Chapter Ethan #2
Thomas said, “Couldn’t… couldn’t let you… They’re gone. Threw them… threw them out into the dark.”
Which was, of course, when the Guardians of the mountain let out one of their hair-raising chorus of SHRIEKS, as if to remind everyone they were still very much an ongoing concern. Ethan saw movement past the ring of the mercury lights. Saw dozens of yellow eyes.
“If the eggs are out there, we’ll never find them,” Kyla said.
“Sarah has one,” Ethan said. “It’s on the table. Someone could go take a look. They’d be safe.”
“I don’t think we’ll have time for that,” Hunter said, rising to his feet.
“But without the eggs, how can we reach the house?” Kyla said. “The door to the city’s over there. And that’s a lot of dark to cross with only one stone.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Hunter said. He rose and looked back toward the motel.
Thomas moaned so hard he threw up a mouthful of bile into the dirt. There was another chorus of SHRIEKS from the dark. Ethan wondered if those things could smell blood.
A hand wrapped around Ethan’s arm. With surprising strength, Sarah Powers dragged him back into room 4 and pointed at her side table.
Her jaw was tight, her pupils wide, her hair swirling around her.
You didn’t have to be an empathetic genius to see the woman was scared—almost literally—out of her mind.
“Please. You have to kill me before that fire goes out. Please.”
Ethan saw a flame burning in a dinner plate, there in the clutter of the table’s junk. Two nights ago, he’d found that same plate coated with a strange silver substance. That silver had been a shard of the mirror from the old house, he realized now. It can burn like wood.
“If the fire burns out and nobody dies, that’s it,” Sarah said. “The ceremony’s over and we risk destroying reality as we know it. Everything, everywhere, could collapse into this hole we’ve carved out of the universe.”
Ethan looked to Hunter, who shrugged. “It’s your call.”
He turned to Kyla. There was fear in her eyes, just like he felt in his own: they hadn’t planned on this contingency. The pair shared one of their silent consultations.
Are you sure? she seemed to say.
Ethan gave a cautious nod. I think so.
Outside, Ryan had finally calmed Penelope down, or at least calmed down the girl in Penelope’s body.
He brought her to her feet, took a few steps away to pluck up the Desert Eagle, and hurried back.
“Go on inside,” he murmured, rubbing the girl’s back.
“Come sit down.” From the back door, Fernanda rubbed her head and asked, “Are you sure this is good idea?”
Sarah gave Ethan’s arm a last, desperate squeeze. “Please.”
The fire in the dish was starting to gutter and choke.
Sarah said, “Please.”
Kyla said, “We’ve just been delaying the inevitable here.”
“Yeah.” Ethan pulled free of Sarah and stepped well out of her way. “Eventually you just have to face whatever’s next.”
“You idiots,” Sarah said. “You fucking idiots.”
Ethan watched the fire burn, feeling the pulse of energy that thrummed through the room. The pulse grew weaker as the flames died. Weaker.
And then the fire went out. The pulse weakened down to nothing. The grooved egg on Sarah’s table gave a last faint shudder and went still.
A last, long silence came over the motel. A lonely wind, a breath from the past.
Sarah sat on the bed. She put her head in her hands. “What have you done?”
Penelope shuffled through the door, her eyes bright with tears. She whispered to herself, “How will I get her back now?”
Ryan stepped through the door behind her. He froze. He swallowed. “Would you look at the time?”
Ethan looked at his watch, the alarm clock on the nightstand, back again. Its hands were flying: 6:55.
8:22.
10:13.
Somewhere outside, from the direction of the road, Ethan heard a low rumble.
Hunter said, “Close the doors. Now.”
Outside, on the horizon, Ethan saw two pinpricks of light from the direction of the road. Headlights. Coming this way.
He recognized the growing rumble for what it was: the approach of an engine.
Ethan said, “It’s him.”
10:52.
11:23.
11:45.
Ryan slammed the room’s front door, bolted the chain, grabbed the cluttered side table and heaved its contents to the floor.
The table was just wide enough to wedge it beneath the door’s knob like a barricade.
The fast-food bags and matches and ashes went everywhere.
The grooved stone egg went rolling, bounced off the wall, came to rest near Sarah’s boot.
When she didn’t move to take it, Ethan plucked up the stone and handed it to her.
“The Chief gave this to you for a reason. Hold on to it.”
At the edge of the room, Kyla was trying to shove the long dresser toward the back door. “A little help?”
11:47.
11:52.
11:55.
Outside, the mountain let out one of those booming moans, louder than a crack of thunder, and it was followed by a shake in the earth so powerful it knocked them all to their feet.
Hunter was the first back up, dragging Sarah from the bed so he could pull the mattress free.
With some help from Ryan, he heaved it against the window.
Ethan and Kyla rallied too. They dragged the long dresser to the hall and shoved it against the back door.
Behind him, Ethan heard Hunter’s chest rattle and wheeze.
He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the man cough up a spray of blood onto the back of his hand and try to wipe it away before anyone saw.
The roar of Jack Allen’s car filled the room. Headlights washed through a chink between the mattress and the window. Out in the dark, the Guardians were getting restless.
11:56.
11:57.
11:58.
The approaching car swerved into the parking lot, coming to a stop right outside their door. A familiar voice sounded just behind Ethan’s ear. A grinding crunch of teeth.
“Oh, son. Now we’re playing for keeps.”
Jack Allen laughed.
He laughed and laughed and laughed as the time trembled at 11:59, the racing hands of the clock suddenly hesitating like they couldn’t bear to allow this to happen. But there was no stopping it.
11:59 became midnight, and a horrible bellow of pain from the mountain knocked out the power. All of it, at once, just like that.
Room 4 sank into darkness, right along with the rest of the motel. A wave of SHRIEKS went up: the Guardians were on their way.
And from the front door, there came a courteous knock
Knock
Knock.