Object x, p.20
Object X, page 20
“What did you just say about my daughter?” Victoria asked him.
“The blood on the door,” he clarified himself. He didn't bother to tell her the entire story. Her involvement didn't matter to that extent in his eyes. “Ask her if it was Annabelle's.”
Victoria looked past Darnell. What if she made a run for it? Sure, there wasn't anywhere to go anymore, but she would take her chances with her family in some other part of the school as opposed to spending another minute in the presence of this heartless sociopath. How could Darnell just drag her in here and imply that something terrible happened to her daughter without any concern in his voice? He didn't even show emotion on his face. He was so cold, and his face scrunched further with each passing second that she didn't follow his command.
“I'm done here,” Victoria declared firmly.
Darnell grabbed Victoria by the shoulder and pushed her backward. She stumbled along the concrete until coming to a rough stop courtesy of the stiff wooden door. Her hip slammed against the unforgiving wood, but adrenaline concealed her pain. There was no use screaming for help as long as Demetri held her only allies at gunpoint. It was all on her. She needed to find a way out of this room.
“It was Annabelle's blood.”
Victoria jumped forward, landing only inches from Darnell, and barely avoiding the tip of the sharp knife clenched in his hand. The woman in the door parroting her voice had spoken directly into Victoria's back before Victoria bolted away. She felt something. Intense yet fuzzy. Leaning against the door—for as brief as she had—brought Annabelle back to her. She felt her daughter's touch on her arm. She heard her laughter. A piece of Annabelle existed in the door that had no right claiming the same honor, but she didn't understand how.
“But it wasn't enough,” the voice told them. “More is needed in order to stop all of this. A sacrifice is the only way to end the pain and suffering. Bring me Annabelle.”
Victoria turned back to the door. It was all an act. For reasons unknown to her, the voice in the door had slipped up and answered Darnell instead of her, revealing that it could hear more than just Victoria speaking. Or perhaps it wasn't a mistake? What if it was all part of a larger plan, and they were walking right into a trap?
Victoria didn't care, though. Rage surged through her veins, mixing with her blood and pumping to her heart, before being sent to every inch of her body. She balled her hands into fists, steady and alert. She wasn't normally like this. She was someone who typically used her words to solve problems rather than her actions, but she sought confrontation now. She was done listening to orders.
“LEAVE MY DAUGHTER ALONE!” Victoria screamed at the top of her lungs.
The door responded with a wicked giggle.
Victoria turned and stepped toward the light with a determined strut in her stride. Her plan was simple. She would walk back into the gym, collect her children and her diaper bag, and get as far away as possible from these crazy people without further exposing herself or her kids to the horrors outside. There had to be a solution. Perhaps Wendy would be interested in teaming up with her? Or maybe Jax as well? Regardless, she would find a way out of trouble. She always did.
“Where do you think you're going?”
Victoria looked up. It wasn't the door speaking to her this time. No, the question directed at her came from a tall and intimidating man wielding a knife in his hand, and she immediately saw the first problem in what should be a rather routine plan. Both Darnell and Demetri were armed, angry, and intent to not allow her to leave. Yet, somehow, she had to figure a way out.
She didn't know what else to say other than the truth. She was too upset to formulate a lie. “I'm leaving.”
“You're not going anywhere,” Darnell told her. “Your daughter is our way out of this. Now, call her in here.”
“Annabelle isn't our way out of this,” Victoria argued. “That thing is lying to you! It's lying to us!”
“How rude of you to call me a liar.”
Victoria took a deep breath, trying her hardest not to respond to the inanimate object behind her. That's all it was: just wood. It didn't matter what she called it because it wasn't real! It wasn't an actual person!
“Your older brother passed away from cancer when you were just seven years old and you still think about him daily,” the voice in the door said from the darkness. Darnell's flashlight pointed down at the floor, not allowing either of them to see into the room even if they wanted to. “You had a pregnancy scare after you lost your virginity during your first week at college, and then you didn't have sex again for a year because you were so scared of getting pregnant for real. You often lie awake at night and watch your husband sleep in bed next to you because it puts you at ease. And while you would never tell your daughter this, you have a soft spot for boys, which means you'll always allow Noah to get away with a little bit more than Annabelle.”
The world's most powerful vacuum rolled into the room, stuck its hose down Victoria's throat, and sucked every drop of confidence out of her system. She stood in stunned silence and stared ahead at Darnell, but not as a result of her own doing. She was too scared to turn around and face the door to her rear. It knew her. It knew her tragic memories, her teenage drama, and the intimate details of her present-day family life. But how? How could it see into her world? How could it feel what she felt?
“Because I'm you, Victoria.”
Victoria panicked. The voice in the door wasn't her. She'd witnessed too much tonight to rule anything impossible, but she was certain that she wouldn't see herself if she opened the door and stepped inside to wherever it led. Still, she needed to get away from it, and she didn't have anywhere else to go.
She slipped past Darnell and ran out into the gym.
Demetri turned his head, confused as to why Victoria was back in the gym without Darnell. He heard the principal of the school, however. Darnell's deep voice echoed from the storage room, gradually coming more into focus with each passing moment, until he emerged into the gym with a knife in hand. His screams didn't call for Victoria, though. Instead, he demanded Annabelle.
And that temporary distraction was all the opening Jax needed to make his move.
Jax would understand the reasoning for Victoria's decision if he stopped to think things through. Common sense said that a distraught mother would immediately seek her children, but that wasn't what Victoria did. She ran away from them—toward the closed doors that led out to the school hallway—before stopping as if to taunt what she viewed as her captors. Victoria risked her safety for the greater good. In order to find an escape, she needed help, and the sharp sound of Demetri's guttural grunt gave her an extremely welcoming taste of hope.
Jax burst forward and lowered his shoulder before driving it through Demetri's back, taking him down to the hardwood court with him. The Glock slipped from Demetri's hand and slid along the wood floor like a frozen hockey puck across ice. He wasn't prepared to be attacked, let alone blindsided after dropping his guard for a moment. Demetri possessed so much power just seconds ago. Now, he fought desperately to try to get Jax off of him, but didn't fare well given his substantial disadvantage in both size and strength.
Victoria scrambled for the gun and quickly scooped it up off the floor. She raised it, prepared to fire at will the moment that Darnell got too close, except he wasn't anywhere near her after she regained her bearings. Darnell walked in the opposite direction from her.
He walked toward Annabelle.
Victoria observed Annabelle holding onto Tommy's hand. Meanwhile, Wendy had her hands full with Noah, Jax continued to pin Demetri against the floor, and Richard and Amber appeared overwhelmed and frozen in time as a result of everything going on around them. She had two choices with no one left to help her. One, she could do nothing and pray that a miracle happened. Two, she could take matters into her own hands and do something.
So, that's exactly what she did.
Victoria pulled the trigger.
The deafening gunshot blast brought a sudden stop to everything. Victoria didn't feel a thing. She expected a numbness to sweep through her hands or a tingling surge to shoot up her arms, but it didn't. Noah cried in an otherwise silent and motionless gymnasium as Victoria focused to relocate her target. Absolutely nothing on this planet mattered at the moment other than keeping Darnell away from her daughter. Annabelle's safety was her sole concern.
Victoria's index finger settled on the trigger once more when she watched Darnell resume his path. She ran out of time in a hurry. A matter of seconds were all that separated Darnell from arriving in front of her eldest child, and she couldn't risk potentially hitting anyone other than her intended target before he did. Her lack of success with her first shot showed her inexperience. She was a greenhorn with a firearm. She couldn't be expected to hit a moving target in poor lighting and with a pounding heart, but motherhood often called for the impossible to become reality. She needed to be spectacular in order to save her daughter.
Darnell froze unexpectedly, but Victoria couldn't claim to be the reason why. In fact, she'd never managed to pull the trigger for a second time. All because something happened first.
Intense white light surged from the storage room.
The light wasn't just white. It was a heavenly white, almost glowing from how bright it appeared throughout the gym that it poured into. It didn't quite reach the far wall or the ceiling, but it illuminated everything in its path, painting a clearer picture of the dire situation that they'd been thrown into. Light represented a taste of humanity in an otherwise uncivilized environment, but the source of why everyone could now see didn't possess the humane touch that so many of them longed for.
The distinct grind of a knob being turned. The creak of a hinge. The erratic groans and squeals of a door opening slowly. The light grew. It spread all throughout the gym, reaching corners unseen to those who'd never stepped foot inside the school before. Suddenly, the light became blinding, a wall of crippling bright white overpowering everything in its presence. The world of darkness had been transformed into a sea of white.
And then without warning, the echo of a door slamming shut bounced from end to end in the gym, followed by the bright white light vanishing.
The temperature inside dropped at least twenty degrees. The flashlight in Darnell's hand flickered while the hand-crank light on the floor went out for a handful of seconds before returning to life. Everyone felt it. There was something else in here with them. Something or someone had come through that door, but everything appeared unaltered in the gym.
A loud noise—as if something fell off a shelf and crashed to the concrete floor—sounded from the dark storage room.
A blur dashed around the gym. It wasn't something posing at Victoria, though. Nor was it a horrifying animal spawn in the depths of hell. Rather, it was a frightened woman desperate for a way out, but unable to think clearly as a result of her immense amount of stress.
Wendy finally reacted after what felt like an eternity of standing still and watching. “DON'T!”
It was too late. Amber was already on the other side of the gym, concealed partly in the shadows, but not enough to hide herself completely. She unlocked the crash-bar handle, pushed forward, and let herself outside. No one could track her escape. It was too dark and the door was too far away. Unfortunately, everyone inside the gym heard exactly how far Amber made it outside.
Because she screamed.
Wendy took a step toward the open door before freezing. She couldn't rely on her instincts this time. Every bone in her body yelled at her to run after Amber and quickly shut and lock the door if she couldn't help her, but the baby in her hands and the kids hanging on her shirt reminded her that she couldn't do everything on her own. She needed help.
Wendy turned to locate Victoria—her eyes catching a stunned Darnell staring in the direction of Amber's path instead of at Annabelle—when she saw a glimpse of why the school principal appeared to have a change of heart. Moments ago, Darnell was locked solely on the little redhead holding hands with Tommy, but that didn't appear to be the case any longer.
They moved like darts in the shadows. Long legs and bulky bodies centered low to the ground, they poured in through the door before scattering in all directions. The finer details remained unknown outside of the radius of the hand-crank light, but their presence was far from obscure. Spiders were now inside the gym.
“Are those what I think they are?” Darnell asked. His stoic tone didn't match his forthcoming actions. He would be absolutely horrified in a matter of moments.
Wendy turned her head again to see Victoria racing in her direction. They were the only two who reacted. Darnell looked mystified, Richard appeared terrified, and Jax's eyes bulged as he tracked something large crawling diagonally along the wall behind the basketball hoop. Wendy never had a chance to gauge Demetri's reaction with Jax pinning him against the floor courtesy of his forearm on the back of his neck, and she didn't particularly care how he felt either. He was partially responsible for why they were so royally screwed. None of this would've happened if he'd just listened to her!
Victoria swiftly accepted Noah back from Wendy, handing her the gun in return like a surreal version of Yankee swap on Christmas morning. Both Tommy and Annabelle released their interlocked fingers from each other's hands as they looked to their own mothers. The world moved fast. Time was of the essence—not slowing down for those caught with their pants down—and experience paid off in spades as the only two adults in the room who'd dealt with these creatures didn't stop and stare in wonder. Instead, they reacted.
“Grab our bag! Hurry,” Victoria shouted at Annabelle over the sound of her crying baby.
Wendy watched Annabelle run to the nearest wall and collect her mother's diaper bag. Sadly, Wendy couldn't ask the same of Tommy, because both of their backpacks rested up against the wall only feet from the open door where the spiders entered. Their few essential belongings were a thing of the past. She didn't know how many spiders were inside, but the blotches of black streaking throughout the darkest part of the gym hinted at there being far too many, and she wouldn't dare risk Tommy's safety for something as replaceable as food and water.
Wendy looked toward the wall furthest from where they stood. A pair of doors—potentially locked and consisting primarily of glass—represented their only hope to escape. There was nowhere else to go unless they barricaded themselves inside the storage room, and Wendy had no desire to do anything of the sort after what she both saw and heard in there earlier. Coming to this school was wrong. She'd made a catastrophic mistake and now faced the consequences of her terrible decision, but they still had a chance to make it out of here alive. They had to be sharp. They had to act fast. But mostly, they needed some luck.
They would make a run for it with Victoria, Annabelle, and Noah. Wendy also planned to grab Jax on the way to the doors leading out to the pitch-black school hallway. The rest of the people in the gym could fend for themselves as far as she was concerned. Her patience wore thin, and she didn't have time for those who'd shown her nothing by disrespect and poor treatment from the moment that she first stepped foot inside this gymnasium. Strength in numbers didn't mean a thing if she couldn't trust someone to have her back. For now, and until proven otherwise, the only people Wendy planned to trust other than Tommy were Jax and Victoria.
“Mom!”
Wendy looked at Tommy instinctively. There were two major problems, however. One, Tommy always called her Mommy. Two, while Tommy was still far away from puberty, he also didn't have the voice of an eight-year-old girl.
Wendy shifted her focus past her son. There, she saw Annabelle with a diaper bag in her hand. Fifteen feet separated them at the most. Unlike Wendy's bags, the one that Victoria sent Annabelle to retrieve was close enough that the young girl should return in just a matter of seconds, but something was in the way of her arriving back at Victoria's side.
A large black spider stood directly in between them.
Wendy didn't have any idea where it came from. She looked up for a split second, unsure if she saw movement on the ceiling or not, before realizing that these things may have spread out faster than she'd anticipated. They needed to be on the move already. They couldn't afford to stand around any longer while these monsters were inside. Yet, no one moved an inch.
Wendy, Victoria, and Tommy looked over the spider that showed its back to them, while it faced Annabelle near the corner of the gym. The young girl trembled. The diaper bag slipped from her quivering fingers and plopped down on the hardwood below as she took a step back. Three steps further back and she would be up against the wall. She didn't have anywhere else to go.
“Shoot it!” Victoria begged.
Wendy took note of the peculiar silence as she raised the gun in her hand slightly to point it at the spider. The cries and screams all around her seemed to fade away. She was in a bubble—her very own bubble. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. Her chaotic environment ground to a halt as her blue eyes narrowed to focus on her target, her index finger measuring the resistance of the trigger that it rested against.
In one swell swoop, Wendy lost track of her surroundings as she crashed to the stiff wooden floor below. She gasped for breath but no air made its way into her lungs. Physically, she still existed, but nothing about her new reality reminded her of the life she'd lived. The cool hardwood pressed against the side of her face while she tried to pick herself up off her stomach, but neither her hands nor her feet functioned. She felt completely helpless.
That was when Wendy realized that she'd fallen forward. She observed the spider's endless array of black legs with only her left eye. Its hairs seemed more plentiful up close and personal, and its size appeared downright hulking now that she found herself next to it on the floor. She couldn't defend herself if she couldn't even breathe. She couldn't protect Tommy either! Her last shred of hope disintegrated right in front of her, and there wasn't anything she could do about it.
