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She sat up. The pain between her legs made her vision swim. The shadow of her father flew past her to the door. He’d been getting ready for the day, washing up and shaving. A set of fake fangs was gripped in his hand.
“Stop making such a racket!” her father said, his mouth cupped against the door.
“Let us in!” A muffled cry came from outside. It was the doctor’s voice. But it was hoarse now, bereft of composure and dispassion.
Her father was about to unlock the door when he paused. A grayness settled into him like a layer of sediment. He moved to the shutters next to the door and pressed a button to open them.
Ashley June could now see the doctor on the doorstep. Farther down the street a block away was his wife. She was carrying the young girl in her arms. The girl did not seem to be awake. Her head was slung backward, her hair dragging on the ground. Except Ashley June did not remember the girl having long hair. She peered more closely.
It was not hair.
It was blood.
Long strings of blood streaming from an open wound on the girl’s head. Trailing to the ground.
It was dusk. It was past dusk.
The girl’s legs dangled out of her mother’s cradled arms. Something was wrong with one of her legs. It was misshapen and bent at an acute angle.
The man pounded the door on the other side. “Hurry up! It’s almost night!”
“Why did you come back?!” Ashley June’s father responded angrily.
“The horse bucked. Something spooked it, threw us off before running away. A hoof caught my girl, broke her leg. We were too far from our home—we’d never have made it. Returning here was our only option. ”
“You should never have—”
And then he froze. As did her father. At a single sound.
Howling. From somewhere across the street. Joined, a second later, by another howl.
The neighborhood was waking up. To th
e smell of heper blood.
Her neighbors were probably still dangling in their sleepholds, their half-asleep minds unable to comprehend or believe what they were smelling. But very soon, they would rush out of their homes in their pajamas and into the darkening dusk light.
Ashley June, her body still wracked with pain, sat up.
“For heaven’s sake, open the door!” the doctor shouted.
Her father: “No. ”
A pause. Then the sound of pounding ensued, only louder, more urgent, even angry. “Open up! They’re coming!”
“No. ”
“You can’t do this. You leave us out here, we’re all dead. You hear me? All of us. ”
Her father did not say anything. He only pressed his hands against the door, his head hung low like a man pushing uphill against a heavy boulder. Ashley June glanced at her brother’s room. The door was still closed, her brother and mother staying behind it, willfully blind.
“You let us die out here and you lose me! You lose everything we’ve worked so hard for. ”
Her father did not reply.
“Think of the Origin! He’s only seven! How long do you think he’ll last alone? Now let us in!” The rest of what he said was drowned out by the sound of pounding. It was her father pounding the door now, not the doctor, three, four times, tortured with indecision.
More howls broke out.
“I can’t let you in!” her father said. “She’ll leave a blood trail right into the house. ”
“It’s nothing! Just a scratch. We can stem it. It—”
“No! She’s left a trail. There has to be an explanation for the trail. ” And the next words from Ashley June’s father came out lower, the quiet of guilt. “I’ll let you in. But not the girl. Do you understand? Not the girl. ”
There was a long silence on the other side of the door.
More howls screeched into the dusking sky.
Ashley June moved to the other side of the sofa. Her legs dragged along, paralyzed like lifeless sacks. From there, she was able to glimpse out the unshuttered window, see more of the street. She observed the doctor hurrying back to his wife and daughter. He pulled his daughter out of his wife’s arms, let the young body fall misshapen onto the ground. The leg, bent at a hideous angle, lay on the ground like a broken twig. The mother screamed, her high-pitched screech joining with the wails of the neighborhood.
