Voices in the Dark: Part Eight

Part Eight

“Go fish,” Lily retorted.

“Shhh… not so loud,” Addy said, drawing another card.

“Sorry,” Lily whispered back. “Do you have any sevens?”

“Go fish,” Addy replied.

Yawning, she set her cards down and peeked out the treehouse window. The angle of the

sun and the gnawing hunger in her stomach suggested it was probably a little after noon. Without

her phone or a watch, it was hard to tell. At this point, the two of them had been hunkered down

in the old treehouse for nearly ten hours, and extreme boredom was setting in. But, all in all, so

far her plan had worked out surprisingly well.

The first hurdle had been convincing Lily. Luckily, that part had been easy. Lily had

accepted Addy’s story immediately and hadn’t even questioned her when she insisted they

needed to leave the house right away.

They packed sleeping bags, snacks, water, and a deck of cards. That was all Addy could

think of at the time, though somewhere in the back of her mind she felt certain she was forgetting

something. What she did know… what she knew with absolute certainty, was that she and Lily

needed to get away from their home and remain hidden for at least a day and a night.

She felt strangely naked without her phone. It was frightening knowing she couldn’t call

anyone, couldn’t check the time, couldn’t know what was happening in the world. But she also

knew that if she had brought it, her parents would be able to track her down.

The treehouse behind Shackleton Woods had been the obvious choice. Addy was fairly

sure her parents didn’t know it existed. At the far edge of the wooded lot, beyond the walking

path, a wall of ivy separated the woods from an adjacent property. What Addy and several other

adventurous neighborhood kids had discovered over the years was that the ivy concealed a hole

in the fence, a hidden passageway between Shackleton Woods and the neighboring property.

That property appeared to have been abandoned for years. The main house looked old

and haunted. The yard had long since surrendered to waist-high grass and weeds. But the

treehouse still stood proudly in the branches of a massive oak tree, weathered but sturdy, like a

forgotten secret fortress.

It had been the first place that came to Addy’s mind when she realized she would need

somewhere to lay low.

When she and Lily left the house at approximately three in the morning, they slipped

quietly through the back door so they wouldn’t have to pass their parents’ bedroom and risk

waking them.

The very last thing Addy did before leaving was unplug the black extension cord from

the outlet in the garage… the cord that powered the Ring camera outside. And so, when the girls

walked away from their home on Chestnut Avenue, the floodlight never switched on, and there

was no mechanical voice declaring,

“Hi. You are currently being recorded.”

Most importantly, no notification appeared on their parents’ phones announcing their

daughters’ departure.

Once they were about four blocks away, well beyond what she considered the point of no

return, Addy suddenly realized what had been nagging at her. She smacked her forehead with the

heel of her palm and groaned. An ache in her lower back and the faint beginning of a cramp deep

in her abdomen told her exactly what she had forgotten.

“Not now,” she thought. “Please not now!”

But there was no denying that she was sensing the first hints of this month’s period.

Addy could practically see the look of exasperated disapproval on her mother’s face. Two years

earlier, when this special monthly torment had first arrived in her life, her mom had installed an

app on Addy’s phone to help track her cycle. Yet, despite her best efforts, it always seemed to

arrive as a surprise.

And now, while embarking on a journey that was already dangerous and complicated

enough, she could add the joys of womanhood to her growing list of concerns. Her backpack

currently contained two spare outfits, zero pads, zero tampons, and no ibuprofen. She could only

hope the worst of it would hold off until this whole nightmare was over. But even as she thought

this, a cramp tightened like a metal vise beneath her navel and throbbed cruelly through her

abdomen.

Still, she pressed forward, determined, and undaunted. She was driven by what she

knew… what she had learned from the thing in the sidewalk… the entity. Addy knew what lay

ahead. She had seen it and it was horrifying. The events of the following evening had been

revealed to her with the clarity of the present. And now they still existed in her mind the way

memories of the past typically would.

Remembering something that hadn’t happened yet was deeply disorienting. If she thought

about it too long, it made her nauseous, which did nothing to help the queasiness that always

came on the first couple days of her period.

During that strange connection with the other intelligence, Addy had absorbed more

information and experiences than she would have thought possible. Even now, most of it was

slipping away. It was like trying to look at something too large to comprehend all at once, like a

massive image that required her to keep shifting position just to glimpse fragments of it. The

experience reminded her of the time her family went to see a movie on a giant IMAX screen but

ended up sitting in the front row on the far edge of the theater. You technically could see the

movie... just never all of it at once.

The burden of those extra thoughts… ideas and memories that she hadn’t earned, felt like

carrying a second mind inside her head, something enormous and complicated, mostly

inaccessible, but always there if she tried to probe it. She didn’t have time for that. Instead, she

focused on the one memory she could still see with terrible clarity. She had witnessed the events

that would soon unfold in front of her home. The same events The Howler had predicted, events

that would end with Lily’s death and the grim satisfaction of a hungry, carnivorous universe.

This was what she saw:

The Ring’s floodlight burst to life in front of the Henderson house.

“Hi. You are currently being recorded,” announced the familiar electronic voice.

The Howler, recently released into the neighborhood by the same officer who had hauled

him away less than fourtyeight hours earlier, ran past the house and tripped on the cracked

sidewalk, crashing into a recycling bin, spilling bottles and cans into the street. He was being

chased. The large, lumbering figure of Mr. Gower came shambling into view and overtook him.

The Howler snatched up a glass bottle and hurled it at Gower’s head. It harmlessly grazed

Gower’s ear and shattered on the pavement. Outraged that The Howler would dare assault him,

Gower reached for something at his belt.

“That’s it!” he shouted. He was winded from running, his voice strangely high. “Now

you’ve done it! That was an attack on my sovereignty!”

He pulled a handgun from his waistband.

“I am within my right…” he started to say, just as The Howler sprang to his feet and

tackled him.

Gower toppled over, stumbling backward into the street. The gun went off as he fell.

In this strange, extra-sensory vision, Addy was able to follow the bullet’s path as easily as

watching someone stroll past her bedroom window.

She watched it as it left the barrel of Gower’s pistol, skimmed past the white mailbox,

sailed over the front yard fence, and clipped leaves from the camellia bush before smashing

through the kitchen window.

From that window there existed a tiny alignment, no more than three inches wide,

through which someone could see straight through the kitchen, across the hallway, and directly

into Lily’s bedroom door. The bullet found that gap like thread through the eye of a needle.

It passed easily through the thin wood of Lily’s door, punching a hole in the Frozen Two

poster Lily had taped to the other side. Next, it punctured the beloved plush toy that was both a

pig and a unicorn, perched on the edge of Lily’s bed. And, finally, the projectile ended its deadly

flight by penetrating the top of Lily’s skull… killing her instantly in her sleep.

Addy had watched it all unfold like a scene from a slow-motion action movie.

Having watched this horrifying scene, her plan formed effortlessly and immediately. It was

simple. If Lily wasn’t home, the bullet couldn’t hit her.

Addy would take her somewhere safe until the moment passed. She didn’t know exactly

when the event would take place… and that was okay. She and Lily would simply wait it out

here in the treehouse, eating Oreos and playing Go Fish. However long it took.

How will I know when it’s safe? Addy had wondered.

They weren’t too far from home. If the gunshot happened, she might be able to hear it.

Once she knew for certain, they would pack up their things, walk home, and apologize to their

terrified parents.

Addy hated breaking rules. Even now she felt awful imagining how worried her parents

must be. But this was one of those situations where you asked forgiveness instead of permission.

Someday, she assumed, it would all make sense… they’ll understand.

The day slowly crawled toward evening. Although Lily had believed Addy and had

agreed to the plan right away, she was starting to get tired and cranky. She kept asking when they

could go home and complaining about being stuck in a treehouse all day.

As the hours dragged on, everything about their situation became more difficult, almost

as if some cosmic pressure were pushing them to give up and go home and let fate unfold as it

was meant to.

Mosquitoes attacked relentlessly. The ancient wood of the treehouse kept giving them

splinters with the slightest movements. The food and water Addy had packed, which once

seemed like more than enough for a multi-day journey, vanished with alarming speed. Lily

complained about being hungry. Addy’s own stomach growled and twisted. And, during her most

recent trip to the bushes below the treehouse… the place they had designated as the “outdoor

bathroom”, Addy saw the thing she had been dreading… small crimson spots inside her

underwear. She wadded up tissue and shoved it between her legs, praying this would all be over

soon.

Night settled over the woods. Addy had no idea what time it was, but it felt late enough to

try to sleep. The forest came alive with noise. Crickets chirped. Frogs croaked. Small animals

rustled in the underbrush below them, making Addy far less interested in climbing down to use

the bathroom again. The distant roar of traffic and the occasional wail of sirens from the always

bustling Hazel Avenue drifted through the darkness.

Their thin sleeping bags offered little warmth. They shivered together, huddled close to

share body heat. Addy was cramping badly. She had a headache, an empty stomach, a full

bladder, a growing iron deficiency, and a bloody wad of tissue wedged uncomfortably between

her legs. At least she had worn dark jeans, not that she expected to be seen by anyone that night.

She lay there wishing as hard as she could for it all to end, hoping for the sign that Lily

was safe and that they could finally go home. After four more hours of suffering, the sign she

had been waiting for finally came.

A sharp crack echoed across the night. It wasn’t as loud as she expected, even from six

blocks away, but it was unmistakable… a gunshot.

Not like the ones in movies, but exactly like the one from her vision.

Addy shook Lily awake.

“This is it,” she whispered. “It’s happening.”

“What do we do now?” Lily murmured.

“I don’t know, but…”

Addy’s words were cut off as the ground beneath them began to violently shake.