Evan Angler
Tch, tch, tch, it went. Tch, tch, tch. And Nervous-Ali told herself, You’re going to die in here! You’ll be eaten by a creature your best friend doesn’t even believe exists. And then you’ll be dead. Until all at once the scratching stopped. The closet went still. Ali calmed herself and squeezed a few panicked tears from her eyes, letting them go and allowing herself to believe it had just been her mind playing tricks on her. She laughed at herself. She wiped her sweaty brow and leaned back against the closet wall. This lasted a few tranquil breaths before she felt the sprinkle of filings and sawdust raining lightly onto her hair and into her eyes. And then something heavy landed on her shoulder. Some squirming . . . thing . . . the size of a dinner plate had landed on her back. Ali screamed in a way she never had in her life. She shot up so fast that she cracked her head on a pipe jutting out of the closet above her. Bright, white sparks filled her eyes, and a splitting pain bolted through her skull and all the way down her neck. Ali went limp, but without enough space to kneel, she couldn’t even collapse properly; instead, she rested, back to the door, knees pressed up against the wall, head in her hands, contorted and sick with pain. It was clarifying, that pain. It was enough to knock sense into her through the fog of her panic. You have to find a way to see, Ali told herself. You need to see it. You need to know what’s burrowed its way into this room with you. Slowly, she lifted her head from the bowl of her hands. Dark everywhere, eyes open or shut. In the opposite corner, whatever it was shuffled vigorously back and forth. Invisible to her still, but she could hear it. It was 18
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8/14/13 9:14 AM