”

“You sure?”

“Sure enough. Go, will ya?”

Lance accelerated, kicking gravel up into the wheel wells, sounding like angry rattlesnakes. He swept the car around and got it pointed away from the house.

Sam turned in his seat to watch the blackness through the rear window. Lance braked, casting red light on the road behind them and the trees on both sides.

Then the car rounded a bend, and Sam relaxed. He closed his eyes and sighed. He said, “I never did like that house.”

CHAPTER

fourteen

W
EDNESDAY, 1.05 A.M.

Keal watched the police car vanish around a curve. He crunched across the forest floor and stopped next to a bush.

“For Pete's sake, Jesse,” he said. “I should never have let you talk me into taking you out of the nursing home. You didn't say anything about throwing rocks at cops.”

The bushes laughed, a thin coughing sound. Hiding behind them, the old man said, “I haven't seen people move that fast since someone passed gas in an elevator.”

“It's not funny,” Keal said, but he laughed a little in spite of himself. He shook his head. “It's one thing for me to fly you across the country because you think the folks in this house are in danger. It's something completely different to attack police officers. I'm just saying, you better know what you're doing.”

“Oh, pooh,” Jesse said from behind the bushes. “Wasn't us who scared them away. It was the house, this place. We just helped it out a bit. Now, don't just stand there. I got a stick jabbing me in the back.”

Keal made his way around the foliage. The shadows here were even darker than the rest of the woods. He couldn't make out anything.

Jesse wheezed in a breath, and Keal moved faster. He was supposed to take care of the old guy. Didn't matter if it were back at Mother of Mercy Nursing Home or here, Jesse was his responsibility.

He said, “You okay?”

“Nothing I'm not used to,” Jesse said. “These old lungs don't work the way they did once.” His laugh sounded like sobs. “Nothing does.
Owww!
You stepped on me.”

“Sorry,” Keal said. “Can't see.”

He knelt down, running his hands over Jesse's scrawny body. He cupped his hand under Jesse's head. When he lifted it up, a stray beam of moonlight caught the old guy's face. He was smiling.

“Now, that was fun,” Jesse said.

“I wasn't laughing, man,” Keal said. “That cop pointed his gun at me. I was sure I was a goner. And he was heading right for you.”

Jesse growled.

Even watching the old man make the sound, it put goose bumps on Keal's arms and the back of his neck. “That's just freaky,” he said.

“It worked,” Jesse said. “Did you see that guy hightail it for his car?”

“I'll give you that one. You all right?”

“Just tired,” Jesse said. “Not used to being up so long. I feel like . . .” His lids drooped. “Like I could just . . .” His eyes closed, his mouth fell open, and he snorted in some air.

“Yeah, funny . . .” Keal leaned closer. “Jesse?”

Jesse's eyes sprang open. He smiled. “I ain't
that
tired . . . or old. You going to get me off this cold ground or what?”

Keal got his arms under Jesse and lifted him. It was like picking up a scarecrow, the man was so light.

Jesse said, “I gotta admit, I wasn't expecting the gun.”