Free The Guardians by Andrew Pyper Page B

thinking any of this as we made our way onto the Thurman property that night. All I was thinking wasn’t a thought at all but a physical aversion that had to be fought off with each step, along with a murmur in my head that would have said, if it could speak aloud, something like
Turn back
. Or
It’s wrong that you’re here
. Or
You are about to step from the world you know into one you don’t want to know
.
    In short, I was afraid.
    I think all of us wanted to stop, to sidle no farther along the thorny hedgerow that shielded us from the pale streetlight, the wan half moon. If one of us had said, “I think we should go,” or merely turned and headed back toward the street, I believe the rest would have followed. But none of us said or did anything other than proceed along the side of the house, inching closer to the two tall windows set too close together like crossed eyes. Both fogged with dust, through which someone on the inside had long ago dragged a finger to spell
fuckt
against the glass.
    I’m not sure we discussed the best way to get in. I suppose each of us assumed there would be a window left open or gaping cellar doors that would make it obvious. We never thought to try the front door.
    “This is where he went,” Ben whispered, and the sound of his voice reminded us how long we had gone without saying anything. From the time we gathered at Carl’s apartment and made the three-block walk to stand opposite the McAuliffe house, looking into its warm interiors from which we had so often safely peered out at the Thurman place across the way, we had travelled in silence. It was a journey that required no more than ten minutes but felt much longer than that. The whole time all of us walking in a defeated pack, as though escaped prisoners who had decided freedom was too much work and were returning to our cells.
    And then, still recovering from the sound of Ben’s words, we paused to grapple with their meaning.
    The coach. This is what Ben was telling us. It was over this ice-crusted grass that he carried Heather Langham the night before last
.
    In the dark, the backyard was impossibly enlarged, a neglected field of weeds poking through the snow and swaying in a breeze that rushed the clouds across the moon. A see-saw stood in one corner of the lot, the seat of the raised end poking up from a cluster of saplings like the head of a curious animal.
Little kids used to play on that
, I remember thinking. And then:
What kids? When would any child have run around on this ground? Who could ever laugh into this air?
    I wondered about that long enough to be surprised when Carl nudged me from behind.
    “It’s not locked,” he said.
    I followed his pointed flashlight to see Ben standing in front of the open back door.
    We followed him inside. All of us making our way through a mud room into the kitchen. An old gas stove stood in one corner, the face of its clock cracked, the time frozen at a quarter to twelve. An undoored fridge. The wallpaper a photographic mural of a country scene: a pondside with a forest beyond, and a single deer lowering its head to drink. But then you looked again, looked closer. The forest was cloaked in shadow that seemed to darken as you watched. And the deer wasn’t drinking but lifting its head, startled by a cry from the woods. Something about the composition of the picture suggested that whatever was about to emerge out of the trees meant to hunt the deer, to spill its blood on the grass. And that the deer knew this, was frozen by the knowledge that it was about to die.
    We were all gazing at the wallpaper now. All of us listening. For the thing in the woods. The thing that was here.
    And with our listening came a count. One, two, three, four—our lungs, our in-and-outs of air. Along with a fifth. The idea of another’s breath somewhere within the house.
    Ben shook his head. A gesture that signified the denial of a request, although none of us had asked anything of him. Then he walked