Bentley Little - The Burning

He tried to tell himself that the mother and daughter had probably been pioneers who'd been buried close to their cabin, but the witch theory seemed much more plausible, and he shivered as he thought about what the grave site looked like at night under the full moon.

Tick tick tick.

There was a light tapping on the window.

Heart thudding in his chest, Skylar glanced over at his mom. She was dead asleep, mouth open and snoring. Not only that, but she was way over on the other side of the room, a distance that suddenly seemed like miles.

Tick tick tick.

The tapping continued, grew louder. It could have been a windblown branch knocking lightly against the glass were it not for the fact that the noise was syncopated, a repeating rhythmic pattern no wind could have created. He'd been avoiding the window, not wanting to look at it, afraid of what he might see, but now he hazarded a glance at the drapeless pane.

A Yoda-like face peered in at him, a small wrinkled head, brown instead of green, partially illuminated by the light of the moon. The eyes shifted slowly, taking in the room, looking for something.

Him.

The beady eyes locked on his own, and the corners of the mouth slid upward into a malevolent smile. It was the most terrifying face he had ever seen, and his mouth went suddenly dry. He shut his eyes tightly, afraid of being hypnotized by those evil orbs, afraid of seeing the teeth inside that horrible mouth, afraid of ... just afraid.

"Mom!" he screamed.

She awoke immediately, leaping up out of bed and instinctively rushing to his cot. He opened his eyes. He expected the face to disappear-whether monsters were real or imagined, the presence of grown-ups usually made them flee-but to his horror, the terrible creature was still there and watching them, two brown wrinkled hands placed on the window to either side of the eyes in an effort to assist the viewing.

His mom saw it, too, and she let out a loud high scream that caused his grandma to shout out from her bedroom and finally made the thing at the window pull away and disappear into the darkness of night. A second later, the lights went on and his grandma was in the room, wearing dirty pajamas, her hair wild, her face without makeup looking old and a little scary itself. "What is it?" she demanded. "What happened?"

"Someone was at the window!" his mom said, her voice breathless and still almost loud enough to be a scream.

Someone?

"It was a monster," Skylar said. His voice came out small and babyish, and he should have been embarrassed by that but wasn't.

His grandma went over to the window, looked out. She put her hands to the sides of her eyes like a reverse image of the creature. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "It was probably just a kid from-"

"He's not being ridiculous," his mom said, and that made him feel good. Her arms tightened around him. "It was ... I don't know what it was, but it didn't look human."

"Well, I don't see anything out there now." His grandma turned away from the window and faced them. Skylar saw not sympathy or understanding in her eyes but disapproval.

"Turn on the yard lights," his mom commanded. "Check."

The old woman must have heard the same seriousness in her voice that he did, because instead of refusing, as he'd expected, she left the room and walked down the hallway. A moment later, the exterior of the house was flooded with light. Holding his hand, taking him with her, his mom moved over to the window. All was was had fled.

The outside lights flicked off, and his grandma returned. "Nothing," she announced. He thought she sounded pleased.

His mom didn't say anything, and he didn't either. But she continued to hold his hand, and while he knew that creature might still be out there, might even be watching them from some vantage point within the trees, he no longer felt afraid.

"I'm going back to bed," his grandma said. "I'll see you in the morning. If you see any other monsters? Don't call me."

She disappeared around the corner. Skylar and his mom looked at each other and after a beat, they both burst out laughing. It was the first time he'd laughed since leaving Yuma, and even under these bizarre circumstances it felt good. Through the thin walls, he heard his grandmother's wordless sounds of disapproval-they both did-and that only made them laugh all the harder.

His mom wiped the tears from her eyes. "We're going to have to get some drapes in here," she said. It was meant as a joke, sort of, but it brought them back to the here and now, and they both stopped laughing.

Skylar looked at his cot, then over at his mom's bed. She knew what he was thinking before he even said it, and she let go of his hand and put an arm around his shoulders. "You can stay with me tonight," she told him.

He felt grateful that she hadn't made him ask-he felt like a baby enough as it was-and he crawled into the bed first, taking the space against the wall, away from the window. She climbed in after and gave him a kiss on the forehead before turning in the opposite direction. "Good night," she said.

"Good night," he replied.

But it was a long time before either of them fell asleep.

Seven

Kansas City, Missouri

Dennis was awakened by the train.

It shook the cheap motel like an earthquake, accompanied by a deep bass rumbling that he felt in his gut and that threatened to turn his stomach to Jell-O. It was the train's whistle that had shaken him from sleep, a loud sustained blast of air horn powerful enough to penetrate the plaster walls, cut through the static of the television he hadn't turned off and yank him from the deepest REM.

He'd seen the tracks in the daytime, of course. In fact, the highway he'd been taking had followed them for most of the afternoon. But he hadn't expected passing trains to sound so close. Or so loud.

The Midwest was weird. Especially the small towns. He'd spent all of his life in a large Eastern metropolitan area, so it was strange to him to see streets and neighborhoods where the houses had no fences, the yards no boundaries or definition. Stranger still was to see train tracks that seemed to run right through people's back lawns, tracks that were not segregated in a certain section of the city or fenced off in any way but proceeded over yards and down streets as though their builders had been completely oblivious to the community around them.

He wondered now what it was like for the people in those places. Were they awakened every night like this, jarred from sleep by trains speeding past only inches from their bedrooms? Or did they eventually adjust to the all-encompassing noise?

The train was long, but finally it passed, and Dennis lay there listening to the receding sound of its whistle. He tried for several minutes to fall back asleep but couldn't, so he flipped on the nightstand lamp, got out of bed and got a drink of warm flat Coke from the can atop the dresser. His cell phone lay next to the TV, charging, and he picked it up and looked, hoping for messages, but there were none. Earlier in the evening, when he'd called home to check in, he'd missed his mother and sister so much that he almost felt like crying. Travel was much more stressful than he'd been expecting. And much less fun. The lure and excitement of the open road had faded. Most of the time he was alone, driving through unfamiliar territory, listening to local radio stations that depressed the hell out of him. Hearing the voices of his mother and his sister made him realize what he had left behind.

But still he could not go back.

Not yet.

He did not know why, but he knew it was so.

The problem was, his money was going much faster than expected. Even with his skipping breakfasts and sometimes lunches, eating off the dollar menu at fast-food restaurants, and staying at the cheapest fleabag motels, his plan for a grand tour of the United States was destined to be over before it was finished unless something changed.