Alan folded his hands together and propped them on his stomach as he leaned back and closed his eyes.
Sleep would be impossible—he knew that—but he could still relax and try to focus on his breathing.
He thought about that night in the hotel.
When they got back from that horrible trip, he and Liz hadn’t talked about it much. It wasn’t just their fear that talking about something paranormal would somehow help it manifest itself. Alan knew that those things at the hotel didn’t adhere to those same weird rules of engagement. He and Liz hadn’t discussed it because they both knew that to move on they had to allow themselves to forget. Healing would take time. Dwelling on it didn’t make it better, it only made it more difficult.
Since then, Ricky had forced them to confront their memories.
Alan remembered the fear of sitting in the hotel room, knowing that there were monsters outside in the dark. The tapping, coming through the door, the windows, and even the walls—it was enough to drive a person insane. That wasn’t the only purpose for it though. The tapping wasn’t just mental warfare. It seemed that the monsters could use the tapping strategically in order to manipulate things that they couldn’t get access to.
For most of the winter, Alan had been obsessed with the idea. How did the tapping work, and how could it be defeated?
Sitting in his chair, waiting for dawn, Alan thought about the tapping again.
When he really focused on the memory of that hotel room, it was almost like he could hear it.
# # #
The alarm shrieked and Alan jumped up out of the chair before his eyes were even open. All the lights in the living room were on. As he crossed the room to pull the curtains, the lights in the TV room came on too. Everything would run off of the battery pack for thirty seconds and then the power would transfer over to…
The generator fired up. Its distant hum was something they heard every Sunday afternoon when it put itself through its paces.
Alan heard a flurry of steps rumble down the stairs and then Joe trotted down the hall.
“Dad, is this a…”
“No. Not a drill. Take your position.”
Joe darted around him and slipped through the closet to move through the door in the back. Alan continued his way through the house, closing the curtains on the lower floor. Liz came down the stairs at a measured pace.
“Where’s Joe?” she asked.
“Already in the safe,” Alan said. He lowered the bar over the door to the cellar and put the bolt through the latch.
Liz nodded. “How many?”
“I don’t know,” Alan said, shaking his head. “I haven’t gotten that far.”
Together, they retreated to the closet. Liz pressed the button and spoke to Joe, who opened the door from the inside. Alan closed the door behind himself.
“You see anything?” Liz asked their son.
Joe didn’t look frightened at all. His face was lit up by the screen in his hands as he flipped through views that were fed from the system. Alan almost wanted to grab his son by the shoulders and tell him that this wasn’t a game. Whatever the security system had detected, it was likely a real threat to their safety. Instead, he looked up at the clock. They had more than three hours until sunrise. The little room was the size of a walk-in closet.
Alan patted his robe pocket.
“My phone’s upstairs,” he said.
Liz shook her head with a frown—she hadn’t brought hers either.
“Send a message, Joe, would you? One to Ricky and one to Robert? Tell them that…”
“It’s too soon, isn’t it?” Liz asked. “This could be a false alarm.”
“It’s not,” Alan said. He didn’t have to consult any of the cameras or look to see what had triggered the system. His heart rate alone told him that this wasn’t a false alarm. It felt like a balloon had been inflated inside his chest, putting pressure on all his organs.
Instead of sending the message, Joe handed Alan a cellphone.
Alan scrolled through the contacts and found the one for Robert first. Next, he sent a message to Ricky.
Joe sucked in a surprised breath.
Liz pulled the tablet from their son’s hand. She squinted, adjusted the view, and then brought it close to her face. When she handed it to Alan, she whispered, “What in God’s name is that?”
Alan’s hands went numb as his eyes scanned over the image.
He was looking at a mostly blue view of the side yard. On that side of the house, there was about twenty feet of lawn before the woods started. Right at the edge of the trees, a figure stood, completely still. Normally, a person would show up with a bright colored face and hands—their thermal signature against the cold backdrop. This outline was just black.
Alan switched to the enhanced night vision version of the same shot. In that view, the thing’s body didn’t show up at all. Only the eyes were visible. They were like two points of flickering light. Alan didn’t want to look directly at them. There was no telling how much power they would have through the video.
“It’s a trick,” Liz whispered.
Alan switched back to the thermal view. It was impossible. Even the grass and the trees appeared to be warmer than the creature standing there. It had the shape of a man, but if it was a man, the body had to be ice cold in order to appear that way.
“It’s a trick,” she said a little louder.
“Huh?”
“It’s a trick, Alan. He wants us to fixate on him. Switch the view, quickly.”
Alan hit the button to move to the next camera. This one pointed out at the road. After all their troubles, years before, they had invested in every security measure they could think of. It didn’t start because of a fear of supernatural entities. They just wanted protection in case the Prescotts—the evil sorcerers—came back for
