“So…you like girls?” Kerri said.
“Yeah. Well, no. I mean…mostly you, really.”
“Oh. (Pause.) It’s…maybe ’cause we’ve been so close this week…?”
“No, I’ve…I’ve been feeling like this awhile.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know, since I was…twelve? Is twelve too early?”
“No, I think it’s the normal age.”
“Maybe eleven.”
“Wow.”
It was the quietest “wow” in history.
“Does it…shock you?” Andy asked.
“No,” Kerri said firmly. “No, it’s just that…I didn’t know you were…”
“L?”
“Yeah…E…”
“V…”
“Uh, wait, you lost me there.”
“In love with you.”
All around them, Kerri’s hair was awake and eavesdropping.
Kerri mentally checked her constants. Her heartbeat was slowing down. Her breathing was tranquil. Her breasts felt the marshmallow pressure of Andy’s, but there were no complaints there. Nothing had come as a shock indeed.
“Andy, I…I mean, it’s very sweet, but…I’m not into girls, I think.”
“Have you tried?”
“No. But I haven’t tried skydiving either and I’m pretty sure it’s not my cup of tea,” she said. “I mean, no, wait, that wasn’t—” She sighed. “That was harsh. Andy, I’m sorry; I was freaking out a minute ago.”
“I know.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the right time.”
“I know,” Andy said, realizing, but the bitterness of that realization could not possibly spoil the sweet smell surrounding her. “It’s just that…you were like…hugging me, facing me, and I thought it wasn’t fair to you because you didn’t know how I felt.”
“Do you want to move off?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Kerri shifted a little, her hands clasped around Andy a little more gently, pulling her closer. Andy noticed: her own pulse was now beginning to pace up. She made a conscious effort to bridle it.
“I just thought that…if I kissed you it’d be less awkward.” She took a second to evaluate. “Fuck, that worked out great.”
“Hey.”
Andy’s own hair gasped as Kerri caressed her cheek.
“Never punish yourself for this. You hear me?”
They were too close to see the other’s whole face, but Andy noticed Kerri’s eyes smiling.
“I’m glad you told me. Plus, you succeeded in calming me down.”
“Yeah. I’m not sure I was aiming for that, but whatever.”
“Andy, listen to me,” she began, carefully. “I don’t think I like girls. But I do like you too. A lot. And I really, really need you to be here right now. Can you do that?”
The soldier in Andy took over. “Yes. Of course.”
“You can?”
“On top of you.”
“Yes, on top of me. Will that be a problem?”
“No, I can handle it.”
“Good.”
“Can I move my hand? It hurts a little.”
“Make yourself comfortable.”
They both maneuvered a little, full-cycling a mutual hug, Kerri’s arms resting surely on Andy’s back, Andy’s hands sunken in pure orange euphoria, legs intertwined, breasts still clothed but formally acquainted.
When Andy looked again, Kerri had closed her eyes. A peaceful cub smile dozed on her face.
“Kerri.”
“Yup.”
“Would you rather I was a boy?”
“No. You wouldn’t be in this room if you were.”
“I like this room a lot,” Andy said. Butterflies and paisley dozed around their burrow. “I was afraid if I told you, you wouldn’t want me in here anymore.”
“Don’t ever worry about that,” Kerri whispered, fingers caressing the back of Andy’s neck. “Nothing bad will ever happen in this room.”
Andy closed her eyes and rested her head next to Kerri’s, face sunken into welcoming sugar-candy orange hair.
—
“Well, that was an interesting development,” Peter told the ceiling of the next room, lying on the upper berth. “No man in a mask this time. I hope.”
“Shut up,” Nate groaned below him.
Peter jumped off the berth, ghost sneakers landing lightly on the carpet.
“Come on, man, I’m honestly congratulating you on a good job. Packing Uncle Emmet’s gun—that was a smart move.” From the pencil pot on the desk he grabbed a fistful of darts and faced the target on the door.
“You told me to pack the gun,” Nate reminded him.
“Oh, yeah, I did. Good old me.”
He threw a dart; Nate covered his ears with his pillow.
“Anyway, it was a long shot,” Peter went on. “Not literally; I mean my telling you to pack the gun. Because those lake creatures turning up was…(A dart hits the board.) Well, not totally unexpected, but still a good twist. There was a chance they’d be there, but they were supposed to be asleep, right?”
Nate dropped the pillow and confronted Peter, who was standing right in front of him, his smug grin and perfect hair impervious to post-traumatic stress.
“We didn’t wake them up,” Nate said.
“I know we didn’t, Nate. I’m saying you did,” he said, waving a dart at him. “That night in ’seventy-seven, when Kerri was kidnapped in the basement, and Andy went to search for her downstairs, and I had to rescue them both; what were you doing in the attic all that time?”
“Like you don’t know!” Nate shouted. “You are in my head!”
The next thing in his head was very nearly the steel tip of a dart. It missed his skull by a centimeter and stopped with a thud right above him, nailed into the upper berth.
“I do know!” Peter gloated. “I mean, whoa, Nate, telling Kerri about the Necronomicon is gonna be tough enough, but what do you think the girls will say when they find out that you not only saw the book in Debo?n Mansion, but you also read it? Aloud? You fucking twit?!”
PART THREE
COLLAPSE
The bunker was reached some minutes past ten a.m. Andy woke up, found herself face-sunk in orange curls filling her eyes, ears, nose, and lips. She was joyfully drowning in Kerri’s hair, its fragrance and softness pounding on her senses like a cheerful Mongol army banging on the gates of Baghdad. And the truthfulness of that sensation, the physical reality of it, was beyond philosophical doubt. She even recognized it from the last time she’d felt it, that night thirteen years ago when she was hugging Kerri, twenty feet underground, in a dungeon, in smothering darkness, too busy sobbing in terror and listening to the lake creatures scratching the walls to notice the bliss back then. But she was paying attention to it now, in Kerri’s bed, their top-bottom position changed during sleep into a sort of overprotective spooning, her face drowned in real, 100 percent pure rainbow-powered ecstasy.
A certainty that in all its glory could not mitigate another truth: what had just awoken her was the sound of scratching on the walls.
She laser-eyed the wallpaper right next to the bed, trying to make out a clue in the dim light of the bedroom, shushing Kerri’s hair down. Nothing happened.
Until a minute later, when something scratched the door.