Dismember

which he liked, but not the movie-theater kind, which he liked more. Still, his mouth was watering already. He took a single pack and pushed the rest of the box back into the cupboard, accidentally knocking a can of olives off their shelf and into a frying pan. The can clanged against the pan and rattled to a stop.

“Everything okay?” Daddy asked from the living room.

“Yes.” He re-shelved the can and ripped the plastic off the popcorn.

“Let me know if you need some help,” said Daddy.

But Trevor didn’t need any help. It was just popcorn, and he wasn’t a little baby. He stood on his tiptoes to stick the bag in the microwave and pushed the button marked with the steaming popcorn bag. One nice thing about Daddy’s house was that the microwave was extra easy to use.

He was watching the microwave door when the face popped into the window on the other side of the room. He saw it only as a reflection, the way you saw yourself when you were brushing your teeth in the bathroom, but somehow that made it even scarier. For one terrible second, he thought he would make another mess in his pants. He had just enough time to think how bad that would be, twice in one day, and then the window broke and he was screaming.

Dave crept across the porch feeling like he’d stumbled into a tanning salon.

What was with all the lights?

On the floorboards around him, a splotchy, black puddle of shadows spread like spilled ink. His shadows, all starting at his feet and leaking away from him in different directions. Dave wondered momentarily at the physics of being at once both bathed in light and steeped in shadows, but gave up on the thought after very little real consideration. He didn’t care about the damn shadows, he just wanted the boy, and the lights meant the Pullmans had finally come home.

Things might not be working out as he’d originally intended, but he was making due.

He felt heat at his back and found red-hot coals in the grill pushed to the corner of the porch. Dinnertime. Hot dogs, from the smell of it. Little bits of meat still sizzled on the blackened grill.

Georgie and Manny stood in the grass on the other side of the porch railing. Dave looked at the boy and motioned for him to stay put. Georgie said nothing, made no returning gesture, only stood there with the leash twisted around his fingers and wrist and his hair blowing in the night breeze. His head had stopped bleeding, but his forehead and nose had turned black with the blood he’d already spilled. Dave wondered if he had any antiseptic back home. He’d have to get the boy thoroughly cleaned up.

On the grass beside Georgie, Manny looked from Dave to the boy before plopping down on his belly.

“Good boy,” Dave whispered and turned back to the house. He pulled one of the knives from his pants.

Dave pressed his face up against the nearest screen window, feeling the mesh material rub away at the caked blood on his nose. Inside, the boy stood in front of the microwave and watched popcorn through the small viewing window.

Dave watched Davy, thinking how strange it felt to spy on yourself, to see your replacement before he knew that’s what he was.

He could have stood there and watched for hours—it wouldn’t have been the first time—but his watching days had ended. He slammed the butt of his knife into the glass, and it tinkled across the kitchen floor inside.

Davy screamed. Dave smiled. He used the business end of the knife to cut out the screen and brushed away the remaining shards of glass. He hoisted himself up and through the shattered window and past the billowing curtains.

Where was the man? Daddy Pullman? Dave moved to grab the boy before things could get complicated, but the little sucker moved fast, and Dave slipped on the mess of glass with his first attempted step. If he had fallen, he might very well have impaled himself on his knife, ended everything right then and there when he was only halfway done, but he managed to throw out his hands and catch his balance. The glass beneath him cracked, crumbled, as if he were walking across the surface of a mostly frozen pond.

The smell of popcorn filled the small kitchen. The microwave whirred and kernels popped. He turned his head just enough to see the collection of crayon drawings on the refrigerator. He’d made those. Or rather, the new him had.

In the other room, he heard frantic scrambling, the sound of some heavy piece of furniture scooting across a bare floor. Tearing his eyes away from the drawings and cursing himself for losing his concentration, he pulled out his second knife and hurried into the doorway between the two rooms.

The Pullmans were gone.

Mike had never believed in the kind of instinct you read about in books and saw in the movies. In his football days, he’d learned to go with his gut, to dive right when he sensed the ball might head that direction, or to jump just before an opposing player dove for his legs, but that had been a cause-and-effect thing, reflexes more than instinct, movements he could perform only because he’d honed his body and his senses, but more importantly because he’d been a kid—sixteen, seventeen years old—and in his prime.

You sensed things, you reacted. Nothing more.

But on that night, hearing the sounds of breaking glass and Trevor screaming, Mike was on his feet and alert before his brain could possibly have registered the oncoming trouble, as if he’d been granted the temporary gift of precognition.

Trevor scurried into the room like he was on the run from a pack of wild dogs, and Mike didn’t hesitate. He pushed the coffee table out of the way, almost knocking over the TV, which wobbled dangerously before coming to rest pointing off at an angle. He was already running when he jerked Trevor off his feet and squeezed him to his chest. Behind him, whether because it had come unplugged or simply broken, the TV darkened, the Back to the Future menu fading into nothingness like a DeLorean doing eighty-eight miles an hour.

Mike carried his still-screaming son out of the living room and down the hall to his bedroom, the only room in the house with a lock. Trevor’s arms clutched Mike’s neck so tightly that for a second he couldn’t breathe. He reached up a hand and clamped it over Trevor’s mouth, not really understanding why, just wanting to keep the boy quiet, keep him from giving away their position.

Giving away their position? The thought was crazy. They weren’t at war. Yet still Mike ran, closing the bedroom door quietly behind them.

Locked inside the room, temporarily safe from whoever or whatever had invaded the house, Mike pried away the boy’s arms and sucked in a long breath.

Whoever was in the house? Whatever? What was wrong with him?

Maybe he had gone crazy. Couldn’t it have been a bird or a bat breaking through the window? Trevor had freaked out a little, and Mike could understand that (he probably would have done the same thing), but surely they’d overreacted a bit, the two of them locked in the bedroom and hiding from some unseen presence like a couple of idiot characters in a horror movie.

Except, as his brain caught up with his body, he realized he wasn’t crazy, that he’d simply reacted to something he only just now fully registered: footsteps.

Someone (or maybe more than one someone) had broken into the house, and he or she or they were moving this way.

Trevor whined, and Mike shushed him more harshly than he’d intended. Before the boy could start crying, Mike took him by the hand and led him to the other side of the room, to the window.

“Listen,” he said. He grabbed Trevor’s shoulder and used his other hand to hold the boy’s chin, making sure he was looking at him. “I want you to go to my workshop, okay? Don’t turn on the lights. Just go inside and wait for me to come get you.” He waited for some sign of understanding. “Okay?”

Finally, Trevor nodded.

Mike opened the window and pushed the drapes aside. The screen came off easily enough, but Mike didn’t bother easing it out of the frame, chose instead to simply kick it free. He could deal with the repairs later. Right now, he had more important things than window screens to worry about.

He lifted Trevor through the window, leaned his head out after him, and whispered, “The garage. Go now.”