The Slither Sisters

SIX





As they followed the walkway to the front door of the mansion, Robert realized the yard was completely silent. There were no sounds of cars from neighboring streets, no lawn mowers or leaf blowers buzzing in the distance. Even the wind had fallen silent.

The grounds of the mansion were deathly still.

There were two large windows beside the front door, but these were blocked by tangles of tall thorny vines. Robert tried pushing them back and immediately pricked his finger. He studied one of the windows from a distance. The drapes were open but the glass was covered with a thick layer of grime, making it difficult to see anything inside. Yet he recognized a familiar shape.

“Look!” he told Glenn, pointing.

There, just inside the house, was a swirling black vortex.

“I don’t believe it,” Glenn said. “You were right!”

As Robert and Glenn stepped aside, Karina peered through the window and frowned. “Guys, wait. That’s not what you think—”

But it was too late. Robert and Glenn were already opening the massive front door and stepping into the entrance hall.

It was the sort of space that was common in old houses, with a large stone hearth, a spectacular glass chandelier, and a grand staircase leading to the second floor.

Yet the hall’s most impressive features were its magnificent tapestries. There were six in all, enormous woven portraits that stretched all the way to the ceiling. One showed a giant pyramid with an eyeball floating above it, like the picture on the back of a dollar bill, except this pyramid was surrounded by men and women dressed in red tunics, like ancient Romans.

Another tapestry showed a large black vortex at the peak of a mountain, with swarms of children ascending the mountain to reach it. With a sinking feeling, Robert realized this was the gate he’d seen through the window—not a real gate at all. “It’s just a painting,” he said.

Karina scowled. “If you’d listened to me, you would know that already. Have you forgotten that I spent thirty years trapped in this house? I know my way around.”

“You can give us a tour some other time,” Glenn said. “I’m going to back to the water.”

Glenn was still speaking as the hinges squealed behind him. The wooden door closed with a crash that rocked the chandelier and shook the rest of the house. He hurried over to open it, only to find that there were no doorknobs, latches, or handles. Just an enormous slab of mahogany wood.

“What is this?” Glenn asked. “How are people supposed to open this?”

“They’re not,” Karina said. “That’s the point. Getting in the house is easy. Leaving is a different story.” Footsteps sounded overhead and Karina looked up to the ceiling. “And here come our hosts.”

Robert looked around the hall. There were some chairs and a table beside the hearth but no real place to hide, and certainly nothing that could be used as a weapon.

“I’ll break the windows,” Glenn said.

Desperate, he lifted a chair off the floor, as if preparing to fling it through the glass.

Then he froze.

Sarah and Sylvia were standing at the top of the stairs. They were dressed in matching crimson gowns. Just like the tunics worn by the men and women in the tapestry.

Robert braced himself, preparing for the worst.

He expected horns to sprout from their heads. Or wings to burst from their backs. Or giant tongues to emerge from their mouths.

He expected the girls to come charging down the stairs, claws extended, shrieking and screaming.

He certainly didn’t expect them to smile.

“Karina!” they exclaimed together.

“Master will be so excited to learn you’ve come home!” Sarah said. “And you’ve brought boys!”

“We need more boys!” Sylvia said. “Have they come to surrender their vessels?”

Karina blinked. “Yes. That’s right.”

“Wonderful!” Sarah said, clapping her hands.

“Master will be very pleased!” Sylvia agreed.

The sisters bounded down the stairs, overjoyed to be welcoming guests.

Glenn glanced about anxiously. “What do they mean, ‘surrender their vessels’?” he whispered. “What are they talking about?”

“Shhhh,” Karina whispered back. “Just play along.”

Sarah took Robert by the hand, leading him into the hall. “You poor thing, you’re dripping wet.” She produced a towel out of nowhere and dabbed the slime from Robert’s face and hair. “How about a cup of tea? Something to warm you up? We were just about to have lunch.”

“Let’s sit by the fire,” Sylvia agreed. She was fussing over Glenn, picking bits of algae from his hair and tossing them over her shoulder. “You’ll be warm and toasty in no time.”

Robert and Glenn hesitated. The Price sisters were being so friendly, it was easy to forget they had eight-inch tongues tucked behind their smiles.

“Great idea,” Karina said. “Come on, guys.”

The sisters spread blankets across the sofa and invited the boys to sit facing the fire. Karina sat between them. The hall’s largest tapestry was directly above the hearth. It portrayed an enormous human arm growing out of a desert landscape, its massive fingers reaching toward a blazing red sky.

The sisters sat in chairs on either side of the sofa.

Sarah smiled. “You boys must be so excited.”

Robert and Glenn stared back at her. What were they supposed to say?

“Yes,” Karina answered. “They’re very excited.”

“It’s normal to be nervous,” Sarah continued, “but I assure you, boys, the surrender is completely painless.”

“After the first decade,” Sylvia quickly added.

“That’s right,” said Sarah. “Some complain for a few years, but eventually everyone quiets down and then it’s smooth sailing for centuries. And what an opportunity! To serve the Great Old Ones in this way—it’s really quite an honor.”

Glenn glanced around, thoroughly confused. “What do you mean, ‘serve the Great Old Ones’?”

“By surrendering your bodies! Those useless slabs of skin and hair and gristle! They allow us to walk among your peers unnoticed.”

“What happens to us?” Robert asked.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Sarah said. “We have a very nice room for you downstairs.”

“It’s more of an urn,” Sylvia corrected.

“A small, urn-shaped room,” Sarah said. “You’ll be so comfortable, you’ll never want to leave.”

“Even if you could,” Sylvia said.

“You must be so proud!”

Robert tried to put it all together. “You’re going to use our bodies as disguises? While we live inside jars?”

“You’re pioneers!” Sarah exclaimed. “We’ll possess all your classmates eventually. But you boys are among the first. Master will remember your allegiance when the Great War is over.”

“Hear, hear,” Sylvia cheered. “Let’s have some tea.”

She reached for a handbell on the end table and gave it four distinct rings. Robert glanced around the hall, desperate to find some way out of their predicament. The front door was inoperable. He had Price sisters flanking him. Even if he could get past them, he had no idea where to go …

A door swung open and in walked a stoop-backed elderly woman. She carried an ancient wicker tray with a ceramic teapot and four small cups. As she arranged the cups on the table, Robert recognized her as Ms. Lavinia—the suspicious librarian with the rickety wooden cart. But she gave no indication of recognizing Robert or Glenn.

“Thank you, Claudine,” Sarah said. “Serve the gentlemen first, please.”

“As you wish,” she whispered.

She carried the teapot around the table, filling the cups with an oily black sludge. It smelled like a mix of diesel fuel and the swamp they’d just come through.

“What kind of tea is this?” Glenn asked.

“Larval,” Sylvia replied. “We brew it in the greenhouse.”

Robert peered into his cup. Floating on the surface and staring back at him was a bulbous head with a long, skinny tail. A giant tadpole.



Sylvia reached into her cup, plucked a tadpole by its tail, and popped it into her mouth like a maraschino cherry. She chewed slowly, savoring the flavors, and Robert could hear bones crunching in her mouth. “Mmmmm,” she said, raising her cup. “More, Claudine.”

As Ms. Lavinia leaned over to fill the cup, her hand shook, and a drop of tea splashed onto Sarah’s gown. She shrieked and leapt from her chair. “Stupid mammal!”

“Forgive me!” Ms. Lavinia exclaimed, stumbling backward and losing her grip on the wicker tray. It fell with the teapot into the hearth and flames billowed out, rising above the mantel and igniting the bottom of the tapestry. Sarah moved to swat the flames with a towel but an oblivious Ms. Lavinia was blocking her way, offering apologies and pleading for forgiveness.

“Move, you useless bag of bones!” Sarah shrieked. “Before the whole house burns!”

Robert felt a tug on his wrist and realized that Glenn and Karina were already off the sofa. He scrambled after them.

“Which way?” he asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Karina said. “Go!”

Glenn threw open the nearest door and they found themselves in a short corridor with four additional doors. Glenn chose the closest, and this time they emerged in a large kitchen with dozens of cupboards and cabinets. Robert rushed to the door leading outside, but again it had no locks or handles; there was no way to open it.

“Get in a cabinet,” Glenn said.

“No way,” Robert said. “We’ll be sitting ducks.”

“We have like five seconds to hide,” Karina said. “Any moment now they’re going to come charging through that door.”

On a countertop in the center of the kitchen was a tall steel pot with a cinder block balanced across its lid. Robert couldn’t understand why anyone would keep a cinder block in the kitchen—until he heard the scratching.

Something was inside the pot. Clawing at its sides.

Robert reached for the cinder block.

“What are you doing?” Glenn asked. “There’s no time!”

“But it’s trapped,” Robert said. “We can’t leave it—”

He had barely lifted the cinder block when the lid clattered to the floor and a sopping wet cat sprang out, bolting across the kitchen and vanishing down the hallway, leaving a trail of foul sludge across the floor. The stench was disgusting.

“It’s a marinade,” Karina explained. “I don’t know how they can stomach it.”

The kitchen door burst open and in came Ms. Lavinia, her face flushed and her dress smeared with soot.

“You stupid, stupid children,” she said. “You need to leave. Immediately!”

Ms. Lavinia reached for the handle of the nearest cupboard—only to reveal it wasn’t a cupboard at all. It appeared to be a window into a tall, vertical well—a sort of miniature elevator shaft, running straight down the center of the building.

“Get in,” she said.

“We’ll fall!” Robert protested.

“That’s the least of your worries. Go!”

Karina went first and Robert followed. He climbed in feetfirst, letting his legs dangle down into the shaft as Ms. Lavinia hurried him along.

“Just drop,” she insisted. “Let yourself fall.”

Instead, he reached out to plant both hands against the sides of the shaft, thinking he would lower himself inch by inch. But then gravity took over and he fell anyway.

The walls of the shaft blurred past him. Robert braced himself for the landing, waiting for the pain of impact to blast through his feet, shattering his ankles and knees.

Instead, the walls vanished into darkness and he seemed to decelerate—as if an invisible parachute had magically slowed his descent. Robert’s body pitched forward and he put out his hands, trying to keep himself from landing headfirst.

He collapsed in a tumble on a cold, tiled floor. He rolled onto his back and realized he had landed in some kind of bathroom. Karina was standing beside a row of sinks, next to a paper towel dispenser.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Where are we?”

“Watch the gate,” she said, pointing up to the ceiling.

Robert scrambled out of the way just in time. Glenn dropped out of the ceiling, collapsing in the same spot where Robert had landed moments earlier.

“Are we out? Is this Tillinghast? Or Lovecraft?” Glenn leapt to his feet and paced around the bathroom, searching for clues.

“It’s Lovecraft,” Karina said.

“I don’t think so,” Glenn said. “I’ve seen all the bathrooms at Lovecraft and I’ve never seen this one.”

Something was weird about it, Robert agreed. It felt like a place where he didn’t belong. There were no urinals—only stalls with doors. And the tiles were all pink and white. Mounted on the wall was a small box with a coin slot; it was some kind of vending machine.

“You guys are hilarious,” Karina said. “You really don’t know where you are?”

Suddenly the door to the bathroom opened and in walked Tracy Adams, a twelve-year-old girl from their Science class. She saw the boys and froze. It wasn’t until this moment that Robert realized where they had landed: in a girls’ bathroom.

And then he and Glenn were back on their feet and running again.