Carol closed the door and made Jim find a means to block any attempt for the aliens to access the rest of the house through the broken windows.

His solution was simplicity itself; he retrieved a hammer and nails from the kitchen and nailed the door shut.

The hammering should have drawn Turner from the confines of his room, but the door remained shut while Carol watched and waited for a reaction from the man. She placed her head against the door and listened for sounds from within, yet only the dull reverberations of Jim’s hammering across the hall echoed in the wood.

She moved away from the door; her brow furrowed as she considered the problem. It was possible Turner, like the man in the bedroom, was dead and they were in the house alone, bereft of all support that should have accompanied the play.

Panic threatened to claim Carol, but she withstood the desire to run and tried to think of other less drastic reasons for Turner to ignore the plight of the actors. The man said he was going to spring surprises on the people in the house. Well, actual aliens were a hell of a surprise. There was no way Turner could have faked the deaths of Ian, John, and Guy in so convincing a fashion, and their deaths were more than a surprise.

And the dead man in the bedroom. He was not a rubber dummy placed there to elicit a reaction.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

There was too much honest evidence to this play for it to be anything other than real.

What if Turner was a victim of the same mental scrambling that crippled the rest of the actors? The man could be totally unaware of the steps he needed to take to rush the survivors to safety.

Carol realized the children were looking at her, waiting for a reaction, expecting a solution to the problems that faced them.

Oddly, she noticed that none of the other actors looked at the door to the control room. It was as if the door did not exist in their minds. It was the smallest of observations, but Carol drew a sudden understanding from knowledge that seemed true on a basic level and gave her the hint of a plan of action.

“I want all of you to go downstairs and stay in the living room,” she ordered in a tone of voice that brooked no challenge.

Jim reached for the shotgun with a look of resignation, but Carol moved the gun from his grasp and held tight to the weapon. Now was not the time to let the man keep the gun and possibly kill an innocent person. Carol could envision the man firing the gun at an opening door and killing the only person able to get them out of this mess.

“Go,” she said while nodding her head towards the stairs. “I will be down after checking something. If I fire the gun, do not come up here.” The warning drew worried glances from the children, but they dutifully descended the stairs while casting glances over their shoulders.

The door seemed solid enough, too thick for her to break down with weak shoulders and muscles. Carol looked at the gun and considered using force by placing the muzzle of the gun against the door and pulling the trigger. That was the type of answer she expected from a man, all force and no logic.

She stepped to the door and knocked.