The Gate, page 10
“Why would she hide it here?” Terry asked. “Not like she hasn’t got a bedroom.”
At that moment, Glen knew exactly what this was. It had to be something to do with rockets. Since the fiasco a few years ago, when one accidentally launched in his room, his father declared all bedrooms were rocket-free. If she was hiding a present here, it had to be rocket related.
Quickly, Glen walked to his bedroom, holding the large box as Terry kept a watch close behind. Rushing to his desk as Terry closed the door, Glen brought out a small penknife from his drawer.
Slowly, he sliced through the sticky tape, careful not to tear any paper or bunch the tape up. When cut, though, he moved to the other two bits of tape and repeated the process. Then, he slowly unfolded the paper, ensuring no other folds or creases were created.
Terry watched impressed. “You’re like a spy!”
“My name’s Simon,” Glen replied in a terrible Sean Connery impersonation. “Glen Simon.”
The box was plain brown, with no clues as to what it held inside.
As Glen lifted the lid, Terry came over, eager to see what was inside.
Moving the balls of scrunched up paper packing aside, Glen’s jaw dropped.
“Wow,” Terry said.
“It’s Big Bertha,” Glen almost screamed in joy as he stared at the huge rocket. Much bigger than the one they had fired earlier. Almost a yard long and with its thick circumference, it looked professional and very dangerous. “She didn’t throw it out.” He stared at the rocket lovingly. “She saved it for me.”
“Shall we set it off?”
Glen shook his head. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I’ve got no idea how to launch it.”
“Hey,” Al called from outside of the bedroom door. “You guys in bed yet?”
“Almost,” Glen replied in a sudden panic, hurriedly putting the rocket back in the box. “We gotta put it back.”
Hearing a commotion, Al opened the door, the Lee sisters behind her. She wore a plastic smock, and her hair was covered in a foam.
“What are you doing?”
Glen, caught in the middle of a flurry of emotions, was frozen. He had no idea what to do.
She then saw the box with Big Bertha and the cut-off wrapping. “Oh, Glen,” she sighed.
“Alexandra?” Stacy asked. “Your rinse . . . We need to wash it out.”
“You ruined the surprise,” Al continued, her feelings hurt. “Why did you go snooping like that?” She marched over, picked up the box, and looked at Glen, disappointed. “You should both go to bed.”
“But, Al,” Glen started. But he had no real excuse. He had been caught red-handed.
“Nice going, Ace,” Patty said with a cruel cackle.
“Beddie night nighttime, Glenny Wennie!” Stacy added.
Terry could only stare in surprise at everything as Glen nodded quietly in shame.
Soon, the bedroom door was firmly shut as Al and her friends left, taking Big Bertha with them.
“Let’s just call it a night,” Glen said despondently.
Terry wasn’t tired physically, but he was emotionally exhausted. He had hidden a lot from everyone today and even himself. Being back in this house after the previous night’s horror was not what he wanted. But he was too scared in his own empty house to stay there. At least here, he had Glen. He had tried to laugh through it, but even as he got into the bed, he could still see Angus’s old hairs on the sheets, not to mention the smell of him permeating the house.
Soon, in his pajamas, Terry lay there in torment. What am I doing? he thought. My house may be empty, but it was away from this. I should have stayed there. It’s too soon to be here. But it was too late to do anything about it. So, he tried to distract himself by focusing on what happened with Al. “Those Lee sisters are awful,” he said, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Glen nodded as he got into his bed. “She’s probably gonna throw it away for real now. Don’t blame her.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Why did I open it?”
“She was a lot nicer before,” Terry added, remembering the Al that once got into lots of hijinks with them, despite her being older.
The lamp stayed on. Neither of them discussed it, but both did not want to be in the dark.
Later, after the Lee sisters had worn themselves out, they lay asleep on a makeshift double bed on the floor of Al’s bedroom. Each wore headphones plugged into the same Walkman so they could listen to the same music as they slept. Identical twins in look, clothes, and in this as well.
Faint, tinny music from them drifted across this otherwise silent room as Al lay in her bed staring into nothing. Her room was a bit of a mess, with remnants of junk food strewn around, clothes in piles from where they had gone through Al’s cupboard and makeup items left all over the desk.
Al closed her eyes, wishing the events of the past couple of days would simply vanish, and she longed for a dreamless sleep.
Shadows are a curious thing. They are nothing within themselves but are instead a whisper of another presence, a person’s dark frame stretching across concrete before they even come into view or the earth’s shadow slipping over the moon to shape a crescent. Neither fully tangible nor entirely absent, shadows exist in a liminal space where they exist and don’t. Where they conceal yet reveal. They can hide things within their darkness, yet they betray the presence of what casts them.
But in the Simon house, a shadow moved around. As Al, Glen, Terry, and the Lee sisters slept, a darkness crept across the ground floor. Over the cut-out pages of the antiquarian book resting on the living room coffee table. Over framed pictures of the family leading up the staircase. Across Al’s bedroom door, down past the bathroom, and up to Glen’s bedroom.
There, the shadow sat for a moment, listening. Sensing.
On the other side, Glen was fast asleep. He did not see the shadow creep in through the gap under the door. Nor did he notice it drift across his bed and over his face as it moved over to the window. When its darkness hit the roller shades, the fabric reacted immediately with a snap, and it shot up and spun around the roller, flapping noisily through the silence.
Glen jumped out of his sleep with a start. Instantly wide-awake, he sat in his bed, disoriented as he looked around the room. The bedside lamp that had been left on was somehow off. Leaning across, Glen flicked the switch. Nothing. He tried again. Still nothing.
The familiar, eerie, fluttering sound from the night before then started again. Quieter but there. The flapping of wings, the thudding of soft bodies against glass.
Scared in the darkness, Glen glanced over to Terry who was sleeping deeply. He was turned away, toward the wall.
“Terry, you awake?” Glen whispered.
No reply.
Before he could call out louder to his friend, the sound of thudding grew instantly stronger, dragging his attention back to the window. Where he imagined large dark things bashing against the glass, casting their monstrous shadows inwards onto the floorboards below. But he could see nothing. He could only hear it.
Against all better judgment, Glen moved his legs off the bed and stood. The cold wooden boards beneath his bare feet felt almost painful as he slowly walked around the bed, past Terry’s and over to the window.
As he got closer, Glen could still not see the moths he thought were there. Peering outside, he looked up, left and right. There was nothing. Staring down, he saw the yellow-bulbed porch light a foot below this window, having been accidentally left on. Its orange incandescence glowed in the darkness outside as a couple of small moths played around its bulb. They spun and twirled in a frenzy until, occasionally, one moth broke its formation and flew higher before lightly thumping against the bedroom window then flying back down to the bulb.
With a wave of relief, Glen shook his head, chuckling quietly to himself. How absurd it was to think those oversized shadows belonged to giant monster moths? He must have dreamed it. His imagination had truly run wild. Smiling at his foolishness, he let out a soft sigh and reached for the shade cord. Pulling it down to cover the window, he lightly released his grip, only for the automatic catch to fail.
The shade snapped back up, rolling loudly.
Muttering, Glen grabbed the cord again. He pulled it down, this time, giving the shade a few firm wiggles as it reached the bottom, hoping the catch would finally kick in, and for a moment, it did seem to hold, but then it slipped free and shot back up again.
And there it was.
Not just a moth but a monstrosity.
It hovered outside the window, grotesque and impossible, nearly twice Glen’s size. Its tattered wings, mottled with sickly shades of gray and black, beat loudly. Its bulging, multifaceted eyes reflected the pale yellow of the porch light below.
This creature was drenched in blood. Dripping down its heaving thorax, thick, viscous strands down its spindly legs.
The sound of its enormous wings, furious and unrelenting, filled the air with a droning hum. It was not just a creature; it was a nightmare. And with each beat of its wings, the dripping blood spattered across the glass and trailed downward in thin streaks.
Glen stood, too scared to scream, wide-eyed as he tried to understand what he was seeing. He wanted to cry for Terry, but if he didn’t wake up with the deafening noises they made, he sure as hell wouldn’t wake up for a panicked cry.
Looking closer, Glen could see that this moth was not alone. Crawling all over its body were thousands of other tiny insects. Moving black dots that rushed all over it.
But the focus of Glen’s stare was this creature’s proboscis. The long fleshy feeding tube below its eyes as it twitched erratically, pressing and scraping against the glass, leaving red streaks in its wake.
Then something changed as the proboscis began to fold in on itself until what could be seen below, appeared to be a mouth. A human mouth. A mouth whose lips quivered hideously at him.
Lunging forward, Glen grabbed the shade cord once more and yanked down it hard.
Instead of the shade rolling down, the whole window then buckled inward. The glass shattered into hundreds of tiny razor-sharp shards as the moth slammed into it with incredible force. As the human-sized moth pushed its way inward, its wings were deafening beat at speed.
The shattered fragments of glass that burst out did not fall and hit the floor. Instead, as they broke off the window pane and each transformed into something else, they changed into normal-sized moths, all of which flew toward Glen.
Finally finding his legs and his voice, Glen let out a terrified cry, and he turned and raced out of the room. Leaving Terry asleep in bed. Too afraid to stop and grab him.
Yanking the door open, with the giant moth and his squadron in pursuit, Glen charged down the hall toward his sister’s room, then slammed his door behind him.
“Al,” he screamed. “Al, help!”
Just as he got to her bedroom as the drone of the moths sounded closer and closer, her door opened.
The drone stopped.
Al stood in the doorway, half awake and bleary-eyed. “What are you screaming about?” she asked, looking at the distress on her brother’s face.
“The moths! They’re back,” he screamed, looking behind him, expecting them to burst from his room and into the hallway at any point.
“Huh? Moths?” She looked out into the hallway. Nothing. The house was quiet.
Glen turned back down the hallway again, and as he did, he realized the sound was gone. “They came back. They broke in the window,” he whimpered in confusion as he burst into tears. “I left Terry there.”
Glancing over her shoulder, Al saw the Lee sisters were still in their Walkman oblivion. The noise of Glen screaming did not make it past their headphones.
Walking into the hallway, she closed her bedroom door behind her. Putting one arm around the sobbing Glen, she spoke softly. “Sounds like it could have been just a nightmare, yeah? How about we go have a look?”
“No,” he cried, pulling back on her arm. “They’re in there. I saw them!”
“Listen,” Al persisted. “Really listen. Can you hear anything?”
Glen listened, but even though he could not hear them anymore, it did not stop him from believing they were back.
“Come on,” Al said. “I’ll go in first. You’ll see.”
One slow step at a time, Al led them down the hallway. She was sure this must have been a nightmare, just as she was sure that last night’s strangeness must have been something as equally rational. They all saw separate things that were not really there. Things that disappeared as soon as they ran away from them. Things that did not leave a trace in daylight. They must have all been nightmares or group hallucinations? A gas leak? But now, walking toward Glen’s room, seeing the abject fear in his eyes, she was not so sure it was nothing. Yet there was no sound except for their own shallow breaths and cautious footsteps.
Getting to the door, Al swallowed hard before reaching out and gingerly placing her hand on the handle.
The handle was stuck.
“Terry?” she called out as she knocked. “Terry? Are you okay?” She turned to Glen with a concerned look. “This better not be a joke, little bud.”
Glen shook his head, the fear still consuming his expression.
Click.
The door unlocked. But Glen’s eyes widened.
“Al?” he said, terrified.
“What is it?”
“My door doesn’t have a lock on it.”
Instantly, a cold feeling of horror spread over them. He is right, she thought. None of the doors have locks.
She pushed down on the handle with trepidation, then pushed open the bedroom door.
“Terry?” she called out, not wanting to step in.
The room was dark and deathly silent.
There were no moths, but she could see from the doorway that the window had indeed been shattered inward. The floorboards were littered with broken glass, and the roller shade was strewn unraveled in a heap.
They could also see from the dull light coming in from outside that Terry was still asleep in his bed, exactly as Glen left him, breathing loudly.
“Terry?” Al said in a hushed tone so as not to alert whatever else could be in here.
Slowly, they approached the bed, but Terry did not stir.
“Terry?” Glen tried, speaking louder, keeping an eye on the shattered window.
Al looked around the room again before she reached out and gently shook Terry’s shoulder. “Hey, doofus, wake up.” Pulling on his shoulder, Al turned Terry over to face them.
He looked perfectly normal. Peaceful. Asleep.
Al shook him harder. “Terry? Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
A sudden noise from the hallway startled them. It was the toilet flushing.
A few moments of confusion later . . .
“What’s going on, guys?” Terry said, walking into the room behind them, disheveled and groggy.
Al and Glen froze in a terrible fear as they stared at the approaching Terry.
“Guys? What’s going on?”
Slowly, Al turned back to the bed. Back to what she had seen as a sleeping boy.
Glen could not turn. He just closed his eyes, dreading what was about to happen.
What had just been a sleeping Terry was no longer anything remotely innocent.
Al’s trembling hand was resting on the shoulder, not of a boy but of a creature. A snarling abomination, grotesque in every detail. Its flesh a patchwork of raw, oozing wounds and its misshapen features, twisted and gnarled. Browning jagged teeth gnashed within a mouth almost too wide for its head as its sunken eyes glowed a deep green.
The real Terry could see this, too, as his face drained of color. He recognized the face of this beast. The same hideous thing that was illustrated in intricate, terrifying detail on one of the stolen pages of the old book. This was no coincidence. This was it, that same creature. That same demon.
Al’s hand jerked away, and she let out a scream. Glen could not avert his gaze any longer as he turned and opened his eyes. As he saw the demon snarling on the bed, he screamed, too.
Before they could run, the bed suddenly quaked with violent, sickening speed. From beneath it emerged a dozen scaly, clawed hands. Each the size of a child’s arm, with gnarled fingers tipped with razor talons. These hands surged toward Al and Glen, desperately grabbing the air.
Al dragged Glen backward, stumbling toward the door. Their screams mingled with the guttural growls and hideous demonic voices that emanated not just under the bed but from within the walls of the house.
The three didn’t pause to see what would happen next. Terror drove them away, and they bolted out the room, slamming the door behind them.
They were not there to witness as the demon on the bed chuckled as its body began to break apart of its own accord. Blood and gristle snapping as whole chunks of its body separated, and from them grew clawed hands. Soon, the body had split into many pieces, all of which stood as small, separate, hairless demons.
In the hallway, the door to Al’s bedroom opened as the Lee sisters, both barely awake, walked out, having heard the screams over their music.
“What’s going on?” they asked in worried unison as Al, Glen, and Terry approached in a panic.
“Run!” Al shouted.
At that moment, the monstrous voices and growls became louder and louder and filled the walls around them.
Both unsure of what was happening, the sisters screamed and followed the others downstairs in a hysterical frenzy. As they all ran, the voices in the walls followed them, growing louder and louder, angrier and angrier, scarier and scarier.
They dashed off the bottom step toward the front door.
Glen was there first as he reached out and grabbed the doorknob. He flung the door open wide, and all five spilled out onto the porch, into the night air.
Coming to a shocked halt before they got to the grass, they stared at what was now in the driveway.
Standing next to their car, in the glow of the porch light, was Michael and Marcy Simon.
