The ceiling fan moved the hot air around the room. Matt listened to Julie’s steady breathing next to him and tried to sleep. Eventually he nodded off.
Someone was in the room with them. Matt didn’t know how he knew, he just knew. He awoke with a start, confused and disoriented from a nightmare, a collage of jagged edges and blood-red colors and unrelenting terror.
His eyes flew open and there was Tim. The kid stood motionless next to the bed in the hazy predawn half-light. It was too dark to tell whether his eyes were open or closed. Matt bolted upright, the covers twisting around his waist. Tim seemed not to notice.
Matt rubbed his eyes and tried to comprehend what was happening and out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw what looked like a thick rope or perhaps a long snake slip off Julie’s face. It slid away like a hose being reeled in, and he would have sworn he saw the rope-snake-thing disappear into Tim’s open mouth. A stealthy slithering sound accompanied the movement that Matt was even now beginning to doubt he saw.
Shaken, he leaned to the side, fumbling with the switch on the lamp next to the bed. It snapped on and sixty watts of blessed light flooded the room and Tim was still standing there, he hadn’t moved at all as far as Matt could see, but there was no rope and no snake and Matt wondered whether he had imagined the whole thing.
Then Julie’s eyes fluttered open and Matt looked down at her face and felt a chill flood his body all the way down to his bones. She had been sleeping on her back, and outlined on the porcelain skin of her face were a pair of red splotches roughly the circumference of a decent-sized rope. Or snake. Or whatever the hell Matt had (maybe) seen slither into Tim’s mouth.
Julie blinked sleepily and sat up in bed. “What’s the matter, baby, did you have a nightmare?” She reached for Tim and as she did, Matt inspected her face more closely. The splotchy marks ran from the sides of her mouth across each cheek. They looked as though they had been made by… something… trying to force her mouth open and slither inside it.
Just as he thought he had seen happen to Tim.
What the hell was going on here?
Julie pulled her son close and Tim tumbled awkwardly into their bed, eyes wide, saying nothing. Julie refused to meet Matt’s gaze.
He kicked off the tangled blankets and eased out of bed, padding into the kitchen to make coffee. There was no way he would get any more sleep tonight. And he had to get away from Tim; the kid was seriously creeping him out.
“He’s been through a lot, give him a break!” Julie’s face was a mask of stress and barely controlled anger as she glared at Matt, but he thought he could detect a trace of desperation in her eyes as well. She was confused and frightened about what was happening to her boy. They were sitting at the dinner table, the dishes having been picked up and rinsed, Tim having trudged down the hall and into his room like a freaking zombie after picking at his food and eating basically nothing.
“I understand he’s been through a lot, but the way he’s acting is not normal.” Matt had been thinking about the bizarre scene he had woken up to all day at work and knew he had to broach the subject to his girlfriend. As expected, Julie did not want to hear it.
“Oh, okay,” she said acidly. “Not normal. And I’m supposed to believe… what? That some alien life form entered Tim’s body while he was down in that mine and is trying to… what? Expand into other bodies, too? Like mine?”
“I know how it sounds,” Matt said. “But I also know what I saw.”
“Really? You know what you saw for a split-second in the dark after being awakened from a deep sleep? In the middle of a nightmare? You don’t think it’s more likely you awoke disoriented and just saw Timmy yawning? You don’t think that’s more likely than your stupid alien theory, or monsters, or whatever?”
Matt knew it was pointless to argue — Julie simply was not going to see his side of things, not now, at least — but he couldn’t help himself. He had to admit it sounded ridiculous when he heard the words come out of her mouth, but he also had to admit that, yes, that “stupid alien theory” was exactly what he thought. Maybe it wasn’t aliens that had invaded Tim’s body, maybe it was just some weird mutated virus or something, but whatever it was, Matt feared it. And if Julie had any sense, she would fear it, too.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve lived in this town my whole life. I know what happened in those underground tunnels a hundred years ago, I know”—
“—That’s a load of crap,” Julie interrupted. “You know the fireside ghost stories you’ve heard and you know the whispered rumors and half-truths, but you have no idea what actually happened back in the 1920’s and earlier. You don’t have a clue. So don’t go trying to frighten me even more than I already am. Don’t try to turn me against my own child and make me afraid of him. Just don’t. Fucking. Do it.”
“I’m not trying to make you afraid of anyone, and I certainly don’t want to turn you against Tim. But think about it. The drop-off just inside that mine shaft was something like ten feet, almost straight down. How could Tim possibly have fallen into that shaft and gotten himself back out with no help?”
Julie glared at him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “My son is fine and he’ll be his old self again any time. Just wait and see.”
Matt gave up. He stared into Julie’s eyes and saw a kind of frightened defiance reflecting back at him. Finally he shook his head wearily and left the kitchen to get ready for bed.
Just about everybody owned guns in Tonopah. The little village was located in the middle of nowhere in central Pennsylvania, and while it wasn’t like there was no local law enforcement presence in town, most long-time residents just felt more secure knowing they had their own protection.
Matt was no different. He had locked his Glock up in a gun safe when Julie moved in, not wanting to risk a tragedy brought on by a curious twelve year old. Now, though, he knelt in the closet and opened the safe, picking up the pistol and hefting it. He thought back to last night and what he had (maybe) seen, about the strange behavior Julie’s son had exhibited since returning from the mine yesterday — how had he managed to climb out of that shaft all by himself? — and came to a decision he had known all along he would. He slammed the gun safe closed and walked out of the closet still holding the Glock.
He wandered to the small table on his side of the bed and opened a drawer, dropping the pistol inside and sliding it shut. Keeping a loaded gun next to the bed was not ideal, not by any stretch of the imagination, but Tim almost never came into this room, last night’s bizarre occurrence notwithstanding.
Besides, the way Matt saw it there were risks to not being protected, especially if what he had seen last night was somehow real. So he would keep the gun in the drawer for a few nights and see what happened. If Julie was right, and Tim snapped out of his bizarre fugue — not that that scenario seemed likely — he could simply return the gun to the safe and no one would be the wiser.
If she was wrong, though… well, Matt didn’t want to think about that possibility.
Middle of the night.
The bedroom mostly dark, illuminated only by the weak light of a half-moon filtering through the partially drawn shade.
And Tim was standing next to the bed again.
Matt’s eyes flew open and he was instantly awake. As was the case last night, he had no idea what had awoken him from his slumber, but this time there was no confusion or disorientation. One moment he was asleep and the next he was awake, alert and aware.
Tim stood quietly next to his sleeping mother, closer to the bed than he had been last night. This time there was no rope, no snake-like thing reeling back into Tim’s mouth or anywhere else. Matt knew, because it was the first thing he looked for.