One claw rears back and then begins tapping.
The sound is so satisfying. Yellow waves roll out into the world and fill me with deep pleasure. Tapping is so enthralling and hypnotic. I can’t imagine anything I would rather do.
When my second talon takes over for the first, the tapping is more insistent. It’s building towards something. I try to track the imaginary yellow waves through the glass to understand their purpose. When I finally see it, I’m amazed and horrified. The sound of my finger hitting the wood is vibrating energy through the house and trying to focus it on the door lock. If they build enough, the vibrations will turn the mechanism and let me in. I imagine that it would take forever to move the deadbolt. There’s so much mass there that I would have to stand out here for hours in order to turn that lock.
Something much smaller, like the hook on Mr. Engel’s cellar door, that would go fast. That hook would slip from the eye in no time. If I were already in the cellar, I bet I could tap on the stairs and unhook that lock with so little sound that someone in the kitchen wouldn’t even hear it.
It doesn’t matter though. I won’t be able to get inside. I’ve purposely left myself with very little time before dawn. The sky in the east is already beginning to warm up from black to dark blue.
I have to go.
I move fast across the fields. I only slow when my talons find something to eat. It’s disgusting, but I know there’s nothing I can do to stop myself from feeding. I’m too hungry to pass anything up. The talons only like things that consume blood. Ticks are their favorite. They’ll also grab any spiders they can catch. At one point, I look down and see that I’m sucking on a furry corpse. I smack it away from my mouth with my good hand. There’s no denying how good it tasted. Fresh from the animal, hot blood is incredibly satisfying.
I try not to think about it as I slip inside Uncle Walt’s house and lock myself in the pantry. I’ll need to find a safer place to stay eventually. The pantry is too exposed. I promise myself that I’ll block up the cellar windows tomorrow night so that I can take refuge down there in the future.
At some point, it doesn’t do any good to keep denying what I’ve become. I just have to make sure I don’t lose sight of my real goal.
As I drift off to sleep, I try desperately to remember what it was.
(What was I thinking?)
What was I thinking?
I should have never come back to this pantry—it’s too exposed. I swear I just heard a car engine. It wasn’t a small engine, like the one that’s in the rental car that Amber drives. It was the giant, throaty rumble of a serious engine. It was the type of engine that has horsepower to spare, crouched under the hood and ready to explode.
The sound has faded now. It’s so low that I’m almost able to convince myself that it was a dream. Sometimes the sun finds a crack through the towel I have stuffed under the pantry door. Those stray sunbeams give me bad dreams.
The engine noise rises again and I understand what’s happening. The vehicle passed behind the hill between Uncle Walt’s and Mr. Engel’s. It’s getting closer. I recognize it now. It’s the sound of the police car.
I hear gravel crunch as it rolls across the culvert.
The driveway chime rings. Those crooks from CMP must have reconnected the power. So maybe it wasn’t the sunlight that gave me bad dreams. Maybe it was the sound of the workers that infiltrated my daytime slumber.
It’s her—the policewoman. I hear her footsteps in the dooryard followed by another pair. Her partner is moving very cautiously. I can hear it by the way he puts his toe down first and then rolls his weight to his heel. They suspect that I’m dangerous.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
She calls my name.
I’m paralyzed. I couldn’t answer if I wanted to.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
She calls again.
I hear her partner whisper to her, “Open door over here.”
He must be talking about David’s door. I think I might have left it ajar. My heart starts pumping, sending energy up to my eyes. I’m going to need them. David’s door creaks on its hinges as the partner pushes it open. I hear him settling his weight on the shed floor. His uniform rustles as he peers around the corner, looking for me.
He has to go away, right? They can’t just come into someone’s…
He takes a step and I hear her climb up onto the stone apron under David’s door.
They’re coming in.
He makes a brief detour down to the barn while she waits. They whisper back and forth in quick bursts.
“Shop. Wood pile,” he says.
“Any blood? Tracks?”
“Nope.”
I hear a click and then very low crinkling hum. He turned on the shed lights. Again, what was I thinking? I could have turned off the breakers for the whole house before I went into the pantry. I should have known that CMP would be by eventually. This was simply a lack of foresight.
“Noose,” the partner says.
He makes a quick survey of the first floor of the barn and then his feet come back through the shed to stop at David’s door.
They consult in low voices.
“Maybe he dropped off the note and came back here to kill himself,” the partner offers.
“But didn’t do it?” she asks.
“Not by hanging,” he says. “Keep going?”
“Let’s see if the door to the house is open,” she says.
That’s my door—the pantry door—that she’s referring to. I still can’t move. I can barely open my eyes. They’re both creeping. They’re coming down the shed hall towards my position and there’s nothing
