The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 1: Project LARS (Part 4 of 6)

The children's ward at St. Claire's was about as quiet as it ever got.  Someone kept coughing, somebody else snored, someone had been weeping, but the sobs were now dampened to dull heavy breathing.  Out in the hall, two adults were having a conversation.  They talked softly not to disturb the patients, but the whispers entered the rooms like the chatter of birds.

Kevin Walsh lay awake.  He was in a room with five other boys.  His bed was draped off from the others.  The noises had nothing to do with his restlessness.  He lay awake every night.  Darkness had become a horrible burden.

His eyes darted around the curtains, a continuous clockwise sweep of his surroundings, while he waited, expecting the shadows to creep in and invade the protective well of light that the bedside lamp cast.  He would keep up his vigil until the night ticked away to morning, and complete exhaustion carried him away against all of his wishes.

Since they had taken him off the medication, he had barely slept at all.  The shots had allowed him to slip past the terrors that awaited him on the road to sleep, like a pack of bandits.  Without them, he was ambushed every time he attempted the trip, even in the full light of day. 

Kevin had been at St. Claire's for more than two weeks and all the sights, smells, and sounds of that horrible night were even more vivid, as they played back in a haphazard loop, invading other memories and moments from his life.  He might be trying to think of a more pleasant time — trying to imagine himself huddled in his own bed in the wee hours of a Christmas morning — when that horrible roar would shred the very walls around him, tearing them apart until blackness oozed in and drowned everything in its malevolent tide.

Then he would see it all.  He would relive it again and again.

Kevin had been standing outside the Westgate's house waiting for Donny to come out to meet him.  The house was dark like most of Bluebell Crescent.  Even on a Friday night, lights were out and curtains were drawn giving the illusion that everyone was asleep.  Activity could only be seen in one house.  Through the picture window, a movie flickered with an abundance of blue and black.

The only thing the windows of Donny's house showed was the reflection of the street lamps.  The bedrooms lined up on the second story like something from Goldilocks.  His parents were on the left, his sister in the middle and Donny's room was on the right, all neatly lined up by age and importance.

Kevin stepped back onto the street trying to get a clearer look at the middle window.  The blind was drawn, but there was something about the thought of Amy being in there, asleep in bed, which gave him feelings he didn't know what to do with.  The same thing had occurred last summer whenever he happened to be in the pool with her.

Kevin would never mention it to another human being, but sometimes he imagined being married to Amy some time far in the future and living in a house very much like the one in front of him.

His daydream was cut short when something changed.  There was noise.  At first, it was so faint he wasn't sure where it was coming from, but then there was a crash that was unquestionably from inside the house.  Kevin's eyes widened and searched out the source futilely through the covered windows. 

A light in the parent's room came on and bled around the drapes.  A high pitch shriek broke the peace of the night, and there was a sudden feeling of the house coming fully awake.  He couldn't hear or see it, but he sensed Mr. and Mrs. Westgate launching themselves out of the bed and heading down the hallway.

That was when he heard the roar.

The house muffled it, but it still sounded impossibly loud.  It wasn't just a sound, it had mass and form. 

When he was still only a little kid, his parents had taken him to the zoo.  He only remembered a small fragment of that day.  He had been watching a man fill balloons with helium.  There was a cage to his back, but he was oblivious to it.  The fact that it was a zoo or that there were animals was forgotten until something roared.  It sent a primal tremor through his body.  There was a quality to it, which imprinted the creature onto his brain.  He didn't need to turn to know it was a lion.   Something built into his DNA tens of thousands of years ago on the African savanna told him the huge predator was right behind him.

The bestial noise that tore out of the Westgate house reminded him of that moment, except he didn't get a sense of it being made by an animal.  What formed in his mind was a hole.  A pit of blackness that could devour stars.

When it stopped, there was a hiccup in time that no matter how many times he relived the experience, never made sense.

He was vaguely aware of people running and shouting around the crescent, even though his eyes were stuck on the spinning wheel of the skateboard lying upside down at his feet.  He didn't remember dropping it, but it must have slid from his numb fingers.

He looked back up at the house, and the blind was gone from Amy's window.  He could see straight in, all the way to the lit-up hall.  A framed grouping of family photos hung askew on the wall.  On the glass of the window was a dark handprint.  The five fingers stood up clear and distinct, but the mark turned into a slug's trail as it slid down the glass.

Part of him wanted to run to the door and help them.  The rest of him wanted to turn and flee as far from there as possible.  He didn't move.  His legs were one with the pavement.

New noise filled his ears.  Sirens accompanied by flashing lights that bathed the house in red and blue entered the crescent.

Over the noise and the confusion, he heard his name.  "Kevin!  Kevin!" someone was screaming.

Two men dashed to the Westgate's front door.  Mr. Quinn barefoot in his bathrobe and Gary Kessler in boxers and a Cowboys t-shirt had just reached the path to the stoop when Donny's window exploded.  A hulking shape flew out and landed on the ground.  As soon as the paws touched the ground, it was all snarls and kinetic motion – a blur of darkness against the night.

Mr. Quinn was tossed into the air.  His robe fluttered like a cape as he slammed into the house, leaving a dent about halfway up the vinyl siding.

Sharp cracks disrupted the air and a series of black pockmarks appeared next to the dent Quinn's body had made.  The thing – the horrible monster switched direction and bounded over the fence to the backyard, between one bullet shot and the next.

Gary's arm slapped into Kevin's chest, and he picked him up in mid-run like he was nothing but a toddler.  He carried Kevin away from the house, charging across the lawn.  Then the roar returned, only this time it was not muffled by walls and glass but by distance.  It sounded miles away, as it echoed among the hills and pierced his soul.

Lying in the hospital bed, Kevin's ears were alert to it still, expecting at any moment that noise would come and swallow the world.  It didn't matter that they had killed the creature. Every cloud that passed a shadow across the sky, every breath of wind that rattled the glass of his window, every footstep in the hall made him feel it was still out there somewhere.  Waiting, stalking, coming for him.  It didn't matter if they said it was dead, something in the very core of his being told him he would see it again one day.