(A sample from Crawlspace.)
© 2009 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
THE CRAWLSPACE was alive with dust and insect leavings, shook up and cast about by Tommy’s frantic efforts to escape. He pulled himself closer to the outside grill. But he heard shoes clump-clump at the back door. The Professor must be there, holding his Burner at the ready. Tommy heard their voices:
‘Eddie, you stay here.’
‘But I want to see it!’
‘You don’t understand. These Things have fantastic strength—’
With a last surge Tommy reached the grill and banged against it. The metal bent and broke and tore free from the foundations.
Tommy put his arm out, twisted one shoulder through and paused. He was gasping. His tentacles writhed out of his arm – a sick, disgusting sight. He was stuck.
From the front of the house he could hear Papers come out. From the back he heard the Professor step down off the porch.
He wished with all his heart. He glared at his arm, at the oozing, slimy tentacles. ‘Change!’ he whispered. ‘Change back!’
The tentacles seemed to recede a little into his arm. Back in the crawlspace, his trunk felt like it was shrinking. He felt more human now. He was sure he was smaller. He crawled out on the ground. Weak. Gasping. In pain.
He heard the Professor’s voice. ‘Papers!’
‘Here!’
Tommy gathered himself up. He started to limp across the yard. From the back yard he could hear the Professor cock his Burner and give the order to Papers:
‘Now! Go!’
Tommy put on a burst of speed and scuttled across the yard to a delivery truck parked at the street. He crouched behind it.
He saw Papers and the Professor meet at the grill. The Professor shoved the twisted wreck of the grill with the muzzle of his Burner. ‘It got away. Damn!’
‘Muh, mightn’t it still be under there?’
‘Doubt it.’
The Professor lay down his Burner and knelt at the opening. He touched the frame and brought his fingers to his nose. Tommy looked down at his arm. He saw traces of his own Jelly on his skin. It made him sick to his stomach.
The professor showed Papers the Jelly from the frame. They put their heads into the opening. Bang! They jumped.
Eddie appeared at the corner.
‘Eddie!’ the Professor shouted.
Eddie lowered his head. ‘Sorry. The door slipped.’
‘Never mind, Eddie. Come here. You did a good job before, tracing it. Tell me, is it still under there?’
Tommy watched the Kid bend over the opening. He was smelling at it. He stepped back suddenly, bending over.
‘Ugh – gross—’ The Kid turned away and started puking.
Behind the delivery truck, Tommy studied his right hand. Some of the tentacles still showed. And some Jelly was oozing out from his pores. Absently he licked at it, feeling the buzz swirling into his head and the blood, or something else, surging through him. It felt as good as jerking off.
He loped away, past the houses. At the end of the street he made it to some woods. He slipped into the shadows of the trees and looked back.
At the Otis house, Papers bent over the Kid. The Professor shut his phone.
‘It’s Trickman,’ he said. Tommy could hear him, just barely. He never could have heard him if he only had measly human hearing. ‘Otis is on his way. They got to him.’
‘Then it isn’t the Puh, Principal who’s here.’
The Professor shook his head and looked around warily. ‘No. This must be another one. Maybe,’ he said, ‘more than one.’
Papers patted the Kid on the back. ‘Eddie, are you okay?’
‘You’ll be all right, son,’ said the Professor. ‘Sometimes the stink of the things’ Jelly – it always made Tommy sick, too.’
Papers looked up and met the Professor’s gaze. ‘Tuh, Tommy. You don’t think the, the Thing – it didn’t, guh, get Tommy?’
‘We better take a last look through the house. Quick, before Otis gets here.’
ACROSS TOWN, Principal Otis’ Volvo burned down the road. The Ford followed.
Trickman bit into his ice cream cone and moaned.
‘Mmm, Rocky Road.’
Styles didn’t rise to the bait. He focused on the Volvo up ahead. ‘Yeah, Phineas, go on, we know where you’re headed.’
‘Slow down,’ Trickman said. ‘Let him think we lost him.’
‘You just don’t want to spill any of that ice cream.’
DOWN THE STREET from the Otis house, Papers and the Professor and Eddie watched from a bus bench. They watched the silver blue Volvo turn a corner and pull into the Otis driveway. Principal Otis glanced back from the door. He rushed inside.
The Ford pulled up. Papers, the Professor and Eddie stood up from the bench and greeted it.
‘You get him?’ Styles asked, climbing out.
The Professor nodded at the house. ‘He went inside.’
‘Hey, where’s Tommy?’ Trickman asked.
Papers shook his head.
‘Something happened inside the house,’ the Professor said. ‘There was another one. We lost Tommy.’
‘Shit … poor kid…’ Trickman looked upset.
Styles grimaced. ‘Fucking Crawlers.’
The Professor checked his watch. ‘Yes.’
Trickman hauled out the gym bag with the Burners. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘What are we waiting for?’
IN HIS BEDROOM, Principal Otis packed in a hurry. Some magazines fell to the floor, glossy with pictures of half-naked young men. Principal Otis stopped and looked out the window. Through the window he saw the Team – Trickman, Papers, the Professor, Styles – walking up the drive. Principal Otis crossed to the dresser and pulled out a small, ugly pistol.
AT THE STREET, Eddie crouched behind the delivery truck. He watched the Team approach the house.
The Professor gestured and they split up. Styles and Trickman took the front door. Papers and the Professor headed around back.
Eddie looked at the side of the truck. There was a bit of Jelly on the bumper. Eddie touched it and sniffed his fingers. Against his will, not wanting to, full of disgust and nausea, he brought the strange substance closer to his lips. His tongue slipped through his lips all on its own.
He licked the Jelly.
Flash—
Eddie lost touch with the delivery truck. He had slipped somewhere else. He was still on the street and could see the house they had searched. But it was different somehow. He saw everything in an odd way. Everything was moving a little strangely. He was peering through trees in the dusk. Something was moving through the woods over there. The red sky was dimming overhead.
Flash—
TRICKMAN kicked in the front door to the Otis house. Around back the Professor shouldered in the kitchen door.
In the bedroom Principal Otis heard the doors breaking. He froze. Sweat gleamed on his face. He licked his lips and grimaced. He fingers twitched as he loaded the pistol.
Papers and the Professor crossed the kitchen into the back hall.
Styles and Trickman cocked their Burners as they moved through the living room.
The Team sighted one another down the length of the back hall. Trickman lifted his Burner. Down the hall, the Professor nodded.
In the middle of the back hall were two doors. The door to the bathroom hung open. The door to the bedroom was closed.
Styles shouted, ‘Otis! Principal Phineas Otis! We’ve come for you!’
In the bedroom, terrified, Principal Otis swung the pistol about. He aimed at the door, the walls, back at the door. He opened fire.
Bullets tore through the wood and punched into the hall walls.
‘Burn it!’ the Professor snapped.
Styles and Trickman and Papers and the Professor blazed their Burners. The red rays burned holes through the bedroom door like Swiss cheese.
EDDIE reeled against the side of the truck. He blinked. His eyes were rolling back in his head. Then his hand hit the side of the truck and he blinked again. He saw again the delivery truck, the street, the houses. It all looked normal again.
He was back.
In a choked voice he whispered, ‘The Thing – it was right here!’
FOUR RED RAYS sliced through the bedroom door and walls toward Principal Phineas Otis. The rays found him and converged. His body charred in the heat. His limbs jerked – the pistol shook in his hand and fired until it ran out.
Through the holes in the wall the men of the Team fired steadily.
The Professor gave the order. ‘All right. Cut it!’
The room was engulfed in smoke. The men kicked through the smoldering wreckage. They poked the muzzles of their Burners through the bones that had been Principal Otis.
‘Oh, shit,’ Trickman groaned. ‘Springfield all over again.’
‘It’s not possible!’ Styles said. ‘He was one of them! He had to be!’
‘Look for yourself, cologne breath! He didn’t Change! They always Change! But he didn’t! Face it! He wasn’t a Crawler!’
THE OTIS HOUSE exploded with flames. The Team stood by the bus bench and watched it collapse on itself. From far away the sirens wailed.
‘We just muh, murdered a human being,’ Papers said. ‘But then … the, the Thing Eddie sensed…’
The Professor paced back and forth. ‘There was one of Them here. It wasn’t Otis. It was somebody else. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.’
Papers asked, ‘Could Otis have been shuh, sheltering one of Them?’
‘It never happened before.’
Styles said, ‘Those sirens are getting closer. Maybe we should be getting back to the motel. Pity about Tommy though.’
The Professor stopped and looked at him. ‘That’s it. I should have known. It was Tommy!’
Trickman gaped. ‘Tommy?’
‘Of course! Tommy! He’s the killer! He’s one of Them!’
‘No way!’ Styles scoffed.
‘He fooled all of us, pal. It happens.’
Eddie ran to them. ‘Professor, it was here! The Thing! I smelled it!’
‘Eddie – are you sure?’
The Kid held up his fingers – sticky with Jelly. He pointed past the houses up into the dark woods. ‘It went – that way.’
