the next time.
Because she didn’t know how fast the creature might be able to move,
she needed to put more distance between herself and the back door.
She grabbed the can of gasoline at her side, Uzi in one hand, and
backed out of the doorway, into the hall, almost tripping over the dog
as he scrambled to retreat with her. She backed to the foot of the
stairs, where Toby waited for her.
“Mom?” he said, voice tight with fear.
Peering along the hall and across the kitchen, she could see the back
door because it was in a direct line with her. It remained ajar, but
nothing was forcing entry yet. She knew the intruder must still be on
the porch, gripping the outside knob, because otherwise the wind would
have pushed the door all the way open.
Why was it waiting? Afraid of her? No. Toby had said it was never
afraid.
Another thought rocked her: If it didn’t understand the concept of
death, that must mean it couldn’t die, couldn’t be killed. In which
case guns were useless against it.
Still, it waited, hesitated. Maybe what Toby had learned about it was
all a lie, and maybe it was as vulnerable as they were or more so, even
fragile.
Wishful thinking. It was all she had.
She was not quite to the midpoint of the hall. Two more steps would
put her there, between the archways to the dining and living rooms.
But she was far enough from the back door to have a chance of
obliterating the creature if it erupted into the house with unnatural
speed and power. She stopped, put the gasoline can on the floor beside
the newel post, and clutched the Uzi in both hands again.
“Mom?”
“Sssshhhh.”
“What’re we gonna do?” he pleaded.
“Sssshhhh. Let me think.”
Aspects of the intruder were obviously snakelike, although she couldn’t
know if that was the nature of only its appendages or of its entire
body. Most snakes could move fast–or coil and spring substantial
distances with deadly accuracy.
The back door remained ajar. Unmoving. Wisps of snow followed drafts
through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb, into the house,
spinning and glittering across the tile floor.
Whether or not the thing on the back porch was fast, it was undeniably
big.
She’d sensed its considerable size when she’d had only the most
fleeting glimpse of it slipping away from the window. Bigger than she
was.
“Come on,” she muttered, her attention riveted on the back door. “Come
on, if you’re never afraid, come on.”
Both she and Toby cried out in surprise when, in the living room, the
television switched on, with the volume turned all the way up.
Frenetic, bouncy music. Cartoon music. A screech of brakes, a crash
and clatter, with comic accompaniment on a flute. Then the voice of a
frustrated Elmer Fudd booming through the house: “OOOHHH, I HATE THAT
WABBIT!”
Heather kept her attention on the back door, beyond the hall and
kitchen, altogether about fifty feet away.
So loud each word vibrated the windows, Bugs Bunny said: “EH, WHAT’S
UP, DOC” And then a sound of something bouncing: BOING, BOINC, BOING,
BOING, BOING.
“STOP THAT, STOP THAT, YOU CWAZY WABBIT!”
Falstaff ran into the living room, barking at the TV, and then scurried
into the hall again, looking past Heather to where he, too, knew the
real enemy still waited.
The back door.
Snow sifting through the narrow opening.
In the living room, the television program fell silent in the middle of
a long comical trombone crescendo that, even under the circumstances,
brought to mind a vivid image of Elmer Fudd sliding haplessly and
inexorably toward one doom or another. Quiet. Just the keening wind
outside.
One second. Two. Three.
Then the TV blared again, but not with Bugs and Elmer. It spewed forth
the same weird waves of unmelodic music that had issued from the radio
in the kitchen.
To Toby, she said sharply, “Resist it!”
Back door. Snowflakes spiraling through the crack.
Come on, come on.
Keeping her eyes on the back door, at the far side of the lighted
kitchen, she said, “Don’t listen to it, honey, just tell it to go away,