The Suburb Beyond the Stars (11 page)

T
he little ranch house had to withstand invasion. It could come from any direction, or from several directions at once.

Furniture in front of the windows was the first thing. Bookshelves slid across the rug, hopping on the pile. The boys pulled an old wooden trunk as a barrier across the base of the sliding glass doors. Brian stood for a moment afterward and looked into the night. Moisture had gotten between the panes of glass and they were frosted. Nothing but falling darkness could be seen outside.

Brian knew that anything could be out there waiting or heaving its way through the shadows. Hiding on the edge of lawns. Pulling back fronds to observe the house from afar. He pictured himself, a small lit figure, framed in a foggy window.

And somewhere out there: Prudence. Waiting for them. Needing help.

In the kitchen, he filled pots and pans with water and set them to boil. He planned to use them as weapons. The stove smelled of hot, rancid grease.

Kalgrash and Gregory raided the basement. There were bags of fertilizer, birdseed, and salt, which they could prop against windows. Gregory grabbed some tools and hung them on his belt.

“You know who I wish we had with us?” Gregory muttered. “Bob Barren, P.I. From television. He could make a cannon out of pepper and a trash can. Or a bomb out of Lysol.”

Kalgrash picked up a snow tire under each arm. “Too bad he’s not here,” he agreed.

“For Bob Barren, P.I., home cleaning products are basically an arsenal. He once brought a drug cartel to its knees with a Swiffer.”

“You’re awfully cheerful,” Kalgrash observed.

“The closer to death Bob Barren gets, the more jaunty his jokes.” Gregory headed upstairs with his arms full of tools.

He and Kalgrash were nailing boards over the plate-glass window on the landing.

“There’s only one actual weapon in this house,” Gregory said, hammering.

“The blunderbuss,” Brian said from up above.

“Yeah. We should check if it has bullets.”

“Do you know how to fire a blunderbuss?” Brian asked. “Isn’t it, like, a muzzle loader?”

“A ‘muzzle loader’?” Gregory protested. “What are
you talking about? You fire a gun by going
BANG! BANG! BANG!
How difficult can it be?”

Brian went over to take the Norumbegan gun down from above the mantelpiece. He inspected it. “I wonder if you need gunpowder?”

It was at that moment his eye fell upon the plaque beneath the gun. It said,

N
ORUMBEGAN
“Brown Bess”
Musket
c. 220 B.E.

“This is it!” Brian exclaimed. “This is Prudence’s friend Bess!”

“What is?” asked Gregory. The hammer was held in a casual backswing as he waited for an answer.

“The blunderbuss!” said Brian. “I completely remember this now from American history. They used to call their muskets brown besses.”

“What? Who?”

“People in Colonial America.”

“When?”

“You know. Back in the day.”

“Why?”

Brian shrugged. “I don’t know. You were in the same class.”

“Yeah, but
I
wasn’t paying attention.”

“I think it was
Bess
from
blunderbuss.
Or from Elizabeth the First. The Queen of England.”

“You remember too much.”

“I don’t remember enough. I don’t know how to work this thing,” said Brian, turning it over carefully in his hands.

Gregory was excited. “There must be bullets around.” He stood. “Give it here. Let me check it out.”

“Keep hammering, Kojak,” grunted Kalgrash, holding a board in place.

“One sec,” said Gregory, jogging up the steps to Brian’s side. “Can you see how to work it? Let me see.”

Brian was inspecting it. “I can’t tell,” he mumbled vaguely, turning it over again. “There’s no …”

“Oh, come on! It’s a gun! Just pull the trigger and —” He lifted it out of Brian’s hands. “What’s so tough?” He looked down its barrel.

“Careful,” Brian warned. “Maybe she’s already loaded it.”

Gregory pointed it at a window. He sighted along the barrel.

“There’s no trigger,” he said.

“I know,” Brian agreed. “I was just saying that.”

“How are you supposed to work a gun without a trigger?”

“I don’t know.”

“That sucks. You might as well hold up a broom and go
bang bang.”

“She said —”

“There’s got to be something on here.”

“She said she would ‘say the magic word.’”

“Which is what?”

Brian considered, frowning. “Oh, I bet —”

“There’s something outside!” Kalgrash hissed.

The two boys looked, startled, at the front door. There was a stealthy scratching upon the wood.

“Battle positions,” Kalgrash whispered.

Gregory padded back down to the landing. Something was trying to get in. Gregory picked up his hammer.

Kalgrash stood, retrieving his battle-ax from where he’d leaned it in the corner. Carefully, he bent back so he could see out the window. For a long moment, he stared.

“What?” Gregory demanded. “What is it?”

“A cat,” said Kalgrash. “A kitten. No, cat. But petite.”

“It must be Melior!” Brian said. “We need to put out some food for her. She’s probably starving.”

Kalgrash pointed out, “If you put out food for her, she’ll stick around. She’ll still be out there when the monsters get here.”

“Let it in,” said Gregory. “It’s better off in here than out there.”

“What if it’s a trap?” said Brian.

“It’s a cat.” Gregory unlocked the locks and opened the door.

The cat, a small tiger-striped orange tabby, darted in and nosed around the bowl. There was nothing left.

“I let her out a few days ago,” said Kalgrash. The cat rubbed against his greaves.

“You let that cat out?” said Brian.

“Yeah. Is anyone going to nail up the other end of this plank, or am I just squatting here holding it for the night?”

“And were there any other cats?” Brian asked. “In the house?”

Kalgrash said, “No. Come on, Gregory. Hammer. Hammer in the morning. Hammer in the evening. And all over this landing.”

Gregory picked up a nail from a coffee can and rested the point on the board. He started to bang at it.

“Wait. Stop,” said Brian.

The other two stopped.

“Because,” Brian said, “the cat hair we’ve found all over the house is gray, not orange-striped.”

Kalgrash’s face paled. He dropped his eyes to the cat. It bolted downstairs.

“Grab it,” said Brian. “Grab it! It might not be a cat!”

Gregory tossed the hammer to Kalgrash and bounded down the steps. They heard him bash his way through the storage room in the basement. “Here, kitty!” he called. “Stay cute! No mandibles! No tentacles!”

Brian put the blunderbuss on the sofa and ran down the stairs, past Kalgrash.

“There is another end of this plank,” Kalgrash pointed out to no one. “I’m holding it up.”

Brian looked briefly into the room where the Norumbegan symbols of protection had been lined up on the floor. He wondered whether —

“Ow!”
Gregory yelped. “He scratched me! I almost had his head.”

Brian rushed into the storage room. “You shouldn’t try to pick her up by her head.”

“Sorry. I forgot your degree in veterinary medicine.”

“I’m just saying —”

“I think I can pick up a cat, thanks.”

“Gregory, I’m sorry if I’m somehow …”

“You’re not ‘somehow.’ Where’d he go?”

“She.”

“See? Does it really matter? If he’s a cat of evil?”

“Here’s a cat box, for example. For cars and planes and stuff. If you hold the box, I’ll grab —”

The cat slipped by behind Brian and thumped up the stairs.

The boys turned and ran after her, the carrying case flapping at Brian’s side.

“I am kind of thinking,” said Kalgrash, still kneeling, holding wood, “that the cat is not an avatar of evil. When the Thusser threaten someone, they mean more than just licking your knuckles with a raspy tongue. It tends to be more, you know, death, damnation, torture, et cetera.”

The two boys were up the stairs. They split up — Brian heading for the kitchen and dining room, Gregory heading down the hall toward Prudence’s bedroom.

Brian flicked on the light in the kitchen. The cat was sitting on the counter, nosing around the dirty dishes. The gray cat fur was plastered to plates, to knives, to forks, to spoons. The cat sniffed at it.

On the stove, several saucepans and spaghetti pots were on the boil. Their lids rattled.

Brian walked slowly toward the cat. “She’s here,” he called out. He held up the travel box.

The cat saw it and leaped, loping around the corner into the dining room.

Brian followed the cat, stepping quietly on the wall-to-wall carpet. He put the box down. He got down on his haunches and slid carefully forward. He held out his hand for the cat to sniff. “Come on, girl.”

The cat, terrified by days of roaming through nightmare suburbs, did a small dancing step backward, then inched toward Brian’s fingers. She pouted and stuck out her snout. The little petals of her nose fluttered near Brian’s fingers.

And then some creature outside threw itself against the plate glass and began pounding.

A
crash. Brian stood, swiveled.

A dark shape threw itself against the frosted sliding glass doors, raking at the handle.

“Gregory! Kalgrash!” Brian yelled.

There were two attackers now at the back door, bashing at it with their crystalline fists — two more like the monster the boys had broken in the street — fists hardening with every blow.
Kreslings,
Kalgrash had called them.

There was a hideous slam — and the door fractured. A hole had been punched out. A fist flew through and groped around while the creatures cackled.

Kalgrash was there with his battle-ax. “There’s more coming across the lawn,” he said.

He whacked with his ax. Nothing — the flesh firmed like granite. The ax couldn’t slice. The beast fumbled for the lock as Kalgrash, screaming in irritation, hacked at the hardening skin.

Brian ran for the blunderbuss. There was something he wanted to try.

Gregory watched out Prudence’s bedroom window as three more of the monsters, their vitreous flesh glittering, charged across the lawn.

One of these things had been bad enough, the night before. Now at least five had surrounded the house. The three on the front lawn leaped and hopped as they approached.

Gregory smiled.

There were cans and things for throwing stacked next to the desk, and he had a good arm. He hurled a Progresso soup and beaned a monster, but its flesh gathered quickly. The can dented and fell on the grass. The monster did, too — Gregory had aimed at a knee, trying to lock it up firm just long enough to trip the thing. The monster fell for an instant. Gregory yelled, “Ha!” out the window. But the monster was quickly pliable. It rose and charged again.

Throwing things would do no good. Gregory grabbed some gear and ran for the front door.

Kalgrash was slowing up the invasion through the back door by chipping away at the fumbling hand. He couldn’t make a dent in the rippled flesh, but he could slow the thing down by hardening it so frequently that its fingers became stiff and immobile. He battered relentlessly, glad the one kresling blocked the other.

There were three coming for Gregory and the front door. He and Kalgrash hadn’t finished nailing planks over the window on the landing. All it would take was one kick to the plate glass, and the monsters would be inside the house.

Gregory, with a mingled fear and a weird joy in battle, raised up a contraption he’d rigged out of a bottle of kitchen cleaner and a lighter.

The monsters were at the door. They were bashing at it — then leering in through the window — reaching up with one heavy fist and whacking. The glass went flying. Gregory, on the stairs, shielded his face.

The monster in front was knocking at the planks, trying to dislodge them so it could step in. It climbed one rung, stepped back, wiggled the wood.

Gregory raised his contraption and declared, “When the action gets hot, the hot get active!” — Bob Barren, P.I.’s, slogan, declaimed when he jumped from copters into resort pools filled with nitroglycerine. Gregory jabbed his thumb down on the aerosol button and started spraying. He lit the spray.

For an instant, he was jubilant. It was just like on TV.

A huge blast of flame. The monsters were thrown back.

Then Gregory realized that his own hand was singed.

He screamed, dropped everything on the tile floor — just as the monsters were peeking past the smoldering planks.

“Curse you, Bob Barren!” Gregory roared, slamming the hand again and again on the wall in absolute agony.

In the back of the house, a kresling thumb flipped a catch. The sliding doors were unlocked. The kresling began to work them open.

Kalgrash’s mighty, mailed hand seized the handle and dragged the door back into place. The glass jags sliced at the monster’s trapped arm — causing it, once again, to
calcify or get cut. Hard as a gem, the arm was jammed in the fractured hole.

The kresling screamed with rage and dragged at the door, trying to force it open. Kalgrash ground his teeth and held the door closed.

Another fist slammed the glass. Twice: once to harden, a second time to punch through. Then another hand was fumbling for Kalgrash’s neck.

He backed up.

The kreslings tripped — fell — and the door finally slid open.

They rose, gruesome mouths working.

Kalgrash skittered sideways into the kitchen, picked up one of the spaghetti pots from the stove, and threw the boiling water at his enemies.

They screamed — one cracked — his face popped like glass and splintered — he fell — and the other, howling with anger, crawled over his body to do battle with the troll.

On the landing, Gregory looked up from the unbearable pain of his burned hand. The monsters were pulling off the few planks still blocking the broken plate-glass window.

With his other hand, Gregory picked up the hammer from the floor.

He hurled it.

He was not surprised when it smacked the monster in the head and dropped without effect. The head had hardened.

The charred wood went scattering down the stairs.

The first monster lumbered into the house.

Gregory cowered, screamed.

It reached for him.

And Brian, at the top of the stairs, holding the blunderbuss, cast the Cantrip of Activation.

A blast of light.

The monster stumbled back, its chest a shard-lined pit of blue flame. It was dead.

The next one was already inside. Brian called out the word again, and again the muzzle blasted magic flame.

Gregory looked on in awe.

Kalgrash and a creature clashed in the kitchen, armor and hard flesh grating and rattling. The huge ax clanged again and again on the dense hide.

The monster swiped, caught his claw on Kalgrash’s steel faulds, and yanked.

Kalgrash reached out for a boiling saucepan with one hand as he swung his ax with the other.

No dice. He had the handle, but the pot tipped — and most of the hot liquid spilled.

The monster dragged him down.

Kalgrash slammed the boiling pot against the thing’s head and — while the flesh up there was still bunched up and hard — buried the hatchet in the monster’s lower back, enclosing him almost in an embrace. The thing cried out, flopped over liquidly, and pooled.

Two down. More already in the door.

And then he heard something in the hall. Something had climbed in the bathroom window. It was headed his way.

At the front door, Brian was holding the monsters at bay. They wouldn’t come through, having seen the first two dispatched by Old Bess. Several of them loitered by the stoop, waiting for a chance to invade. They knew, clearly, that two of them could take Brian out before he could fire twice — but one of them would die in the process.

“We need to be in a more secure position,” Brian shouted. He thought quickly.

Something was headed down the hallway. Brian looked and saw a different horror — a collection of gray stumps fumbling toward him — something like a ball of truncations, wrinkled flesh, padding down the carpeted corridor.

Brian had a choice. Stumps or vitreous humanoid. One or the other would get by him.

He called out, “Kalgrash!” and, keeping the blunderbuss trained on the monsters outside the door, started to make his way down the debris-littered stairs. “Come on, Gregory,” he said.

Gregory was only half sitting up. He kept wringing his hand in the air. He looked, confused, at Brian.

The stump beast made it to the top of the stairs and flexed to throw itself on Brian’s head.

Brian knew that if he took the gun away from the monsters at the door for one second, they’d be inside, gouging Gregory and him.

Gregory slid to his knees and tried to rise. The monsters outside were gloating and waiting for their chance.

The stumpy ball prepared to knock Brian down.

And then Kalgrash’s ax buried itself deep in the gray, elephantine flesh. Kalgrash gave a whooping battle roar.

“Kalgrash!” Brian yelled. “We’re going down to the safe room! With the symbols! It’s more defendable!”

“Says who?” Gregory demanded.

“It’s one door,” said Kalgrash. He bustled down the stairs. “I don’t know who thought of these open-plan houses. Awful for siege warfare.”

Brian put his hand down to help Gregory up.

“I can get up myself,” Gregory complained.

“Well,” said Brian, eying the monsters outside the door warily, “then —”

“Since when did you get so bossy?”

“Since you’re just sitting there on the floor, Gregory!”

“With a burned hand! From my Bob Barren trick! It turns out that a little old-fashioned ingenuity doesn’t go a long way.”

“So come on and —”

The monsters charged Brian. He raised the blunderbuss, fumbled the spell (surprised, unthinking), and the gun didn’t go off. Gregory fell down the steps. Kalgrash couldn’t swing his ax with Brian in the way.

The monsters pawed at Brian’s arm. He cast the Cantrip again. The gun discharged. There was a blast.

One had been beheaded, and sifted into grayish dust. The other still kicked at glass and tried to pull off Brian’s limbs.

Kalgrash hit the thing with a solid blow.

It did no good. The blow just locked the monster’s grip around Brian’s arm, solid as marble.

Brian twisted the gun to get the muzzle pointing at the monster’s head.

Gregory was limping down the final steps.

Kalgrash hit the thing again, Brian shouted his Cantrip, and the gun blew the thing apart.

The three ran for the room in the basement.

They swooped in, careful not to disturb the amulets lying in rows on the floor. Brian stood by the open door. “Kalgrash, you watch the window.”

The window had a sack of driveway salt crammed into it.

Kalgrash stood there at the ready.

Brian concentrated on thinking the Cantrip, so he would be able to fire in an instant if something appeared by the door to the protected chamber.

There was no sound in the house. Everything that had attacked them so far was destroyed. All three listened carefully. No movement. No thumps in the halls. No heavy breathing of ugly maws on the landing.

In the distance, at the crossroads, there was the singing of the children on their bikes, riding in their circles. They sang that nothing would come out right.

“We should get those kids,” said Gregory.

Brian shook his head. “I think they’re safe.”

“They’re out there playing Duck, Duck, Goose with baby-killing ogres from another dimension.”

“I think the Thusser are using those kids to spy on us. I think the Thusser can see everything those kids see. That’s why that ring of kids is posted there. The Thusser aren’t going to hurt them.”

Gregory flapped his hand, trying to shake off the pain. “You always have to be the one to figure things out, don’t you?” he accused Brian. “Maybe I’m right for once.”

Brian was tired and anxious. He demanded, “Why are you being like this?”

“See?” Gregory said. “You wouldn’t have ever yelled at me before. Back — a year ago.”

Kalgrash said, reasonably, “But you’re being a jerk.”

Gregory retorted, “Says who?” And to Brian: “Just because you know a few spells, you’ve become completely bossy.”

“It just seems like this room might be the best place to be if there’s another round of something attacking us.”

“We can’t leave little children riding their bikes out there.”

“They’re as safe out there as they’ll be near us,” said Kalgrash.

“So you’re just going to let them ride around out there?” said Gregory. “Alone? With the monsters?”

Brian thought about it. He really did believe the kids were safe for the moment, but he didn’t want Gregory to feel like no one listened to him. “Okay,” he said. “So what do you want to do?”

“I’ll lead an expedition out,” said Gregory.

“Who’s your expedition?” Kalgrash asked.

Gregory thought about it. He looked from Brian to Kalgrash.

“All three of us,” he said.

Brian said, “So we’ll go out and get the kids to come in here with us?”

“Right. So they’re safe.”

Kalgrash said, “You want the Thusser listening in to our every word?”

“I want to save the kids.”

“No. You want to be the one shouting orders and with us all admiring you and your hair.”

Gregory said, “A kresling tried to grab a little boy the other night.”

“He’s right,” said Brian. “They did try to take one of the kids.”

Gregory said triumphantly, “See?”

Kalgrash closed his eyes, exhaled, and nodded.

So, carefully, they left the room with its sigils on the floor.

They went out into the hallway.

No sooner had they stepped out of the safe room than they smelled something awful. Cat urine. Overpowering. A high, searing reek.

Kalgrash sniffed. “What is that?”

“Let’s go,” said Gregory, forging forward.

“Look!” Brian said, pointing at the walls.

The walls were growing hair. The nap of the rug was growing hair. The ceiling was growing hair.

The three of them ran for the stairs.

The stairs were covered in gray shag. It was waving. The three coughed with dander.

There was no door, no window. They were vined and wound with fur.

The walls now waved with long tendrils of gray hair. Brian’s shoes were entangled in the extrusions of the rug.

Everything was fur. They were inside something. The house itself had become animal.

The floor shuddered.

Kalgrash yelped.

“Back to the safe room!” Brian screamed. He pointed back to where he could see the clean rug, the neat rows of protective signs.

“Let’s try to get out!” Gregory said. “Kalgrash can cut through fur.”

“Something’s wrong,” Kalgrash said, pointing at the floor.

The floor trembled, then dropped.

The boys screamed. The house was tilting.

Or a pit was opening up.

Or a gullet.

Brian scrambled back into the safe room. He tottered on the threshold.

He looked behind him and saw the whole of the house resolving into one long, furry throat. It was trying to swallow them whole.