THEM

Chapter 4

After that news broadcast, my dad was now convinced that the police really weren't coming.

We were going to have to get ourselves out of here.

There was only one problem.

I glanced out the small kitchen window that my dad had been so intent on staring out of earlier.

"Do you think they're still out there?" I asked quietly, surveying the area in front of our house, trying to make out any shapes I could in the darkness that covered everything in its' dark blanket.

"I don't know." My dad replied as he hurried back and forth throwing things into a small black duffel bag he had found in one of the closets.

"It doesn't matter though. We can't just stay here. We're sitting ducks here."

He was right. The fact that we were surrounded by nothing but trees was a disaster waiting to happen. We wouldn't be able to see them coming until it was too late.

Like it already was.

Like with Ava.

Like with mom.

Biting down on my lip, I quickly turned to face my dad as he came to stand in front of me with the duffel bag now fully loaded.

He sat the bag down on the table and then turned and picked up the rifle that sat laying on the ground. He checked the bullets before looking back at me.

"It has some bullets but we'll need more than this."

I glanced at the door, knowing that the box of bullets still laid outside sprawled across the porch where I had dropped them.

We just had to open the door and get them.

Easy.

My dad picked up the duffel bag and then looked between both the bag and the gun before to my surprise, holding the gun out to me.

"You've got my back?"

My breath caught in my throat.

Suddenly, I was no longer standing in the middle of our lake house but in my childhood bedroom.

I was standing right behind my dad, my small fists clenching his t-shirt as he held his hand out ready to open the closet door where I was two hundred percent sure a monster was lurking inside.

A storm had just passed through and the lingering gusts of wind had been knocking the branches of the tree that sat right outside my window against the side of the house. However, in my head that knocking was actually the monster that frequented my closet trying to claw his way out and eat me.

That was the only rational explanation for an eight year old to come up with obviously.

I had jumped out of my bed and ran to my parents bedroom before dragging my dad back to my room to get rid of it, my mom laughing and wishing him luck as she rolled back over to continue sleeping. The monster was obviously not her problem.

The entire trip back to my room he kept trying to reassure me that there was no monster in my closet and that it was just the wind, but I would have none of it.

"It is a monster daddy. I just know it. As soon as I let my guard down it'll eat me!"

My dad shook his head and chuckled as he entered my bedroom.

"As soon as you let your guard down huh?"

I nodded vigorously.

My dad simply shook his head before walking towards the closet.