The dog dropped his nose onto his lap in affirmation.
“Don’t worry about it. Whatever that was, it can’t get here.”
Then Caliburn spelled, IT FOLLOWED ME.
“No. It can’t have.” Sam’s voice was emphatic, but already, his resolve was weakening. “Whatever it was, there’s no way it followed us here. We’re more than a hundred miles away by car. There’s no way it could have followed us.”
The dog’s fur spiked upward. He sniffed and shuffled around, finally settling with his tail between his legs, nearby the fire. Sam patted Caliburn behind his ears, reassuringly.
“It’s okay, Caliburn. No one followed us. No one knows where we are.”
Caliburn barked once. The dog was scared. That much was certain.
Sam said, “How does it know you’re here?”
Caliburn slowly maneuvered the SCRABBLE pieces to spell, CONNECTED.
Sam frowned. “You and he are connected? Like the swords. You’re both forged by the same blacksmith leaving an indelible connection like a scar?”
The retriever tilted its head as though still trying to contemplate what was being said and what it meant. He then returned to some leftover food Guinevere had put out for him in the morning.
Sam shrugged. “I don’t get it. First he’s scared half to death and now he’s bored?”
“Beats me.” Guinevere stood up on her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
Sam kissed her back. “Good morning.”
Guinevere said, “I had fun last night.”
“Me too.”
A moment later, Caliburn’s fur spiked, his brown eyes wide with terror, he released a soft growl.
Sam gave him the SCRABBLE board. “What is it?”
The dog carefully spelled, IT HERE.
Sam said, “What’s here? Excalibur?”
Caliburn nudged the pre-made word, YES.
Sam glanced out the window. The fog was so thick he couldn’t see where the driveway reached the road. There was no sign of anyone or anything at the front door.
He looked at Guinevere. “He’s kidding, right? There’s no way whatever that was followed us here.”
Guinevere shrugged and made an uncomfortable laugh. “I don’t know. He seems to understand a lot more than we’ve given him credit for. He might actually have a connection.”
Caliburn kept moving the letters until it spelled, TO KILL ME.
Sam and Guinevere drew their handguns. Sam kneeled down next to Caliburn and patted him with his spare hand. “It’s all right. You’re safe with us. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”
Caliburn nudged three more letters together.
Sam glanced at them, and then read it out loud, “RUN!”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Sam looked at Guinevere, their eyes making a quick exchange. They needed to get going. He reached for his keys. His heart raced. There was a tension in the air mixed with disbelief. No one could possibly know where they were. It was impossible to believe that Caliburn and Excalibur were really connected in some way.
Even so, there was something about Caliburn’s reaction that turned his blood to ice. He raced upstairs to grab his backpack. Sam moved quickly. Guinevere had both her handguns out and Caliburn started barking at the front door.
Behind them, something started tapping on the window.
Sam turned around.
There was nothing there. A small branch from a Red Alder tree was brushing up against the glass in the wind.
His eyes fixed on it, holding his gaze for a few seconds.
He withdrew the handgun and leveled it at the window.
Guinevere whispered, “What the hell are you planning on shooting?”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know, but there’s something out there.”
“It looks like a Red Alder tree to me.”
Caliburn’s fur shot straight up, and he bared his teeth, giving a deep, gravelly bark.
Sam kept his eyes fixed on the window. He swallowed hard. “Whatever it is, I can feel it. It feels exactly the same as the Evil we felt when we were attacked in the Tillamook State Forest…”
Guinevere stared at the window. “Oh shit! I feel it too.”
The tip of the Red Alder branch twisted and bent all the way over until it was touching the glass. It was too obvious and purposeful a movement to have been caused by the wind.
Sam held his breath.
Caliburn’s growl turned deadly silent.
The tip of the shifted branch started to sway. Tap, tap, tap. It was prying at the edge of the window, the slight gap in the window pane.
Guinevere whispered. “It can’t get in there… the window’s locked.”
Sam aimed the Walther P99 directly behind the window.
The branch stopped moving.
Sam’s eyes narrowed.
Was IT scared?
He considered that possibility. It might be more likely that there was nothing more than wind outside, and all three of them had become spooked by nothing more than a tree being casually shifted by the breeze.
Sam took a step backward, turning his back on the window. He took another one.
On the third step, the tapping started once more.
Sam turned to face it, and drew the Walther P99, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. He fired four shots in rapid succession.
The glass shattered. Fragments and shards splintered in every direction.
Sam, Guinevere, and Caliburn all stared at the broken window. If there had been something evil outside it wouldn’t be alive anymore. Not with four shots of 9mm Parabellum somewhere in its torso. And even if Sam hadn’t struck a vital organ, no one can take a bullet, let alone four without making a sound.
A few seconds later, the branch bent around with a gust of wind and started tapping on what remained of the shattered window.
Sam took a deep breath in and exhaled.
Guinevere said, “It was just the wind! Just the goddamned wind!”
And then the internal lock on the window frame began to turn on its own.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Sam and Guinevere opened fire simultaneously.
Together, more than a dozen rounds were sent down the barrels, each one landing somewhere near the window’s lock, the broken window, and below the window. If anyone had been alive there, it would have been shot.
Something moved quickly, reaching inside to fully unlock the window. It moved so quickly that he couldn’t really tell what it was. Instead, it looked more like a jumbled mess of colors. Like a camouflaged animal stalking its prey in the forest.
Only in this case, they were the prey.
Sam emptied the rounds in his chamber. He didn’t wait to see if they had any affect. He shouted. “Run!”
All three of them ran through the internal door to the garage.
Sam pressed the garage opener, but the power to the house had been cut. The door didn’t budge. He climbed into the car, took out his keys, inserted it into the ignition and turned it. The T-Bird started first try.
Caliburn barked.
Inside the kitchen, a person’s feet could be heard crunching against the glass on the floor. Those feet weren’t moving slowly. They were running — straight for them!
Sam revved the T-Bird’s engine.
Guinevere reached into the spacing beneath the dashboard and retrieved Sam’s Remington 12-gauge shotgun.
Sam shifted the three-speed shift-o-matic into reverse, released the handbrake, and planted his foot on the accelerator.
Something came through the internal garage door.
Guinevere fired the shotgun at the shapeless form running toward them.
The Thunderbird smashed through the pine garage door.
Sam held his foot hard on the accelerator.
In front of him, he watched the shapeless figure run straight for them. Guinevere fired again and again, until she’d emptied all four rounds into whatever creature seemed to be attacking them. On the fourth shot, their attacker was knocked over, giving them vital seconds to increase the distance between the Thunderbird and their pursuer.