The stairs up to the bedrooms squeaked as I took them two at a time. Somehow the kids always ran them without making them squeak, although it didn’t do a thing for silencing their approaches or departures. Melinda heard me coming and called, “Joanne? Is that you?”
“Yeah.” I appeared in her doorway, smiling. “I squeak too much to be the kids, huh?” Clara was right: Mom was grumpy. Her color was off and for once she didn’t look perfect. Her hair was up in a tangled pony tail and she was wearing an orange shirt that I recognized as Billy’s, soft and comforting but a bad color for her. Her eyebrows were pulled down and her mouth was turned in a frown.
“Come on in. Thanks for coming over.” The frown fled into a grateful smile. I padded in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Not a problem. Are you about to die of boredom?”
“Yes. And I’ve only been here three hours.”
I laughed. “I’m surprised you’ve stayed still that long. I brought you some stuff.”
“If it’s knitting, I’m going to poke your eyes out with the needles,” Melinda warned, then shook her head. “I couldn’t get up if I wanted to. All I have to do is remember how scared Bill looked and I don’t even want to move.” She pulled her lower lip into her mouth and frowned out the window. I touched her arm.
“Hey. It’s okay, huh? You don’t have to be tough if you don’t want to. I won’t tell anybody.” My heart hurt for her. “It’s gonna be fine, Mel. You just take it easy. Anyway, I brought trashy romance novels, not knitting, and a pint of chocolate fudge brownie delight ice cream.”
“That’s my favorite!”
I grinned. “Yeah, Billy told me. He thought maybe if you were stuck in bed for a while he could get you to gain some weight instead of him.”
To my relief, she laughed. “Isn’t that just like a man. Always thinking of himself.” Her eyes brightened and she looked away again. I busied myself hauling stuff out of plastic bags until she cleared her throat and said, “Thanks.”
“No problem.” I looked up again with a smile. “Rob wanted to know if they could put the water slide out on the back lawn. It’s that or Parcheesi. What’s your vote?”
“The water slide is okay. I didn’t want them to get the lawn all soaked because of the party tonight, but—”
“Oh, crap, right.”
Melinda gave me a dirty look. “You’d forgotten, hadn’t you.” Then she frowned. “Joanne, have you been tanning?”
I groaned, half-laughing. “Sort of. It’s a long story.”
“I may be stuck here a while,” she said dryly. I lifted up my hands and she gawked, grabbing my left wrist so she could turn my injured palm up. “What happened?”
“…part of the same long story. I’ll tell you about it,” I said hastily. “I promise. Let me get the kids going with the water slide first, okay? We’ll come play Parcheesi in here this afternoon so you’re not trapped in the twilight zone alone all day, and I’ll call to let people know the party’s canceled.”
She let go of my wrist reluctantly. “I guess so. Unless you’ve got a ‘get out of bed free’ pass handy?”
For an instant I hoped the power inside me would rise to the challenge, but it didn’t so much as stir. I shook my head and pasted on a rueful grin. “‘Fraid not. Just tell me where to find the guest list.”
“How organized she thinks I am,” Mel said to the ceiling. “Guest list, dias mia. Bill’s telling the guys at the precinct, and I think I can give you the rest of the names.”
“Okay.” I produced a plastic spoon and the pint of ice cream from the plastic bag. “Eat, gain, and be merry. I shall return anon, once the kids are settled outside.” And once I was done dealing with the Thing in the kitchen. I stood, saluted smartly, and left Melinda smiling behind me.
I helped the two older kids set up the slide, which is to say I set it up while they got their younger siblings and everyone, including the two-year-old, stood around telling me what I was doing wrong. Despite my incompetence, they seemed pleased with the results, and I left them alone, shrieking and sliding across the plastic mat in freezing cold hose water. Then I went to investigate the Thing in the kitchen.
I felt it when I got to the dining room. I could even see it, a malevolent silver glow that bled through the walls. My steps slowed until I felt like Cinderella stuck in the pitch. I had to look at my feet to realize that I was not, in fact, moving forward anymore. No wonder the kids hadn’t wanted to go into the kitchen. I lifted my chin and kept going, feeling like I was trying to walk through a marshmallow. The air pressed back at me, soft and sticky and thick. I breathed through my nose, deliberate deep breaths, and pushed through it. When I reached the kitchen door, the thickness shattered like a soap bubble and I was able to draw in one normal breath.
It seemed like a long time before I took the next one. There was more than a Thing in the kitchen; the Thing had filled the kitchen almost entirely. Enormous silver coils piled on the counters and stuffed the corners of the room. A shadow of my own reflection bounced across glittering white scales that weren’t quite solid enough yet to make a true reflection. A heavy head lifted out of the coils and flat white eyes stared down at me.
It was smaller than it had been in the Dead Zone. Its head was only the length of my body. When it opened its mouth, hissing silently with the gray-white tongue flicking out to taste the air, its fangs were only half my size. As I watched, though, it…popped. Cartilage and muscle bulged with audible cracking sounds, expanding a few inches in every direction. The spires along its back snapped and pulsed to a larger size, and its skull jerked out, stretching skin that suddenly didn’t fit it anymore. The scales shattered and reformed, larger now to accommodate the new size. The fangs were a hand’s-length longer when it hissed again.
It was very nearly solid already. Whatever was keeping most of the spirits from realizing their bodies wasn’t affecting the serpent. Maybe it had more strength of will or more conscious awareness. It sure as hell knew I was there, gaping up at it. It all but smiled, lowering its flat nose to within centimeters of my face. Then it opened its mouth and snapped its jaws shut over me.
Agony cramped my hamstrings, dropping me to my knees with a gurgle that wanted to be a howl. I fell through the not-quite-solid serpent’s mouth, feelings its jaws scrape up my bones, and lay curled with my forehead on the floor, shuddering. The serpent seemed to chuckle above me, and I thought I felt its tongue lash along my backbone. I curled my hands into fists and whispered, “Houston, we have a problem.”
I’d thought I could vanquish the Thing in the kitchen. I hadn’t been real clear on how the vanquishing would work; I’d had vague ideas of playing maiden-and-unicorn and leading the Thing outside. The minor detail that I wasn’t a maiden hadn’t seemed relevant, since it’d seemed unlikely that the Thing would be a unicorn. I didn’t think kids would call a unicorn a Thing. Then again, I’d never met a unicorn. They could be very Thing-like, for all I knew.
I admired how my brain was trying to derail me. It didn’t want to think about the Thing being semisolid. It didn’t want to think about the Thing growing larger even as I watched. It certainly didn’t want to think about the Thing being the Dead Zone serpent with a particular vendetta against me. Well. Vendetta might be a little strong. It wanted to eat me. I had, in fact, agreed to let it, too. It just wanted what I’d promised.
I decided that from the point of view of the one who was going to be eaten, that was enough like a vendetta. Then I bonked my forehead on the floor and set my teeth together. Focus, Joanne.
I wasn’t going to be able to get the serpent out of here by playing maiden-and-unicorn. I wasn’t at all sure the damned thing would fit through the door. I heard it pop through another growth spurt above me, and revised that upward: it wouldn’t fit through the door. Then again, in its semisolid state, that might not matter; doors might be irrelevant. I began to crawl backward, whispering, “Heeeere, snakey snakey snake. C’mere, snake.” I heard it rustle upward, the sound more in the backs of my ear bones than in my ears, and dared to peek up.