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Chapter 7

There I was, bundled up in seven blankets with Tim and Chase, in a brightly lit room with all the blinds drew closed and our padded onesies helping to make us feel safe from the strange horror that lurked outside in the stormy dark of night. I sat there, Xbox controller in hand, looking down at Chase's pathetic little house of sand from atop my floating castle of glass and iron. To try to calm me down, they'd all decided to play minecraft.

Great, big woop, sure, I'm calm now, but in the same sense that I'm bored. The game ended for me about the time I got my third stack of iron, when everyone else was still building a small house next to their mines. This is usually where the game ends for me; I shoot farther ahead than everyone else, then become a dick and build a tnt cannon atop a sky scraper and blow the shit out of everything.

Needless to say, once I hit that button and rained hell on everyone, Corbin brought us dinner and made us shut down the game so that he could relax for a minute or two and play his game. He... He's that one person you know who can play any game on it's highest difficulty and make it look easier than when you play it on it's lowest difficulty. We all just sat back and watched as he set some score of over six trillion in geometry wars, dwarfing Logan's high score of a million or so.

After eating, I ended up falling asleep with my head against Tim's shoulder, and woke up in the night to a dream of being eaten alive by the thing in the cave. The dream freaked me out and I opened my eyes to faintly see my bedroom thanks to the soft light of the moon through my window. I was confused at first, but quickly remembered having been woken up and taken home because Logan and Corbin had some ordeal with their friends to sort out.

I laid my head back down on the pillow and tried to fall back asleep, which doesn't work when you realize the pillow is breathing. I raised my head and looked at it a bit better, realizing the pillow was actually Tim's padded stomach as he snored softly. I sat up a bit and looked around my bed, confused by how I was laying. I got up out of the bed and left the bedroom, first for a pit-stop to the bathroom then to go crank up the heat.

Granted, I probably could've turned on the lights or at least not looked out the window, but I like challenging myself to see how well I know the house without my eyesight. As naturally as in horror movies, staring in at me through the window was that thing. I swore under my breath as I saw it, the cold mist drifting off to the side as it breathed and watched me cross the room to go turn up the thermostat. It raised a webbed hand to the window and set it on it, something about it being... off.

I squinted to see what was so wrong about it until I realized the shape of it's hand was... joint-less. Like a tentacle without suction cups, the sickly green fingers simply stuck to the window, like the skin of wet paw pads instead of fur or scales, and the bone structure of an invertebrate. For at least two or three minutes we just stared at each other, and I almost felt as if I understood it.

I could see how I looked in it's eyes, some strange, deformed being with a face inside it's own. Puffy and useless, I had but an inch of plushy armor for self-defense, and the thing could probably kill me if it wanted to. Hell, the thing could probably break the glass if it tried, and yet it stood there, staring at me. I unzipped the onesie and took it off, unstrapping the pads and dropping them to the floor to show the being what I really looked like. It blinked and something about the way it's eyebrows twitched told me the thing understood.

It just... did. Not what I looked like, but more of the fact that I had meaning, that I came from a world of people similar to me. And somehow I understood the same from it. Somewhere, out there in the big ol' world of the unknown, was a group of beings that were similar to it, maybe it had social class, maybe they spoke a language, maybe they understood mathematics, and had currency. Maybe they had religion. If they did, what did they worship? What did they sound like when they spoke? What were they?

What is it? I paused for a moment before screaming at the damn thing, "What are you!?" The thing flinched when it heard me scream, and then glared at me as if I'd offended it. I saw it's mouth move, saw it's lips wriggle and the space between them form the shapes that would make words, words that chilled my spine when I realized what they were.

You know.

I know?! Well, that's it. It can speak, I'm done. I quickly spun on my heel only to bump into Tim who had a crazed look on his face, "What are you doing up? What were you screaming about?" I pointed to the window and he froze. "Oh. We need to call Logan-"

The front door flung open and the shape of a man stood in the frame, only their black silhouette visible against the half-lit world outside. The figure flicked on a light and I was relieved to see it was Rod, holding a large quilt in his hands. "You two, get over here, now."

We did as told and when we got close to him, he wrapped the blanket around us and led us outside, closing the door behind us and turning off the light. He had us keep our heads low as we crossed the street to his place and entered the warm building, my feet wet and blackened from having crossed the asphalt of the road.

He lifted our chins up as we were shivering from being outside in the cold, wet rain and led us into his living room and had us sit down on his couch. His house had a strange, warm feeling to it, radiating the smell of vanilla and at least thirty or forty candles standing around the room. I laid my head on Tim's shoulder and clutched his hand, now feeling the fear of having seen the thing outside.

Rod bent down to our feet with a towel and rubbed the soot off of Tim's slippers and my feet, carefully and precisely cleaning them before wiping up the floor behind us. I tugged the blanket a little tighter around my side and wriggled closer to Tim, feeling in need of comfort and protection. Rod got up off the floor and sat down in a chair opposite us, just looking at us.

I sighed deeply as I realized I'd need to be the one to break the awkward silence, "Why'd come get us?"

"Because you needed help, and your father wanted me to keep an eye on you, so I went over and brought you here."

"But how'd you know?"

"I have my methods."

Tim scoffed, "Voyeurism's kinda pervy, man."

"I don't spy on people if that's what you're implying."

"Well, how else-"

"Timothy James Atwood, there are things in this world that science cannot explain, and neither can I, thus I will not. Respect that I at least keep my mouth shut and do not assume the most obvious to always be true."

Tim slunk deeper into the blanket and gripped my hand tighter. Stress wasn't the same as fear, and it was usually worse. Rod shook his head and sighed, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped. I have a hard time acting appropriate for my age."

"It's okay, I shouldn't have accused you of spying."

"Don't worry about it."

There was an awkward pause before Tim asked the obvious, "What's with all the candles?"

I couldn't help but tease Rod, and it kinda just slipped out, "Wards off evil spirits."

Rod scoffed before making me feel like a jack ass, "Actually, they just cut the power bill back. Also, I think a raccoon died under the house, so the vanilla blocks the smell."

"Oh. Guess I shouldn't have-"

"It's a common misconception that fires or candles have anything to do with spirits, but trust me, they don't. If they did, I'd be a lot less haunted by my past than I am."

"Haunted? What past?" Tim nudged me and scowled, "What? Oh, come on, he clearly wouldn't have said that if we weren't supposed to ask!"

"Fyodor makes a point, but my life isn't haunted by anything you can imagine."

"Really? I mean, if you knew my entire name without anyone telling you it, who's to say you don't know anything else about me? I can imagine a lot of weird things, as you would know."

"Tim, these aren't matters to be taken lightly. Sex is a fleeting thing that happens for but a brief moment. War, death, and murder are of a nature that makes your weird little fetishes and your interest in them seem meaningless and pointless. You don't want to know what all haunts my past, and I'm not particularly in the mood to admit too much of it."

I couldn't help but notice how Tim's pupils seemed to dilate and how his breathing shifted. He went uncomfortably quiet and the room was still for a time. The sound of thunder suddenly pierced the silence and sent a strange, bone chilling rumbling through the air. A second or two later, a flash of light through the curtains on the far wall accompanied by the roar of whatever heathen gods govern it shook the entire house.

Lightning is one thing. The sillheouette of a strange, unholy thing witnessed outside the window with a lightning strike is such a cliché in horror that to truly witness it I felt my entire stomach lurch and felt the nausea grow in my throat. Upon me and Tim suddenly clutching each other's hands and pulling ourselves closer, Rod looked around and stared lazily at the window, another burst of lightning illuminating the thing's form and presence.

Something about how Rod looked at it was... off. He wasn't afraid, but he wasn't confident, either. He seemed as if to be calculating his next move on a game of chess, simply staring at the problem and trying to watch every possible action unfold in his mind. I felt myself begin to fantasize about him letting the thing inside, and it talking, it knowing our language and speaking with us.

In one scenario it was calmly talking about how it's alien mothership was stationed over the city, preparing to obliterate us. In another it spoke of new horizons and the future of mankind laying just beyond our atmosphere. As more scenarios began to play out in my mind, I always left out the one that turned out to be true. The closest I came was it being from the moon, and the government giving their species permission to inspect us and catalog our actions and doings, to study us.

I shuddered at the thought and then whimpered as I watched Rod fling open the curtains and stare the devil in the eyes. And then in Rod's voice, I heard it; utter hatred. His voice was strange, slurred, and mixed up in a way, leaving his words and their meanings unfathomable, but whatever he said, the thing seemed to understand, and it's eyes flicked briefly before it turned away and left.

I couldn't help but ask Rod the very question that I figured rang in Tim's ears, "What is that thing?"

Rod looked at me after drawing the curtains closed, giving me a mischievous look, "That thing is far from home, Fyodor."

"But what does it call home?"

"The world beneath ours, of course."