Little Emmett Read online

  Tobie—the loudest of any of them—was wah, wah, wah-ing beside him and Emmett wished he’d be quiet before he made things worse. Somehow he’d make things worse. He always did. He could never keep his mouth shut.

  “Be quiet!” The man ordered. But Tobie continued to howl, so that the man clenched his jaw irritably. He pointed the gun across the table toward Tobie, whose pinched face saw nothing in his distress. “I said be quiet!”

  Tobie opened his eyes then, and upon seeing the barrel turned toward his face he hiccupped once, choked himself into silence. He trembled in his chair like someone shivering for warmth. He looked toward his sister, who wept in perfect silence across from them, and they held each other’s fear-struck gazes for a long while.

  “That’s better,” the man said. “You’re scaring my daughter…”

  Bailey had cried herself numb by then. She was red in the face, but she showed no expression. Her father bent to her, holding his gun in one hand, offering his free arm to take hold of her. She made no effort to climb into his arms, but she did little to fight it, either.

  “There, there,” he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “Come on, now. Let daddy hold you. That’s it. Let daddy hold you…”

  He scooped her up, and she put her head over his shoulder as if for a nap, her legs dangling below his arm where he held her up beneath her rump. There he bounced her, like an infant, shh-shh-shh-ing in her ear.

  “It’s all right. Daddy’s here. Daddy’s here now.”

  Tyler coughed once more from the floor. He was sitting in a pool of his own blood, fanning out beneath his legs. His eyes were closed.

  Bailey’s father, continuing to soothe his daughter, lifted his chin toward the ceiling. “The devil is in this house,” he said. “Yes. I feel it. It’s all over this place…”

  “You’re the devil!” Jackie cried, though she didn’t turn to him to say it. Emmett cringed at the sound of her voice, felt every muscle in his body coil up defensively. The man stepped closer, but no one turned to see him lest he take special notice of them.

  “Oh, no,” the man said. He put his mouth to Bailey’s head, to her hair, and his lips moved like a fish’s lips, comforting. “I’m not the devil. No, no, no…” He paced at the end of the table, bouncing his daughter on one shoulder, resting the shotgun over the other. Bailey sniffled softly, beginning to cry again. “Hmm? What is it sweetheart? Don’t be sad. There’s no need to be sad…”

  There was a sound of something falling. Emmett turned to see what it was, and saw Tyler now lying on his side. There was so much blood on the floor, it didn’t seem possible there was any left in him. Likely there wasn’t, and his place on the floor was now a permanent one.

  “Don’t be sad. Everything will be all right.”

  The man turned his back to them, pacing toward the foyer. Emmett looked at each of the others, who were finally beginning to sober up from their hysteria. Now they, too, stared at the death around them, their gazes lost in it. So much to process, their soft faces were vacant with trying.

  The man circled back to them, a thoughtful look in his eye.

  “These are only children,” he said, speaking to the air. Possibly himself. “Just children… like my sweet Bailey… my sweetheart…”

  None of them dared say a word.

  “A child should never be taken from their father,” he said to the ceiling, eyes centered there as if someone were above them to listen. Then suddenly he looked down, and his attention snapped to Emmett. “You’ve been taken from your father, too, haven’t you? I can see it.” He again put his lips to his daughter’s hair, but his eyes remained on poor Emmett, holding him with their feverish stare. “Your father loves you. Just remember that. A father’s love is everything…”

  Bailey’s mind must have been catching up, as she started crying a little louder, her lungs getting ready for round two. Her father cooed in her ear, bouncing her as he paced again from side to side.

  “I know. I know, sweetheart. You miss mommy, too. We both do.” He tucked his shotgun awkwardly under his arm, so that he could rub his daughter’s back. “It’s okay… it’s all right… We’ll see mommy again soon. All right? I’ll make sure of it…”

  Emmett was startled by the sound of Jackie’s voice.

  “What are you going to do to us?”

  The man considered her for an uncomfortable amount of time. Jackie slouched in her chair, wishing she hadn’t asked.

  “No, no… It doesn’t matter…” he said to himself. He played with Bailey’s hair, tucked it behind her ears. “They’re children. Helpless children… This world isn’t fair. Not at all.” He considered each of them, the four children seated at the table, a worrisome cloud over his brow. “This world has turned its back on us. Did you know? We’re not human to them… No. No, no.” He cocked his head back, trying to get a good look at his daughter, huffing and puffing over his shoulder. Each time he saw her face, his own expression was transformed into something much warmer, so that he was almost another person entirely. “That’s why we’re going someplace better. Isn’t that right, sweetheart? Where we’re equal as anyone else. It’s not for them to decide, is it? We’re not sick. They’re the ones who are sick…” He pulled his daughter tighter against himself, and then juggled the shotgun under his arm back into his hand. Emmett tensed, toes curling, as his eyes swept over them. “The devil is in this house. You all should leave, before it gets into you, too.”

  He lifted the shotgun so that it rested against his shoulder like before. He kissed his daughter’s head again and again. Then he cast those wide, unpredictable eyes back upon them, full of urgency.

  “Go on!” he shouted. He swung the shotgun toward the front door behind him. “Get out of here, before it’s too late!”

  Chair legs squealed and grated the floor as they nervously jumped to their feet. All but Emmett. He watched the others file quickly out of the kitchen with their heads down as Bailey’s father followed them with the barrel of shotgun. He feared it must be a terrible joke. Despite the ice-cold pang it gave him to see it, he observed Tyler’s corpse on the kitchen floor one last time, confounded by how they weren’t facing the very same fate.

  “Emmett.” It was Clark. He was stopped halfway across the foyer, as Jackie and Tobie were already slipping their bare feet into their shoes behind him. “Come on.”

  Tears sprung to Emmett’s eyes as he finally stood from his chair. Blinded by them, he moved past Bailey and her father, those cruel, metal eyes trained on him as he went.

  “I’m sorry, Bailey,” he whispered. It was agony, the swell in his throat.

  He made his way to the front door, where all the shoes were piled in the corner. Bailey’s bright, tiny voice whined pitifully over her father’s shoulder, watching them leave without her.

  Always leaving without her.

  “Put your shoes on,” Jackie told Emmett. “Hurry.”

  He peered toward the kitchen, to see Bailey’s father sweeping things off the table with the barrel of the shotgun, clearing a space…

  “Come on, Emmett.”

  He slipped his naked feet into his shoes and did his best to quickly tie up the laces. The front door was open. Tobie and Clark stood outside in the cold, waiting for him and Jackie to follow. As he looked up at them, waiting in the dark, the looks on their faces were such that he’d never forget. They were alive and struggling to believe it. Torn between relief and guilt for their apparent luck.

  Jackie pulled him by the arm, led him out onto the cool porch with the others. She shut the door shut behind them. Their feet kicked down the steps, scraped through the yard in their hurry to get to the other side, to get as far away from the house as possible in as little time as possible.

  “What about Bailey…” Emmett mumbled in a low, distant tone. “What about Bailey…”

  Jackie grabbed hold of his hand, and he squeezed it welcomingly. They passed Mrs. Holmes’ truck, parked in the center of the yard. The sight of it sent
chills up Emmett’s spine—the things it had likely seen…

  A sudden blast gave them pause. They each looked back. The house—

  Not a house. Not anymore. A graveyard.

  —loomed in its tall, narrow way, dark and forlorn under the night sky. Eerily quiet in the wake of the gunshot. The children stood and watched for a good minute. Shallow breaths, vaporous in the night air. Each of them was grateful not to be inside anymore… and also ashamed.

  “We have to go,” Jackie said. “We have to keep go—”

  The windows flashed with another jarring blast. Emmett winced as Jackie’s grip crushed him. Then silence. A deeper one than the last. They stood frozen a moment longer. Horrified. They saw nothing, but they knew everything. The house was truly empty now.

  Without a word, they continued on, sneakers kicking the dirt with haste. When they reached the road, they didn’t look back. They kept moving, watching the ground go by under their feet as they journeyed down the mountain.

  The Holmes house disappeared behind them without a goodbye.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Where are we going?”

  They’d walked fifteen minutes without speaking to one another, shivering down the mountain road, lost in their own heads. The night was still young, and the last thing any of them wished to speak about was the future. But it was Tobie who broke the silence on that, unable to keep his uncertainty a secret any longer.

  “I don’t know,” Jackie said. “But we can’t go back.”

  “They’re dead,” Clark said, almost a whisper. “They’re really dead.”

  Emmett hated being right. He’d known something was coming. Something bad. Then, huddled with the others in the dark on their way toward the valley, he remembered.

  “Oh no,” he said. He stopped. The others slowed, too, looking curiously at him. “I left it… I left it!”

  “You left what?” Tobie asked.

  Emmett buried his face in his hands. “I left it, I left it!”

  He meant, of course, his mother’s trinket, but he didn’t bother mentioning that to them, and they didn’t ask.

  “Whatever it is, Emmett, it’s gone now.” The confidence in Jackie’s voice assured him it was true. There was no point believing otherwise. “Everything any of us had is gone. We can’t go back.”

  “You mean the necklace, don’t you?” Clark said, stepping close.

  “I’m sorry, Emmett,” Jackie said. “I left things I cared about, too. But it’s too late.”

  “But why can’t we go back?” Tobie asked. “I mean… where else are we going to go?”

  “We’re not going back, because…” Jackie strained to say it. “Do any of you want to see it again? What happened up there? I don’t. I don’t want to know what happened. We know what happened. I don’t want to see it… or… or…”

  Tobie put his hand on his sister’s heaving shoulder. “Okay. I get it.”

  Jackie shook her head. “I don’t know where we’re going. Just… away, for now. We’ll think of something.”

  “We better soon,” Tobie said. “Before anyone finds us.”

  “No one’s going to find us.”

  “How will we survive?” Clark asked. “What about food?”

  “I said I don’t know!”

  “We can steal food,” Tobie said. “That’s not hard.”

  “Can we figure this out later?” Jackie asked. “I can’t think straight. I’m tired, and… let’s just find someplace we can rest. Okay?”

  They all agreed, though sleep was the furthest thing from most of their minds, no matter how strongly their bodies ached for it. So they continued walking, returning to their thoughtful silence, down and down the mountain in the cool dark.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Emmett complained he needed a break, that his legs were tired, and there was no argument from the others. They left the road a short distance into the trees until they found an adequate place to sit down.

  The moon was pasty and white over their heads through the branches, giving them enough light to see where they lay. For several minutes all they did was yawn and shiver.

  “It’s cold,” Tobie said, clutching himself.

  They sat cross-legged together, as close as they could get. They were lucky to have their shoes, at least.

  “He just let us go,” Clark said, voicing the thoughts they were all still having.

  “Except Bailey,” Emmett said plainly, followed by nothing but silence from the others. It was hard enough to think about.

  “There was nothing we could do,” Jackie said. “Not for any of them.”

  Any of them.

  And there were many of them now. First there was Lionel. Then the dogs. Then Mrs. Holmes. And Tyler. And then Bailey…

  Lionel wasn’t the first. There were others. Much longer ago…

  Again, Emmett pushed those thoughts away. A different time. A different place…

  He slapped his arm as he felt something biting there. Things crawling in the dirt, up their legs. He scratched his head, the back of his neck, itching all over…

  “I might have an idea,” Tobie said. The others were too tired and doubtful to ask, but they listened. “Jackie, what about the Richardsons? Neil and Megan?”

  “What about them?”

  “They’d look after us. Or find someone who could. They’d help us.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “They were our best friends, of course they’d help us.”

  Jackie sighed. “Their parents could get in a lot of trouble for taking us in. Maybe they’d help us, but… maybe they’d be scared of us, too.”

  “Well, maybe they know a place. A place like the Holmes’…” He gulped, second-guessing himself. “Better than the Holmes’, even.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “What else can we do?” Tobie cried. “We can’t live in the woods forever.”

  “I know that.”

  “Well, don’t shit on my idea if you don’t have one of your own.”

  “It’s just a pretty big maybe. That’s all.”

  Jackie smacked her cheek, then checked the palm of her hand. Even in the dark, her hopelessness was apparent to them all. Still, it was at least an idea, and something was better than nothing.

  “I guess it’s a start,” she said. “It’s just a matter of knowing where we’re going.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Despite the creepy-crawlies on the forest floor, or the chilly air on their arms and faces, the children managed to nap quite a while on the ground, albeit poorly. They slept against each other, keeping warm as possible.

  Pretty soon they were each awake together, sitting up in their little circle, stretching their arms over their heads, the woods still dark around them. They couldn’t know for sure, but there was a definite feeling that the sun would be rising shortly.

  Soon they were back on their feet, continuing down the mountain toward the valley. Toward town.

  “Bad idea to rest,” Tobie said. “People will see us during the day.”

  “People would see us any time of day,” Clark said. “At least now we just look like regular kids, instead of… prowlers.”

  “Guys, look.” Jackie pointed down the slope they were headed, through the trees off the road. “We’re nearly to the bottom. See?”

  They were coming up on other houses, now. Houses along the foothills. Houses which resembled cabins, some of them. Others were huge—mansion-like, with enormous patios in the back, with covered hot-tubs and barbecues. All their windows were dark, still so early in the morning. The children crept as they neared them, staying on the Holmes’ road which would eventually join a public one farther ahead, bleeding into this secluded neighborhood.

  Ritzy.

  That’s the word Emmett’s mother had used on their way up, those few months ago.

  Swanky.

  “We need to be quick,” Jackie said. “And extra quiet. We don’t want anyone looking out their windows for us, or calling the po
lice because a group of kids are wandering their neighborhood at five in the morning.”

  “How do you know what time it is?”

  “I don’t. But it’s getting lighter. Can’t you tell?”

  She was right. The black sky was getting steadily grayer. Soon it would be blue.

  “You know how to get to your friends’ house?” Clark asked.

  “No,” Jackie said.

  “It’s easy,” Tobie said reassuringly. “All we have to do is find our school. We can find their house from there. That shouldn’t be so hard, right?”

  Jackie shook her head. “We’ll see.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  As the sun climbed higher, the sky turned a deep blue, then brightened to orange, then yellow, and ever-so-steadily to blue once more.

  At the sound of a garage door rattling open nearby, they ducked into someone’s driveway, behind the bushes there, and waited as one of the neighbors pulled into the road beside them and then departed out of sight.

  “People are heading to work now,” Jackie said. “We need to be careful. It’s still too early for kids like us to be wandering around.”

  Quietly, they slinked their way through the rest of the neighborhood until it started to change. The large houses, with their many windows and their private fences and their carefully landscaped yards, gave way to a more modest, recognizable neighborhood. To Emmett, at least. He couldn’t say as much for the others. After all, perhaps any of them—Jackie and Tobie or Clark—had come from wealthy families.

  No one was safe from the illnesses they were all so afraid of.

  “How much longer?” Emmett asked.

  “Come on, Emmett,” Clark said. “We can’t stop again. Not yet.”

  He legs were sore, and his feet felt so incredibly heavy on the ends of them. If they couldn’t find help, and this was what their lives were destined to be—constantly running, hiding, sneaking around—he wasn’t sure he’d survive it.

  More and more cars were passing now. They tried to hide each time one came, but not always were they able to. The sidewalks were long, and the fences didn’t always allow them an escape. So they walked as casually as they could, instructed all the while by Jackie under her breath.