The Guardians

gummy enough to act as glue on the floor of this place, and when I raised my eyes again he was there.

A boy.

Eyes fixed on me. I recal little else about his appearance other than the impression that we were the same age, nearly men but not quite. He could have been Carl, or Randy, or Ben—there was a milisecond flash when I assumed it was one of them—but there was a threat in the way he cocked his head that I'd never seen in them, or in anyone.

The boy said nothing. I remember no detail of his face that could be described as an expression, the outline of his body stil, ungesturing. So what was it that prevented me from thinking of him as a fuly living boy? How could I tel he wanted to show me something?

I remember attempting to speak to him, though what I intended to say I have no idea now. What I do remember is the panic, the claustrophobia of being bound and hooded. Buried alive.

Oh yes, the boy said but didn't say . You're going to like this.

A wet click of breath in my throat and he was gone. Not with a puff of smoke, nothing uncanny or ghostly. Simply gone in the way a thing confirms it was never there at al.

I registered the squeak a moment later. The grind of a rusty hinge.

This was what made the boy disappear, what proved he was a misreading of reality. The bathroom door at the end of the hal had been wrenched open, a ful-length mirror screwed to the inside. And now, with a nudge of draft, the door moved an inch, shifting the angle of the mirror's reflection. Removing me from view.

There was the explanation for what I'd seen, rational, conclusive. It was me. Me, summoning a dark twin to return my gaze.

But even as I continued down the hal with calmed breaths, I didn't believe it. That wasn't me. A line of thinking I wrestled down but couldn't completely silence.

You know it wasn't.

It strikes me as strange now—and it must have then as wel—but once the boy could no longer be seen, the feelings he brought with him could no longer be felt either. I was certain that Heather Langham was not going to be discovered tied to the radiator in any of the bedrooms I leaned into, or slumped in the shower stal whose glass door I swung open to a party of skittering roaches. It smeled bad up here, but only in the way of smels I had already encountered, of piss and damp and long-discarded fast-food bags.

I had puled the bathroom door closed and was leaning against it, suddenly winded, when I saw someone standing where I had been when I noticed the boy.

Another figure of dimensions similar to my own drawn in a sharper outline of darkness.

Carl took a step closer. A dim veil of moonlight glazing his face.

'Randy found something,' he said.

We descended to the main floor in silence, and I noticed that the house was silent too. Had the others already left? Carl said Randy had found something, but I remember doubting this. Not only because the house was so quiet it seemed impossible that three other breathing, heart-pounding boys could stil be within it but also because of the lingering sense of change that folowed the appearance of the boy. The world had been altered now that I'd seen him—the mirror me that wasn't me—

and the solid grip I'd had on my perceptions before tonight was something I thought might never return. I had the idea that I could no longer count on anything as true anymore, every observation from here on in holding the potential of trickery. Which included my friends. Included Carl.

He led me down the front hal into the kitchen. Only once we came to stand side by side on the bubbled linoleum, listening to the stilness as though awaiting whispered instruction, did I change my mind about the house's vacancy. There was something in here with us. Not Randy or what he'd discovered. Not even the boy.

But something else altogether. A presence that had yet to let itself be known, but was aware of us. Saw endless possibilities in our being here.

Carl nudged me closer to the top of the basement stairs. I wondered if he might push me. I could feel my skin ripping on the steps' nail heads, the crack of bones loud as feled trees. At the bottom, something sharp.

Carl turned on his flashlight, and a yelow circle spiled over the stairs to colect in a pool on the hard soil of the celar floor. I expected him to start down first but he waited, looking down the stairs with the distracted expression of someone working to recolect a half-forgotten name.

His lips moved. An inaudible gulp. He turned his head and looked at me. 'It's different,' he said. 'What? What's different?'

He gave his head a shake. Two pouches, brown and tender as used tea bags, sweled under his eyes. 'You go first,' he said.

And I did. My oversized shadow looming and lurching as I made my way down the narrow steps. A plumbing pipe screwed into the wal for a handrail. One that threatened to give way any time you caled upon it.

At the bottom of the stairs, another flashlight found me. As it approached it blinded me to whoever stood behind it.

'We need to make a decision.'

I could see Ben only after he pointed the light up into the pipes and frayed electrical cords running through the wood slats of the ceiling.

'You need to be a part of it, Trev,' he said. 'Okay. What's the question?' 'What do we do now?' 'How about we get out of here?' 'No,' he said, pursing his lips.

'I don't think that's an option.'

Ben started away into the celar's broad darkness. I turned to Carl behind me, but he only waved his flashlight