Eleven: Run Down
***
“How long can you stay up there?” Marty wanted to know.
The balance beam creaked as Keltie did two pivot turns, then went into a split leap. “Until I start thinking too much about how crazy this is,” she said.
They had the school gym all to themselves. As usual, its endless cache of shadows and cool drafts made Keltie think of mausoleums. It was one of the reasons she did not like to work on the beam alone. The detention center was old and full of ghosts, and when you thought about them, they sometimes showed up.
“Boo!” Marty said, grinning.
“Knock it off. I’m about to dismount.”
She took two steps forward before going into her best Nellie Kim off the edge of the beam. The move was of Olympic difficulty, which meant her execution landed far from perfection. Still, she managed not to fall on her ass, and opened her eyes to the sound of applause.
“Bravo,” Cameron said.
“Daddy!”
“You do that with a third degree lateral sprain and the network will have a coronary.”
She walked off the mat to give him a hug. It didn’t seem strange that Marty had vanished, or that the shine in Cameron’s glasses looked more ominous than friendly. Not even the creepy gym mattered at the moment. The old man’s very presence overruled the whole world.
His hug was brief, however, and when Keltie pulled back, she saw that the odd shine in his glasses remained. “Daddy?” she asked.
“How are you, sweetheart?”
“Well—“
Something heavy came down nearby, shaking the entire room. Keltie’s head spun towards a pair of double doors on the far wall. The impact came again, followed by a distant scream. Lights overhead began to sway.
“Daddy, what is that?”
“There’s something in the school, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s looking for you.”
BOOM! The gymnasium shook some more. One of the double doors clicked…and came open the tiniest bit.
“It’s looking for you, Keltie. Okay? Do you understand?”
“Daddy!”
BOOM!
“Daddy, where is it?”
“It’s in the hallway. Now listen to me.” His hands fell on her shoulders and gave them a shake. “Listen. I want you to count to twenty and run. That’s all you can do. It’s your only chance.”
As he finished speaking there was a fifth jolt, the hardest one yet. Keltie screamed, expecting to see the terrible thing that wanted her—whatever it was—come crashing through the wall at any moment. Above, the lights were in full swing. Shadows danced everywhere, making an already dark gym even harder to see. She would never find her way out before the monster got her. It was impossible.
BOOM!
The backboard on one of the basketball hoops shattered. Glass rained on the floor in a chaotic symphony. One of the shards struck Keltie on the foot. She turned to jump into Cameron’s arms…only to find him gone. The gym stood empty from corner to corner.
“Oh no!” she cried. “Oh please, no!”
Count to twenty and run.
“One,” she said, and was immediately interrupted by another one of the hollow, heavy jolts. This one broke open a crack on the opposite wall that reached all the way to the ceiling. “Two. Three.”
Somehow, she made it all the way to twenty. By then the gym was a shambles. Piles of broken glass shined underfoot. Shards of wood stabbed at her, eager to draw blood. Keltie went out a different pair of doors than the ones she’d seen come open a minute earlier. They dumped her into a locker-lined hallway where she found, of all people, Frog. The school gym coach.
“Not this way!” Frog’s round, doughy face warned. “It’s too close! Go out through the foyer!”
Without thinking, Keltie found a door on the right that pitched her into the boys’ wing. More lockers greeted her here. Classroom doors with glass transoms stood wide open. Almost on cue, a boy with glasses poked his head out from one of them and stared at her.
“You’re a girl,” he squeaked. “Girls aren’t allowed here. You’ll have to run through.”
“No problem,” Keltie said, before taking off at a sprint.
The school had fallen utterly silent since she’d left the gym, but it scarcely mattered. She could sense that the hunt for her blood remained active; the very walls seemed to radiate doom and dread. There was no safety here, no sanctity. She needed to be outside and far away.
At the end of the hall stood a door that let on the foyer. Keltie ran through it. Mrs. Cobb looked up from behind the front desk. “Happy Valentine’s Day, bitch!” she scowled.
“Run!” Keltie screamed at her, dashing to the front doors. Through them she could see a hard, heavy rain pounding the lot. Once she stepped outside it instantly soaked her to the skin. Deafened by its roar, she ran on. Her shoes kicked up water. Her eyes stung.
Yet the school kept getting further and further away. With every step she took the danger receded. And while she was still certain that something, somewhere, still wanted her, it really seemed as if the booming beast would not have its meal. Gasping for breath, Keltie stopped on the sidewalk. A leviathan brooded in the distance, all black windows and crumbling red bricks. Yet nothing moved. The doors were closed and locked. She was safe.
“Okay,” Keltie breathed. “Okay.”
She broke into a light dog trot across Benedict Avenue. Gusts of rainy wind swept down from tall trees. Only here they no longer felt cold. They felt like the beginning of spring after a long, dead winter under ice. Keltie took a deep breath, relishing the flood of air in her lungs.
It was the last thing she remembered before hearing the truck horn.
How it came up so quickly, even under a silver downpour, she didn’t know. The blast was long and loud, more hungry than alarmed. The cry of a beast that wanted to eat. Two bright eyes rushed at her. A grill of shimmering teeth bore down. Keltie felt the truck hit, but instead of sending her through the air, it dragged her under. A piercing squeal of brakes ripped through her brain as it came apart on the road. She screamed—
***
And woke up sweating in bed.
The room regarded her in dimly lit silence. Furniture dozed under dirty clothes. The Ben and Holly clock ticked.
“Jesus,” Keltie let out. “Slaughter one vampire with a stake and now my sleep’s probably fucked up for life.”
She checked the clock; it read just shy of 4 AM. Time to get up and get dressed. Hit the road. Either that or wait here for Bolt to come and finish her off. Decisions, decisions.
Keltie put her feet on the floor. They didn’t quite want to go, but she made them do it. She turned on a hot water plate for instant coffee and grabbed a Twinkie off the desk. As she ate it a knock came at the door. Marty.
“You’re right on time,” she said to him, embarrassed not to be ready herself.
He smiled. “I’m not quite your typical Filipino in that regard.”
“I wouldn’t know about it. Come in.”