Bait

The last thing Adam wanted to do was walk through his front door.

It was late, past dinner time. The sun had set about an hour ago but there were no lights on in the house of Ledger. An old, colonial style building, single floored and made mostly of wood, Adam always thought it looked like some abandoned cabin you might find in a fairytale. The one with the evil witch, or the big bad wolf inside.

It was Thursday. Adam knew his dad wouldn’t be home for another few hours. Jacob Ledger worked in the city, an hour’s drive south of Wakehurst. But it wasn’t the long drive that made him late. Ever since Adam’s mum had left, Jacob had been spending longer and longer days in the city. Adam had no idea if he was spending that time working extra hours or doing something else. For a while he’d had this horrible suspicion that his dad had started a second family, and that he was eventually going to leave Adam for good and move in with them. But he didn’t think that anymore. He saw the way his dad was when he eventually did come home. The lethargy, the apathy. He was a man without a purpose. He had no plans to leave, because that would require some sort of hope for the future. Jacob was a man that had let life beat him to his knees, and keep him there. It was only recently that Adam had figured out the real reason he stayed out so late. It was not because of anything enticing or seductive out there. He stayed away from home because that’s where Adam was. Most days Adam was glad he wasn’t around. The way they avoided each other in the house made him feel like an intruder, a thief sneaking around the place, or a ghost doomed to haunt the man for all eternity. But this day, for the first time in years, Adam would have given anything for his dad to be home.

The walk up the garden path to the front door felt like a slow march towards death. It would be inside waiting for him, he was sure of it. He reached the porch steps, only four of them, leaving about a two foot gap between the ground and base of the house. Through the slits between steps there was only darkness. Beneath the house had always fascinated and terrified Adam. It could only be explored by crawling on your hands and knees. There were thick supporting pillars every few metres, giving it an almost reverent feeling, like some sort of temple that had long fallen into ruin. Now it was the place where Adam’s imagination could run wild, filling it with every horrible creature he’d ever come across in books or movies. For as long as he could remember, he would run up those four porch steps instead of walk, especially if he was alone and the sun had set. And every single time, he would imagine hands reaching through the gaps to grab at his ankles, horrid, monstrous hands, that would drag him under the house and do such terrible things to him that even his imagination didn’t let him see the ending clearly.

Now, staring at those steps, with nothing but perfect darkness behind them, Adam was frozen with fear. He knew exactly what would be waiting to grab his ankles this time. The Nightmare would be crouched there in the dark, just out of sight but not out of reach.

Slim cracks appeared, like miniature lightning, starting from the edges of his vision and moving inwards.

No. Not again. Not ever again! Adam shook his head violently, tears of frustration welling in his eyes. He would not let the cracks come. He could not let something else through. One Nightmare was enough. So much more than enough. Besides, he knew they were watching.

Dorian had explained the plan - if you could call it that - like he was telling Adam how to crack an egg. “All you have to do is go home and pretend none of this ever happened,” he’d said. “Clean yourself up, eat dinner, do whatever it is you’d normally do, and rest easy tonight. When the Nightmare comes for you, we’ll be ready.”

Adam had tried to protest against this plan. He’d pointed out its obvious flaws as confidently as any child could point out such things to an adult like Dorian. How did he know the Nightmare would come for him? How would he stop it when it did? He’d already admitted to being outmatched by it, what made him think this time would be different? Dorian had waved off his protests as easily as waving off a fly. “Leave all that to me and my people, Adam.” And just like that, he had been escorted out. He had looked to Iris for aid, but she had only looked at him with that same expectant stare she’d given him in the kitchen. Somehow, it had seemed so much more encouraging the first time. Now it just felt like she was abandoning him too.

Despite Dorian’s promise that they would be watching him at all times, he hadn’t seen so much as a hint of them since he’d left the House of Aetos almost an hour ago. Were they invisible? Could they turn themselves into small animals and hide in plain sight? How many of them were there, and what were they actually capable of? It terrified Adam to realise he had no idea. The makers were still as mysterious and unpredictable to him as the Nightmare itself. He felt trapped between two elemental forces, like he was standing on a narrow beach with a storm swell in front of him, but a forest fire behind. The raging waves were drawing closer, trying to pull him into the deadly currents, but the fire was drawing closer too, so close he could feel its burning licks across his back. Either direction meant pain and death. But if he didn’t move, the water or the fire would make the move for him.

Adam took a running leap and cleared all four stairs in one go, landing awkwardly on the porch and stumbling. Before he could reclaim his balance, he’d smashed into the door, taking most of the impact on his left shoulder. Pain flared down his arm, but he was so full of adrenaline that it was a distant sort of pain. He fumbled for his keys, buried somewhere in the front zip pocket of his school bag, trying not to think of what might be emerging from beneath the house to follow him, furious that he’d escaped their grasp on the stairs, and determined to drag him into the darkness all the same.

He grabbed the keys, and in his rush to get them into the keyhole, dropped them. They hit the side of his foot and bounced across the porch, not far, but those few extra seconds Adam spent going after them was enough to send him into a full blown panic. The cracks returned, thicker and denser this time. Adam jammed the keys into the door, unlocked it and hurled himself inside, convinced that the Nightmare was just a step behind him - long spidery fingers inches from his shoulder - ready to spin him towards that horrible, screaming face.

He slammed the door, and spun the deadbolt into place. His breath came in short, shallow gasps. The cracks were still there, but not growing. He hit the light switch on the wall to his left and the hallway illuminated in warm incandescent light. He stood there staring at the door for a few moments, half expecting to hear something on the other side begin to bang against it, trying to break its way in. But all was silent.

A strange shift began to take place inside him. He began to slowly turn, and it was a disorienting feeling, like the world was spinning while he just stood in place. All his fear had been directed at those gaps in the stairs, and the thing he imagined coming out of them. But there had been nothing there, and now his fear was reversing directions, flowing backwards and settling itself into every dark room adjoining the hallway. If the Nightmare had not been out there, then it must be in here.

Adam stood frozen in his small hallway, the only part of the house where the light was on. Each doorway leading off it seemed to be resisting the light, keeping the room beyond in total darkness. They stood like gaping mouths, waiting to swallow Adam the second he felt foolish enough to enter. The only way to turn the lights on was to reach into those mouths and hit the switches along the inside wall.

Adam remained exactly where he was for a long time, grappling with his fear, and trying to build up what little courage he could muster. He imagined this is what it must have felt like for cavemen when they had to spend the night under the frail protection of a campfire, knowing that just outside its glowing circle were the wolves and wild cats and monsters of their imaginations, prowling in the darkness, waiting for one of them to stray too far from the light.

Eventually, Adam did get the rest of the lights on. He flicked the living room light switch by reaching his arm wildly around the edge of the doorframe and slamming his sweaty palm against the wall until he hit it and the room was bathed in the same warm light as the hallway. It was not a very big room, so it only took a quick glance to see that the Nightmare wasn’t inside. He made his way from room to room, each time frantically hitting the switch as quickly as he could, and checking to make sure everything was as it should be. Just the same old fraying furniture. The same dusty corners and countertops. The obvious neglect and impoverishment that had been slowly taking over the house in the years since his mum had left.

When every single light in the house was on, and every room had been checked and checked again, Adam finally began to calm down. It was not here after all. It had all been in his imagination. He felt drained, exhausted by the day and the relentless fear that had come with it. He didn’t feel like eating, but he forced himself to shower. In the bathroom mirror he got to properly see how bruised and swollen parts of his face were. He felt a flash of anger towards Iris that she hadn’t bothered to heal his face alongside his ribs. He was going to look terrible tomorrow, and even his dad wouldn’t fail to notice the black eyes and swollen nose. He wondered briefly how much he’d care that his son had been beaten up, then he busied himself cleaning up for bed.

He kept the light on in the bathroom when he’d finished, just as he’d kept every other light on in the house. His dad would be angry when he finally came home, but that didn’t seem like such a frightening thing anymore. He curled up in bed, convinced that he would never be able to fall asleep, but his exhaustion took him quickly and plummeted him into a deep sleep, mercifully free of dreams.

At some point in the night, the sound of the front door being opened woke him, but the familiar jiggle of his dad’s keys landing on the hallway shelf, the muffled thud as he kicked his shoes off, the low grumble of irritation as he went from room to room switching off the lights, and finally the crisp snap of a can being opened in the kitchen, all served to reassure Adam that it was definitely just his dad. He drifted off to sleep once more.

Adam woke up in the early hours of the morning with a splitting headache, and a body that felt like he’d been sleeping on a bed of jagged rocks all night. He let out an involuntary groan as he sat up. The digital clock on his bedside table said it was 6:05am.

As he sat there, his mind slowly waking up, there was a distinct moment where he felt himself on the edge of remembering everything that had happened the day before, like a great dam was about to burst and drown him in fear and confusion once more. But Adam managed to hold back the flood, keeping his mind in a semi-conscious state, knowing there was much to remember but never actually taking the step to remember it. Slowly, methodically, as if on autopilot, he got out of bed and began to get ready for the day.

Half way through breakfast, a flash of memory showed him a skeletal thin hand and a writhing body on the floor. He stared misty eyed into his bowl of cereal until his mind descended back into its catatonic state. Then he continued eating.

The next memory didn’t surface until he was putting on a fresh school shirt. He saw the faint remains of a bruise across his left side, and suddenly saw it as a giant purple and yellow bruise, felt the pain of trying to expand his lungs beneath it, and heard a voice that was both comforting and terrifying to remember. The world is not what you think it is.

It took much longer to shut himself down again this time. He stood there like he’d been turned to stone, the glazed look in his eyes would’ve been enough to scare even his father had he walked in on him. But of course, he didn’t.

It was only as Adam was putting on his shoes in the hallway that his dad’s bedroom door creaked open.

Jacob Ledger shuffled out into the hallway. His head was shaved (easier to deal with that way, he liked to say), and his beard was long and scruffy. He wore a tattered bathrobe that was older than Adam. He was approaching fifty, and he showed every single one of those years with a few extra on top. He worked as the restaurant manager at a small French bistro near the city harbour. Adam and his mum used to go there for dinner sometimes, and Adam loved the way his dad and the other staff members would treat them like they were special guests, as if they were important or famous and deserved the absolute best of everything. He could tell his mum loved it too. But Adam’s favourite part was that they got to take a little slice of it home with them. His dad would be kind and caring towards his mother, and she would be loving and tender in return. But that magic would always fade. Whether it was a few days, or a few hours, the bitterness would creep back into his dad’s voice. The harshness back into his actions. And Adam would watch his mother’s heart break over and over again, because she was the sort of person who allowed herself to hope, who would see the change in her husband and think, maybe this time will be different. Adam had stopped thinking that way long before she’d finally left. He’d learned that things never changed in the way you wanted them to.

“What happened to your face?” Jacob spoke like a man who’d been smoking a pack a day since he’d been old enough to buy his own cigarettes, but Adam had never seen him do it. If he did smoke, he hid it well.

“I’m fine dad, promise.”

Flashes of memory, fists slamming into his face, the look of cold fury on Marcus Kirk, and the cracks, growing much too large…

Jacob grunted. “Tell me who done it and I’ll get the prick expelled.” He meant it too, Adam knew that. His dad would march over to the school in his robe and refuse to leave until the principal had agreed to punish whoever had hurt his son. And word would spread that Adam’s daddy had come into the school to throw a tantrum because his son was such a loser he’d gotten himself beaten up, and he’d have a target on his back for the rest of the school year, probably the rest of high school in general. No, he would not be telling his dad who done it. Jacob was the kind of man whose only response to a problem was to lash out at it, even if all it did was make the problem worse.

“Honest dad, I’m fine, it was just an accident.”

Jacob grunted again, but didn’t push it any further. Adam thought he saw a hint of approval in his dad’s eyes, like he’d passed some sort of test, as if he was doing the right thing - the manly thing - by not letting anyone else fight his battles for him.

He saw a face drawn with a horrible silent scream, spidery hands reaching for Marcus, grabbing him, spinning him around…

“I’m running late,” he waved and slipped out the door before Jacob could say anything back. Just the thought that his dad might actually have felt proud of him made him feel sick to his stomach. He was not doing the manly thing, the brave thing. He was doing what he always did. Running away from his problems. And now he was beginning to remember… Now things were starting to come back. Wave after nauseating wave of memory, and he saw clearly what kind of person he was. He’d spent so many years hating his dad for the way he’d treated his mum, but now he realised he was just like him. Worse even. When he couldn’t run away from his problems, when they had him backed into a corner, what had he done? He’d lashed out, that’s what. More destructively than his father ever could. It seemed both the Ledger boys solved their problems by blowing them up into far bigger problems. His dad’s dissatisfaction with life had led him to drive away the one great thing in it, and now he was more miserable than ever. And Marcus may have been dangerous and cruel, but he was still just a bully. Just a person. The Nightmare on the other hand, was something else entirely.

Tears stung Adam’s eyes as the full weight of yesterday’s memories finally returned. He kept walking towards the bus stop, but was no longer sure he was going to school today. How could he, after what he’d done? Would they even let him? Would the principal be waiting at the gates, maybe with a few policemen in tow, there to arrest him for what he’d done to Marcus? Now that he thought about it, he wondered why there hadn’t been any police knocking at their door last night. Surely Marcus must have been taken to the hospital, and there were plenty of kids who’d witnessed what happened. But what would they have really seen? Adam, bleeding on the ground, and something, someone, attacking Marcus. Adam could recognise himself in the Nightmare, but only just, and only because he knew what it was and where it came from. Maybe he could just go to school. Maybe no one suspected Adam Ledger of doing anything other than getting his ass kicked.

As these thoughts ricocheted around his head, his legs marched him steadily to the bus stop, and when it pulled up a few minutes later, he got onboard. He’d find out if he was in trouble soon enough, there was no point delaying it. He stared out the window as the bus rolled through the town of Wakehurst, looking at everything and nothing, but finding that his eyes were seeking out the corners and the shadows, the alleys between houses, the gaps beneath parked cars, any place someone - something - might try to hide. He was so entranced by this that he didn’t even notice the way the other students kept their distance from him, refusing to sit directly in front or behind him, even the rowdiest were aiming their spitballs and paper wasps elsewhere.

The bus pulled up in front of the school. As Adam got off he looked down towards the end of the street. He didn’t know what he expected to see there. Crime scene tape blocking off the area? Detectives scouring the ground for clues? Anything to suggest that something terrible had happened there just yesterday. But there was nothing. The corner of the street where Marcus had beaten Adam so ruthlessly, and the Nightmare had clawed its way into the world, was bare. He had a sudden urge to go see if there was any of his dried blood on the ground, just to prove it had actually happened, but instead he hurried through the school gates, his head hanging low, feeling like a wanted man.

If Adam had any friends, he might have heard all the rumours flying around the school that morning, rumours of a lunatic on the loose, or a serial killer, or, if you asked one tenth grader by the name of Harold Ainsworth, an alien. He’d have heard that Marcus was in the hospital, or in the insane asylum, or being probed and on his way to a different planet. A few people were even convinced that he was dead. But there was one rumour that was surprisingly consistent. Perhaps because it wasn’t a rumour at all. It was that the weird kid, the skinny loner, the eighth grader Adam Ledger, had something to do with it. Did he know the lunatic? Was he dangerous as well? Was he even human, or an undercover alien whose mission was to clear the way for the invasion of Earth? Harold’s opinion might not have been getting much attention, but the other rumours were spreading like wildfire.

There was a school wide announcement during Adam’s first lesson. The voice of their Principal, Mrs Rochdale, came through the school’s PA system in its usual drawl, not helped by the constant static that the ancient system emitted, like the old tv in Adam’s living room his dad refused to replace. Adam also had to contend with the thumping in his ears as his heart rate skyrocketed, making it almost impossible to hear what was being said. “Attention - all students - due to an incident that took place yesterday evening - all after school clubs are temporarily postponed - detentions will now take place over the lunch hour - Please head directly to your bus stop or the designated pick up zone immediately after the final bell.” Adam waited with bated breath to hear his name called out, to be summoned to the principal’s office and be accused of - what exactly? But there was no more to the announcement. He got a few strange looks from some of his classmates, but that was hardly new.

Adam couldn’t understand it. At the very least, wouldn’t they want to question him? Ask what he saw? Had not a single student mentioned that Marcus had been beating up another student when he was attacked? Adam thought it might be possible. Perhaps none of the witnesses had wanted to get Marcus in any trouble. Maybe only the students knew he’d been involved. But if that were true, it wouldn’t be long until the teachers got wind of it. And in the meantime, he was supposed to what? Just sit here like an idiot waiting for the Nightmare to make its move? Adam was no stranger to feeling powerless, but he’d never felt quite as pathetic as this. He’d sat there doing nothing all those times his dad had belittled and insulted his mother, and when she’d finally left he’d continued to just sit there. What could a little boy do, against the whims of the people his existence depended on? Not a thing, that’s what. Yet looking back on it now, the pain of losing her is not what’s stuck with him. It was the regret that still festered. It was the maddening desire to go back and change things. To do something. Anything! Anything but sit there and watch it all unfold like it was just some poorly written movie, instead of his own life falling apart around his head, without so much as a defiant whimper from him.

Adam felt sick. Hot and cold flushes cascaded down his body. Was he holding his breath? He couldn’t tell. When the first cracks appeared he knew if he didn’t do something he would lose control again. That he would bring something else into the world, and this time Cora wasn’t here to save him.

Cora!

The cracks retreated. His breathing returned. The sickness in the pit of his stomach lost its edge.

He’d made a decision. He wasn’t just going to sit here like a worm on a hook waiting for the Nightmare to come for him. And he wasn’t going to be a pawn in Dorian’s game.

He would not look back on this day and feel nothing but regret. Not again.

But first, he needed to find Cora.