She was Taylor Alenn. Her dad had survived an abduction by it. He’d come to rescue her too, Cliff saving both of them. They were a strong family. Her dad was an inspiration, and she wasn’t going to disappoint him any longer.
Taylor flipped the journal open to the third page and kept reading, typing the hand-scrawled German text into her phone’s translate program.
An hour later, she was still in bed, sitting straight-backed, wondering how the hell she was ever going to break her ancestor’s binding.
Ten
Fredrik heard rapping at the window and spun over in bed. The tree must have been blowing in the wind again. His gaze darted open as the sound continued, and his brain clicked into place. Wait. There was no tree outside his room anymore. His dad had chopped it down, and they’d brought a root guy in to take the trunk out.
Dad said it was growing too big and was too close to the house. It could mess up the cistern underground, he’d said. Now Fredrik was up, peeking out from the blankets toward the window.
Tap tap tap. Then a pause, before the same three beats again. Tap tap tap.
Fredrik couldn’t see anything from his bed. His hand darted up, turning his nightstand light on. Everything glowed in the soft orange radiance, and his gaze darted to the dog-eared comic beside his bed. The issue of Creatures Unleashed stared blankly at him, the werewolf on the cover suddenly making him wish he’d opted for something a little tamer before bed.
Tap tap tap. The sound came again. He glanced at the clock to see it was three in the morning, and considered calling for his dad. But he couldn’t bring himself to. He was thirteen, too old for nonsense. It was probably nothing; a leaf stuck on the window, blowing in the wind. Repeatedly. In perfect time.
Tap tap tap. His heart jumped.
Fredrik flopped the covers to the side and hurried out of bed, pulling the pillow down by accident. It hit the floor softly and startled him as it landed. He took slow, methodical steps toward the window, his bare feet swiping gently against the hardwood. “It’s nothing.” Tap tap tap. “It’s nothing.” Tap tap tap.
Fredrik had nothing to be afraid of. He’d heard all the rumors over the years, but all that stuff had happened long before he was aware. He was one when the last kids were taken, and the Smiths from the orchard across the field from them were dead now. Still, Brittany Tremblay had gone missing, and that concerned Fredrik. It concerned him deeply.
His mom told him Brittany would find her way home. That she probably got lost in the forest, but Fredrik knew as well as anyone that the forest wasn’t that big. Walk one way, you found the highway; go the other, you got to the farmland.
All of this crossed Fredrik’s mind as he crossed his bedroom floor and stopped in front of his window. It was dark outside. There were no streetlights on their property, and the only motion sensors were at the front, so they could see when a car was coming to the house.
Tap tap tap.
With his heart in his throat, he peeked under the curtain. He was ready to scream, to alert his parents of an intruder, but there was nothing there. No werewolf, no zombie waiting to eat his flesh, just the side yard.
Fredrik looked up, spotting the moon. It was almost full, and it only appeared for a second, before the clouds blew in over it once again. During that moment, he thought he saw something in the yard. Was it an animal? Maybe it was Brittany. She could have emerged from the forest and crossed the field to their house. She needed his help.
Fredrik had always had a crush on the girl. She seemed so sophisticated, even though the other kids called her poor and made fun of her clothes. Fredrik didn’t care. He thought she was cute. Gone were his worries of monsters that go bump in the night. Young love clouded his mind as he unlatched the window and opened it wide.
“Brittany?” he whispered, never quite seeing what grabbed him, pulling him to the damp ground. His face smashed the dirt with a sickening crunch, and he tried to shout out, but nothing came. He couldn’t find breath, but he saw an arm reach up and shut his window from outside, before he felt himself being pulled up onto a shoulder.
The last thing he saw was the farmhouse, and the moon peeping from the clouds, before his vision went black.
_______________
Paul had woken up at six and was on the street, pounding pavement with his worn-in sneakers fifteen minutes later. The sun was set, but beginning to sneak over the horizon by the time he was a couple of blocks into Central Park. He loved this routine and wasn’t sure he’d ever stop running. Terri even came with him a couple of times a week, but today, she was going to shower and make breakfast so they could get on the road to Bellton by nine.
It was a four-hour drive on a good day, and it was a spring break Saturday in the state. Paul was already dreading the heavy traffic, but he was with his family, and Stevie was getting into audio books, so he had the boy’s newest favorite fantasy series cued up in his SUV. Terri would listen and smile as Stevie commented on it, telling them who his favorite characters were and why the bad guys needed to get stuck with swords. Paul enjoyed it too. It was fun
