The Taking Read online

  Paul straightened in his chair. This was it. The moment for which he had been waiting. The moment the people of this town would finally see the Mayor for what he was.

  “I must ask you to sacrifice more.” He gestured to the men standing righteously behind him. “We have talked over our predicament. We feel the best thing to do, at this time, is to prepare for further sacrifice. We must send Carol out, but we need to be ready to send out more. We need to be ready for sacrifice beyond our previous experiences.”

  The room was shocked into silence; the only sounds those of the Anderson family's sobs. Paul waited for the fallout. He waited for the crowd to rise in rebellion.

  7:10 p.m.

  Ruth sat on a bench in the park. She was tired of walking. The eerie wind that had almost stopped her had disappeared with a flash of light. Now the night was utterly ordinary. A quiet, chilly fall night and Ruth was tired. Tired of looking for the Takers. Shouldn’t they come to her? Here she was, ready to go. Prepared to sacrifice herself for her town. But the Takers were nowhere to be seen. She sighed. More of a harrumph then a gentle exhalation. She was too old to play games. Too old to walk all night like a kid playing hookey. For a minute Ruth grinned. She liked being a grumpy old lady. It was the best part of growing old. Everything else was not so much fun.

  She looked around. So far, the night had not been nearly as exciting as she was expecting. She’d walked the entire south side of town and hadn't seen a single Taker. Aside from the bizarre forceful wind and the blinding light the night seemed normal. There was no sign that anyone, human or otherwise, was around or that there was anything unique about the night. The no one around, well, that made sense. People tended to hide, hunker down in their homes like groundhogs burrowing beneath the ground, whenever it was the new moon, and the Takers came.

  Ruth looked up. She missed seeing the night sky. Ever since she moved to Heritage with her husband, she hadn’t seen the constellations shining like they were this night. No one went stargazing in Heritage. Especially not during the new moon when the stars were particularly bright.

  She picked out Pisces and Pegasus, recalling the stories she’d been told as a child. Her eyes searched the sky and landed on Andromeda where she paused. Andromeda. The princess chained to a mountain for a monster. It seemed apropos that she should see Andromeda on tonight, of all nights. After all, wasn’t she here waiting for a monster? But Ruth was hardly a princess.

  7:25 p.m.

  Henry paused on the corner of Third and Chapel. He was four blocks from home. He hadn’t seen the source of the rumble or heard any other noises indicating someone else was around, but he was close enough to home that he started to feel more comfortable. He only had a little bit further to go and then he would be back home and safe. There would be other opportunities to get back to Pittsburg and everything he remembered so fondly. But for now, returning to the life he missed was the least of his worries. Henry just wanted to escape the dangerous streets of Heritage and get back inside behind closed doors and solid locks. He only had to make it a few more blocks.

  He started to relax. His friends in Pittsburg were never going to believe this story. He grinned. He could just imagine his best friend Charlie’s high-pitched and excited voice asking him to tell the story of everything that happened. When he got back home, this was going to be awesome.

  He turned down Third. He only had to make it to West Street and turn left. Then his house was right there. Just a few blocks away. He could cut through the backyards to Sarah’s house or have her come to his. Either way, he would be safe, and he wouldn’t be alone. He bet Sarah would let him have extra cookies, too, since he’d had such a rough night and all.

  His giggle broke the silence. The complete and total silence.

  He hadn’t noticed until now. Too busy planning how to set up his story to pay attention to everything about his surroundings.

  His breath puffed into the air in a visible cloud.

  He shivered as the temperature dropped.

  When did it get so cold? He was fine a few minutes ago. Now he was shivering.

  Henry looked around. The street was quiet and dark. Trees stood like silent sentinels lining the sidewalk. His footsteps even in his Nike sneakers were loud. Each step he took seemed to echo like he was in a sizeable empty room instead of on a street filled with trees, grass, and houses. He slowed and looked from side to side. Nothing. He continued. He was so close. He only had to get home.

  Henry’s small feet moved faster. He didn’t care anymore how much noise his footsteps made. He pumped his legs harder. He ran fast. As fast as he had ever run. Then he realized the horrible truth. No matter how fast he pumped his legs and arms, he wasn’t moving.

  The air around him grew heavy. So heavy it was hard to breathe, impossible to move. It dragged on his body, holding him back. Keeping him still. He leaned forward trying to move his feet.

  The air vibrated with electric tension. It weighed him down, too thick to pull into his lungs.

  The only thought in Henry’s brain was to keep moving. No matter what, move. Unfortunately, he couldn’t. His body wasn’t cooperating with his brain’s message.

  The air at the end of the street shimmered and flickered like a TV that wasn’t working right, the image jumping in strange sparks of light. A figure appeared and then flashed bright and dark, before appearing again. Down the road, one of the Takers materialized.

  Henry’s heart pounded, a throbbing beat that reverberated in his chest, telling him to move. To run. To escape.

  He pushed his body as hard as he could. Sweat broke out along his forehead and trickled down the back of his neck. He struggled to move his limbs against the horrible weight of the air. Slowly his body pushed forward. Inch by inch, with one eye on the Taker at the end of the road and one on the gap between houses. It was his chance. His way out. But moving his body wasn’t coming easily.

  From the corner of his eye, Henry saw something moving on the other side of the street. A Taker. He swung his gaze from side to side and watched in horror as the Takers appeared one after the other. He was blocked. He was surrounded. There were Takers on every side trapping him with no way out. His body was unmoving. Entirely outside of his control. This was it. He couldn’t get away. Henry thought of his mom and dad. Remembered the warm hug his mom always gave him before she left and the heavy weight of his dad’s hand on his head. Tears welled in his eyes.

  The air vibrated and then snapped. A sudden rush of warm air came, along with the squeal of brakes. A dark truck careened from behind Henry, swerved around him, then squealed to a stop in front of him. The passenger door flew open. Matt’s angular face and brown eyes peered out at him.

  “Get in!”

  Henry stumbled and almost fell. The heaviness of the air vanquished by the appearance of the truck. He lurched forward one step and then another before breaking into a stumbling run that took him the last few feet to the truck. He threw himself in through the passenger door.

  The minute his body hit the seat Matt’s foot hit the gas and the truck spun back the way it came.

  Henry rolled off the seat and into the passenger footwell, struggling to right himself while the truck weaved from side to side. Through the open passenger door, he saw the street and houses blow by in a nauseating blur.

  Henry tucked his legs and pushed up onto the bench seat. One hand braced on the dash while the other reached for the passenger door that still bounced wildly open and then snapped almost closed before swinging wide again as Matt drove.

  The truck lurched to the right. Matt’s uttered a low mumble of curses as he fought to control the truck and navigate through the once peaceful streets of Heritage.

  Through the open door, Henry spotted a Taker moving faster than he’d seen thus far. Its gapping black hood turned toward Henry and the truck. A scream boiled in his throat as the creature lunged for the door and missed.

  The truck turned a corner. Henry was thrown back against the seat. He scrambled to b
race himself as they raced through town. With one hand on the dash and the other gripping the seat back, he waited. When door started to swing in again, he grabbed it and pulled it shut, heaving a sigh of relief, as if the closed door could keep the monsters away. Could it? He hoped so.

  The truck squealed to a stop and Henry lurched forward, bracing himself on the dashboard, he stared out the front window.

  A line of Takers stretched across the road in front of them.

  Matt craned his neck around, looking to the sides and the front. Henry followed his gaze. They were surrounded. On all sides, Takers loomed. Dark, silent, and unmoving. The truck sat in an idle. The engine purred as Matt muttered under his breath. He turned, glancing behind them again before addressing Henry without ever taking his eyes off the creatures around them.

  “Put on your seatbelt.” It was an order and Henry scrambled to comply. The belt jittered in his shaking hands, but he managed to set the ends together with a click. Matt spared him a quick glance. “Hold on.”

  7:30 p.m.

  Sarah stood up. One second she was on the ground with her arms wrapped around her knees, and the next she was standing in her living room. The same living room she’d stood in her whole life, with its cabbage rose printed sofa and light gray curtains. From the outside, it looked dreary and the same as every other home. But from the inside, it was her mother. A layer of dust covered the sparkle, but Sarah suddenly remembered her mom lovingly arranging the sparkling bowl on the coffee table and the crystal rose on the mantle.

  The living room hadn’t changed in the 11 years since Sarah’s mother disappeared when she was Taken. Looking around the living room now, Sarah saw things she never noticed before. She saw color. And light. She saw personality. She saw her mother.

  She’d never seen her home in this light. She never saw the world through this lens. Through the idea that her mother was an individual who liked the color red and things that sparkled. Maybe if her mother was different, then Sarah was too. Perhaps she was more than the scared girl with her nose in a book. Maybe she was different from everyone else in this town. All those people who lived their lives in fear. Fear of the Takers. Fear of being different. Fear of living outside of the box.

  Sarah stood there sifting through what she knew, or what she thought she’d always known. Her world was shifting like looking through a kaleidoscope, pieces in her mind were moving and turning. Each shift showing her reality in a different light.

  When it finished she stood in the same living room with the same cabbage rose sofa and gray curtains. The same worn jeans and comfortable sweater, but everything was different. She wasn’t a new person or anything so overly dramatic as that, but she saw the world differently. Sarah saw freedom where before she only saw fear. She could be uniquely herself, even though she was still in the same town she’d always known. Sarah took a deep breath letting the air fill her lungs and held it as long as she could before letting it out in a rush.

  Time to go.

  Sarah moved quickly through her house to her bedroom and grabbed an empty backpack sitting in the back of her closet. She pulled her navy sweatshirt off the back of her desk chair and stuffed it in the bag before dragging her wooden desk chair out of her room and down the hall to her father’s room. She pulled it behind her as she walked to the closet. Standing up on the chair, she moved a few old shoe boxes on the top shelf out of her way until she found that for which she was looking. In a plain brown box, her father kept a pistol, ammunition, and a flare. She emptied the contents of the box into her backpack before she climbed down and headed to the kitchen. She left the chair where she dragged it. What did a chair matter in the middle of this night?

  In the kitchen, she grabbed a flashlight. Over to the oven for the matches they kept in case the pilot light went out. She paused and looked around. Determination filled her. It felt good. Sarah stuffed everything into her pack. Down the hall to the downstairs bathroom. Under the sink was an old tin box with first aid supplies. She emptied that into her pack as well. Back in the living room, she shrugged into her sweatshirt and then settled the backpack over her shoulders. She gave a few experimental bounces to make sure the pack wasn’t too heavy before taking one last look around. She patted her pocket to make sure her phone was still secure. Weighed down with the bag on her shoulders she still felt lighter than ever before.

  She stopped at the front door and looked back into the living room. The room of her childhood memories with family. The place where she spent so many nights curled up in fear. She opened the door and stepped outside. It felt like saying goodbye.

  7:43 p.m.

  Matt stared at the Takers lined up in front of him. Four of the creatures stood in front of the truck while another six circled the back. They weren’t moving anymore, just standing silent and still. There was something a little off about the creatures. They were both solid and hazy, simultaneously. Like they were in this world, yet of another at the same time.

  He glanced to the side. Henry sat with his hands clenching the seat belt. He bulged forward in the seat from his backpack still perched on his shoulders. A small batman figurine hung from the zipper on the side. It slowly swayed back and forth. It struck him as oddly symbolic. Matt stared for a second, mesmerized by the gentle swaying. But reality jerked his view back to the road and the creatures in front of him.

  “Hold on.” Matt barely recognized his own voice. Nothing about this moment felt normal. Matt glanced around, hoping the outlook would have changed in the second he wasn’t looking at the road like the Takers had miraculously vanished or a path had opened up.

  Still the same. As one, the Takers took a single step forward.

  No more time.

  Matt’s foot hit the clutch. He shoved the truck into second gear, prepared for when he hit the gas. When he did, they needed to move. The Takers took another unified step. Matt slammed the gas pedal down. The truck lurched forward, jumping to life, and gained speed quickly. He pressed back in the seat while locking his hands around the wheel. He aimed the truck straight toward the Takers blocking the road. In the passenger seat, Henry sucked in his breath.

  “Hold on.”

  “Hold on!”

  “HOLD ON.” His voice raised to a yell as the truck slammed into the Takers in front of the vehicle. Well, the truck should have slammed into something. Instead, it slid right through the Taker, no sound or thump. As the Taker moved through the cab of the truck, the hooded head turned toward Matt, and the temperature dropped.

  The truck shot forward. Matt looked in the rear-view mirror to see the Takers had all turned. They watched the tail lights of the truck as he drove away.

  7:45 p.m.

  Sarah typed a quick text to Matt letting him know where she was going as she moved down Third Street. She knew he was driving toward the school, so she figured she would head toward the town center. Together they could find Henry faster. She walked to the corner and stopped under the circle of a pale-yellow light from the street lamp above her. The street in both directions was quiet. Occasional street lights cast rings of dim illumination with long spaces of darkness in between. She tried to think like an eleven-year-old boy. Superheroes, trucks, football. None of it helped her figure out where he would be.

  Think like Henry. Right. No problem.

  She continued toward the town center. In the distance, she heard a noise. It sounded like it was coming from the school or the athletic fields. Sarah stood with her head cocked, listening, trying to catch another noise on the wind. There it was again. Squealing brakes? Who would be out driving tonight?

  Other than...

  Matt.

  Sarah ran toward the sound.

  After a few blocks, she slowed with a stitch in her side. She was only a few minutes from the school, and she hadn’t heard anything else. Was she still going in the right direction? Matt may have been around the school, but that didn’t mean he was still there. She stopped and looked around. If she kept going on this road, she would end up in f
ront of the school, but if she cut down Main, she could circle around the back. Where would Henry go?

  The athletic fields. If she was an 11-year-old boy, the bleachers would be a tempting place to stop.

  Sarah turned back. As her panic receded to a level of general terror, she started forward slowly and carefully with her head on a swivel.

  A bang shot through the dark. She froze with her head tilted. It was silent. She circled slowly but had no idea where the sound had originated. The street around her was quiet and still. No one was in this part of town at night, especially on the night of the Taking. A chill rushed up her spine. Now Sarah was convinced she wasn't alone. The night had been scary before, but something seemed suddenly different. It looked dangerous. Menacing. But she didn’t see anything or hear anything else.

  The terror she had conquered at home reared its ugly head. She’d been doing okay, feeling pretty brave, but she stopped for one second, and the fear came rushing back. She was in the center of town, a block away from City Hall and right in front of the pharmacy. She stepped back from the pool of light shining on the sidewalk. As quietly as possible, Sarah eased herself over to the dark stoop in front of the pharmacy. Under the awning, she felt a little more secure. Not so out in the open. She watched the street. Nothing. No people. No movement. No lights. No Takers. She still felt insecure, felt the cold touch of evil nearby, making the hairs on her arms and the back of neck rise. The longer she stood there, the more convinced she became that she was not alone. Something else was on this street. Something she couldn’t see, but she was convinced of its presence all the same.