There’s a long pause, then another voice pipes up. It’s Bowie, Alison’s six-year-old son. “Marlo! Can you come over and play?”
“Poppy said it’s fine,” Alison chimes in.
Despite the inherent nosiness of her PI career, Alison is a sweetheart. In the middle of the night, however, that sweetness has turned sour. Her presence is so out of place that even my daughter doesn’t buy it, simply shaking her head and furrowing her brow.
That’s a good read, I think, proud.
I turn to the others, refusing to waste any more time. “Let’s go,” I whisper. “Out through the back.”
The three of us stand up and hustle through the kitchen, keeping our bodies crouched low and our eyes peeled. I grab a butcher knife as I pass the block, gripping it tight.
Alison finally loses her cool. “Get out hereright fuckingnow!” she shrieks from behind the front door, feral with rage. She starts hammering with her fists, her three-knock rhythm devolving into a frantic cascade of pounds. “Marlo! Get out here or I’ll cut your fucking fingers off and make myself a necklace, you little bitch!”
I briefly transition into Mom Mode despite our violently heightened circumstances, instinctively shaking my head at Marlo. “We don’t say mean things like that, right?” I remind her, struggling to act natural.
“You said the F-word when you got here,” she informs me. “Twice.”
“That’s … a good point,” I murmur. “Well then, you have my permission to swear tonight.”
“Ass,” she says.
“Great work, sweetie.”
We’re moving down the hallway now, headed toward my bedroom where another door will take us directly to the back patio. As we pass the living room, my portrait of Stevie Nicks in four brilliant variants of neon color stares down at us, watching as we scurry along. There’s a sharp turn in the hallway ahead, and as I approach this bend I can already feel the excitement bubbling up within me. Almost there. Almost free.
A figure steps around the corner, large and hulking in the darkness.
I let out a startled yelp as my mind struggles to shift gears. This shape is not Alison, nor Eddie for that matter, and despite the dim lighting I can still make out the enormous hatchet hanging casually by their side.
“Hey, Marlo,” comes a deep, unfamiliar voice. “I’m taking you to school this morning.”
The three of us stagger back as a terrible crash of shattering glass rings out from another room, then another. I glance over to see a new figure stumbling through the darkness, trying to get their bearings in this unfamiliar space.
A woman calls from the guest room. “Is Marlo here?”
I course correct, retreating our group back down the hallway, but this path is quickly blocked by a skinny man wielding a giant pair of gardening shears.
“Hey, everyone just needs to calm down,” he coos. “Which one of you is Marlo?”
We slowly back into the living room, the mob closing in on us from every side. My eyes are darting, feverishly hunting for an exit, but there’s just too many intruders. Forcing our way through is no longer an option. Regardless, I’m not going down without a fight. This might be the end of the line for me, but I’ll be damned if I let them take my daughter and keep their teeth.
There’s a part of my subconscious mind that keeps begging me to empathize, desperately reminding me that these arereal peoplewithreal livesandreal stories. They’re not the homicidal maniacs they appear to be, victims of Eddie Michaels in their own way.
Unfortunately, I can’t really care about that right now.
Noah lifts his bat and I prepare my knife, but before we get a chance to use them a strange, rattling voice spills across the room, halting our assailants with a simple command.
“Alright, gang, that’s enough!” Eddie croaks. “Stop moving!”
The mob freezes in place, transforming into statues of flesh and bone.
“Lights up!”
The man with the axe strolls over and switches on a nearby lamp, granting the scene a terrible new clarity. The mob’s faces are now fully visible, and while a few of them are unknown to me, the vast majority of the attackers are my neighbors from up and down the block. The skinny man with gardening shears is Kevin Lowery, from the end of the street, a guy whose cat always ends up over here for Marlo to pet and feed. Next to him is Taylor Peterson, a girl who babysat for me a few times when Noah wasn’t available. She’s holding a hammer. Alison and Bowie have found their way in, brandishing a power drill and a screwdriver, respectively.
The whole gang is motionless, their approach halted mid-stride to create a surreal assortment of poses.
Eddie crawls out from the darkness, weaving through the bodies on his many skittering legs and then stopping before us. The massive, primeval earwig rears up a bit, getting a good look at Marlo as she cowers in fear. My daughter is beside herself, unable to keep from sobbing as she buries her head against my legs.
