The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(30)
Her eye caught the top of the blue plastic milk crate Korey used for a bedside table. A copy of ’Salem’s Lot by Stephen King lay on top of a stack of Sassy magazines. Suddenly it all made sense.
Korey saw her see the book. “I didn’t make it up,” she said.
“I don’t think you did,” Patricia said.
Disarmed by Patricia’s refusal to argue, Korey got into bed and Patricia left the bedside lamp on, turned off the overhead light, and left the door open. In his bedroom, Blue was already in bed, covers pulled up.
“Good night, Blue,” Patricia called to him across his dark room.
“There’s a man in the backyard,” Blue said.
“It’s the wind,” she said, picking her way between the clothes and action figures on his floor. “It makes the house sound scary. Do you want me to leave the light on?”
“He climbed up on the roof,” Blue said, and right at that moment Patricia heard a footstep directly overhead.
It wasn’t a limb falling or a branch scraping. It wasn’t the wind making the house creak. Just a few feet over her head came a deliberate, quiet thump.
Her blood stopped in its veins. Her head craned back so far she put a crick in her neck. The silence hummed. Then another quiet thump, this time between her and Blue. Someone was walking on the roof.
“Blue,” Patricia said. “Come.”
He flew out of bed and grabbed her around the waist. She walked them in a straight line, stepping on his books and action figures. Plastic men snapped beneath their feet as they rushed to his bedroom door.
“Korey,” she said, quiet and urgent from the hall. “Come on.”
Korey flowed out of her bed and ran to the other side of her mother, and Patricia herded them both down the front stairs and sat them on the bottom step.
“I need you to wait here,” Patricia whispered. “I’ll check the doors.”
She walked quickly through the dark downstairs den to the back door and turned the deadbolt, expecting to see the shadowy shape of a man through the door right before he smashed through the glass and yanked her out into the wild night. She made sure the sun porch door was deadbolted—they had too many doors—then went down the steps to Miss Mary’s room, turning on the light as she went.
Miss Mary came to life on her bed, squirming and moaning, but Patricia kept on walking to the utility room, where she made sure the door to the garbage cans was deadbolted, too.
She went to the front hall and turned on the porch lights, then went to the sun porch and snapped on the floodlights that lit up the backyard.
“Korey,” Patricia called from the sun porch, her eyes glued to the merciless white glare of the backyard, the floodlights picking out every blade of yellowed grass. “Bring me the portable phone.”
She heard feet running from the front hall across the living room, and then her children were beside her. Korey pressed a hard plastic rectangle into her palm. She had the upper hand. The doors were locked, they could see everything around them, and they were secure. She could call the Mt. Pleasant police department in a flash. Maryellen said their response time was three minutes.
She kept her thumb over the dial button and they stood, eyes glued to the windows. The floodlights erased every shadow: the strange hollow depression in the center of the yard, the trunks of the oak trees with their bark stained yellow by the iron-rich Mt. Pleasant water, the geranium bushes against the fence separating their property from the Langs, the flower beds on the other side separating their yard from the Mitchells.
But beyond the reach of the lights, the night was a black wall. Patricia felt eyes out there looking into her house, watching her and the children through the glass. The scar tissue on her left ear began to crawl. The wind tossed the bushes and trees. The house creaked quietly to itself. They all watched, looking for something that didn’t belong.
“Mom,” Blue said, low and even.
She saw his gaze fixed on the top of the sun porch windows. The roof of the sun porch was a shingled overhang outside her bedroom windows, and along its edge Patricia caught something slowly and deliberately move and she knew immediately what it was: a human hand, letting go of the edge of the overhang and withdrawing back up out of sight.
She had the phone against her ear in an instant. Sharp static cracks made her yank it away.
“911?” she said. “Hello? My name is Patricia Campbell.” The line ZZZrrrrkkKKKed in her ear. “My children and I are at 22 Pierates Cruze.” A series of hollow pops covered the faint sound of a human voice yabbering on the other end. “There is an intruder in our house and I’m here with my children alone.”
That was when she remembered her bathroom window was wide open.
“Keep trying,” Patricia said, thrusting the phone into Korey’s hand, not giving herself a second to think. “Stay here and dial again.” Patricia raced across the dark living room and heard Korey say behind her, “Please,” to the operator as she turned the corner and ran up the dark stairs.
From the overhang over the sun porch it was just a short chin-up to the main roof, then up one side, down the other, and a short drop onto the porch roof right outside her bathroom, then in through the bathroom window. She’d opened it earlier to let out the smell of her hairspray.
She felt something dark and heavy above her on the roof racing her to the open window. Her legs pushed her weight hard up the stairs, chest heaving, breath burning in her throat, pulse cracking behind her ears, hurling herself around the banister at the top of the stairs and into her dark bedroom.