Long Black Curl by Alex Bledsoe Page A

fact.
    For a long moment, the only sound was the refrigerator’s compressor kicking on. Then they all jumped at the sudden knock on the door. It was one lone pounding, and they sat immobile, waiting for more. But it didn’t come.
    Mandalay saw Claudia and Elgin exchange a look. It wasn’t hard to read: Whoever or whatever was out there, it wasn’t a guest expected for dinner. And it was far too soon for it to be Mandalay’s father.
    Elgin picked up a shotgun from the corner and walked to the door. “Who’s out there?” he called.
    They all listened. Over the wind, they heard what sounded like fingers scraping on the other side of the wood.
    â€œMommy,” whispered Luke’s other sister, Deetzy.
    â€œHush,” Claudia said softly but emphatically. Still, she took the little girl’s hand.
    Mandalay moved slowly around the table. There were things, she well knew, that lived near the Tufa, unseen and unseeable except in rare instances. Most of them were harmless, but not all. Some were both terrifying and incredibly dangerous. Given who she was, Mandalay should have been able to sense what was out there, and thus know how to respond to it. But nothing came to her.
    And of course, none of that would matter if, on the other side of the door, waited a fully human maniac who had randomly chosen to slaughter everyone in this particular house.
    More scraping sounded through the wood. It couldn’t be an animal; the sound was unmistakably fingerlike. And as she approached, Mandalay could tell the sound came from low on the door, from a small child’s height. If a child were lost in this weather, as she had been—
    â€œOpen the door,” she said.
    Elgin looked back at her. The fear and weakness in his face almost made her angry. “No fucking way.”
    â€œOpen … the door,” she said, using the same tone she’d used to stop him before.
    â€œBarton,” Elgin said to Luke’s older brother. “Hold this gun. If it’s anything that looks dangerous, shoot it in the goddamn head.”
    â€œYou think it’s a zombie ?” the boy asked. The gun barrel waved in his unsteady grip.
    Elgin looked at Mandalay with mixed contempt and fear. “It could be. It could be anything.”
    He slid back the dead bolt, took a deep breath, and threw open the door.
    It slammed into the wall. That startled Barton, who yelped and fired the shotgun. The noise was like standing right next to a thunderclap. The two younger girls screamed.
    The blast went through the open door, harmlessly over the old man sprawled on the porch.
    Elgin snatched the gun from Barton and slapped him so hard, it knocked him to the floor. “You goddamned retard!” he shouted, his voice cracking.
    â€œStop it,” Mandalay said. She knelt by the old man and turned him onto his side.
    They all gasped when they saw the face of Rockhouse Hicks.
    None of them spoke. Only the wind made any sound, whistling through the door and moaning in the cold sky outside. It tousled the old man’s disheveled white hair and sent ripples along his clothing.
    â€œIs he dead?” Deetzy asked.
    No one moved to check. At last Elgin said, “My daddy told me this story once. These three fellas were coming across the mountain going to Kingsport, and one of ’em got tired. He told ’em he was gonna sit down on this here stump for a while, but he’d catch up to ’em. They went on into Kingsport, and on their way back they found him still sitting on that stump, froze solid.” He nodded at Rockhouse. “Just like that.”
    Then Barton said, “Y’all, look at his hands.”
    Mandalay lifted the hand that must have clawed at the door. The wound where his extra finger had been sliced away was scabbed and swollen.
    He was too big for her to move on her own. “He’s not dead,” she said. “Get him out of the snow.”
    â€œNo,”