Vol. 1 - STATION DARK #16: Encroachment
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Vol. 1 - STATION DARK # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18(End)
Vol. 2a - BETWEEN STATIONS # 1 (of 6)
Vol. 2b - THE LONG STAY # 1 (of 12)
Encroachment
They didn’t talk much until they hit the end of Elm. The three kids coasted the last few yards on their bikes as if the road itself were tilted that way, brakes chirping, chain clacking.
“That wasn’t a room,” Noah said finally. “Not a normal one.”
“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Pretty much got there on my own, but thanks.” She glanced back at the Niles house, with its white siding and overgrown flower beds, sitting at the end of the street like a held breath waiting to release. She wondered if she might see anything through the front window’s blinds.
Cassie caught Noah glancing back, too. He seemed to have a thought lodged sideways in his mind.
“We can’t help them right now,” she said.
“I know,” said Noah, pedaling up beside her. “I’m thinking about the salt. The corner with the salt pile. Jacob didn’t know why it was there.”
“The whole place was weird,” said Cassie. “I’m not sure it’s supposed to make sense.”
“Maybe not.” Noah shrugged, but his backward glances told a story that still lingered.
Eli kept his gaze on the street, tracing with his eyes the tar seam running up the center which shone black and wet though there hadn’t been rain. He hadn’t said anything since they left the Niles’ threshold. In their strange room, where the wallpaper had peeled back in waveforms and the air had tasted like coins. Jacob’s little brother had stood still as if he were so listening to a wind from inside the wall. Eli had wanted to ask what he heard but lost his nerve.
They passed Mr. Weston’s service garage at the corner of Maple and Third. The door jittered down an inch, up an inch, down again, like somebody inside was tugging at the chain and letting go with a mechanical rattle and clank.
“That’s weird,” said Noah.
“Yeah, said Cassie. The sighting fixed to an unease that had swelled in her, a dread that something was coming. A moment. A dark vibration. “Ignore it. Eyes straight ahead. Don’t get distracted.”
This only made them look harder.
The pole beyond the garage vibrated with an insect hiss, like hundreds or thousands of invisible wings. Eli could feel the buzz in his jaw, a bone-deep rattle like being too close to a speaker at a dance. It expanded with a slow patience that made his skin pull tight across his ribs. “You hear that?”
Noah’s eyes darted around. “Hear what?”
“Never mind,” said Eli. He didn’t want to put a shape to it with words. “Just nervous.”
They cut across to Birch, then onto a little dogleg that ran behind a ranch house with an above-ground pool stacked for winter. The metal ring of it gave off a low moan, the sound a bottle makes when you blow across it. The moan followed them for half a block before giving up and fading away.
“I definitely heard that,” said Noah. “Is this just… normal now?”
“Shut up,” said Cassie, but she said it softly, as if she might anger the vibrations in the earth.
They turned onto Sharon’s street and heard Cal before they saw him. His shout broke through the quiet like a rock through a window two houses up: “Sharon! Open up!”
Cassie’s hands went slick on the grips. They pushed harder.
The block didn’t look like anything special at first, just a row of quiet houses with low roofs and big picture windows full of plants, a couple porch swings, mailboxes leaning toward the walk. Then the oddities began to announce themselves, each one only a degree off, barely enough on its own to be noticed.
On the third house down, the plastic deer in the yard had its front leg sunk in the soil to the knee, the paint bubbling where it met the dirt. At the house beside it, the wind chimes moved though there was no wind, jangling in patient, rhythmic intervals, with the longest chime ticking like a metronome. Further down, a pickup parked at the curb rocked once, settled, and then rocked again like someone inside shifted their weight from the driver seat to the passenger seat and back. Eli could feel the ephemeral shape of that motion in his own chest, disrupting his heart’s rhythm.
The sixth house down was Sharon’s. Cal’s van was nose-in to the curb, the passenger door hanging open, and Cal stood with his shoulder braced against Sharon’s front door and wisps of hot breath cording his neck in the cold air. He looked bigger in his anger.
“Sharon!” he said, and hit the door again. The frame gave a little, and then sprang back as defiantly if the wood was picking a fight.
“Cal!” Cassie shouted. They dropped their bikes in the yard and ran. Cassie reached him first, hands up like she planned to catch him if he fell back. “What are you doing?”
“Heard shouting,” said Cal. “Sharon’s inside.”
“Guys…” said Noah. Whatever he thought he might say next died in his throat. He merely pointed then, and Cassie turned to look across the yard to the little split-level house next door, where Mrs. Addams had stepped out in white slippers to fetch the paper. She wore a pink robe and had one slipper on the first porch board, where she’d paused, frowning, as if she’d stepped in something sticky.
The board had bowed around her foot. The grain shifted. Cassie saw the line of old nail heads sway slightly. Mrs. Addams took her foot back and the wood didn’t release. It mounded and gathered like tar stuck to a boot as she raised her slipper. The second slipper came down fast, a reflexive stumble, and it met the same slow give. She reached for the railing and the wood there bent toward her hand as if the whole house were made of warm putty and might collapse under her touch. The rail caught her wrist as she flailed for something solid, swallowing her arm to a shudder.
She looked over, past them, as if embarrassed, as if she’d dropped an armful of groceries and wanted to pretend it didn’t happen. Her mouth formed an apology but she made no sound.
“Cal,” said Cassie, without taking her eyes off the porch. “Cal.”
“I know,” he said. He didn’t look. He pressed his forehead to the door. His voice dropped so low they had to lean in. “We get Sharon first.”
“She’s right there,” said Noah. “She’s helpless.” He waved at Mrs. Addams with one hand, not sure whether to go help her but equally sure he shouldn’t leave Cal’s side.
Cal lifted his head and looked. He watched the porch boards shiver around the woman’s ankles like water around a piling. His gut turned with sour acids as he saw the railing cup her other hand, watched her shoulders sink an inch as if the porch had taken the idea of consuming her for lunch. For a second, something like panic flashed through Cal’s face. He felt Noah’s hand tugging at his coat, and he looked at the three frightened faces huddling close to him. He shoved his terror back down. “We’ll come back. I promise.”
He turned his body, squared himself, and hit the door again. His action bolstered the kids, and Noah stepped in beside him without being told. Together they made a thud that felt bigger than either of them. The frame exhaled, groaned, refused. Cassie scanned the face of the house for better leverage, for a window unlatched or a second way in. Every line of the siding lay too straight. The glass in the picture window looked extra flat.
Eli stepped back two paces, then another, until he could see the larger composition. The house bulged in quiet places, like the seam where the wall met the ceiling in the front room, the line under the eaves, and the bottom edge of the door where the weather strip brushed the threshold. He didn’t exactly see it, but felt the pressure changes across his skin.
“Here,” he said, moving to Cal’s side at the door, tapping the spot he felt bulging most, whether visibly or somehow otherwise: two inches to the right of the door latch, on the frame itself. “It’s weak here.”
Cal shifted his stance, eyes on Eli without question. “On my count.” He pulled air. “Three. Two. ONE.”
They hit the frame together in perfect, desperate unison, and the wood cracked. Another blow and the frame came apart in a puff of splinters, disassembling in a way that seemed impossible for something made of nails and wood. The door fell away into parts and a wave of weighted air hit them.
The entryway smelled earthy and rancid with the tang of scorched wire. Cal put his hand to the door frame and hissed, pulling back as if he’d touched a stove. The paint stuck to his palm in chalk smears. Eli saw the way the drywall on the far wall slowly rippled.
“Sharon?” called Cal, gentler now. “You there?”
Something moved in the depths, amidst the folds of shadows near the kitchen. A human shape stretched thin by the angle. They all went quiet at once without meaning to, each of them measuring up the distance and consequence of whatever lie in there.
“Cal?” a voice returned. It came to them flat.
Eli froze. What he saw made something cold and old inside him pull taut.
For a second Cassie thought it wasn’t Sharon at all. When she saw it, she gasped and grabbed Noah’s arm.
Sharon’s right shoulder had disappeared entirely into the plaster of the kitchen wall. Her cheek was pressed flat to it, sinking as though the wall were soft clay cupping her face. The paint around her skin bulged outward, pulsing faintly, taking on her outline as if learning it. Her fingers, at least the ones they could still see, twitched like she was trying to tap on something inside the wall, or like something inside the wall was tapping through her. Her eyes drifted toward them, sluggish, and the plaster shivered around her.
“Cal…” she murmured. “You’re late.”
The wall pulled her another inch deeper.
*** End Transmission ***
Read STATION DARK #17: “Ground Reference” HERE
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Vol. 1 - STATION DARK # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18(End)
Vol. 2a - BETWEEN STATIONS # 1 (of 6)
Vol. 2b - THE LONG STAY # 1 (of 12)
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