Things happened quickly after that.
Heeding her doctor’s final words of advice, Chelsea spun, prepared to flee. She reached the door, only dimly aware that Derek was right behind her. She yanked out the keys, but her hands were shaking terribly. Finally, with the sound of harsh breathing mixing with a terrible tearing noise at her back, she found what she thought was the right one and plunged it into the lock. It didn’t slide in as easily as she remembered it doing mere moments ago, but when she pressed harder it went in.
“Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea!” Derek shouted at her back. “Hurry up!”
The room was filling with an even more awful noise. It sounded like it came from Dr. Gambinetti, or at least from his throat—but it wasn’t a sound you’d expect any animal or human to make. It was as though someone had connected a bellows to Dr. Gambinetti’s vocal chords, then stepped on it. It sounded like a wind, like a rush of water, like an engine’s roar.
Chelsea refused to turn around, but she felt Derek turn.
“Oh crap,” he said into the din. But then the sound was cut off, swallowed by that terrible tearing, snapping and chewing.
No longer interested in being delicate, Chelsea twisted the key in the lock. It broke off in her hand, as if the only thing attaching it to its body had been butter.
Chelsea slammed her fists into the door, crying, “No! No! No!” The voice inside her whispered, Told you so.
Her slamming grew weaker, then stopped. Where was Derek? She no longer felt him behind her. She couldn’t turn her head or even open her mouth to scream. She pictured Koko slithering away from poor Restrooms’s body, scuttling, winding closer and closer.
Count your tears and you’ll be safe, the OCD said. But she knew, really knew, that it was lying. Nothing was going to save her now.
It wasn’t until she heard another hiss and placed it, not right behind her, but much farther back in the room, that she realized the lizard was not right behind her. Koko was either still busy with his dinner, or he had taken Derek.
Chelsea’s choice was obvious: She could either stay here, staring at the door, at the little glass window in the top and the snow that seemed to be falling harder and harder—or she could turn around and see what was really going on.
She put a bit of her cheek inside her teeth—tender and rough—and bit down hard, hard enough for it to bleed. A salty taste rushed onto her tongue. It hurt, just badly enough to jolt her nervous system out of its terror-inspired catatonia, and she turned.
In their rush for the door one of them had knocked over a lamp, so the grisly sight of Koko and Gambinetti was cloaked in blessed shadow. There was light though, down the hall and in the kitchen. Derek was standing there, waving frantically at her, mouthing, “Come on! Come on!”
Had he found a way out? The door in the kitchen was locked, too, all the windows barred. Maybe she had a key, or maybe the key she’d just broken off in the lock was the one that worked the back door.
Derek was getting frantic. She wanted to run to him—really, she did, but it meant crossing Koko’s path, and that she could not do.
Down the hall, she saw Derek heft a heavy kitchen chair, thick with white paint, as if he were hoping to beat the giant lizard to death with it. Realizing it was useless, he put it down and rifled through a kitchen drawer, pulling out one long knife after another, instantly realizing that each was hopeless for the task.
Finally, he just stood there, his hands grabbing at his hair, and could not remain silent anymore. “Chelsea! Will you run already?”
The moment he shouted, the chewing stopped. Koko’s massive head reared and looked, first in the direction of Derek, just out of his sight in the kitchen doorway, then at Chelsea, perfectly visible from the living room. It looked like the lizard was deciding what direction to head in. So Chelsea ran, not toward Derek, but up the stairs to the second floor, all fourteen of them. She took them two, three at a time. There was a door near the top of the stairs, but instead of trying to open it, she whirled onto the landing and squatted behind the banister that ran along the second-floor hall, the whole of the stairs and just a bit of the landing below visible.
She felt briefly free, like an astronaut traveling between earth and the moon experiencing a few true moments of zero gravity, like maybe she had left all the horror down there, behind her, like maybe it was all a dream and she was just a little girl, fleeing her mother or father in a wonderful game of hide-and-seek.
It didn’t last. She pressed her head against the wooden support posts holding up the railing and panted, marveling at how she had no control over her fast breathing. She looked down. The wobbling light from the fallen living room lamp spilled through the posts, making long, black bars of shadow against the staircase wall.
Being ever so gentle with herself, she twisted and tried to peer over the banister, straight down the stairs. She could see the frayed welcome mat and even a small bit of the living-room floor. Koko was nowhere in sight. She didn’t hear any struggling, so she assumed Derek was safe.
He’ll die if you don’t count the posts.
She started counting. 6, 8, 12, 14. But stopped herself when she heard a rustling sound below. A big shadow shifted in the living room. As she stared from behind the railing, Koko’s head appeared at the base of the steps. She could see his thick, forked tongue swiping out at the air, trying to taste the scent of fear.
She heard Derek’s voice, muffled by distance as he shouted, “Hey! Get away from there!” But Koko’s head kept on coming, up the steps, pulling his shoulders and his thick body behind it.
The lizard was climbing. Of course it could climb. How else could it get out of the basement? How did it get out of the basement? Was it something she had done? Something she’d forgotten to do? Something she didn’t count?
Oh my God!
It was a third of the way up the stairs and its body still was not completely visible. As the lizard emerged and she measured it, she knew for a fact that Eve Mandisa had either been wrong or hadn’t measured her pet in many years.
It wasn’t six feet.
Six feet. Seven feet. Eight feet. Nine feet. Ten. And a healthy amount of tail left over.
How? How could it be that big? The only monitor lizard in the world that size was the Komodo dragon. Ms. Mandisa couldn’t have one of those for a pet.
Could she?
The skin was the right color. The head was the right shape.
Was it real, or was it the OCD?
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
“Get away!” she heard Derek scream, louder, nearer.
She heard something splinter loudly. Wood? It sounded like maybe Derek had smashed the chair against the floor, to get the lizard’s attention. If so, it worked.
Koko turned his head back down, toward the hallway and the sound.
No, Derek! No! It’s a frikkin’ Komodo dragon! She wanted to scream, but the only thing that came out was a whimper. Images of Derek, arms flailing as Koko sat on his chest, ripping out his throat, flooded her brain.
Koko turned, maneuvering the thin space with snake-like ease, and headed back down the stairs.
Derek! No! As the lizard, and then its shadow, slunk out of view, Chelsea’s throat tightened as if a tourniquet were twisting around her neck. She could feel the blood rushing out of her face, feel her heart reach a whole new level of jackhammering. Finally, just as little swirling spots filled her field of vision and she was about to pass out from anxiety, the panic yielded a rational thought:
Call 911!
Shaking more than she had when she reached for the keys, Chelsea slipped her fingers into the tight pocket of her jeans and wiggled her cell phone free. She flipped it open, comforted by the blue glow of its tiny screen, pressed the three magic numbers and hit the call button, counting the four seconds until someone answered.
“Emergency services,” the voice intoned.
Inside, Chelsea was thinking, Phew! But outside, her body would not cooperate. The words rushed out of her head, only to be clogged in her throat. What came out wasn’t even a sentence; it was more like panicked breathing.
“Ahhhhh…ahhhhh…ahhhhhh…”
“Hello?”
“Ahhhhh…ahhhhh…ahhhhhh…”
An audible tsk was heard, followed by a clicking. In a few seconds, a recorded voice came on the line. The voice was deep, male, and obviously reading from a prepared script.
“This is John Trent, Bilsford chief of police. Hobson Night creates a number of real emergencies as well as a massive amount of prank phone calls. If this is a real emergency, please stay on the line, and we will get to you as soon as we can. If not, please do everyone in the community a favor and hang up now.”
She counted the seconds. 15, 16, 17.
Downstairs she heard more wood splinter, then a yelp of pain and what sounded like a door slamming, followed by heavy, animal scratching.
“Derek!” she shouted. She pulled herself up to her feet and stood at the top of the stairs. “Derek!”
How many seconds had she been on hold? 32, 33, 34?
She looked down at the phone. The line had gone dead. Maybe she had accidentally hung up. Or maybe they picked up, didn’t hear her, and thought it was a prank. It didn’t matter.
She hit the first number on her speed dial: home. After seven rings, nothing, which meant Dad was probably on the line with Uncle Frank and not bothering to answer call-waiting.
She hit two, her mother’s cell. The phone was powered off as usual, putting her into call answering after three rings. She didn’t bother leaving a message, since she’d probably be eaten by the time her mother turned on her phone again.
She hit three. The phone rang. A familiar voice answered.
“You okay, Chelsea?” Derek whispered.
She exhaled at hearing his voice. “I’m fine, fine. You? I heard…”
“Yeah, I kinda swatted at Koko with a kitchen chair. He didn’t like that much, but it got him down off the stairs.”
As he spoke, Chelsea noticed he was breathing funny, not just panting, but weakly, like he was tired. He laughed a little, but even the laugh didn’t sound good. “Damn, that big son of a bitch is fast, isn’t it? Got me in the hand pretty bad, but I managed to shut the kitchen door before it got in. Pushed a…pushed a table up against it, but it was scratching at the base of the door like it was a dog or something. It almost got through. But I’m okay now, I think. I don’t think Toilets is okay, though. He didn’t look too good. He looked…Chelsea, you stay where you are, or lock yourself in a room somewhere.”
She heard some scraping on the line as he spoke, as if Derek was moving things around in the kitchen. How bad was he bitten? Komodos were venomous, she remembered reading. They’d bite their prey, and then wait for them to die. Maybe that was why Koko didn’t bother tearing down the rest of the door. She pictured the lizard outside the kitchen, listening, waiting for Derek to drop.
He had to get to a hospital.
“Did you try the police?” she asked.
Another laugh. “Yeah, all I did was mention a giant lizard eating people and they put me on hold, then hung up. I think Hobson Night’s got them too busy to believe something this weird. My folks are gone and my useless friends are all out partying. Don’t worry, though. We’ll get out of here.”
“How?” she said, near tears.
He slurred his words as he spoke. “It’s a freaking house, L. C. We’re not in a submarine, or stuck on a plane with snakes. There’s got to be a way out! Smash open a window! There can’t be bars on everything!”
He was wrong. She remembered counting all the windows and the bars. She remembered being very thorough. Twenty-one windows, all barred. Even the basement window that Aristotle sneaked through.
“What if we can’t, Derek?”
There was silence for a moment, then, “You know why I like you so much, L. C.?” Derek asked.
It was a silly thing to say in a terrible situation, and she couldn’t help but respond.
“Why?”
“Because no matter how bad things get for you, I’ve never once seen you give up. You get scared because of that thing in your head, you run away, but you always come back.”
It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to her. But of course, Derek didn’t know when to let go. “If I have to be trapped in a locked house with a giant man-eating lizard, I’m just glad it’s with you.”
“Derek! Stop joking! This is crazy!”
“I know…I think I’m feeling a little woozy….” She heard a strange wavering in his usually steady voice. She had to get Derek to a hospital.
It wasn’t the OCD talking, but it was agreeing with everything she said.
Yes! Yes! Derek will die! Count the drawers! Count the cracks in the floor.
No. A hospital. Derek needed a hospital.
She heard him moan as he hefted something, heard glass crack but not splinter, as if his blow had been too weak even to shatter the glass.
“Hmm…window’s pretty strong, too. Or I’m weaker than I thought. But…you know what?” Derek said, voice rallying behind a great boyish idea. “This is a gas stove. I can blow out the pilots, turn on the burners and when the place gets nice and full of gas, hide in the basement and toss in a match. WHOOM! That’ll blow a hole in the wall!”
And Chelsea thought she was nuts. He couldn’t possibly mean it.
“Don’t Derek. Don’t. That’s insane. You’re not thinking right.”
She heard him shifting, imagined he was turning the burners on, and the oven. Imagined that even now the kitchen was filling with gas. Was it real?
“I think it’ll work. There’s a lighter right here. Don’t move. I’ll blow a hole in the wall and go get help.”
“Derek! Stop! Turn the burners off! You shouldn’t breathe that stuff!”
The loud scratching returned, accompanied by the sound of splintering wood, about to give. “Oh crap, he’s at the door again. Gotta go, L. C. See you soon!”
He hung up.
Now she heard the scratching in reality, down below in the hallway that led to the kitchen. It was loud, insistent. She also heard Derek’s voice, muffled, trying to command Koko as if he were a dog. “Get out of here! Go on! Get out!”
Dizzy with fear, she looked down the stairs. The shadows below danced furiously in tune with the scratching. She counted how many times the big tail flashed, how many scratches, how many huge splinters she imagined the claws pulling free, how large in inches she imagined the hole must be getting.
Cold sweat poured down her forehead, like the snow she saw down below, pooling along the lower line of the front door’s icy window. The storm was in full swing. Between that and Hobson Night there probably wasn’t a free police officer, firefighter, or ambulance in all of Bilsford.
She looked around the second floor, down the long cluttered hall, its thin-slatted wood paneling now painted white, at the array of potted plants, at the small end table with the answering machine on it, trying to find—what? A weapon? Another phone? A score of bad monster movies flashed in her mind. Maybe she could fray a lamp cord and try to electrocute Koko. Maybe she could freeze him, get him out into the snow somehow. Maybe she could count him to death.
That idea about the freezing didn’t sound so bad. Koko needed heat. In fact, maybe he wasn’t even hungry anymore. Maybe he just wanted to head back down to his habitat, where his heat lamps were, but he couldn’t because Derek had barred the door. That made sense. Lizards only attacked for food, then they dragged their prey off to eat and digest.
So maybe Derek should just get out of the way?
She hit his number on speed dial.
“Chelsea, if that’s you, I’m kind of busy right now!” he screamed from below.
“Derek, I think Koko just wants to get back to the basement!” she called back.
“Well, too bad for him, then!” Derek shouted.
The scrambling stopped. Koko had heard her voice. Maybe even recognized it, connected her with food and the warm basement. After a few seconds, though, he started scratching again.
Her cell rang. Derek.
“Chelsea, I’m going to let him in. I’m going to let him in and blow him up!” He sounded even weaker than before. The exertion was probably making the venom move faster through his system.
“No, Derek! Don’t!” she screamed, but he hung up.
At the sound of her scream, the lizard stopped again.
Chelsea froze; then an idea hit her. It could recognize faces and voices, right? What voice would be most familiar to Koko?
She turned the volume all the way up on the answering machine and hit PLAY. Eve Mandisa’s voice filled the house, announcing her name and telephone number. At the sound of his owner’s voice, Koko stopped scratching completely.
Chelsea walked back to the top of the stairs, near the closest door and looked down. As messages issued from the machine, the scratching did not resume.
“Eve, where are you? Let me know!”
She saw the lizard’s shadow, cast by the fallen lamp, appear again on the floor at the bottom of the steps. Koko probably figured Eve could help him get back in the basement.
“Eve, I’m at the airport and your flight arrived, but not you. Where are you?”
The shadow got bigger as Koko, somewhere in the living room now, crossed closer in front of the light. Chelsea backed up against a door. The knob turned in her hands. If Koko started climbing up, all she had to do was stay quiet, barricade herself in the room and call Derek, at least talk him into shutting off the gas.
“Eve, the airline says you never even got on the plane! I’m really worried now! Did you take care of Koko like we discussed? No matter what you think of it, it’s an animal, Eve, for pity’s sake! Please, please call.”
When the tip of Koko’s nose appeared at the base of the stairs, Chelsea opened the door and backed inside the room.
“Eve, I’m worried sick. No one seems to know what happened to you.”
It was dark in the room, but the light from the streetlamps, reflecting off the falling snow, bathed it in a soft full-moon blue. Chelsea could make out a bed and bureau, and some suitcases piled against one wall, but nothing else.
“Eve…”
It wasn’t until she pulled the door shut and backed deeper into the room that Chelsea nearly tripped over the half-eaten body of Eve Mandisa.
As she screamed, long and loud, Koko’s feet reached the welcome mat in front of the stairs.