“Stay upstairs,” Will said, then flipped on the basement light switch at the top of the stairs and ran down the steps. Billy followed at his heels, not hearing or simply ignoring the command. What the hell was going on? Better not to think, only react. Lisa was right, someone had broken into the house and tried to hurt their son.
He stopped as soon as he jumped the final step onto the floor of the basement. Billy slammed against him from behind. Will stumbled forward, never taking his eyes from the body of his wife, nightgown riding too high up her legs to expose one thigh. She wasn’t moving. The whole upper part of her body was stained black in the dim light.
Will forgot what he’d been doing, forgot Billy behind him, only stumbled forward and fell to his knees beside his wife. She lay as if she’d fallen down the stairs, but she was too far from the landing.
“Lisa?” He touched the torn hole in her neck, watching as blood covered his fingers. How had she done this? “Lisa?” His hands were thick with her blood. He put one under her shoulders and lifted her from the floor. She coughed, gagged on something before her eyes fluttered open. Then they closed again.
“Lisa? Lisa, baby, open your eyes.”
“Mom?” Billy, behind him. Their situation raced back to him with the sound of his son’s voice. Someone else was down here with them! Still holding Lisa he shouted, “Billy, go upstairs—”
But Billy screamed, “Dad, look out!”
Will turned his head toward the stairs, saw a shuffling blur, a too short man. A thought, no legs, jumped to the front of his brain. Will stared, saw in his peripheral vision Billy backing toward the stairs. The thing cackled in a voice that sounded like a laughing crow, or someone gasping for air. It was a laugh, though. It raised itself on twin stumps and swung Will’s pick with too-thin arms, spinning like a toy as it did so. Will dropped his wife and raised his left arm. The point tore into his wrist, its tip breaking through the muscle. He fell back, kicking wildly. Something broke his fall but he could not think coherently enough to consider what it might be. He was a boy himself again, thrashing against a nightmare. That awful cackling laugh returned. “Come here, Boy!” it shouted.
Billy’s voice followed, all panic. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
Will regained himself long enough to shout, “Billy, run upstairs!” He choked, jaw not working right. “Call 9-1-1 then get the hell out of the house! Run!”
He rolled over, tried to force himself up, the point of the pick still impaling his wrist. The wooden handle banged against the floor and twisted. Will screamed at the sudden, lurching pain up his arm.
The creature was close now.
“What a mistake you were. Such a weakling. By now, you should have mastered the portal and passed the necklace on to your son. You have dishonored me. Dishonored the ones that came before me.”
“What are you—aaahh!” Will shouted, tears in his eyes from the pain so the speaker was merely a blur scuttling toward him.
“That night in the woods was supposed to be the big moment. When I passed the necklace on to you and taught you its power. Did you really think that place was in this world? It is somewhere else entirely. Somewhere where all the dead are buried, never to be found. You would have learned all my secrets. But you were not worthy. Even now.”
Will heard Billy loitering on the stairs and shouted, “Run!” Quick footsteps up the stairs. The legless body of Jacob Pallasso crawled over him, paralyzing him in its coldness, and went in pursuit. That’s not my father, not my father, not my father. When Will reached down for balance his hand pressed soft flesh. He looked down. Lisa stared up but did not see him. The bottom of her face, the nightgown, all blood. The world went black around her. He screamed and pressed the jagged hole in her neck, tried to push the flaps of skin together as if he could save her by putting her back together like a broken vase. Not working, not working. He began screaming, kept trying to repair his beautiful wife. Was she dead? She couldn’t be.
“Lisa!”
Behind him, his father’s corpse reached the stairs, pulled itself on stick arms up each step, following the child toward the kitchen light.
Will could only push the cooling skin of his wife’s throat together and call her name. Call her back from the dead.