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4
The Bride
There was a muscular pickup truck parked by the back door, and the downstairs front windows of the old house glowed with the golden light of a fireplace. The bride did not even glance at it as she approached the house and went to the back door. A dozen others followed her from the wedding along with six more who had begun walking with her along the rain-swept roads. Strangers, but now part of something.
A family?
A horde?
A swarm?
The bride did not know which word fit. Maybe there was no word in the dictionary that explained this.
Her hand reached out to turn the doorknob, but it was a clumsy motion, and even as she did it, the woman inside could feel herself drifting backward from the action as if the one had nothing to do with the other. A reflex action, but not any choice of hers.
The kitchen door opened and her body went inside, taking her consciousness with it. As if whatever was about to happen in the old house required a witness.
The kitchen was dark, but light came from under the door. Warm light that moved and flowed. Firelight, not lamplight.
The body—the bride no longer considered it hers—stopped for a moment as if confused by this light. Or by the second door. Whatever reflex had allowed it to turn one doorknob was already fading, as if there were only a little rational thought or motor memory left and it was already draining away. Besides, there was no knob here. Only the flat wood and decorative trim of the door.
As wind blew in from the open doorway to the outside, it brushed against the inner door and made it sway. As if the door wanted to open and was trembling with anticipation.
The bride moved forward as the other wedding guests and the roadside strangers crowded in behind her. They milled, pushing forward. Pushing her forward.
Beyond the door there were voices.
Two.
Male and female. Young. Whispering.
“It’s okay,” said a boy’s voice. “We’re good here. It’s just the—”
He stopped speaking as the hand that the bride had once owned reached out and pushed on the door.
The door opened at her touch.
She moved into the next room. A big room that was part dining room and part den. A fire crackled in the stone hearth. And on the floor, wrapped in a thick blanket, with hair and clothes tousled and faces flushed, were the owners of those voices.
A pretty girl.
A handsome boy.
Just the two of them, caught in a moment of shock that had not yet turned to horror.
It would, though.
The bride knew that much.
Horror was what she had brought to this house. It was the only gift she had received at her wedding, and it was all she was allowed to share.
Horror, and all that the horror promised.
Every dark thing.
She spoke that horror in a voice of hunger and of need. The others behind her raised their voices in chorus.
She led the silent procession from the kitchen into the den.
