The morning Father Wheatley was supposed to come, Carmen had been too nervous to do the breakfast dishes and, instead, had stacked them neatly in the sink after giving them a cursory rinsing. After he left, she changed into a baggy shirt and jeans, went into the kitchen, and began to wash the dishes. Laura had offered to help, but Carmen had said, "No, no, you stay here and watch TV, or something." She wanted to be alone for a while; she wanted to think about the things she'd done and said to Stephen—the things they'd all done and said to him.
She was standing at the sink washing the dishes when she felt a pinch on her behind. She chuckled and, still holding a plate in her wet, soapy hand, turned around saying, "Stop it, Peter," as she looked down, expecting to see him. He wasn't there.
She stared at the empty space on the floor for a moment, then felt another pinch.
There was a third pinch and then she felt fingers—she knew they were fingers because she'd felt Al do the same thing before, but playfully—slide between her legs and press upward.
The plate she held slipped from her hand and shattered against the edge of the sink.
Laura hurried into the kitchen, saying, "Aunt Carm! What's wrong?"
"M...uh, well it was—"
The hand pushed between her legs again and probed with strong fingers. Carmen grunted and jumped forward to get away from it.
"It's after you now, isn't it?" Laura gasped. "Like it was after me last night."
"Just go back in the living room, Laura. Please."
She hesitated a moment, then did as she was told, looking over her shoulder, concerned.
With suds still on her wet hands almost up to her elbows, Carmen left the kitchen and hurried down the hall to her bedroom, where she slammed the door hard and locked it, then leaned her back against it for a moment, trying to catch her breath.
Her heart pounded in her chest.
The back of her neck felt cold.
And even as she leaned back against the door, she felt the alien touch again.
Carmen threw herself forward with a muffled cry, not wanting Laura to hear her, and landed on the bed, but the hand moved with her, holding on all the while, fat fingers groping.
She struggled to sit up, but suddenly there were more hands on her body, pressing her arms, shoulders, and legs to the mattress as one of the fingers entered her, entered her hard and roughly.
Carmen could not hold back her cry of pain. But it didn't end there.
Something longer and fatter than the finger, something that even throbbed, shoved itself into her rectum.
Carmen's entire body stiffened.
The thing moved in and out furiously, ripping at her.
"Oh, please," Carmen gasped.
There was a knock at the door. "Aunt Carmen? You okay?"
"Please Jesus! In the name of Jesus! Stop! In the name of Jesus!"
The bedroom door opened and suddenly, everything stopped. The hands let go, the fat, throbbing thing pulled out of her, and Carmen was left on the bed, shaking uncontrollably, sobbing.
Laura hunkered down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders, asking, "Aunt Carmen, what's wrong, what happened?"
Carmen could not speak. She could not give Laura an explanation. She simply shook her head as she tried to catch her breath and regain her ability to speak.
"I-I-I...don't know, Laura, something attacked me. Something..." Her lips pursed and her hands clutched the pillow as she tried to find the right word. "Something, um...hurt me!" she hissed, her voice quivering with disbelief as she spoke.
When Laura spoke, she sounded near tears: "Oh, God, I knew it, I knew that's what it was, oh God, it's still here, the blessing didn't help, oh God, Aunt Carm, what're we gonna do?"
Carmen realized that, more than anything at that moment, she wanted off that bed, and she pushed herself away from the mattress quickly. In an instant, she was standing beside Laura.
"Well, for a little while anyway," Carmen said, "we're gonna get the hell out of here, you, me, and Peter. But first, um...I'd like to take a shower."
Carmen felt filthy—vile. It was a relief when she stepped beneath the hot water. She covered her body with soap lather and scrubbed herself hard with a washcloth, hoping to scrub away the dirty feeling of violation.
After scrubbing for several minutes, crying quietly, she stepped forward to rinse off under the spray, but the shower curtain moved and, although she saw no one there, she knew she was no longer alone.
A foreign sound suddenly meshed with the hiss of the shower, meshed and then, after a moment, separated and formed words in a voice that was deep, rough and resonant:
"I wanna roll in bed with my two favorite playthings...you and Laura. I wanna fuck you. I wanna fuck you until you screeeaam!”
Then the voice laughed a long, cruel laugh, and the attack began.
Hands clutched her shoulders from behind, spun her around and slammed her hard against the wet tile. She started to cry out, but her lips were smashed against the wall. The laughter continued as something slammed into her hard...pulled out...slammed in again...and again and again and again...
Hands squeezed her breasts hard, pinched her nipples until pain shot through her chest, up her neck and down her abdomen.
And yet there was no one there...
Carmen pulled her face away from the tile, sucked in a deep breath, along with the moist and humid spray of shower, and screamed as loud as she could.
But it continued: the pounding inside her, the painful crushing and pinching of her breasts...
Then the bathroom door opened and Laura screamed, "Aunt Carmen I'm here what is it what's wrong what is it?"
It stopped.
Carmen found herself leaning against the wall, her body covered with lather that began to run down to the floor of the tub with the shower's spray. She pushed away from the wall, her hands slipping over the tile, turned and pulled away the curtain.
"It was here,” she gasped, her voice hoarse. "It...it attacked me again, it sod—it did the same thing to me again."
Her tears were washed away by the shower and she folded her arms over her breasts as she sobbed.
"Just get out of there!" Laura cried. "Please, just get out of there so we can leave!"
Carmen nodded. "I am. I will. I'll be out in a minute. Go get Peter for me, okay? Make sure he's all right."
She rinsed quickly, left the shower and began to dry off furiously, not caring about whether her hair was dry or not. With Laura and Peter at her side, she dressed fast, gathered up a couple of Peter's toys and they left, with no idea where they were going....
They drove around town for a while, then went to a nearby shopping mall, where they had ice cream, let Peter ride a small mechanical spaceship for a quarter, and did some window-shopping. They kept moving, kept their attention diverted, and did not think about what had happened at the house.
After a few hours of trying to lose themselves in the safe and anonymous crowd of shoppers, Carmen realized how late it was and decided that, as much as she dreaded returning to the house, she had to get back so Stephanie and Michael wouldn't come home from school to an empty house—or at least one that appeared empty.
They did some quick grocery shopping for dinner, then headed home.
When they got to the house, they climbed the porch and stood at the door...staring. With nervous clumsiness, Carmen took the keys from her purse, found the right one, slowly slipped it into the lock, turned it, and they entered.
There was nothing out of place. There was nothing unusual waiting for them.
Clutching a bag of groceries in one arm, Carmen turned to Laura and said, "Whatta you say we just go ahead and start dinner, take our time, have some fun, and forget about everything?"
Laura's eyes were wide as she looked around, taking cautious steps along the hall. She nodded her head and said, "Yeah. Okay."
And so they did. They unloaded the groceries in the kitchen and started dinner.
Stephanie got home first. They told her nothing, just kept her in sight.
When Michael came home, he asked if he could go to a friend's house down the road until dinner and Carmen gave him an enthusiastic yes; she was relieved to have him out of the house.
By the time Al came home, dinner was nearly done and nothing had happened. Carmen gave him a kiss when he came in and headed for the shower.
She felt guilty, just as guilty as if she'd been unfaithful to him. She felt she needed to tell him about what had happened, but how? What could she say? What would he say? Maybe he'd think she was crazy— like Stephen—and get angry and not want to get near her.
He might even leave her. After all, if he thought it was just her imagination, if he thought she was imagining such things— things like that—maybe he would think there was something wrong between them.
She decided she wouldn't tell him; at least, she would resist the urge to tell him as long as possible.
Dinner was quiet. There was little talk, just a lot of dinner noises: forks clanking against plates, chewing, drinking.
When it was over, Carmen and Laura washed the dishes, whispering to one another about whether Carmen should tell Al or not, about what they were going to do. Laura suggested she tell him, because it was only inevitable that something would happen to him, too. What then? She insisted that he should know.
As much as Carmen didn't want to admit it, she thought Laura was right.
After dinner, Al settled in his chair with a beer to watch television. When the dishes were done, Carmen went to him, hunkered down beside the chair and put a hand on his arm.
"Can we talk?" she asked quietly.
"Sure," he said, nodding.
"Urn...in the bedroom?"
He frowned slightly. "You okay?"
"Well...let's talk first, all right?"
They went into the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and Carmen told him, in a nervous and halting voice, everything that had happened that day.
The expression on his face changed again and again as she spoke. It went from comical disbelief to serious consideration to anger and then to blank shock.
"You're serious, aren't you," he whispered after a while.
"Yes I'm serious. You think I would joke about something like this?"
"I...I don't know, I'm wondering...well, how long has this been going on?"
"It just happened today. Why? I mean, why would you ask a question like that?"
"Well, I just wondered if...I mean, I just thought that maybe..."
Suddenly, Al burst into tears and buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with his sobs.
Carmen was shocked. She just stared at him for a moment, then leaned forward, put an arm around his shoulders and held him close.
"Al, what's wrong? What's the matter?"
Through his tears and sobs he said, "I-I was afraid to tell you that...th-things have been happening to me, too."
She clutched his shoulders. "What things?"
"Oh, j-just...music and voices and...just things! I've been telling myself it's nothing. I didn't want to think that...that... One night after I'd taken all the light bulbs out of their sockets downstairs, Michael woke me up and said his light was on even though there was no bulb in the socket and...well, I went downstairs and it was...glowing, Carmen, the light was on, but there was no bulb! There was nothing except...except light coming from that thing!"
"Why didn't you tell me, honey?"
"Because I didn't want to tell myself that I saw it. But there was...more. Music, coming from downstairs. Voices. Like a party. Late at night. And the bed...vibrating."
"You told me that was because of the refrigerator upstairs."
"I was lying. I just didn't want you to know. I knew better. It was vibrating. It wasn't from upstairs. There is, um...yes, there is something wrong. There's something wrong with this house, there's something in this house."
She waited a long moment, then leaned close to him, her arm around his shoulders, and whispered into his ear, "Stephen tried to tell us that and now...he's in a mental hospital."
Al shook his head. "No, no, I think it was more than that with Stephen. I really think there was something wrong with him. He changed. He became...hostile. It was something more than this, I really think that."
"Okay, maybe. But he was trying to tell us about the house."
He sucked his lips between his teeth and said through more tears, "You don't think I know that? You don't think that's killing me?"
She nodded. "We both know it now. So what're we gonna do?"
"We can't afford to move, that's for sure. Not right now, anyway."
"Okay, so what're we gonna do?"
He shook his head, tears glistening on his cheeks. "I don't know, sweetheart. I just don't know."