“I want to see,” she said and hopped out of bed and put on her slippers and tiptoed toward her mother’s room. The light was off but her eyes were adjusted to the dark and she could see that the door was partway open.
She didn’t hear any voices but she did hear strange sounds, grunts and harsh breaths and then a wet squelchy noise. The last sound made her feel funny in her stomach, sort of sick and scared, and she wanted her mom then, wanted to run and jump into Mom’s bed and feel her mother’s arms around her.
She pushed the door open and the first thing she saw was William silhouetted against the faint light coming in through the window, and there was something in his hand, something that looked like a knife but it couldn’t be a knife, why would he have a knife?
Then the smell hit her and she gagged. It smelled like the bathroom, like poop and pee and also something else, something metallic that left a faint film of sick on her tongue.
“Sam,” William said, and his voice was very steady and very cold, like a frozen river in winter. She’d never heard his voice like that before. “Go back to your room. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Mom?” Samantha said. “Mom, can I come in bed with you? I’m scared.”
“You can’t get in bed with her right now,” William said. “Go back to your room.”
“Mom?” Samantha said, and she went toward the bed even though she was sick and terrified, even though William had told her twice to leave.
She saw her mother’s profile just for a moment, very still, then William came around the bed in a few strides, tucking away the thing he could not possibly have into his belt. He scooped Samantha up into his arms. She’d always liked to be held by William, because he was big and tall and she was so small, but now he didn’t feel safe and she tried to wriggle away. His arms were hard as iron and his voice was the same way when he said, “Stop trying to get away, Samantha,” but she couldn’t stop because Mom was so still and she hadn’t answered when Samantha called and Mom always answered, she’d never ignore Samantha when she was scared.
“I said stop,” he said again. “You will listen and do as I say from now on. You belong to me now.”
“No,” she said. “I want Mom.”
He put his hand over her mouth and there was something sticky on his fingers, something that smelled like metal. “Your mother has decided that I’m to take care of you now. We’re going away. You will listen to me and obey and if you do that you’ll be the happiest little girl in the world. If you don’t then . . .”
He trailed off. Samantha didn’t know what might happen to her if she didn’t listen to William, couldn’t begin to imagine it. She only knew that she didn’t want to go with him. She wanted to stay with Mom and Heather. She squirmed again, trying to escape his grip, and he sighed.
* * *
? ? ?
The tapping sounded at the window again, firm, insistent. She wasn’t there, on the stairs with William. She was in the cabin, and William wanted Mattie to open the window.
He wanted her to open the window like she had before and he was sure, he was certain that she would because Mattie always listened to him, Mattie always obeyed. She’d opened the window for him in the first place.
The bedroom window was the only one large enough for William to fit through, she realized. The two windows in the main room were small, too small for his shoulders, but the bedroom window was larger. He could climb through there. He could reach her again, punch her in the face, throw her to the floor, remind her that her duty was to make sons for him.
Tap tap tap
He was so sure, so certain.
Mattie’s feet moved toward the window.
The creature roared out in the night, so close that it could have been in the cabin with them.
Then the screaming started.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Griffin,” C.P. said from the other room.
Mattie heard him run across the wood floor, heard the front curtains swish open. She hurried into the main room and nearly tripped over Jen, who was lying in the middle of the floor, still as death.
“Get . . . away . . . from . . . window,” Mattie wheezed out.
The creature roared again, and the person outside was screaming, screaming long horrible cries of pain that seemed to push inside her ears and press against her eyeballs and stop up her throat.
“That’s Griffin out there,” C.P. said. “We have to go out and help him. We have to do something. He sounds like he’s dying.”