Bailey didn’t notice the kid until he spoke, nearly
causing a disastrous mess of chicken lo mien and pork dumplings. No real surprise
that her senses were dull after the ten hour day she’d just put in. All she
wanted to do was eat, zone out in front of the TV, and take a long, hot bath.

“Can I come in?” the boy asked.

He was around eleven or so, slightly built, wearing a ragged
black hoodie that was a size too small. The hood was up and drawn tight around
his milk colored face. His head was pointed down, studying the worn toes of his
battered Converse sneakers.

“Why?” Bailey was cautiously concerned. “Are you
lost?”

“Sort of,” the kid shrugged. “I just really need to
use the phone.”

“Don’t you have a cell phone?”

“Yes, but it is broken. It is food time and my mother
will be worried if I do not call home soon.”

There was something very off about the way this kid
spoke. It reminded Bailey of the way Data spoke on
Star Trek
;
phonetically correct, without any emotional inflection. And why did he call
dinner “food time?” Who the hell talked like that?

“Please,” the boy took a step towards her. “I really
need to call my mother.”

Bailey opened her mouth to tell the kid to go away.
Movement behind the boy stopped the flow of words before they began. Three more
children, all identically dressed in ill-fitting hooded sweatshirts and beat up
trainers, emerged from the shadows of the apartment courtyard. Each quickly
turned their gaze downward as they entered the bright light provided by a large
lamp post.

Real fear leapt into her throat. Fingertips tingling,
Bailey fumbled her keys out. Trembling hands turned seating the key in the
deadbolt into a struggle. She expected her traitorous appendages to drop them
into the nearby bushes, just like a dumb bimbo would in a bad horror film.
Making the procedure even more difficult was a need to keep one eye on the kids
while doing it.

“Please!” For the first time, the original boy’s voice
showed an emotion; urgency. “We need to come in. We cannot unless you ask us
to. We need to call home.”

His face raised. The others followed suit. Bailey’s
heart joined the fear taking up residence in her throat, thumping wildly. Every
drop of saliva disappeared from her mouth. She momentarily forgot about the
lock. All she could do was stare at four sets of perfectly black eyes.

Surprisingly, Bailey began to feel calm. Her instincts
quit hitting the internal klaxons quite so hard. She relaxed the death grip her
hand had on the keyring. It was nice to stand out here and stare into the
tranquil eyes of his nice young boy. This harmless boy. How nice it would be to
have them in to visit!

A modified Honda motorcycle buzzed loudly into the
parking lot. It snapped her attention away from the hypnotizing gaze long
enough to break the current chain of thought. The boy’s expressionless face
contorted in frustrated anger. Bailey turned around, sliding the key home and
unlocking her door.

The children were slowly moving forward in unison. She
quickly entered, paper bag of Chinese food smacking the doorframe. White
cartons tumbled to her welcome mat. Bailey could care less. The speaker stepped
on one, reaching forward with a pale hand tipped with dirty fingernails. Bailey
slammed the door shut, shooting her deadbolt hard enough to send a cramp
shooting through her forearm.

Immediately, an incessant knocking began. She jumped
away from the door, expecting the kid to punch through the sturdy oak and
unlock it.

Nothing so dramatic happened. The banging continued.
She forced herself to take deep breaths, trying to calm the rapid pounding of
her heart. It was necessary to think about what to do next. Calling the cops
was a good idea, as was making sure all the other entrances were locked up
tight. Finding something to defend herself was a solid tactic as well, just in
case one of them go in before the police arrived.

A small hand reached up to her large living room
window. The grubby paw formed a fist and proceeded to thump against the glass.
Bailey let out a shrill scream, rushing over to the check that the lock was
engaged. Looking down, she could see a small white face staring up at her, oily
eyes begging Bailey for access to her mind, to ensnare her into a trap that
would encourage lowering defenses. She swept the blinds closed furiously. The
plastic wand attached to the metal track at the top snapped off.

More knocks coming from the bedroom. Bailey ran down
the hall, slamming the door closed after checking the latch. Instantly she
re-opened the door, lunging inside to her dresser. From the top drawer she
grabbed a short steel rod, which she snapped out into an eighteen inch baton.
She’d bought it at a flea market after the stall vendor had talked her into
getting the weapon rather than Mace. It felt good in her hand.

Even better, the intimidating sound of the club
expanding caused all knocking to stop, for a moment anyway. It resumed a minute
later, more insistently than before. Bailey cursed and shut the door again.
Awkwardly, she lunged into the hallway bathroom, sitting on the throne after
shutting herself in. The call of nature was not to be ignored, even in times of
extreme terror. She couldn’t stifle a crazy laugh at the thought. Strange to be
doing something so normal in abnormal circumstances.

Bailey was finishing up when the patio door off the
kitchen slid open. She froze, waiting for the sound of basketball shoes on
creeping across the kitchen linoleum. The pounding ceased. The complete silence
was somehow worse than the noise. At least with the thumps, she knew where the
kids were. Maybe they were already in the house, sneaking silently towards the
bathroom, dead eyes shiny with the anticipation of mutilating her in
unimaginable ways.

She got off the toilet and contorted her body into a
position where she could look under the door. No one was waiting directly
outside. Bailey strained, wiggling in the small space to get a better look down
the hallway.

“
Please!”
A thin, reedy, and absolutely scared
shitless voice cried out from the kitchen. “
Please let us in, we can’t come
in unless you tell us we can! We need to come in!”

Shock at the sudden speech turned into confusion. Why couldn’t
the kids just walk in? It wasn’t like there was a big trench that magically
formed whenever an intruder entered. What was keeping them back?

“
Oh please hurry and let us in! We’re scared!”

Multiple sets of hands began drumming on the metal
patio door frame. It was frantic, intense knocking, the desperate request of a
frightened person running from some unspeakable danger. More shouts, more pleas
echoed throughout the apartment.

Bailey hefted her baton and headed down the hall to
the kitchen. Each step she took seemed to increase the children’s racket. They
rained blows onto the retracted screen and even on the siding bracketing the
entrance.

She stopped at the border between the living room and
kitchen, weapon raised. Bailey’s body was wired from adrenaline. Sweat made her
armpits a jungle. Though common sense was telling her to ignore the kids, to go
for the phone on the end table, the primal part of her mind was ordering Bailey
to find someone’s head to smash in.

“Please let us in!”
The boy screamed
wildly. ”
Please, we’re running out of time! He’s coming!”

The sight of the kids was a punch in the gut. In this
moment, they looked like ordinary children, frightened by a terrible dream, trying
to get into their parents’ bedroom. Their arms blurred as they pummeled any
available surface near or around the door. They strained towards the entrance,
but none dared to cross the threshold.

“Who are you?” Bailey demanded, voice strong. “What are
you doing here?”

“Please tell us we can come in!” The child’s voice was
distorted, as if it came through layers and layers of static. “You have to tell
us we can come in!”

“No! Fuck off!”

“Let us in!”

“Eat shit!”

Viscous black tears began to ooze down the children’s
cheeks simultaneously. Each mouth dropped into an “o.” They began to wail, a
loud, ear splitting, relentless cry that caused Bailey to slap her hands over
her ears for protection. Her weapon clattered to the floor. She sacrificed one
ear to the noise in order to retrieve it.

A blinding light filled the kitchen from the outside.
Bailey threw up a hand, trying to see the source. The kids mercifully quit
their caterwauling, replacing it with a deep gurgling reminiscent of a backed
up drain. Black fluid spewed from between their lips and out their nostrils.

Something swooped over the children, enveloping them
in what resembled an iron grey sheet. Frozen in a silent scream, they continued
to vomit their foul liquid. It stained the covering as it began to tighten
around them. The backlight dimmed a bit, revealing a shadowy, tall figure, very
broad, wearing what looked to be a billowy hood. It was steadily pulling
the sheet taut, like a fisherman harvesting his netted catch.

Bailey groaned loudly. The cloth prison grew smaller
and smaller, crumpling up. As it did so, bones cracked and organs popped
underneath. Clothing fell to the concrete slab. They smoldered, bursting into
blue flame before reducing to ash.

Finally the horrible process was complete. A
basketball sized bag, held easily in the tall being’s hand, was all that was
left of the children. It stepped closer to the patio door, revealing a face
beneath the cowl that was heavily wrinkled, thick lipped, and blue in color.
Large, oval eyes peered at Bailey’s hunched figure.

The figure did not cross into the kitchen, seemingly
content to stare from outside. In spite of her relentless horror, she realized
that she could feel the thing’s curiosity. A cold fingered hand seemed to
rummage through Bailey’s mind. She felt the probing sensation, recognizing that
whatever the creature was, it was pervasively trying to pluck information from
her brain.

“GET OUT!”
She screamed, voice
breaking with the force of it.

Suddenly, all feelings from the invading presence was
gone. The being stepped back, straightening its stance. A low hum began. The
light began to pulse slowly, strobing in and out, increasing in tempo and
pitch. Bailey stood frozen, baton outstretched in shaking hands, watching the
figure’s body fade out into nothing.

It was gone. Bailey slid down the cabinets to plop
onto the cool tile floor, feeling fatigue washing over her. A gaggle of her
neighbors crowded out into the back yard, clad in night clothes and jabbering
excitedly. Some even pointed cell phones up into the sky, trying desperately to
capture footage that would turn them into temporary local celebrities.

Gathering the last of her energy, she tottered over to
the open patio door, shut and secured it, then sat with her back against the
glass. It felt good.

Bailey drifted off to sleep before the reporters got
there.

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