Object x, p.24
Object X, page 24
Wendy stood barefoot in her backyard again, short grass tickling the insides of her toes. The chill of night. The intrigue of darkness. She was back where it all began, but not really. Physically, she drove along a dark and quiet road with spiderwebs covering so many of the trees above. Mentally, contrary to reality, she'd returned to where her most vivid—and by far strangest—dream first originated.
She stood in front of what Sam labeled as Object X.
And just like before, she somehow saw everything around her perfectly even in the dead of night.
She felt it. Suddenly, everything made sense to her. She understood why her arm had extended forward at the start of her dream, and even more importantly, she grasped why she'd placed her palm flat against the slick black surface. It wasn't something supernatural or inexplicable. Instead, it was the most logical thing that she'd heard all day.
Tommy's blood.
It was what she'd felt the moment her skin touched Object X in her dream. That was why Sam cut Tommy's hand, wasn't it? It was the explanation behind her husband's decision to allow Tommy's open cut to pour into a bowl in his bedroom as well. Sam wanted their son's blood to smear on the strange door-like structure in the backyard, and her unbreakable bond with the boy in the back seat attracted her to the object as a result.
Back in reality, Wendy abruptly slammed on the brakes.
She didn't turn around to check on Tommy or Annabelle. She didn't ask them if they were okay from her sudden and unannounced stop either. She knew that they were fine. She wasn't driving fast and they were both buckled up, after all. Still, it was the polite thing to do, but something distracted her from using her manners.
Wendy estimated the two-lane road at twenty-four feet across. Another three feet on each side were reserved for the shoulders, totaling thirty feet of drivable territory before the pavement gave way to the front lawns of houses on both sides of the road. The dimensions of the road were never important to her in the past. She assumed that most people felt the same way. All of that changed in a hurry, though. Because right now, completely stopped and with her foot refusing to ease up on the brake pedal that she'd almost slammed through the floor, she saw the only thing that rivaled her fear of monstrous spiders.
A massive snake slithered across the road. Both its head and tail evaded her headlights as its scaly dark green body with black spots filled the entire thirty feet of pavement with ease. Its thickness stunned her. From her spot ten feet back and behind the wheel, she guessed that it would reach the middle of her thighs if she stood next to it, and she seriously doubted that their little car would be able to drive over it. Its sheer size intimidated her like little ever had before. It was something too large and powerful to escape from.
It moved. Slowly. Yet, it moved. Something so behemoth couldn't be quick and nimble, but she'd been wrong before. She checked to make sure that it hadn't stopped as a result of her presence, following a particular black spot—almost twice the size of the other black ovals on its smooth and almost wet-looking body—and tracked it as it slithered across the rough pavement an inch at a time.
Wendy waited.
And waited.
And waited.
There was no tail in sight. Just an incomprehensibly girthy body which never ended, blocking access to the road for the sole car waiting for it to pass. She located another distinct black oval marking on its dark green body and followed it. Her mind wandered while she watched the snake in silence. Running wasn't the answer. These things would spread out and establish themselves everywhere. She could drive hundreds of miles with the intention of escaping these monsters, and by that time, something even more hellish would already be awaiting her arrival.
What if the way out of this wasn't far away? Actually, what if it wasn't just close, but right at home? The black object in her backyard wasn't some outlier. She shared a connection with it—a connection born in Tommy's blood—but it wasn't the same as the doors and fixtures along the way that'd presented themselves to individuals as something more than just inanimate objects. Victoria would claim that the door in the storage room was special. Jax would argue that his encounter with whatever deceived him into believing that he'd rekindled a past love was genuine. Wendy, on the other hand, knew for a fact that the object in her backyard was unique.
It wasn't a wooden door. It was smooth and clean, lacking a knob or any signs of wear and tear. It possessed a different aura. It contained a certain presence. Could she prove that everything originated in her backyard? No, but she was sure of it regardless. Object X didn't call her to it like the doors and objects that she'd encountered along her journey called others, and something about that stood out to her. That thing didn't want to see her again.
The snake's seemingly endless body finally gave way to a tapered black tail as it dragged the last of itself out of the road. Was it wrong to be thankful that she didn't have a flashlight? Curiosity would cause her to shine her light out her driver-side window to discover exactly how mammoth the snake slithering up someone's front lawn really was, but another part of her didn't want to know. She'd seen enough for one day. Occasionally, she preferred to be naive to the many horrors of the world around her, and she was content never knowing how many times larger this snake was than the anacondas and pythons that she'd seen on nature shows over the years.
“Mommy, I'm scared.”
Wendy turned to see Tommy's head right next to her. He'd unbuckled his seatbelt to get a better view of the snake crossing the road in front of them, but she was too lost in her own thoughts to notice until she heard his voice. She looked further behind him to see Annabelle staring at the back of the driver's seat, her pale face an even more ghostly-white than usual as she reflected on how much her life had changed in just a few short hours. Annabelle's decision to never ask for her dad surprised Wendy more than anything. It was as if deep in the depths of this little girl's once pure and innocent heart, she knew that her father was gone.
Wendy knew that she needed to be strong for the two little ones in the car who looked to her for guidance, but she couldn't always be as brave as she desired. “I know. I am too.”
“Where are we gonna go?” Tommy asked, his voice crackling, reflecting his lack of confidence.
She shifted the car into drive but kept her foot pressed down on the brake pedal. She knew the right answer to Tommy's question, but it didn't make things easier for her. Every inch of her trembling being still wanted to drive as far away from here as possible. To another state. To another country. To another world. She desired nothing more than to start over and give Tommy and Annabelle a chance at the type of childhood they deserved, but such luxuries no longer existed in a world where survivors would undoubtedly forge for food and struggle for shelter.
Wendy stepped off the brake and instead hit the gas. They still had a drive ahead of them, but it didn't involve making it to the highway to escape. Instead, Wendy planned to return to the scene of the crime.
They headed back home.
Chapter Seventeen
Wendy drove along the backroads to avoid a similar traffic jam like the one on Transit Road. They encountered deserted cars along the side of the road and running vehicles that never made it out of driveways, but no fellow travelers. Spiderwebs seemed to become more prevalent the closer they journeyed home. Wendy wondered if they were actually surrounded by sixteen-legged arachnids at every turn, but unable to see them due to the lack of light. And where were the birds? Or other bizarre creatures? There was more out here. They weren't alone.
A deep-seated sorrow seeped through Wendy's blood when she turned onto her street. How many times had a smile washed across her face at this exact location over the years? A tough day at work didn't mean a thing when she had Tommy waiting for her in the family room. Bad news didn't seem so troublesome when Sam sat at the kitchen table, ready to make her laugh with one of his sexually inappropriate jokes. This very drive always served as her return to base. It led her home, to the one place where all of her worries faded the moment that her loving family greeted her with open arms, but she didn't recognize anything about the same street that she'd driven daily for the past eight years.
Spiderwebs were everywhere. One in particular draped over the road like a bridge, connected by two trees and suspended in the air. Two red-tailed hawks had gotten caught up in the web, one bundled tightly while the other's long wings were spread out and trapped in the thick webbing. The majestic birds of prey were no longer apex predators. They once roamed freely, feasting on squirrels, rabbits, and mice, but those carefree days were a thing of the past. So much had changed. So much was gone and never to return.
She couldn't tell if the birds were alive or not as she drove past them and they disappeared back into the cover of darkness. The lack of sidewalks and street lights on their street had a tendency to always make their quiet little neighborhood seem that much more hidden from the rest of society, but what she saw made her feel like an explorer stepping foot on virgin land for the very first time. She didn't recognize what her home had been transformed into. No crickets chirping, no dogs barking, and no backyards lit up with music playing for a late-night swim: this wasn't the place that she'd adored for the better part of a decade. She was a stranger to her own home.
Wendy stopped in the street, looking at her house that was covered in spiderwebs. Would she feel better if she heard something fly overhead right now? Something about the silence disturbed her. It was a palpable calm, inviting her to reach out and touch it, but threatening to pull back and reveal its true self at any moment. She wouldn't allow herself to be deceived like so many others had tonight, though. She'd come too far to fail now.
She pulled into the driveway cautiously. The garage door on her side remained open, but partially obscured by the mess of spiderwebs hanging off the roof. It all seemed too welcoming. Where was the spider that'd chased her SUV down the street? Where were others like the smaller one that'd snuck down the chimney? She feared what awaited her the moment that she shifted the car into park and cracked open the door to step outside, but she couldn't change anything by running. She understood that. There was only one way to make things right.
She pulled up further before putting the car into park fifteen feet in front of the garage. “I want you two to stay here.”
“But I wanna come,” Tommy quickly spoke up.
Annabelle stayed quiet.
She looked back at her son. She wasn't often firm with him, but this was one of those times. “You need to stay in the car.”
“But Dad might be—”
“I'll get Dad if he's home,” she interrupted, not bothered by her own lie. Each passing minute caused her to reflect on Sam's recent bizarre behavior more and more. Everything from his unusual emotional distance to his decision to stand by and watch her fight for her life in the kitchen infuriated her. He wasn't the same man that she loved.
“But what if you need help?” Tommy proposed in an effort to come along. Any fear of what lingered outside obviously didn't compare to the prospect of being separated from his mother. “Please, Mommy, don't leave me here!”
Wendy unbuckled her seatbelt to allow herself to turn her body to look into her son's terrified eyes. She placed her hand on his knee as the first tears rolled down his cheeks like a stream without end, soon joined by a wave of waterworks. Tommy's pain was her weakness. When he suffered, she suffered too, but with the additional guilt of a mom who couldn't protect her child. She asked a six-year-old boy to be brave and stay in the car while most adults failed to do the same given the circumstances, and he responded like any other child in his shoes would.
Yet, Annabelle didn't share Tommy's overwhelming emotions. She was stoic. She hid whatever she felt—assuming that she still possessed the ability to feel at all after all that she'd been through—with eyes that always seemed elsewhere. The little girl next to Tommy wasn't really there. Technically, she occupied the seat opposed to her hysteric son, but she was a shell of what her friends and family knew. Her childhood glow was gone. The unrivaled energy of youth had been snatched away from her. Annabelle was now an old soul in an adolescent body, weathered and beaten from one too many tragedies in far too few years.
“Annabelle needs you,” Wendy said to Tommy. “She needs you to be here for her. She needs you to be a rock that she can rely on. She needs you to be strong.”
Tommy sniffled, wiping the tears from his flooded eyes.
Wendy caught Annabelle's green eyes. Dim and tired, they no longer sparkled. “And, Annabelle, Tommy needs you. He needs you to give him hope when he worries. He needs you to calm him when he experiences doubt. He needs you to be someone he can count on.”
Annabelle looked down, briefly, before raising her eyes up off the floor and settling on Wendy.
“You two need each other,” Wendy told them. “We all need each other. Now, I need both of you to stay here and wait for me.”
Tommy immediately parted his lips to speak, but Wendy put an end to his protests with a motherly stare.
“I'll be right back,” Wendy promised, gazing deep into Tommy's watery blue eyes while rubbing his knee. “I will never, ever, ever leave you.” She promptly turned to Annabelle. “I won't leave either of you, but you two need to promise me that you'll stay here and wait for me to come back.”
Annabelle may not have displayed any emotion, but her slight nod showed that she gave her word.
Tommy, unlike the girl next to him, wasn't so quick to allow Wendy to leave. “But what if you don't come back? What if something happens to you?”
Wendy didn't entertain anything of the sort. She pushed all doubt and fear from her mind, focusing on two possible outcomes for her excursion into the unknown. One, she would return after failing to discover what she searched for. Two, she would find a way to make everything right. Somehow, someway, she would awake herself and everyone around her from this crippling nightmare of sadness and death; and if for some reason she couldn't, then she would return to the car to escort Tommy and Annabelle as far from this living hell as humanly possible. Failure simply wasn't an option.
She did her best to reassure Tommy. The truth was that the words on the tip of her tongue didn't feel like a lie. The answer to all their problems was just a short walk away. “Nothing's going to happen to me, sweetheart. I promise. Now, I'm going to turn the engine off and leave the keys on the seat. You know how to put the key into the ignition if you need heat or light, right? You've watched me do it plenty of times before.”
He nodded. It took a while, but he seemed to finally compose himself. It was quite a feat for someone so young.
“I love you, I'll always love you, and I'll be right back before you know it,” Wendy said, confident in her words. “Take care of Annabelle, okay?”
Tommy nodded. He moved his hand over his mother's, savoring her touch for the little remaining time that they shared together.
Wendy looked at Annabelle. “Watch out for my little boy.”
A silent stare was the extent of Annabelle's response. She clearly thought of her own mother, reflecting on how she was robbed of the chance to say goodbye before everything went so haywire in the school gymnasium.
Wendy gave Tommy's knee a long squeeze, pulling back as the tips of his little fingers tickled her skin as she moved. It wouldn't be the last time that she touched him. One way or another, whether in a world resembling their own or a land far different from the one they called home, they would be together again. Even the most horrifying creatures and dreadful situations couldn't keep them apart. She would return for the most important person in her life. She guaranteed it.
She shut the engine off and placed the keys under her butt. She wanted them as close to the ignition as possible once she exited the car. She turned back to Tommy, told him that she loved him one more time, and savored the sound of him telling her the same. She reached up to turn off the dome light to save the car's battery before taking a deep breath to focus on her mission. Slowly, but not because of fright, she opened the door and let herself outside. She closed it behind her gently—careful to remain quiet—before making her way toward the grass.
Her plan was simple. She would walk around the side of the house, journey along their neighbor's fence that ran the length of their backyard, and make her way to the black object responsible for the madness around her. The answers would be there. She would know exactly what to do when she saw it. Right now, at this very moment, she couldn't explain how everything would work itself out, but all of that would change in less than a minute.
Wendy navigated her way by feel. She was blind in the darkness, instead relying on the noticeable difference between the rough concrete driveway and more forgiving grass to identify her whereabouts. She took three additional steps onto the grass before turning left to straighten herself with her intended path. She knew her way around even without her eyes. She just needed to walk directly ahead. Clear the garage, travel along her neighbor's long fence, and arrive in front of what Sam referred to as Object X: it was easy.
Except it wasn't.
The backyard wasn't pitch-black. Most of the grass and trees stayed under the cover of night, and she soon found that the deck and house did the same after continuing her path forward and clearing the garage, but an expected absolute darkness didn't greet her when she gazed further out into the yard. Object X glowed. It gave off a dim light—more gray than it was white—but enough to capture the attention of anyone who looked its way in the stifling gloom of night. The light wasn't what surprised her the most, however. It was what the light illuminated that caught her off guard.
Sam sat in a lawn chair, with his back to her, three feet from Object X.
Her fear returned, flooding her body like a breached levee in rising waters. She clung to a strong tree to save herself in the surging tide. She screamed for help over the sounds of those around her begging for rescue. Nonetheless, the surging waters swept her away, sending her trembling and helpless body to her death in a sea of destruction. She was just another nameless face in a night of unspeakable suffering. She couldn't do this. She wouldn't be able to make a difference. She was just one person trying to change everything by herself!
