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“Nothing to be done now. Tunnel goes on for a ways. We’re gonna follow, see if we can discover the end.”
“I’ll call for backup.”
D.D. reaches into her back pocket for her phone.
The older woman moves. Reaches down. Lifts up. Suddenly she has a fire poker gripped in her man-sized hands.
D.D. remains focused on her phone, tapping away.
I open my mouth, but of course, no sound comes out.
The big woman closes the gap between them.
D.D. hits another button on her phone.
The big woman raises the poker over her head.
Too late, I realize her colors aren’t blue and gray. Instead, she swirls with voids of black, screams of red. She is sadness, pain, rage.
She and the demon, they have the same colors.
I try to scream. Silent. Horrified. At the last second, my brain fires to life. I stop wasting effort on my useless throat, rap on the wall instead. Three knocks. Hard, urgent.
D.D. glances up. Just as the fireplace poker whistles down.
D.D. throws up her forearm, tries to twist away. A sickening crack as metal meets bone, then her right arm falls limply to her side.
The poker rises back up, the grandmother woman not looking anything like a grandmother anymore.
I move. I throw myself against the edge of the huge oak table, ramming it straight into D.D. and the woman, because there’s no way to hit one and not the other.
D.D. gets knocked forward, straight into the tunnel, while the hulking sheriff’s lady tumbles sideways, poker clanging to the floor as she tries to catch herself.
Then I feel it. Something cold and dark gathering behind me.
The house tried to warn me. Go, it had moaned. Go, go, go.
But of course, I didn’t listen to it any more than I listened to my mother so many years before.
And now...
I turn. He stands in the middle of the wood-framed doorway. He holds his favorite serrated blade in front of him.
He grins.
And I know exactly what’s going to happen next.
