So the next morning we were on the road to Michigan again. It felt good to have Rachel next to me in the Prius again, even though she insisted on listening to a podcast by one of her psych professors. “I’m missing class, I might as well learn something while we’re driving,” she told me. “You remembered there’s a time change, right?”
“Of course.” Mostly because I’d almost forgotten last time. “We’ll get there in plenty of time.”
We were fifteen minutes late, but it wasn’t my fault— a stalled car on the side of the highway backed up traffic for two miles and 20 minutes. Amber and Kris were already there, waiting for me. No Nicole yet.
I introduced Rachel, and we sat in my car. “What do we do if Driver shows up?” Amber asked, looking out the window nervously.
“Just talk,” I said. “He hasn’t seemed violent so far. Hopefully it won’t turn nasty.”
“But I know Krav Maga,” Rachel said. “If we need it.”
“Cool.” Kris seemed impressed.
Nicole pulled up five minutes later in a dented and dusty blue minivan that was heaving and shaking as she turned off the motor. We opened our doors as she walked over.
“Hi.” Nicole stopped next to the hood. “Sorry I’m late. I overslept a little.” She wore jeans and a loose jacket with big pockets over a T-shirt. Turning her face from me, she looked at the others nervously “Hi, I’m—oh.” She recognized Amber. “Hello.”
“Hi.” Amber crossed her arms. Kris stared at her.
I introduced everyone. “Let’s go into the house.”
Amber unlocked the door. Kris and Rachel opened the windows and shutters to let some air and light drift into the living room, but without anywhere to sit we all just stood in a circle, looking at each other. Waiting for someone to speak.
I started. “So, Nicole—your father was Jacob Holroyd, is that right?”
“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “My mom worked in a store downtown. I don’t know how they met, or started—you know. Anyway, after I was born, my—Jake—he gave my mother some money and she moved to Gary, with her aunt and uncle. She told me about my—Jake—when I was 18, but I didn’t want to meet him right then.”
Nicole glanced at Amber for a moment, then looked away. “But I got curious, and after a while I started checking up on him. And I started learning about his family, and about this place.” She gestured at the walls. “How they built it back in the 19th century, and everyone who lived here—there’s a lot online, and I found some stuff in the library here because I wanted to find out more. Not just about him, I didn’t care about Jake, I was just—there was something about it that was scary.”
“Did you ever meet him?” Amber asked.
“Once.” She bit her lip. “He was—okay. He wasn’t really interested in suddenly having a daughter. He gave me some money, and that was it.”
I glanced at Rachel. She gave me a slight nod. She can usually feel when someone’s telling the truth, and so far Nicole was being honest.
“You did a DNA test,” I said.
“Yeah.” She seemed embarrassed. “He let me do that. I mean, he didn’t really argue that he wasn’t my father, but we both wanted to be sure. So we did that. Before we met each other.”
“But why did you try to push me in front of that car?” Amber demanded. Kris stood next to her, glaring.
Nicole looked at the floor again, shifting her feet uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. I was—I wasn’t thinking straight. I just wanted to talk to you, but I saw Driver and I panicked. I had to keep you away from him, and I just—I don’t know. It was the only thing I could think of. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You tried to kill her,” Kris said.
Nicole looked ready to cry, and I wasn’t sure what Kris was likely to do. So I asked quickly, “Why keep Amber away from Driver? What’s so important about this house?”
She folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself. “People—disappear. My mother—that’s why she moved away when I was born. She—it made Jake exciting for a while, she said, that he had some kind of secret, but then he—told her too much. So she left.”
I looked at Rachel. She bit her lip, gazing up at the ceiling, then down toward the floor. Then she took a deep breath, nodding.
“Something’s wrong with this house,” Rachel said.
“Like what?”
She pointed toward her feet. “Down there.”
“Excuse me?” Kris stared. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m psychic.” Rachel stated it as a matter of fact. “No, I can’t tell the future or read your mind, but I can feel things outside the usual human senses.” Kris started to open her mouth with a question, but Rachel cut her off. “Don’t argue, I just am. And yeah—something bad is down there.”
“Bodies?” I looked at Nicole.
She took a step back. “Not—not anymore.”
“What was that list of people?” I asked. “People who disappeared?”
“This house is dangerous!” She looked like she wanted to run away, but she stomped a foot on the floor and clenched a fist. “It’s got to be burned down or something! That’s what I want to do, but Driver—his family—that’s what they’re scared of.”
“Stay calm.” I held up a hand. “Those people?”
“When I started looking into the history, and I found out about the Driver family—how they owned the property but let the first Holroyd build the house here—I started noticing people disappearing.” She looked away from me, but then she was looking at Amber and Kris. She turned around, shaking. “I have to—you won’t believe it if I don’t show you.”
Great. ”Trust me, Nicole. I have seen things you wouldn’t believe, and I’m not talking about human beings.” I glanced at Rachel. “But I’ll look at whatever you’ve got to show me. One thing first.”
She tensed. “W-what?”
“You’ve been institutionalized for mental health issues. Twice. What was that about?”
Nicole glanced around like a trapped bird. “Y-yeah. All right. I had some trouble with drugs. And, uh voices. I’m not crazy!” She glared at us, then lowered her head. “Except, yeah, I am crazy. A little. Just—not about this. This is real. I have to show you.”
“Where?” Amber asked.
“It’s downstairs.” She pointed to the hallway. “The basement.”
“I’ll get the car flashlight,” Rachel said. “Wait for me.”
Kris went with her to get their flashlight. Amber stayed, arms crossed, watching Nicole. . “You could have just told me.”
“I was scared. You wouldn’t believe me.” She faced away, trembling.
“You could have tried.” She looked at me. “What do you think is down there?”
“I’m afraid to guess” I had some ideas. I was just afraid some of them might be right.
Rachel and Kris came back. Nicole led us to the basement door, and they turned on the flashlights as we climbed down.
With more light than our phones, the basement was even spookier. We could see the cracks in the concrete, the cobwebs in the corners, the droppings everywhere. Plus, a dead rat lay next to the washer, its long tail curled like a snake waiting to strike.
The door stood like a tombstone, black and solid.
Nicole walked to the furnace and reached behind it. “I found it back here. It took me two hours.” She held out a key.
“You were the one living here?” Amber asked.
“Just a couple of days. I was—hiding. Sort of.”
“From who?” I asked. “Wait—Driver?”
She nodded. “I found out some things about him too.”
I looked back, up the stairs toward the open door. Chances were Driver was close. “Someone should keep an eye on the door up there.”
“I’ll do it.” Rachel stepped away from me, one eye on the door. “I can already tell—there’s something in there I don’t really want to see.”
I gave my flashlight to Rachel, then took the key from Nicole. The lock resisted, but eventually I managed to turn it and twist the knob. I pushed the door open.
Three wooden steps led down to a narrow platform. We walked down carefully. The platform creaked when I stepped onto it, and I held my breath as Amber joined me. Kris and Nicole stayed at the steps, following our gaze as we looked out at a wide pit in the dirt floor.
The room was about 30 yards across, with plywood walls holding out the earth. The dirt was black, damp, and smelled like dead worms and decaying compost, a swampy odor that made my stomach churn.
Kris flicked her flashlight back and forth, until Amber pointed. “What’s that?”
She aimed for the center. Something moved.
For a moment I thought—hoped—it was a shadow from somewhere. Then it moved again, something long and ropy, like a snake slithering through a swamp. It rose up, swaying in the air, curling and uncurling as if stretching after a long sleep. Tiny hairs like cilia rustled along its length. It straightened out, reaching toward the ceiling, then froze, as if responding to something only it could sense.
Then something opened up in the center of the pit.
An eye. A big, bulging, monstrous eye.
Amber jumped up onto the step next to Nicole. The eye was a pale mustard yellow, with a tiny black pupil swimming in the center, rolling from one side to the other. The lid quivered, blinking, and a thick, sickly fluid oozed out one side, seeping into the black dirt around it.
“What the hell?” Amber breathed.
I looked at Nicole. “You knew this was here? You saw this?”
Before she could answer I heard Rachel: “Tom?”
I headed up the steps. Rachel’s light was pointed at the top of the stairs.
Driver was there.
“Who’s that—” He peered down, shading his eyes against Rachel’s light. “What are you doing down there?”
Amber was behind me, with Kris. Nicole stayed inside the door at the top step, keeping her eyes on the pit.
“Stay up there.” I reached under my jacket.
Driver ignored me. He walked down slowly, shaking his head as if disappointed in me. In all of us. “You shouldn’t have come here. How did you get the door open?”
By the time he reached the bottom step I had my handgun out. “Please keep your distance. I haven’t fired this very much, and I wouldn’t want to shoot you by accident.”
Yeah, I own a handgun. A Glock we’d named Donald Duck, bought after a particularly dangerous case last year. I don’t carry it often, and I’ve never actually shot a human being with it. Although I have shot other things.
But if Driver was a serial killer—which is all I’d been worried about this morning-—I didn’t want to be helpless. Especially with Rachel close by.
Driver looked at the handgun. “You’re going to shoot me, Tom?”
“I hope not. What’s that thing down there?”
His eyes flickered toward the door. “It’s been there for thousands of years. It’ll be here long after we’re dust.”
“Feeding on humans? Have you been giving sacrifices to the elder gods?”
Driver’s frown grew dark. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Of course not. “Whatever. Nicole? Lock the door. Let’s get out of here.”
I heard her move behind me. I was keeping my eyes on Driver. Then the door at the top of the stairs swung open.
I stepped back, both hands on my pistol, but now more people were coming down. Two men, a woman, another man, another woman—”Hold it!” I shouted, trying to keep my voice and my hands steady.
“Are you going to shoot us all, Tom?” Driver smiled. “Meet the Driver family.”
“Maybe I’ll start with you.” I didn’t mean it. But I’d shoot somebody if I had to. I heard Rachel’s breathing next to me, shallow and fast. I was fighting to keep my own breath under control.
The Drivers—five of them, plus the original—were all ages, from a bearded man in his 60s to a girl who looked 19. They formed a semicircle behind Driver, arms at their sides. None of them looked armed.
Driver smiled. “This family has been serving the ancient god for 150 years. That doesn’t end today. The ancient god is forever. Before the Earth cooled, he lived, and when the sun dies, he will endure. You are nothing in his sight.”
“Nice.” Rachel shined her light around the family. “We’re nothing except good eating? Is that it?”
He shrugged. “Even gods have needs.”
“Let’s get on with it, Glenn,” said the old man with the beard.
Driver nodded. “If you’re going to shoot, Tom, start now.” He took a step forward. His family moved in too, slowly but with determination on all their faces.
I pointed my gun. “Sorry, Glenn—”
“Wait!” Nicole. “This is my house! My house now!”
“You can have it,” Amber said.
“You aren’t part of the sacrifice.” Driver waved a hand at Amber. “We need you. We need a legal heir so the house stays intact. You’ll—come to understand. We’ll take care of you—”
“Bullshit!” Nicole screamed. “I’m Jacob’s daughter, and this is my house now! You!” She pointed at me. “Come here. You too.”
I backed toward her, Rachel next to me, my pistol still aimed roughly at Driver. “What’s going on?”
Nicole motioned to Amber. “You guys. Come on.”
Driver started forward. “What are you—”
“Come on!” Nicole waved her arm frantically. “Get inside! All of you!” She held up the key.
The Drivers started forward. Amber whirled, and she ran with Kris through the doorway. I pulled Rachel, and for once she didn’t resist. We jumped through the opening, and Nicole shoved the door with her shoulder, slamming in Driver’s suddenly enraged face.
A heavy iron bolt hung from the wall. I hadn’t noticed it before, but with a grunt, Nicole pushed it into place as the Drivers on the other side pounded and shouted angrily.
We stood on the small platform. In the pit the eye pulsed, and another one of its tendrils pushed up through the dirt, as if sniffing the air.
“Now what?” Amber demanded. “You can have the damn house! What are we going to do now?”
Nicole pointed. “There’s another door.”
I looked across the pit. Yeah, another door, 50 feet away, on the far side of the room. Hanging open.
“I found it when I was here before. We can go around the edge, if we’re careful. I did it once.” She looked at me, desperate. “I’m sorry! It was all I could think of!”
It was better than fighting the Drivers. Even with my pistol, they outnumbered us. And I’m not a killer, for better or worse. I looked at Rachel. “I guess we better do it.”
“Yeah.” She squeezed my hand. “I did kind of miss this stuff.”
The pounding at the door hit a peak, then paused. That only made me more nervous. I looked at Amber and Kris. “Well?”
“Okay.” Amber nodded, glanced at Kris, and took a deep breath. “Okay.”
Kris glared at me, but she took Amber’s hand.
Nicole went first, facing the wooden wall around the pit, testing the ground step by sideways step. Her toe slid once, and she gasped, leaning back to catch her balance. Then she edged forward again.
I followed, Rachel behind me, then Amber and Kris. Amber was crying softly, but Kris kept her calm, swearing occasionally at the monster, at Nicole, at the Driver family, and me.
Halfway around Nicole paused, looking over her shoulder. The eye seemed to be following us. The dirt slid around like the surface of a pond, more of the thing’s tentacles sliding around beneath the dirt.
One popped up, darting around like a cobra seeking prey. Another one rose straight up next to it and stayed motionless, stiff as a spear.
Nicole started moving again, quicker, hands against the wall. “Almost there,” she said, more to herself than the rest of us.
Her foot slipped in the damp earth. She staggered, almost going down to one knee, and the tentacle darted forward, slapping at her ankle.
Nicole yelped, kicking. I grabbed her wrist, and then I almost went down as she jerked away from me, shuffling awkwardly. I leaned against the wall for a moment, my heart pounding, until Rachel pushed me.
More tentacles rose through the dirt, swaying back and forth. One poked at Kris’s heel. She swore, and Amber grabbed her wrist tighter, pulling her sideways.
Nicole reached the doorway and sagged against it, gasping. I nudged her through, turned, and pulled Rachel past me.
Amber was right there, with Kris urging her toward me, and then a tentacle pushed up through the dirt and wrapped itself around her leg. Amber screamed and toppled over as the thing pulled her, a second tendril rising to slip under her waist.
Kris shouted as Amber shrieked. I swore, reached under my jacket, and pulled out the Glock.
My first shot missed the tentacle around her foot. The second bullet scored, and it shuddered and went limp. The one under her hips froze, and Amber rolled away. She crawled through the doorway with Kris holding her arms.
Rachel jabbed me in the ribs. “The eye,” she snapped. “Shoot for the eye.”
Right. I found the big yellow eye, bulging from the center of the pit. Could I really hurt this thing? Or would I just make it mad? The ancient god is forever, Driver said. But I doubted anyone had tried shooting its big ugly eye before.
I squeezed the trigger. I stopped counting the shots after three bullets and just kept firing until the magazine was empty, which took only about three seconds.
The eye twitched when my first bullet struck it, and blinked in spasms with every one after that. Something started bubbling out of it, a greenish liquid that spilled onto the dirt and turned into steam. By the time the gun was empty the eyeball was twisting around and around, and the ground started shaking as more tentacles fought their way through the dirt.
Rachel grabbed my arm. “Come on!”
I followed her up a set of winding metal steps and through a trapdoor that brought us up into a small shack that looked and definitely smelled like an outhouse. A small window near the metal roof let in a little light. The door hung open.
Amber and Kris were already outside, holding each other under a tree. I staggered out, my legs shaking, but the sunlight felt warm and safe on my face.
We were behind the house. I looked around. “Where’s Nicole?”
Rachel shook her head. “She ran to the front. She said to get away.”
I had another magazine for my Glock, so I switched them out. Then we headed toward the front yard and our cars.
Halfway there, Nicole’s van came clattering around the house, tearing grass up from the lawn as it shuddered across the back yard, rocking back and forth. It skidded to a stop under the tree, next to the outhouse.
The front door popped open and Nicole tumbled out. Hauling herself to her feet, she started running, waving her arms. “Get away!” she shouted. “Get away!”
Oh hell. Was she—
I grabbed Rachel’s arm, and she shook me free as we raced for the front of the house, Amber and Kris behind us, grunting and gasping as they sprinted. They actually passed us and made it to their car just as Rachel and I reached the rear of our Prius. Nicole stumbled on the front lawn, plucked herself up again, and joined us, panting and wheezing.
“What did you do?” I demanded. “What are you—”
The car exploded.
The blast threw rocks and dirt and tree branches 20 feet or higher into the air, with a roar that threatened to blow out my eardrums and a shock wave that pushed me and Rachel to the street.
We rolled, me on top of Rachel as I tried to shield her from any falling stones or debris, and for once she didn’t push me away, except to shove my arm away from her mouth so she could breathe.
I saw Nicole on the ground, hands covering her head, her lips moving as if she was praying.
After a few minutes the sky stopped dropping random objects on the street around us, and I stood up on unsteady legs.
The side of the house was gone. Obliterated. Beyond I could see where the bomb in the van had gouged a deep crater out of the earth, flames flickering up over the edge. Was it deep enough? I hoped so. Otherwise we were likely to meet a very angry elder god again.
The front door opened, and Driver staggered from the house, followed by his family, coughing and wobbling. Driver paused to look at me, and for a moment I was afraid I’d have to take my pistol out again, but the old man with the beard slapped his shoulder and shook his head. Driver gave me one last glare, then turned and went with his clan to a pickup truck parked across the street.
Rachel helped Nicole to her feet as they drove away. Amber and Kris walked over, Kris holding Amber’s arm to help her walk.
I looked at Nicole. “Gasoline and fertilizer?”
She nodded weakly. “I’m sorry. It was the only way. That thing—” She leaned against my car, close to collapse.
In Chicago we would have been hearing sirens already. Out here the air was still clear and silent, except for the crackling of whatever was still burning inside the pit.
“They’ll trace it to you,” I told Nicole. “There’ll be enough of the van left for the FBI or whoever—”
“I had to stop them. Don’t you see? It was my father! My father, letting them kill people! I couldn’t—I can’t . . .” She coughed. “You guys better get out of here. I’ll wait. I’ll tell them everything and they’ll think I’m crazy and lock me away.”
I looked at Rachel. She rolled her eyes. “I know you. You love telling your stories to people who don’t believe you.”
“Yeah.” I turned to Amber. “If you’re fast, they won’t get you. I’ll try to leave your name out of it so you won’t have to answer any questions.”
She sighed, looked at Kris, then ran a hand through her hair. “They’ll know it’s my house. I’ll have to talk to them anyway. I guess I should stay.”
We went over our story together until the police and fire trucks finally started showing up.
We told them the whole story—Driver, Holroyd, the house’s tortured history, and the ancient god in the pit beneath the house. They clearly thought we were crazy. I’m used to that, but Amber and Kris had to force themselves to stop insisting it was true after a while.
In the end, though, they had a suspect who seemed legitimately crazy, who admitted pulling off the blast, and who told all the cops and paramedics and firefighters over and over about the one-eyed underground monster she’d blown up. Nicole clambered into a patrol car’s back seat in handcuffs but without an argument, and we watched them drive her away.
I don’t know what they ever found in the pit—the bloody remains of an ancient elder god? Bits and pieces of unidentifiable organic matter? I wondered if it could have survived, maybe digging itself deeper into the earth to wait a few hundred years before emerging again. When the Michigan police and the FBI called me during the days and weeks afterward, they refused to share any information on what was down there at the bottom of the black crater—alive, dead, or sleeping.
Driver and his family disappeared. The local police seemed to know about them, and implied that they’d been keeping an eye on them for some time. Their house, when I eventually found it, was empty, and the land around it was dead and barren.
Kris basically hated me, even though I didn’t think it was all my fault, but Amber paid my bill and let me know she was working on restoring the house so she could sell it eventually, with the lower basement area filled in by cement. She didn’t see Driver or his family again, but she was careful whenever she drove down to check out the remodeling progress.
I asked Rachel, when we got home that day, what she thought the thing was. Alien? Demon? Lovecraftian elder god?
She sighed. “I don’t know. It was old. Maybe centuries, like that guy said. And hungry. But also . . . tired. Not ready to let go, but—” She finished her beer. “But definitely evil.”
“Yeah. I got that too.” I opened another beer for her. “Thanks for coming out. Sorry I almost got you killed. Again.”
She patted my arm. “If I didn’t want to get scared once in a while—well, there are lots of cute guys at school.” She grinned.
“Now I’m scared.” But I sipped my own beer and tried not to think about the monster while we watched TV. Or any other elder gods waiting underground for another sacrifice.
# # #
