Keepers

TWO

I put the Mossberg on a small table just inside the guest bedroom and knelt to open the trapdoor. This was the first time I’d used it since having it installed, and I was surprised by the thin cloud of sawdust that blew into my face. Coughing, I waved the cloud away, blinked until my eyes were clear, and started to drop my legs into the opening.

Something outside slammed against the side of the house with enough force to shake the floor and cause the Mossberg to nearly fall off the edge of the table.

I scrambled to my feet, grabbing the shotgun as I ran toward the living room. Whatever slammed against the house had raised some dust of its own, because a dissipating smog of sandy debris was swirling against the window. It wasn’t until I was just a foot or so away from the window that I realized it wasn’t dust at all.

Crouching, I pulled back one side of the curtain to take a look.

It was a cavernous silver mist-so thick in places it was nearly impossible to make out the shape of Magritte-Man’s truck in the street-that churned as if caught in a strong wind. But there was no wind. There hadn’t even been any humidity. The old joke might say that if you don’t like the weather in Ohio just wait a minute, and sometimes it sure seems that way, but barring any sort of significant meteorological aberration, no way in hell could a mist this heavy and wide-spread form in a matter of… I quickly played in reverse everything that had happened since I’d loaded the shotgun… ninety seconds?

I looked out the window again. At the rate this was going, the mist would turn into heavy fog in no time.

Ninety seconds.

Dropping the curtain back into place, I moved through the living room toward the back door. The mist couldn’t be a natural phenomenon; yes, the weather here can make some extreme swings from time to time, but not like this, not a mist-bordering-on-fog that looks like it followed the tail of a major storm in summer, not in less than two minutes. So it stood to reason (didn’t it?) that Magritte-Man and his droogies had to have created it. It had only been two minutes, so whatever they were using to generate the mist couldn’t have worked up enough vapor to encircle the entire house-hell, even if they had more than one means of creating the mist (dry ice, a fog machine maybe?), there still hadn’t been enough time.

(There you again, pal-trying to create logical reasons for stuff that you know damned well-)

Up yours.

I threw open the back door and stepped onto the porch, the Mossberg pointing out from my hip.

The mist formed a semi-solid wall that spread out to create a barrier around the yard and rose so far into the evening sky it was impossible to see where it ended and the October clouds began. I leaned over the porch railing to see just how far the barrier extended; at both the far left and right edges of the house it curved so sharply and so abruptly it actually formed corners before continuing.

It was surrounding the house.

I felt a damp chill and exhaled; my breath became silver vapor as soon as it hit the air and billowed in front of my face, faintly glowing. From deep inside, the mist shimmered with silver light-nothing bright or blinding, but enough to illuminate the yard and the outside of the house.

Moving down the steps I looked from side to side for some sign of the others. I caught a glimpse of one of them when a pair of thin red beams cast by their night goggles glided across the mist from about ten yards to my left. Mossberg at the ready, I ran toward the spot from which the beams had come; just as I hit the mist the handle-grip of the shotgun punched into my ribs, causing me to cry out as I tumbled backward from the force of the impact.

It took a few seconds for my torso to stop throbbing and the breath to find its way back into my lungs. What the fuck had I slammed into? Rolling onto my side, I picked up the Mossberg and checked to make sure the gun and knife were still in place, then got to my feet and looked around for who- or whatever had hit me. As far as I could tell, I was alone in the yard-whose boundaries were rapidly shrinking against the encroaching mist. In a few minutes it would be all the way up to the back porch.

I turned back toward the spot where I’d remembered seeing the beams and moved closer to it, slowly this time. I knew this was probably the wrong thing to do-after all, the back door was unlocked and stood wide open (Why not just send out written invitations? I thought)-but I had to let them know I wasn’t going down without a fight.

I heard a dog bark from outside the barrier, another one howled in response, then the song of an unseen nightbird was answered by the yowls of a stray neighborhood cat.

The mist was playing with me; whenever I moved forward, it retreated, expanding the boundaries; if I moved back, it would advance, swallowing more of the yard. I did this three times, moving backward and forward to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, and I wasn’t; the mist moved in the opposite of my direction each time. Finally, I remained still, as did it.

Flexing the fingers of my left hand, I reached up; a small area of the barrier pulled away from the tips of my fingers. I folded my fingers into my palm and watched the area begin to fill in, and that’s when I came up with my right hand still fisted around the shotgun’s handle-grip and punched at it.

I heard the bones break well before the pain had a chance to register, but by then I was down on one knee and whimpering, my right hand cradled against my chest. As far as I could tell, I had broken my fourth and fifth metacarpals. A jagged, bloody scrape lay across the width of my hand, made thin and black in places by my swollen knuckles. Jesus! It had been like pummeling my fist against a slab of granite. I could still feel the vibration of the impact all the way up into my shoulder and neck.

Struggling to my feet, I grabbed the Mossberg with my left hand because my right was useless for the moment. The mist remained stationary, churning, forming surreal shapes.

I wondered if my neighbors had noticed what was surrounding my house. Were any of them watching right now, their curiosity piqued, or was this mist engulfing the entire block? It had to have occurred to at least one person that this wasn’t normal, right? (Assuming that black mastiffs hadn’t been disassembling people around here, as well.)

This was Cedar Hill, and in Cedar Hill if anything not normal or even mildly interesting happens, well, then, you call the police or the trusty news team at Channel 7 and get a mobile unit right over. If they’d dispatch a crew to cover the opening of a new electronics store one county away, they’d sure as hell send someone to a local neighborhood to cover the appearance of an intensely localized weather anomaly.

Never count on the help of others when you most need it. Take my word on this. I wasn’t about to assume that any of my neighbors had called or were going to call anyone to report this. So I did the only thing I knew for a fact would get someone on the phone to the news or police; I rose to my feet, lifted the Mossberg over my head using only my left hand, pointed it into the air, and fired.

The force of the blast wrenched my left arm backward and tore the handle-grip from my grasp. The shotgun flew back and landed in the grass about five feet away; I half-spun around, my shoulder screaming, nearly losing my balance. Almost none of this had to do with the physical effects of firing the weapon-some of it, yes, you can’t fire a scattergun with only one hand and not get jolted down to your marrow-but more than anything, it was the sound of the shot.

Under the best and most controlled of circumstances a gunshot is deafening, but it seemed as if this one had gone off in the center of my skull; it hadn’t just been a noise or an explosion-it was a pulverizing force that ripped the air from inside me and jammed an invisible ice pick into each side of my head. I stumbled around in half-circles pressing my hands against my ears (I had done this before, I knew that I had held my ears like this before, that there had been pain and panic then, as well… but where and when and why?) while stomping my feet and working my jaw in order to create some kind of pressure and please God make one or both of my ears pop-but nothing helped. At one point the pain and weight became so great I thought I was going to pass out, then a soft hiss began to issue from the base of my brainpan, someone letting the air out of a bicycle tire, and I pulled my hands away and felt the cool air enter my ears with a soft whoosh. I shook my head once, then twice to see if I could jar anything into functioning, but there was only a thick, gluey numbness; I didn’t hear so much as feel the hissing, which was rapidly giving way to a deep, disturbing thrum. I blinked, turned slowly around, saw the shotgun lying in the grass, and made a beeline for the thing. It was vital I have something to focus on besides the disorienting pressure in my head, and the Mossberg would do just fine. Looking up to where the mist met the clouds, I prayed that the blast hadn’t blown out my eardrums and rendered me permanently deaf. I shook my head once more as I swung down and grabbed the shotgun with my good hand, and as I returned to a fully upright position there was hiss and a buzz and a pop and something that sounded like a sheet being torn into shreds by a pair of teeth, then a moment of nauseating dizziness and then… sound. I could at least discern (if not actually hear) sound again. Not much, just the echo of a dog’s bark coming from somewhere deep under the Atlantic Ocean, but it was there, and I could recognize it, and that meant that the damage wasn’t (thank you thank you thank you ) permanent. Despite the circumstances, I smiled as I made my way up the back steps and into the kitchen. It was only as I was locking the door and shoving the kitchen table up against it that I allowed myself to acknowledge what I hadn’t wanted to admit while out there: the noise and force of the blast had been so fantastically intensified-so brutally magnified-because they had been contained.

The mist wasn’t just surrounding the house, it was encasing it.

I thought, This must be how a pheasant under glass feels.

Then a remembered voice: You might say they’re not from around here. But who’d said that, and when? Where? Like with holding my ears, I should have known, but…

(You’re getting awfully close to not leaving me with any choice here, pal.)

I looked out the window over the sink. The mist roiled forward, stopping only a few feet from the bottom step of the back porch. Two thin red beams danced across a part of the wall, then one of Magritte-Man’s cronies stepped through and simply stood there. The glow from his night goggles made him look almost comical. He gave a quick nod of his head to affirm that he could see me. I flipped him the bird with my right middle finger and immediately shrieked from the pain. I had to do something about my broken hand and I had to do it now or I didn’t stand a chance. Bowler (I now chose to think of him and the others by this name) waved a hand to get my attention, then made an odd gesture. I stared at him, shook my head, and he repeated the gesture, albeit a bit more exaggeratedly.

The front of the house.

He was telling me I should go look at something in front of the house.

Fuck you, Bowler, I thought. I’ll go take a look when I’m damned good and ready.

I stumbled into the bathroom and threw open the door on the upright cabinet where I keep all breed of crap-extension cords, old lighters, duct tape, loose tools, lighter fluid, a little of this and a lot more of that… and medical supplies. I removed everything I would need: bandages-both the elastic and gauze variety-as well as gauze pads, medical tape, hydrogen peroxide, and a couple of old finger-splints I’d hung on to after getting my left hand caught in a car door about a year ago. I laid out everything on the sink’s counter and took a deep breath.

Do it now, before you turn chickenshit.

I gripped the broken fingers with my left hand, released the breath I’d been holding, clenched my teeth, then simultaneously pressed down and pulled out.

The snap! made by the bones as they popped back into place seemed even louder than the shotgun blast; the pain shot up my arm right and hammered directly between my eyes. I dropped to one knee, grabbing the edge of the sink with my left hand to keep from hitting the floor, and tried to hold in the scream.

From under the house, the dog howled as if she’d felt it, as well.

“I’m st-still here, g-girl,” I whispered, trying to pull myself up. I was hit by a wave of pain, dizziness, and nausea, and fell to the floor.

(You’re not going anywhere for a minute or two, pal, so now it’s my turn.)

I couldn’t fight him; not now.

Hell, I could barely move.

(You left the house right after you found Mabel’s body, remember? )

If you say so.

(You figured Beth had taken the rest of the Its to the Keepers’ facility.)

That sounds about right, sure.

(So that’s where you went.)

Whatever.

(This ringing any bells yet?)

If it was, do you think I’d admit it to you?

(Fine, we’ll do it the hard way, then.

Even though it was cooler than usual, the humidity was high that night, and every street you