Little Emmett Read online

  Not an arm! Not an arm!

  Something else. It extended across the room, multiplying on its way. Emmett’s jaw dropped. His eyes stung, dry and watering, but he couldn’t close them. A scream caught in his chest and it ached. The extremities

  —not arms, not arms, they are not arms—

  splayed like streams and circled him. The last of the moonlight succumbed to the pressing appetite, stripped from the window like thread from an empty spool. The room blinked out.

  It’s everywhere! Nothing! All of it.

  The throbbing darkness hit him like a wave.

  Emmett tumbled onto the floor with a heavy thud. He lay there a short while. An unsettling, whining sound filled his ears…

  “What the hell?” Tobie’s voice.

  Suddenly the room was restored. The light returned to the window. He cut the darkness to ribbons with his darting, feverish eyes. Two heads popped up from their beds, snapped in his direction. It was then he realized he was the source of that whining sound. He was screaming. The rising terror in his throat plunged back into his belly, cold and aware. Ceasing his screams, he clutched his chest. He struggled to breathe.

  “Emmett?” It was Clark. “What’s wrong? Why are you on the floor?”

  He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t answer. He focused on catching his breath. He looked at Clark, beyond Clark, to the far corner beside Tyler’s bed. It wasn’t nearly as dark as it’d been before. Nothing hid there.

  Clark was next to him in an instant. He touched Emmett’s shoulder, and pulled away as he felt how clammy he was.

  “Was it a nightmare?” he asked.

  Emmett shuddered. “I… I guess…”

  Just then the bedroom door opened and Tyler entered. Emmett hadn’t even noticed he was gone. Tyler observed Emmett and Clark on the floor, shut the door slowly behind him.

  “What’s going on? Was someone screaming?”

  “Where were you?” Tobie asked.

  Tyler shook his head. “I just needed to take a piss.”

  “Emmett had a nightmare,” Clark said.

  Emmett wanted to explain but didn’t know how. It hadn’t felt like a nightmare…

  “Must have been a bad one,” Tyler said.

  “I dreamed,” Emmett began, as Tyler crossed the room toward his bed under the window, “someone was standing in the corner over there. They… they…”

  He was interrupted as the bedroom door opened again. In walked Mrs. Holmes, tiptoeing as if anyone might still be asleep after the commotion. She was in her undergarments, and her hair was down around her shoulders. Emmett didn’t recognize her at first.

  “What’s going on?” she said. “Was there screaming?”

  “Only Emmett’s,” Tobie blurted, and stifled laughter.

  “Emmett?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

  “It was just a nightmare,” Clark answered for him, returning to his own bed.

  “Hmm.” Mrs. Holmes stood a moment, studying the room. She stepped toward him, crouched down. “Let’s get you back into bed, love.”

  As he crawled into bed, Mrs. Holmes straightened his blankets. They were much drier than they’d been. She tucked the blankets over his shoulders, and he smelled that flowery perfume scent off her skin, light and slightly mixed with sweat. She put a hand to his forehead.

  “Do you feel all right? Need anything? A glass of water?”

  He shook his head. She straightened, hands on her hips. She turned in a circle, regarding the other boys. Then, without another word, she left the room.

  “Try not to fall out of bed again, Emmett,” Tobie said. “Don’t want The Humming Man to snatch you from the floor.”

  “Shut up, Tobie,” Clark said.

  Tobie pulled his blankets over himself. “Tell him to shut up. I’m not the one screaming like a girl in the middle of the night.”

  Emmett was too preoccupied to pay much attention to Tobie’s slights. As he rolled onto his side, his eyes centered on something beside him, on his pillow. His mother’s trinket.

  With a quick brush of his arm, he swept it off his pillow onto the floor beneath his bed.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  They stomped their muddied shoes over the entrance rug, kicked them off into the corner. Jackets unzipped, fell to the ground.

  “Just think,” Tobie said. “A couple more digs and we’ll be done. Well, after we make the roof…”

  Mrs. Holmes appeared from the kitchen.

  “Don’t just leave your jackets all over the floor! It’s called a coat closet for a reason!”

  As they put their things away, Bailey entered the room. She approached Emmett, holding a page in her hands. A drawing.

  “Look,” she said.

  It was another dragon. Big and horned and orange. This would be the seventh or eighth Emmett had seen. And while he grew tired of seeing them, he had to admit she was getting rather good at it.

  “Wow, even better than the last one,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Tobie asked.

  Bailey, doubtful, handed her drawing to Tobie. He looked it over, raised his brow and pursed his lips like a proper critic.

  “Eh, it’s okay. Not bad for a four-year-old.”

  “Oh, don’t listen to him, Bailey,” Jackie said. “He still draws like a one year old.”

  “What? I’m better than—”

  Tobie’s words died in his throat as they heard feet stomping above, headed for the stairs, accompanied by an old man’s feral grumblings.

  “Shits… you little shits, all of you… get the hell… get the hell…”

  Lionel Holmes—dressed in shabby pajamas, shirt unbuttoned, revealing his bony, scraggly chest—stood at the top of the stairs. His long, gray hair covered half his fuming face, eyes like lost embers struggling not to wink out. He looked down at each child, looked through them.

  “You all right, Mr. Holmes?” Clark asked.

  He regarded Clark, but only briefly. His gaze traveled beyond him, to Tyler standing at the open closet. He scrunched his face, his lips pulling from his bared teeth. Tyler grew visibly rigid.

  “This isn’t your house,” Lionel said. He remained at the head of the stairs, pounding one fist against the railing as he spoke. “This is my goddamn house.”

  Tyler looked about himself. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Who do you think you are?” Lionel said. Then, before anyone could answer, “Who do you think you are, I asked!”

  Tyler shrugged. “I don’t… I don’t know what you—”

  “I know you!” Lionel said. He pointed a skeletal finger, wagged it accusingly. “I know you! I know all about you! I do! I do… I do…”

  From behind the old man, both dogs came to see what the hubbub was about, their claws clicking over the hardwood. They arrived at either side of their master, sniffing him worriedly. One of them whined, turned in a circle, disappearing down the hall once more.

  “Lionel?” Mrs. Holmes said, coming into the foyer. “Lionel?”

  She came to stand with the children, peering up. Lionel’s eyes sank, like he tried to remember something. He whispered to himself, such forceful whispering that flecks of spittle sprayed. Hurriedly, Mrs. Holmes went to him, stood with him at the top of the stairs. He turned his head to see her, closed his eyes at her touch—taken to a different place inside his turbulent mind.

  “It’s okay. It’s all right. Come back to bed. You’re tired.”

  But whatever itching thought pestered him, it bit into him once more and his face wrinkled back up, scowling like a territorial wolf.

  “Not tired…” he mumbled. “Not tired…” He cast his eyes down at them once more. His accusing glare danced from child to child. Mrs. Holmes put a firmer grip on him, attempted to lead him away, but he gripped the railing tighter. Then his eyes settled on Emmett.

  “Who are you?” Lionel asked. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Okay, now,” Mrs. Holmes said, trying to lead him away with a bit more force. “Time to go
back to bed…”

  “Who are you?” Lionel repeated, voice on the rise. “What… what are you? What are you?”

  Emmett couldn’t look at him any longer. He looked at the others, their coats in their hands, and found them similarly staring back at him.

  “You don’t belong here…” Lionel shook his head. “You shouldn’t be here…”

  “Come now, Lionel,” Mrs. Holmes said, and turned him in place. His feet stepped over each other, barely keeping their balance. The anger was gone from his face. He looked to his wife with utter confusion.

  “He’s not right,” he told her. “He shouldn’t be here. He’s… he’s not right.”

  “Yes, all right. That’s fine,” Mrs. Holmes continued leading him away, their voices disappearing into the hallway, out of sight.

  The children stood frozen, waiting, listening until they heard nothing at all. They exchanged confounded glances with one another, until one of them couldn’t help smiling, simply out of a need to break the spell of tension over the room. Then they all smiled, snorting nervously to themselves.

  Only Emmett didn’t join in on the relief. As the others continued putting their coats in the closet, he stared emptily at the ground where he’d dropped his.

  “You okay there, Emmett?” Clark asked.

  Emmett straightened, collecting himself, and nodded.

  “Don’t worry about any of that,” Clark told him. “He’s getting worse. I don’t think he even knows where he is, sometimes.”

  Emmett was starting to feel that way himself.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE CREEPING COLD

  They stood in a row, bundled in their coats under a cold, late-autumn sky. Before them lay a carefully arranged tapestry of branches. Proud of their efforts, they took a moment to admire the finished work in silence.

  “I bet I could walk across it,” Tobie said.

  “Don’t,” Jackie advised. “You’d fall through for sure.”

  “Wanna bet?” Tobie touched one of the branches with his foot, pressed down and watched as the branches around it bowed as well.

  “Please don’t walk over the fort,” Clark begged. “Let us actually use it a couple times before you destroy it.”

  “It’d be fine. I don’t weigh that much.”

  Emmett, cheeks rosy and warm inside the hood of his puffy coat his mother left him, put an end to the developing argument with his own suggestion.

  “Let’s go inside.”

  One by one, they dropped through the uncovered corner of their hole, bent low to keep from knocking their heads on the low ceiling. It was a rather spacious hole, wide enough to spread out if they wanted. It was plenty deep, too, so that they only needed to duck a little to keep from hitting their heads on the ceiling. They ventured straight for the back, gathered together with pleased smirks across their faces. Clark pressed curiously against the ceiling of branches.

  “We did a pretty good job stacking these,” he said. “I don’t think we need to worry about it falling through.”

  It was surprisingly dark. If they split up to different corners, they’d struggle making each other’s faces out in the dim light.

  “Hey, Tyler!” Tobie called.

  With a delay, Tyler droned, “What…”

  “Come check out our fort!”

  They waited. Listened. They stared expectantly at the opening on the other side, shoes scuffing the dirt up above. Then a head popped in, took a quick look from side to side.

  “Nice,” Tyler said.

  Then he picked himself up and returned to his rock.

  Eventually they tired of pacing the hole, and took to their knees and collectively sighed. They sat for a minute, getting bored but reluctant to admit it.

  “Now what?” Clark asked.

  “Now… we wait… FOR THE HUMMING MAN TO GET US!”

  Emmett screamed as hands squeezed his sides, jolting him up on his feet. Tobie stood behind him, moving his hands like lobster claws, pinching, pinching, pinching…

  “Did I scare you, Emmett?”

  “Stop!” Emmett shouted, stamping his foot.

  “Why? You scared The Humming Man might get you?”

  “Leave me alone,” Emmett said.

  “He’s coming for you, Emmett,” Tobie rasped, pinching his hand-claws. He stepped closer. Emmett took a step back. “He’s gonna getcha…”

  “Cut it out, Tobie,” Jackie said.

  “He’s coming, Emmett. While you sleep. Don’t close your eyes or he’ll get you…”

  Tobie lunged at Emmett, snapping his fingers.

  “Stop!” Emmett shouted.

  Tobie danced around him, giggling like the idiot he was. He pinched Emmett’s side, pinched his shoulder. Emmett reached over their heads, found the most readily available branch. Like unsheathing a sword, he pulled it from the ceiling with one hand.

  “I SAID STOP!”

  Before Tobie had any chance to regret his poor decisions, Emmett clubbed him. Tobie crumpled to the ground. Jackie and Clark gasped.

  Emmett, his heart a chariot race, dropped the branch at his feet. They watched for several seconds and Tobie didn’t budge.

  “Did you just kill my brother?”

  Tobie blinked his eyes. Sluggishly, he pushed up on one elbow. With his other hand, he felt the top of his head. He noticed them staring.

  “Did I pass out?”

  “Yes,” Clark said. “Just passed right out.”

  Heart chugging, legs numb, Emmett confessed. “I hit you on the head with a stick. I’m sorry.”

  Tobie rubbed his head, observed his hand. He looked around the fort as though he didn’t know where they were. Disoriented.

  “Why would you hit me?”

  “You were being a jerk,” Jackie said. “You kind of deserved it.”

  Tobie rubbed his head some more, and then the last thing probably any of them expected happened. His scowl softened, transformed into something much more pitiable. Before they saw much else, he buried his face in his hands.

  “Tobie…”

  “Don’t touch me,” he said, his voice choked. He hid his face in his elbow while he climbed to his feet. “I’m gonna have… brain damage now, or something. I’m gonna…”

  “You’re not going to have brain damage,” Jackie reassured him. “Probably just a headache, is all…”

  “I’m sorry,” Emmett said again.

  Tobie shoved past him toward the light in the corner. Sniffling, he muttered that he was going home. As the others watched, unsure of what to say to stop him, he climbed out from the fort and was gone.

  “I’m sorry I hit your brother,” Emmett said, unable to help feeling guilty. Maybe he’d gone too far.

  “Don’t be. He’s done worse and gotten away with it. He’s just not as tough as he pretends.” Jackie sighed. “Probably time to head back anyway.”

  They followed Jackie to the hole in the ceiling. She stood there, head above ground, and remained there a moment, possibly seeing something they couldn’t.

  “What are you doing?” Clark asked.

  “Tobie?” Jackie said.

  Somewhere just outside, Tobie spoke concernedly. “You guys…”

  “What is it?” Clark asked.

  Jackie hoisted herself out of the fort. Clark stood a moment, then climbed out, too. Emmett reached, slapped his hands on the ground above his head, and struggled to pull himself up.

  “Clark,” he said. “Clark, I can’t get out.”

  Distracted, Clark walked out of view. All Emmett saw were the trees against the sky. He slapped his hands on the ground, pulled and pulled, but his fingers found no purchase on the hard dirt. He succeeded only in dragging pine needles into the fort. He jumped, caught a glimpse of the others standing in a row with their backs to him. He heard Jackie’s voice, but wasn’t sure what she said. Then Clark repeated it. “Tyler,” they were saying, likely rousing him from his nap.

  “Guys!” Emmett called.

  Their voices murm
ured outside. Tyler was up now. Emmett tried one last time to climb out of the fort and failed the same as before.

  “Guys!”

  Clark appeared. He bent down, offered Emmett his hand.

  “Come on, we’re going home.”

  “What’s happening?”

  He took Clark’s hand, scaling the inside of the fort with his feet until Clark pulled him up and out. He dusted himself off as Clark immediately joined the others, leaving. Emmett hurried after them. He looked over his shoulder, searching the woods for whatever it was they’d seen.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What did you guys see?”

  “There’s a man across the stream,” Jackie said. “Watching us.”

  He looked back one last time to see for himself…

  His belly was plunged in ice-water when he made him out. The man in the trees. A hundred or so feet behind them, on the other side of the stream—he stood plain as day, watching them go. As Emmett studied him, the man lifted his hand over his head and gave a courteous little wave. Emmett’s icy guts clenched tighter and he faced frontward with the others.

  “Who is that?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” Tyler said, leading the group. “Never seen anyone up here before.”

  At the rate the others’ legs were pumping, Emmett got the feeling it might be a while before they ever saw their fort again.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  And he was right.

  “What did he look like?” Mrs. Holmes asked fretfully shortly after they arrived home. “Did you see his face?”

  “Just like a normal guy, I guess,” Tyler said.

  “How old?”

  “I don’t know… maybe in his thirties? I don’t know. He wasn’t standing that close…”

  Mrs. Holmes thought long and hard. She let out a heavy sigh.

  “Take your shoes off, all of you. You’ll be inside the rest of the day. And…” She paused, shook her head disappointedly. “It’ll be a while, I think, before it’s a good idea to go back there. Just to be safe.”

  Unanimously saddened by this news, not a single child complained.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The first snowfall arrived late one evening. As they wrapped up their nightly reading ritual, Clark took a peek outside one of the foyer windows.