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a new classic by Edward Summer |
he bedroom was totally dark except for the small reading lamp next to Ginger's bed.
"The headless horseman came closer and closer!" Ginger read aloud. Only her face and arms were visible from beneath the patchwork quilt that covered her and the huge pillows that supported her back. She held the book up against her bent knees.
"Ichabod Crane could feel the horseman's hot breath on his neck. Crane dug his heels into his own mount's bony sides, urging it to go faster!"
Two pairs of eyes, belonging to Fred and Teddy, peered out from under Fred's blanket. Fred had managed to burrow under his pillows and adjust the sheet so that he was covered completely. "I forgot to brush my teeth," he said nervously.
"So go brush them," Tony said from the upper bunk, where he was sprawled on top of a wrinkled blanket.
"But it's dark in the hall!" Fred said. He rolled over so that only his ear stuck out.
"So?" said Ginger.
"So, it's scary!"
"You say that at home all the time. Just go."
"We're not home! It's differenter!"
"Just take your dumb bear along to protect you and go!"
Fred's ear disappeared completely under the edge of the blanket. Finally after much movement of blankets, his head emerged, upside down, from behind the edge. Fred looked under the bed. Nothing was there, so he slid head first onto the floor, catching himself on his hands and swinging his feet down. Fred reached back under the covers. A small lump in the center of the bed slid slowly toward him. It was Teddy.
Carrying the bear, Fred pattered to the bathroom and slammed the door.
"Don't slam the door!" Tony yelled.
He was answered by the sound of water running in the sink. In record time, Fred swished the bristles around his mouth, cleaning one, perhaps two teeth in the process. Then a trip to the toilet, just in case. The toilet flushing. Then the patter of feet, and Fred returned to the bedroom.
From about three feet away, Fred took a running start and leaped into the bottom bunk. He landed with a thump that shook the whole bed. Before the mattress could stop shaking, Fred was back under the blankets. This time only his nose was showing.
"What'd you do that for?" Tony asked, annoyance in his voice.
"In case there was something under the bed,"Fred yelled from beneath the blankets. "So if there was, it wouldn't be able to grab my feet."
"Gimme a break!" said Tony.
The bunk bed began to sway again.
"Cut it out!" Tony commanded. "I'll get seasick."
"Not doing anything!" Fred said.
The bed swayed more, and Ginger's bed swayed, too.
"It's another earth tremor!" Ginger said.
"Oh, boy!" said Tony. "Maybe this'll be a big one." He sat up, his eyes blazing.
Douglas Calder was downstairs in the kitchen. He watched as the green stream of dish washing liquid wavered through the air in a snakelike formation. Dishes rattled in the sink. Glassware tinkled on the shelves.
Across the wall from the kitchen, the basement door swung open with a creak.
Samantha, the family's black cat, lifted her head lazily. She was on the counter carefully watching each drop of hot water drip, drip, drip out of the spout into the sink until she started to doze. But when the shaking started, Samantha thought, I do wish this would stop! It is hard enough to count drips or take a nap without these annoying little earth tremors. She got up, stretched, and jumped down onto the kitchen floor.
She rubbed up against Douglas's legs to go out. Maybe the world is not shaking quite so badly outside, she thought. She meowed, but he paid no attention! She walked to the back hall door to scratch in her most annoying way.
Suddenly the tremor stopped. Just as Samantha sheathed her claws, she noticed the strange smell coming from the basement. She went to the doorway. The crack by the door's hinges let a thin stream of light pass through the darkness.
Samantha pulled at the edge of the door with her paw. A thin trickle of smoke came out as the door opened just enough for her to squeeze through. Her lithe, black body slid down into the shadows that covered the stairs.
There are no flames, she thought. It can't be a fire! It is too, too dark here. Her paws touched the cold cement floor of the basement. She followed her nose toward the smoke. Suddenly, the floor shook again. Samantha froze. The cement beneath her toes quivered. The floor tilted downward. Samantha jumped back. There was a grinding, crunching sound, so low that she felt it more in her stomach than in her ears, which were crushed against her head in fear. She dropped to the floor and crouched, her tail stretched out behind her.
The smoke billowed toward the cat. All at once, the shaking stopped. Samantha steadied herself., noticing that she had not fallen into whatever hole the smoke was coming from. Her nose twitched from the acrid odor. She held the back of her paw up to her nostrils and tried to lick away the sulfurous smoke. Her eyes burned.
From out of the pitch darkness came a soft yellow glow. It caught in Samantha's eyes and she froze in mid-step. The soft, sickly yellow light shifted behind the cloud of smoke that hung over the floor. Samantha could see now that the smoke and the light itself had a shape. It followed a jagged, broken-back, snake pattern across the floor. The light came from below the floor through a long crack that had opened in the cement. After a moment, the light faded away. Samantha was too frightened to move.
A new sound slunk into the silence of the basement. A sniffing, snuffling sound that seemed wet and sloppy, followed by a clittering sound. It was a sound that Samantha recognized: the sound of claws on rock. Claws make that sound because they can't dig into the rock, she thought. So they slip and slide trying to find a place to hold on. The hairs on her neck rose one by one in a shiver from her head to her tail. She tried to run away, but her feet would not move.
From deep inside the smoke, a glimmer of red light filtered into the basement. The red coagulated into two tiny, bright spots in the center of a dark shape. The form was like a shadow inside a shadow, a place where the billows of smoke just stopped.
The clitter of claws on the stone stopped, too. Silence. Then a gurgle. And another. A desperate sound of half-dead lungs trying to push air through some icy fluid that was too thick to move.
Samantha squinted, trying to make out the form in the smoke. Then she saw it. It was a face. A small, squished face with tiny red eyes that shimmered with heat and flame. The eyes hid behind two huge, pulsating nostrils. The nostrils hung over the upper lip of the slavering mouth that was making the strange noises. The mouth was wet with thick drool. A needle-forked tongue shot in and out from between the lips. The tongue caught the red light from the tiny eyes and licked the drool from the corners of the mouth.
The thing to which the head was attached heaved itself up out of the crack onto the basement floor. It had four legs. It was the size of a small, squat dog. It looked like it had been squashed by a giant foot and had barely managed to keep its original shape.
The thing made another damp sound. The dribbling lips spread wide. Behind them, row after row of stiletto teeth hung like white needles polished with spit. The sharp tongue curled lovingly around them, darting through the forest of incisors. The tongue and nostrils were all that moved in the creature, but Samantha sensed coils of hidden energy wound into the muscles of the small body. She wrinkled her nose in disgust from the odor of this thing's breath.
The thing stretched itself like a dog waking from a long nap. Its tail uncurled and quivered with the soothing relief of the stretching. Its ribs pushed out against a black, hard, spiky skin. Samantha had the feeling that she would not like to rub up against that skin, that it would tear off all of her fur.
But now there was another noise from the crack. A different kind of scraping noise. Mustering all of her courage, Samantha began to crawl. She crept through the smoke, feeling the effort in every leg muscle. She moved noiselessly toward the basement stairs and reached them just as the crack began to glow red once again. Samantha leaped up the stairs two at a time. Almost at the top, she turned back to peek.
A second form rose from the crack. Large flaming eyes lit the graceful sweep of Reon's razor-fanged face as he hoisted his body out of the crevice.
Oh, thought Samantha, this is a bad dream! She thought about the possibility of giving up curiosity forever as she made the final leap into the back hall. Then she set off in search of Douglas or Julia or Tony or anyone who would let her out the back door and into some fresh air. That, Samantha hoped, would make her forget the whole event.
© 1997 Edward Summer, All Rights
Reserved, Teefr is a Registered Trademark
(c) 1981, 1996. 199, 1998
Edward Summer, All Rights Reserved, All Character Names (c) (TM)
created 12/15/96
revised 10/7/97, 03/13/99, 10/11/99
