JACK KILBORN ~ ENDURANCE (15 page)

“
Happy anniversary, child. Today, you’ve been with us a whole year.”

As the words sink in, Eleanor blows out the candle. The freaks—those who have two normal hands—begin to clap. There are hoots. Howls. Giggles.

Maria sobs. She fights her bonds. Fights with every last bit of her strength, even as she realizes that Felix will never save her, that she’ll never get out of this hell alive, that these sub-human monstrosities are going to use her all up until there’s nothing left.

Maria watches George sit in the opposing chair. It’s his turn today; the apparent reason for his lethargy. She watches Jimmy—his eyes crossed and the pale hump on his back protruding through the split in his filthy lab coat—wheel the machine forward.

Maria screams when the needle goes in.

# # #

Kelly’s fascination with the Lincoln bedroom lasted all of six minutes, and then she was lying in bed, tackling
Zombie Apocalypse
on her iPod. With Grandma watching, she’d finally beaten level 65, though it had taken up all of her shotgun ammo. Now she was on level 70, fighting a boss who was three times her character’s size, with a stomach so fat it looked like he’d eaten ten other fat guys.

Kelly strafed him with the machine gun, circling his rotund body while dodging the green acid he kept puking at her. She got his health down to only a few red bars, and then one of his lumbering minions grabbed her, turning her into a pile of ash.

Retry?
the game asked.

“
Hell, yeah.”

She adjusted the pillow she was on, took the last bite of a chocolate chip granola bar, and prepared to kick some fat zombie ass.

Then JD growled.

Kelly glanced at her dog. The hair on his muzzle was sticking straight out, and his lips were raised in a snarl. His defensive stance. But he wasn’t focused on her. He wasn’t focused on the front door, either.

JD was staring at the closet.

That’s strange.

“
JD. Come.”

Kelly patted the mattress beside her. At home, the German Shepherd wasn’t allowed on the bed, but Mom couldn’t bitch about what she didn’t know.

JD didn’t move. He growled again, hunkering down like he was ready to pounce.

Kelly studied the closet door. She’d checked inside earlier, while exploring the room, and had found it empty. But the way JD was snarling, he obviously didn’t think it was empty anymore.

Could there be something in the closet?

The thought of it was creepy, and made Kelly shiver.

“
What is it, boy?” she asked. A pointless question—it wasn’t like JD was going to answer.

But he did answer, in his way. He stared at her and whined.

The only time Kelly ever heard JD whine was when she accidentally slammed his tail in the patio door. That’s what he looked like now—eyes wide, ears flat, tail drooping under his hind legs. Like he was hurt.

Or scared.

That’s stupid. Dogs don’t get scared.

Do they?

Kelly stared at the closet door again. She’d been pretty engrossed by her game. Could someone have snuck past her and gotten into the closet?

No. JD would have noticed.

Maybe it wasn’t a person. Maybe an animal had crawled in there, through the walls. They’d had a racoon in the house before, up in the attic. JD used to bark like crazy when he heard it.

But JD wasn’t barking now. He was growling and whining.

Some other type of animal, maybe?

A few seconds ago, the closet had been just a boring, old closet. But now, with how JD was acting, it was actually beginning to freak her out.

She thought about the hunter by the waterfall, the one with the messed-up face. After beating Level 65, she’d used her iPod to Google
cleft palate
. That lead her to a site about birth defects, and some of the images were among the most horrible Kelly had ever seen. On one hand, it must have been awful for the poor people who had to live with those deformities. On the other hand, there was something so instantly repulsive about those images, Kelly had to stop looking at them.

Could that hunter guy be in my closet?

Kelly pictured him standing behind the door, waiting silently for her to go to sleep. So he could sneak up on her and kiss her with that disgusting mouth.

Kiss her, and worse.

Kelly had never kissed a guy. Not even on the cheek. She didn’t want her first to be that awful man.

I’m
imagining things. He’s not in the closet.

He can’t be.

Right?

“
Come here, JD.” Kelly said it softly.

JD didn’t come. He looked at her, then back at the closet.

Kelly set her iPod on the nightstand and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. She held her breath, listening for any sounds that could be coming from the closet—

—
and heard someone cough.

JD barked once and lunged at the closet door, scratching at the knob. Kelly quickly stood up and backed away, to the bathroom. The wooden floor was cool under her bare feet, and she felt nearly naked in her sleep tee shirt, even though it had three-quarter sleeves and hung past her knees.

The Shepherd continued his attack on the doorknob, even biting it, and though JD had never been able to open a door before Kelly had an unrealistic belief that he might this time.

“
JD, come.”

The dog glanced at her.
“Come. Now.”

He trotted over, tongue hanging out, tail wagging. Kelly patted his head, surprised by how reassuring it felt. Then she knelt down and hugged his neck, both of them eyeing the door.

The seconds ticked by. Kelly began to wonder if she’d imaged the cough.

Could it have been something else?

Old houses made noises. There were water pipes, and furnaces, and any number of things that made sound. At home, when Mom flushed the toilet, Kelly could hear it from the basement.

Maybe it wasn’t a cough. Maybe someone upstairs had turned on the shower.

Or maybe someone
did
cough, but it came from the room next door, not the closet.

JD pressed his cold nose into Kelly’s neck, making her flinch. She stood up.

I should open the door to check.

While Kelly didn’t consider herself a tomboy, she was far from a sissy. Kelly preferred
SlipKnot
to
Hannah Montana
, and would much rather watch the
Saw
movies than
High School Musical
. She could pick up snakes and frogs without screaming, unlike other girls in her class, and during a sleepover was the only one who could spend a full two minutes in the pitch-dark bathroom with the
Ouiji
board Sue Ellen Wilcox’s brother swore was possessed by Satan. The only irrational thing that scared Kelly was heights.

Is being afraid of the closet irrational? Or common sense?

“
It’s irrational,” Kelly said. Her mother loved the word
irrational
. And if she were there right now, she’d march over to the closet and show Kelly how irrational her fears were.

Drawing on that, Kelly walked toward the door.

The floor creaked under her feet. Though only a few yards separated her from the closet, it seemed like it took a very long time for her to get there. Each step closer increased Kelly’s apprehension. When she finally reached out and touched the knob, her throat felt like there was a walnut stuck in it she was unable to swallow.

Just open the door.

She tightened her grip, but still hesitated.

What if I open it, and the hunter is standing there?

Kelly looked back at JD. He’d stayed next to the bathroom, still as a picture.

Maybe I should listen to the door first.

The girl carefully placed her ear against the cool, rough wood. Again she held her breath, listening for sounds.

A few seconds passed.

Kelly heard nothing.

Mom’s voice appeared in Kelly’s head, like it did whenever she stepped onto a diving board.
“You’re being irrational, Kelly. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Crack my head open and drown?

Or in this case, get attacked by a crazy, birth-defected redneck?

Maybe pushing a chair up against the door was a better idea than opening it. Kelly saw a small desk and chair, tucked into the corner of the room. She could brace the chair up under the knob, so nothing could get out of the closet.

No. I’ll never get to sleep unless I check. It’s a big day tomorrow. I can’t spend the night with one eye open, waiting for a monster man to break out and attack me.

Kelly turned the knob—

—
yanked the door open—

—
and saw—

“
Nothing,” Kelly said, blowing out a big breath. She turned around to glare at her dog. “JD, you’re one dumb—”

A creaking noise came from inside the closet, so close Kelly could practically touch it. She startled, jumping backwards, eyes focusing on...

An empty closet.

So what made that noise?

Curiosity won out over fear, and Kelly crept back toward the closet. It was a small space, no more than five feet wide and deep. At eye-level, bisecting the space, w
as a metal bar, where two wire hangers hung.

Is one of the hangers swinging?

Kelly couldn’t tell. If there was movement, it was slight, and might have happened when she opened the door. She stepped closer, sticking her head inside
the closet. There was no overhead light, and it was tough to make out any details beyond the three walls. Kelly went back to the bed, picked up her iPod, and switched it on. One of her apps was simply a bright white screen that functioned as a nightlight. She shined it all over the closet, not exactly sure what she was looking for, but finding something unusual on the floor.

A straw of hay.

Not unusual by itself. But the odd thing was its position. The hay seemed to be stuck under the back wall of the closet. Almost like it was caught in a door.

Kelly tentatively pressed her palm against the wooden wall and pushed. The wall didn’t budge. She gave it a quick rap with her knuckles.

Hollow. But that might be the room next door.

Kelly crouched down, grasped the straw between her thumb and index finger, and tugged. The hay broke in half, still wedged beneath the wall.

WTF?

Then something nudged her from behind.

Kelly yelped, scrambling forward, turning around to face JD.

“
Bad dog,” she said, though he really didn’t do anything worthy of scolding.

The comment didn’t seem to bother the canine. He brushed past Kelly, sniffing the floor, and his nose locked onto the corner of the closet. He whined and pawed at the wall, finding something that interested him.

Kelly nudged the Shepherd aside and pointed her iPod at the space he’d been clawing at. The white screen illuminated a small, wooden knob on the floor. It looked like the top of a broomstick, no taller than two inches. Kelly tried to pick it up, but it was stuck. Instead of pulling, she tried to push.

There was a clicking sound, and the wall Kelly had her shoulder against suddenly moved.

A s
ecret passage.

Before Kelly had a chance to process what was happening, JD darted past her, scratching the wall, pushing it open on an unseen hinge like a big door. Then he charged into the blackness behind the wall, disappearing into the darkness.

“
JD!” she yelled after him.

Kelly heard the
click click click
of his toenails on the wooden floor echo away into silence. She squinted into the gap. It was a thin hallway, no more than two feet wide. Unlit, though the iPod allowed her to see that the hall stretched for several yards.

She turned to go tell her mother, then stopped, imagining Mom’s lecture.

“
You let JD run off? How irresponsible, Kelly.”

Mom liked the word
irresponsible
almost as much as
irrational
.

I should still go get her.

But why? I’m almost a teenager. I don’t need to go to Mom for everything.