Chapter 4 — Safe Behind Walls

The door burst open and crashed against the wall as I dashed toward the gate. I had a moment of being thankful that I hadn’t taken my shoes off when I got home, because I had to dash across rocks. I felt them shifting underneath my feet and knew that one wrong move would send me sprawling.

I had to get away from my father, and deep down, I knew that would mean running for my life. I’d seen so many times, where the fury in his eyes burned a little hotter than before. Where he looked a little madder, a little less controlled. And each time I saw that, I knew deep in my heart that he would kill me if he got pushed the right way at the wrong time.

Telling a counselor that he had been beating me up for years seemed like the perfect storm to ignite that madness.

“Whilda!” my father thundered behind me.

I dared a glance over my shoulder and saw him standing at my window. Those blue eyes of his lit up with a fury that I’d never seen before, and my heart tripped in my chest. His hands gripped the windowsill with such force, his knuckles turned white.

My foot caught on a rock while I paid attention to him. I went sprawling, my knees hitting the ground. The rocks bit through my worn jeans, and I had to grind my teeth together to keep from yelling. The rocks also managed to cut into the heels of my hands. I wanted to cry from frustration but pushed to my feet instead.

“Get back here!” my father ordered, in that tone that said he wasn’t fucking around, and I’d regret not listening to him. The tone had worked on me thousands of times before. Often enough that my legs wanted to slow down and turn around. They wanted to listen to him, because I always listened to him.

My instincts, on the other hand, screamed that stopping would mean my death. It would be a brutal death, they said, and one that would make everyone realize that a monster had been raising me… but they would realize that too late.

I shoved to my feet as my father began to curse in earnest. He called me filthy names that I hoped the neighbors heard. I wanted them to know what happened in that house, because it could only help me get away.

Once I’d gotten to my feet, I dashed forward, to the gate.

If we’d had a state-of-the-art system, then my father could have closed me inside the house with him. Buttons inside would’ve controlled the gate without a hitch, as a matter of fact. Thankfully, my father had always been cheap.

I slammed my hand down on the thumb pad and waited. Each second felt like the last, and my heart thumped so hard that it felt like someone beat me from the inside out.

The little red light turned green, and the gate opened. I darted out just as the front door started to open, and I slammed the gate closed.

My father and I stared at each other. The madness in his eyes receded for a second, letting pure coldness seep through that gaze. He stared at me like someone who knew what he needed to do.

I expected him to dart out, to come at me with everything that he had. So sure that he would do that, I got confused when he closed the door. My shoulders slumped, but not in disappointment. My heart slowed down, and relief flooded my system. He would let me go, I thought. He would let me go, because he had decided that I wasn’t worth all of this.

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I started to walk away from the house. My legs shook with every step, and I had no clue where I would go. I didn’t have any friends. It seemed like a bad idea, considering how much I had to hide. They would notice bruises, scrapes, and cuts eventually. Plus, I’d always felt like if I had a friend, I’d lean on them too much. I’d beg them to be the person that never hurt me, never left me, never…

It wouldn’t have been fair to put that kind of pressure on another person. It felt safer and kinder to stay alone.

I had been thinking of shelters earlier. We had two in town, as a matter of fact. One for battered women and one for homeless people. I could’ve got to the first one, I supposed. Did I count, when I was a minor and didn’t have any bruises? Would they take one look at me, and throw me out on my ear?

Not everyone is like that counselor, I thought, and believed. If people acted like that counselor, then there wouldn’t be laws against beating children.

Still, the thought of going to that shelter, knocking on the door, and asking if they could help me sent shivers through my stomach. They could say no just as easily as they could say yes. I would be handing over all the power to someone I didn’t know. I’d have to hope that whoever ran the shelter had a kind heart. I hadn’t encountered one of those in a long time.

As for the homeless shelter… I didn’t think that would be a good idea. They had to take me in before nightfall, by law. However, I’d heard horror stories of what happened after night fell, and no one could leave. It only took one psychopath to turn a shelter into a gladiator style arena.

I had no illusions about what that meant for me.

I didn’t think this through, not that I had much time to think. It had gotten to the point where my instincts outweighed my intelligence. My need for survival outweighed by my need to stay behind walls. Not safe, but behind walls, nonetheless.

The shelter is my only option, I realized.

Headlights appeared behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, to see how many cars had started driving down the street and saw only one. My father’s. He went twenty miles over the speed limit and came straight at me.

I didn’t have a moment to be surprised or worried. I didn’t have a moment of shock. He came toward me so fast, that I had to move or die. I leapt off the sidewalk, onto someone’s lawn. Dad twisted the steering wheel, so that his car jumped the curb, drove over the lawn, and continued toward me.

Without thinking, I dashed across the street, my legs pumping and my breath wheezing out of my lungs.

The car backed up, turned, and pursued me.

I started to run in a zigzag pattern, as fast as I could, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to turn the car in the same way. He ran over curbs, left dents in lawns, and clipped fences in his attempt to catch me. Or hit me. I didn’t even know, but I felt like this didn’t end well for me in his head.

The car twisted around and started to drive straight before I realized what happened.

Screaming, I leapt out of the way, hitting the ground with my hip. I rolled to my side and got back to my feet as the car started to back up and turn toward me at the same time. I scrambled, my eyes darting all around the street. I’d ended up a block or so from my house, and already, nothing looked familiar.

I needed a place to hide.

The car turned toward me, and I took off running.

Someone opened their door, and a lady in a suit stepped out. “What the hell is happening out here?” she screamed, infuriated already.

“Call the police!” I shouted to her, running.

I caught the barest glimpse of her eyes as she watched the car backing up to pursue me. They widened and looked shocked. I couldn’t blame either of those reactions, but I needed her on the phone, now. “Call the fucking police!” I screamed as loud as I could, hearing the note of hysteria that crept into my voice.

The woman jumped back into her house and slammed the door. I sent up a prayer that someone would listen, and phone 911. Someone had to have that kind of intelligence when they saw a madman trying to hit a girl, right?

My father sped down the street, past me, and turned the car so that it blocked the way I had been running. I started to run the opposite direction, employing my zigzag pattern again, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to hit me that way.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a little alley between houses, and almost screamed in joy. I turned down it, about two seconds before the headlight of my father’s car slammed into someone’s chain link fence. The fragile metal gave away, and the sound of it scraping against my father’s hood drove straight into my head. I backed further down the alley, but I couldn’t help staring into the car.

My father’s eyes met mine. Dad looked so calm and cold still. I’d never seen him so… empty and controlled. Normally, when he attacked me, it had this manic quality to it, like I had somehow offended him personally.

I backed away from him, knowing that the car wouldn’t quite fit between the houses. Part of me hoped that he would try anyway, and that he would break the hood in the process. It would make it easier for the police to grab him, and maybe then I could ask for shelter. For some kind of help. They had to believe me now, right?

My father didn’t try to drive through the alley, though. the two of us just stared at each other.

I began to walk backwards, so that I could put more space between us. My hand tightened around the strap of my backpack, as if that would somehow save me.

Dad put the car in reverse and pulled free of the chain link fence. The sound drove straight into my ears, but I ignored that as I turned around, and started jogging between the houses.

When I got through the other side, I looked around. The neighborhood had become even less familiar. All the houses had the same look as the ones in my neighborhood, but they also seemed foreign somehow. I rubbed my chest, trying to get my heart and lungs to work the normal way again.

Left, I decided, and turned in that direction. I crossed the street first and tucked my hands into my pockets.

The sun still shone in the sky, and I imagined what most people would’ve been doing right then. Eating dinner, no doubt. They would all be sitting around their tables, with their families, munching on food that someone had made with loving care. I shouldn’t have felt so jealous, considering the thought of food had my stomach cramping. That didn’t stop me from feeling a twinge.

An engine revved behind me, and I looked over my shoulder with a sense of dread.

There my father’s car sat, its headlights turned off so that I wouldn’t immediately notice it.

He’ll kill me. The thought shouldn’t have surprised me so much, considering I’d been aware of that for years. That one day, my father would go too far, and kill me. Yet, facing that reality, it seemed surreal. Like this couldn’t be life, with this man and this world. This couldn’t be my life.

The tires squealed as my father hit the gas. My eyes darted around, and I saw another alley. I didn’t have any options, so I took off. I felt the wind of my father’s car as it rushed past me, dragging at my body. I stumbled, nearly hitting the ground, before going for the alley again. The car started to back up, and it would clip me. It would hit me in the hip, and I’d fall to the ground. The second I landed, my father would pull forward, and then back up.

I’d be dead before the police arrived.

I got into the alley, and my father ran into another fence, this one wooden. It cracked loudly, the wood splintering, and starting to fall apart. I stood in the middle of the alley, and huddled down, where I would be safe. Where I should have been safe.

Dad threw the car into park and opened his door. He brought a baseball bat with him as he climbed out, and that length of wood looked so threatening. I rose to my feet, my heart thundering, and did the only thing that I could.

Left my safe haven.

I bolted down the alley, listening to the sound of my father’s pursuit. When I got to the other side, I blindly chose a direction to run, and took off. My legs ate up the ground, but I could hear my father’s feet behind me. I had a vague thought, wondering how much time had passed. Shouldn’t the police have turned up by then, if someone called them.

Someone had to have called them, right?

“Whilda?” my father called, his voice calm. “Stop running.”

I didn’t stop. I dashed around the corner of another street, and then darted between two houses. Both of them had chain link fences, and one of them had a hole in it. I ripped that hole wider and dashed into the yard. A treehouse waited, and I rushed up the rungs of the ladder, and into the small building. Inside, two sleeping bags sat empty, along with a carton of cigarettes and two six packs of beer. I had to assume that this treehouse no longer housed little kids but acted as the headquarters to teenaged shenanigans.

Huddling underneath the window, I looked over the edge, at the yard.

My father appeared between the two fences, looking around. He immediately spotted the hole in one, but he didn’t enter the yard. He stared at the emptiness of it, and I prayed the treehouse wouldn’t be easily spotted. I prayed with everything that I had in my heart, even my lack of belief.

Dad walked to the end of the fences and looked both directions. Unless I’d run across the street, between two more houses, he should have been able to see me. My dad had never been a stupid man. He turned back around, and started looking into the yards again, hoping to find where I had gone off to. I curled up tighter, wrapping my arms around my knees.

Would screaming work? It hadn’t last time. Everyone stayed in their houses while my father had tried to hit me with his car. What made me think this time would be any different?

Then I heard it. The distant sound of police sirens filled the air, and I lifted my head. My hope died quickly, because how the hell would they know where my father and I had gone off two. I’d passed two or three streets in our pursuit, until I didn’t recognize my location. They couldn’t exactly track my father’s car either, which had been abandoned a couple of streets back too.

My dad also heard the sirens, though, and he lifted his head. I watched his hands clench and relax a few times. When his shoulders lost their tension, I paid extra close attention to him.

Dad lifted his face up to the sky, the slowly darkening sky. “You’ll have to come home eventually,” he called out. “You can’t stay outside forever.” He pointed at the sky and started to walk away. As he disappeared between the two houses, I slumped to the floor.

My heart took the opportunity to race, and my lungs tried to catch up on my breathing. Now that the immediate danger had vanished, though, the panic set in. The panic, shock, and anxiety. I curled up on the floor of the disgusting treehouse, and just shook. No tears left my eyes, and I had to assume that came from shock.

If I got lucky, then someone took my father’s license plate number, and they would be able to find him. When they did that, I would go to the police, and tell them everything. They would send me into foster care, and that would be terrible. I’d hate it, but I would be able to live with it.

I had a plan. So now, I had to stop shaking like a little girl, get my ass up, and act like I would survive this, because I would. I’d survived worse things, and I would keep myself safe and sane.

Even so, I exercised a lot of caution as I started to climb out of the treehouse. My father wouldn’t have played that kind of trick, where he pretended to leave to draw me out. Not his style. He liked to bust into rooms and beat the crap out of me. Stealth didn’t make for a fun chase, I supposed.

Of course, I wouldn’t have thought him capable of trying to hit me with his car, either.

As I approached the bottom, I craned my neck around, hunting for the man. I saw nothing and made my way toward the hole in the fence. Still nothing. I pulled the metal apart, and stepped through, so that I could stand between the houses. My father had truly left, and I felt my heart starting to slow down as I recognize that fact.

My shoulders slumped, and tears sprang to my eyes. Okay, it’s okay, I thought, wiping at my cheeks. Go to the shelter. They can’t turn you away after this story. It’ll be on the news soon.

First, I had to figure out my location. I walked out from between the houses, to an unfamiliar street. At the end of the block, I found a sign that read Peach Street. I had a vague idea of that location, and thought that if I followed that street, it would eventually drop me off by the main road. Then I could follow that road until I found myself in town, where I could go to that shelter.

With a plan in mind, I started to walk.

I only got a few feet down Peach Street when I heard the siren go up. My eyes went up to the sky, as the sun truly started to set, and my heart began to race. People checked their doors and windows all around me, and I had nowhere to go.

My thoughts zipped back to that treehouse. I didn’t know if a human or Nightmare family lived in that house, but I didn’t think anyone would be using the little building that day. I had to get back there, until the sun rose again. I’d find the shelter sometime the next afternoon, when it would be safer for me.

The siren became background noise, and I started moving faster and faster. My legs didn’t want to cooperate, already tired from all the running I’d done that day. A stitch formed in my side, threatening to undo me, and my breath sawed in and out.

One of the doors across the street swung open, and I reacted without thinking. I dashed between two houses and jumped over a wooden fence. It took a lot of effort, because the fence stood six feet tall. Splinters ripped through my skin, but my hands had already started bleeding. I just needed to get out of sight.

I didn’t stick the landing, either. My ankle rolled, and I hit my shoulder on a small toy. It looked like an old doll that needed to be thrown out. The entire yard had been filled with toys, actually. I walked around them, to the main part of the yard. My eyes scanned the area, but I didn’t immediately see anybody.

Breathing out, I dashed back to the fence, and peeked out of a hole. Across the street, a woman stepped out. She had keys in her hand and hummed a little tune. I assumed that she wanted to check her mail. As she walked down the street, my heart slowed down. She looked about as dangerous as a soccer mom.

And hey, maybe she was a soccer mom. I didn’t know.

As she vanished, I stood back up. Within thirty minutes, the streets would be flooded with Nightmares, and I had to get back to the treehouse before that. If one of them caught me and called their authorities, then I’d be in trouble. More trouble than my current situation, at any rate.

I turned around and froze.

A little girl stood in the middle of the yard, staring up at me with bright, guileless eyes. I could tell that she had some Asian in her heritage—Chinese, I thought—but her eyes had such a bright green quality that it distracted me. Her soft brown hair hung around her face in waves, and she wore a purple dress. She looked maybe three years old.

I put my hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to leave.”

The little girl’s eyes grew wider, and she screamed, “Kier!” at the top of her lungs, while dashing toward the house.

I barely had time to take three steps before a boy appeared. A huge boy, with shoulders wider than any adult man’s I’d ever seen. The girl was clearly his little sister, as they shared some of the same facial features. His eyes, unlike hers, were a soft, clear brown with gold flecks in them. To go with his muscular body, he had height, like many Nightmares. He stood well over six feet, towering over me. The hard, cruel lines of his face contrasted wildly with the old jeans and t-shirt he wore. And he hadn’t put on shoes before coming outside. Despite how serious and hard he appeared, the kid couldn’t have been much older than me.

My heart shot into my throat as all the stories I’d heard about Nightmares started to run through my head.

He stepped toward me, and I stumbled several feet back. “What the hell are you doing here?” the boy, Kier I assumed, growled low in his throat. It sent a shiver of fear through me, as if everything else about him wouldn’t have done that already.

“I just want to leave,” I said.

Behind him, four other kids, all younger than him, huddled. They watched me with the same curious, wary expression.

Kier took another step toward me, his big body rolling forward. I stumbled a step backward. My foot caught on a plastic car, and I hit the ground, hard. The movement startled all the people staring at me, and I knew that it would be the end. After all the shit that happened with my father that day, after how hard I tried to survive, this would be the end, because I stumbled into the wrong backyard. I tripped over the wrong toy.

“Please,” I said.

Kier came at me like a battering ram. His hard arms came around my body, squeezing the life out of me. I wondered if he would be able to crush my ribs, the way the stories said he would be able to. It would hurt, but it would also be quick.

Instead of that, Kier put his palm on the back of my head. It felt like an ice pick drove straight through my brain. I felt the darkness coming around me and couldn’t stop myself from sinking into it.

Interlude Kier The trick worked, knocking the girl unconscious. I dropped her to the ground and lifted my lip in a little snarl. She smelled so human and afraid. She’d come into my backyard and decided to be afraid of me? I should have killed her for breaking the law. Most of my kind would have done that. They wouldn’t have felt bad, either. Luckily for her, the kids all huddled behind me, and I tried not to kill in front of them.

I glanced over my shoulder and sighed. “What are you looking at? Go inside!”

The four of them scrambled away from the door, and I rolled my eyes. They should have been finishing getting ready for school.

I stared at the stupid girl again. She laid in my grass, resting on some of Amber’s toys. I hoped that she woke up with bruises. It would serve her right for thinking she could wander around at night. The night belonged to us. Not them.

If I couldn’t kill her, then I couldn’t toss her over the fence either, unfortunately. One of the neighbors would take care of the twit, and I wouldn’t have to worry about her getting near my family again. I thought about doing it anyway, but Amber’s small face appeared in my mind. I couldn’t let her see me as a killer. Stupid of me, I supposed, but I couldn’t do it.

Kneeling down, I scooped the girl up into my arms again. She felt light as air and bony to boot. She needed another ten pounds on her, just to feel normal.

“What are you doing?” Ash asked from the hallway. He stood there, wide eyed and eyes locked on the girl.

“Go to your room,” I snarled.

He scrambled down the hall, probably too shocked to give me much lip. A first time for everything.

I brought the girl downstairs to the basement. Boxes and boxes lined the walls, all of them spider bait. I needed to make another pass through of all the things in those boxes soon. Hopefully throw some of them out before the others got too nosy. Clementine in particular liked to keep things. She’d come up with a thousand reasons why this thing or that thing had sentimental value. Even the spiders couldn’t deter her from wanting to keep everything in sight.

We had a clear space toward the back of the basement from my last run through. I dropped the girl on the floor there and looked around. She didn’t seem threatening, lying there curled on her side. I didn’t trust that she’d remain that way, though. Humans could be tricky like that.

If I remembered correctly, then my father had always kept hunting supplies in the toolbox.

I turned around and made my way back through the maze of boxes, to the toolbox in question. It looked pretty innocuous, sitting against the wall. I hated the thing, both for what it represented and the fact that it had a practical use so I couldn’t toss it. I opened the lid and scrounged through all my father’s old junk.

Eventually, I found some chain. He used to keep our dog locked in the backyard with this thing. As soon as Dad died, I brought the dog back inside. The animal had died about a year later, much to Clementine’s horror. She’d cried for a week straight.

It had been cruel to use on the dog, but the chain would keep the human from moving around too much. I brought it over to where she slept, and immediately started to secure it around her foot. Then I hooked it onto a pipe on the wall that I didn’t think she’d be strong enough to pull down. I could’ve been wrong, I supposed, but at least she’d make enough racket doing that to alert me. When I finally had her secured, I sat back on my heels.

I still needed to figure out what to do with her. The little trespasser.

“Kier?” Aiden called from upstairs.

“Stay there,” I barked back. If given half a chance, the kids would definitely come down to mess around. They would get curious and wouldn’t care that their curiosity would give me a heart attack one day. I shifted all the boxes around, so that they surrounded the human, until she couldn’t be seen easily. That wouldn’t stop my siblings, but it would slow them down enough for me to chase them back upstairs.

With that, I left.

“What’s going on?” Aiden demanded when I got up there. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes narrowed at me. “Ash said that you brought the human into the house. Did you?” He puffed up his tiny chest, like he could actually take me on in a confrontation.

“What would you have had me do with her?” I asked.

“Leave her outside?”

“So that we don’t know when she wakes up, and she could attack the house?” I asked.

Aiden deflated, and I felt bad immediately. He didn’t know any better, at only eight years old. He’d be a terror at twelve, thinking that he could handle anything, and not understanding how wrong that thought was. But I’d worry about that at a later date. When I didn’t have a potentially dangerous human in my basement.

“Finish getting ready for school,” I said, ushering Aiden off gently. A glance at the clock showed that we were already late. And I couldn’t leave, at all.

The kids finished getting ready, and I paused to grab Ash by the arm. “You need to get them to school safely, and back safely. I can’t leave the house right now, for obvious reasons.”

Ash glanced behind me, through the empty kitchen to the closed basement door. He cleared his throat, and said, “No problem, you don’t have to worry about me.”

I would anyway. My younger brother was only fourteen. Though, I’d had a harder life at his age, I didn’t want him to worry about anything, or ever get hurt. He deserved better than what I had gotten. Maybe it worried me more because Ash looked exactly like me. Just a little shorter and thinner through the shoulders.

Clementine, at twelve, looked the most like our father. She had his soft brown hair, pale skin, and a face full of freckles. Her eyes were bright green, and she had a thin, spindly body that she hadn’t grown into, yet. The only thing of our mother that she had was the shape of her eyes.

Aiden looked like an even tinier version of Ash and me, but his eyes were green instead of brown. He glared at everything as he pulled his backpack on, clearly irritated that he had to miss out on the fun just to go to school.

“What about Amber?” Ash asked.

“Take her to the sitter,” I said. “Just like normal.”

“I wanna stay with you!” Amber cried, throwing her head back. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she stared at me with so much hope that my heart cracked.

“You can’t,” I said. “Not right now, anyway. I promise to read you an extra story tonight, though.”

“Swear?” she said, glaring at me.

I put my hand up. “I swear.”

With a huff, Amber took Ash’s hand, and they all walked out of the house as a unit. All of them had that sullen expression on their faces, too. They would make me regret this, but I had to do what would be best for them. Even if that meant having to deal with tantrums later.

Just before I closed the door, I said, “Do not tell anyone of the girl.”

“You think we’re stupid?” Clementine asked.

I glared. “Nothing.”

They all put their hands up, just like I had a moment before, and spoke in a mocking tone. “We swear.”

I closed the door on them, before they could make this any more difficult on me than it already was. I watched through the window, though. Until I couldn’t see them anymore. It felt wrong, to not be walking them to school like I had every day for the last three years. I’d have Amber in my arms, with her tiny hands on my shoulders. I’d drop her off at the sitter’s on the way to school, and then Clementine and Aiden would go to one school while Ash and I went to another.

Nothing will happen to them, I told myself. There are a hundred adults in those schools, who will make sure that nothing happens to the kids. They will sacrifice themselves before they let anything touch them.

Funny that those words did absolutely nothing to make me feel better. I wished that I could’ve gone with them.

But that girl still sat in my basement.

I went downstairs again and walked over to the pile of boxes. I put my ear to one of them and heard nothing but her steady breathing and heartbeat. She hadn’t woken up yet. I could clearly remember what her heart had sounded like when I stormed out of the house. Terrified. I’d terrified her. She wouldn’t have been so calm now, if she had woken up in an unfamiliar place with a headache.

With nothing left to do but wait, I went upstairs, and began cleaning. First the kitchen, making sure that all the breakfast dishes went into the dishwasher and then wiping down the counters. I even mopped a little, because Amber didn’t have great coordination yet, so she spilled jelly everywhere.

I just want to leave, the girl had said.

I couldn’t trust that she had been honest. If she didn’t want to bother us, then she wouldn’t have been in my backyard to begin with. Humans liked to think they could break the rules, but I wouldn’t stand for that around the kids. Amber had been staring right at her, and anything could’ve happened in those few seconds if Amber hadn’t run inside.

That girl could’ve killed my sister, and I wouldn’t have been fast enough to stop it. That thought cycled through my head slowly. The image of walking outside and having to pick up Amber’s lifeless body.

Fury clenched around my heart, and I wanted to march downstairs and take care of the girl. The kids had left, so nothing stopped me. It would be the work of a moment to snap her neck. Her fragile, breakable neck. Then I’d just call the Authorities in, and they would take care of her body for me. She’d be another human to disappear because she went wandering at the wrong time.

Shaking my head, I walked out into the living room. In an attempt to keep myself from thinking, I turned the television on. News played, and I let it. Nighttime news, which meant only Nightmare business.

“Several houses have been damaged,” the news reporter said.

I stopped and looked at the television. It showed pictures of fences that had been knocked down or ripped apart.

“According to police reports, someone called into daytime 911 when a man started driving his car into houses. It’s unclear what his motivation was at this time, but he damaged a total of fifteen properties. The police are trying to find him and sort out the situation now.”

I snorted. Humans. That was what humans did. They caused trouble, destroyed things, and judged everything that couldn’t be exactly like them. That girl downstairs deserved to die.

My feet started carrying me toward the basement door. My mind began to cycle through her death, and the quickest way to achieve it. It would take one minute to climb down the stairs, walk up to the girl, move the boxes, and snap her neck. She wouldn’t feel a thing. It’d be a merciful death.

I just want to leave.

Her voice whispered through my head, bringing my feet to a stop. I could hear her words clear as day. As if the girl had spoken them right into my ear.

“Huntress damn it all,” I muttered, and stormed away.

I went to the backyard, to look for evidence that she had done something other than go to the wrong house at the wrong time. And also pick up Amber’s toys. I’d been meaning to do that for a week. I gathered everything into a basket that would go onto the back porch but paused when I came across a backpack. It sat in the grass, about as harmful as a sack of flour.

Setting the basket down, I knelt, and lifted the bag. It had things in it. I unzipped the top and looked through it. Textbooks and folders stared back at me. I pulled one of the latter out and opened the folder up. She had a lot of math homework in there. At the top of one sheet, her name had been sprawled. Whilda Plier. Humans, and their need to label something to death. Why last names needed to exist, I didn’t know. Nightmares didn’t bother with that confusion.

I shoved Whilda’s folder back into the bag and unzipped the next pocket. I found more books, but these looked like novels. I looked through them, and each had some kind of damage to it, except for one. I shoved them back into the bag as well, and finally understood what the idiot had been doing.

She had run away from home. Probably on a whim, based on the lack of clothing or food. A little stash of money had been stored in a different pocket. It looked like about thirty dollars. I figured that would buy her two meals, and a lot of time to sit and think about what she had done.

Whilda wanted to leave? Fine, then she could leave. She could return home when she woke up, and we’d never have to worry about this again. I wouldn’t have to kill the girl, adding another body onto my list. The kids wouldn’t have to look at me the way that I knew they would. All would be fine.

Why couldn’t she have fallen into the neighbor’s yard?

***

Aside from having to field a call from the school about my absence, the rest of the night went by uneventfully. I lied to the school, saying that I had a more pressing matter to attend to. Though, maybe lie wasn’t the right word. I didn’t want them to know about the girl, because they would send someone to kill her. They might see me as weak for not having done so already.

Every hour or so, I went to see if she had woken up yet. It had been a long time since I last poisoned someone. I must’ve given her too much, because she stayed unconscious the entire time. Eventually, Whilda would wake up, and I’d be able to get the human out of my house.

I also managed to relax at some point. After I had cleaned the entire house, ate lunch, and sat in the living room for a few minutes, everything felt calm. The peace felt tenuous, because I knew that it wouldn’t last. No one got lucky enough to have peace for more than a few hours.

Something crashed against the side of the house.

Especially when you have kids.

“Sorry!” Clementine yelled from outside. I took a guess that she had brought another ball home from school, and it just exploded against my house. She liked to do that, for reasons that I couldn’t fathom. Probably just liked the big boom that it made.

The front door swung open, and Ash stood there, holding Amber. My three-year-old sister looked exhausted. She had draped herself over Ash’s shoulder and had her thumb in her mouth. When she saw me, Amber reached her arms out. My brother transferred her easily, and I held her tightly.

She gave me a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “Can I have a sandwich?”

“Trying to bribe me?”

“Is it working?”

“Yes,” I said.

“If anyone deserves a sandwich, that would be me,” Ash said, shaking his head. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to walk all three of them home. They’re going in all different directions, all at the same time. It’s like herding cats.”

I gave him a look. “I think I have an idea of what it’s like.”

He snorted.

Aiden and Clementine came into the house. The latter held a deflated basketball in her hands and frowned at the thing. “I thought that it would explode. What do I have to do to make one of these stupid things explode?”

“We could shoot it,” Aiden said. “I know where we could get a crossbow.”

“No,” I said.

“But it would be so much fun!” Aiden said, turning to stare at me with betrayal in his eyes.

“It would also be dangerous. No.”

“You’re no fun,” Aiden said, kicking the ground with his foot. “You won’t let me chase cars, I can’t shoot basketballs with crossbows, and you took away that BB gun I had.”

“Unless you want me to start asking questions about the BB, is that something you really want to bring up?”

“No…” He pouted.

Clementine bumped his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll be in high school soon, which means I’ll have access to all kinds of chemicals. I’ll figure out how to blow something up. Just you wait.”

Amber giggled when I tilted my head back and prayed to the Huntress for some kind of strength. It didn’t work, so I just went to make everyone a snack. Amber got half a sandwich—no crust—just like she wanted. Extra jelly, light on the peanut butter. Everyone else got some fries that I could heat up in the oven. It took almost no time, and I didn’t have the patience for something more strenuous.

As they all ate, Ash came over to me. “What’d you do with the human?”

“She’s still downstairs,” I said. “I’ve been waiting for her to wake up.”

“Why?”

“To let her go,” I said.

Ash blinked and stared at me like I had lost my mind. “Wait, really?” he asked. “Are you serious. Because if you’re fucking with me, then I’m not going to take it as a joke.”

“I’m serious,” I said.

Ash grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the room while our little siblings all ate. Clementine looked up, but at twelve, she hadn’t quite gotten up the courage to barge in on the grownup things. I let Ash drag me out of the room, mostly because I didn’t want to fight him in front of the others.

In the living room, he shoved me away. It would’ve been more impressive if I had actually moved. I had several inches and pounds of muscle on Ash. He couldn’t move me unless I wanted to be moved.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Ash demanded.

“I’m going to let her go,” I told him. “As long as the stupid girl doesn’t do anything to deserve death, I don’t see why I should kill her.”

“She barged into our territory,” Ash growled low in his throat. “That’s reason enough.”

I had to nip this in the bud, before he got too out of hand. At fourteen, he had started to chafe under authority. He’d settle down in another year or so, but right then, his rage rested on a hair trigger. If he started a fight, then I’d have to put him on the ground. I didn’t want to do that.

My hand clamped onto the back of his neck, and I threw my brother into the sofa. My knee went into his back, and I shoved his face against the cushions. “I say that it’s not a good enough reason.”

Ash thrashed around for a solid thirty seconds before falling limp. I kept him pressed against the cushions as I continued to talk. “She’s a stupid human. I went through her bag and found thirty dollars in cash and school supplies. It looked like she ran away from home on impulse, not realizing what that would mean for her. I checked the address in her wallet, too. She only lives a few blocks away from our house. I can dump her back home, and we’ll never have to worry about her again. Do you still think she deserves to die?”

Ash panted as his higher reasoning and his instincts to protect the kids warred with each other. I understood the feeling. I’d had it myself at his age. The only difference being, I acted on mine, and I needed to keep him from doing the same thing.

When my brother stopped fighting all together, I stood up. He stayed on the couch, panting. His black hair fanned out across the cushions, and his clear brown eyes looked exhausted. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t deserve to die.”

“Are you okay?”

He sat up and leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry about that.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

I glanced into the kitchen, at the people that sat around the table. Clementine had stolen most of the fries, and ate them with mustard, because she had always been a weirdo. As she stuffed another fry into her mouth, she glanced over at us. Her eyes held too much worry for someone her age.

Aiden and Amber… They had gotten away from the worst of it. They couldn’t remember much, if anything, that happened. Clementine, Ash, and myself, though… Well, we had to grow up a lot faster than our little siblings. We could only hope that it stayed that way.

“What if she doesn’t want to go home?” Ash asked.

I rubbed my face and sat down on the edge of the couch, next to my brother. “I’ll make it a very appealing decision.”

“You can’t threaten everyone into listening to you. If she doesn’t want to go home, then you can’t make her.”

“Then she can run, and I’ll let her die,” I growled. “The stupid human has a death wish? Not my problem.”

Ash laughed and started to stand up. “You and I both know that you’ll never do that.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ll never let her die, unless she proves that she really and truly has earned it,” Ash explained, walking toward the kitchen. “It’s your best feature and your fatal flaw. You want to give everyone the chance to make it right.”

I almost argued, but my brother walked into the kitchen. If I wanted to continue the conversation, it would’ve had to be in front of the others. The worried look in Clementine’s eyes stopped me from doing that. I didn’t want them to worry about me saying or doing something that could get us into trouble.

The girl would go home. Simple as that. I’d make her go home, even if I had to chain her to that damned house myself. She had come into my house, and put my siblings in danger, which meant she had to go. I didn’t give a damn about her reasons for running. She could’ve gone to one of those shelters that the humans built for their people. Humans always complicated things.

If she had issues at home, then she should’ve just killed her parents. It made everything easier. When the parents no longer cared for the children, when they hurt their offspring, the only thing that solved the problem was death. They outlived their purpose on the planet.

Humans tossed around morals and ethics as if the lives of monsters mattered more than the lives of their young. So yes, it would be better for everyone to remove this girl from our house. Sooner rather than later.