Off Season - Jack Ketchum [54]
Her foot twisted under her and she fell against the stairs. Tiny sharp-nailed fingers curled around her ankle. She shook herself free as the gun exploded above her, and she saw the big man stagger and stare, clutching at the hand that Nick’s lucky wild shot had blown clean away. Then Nick was pushing her past him into the attic.
The big man stumbled back through the doorway into the kitchen, his wound spraying the walls and molding with blood as the shattered wrist waved small dizzy circles above his head. At last he fell to his knees, groaning, and clutched at the kitchen table for support. His blood formed a pool there and drifted slowly toward its edges. The children swarmed up the stairs. From where she lay sprawled on the attic floor she heard Nick’s empty pistol thump against the wall and realized he was still standing there in the doorway. No! she thought. No! Get inside! But she could not speak. She turned and saw him in the doorway with scythe in hand, saw him swing it once and then watched in horror as the spout of bright blood shot up high into the air and then down the stairwell, a child’s head turning grotesquely, falling behind it.
She heard them howl in anger and surprise and saw the children stumble as the boy’s body tumbled down the stairs. She heard Laura scream, a scream of the lost and damned. And then Nick was inside with her at last, the bloody scythe tossed to the floor, and he was throwing the bolt and shoving the mattress against the door, and she rose heavily to her feet to help him push the dresser into place and make them safe again.
The room seemed to close up tight around her. Outside they pounded on the door.
At the foot of the stairs Laura stood blinking at the object that had rolled down to stop at her feet. It seemed almost her mirror image—the open mouth, the wide eyes, the lips specked with blood and foam. She stared and sank into the dream that had protected her, which was punctuated by her own distant screams yet which was still unreal to her and never really threatening. The living room was unfamiliar now. She had never seen these stairs before and never these people who rushed to climb them, shouting and pushing when they reached the door. She was alone with a group of strangers engaged in some wild, inexplicable pursuit the object of which was unclear. She knew there was nothing behind the door. She did not know how she knew that, only that it was true. Nothing but some old magazines and papers and a dusty, empty attic.
So that their strange arterial flow through the house and up the stairs and into the attic could have no meaning except to disgorge them again, through the top of the house perhaps, through the tiny window, like water spilling onto the ground through a fire hose.
She laughed. It was like that game they’d played back in high school, Chinese Fire Drill. They would pull up to a red light and open the car doors and run around the car once or even twice if they could before the light changed back to green, and then they’d have to get back in the car through the same door they got out of and drive away. She saw these strange people in a never-ending spill through the front door into the kitchen and into the living room and then up the stairs to the attic, flowing around the house in a bright painted stream and back again like Little Black Sambo’s tigers turning to butter—soon they would not be people at all but a fast-moving stream flowing in a perfect crimson circle through and around the house, while she stood just outside the circle, safe, and watched them with eyes wide because even though it was a dream it was also a miracle, funny but mostly just amazing that people could be shepherded into a stream of fluid and then be people not at all anymore.
She sat down next to her mirror image on the floor and reached carefully