Alexandra Sokoloff - The Harrowing

Robin froze at the sound of clattering footsteps on the stairs. She looked around her frantically at a hallway of locked doors. The kitchen seemed an eternity away. She turned instinctively for the bathroom door, ducked in.

She shoved the swinging bathroom door shut on its hinge, then her heart plummeted as she saw there was no lock. She glanced around her and pulled the trash can in front of the door.

He’ll shove through that in a second , she realized. She surveyed the mirrored bathroom in a frenzy, looking for anything that could work as a barrier.

At the end of the hall, Lisa ran into the kitchenette and threw herself at the door to the back stairwell, twisting the knob.

Locked.

Lisa yanked at the door, clawing at it like an animal, sobbing. “Shit shit shit…”

The alien voice came from down the hall, taunting. “Lisa. Lii-saa. You know you want me.”

Lisa whirled, eyes glazed. She lunged for the counter, pulled open a drawer, and pawed through it, searching for a knife.

Nothing but plastic spoons and spatulas, tangled twist ties.

The voice was closer in the hall, crooning. “I looove how you think of your brother when you come.”

Lisa screamed and pressed her hands to her ears.

A shadow appeared in the doorway. Lisa jerked back against the counter.

Martin stood swaying, holding the bloody ax, He grinned at Lisa wolfishly, lifted the ax to his mouth, and licked the blade.

Lisa grabbed the coffeepot from the counter and hurled it at him. It bounced off his head, splitting the skin. Blood spilled down his face, but he started toward her as if he hadn’t felt a thing.

Lisa threw herself at the counter, grabbing for anything loose, flinging the toaster, a coffee can, the silverware rack. The objects bounced off Martin with sickening, pulpy thuds, but nothing stopped him; he was almost on her.

She was backed, cowering, trembling, into the sharp corner of the counters…trapped.

Martin’s eyes were black as he smiled. He raised the ax.

A voice called out behind him.

“ Martin .”

Martin jerked around, bobbing slightly on his feet, as if he didn’t quite have control of his body.

Behind him, Robin hovered in the hall, pale as ice.

Martin grinned slowly. “Martin who?”

Robin swallowed, sickened by the vacant look on his bloody face. She was so light-headed, she was afraid she would faint. Just get him away from Lisa , she thought.

“Zachary, then,” she suggested, her voice low, inviting. “Whatever you like.” She forced a smile, then ducked teasingly into the hall.

Martin appeared in the doorway, a swaying shadow. He held the ax loosely in both hands, stared down the hall toward Robin. They both stood still for a moment, eyes locked.

Robin was hit by a wave of terror so primal, she felt her mind loosing from its moorings. The thing in front of her was nothing like human. There was an emanation from it of pure evil. It was like chaos barely contained in a thin sheaf of body, like a swarm of angry black insects loosely held by a bubble of skin.

She fought down nausea and panic, lifted her eyes to its grinning face, trying not to show her fear.

Don’t think. Talk. Do it now.

He took a sudden step forward and she flinched back.

“Afraid, sweet Robin?” the thing purred.

Robin lifted her chin, looked straight into its eyes. “Afraid of what? You won’t kill me. It’s something else you want.”

She took a slow step back, raised her hands to her neck, and started to unbutton her shirt.

Martin licked his lips, moved forward.

Robin eased her way backward as she fumbled to open her shirt. Martin stared, mesmerized, at the loosening buttons.

“You were in my room that night. Waverly came in and saw you and you pushed her out the window.”

The Martin-thing grinned, a horrible sight. Its voice was sibilant, loathsome. “Stupid bitch, with all her screaming. Hardly the mood.”

Robin forced herself to smile, to make her voice seductive. “I’m here now. We can do anything you want.” She moved infinitesimally back. “Don’t you know I was jealous, when you were coming to Lisa instead of me?”

The thing in front of her cocked its head. “You didn’t ask. You have to ask.”

Robin pulled her shirt off. “I’m asking now.”

The Martin-thing lunged at her, incredibly fast. Robin turned in a flash and tore down the hall toward the stairwell.

The creature was right behind her, feet scuttling on the floor like insect claws, rasping breath hot on her neck as it gained on her. She felt hands in her hair, a sharp pain—and she was yanked backward.

Robin cried out. The thing shoved her against the wall by the stairwell door, pinning her between its hands, and shoved the bloody ax against her face. She could smell blood. Patrick’s blood.

And more horrible: Martin’s face was right up against hers, twisted and grotesque. A stench like burning rolled off him; the alien voice purred against her ear. “Sweet Robin. It was you, you know. It was you who let me through.”

Robin’s eyes jumped to meet the creature’s black gaze. The ravening thing stared into her eyes and she thought she would go mad.

“You wanted to die Thanksgiving night. Your darkness let me through. A perfect gateway.”

Robin’s throat was tight. Her eyes spilled over with tears. “No…” she whispered.

“ You caused it all .”

Darkness opened in Robin’s mind, a rush of nothingness.

The thing raised the ax. She could barely register the dull gleam of the blade. Her legs gave way and she began the slide into unconsciousness.

Then the Martin-thing suddenly whipped its head to the side. “Not one step,” it hissed.

It raised its arm, brandishing the ax.

Robin turned her head and saw Lisa halted in the hallway, gripping a carving knife. She looked at Robin, eyes wide.

Both girls were frozen. The creature smiled…

Then the stairwell door flew open and smashed into its head.

Cain burst through the doorway, holding a baseball bat with both hands. He shoved the door hard against the wall, pinning Martin behind it. Robin jerked free.

Lisa ran forward and threw her weight against the door, trapping Martin to the wall. Robin lunged and leaned her weight against the door with Lisa.

The Martin-thing writhed under the door, snarling and foaming like a rabid animal. The girls strained to hold it.

Cain staggered back, lifted the bat, and slammed it against the side of Martin’s head.

Martin’s eyes rolled up and the thing went limp against the wall, still pinned by the door. The ax fell from his hand, thudded on the floor.

Robin and Cain found each other’s eyes.

The only sound was their ragged breathing, and Lisa’s sobs.

Logs burned in the hearth, rolling orange flame.

In the center of the lounge, the round table was set up with five chairs. Candles flickered at the points of a pentagram chalked on the surface.

Martin’s limp body was propped up in one of the five chairs. Lisa and Robin were winding clothesline around and around his torso, tying him to the chair. They wrapped him over and over, a thick coat of ropes, threaded through the slats of the chair—but they had no idea of the strength of the thing inside him or whether the ropes would hold at all.

They had thrown blankets over the arched windows to block the firelight, and they’d rolled back the cabbage-rose carpet. Cain was on his knees, shoulder wrapped, drawing a large pentagram with chalk on the bare floor around the table while keeping a wary eye on Martin; the ax, wiped clean of Patrick’s blood, was close by his side. A Coleman lantern beamed a star of yellow light from a side table. Rain fell in a steady curtain outside. It all had a sense of unreality.