She backed away, then nearly jumped out of her skin as a hand pressed beneath her shoulderblades, an immovable object, stopping her progress.
A person, not much older than her, judging by the style of dress. The face was hidden by a hood and the poor lighting in the upstairs hallway, but she could see some of the mouth, snaggle teeth.
The knife. It moved, pointing it at her pelvic region.
Her front pocket. The phone.
“So he’s your ringleader?” she asked. “And he wants me to delete the photos?”
No escape. The only routes she had available to her were a hard right into the bathroom, forward into the knife guy, or a retreat into the bedroom with the other guy.
“Phone,” the figure said. She couldn’t peg the gender, but it sounded like a heavy smoker.
“Right. I’d argue, but knife wins arguments.”
“Mm hmmm,” the figure said. Drawing it out a fraction too long. Somehow, for some reason, she pegged it as a boy.
“Are… Ben and his mom okay?”
“As okay as you are,” he said. He sounded so normal.
“…That doesn’t answer my question.”
He stepped closer. She could smell him now. Like the meaty thing on the school fence had smelled. “Tell me. What’s the worst thing I could do to you, using this knife? I do want you to think, then I want you to describe it to me.”
A dozen ideas flickered through Maggie’s mind.
She managed to keep her voice from tremoring. “Cut something off? Cut off a finger? My nose?”
He shook his head. “I’m talking about the bad thing that appeared in your mind’s eye, that you didn’t let yourself think about, not completely. The real worst thing you imagined.”
Maggie shivered.
“What I’m going to do is worse than that,” he said. “Something you can’t imagine. Not yet.”
She moved, ducking into the bathroom. He lunged, following, knife in hand, and she reached out to grab the bathroom door, slamming it into his body.
She reached for the only thing she could. A drawer from the cabinet under the sink. She pulled, and it came free. Nothing inside but combs and hairbrushes.
Maggie hit him, swinging the drawer into his hand, into the knife that was sticking out, that he couldn’t move while she was pressing her weight against the door.
He didn’t let go, didn’t grunt or give any indication he was in pain as she swung a wooden bludgeon at him.
His weight shifted, and the door moved with enough force that she stumbled back. Stronger than he looked. On something?
She searched the area, looking for something she could use as a weapon. A towel rack… but if she pulled, would it come free?
She lifted the lid off the top of the toilet, nearly dropping it.
It wasn’t a fight like on TV or in the movies or in the books about superheroes. Not an exchange, no trade-off, nothing like that. It was ugly, stupid, nonsensical. One of them would swing. The person they swung at would be seriously, maybe even lethally wounded, or the swing would miss. If the swing missed, they’d be leaving themselves open for one equally serious, equally fatal wound. A skull cracked open, a knife in the belly.
She had to alert the others. A noise?
Two thoughts connected. She hurled the toilet lid through the bathroom window, a crash, a noise that might give the others some clue something was wrong. She jumped, feeling a hot flare of pain where the plate glass cut her side on the way through.
A one story fall was less scary than a knife. Glass was less scary than the knife.
A thousand people with knives was less scary than the knife, when it was that guy holding it.
The landing hurt, but it didn’t hurt in a way that kept her from finding her feet, running. She held her side.
Dead end street was a more appropriate label, she thought. Praying that he wasn’t coming after her, that she wouldn’t get a knife in the back in broad daylight.
She reached the main street, waving, trying to get the attention of a car. Removing one hand from her side, she used her bloody hands to get someone’s attention.
The rest was a blur. Shock winning out over anything rational.
■
Thursday
No school. No phone. The sirens seemed more frequent now.
It didn’t fit. Nobody seemed willing to admit it, that it was bad.
Two days of intermittent visits to the police station. Giving them the photos, getting the sense they didn’t care, that they were filing it away in the same folders and drawers they stuck all the ‘old crank’ stuff.
There was only fear. Concern that their place would be the next one. Chris was worried, and it was why Chris didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want to rent a car and leave with what they could pack up, like so many people were. The houses that were left unattended were soon occupied by others. By the drug gangs or the crazed seniors or whoever those people were. When the parties and general vandalism were done, the houses were torched, and oftentimes neighboring houses were caught in the blazes.
She hadn’t had any clarification on what had happened to the others. To Ben and his mom, to Lor, to Jeremy and Heather. She’d tried calling them while her neighborhood still had working phone lines, but all she got were dial tones. Her dad reassured her, told her they had to be okay, or they would have heard something. Chris said they had probably packed up and left to be safe.
Were others joining in? Was it a cult thing? Was it out of towners? There were more grotesque decorations in places.
It was getting worse, and nobody seemed to be connecting the dots.
They always heard sirens, but the police weren’t doing anything. They hadn’t done anything about what had happened at Ben’s place.
It was the worst. Being powerless, not knowing.
She felt physically sick, wallowing in it.
Doubly so when she let herself slip. She never stopped that constant, internal mantra, that Ben and his mom were okay, that the other kids had escaped the house. But sometimes she slipped, and she didn’t believe what she was saying.
“Do you know how long we looked for this house? How long we took to find just the right place? A place the three of us could live? If we leave it behind, we’re not going to get it back.”
“If we don’t leave, we’re just being penned in, waiting for another kind of disaster. Have you looked at Maggie? I don’t know what to tell her.”
“Tell her to be strong.”
The voices continued, from the other side of the wall.