“What’s that?” Ell asked. “That alarm?”
“It’s tellin’ me it’s 2100.” Ramsey nodded to the door at my back. “Mind double-checkin’ that lock for me, Grady.”
I pushed out of my chair on shaky legs. “Why?”
“Well, y’all probably don’t really wanna know.”
“Uh, yeah, we do,” Stone said.
Ell and Mia exchanged worrisome looks, then Ell mouthed It’s okay.
Was it?
I didn’t think so…because I knew what happened at 2100. I think we all did. Only none of us wanted a definitive answer.
But I asked anyway.
“Seriously, Ramsey, what happens at 2100?”
“Well, Grady, it means them shadows got an appointment with us.”
Before anyone could speak, a high voice shrieked outside, louder than the wind.
“We’re heeeeeeeeereeeeeee!”
“Don’t look out the windows,” Ramsey warned, nodding to the four covered panes of glass along the right and left walls. “Best to just ignore ‘em.”
“Ignore them?” Stone scurried from his chair, snagged his crutch, and took a shuffling step away toward the nearest window. I may have been imagining it, but he appeared to be moving easier. Maybe all that time trudging through the snow had built up the muscles in his leg. “That’s your plan? Ignore them?”
Ramsey gave Stone a curt nod. “Yeah, ain’t much else we can do.”
“It’s what we do when we’re by ourselves,” Ell said. “Isn’t it?”
“Sure,” Stone replied, “but we usually have a lot better protection than a gun and some weak-ass lights on the walls.”
“Hey now,” Ramsey warned, “you ain’t gotta bring my craftsmanship into this. Trust me, fella, I’ve survived 2100 every night for the past who knows how long. You ignore ‘em, they go away. It’s that easy.”
Stone glared at me. “I said it earlier, but here’s a reminder, Grady. When we die, it’s on you.”
“Yep, got it,” I said. “But we’re not gonna die.”
The monsters outside moaned our names. Every so often, the chains around the front doors we’d come in through rattled and banged. Ell shifted her chair closer until she practically sat on my cushion with me. I slid an arm around her and said it was going to be all right.
“I hear Mikey,” she whispered.
“I do too.”
“Make it stop.” Ell sniffled and dragged her sleeve down her face, wiping away the tears. “Just make it stop.”
“Elllllleanorrrrrr! Ellllllllieeeeeee!”
“It’s not him,” Mia said. “Just remember. It’s not him.”
“Oh yeah?” a different voice hollered from below, gruff and louder than the wind. “If we aren’t who we say we are, Mia, then tell me why there’s a bullet hole in my gut.”
I had never seen Mia’s face pale so fast before. Her lips tightened and she closed her eyes, rocking back and forth in her chair.
“That’s my baby in your belly, Mia! MINE! I’m comin’ for it! I’m comin’ to take it back!”
A third voice joined the fray, this one a woman’s with a heavy Canadian accent. “Give it to him, Mia! Goddamn it! You’ll just fuck that poor kid’s life up. You weren’t ever responsible, you know that, you dumb bitch! Remember when I got you a hamster for your ninth birthday? You named him Omelet. And what happened to Omelet?”
“No,” Mia muttered. “Shut up… Shut up! SHUT UP!”
“You let the poor creature out of his cage and he crawled up on the kitchen counter and into the drain, didn’t he? Remember how we found out? Do you, Mia? Do you?”
Mia’s eyes watered. A tear fell down her cheek and splashed the tabletop. “Stop it. Please—”
“I turned on the garbage disposal and your dumb little hamster ended up all over the walls. Took me hours to scrub all that blood off the linoleum. You know what I think? The bastard deserved it! Ohhh, I can still hear how he screamed. I bet you can too…”
Mia hunched over, clutched her belly. “I’m gonna be sick. Oh God, I’m gonna—”
I bolted from the table and grabbed the nearest thing she could puke in. It was one of the empty boxes. Mia ripped it from my grasp, dropped it, buried her head inside, and let rip.
As the wet sounds of her sick splattered the cardboard, the outside rang with laughter.
After a minute or two—I don’t know, it felt much longer—Mia came up for air, saying, “I’m sorry. I can’t—” Then promptly continued vomiting.
Eleanor hovered behind her, reached and held Mia’s hair out of her face with one hand while rubbing her back with the other. “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay. Let it out.”
Ramsey’s usually calm expression wavered. A spark of anger burned in his eyes. “Okay, that’s it. Didn’t wanna do this yet, but I see I ain’t got no choice. Sounds like there’s more than usual.”
“Well, that’s great,” I said.
“Fuckin’ A,” Stone added.
Ramsey bolted across the room. When he arrived at the door leading into the short hall connecting to the lobby, he kicked it open.
The door slammed against the wall with a loud clang, and a puff of plaster dust billowed from the fresh dent.
“Whoa, slow down,” I said. It dawned on me then that I had forgotten the rifle beneath the table. If Ramsey tried something, I was pretty much screwed. I was a little taller than him, but what he lacked in height he more than made up for in muscle and combat experience. Fighting wraiths was one thing; fighting a soldier was another thing entirely.
I hesitated to believe he would try something…but I had been surprised before.
I rushed along the hall, trailing behind. “Hey man, what are you doing?”
“Gettin’ the big guns.” Ramsey went past the lobby entrance and down the opposite corridor housing the other auditoriums. He halted in front of an exit. The cold wind leaked through the cracks in this door.
I stopped a few feet short of him just as he plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. In the dim light emanating from the lobby, he squinted, studying each of the dozen or so
