Molly Prescott was having a bad day. Mrs. Gale from down the street had seen her talking to Joan at the bakery, and that story had made its way back to her parents. As Molly lay in bed, she felt angry and sick. Who did her mom and dad think they were, anyway? There was nothing all that wrong about Joan. Molly knew her parents didn’t like Joan’s daddy - she was eight, not stupid - but they didn’t have to be so mean about it.

When her mom came home from work, Molly had hidden in her room. She knew she hadn’t done anything bad, that there was no reason to be afraid of getting a lecture, but the flips and flops of her stomach told her she couldn’t deal with it right then. So Molly hid for hours, reading her books. She hadn’t come out for dinner, even when her dad sat outside her door for a long time. She would talk to them in the morning, Molly decided, and she wouldn’t cry, and the words would come out right because she would have been thinking about them all night long.

But now Molly was hungry. She’d been awake planning her argument for hours, long after her usual bedtime. At twentieth bell, it had felt like her stomach would reject even a single bite of food, but it was after midnight now and the upset feeling had gone away, replaced by a gnawing emptiness.

She made a decision. Molly slipped out of bed, putting on her sneakiest pair of socks. Her parents should have been sound asleep by this point in the night, but it couldn’t hurt to be careful. Moving to the door, she opened it just a sliver, peeking out to confirm the darkness and emptiness of the hallway. Molly crept past her parents’ room, staying close to the wall to avoid creaky floorboards. There was no light coming from under her parents’ door, and no noise. Molly was safe.

As she slipped into the kitchen, a shudder ran through Molly’s body. She wasn’t cold; if anything, the air inside the house was unusually warm, considering the fallen leaves outside. She’d had a momentary feeling of wrongness, like a spider crawling on her leg, but it passed. She shook it off and kept moving. A cursory inspection of the table revealed no food there, which was unfortunate but not surprising. It had probably been a simple meal, since they hadn’t known if Molly would come out to eat it or not. She opened the door of the stove and found fresh, unburned wood, confirming her belief.

Molly smiled, pleased to have a justification for going down to the cellar. If there had been a stew left out, or cooked meat, she would have felt obliged to have eaten that. Now she could stuff her face with the good cheese that was kept in storage and not feel bad about it.

Grinning, the young girl walked to the door to the stairs. They were one of the few families in town to have a full basement, a point of pride for Molly’s parents, who had dug it out years ago. She turned the handle and opened the door, but only made it down the first stair before she stopped.

The abnormal warmth was stronger down here. That was the opposite of what was supposed to happen in a cellar, Molly knew. What had really made her pause, though, was the foul smell that emanated from below her. Clearly, something had spoiled. She didn’t recognize the scent, but it assaulted her nose, making her rethink her plan. Maybe she could go to bed hungry, and just eat a big breakfast in the morning.

But no, Molly thought, that was silly. If there was something wrong down there, she shouldn’t just ignore it; and besides, she was so hungry. She’d hold her nose, grab some cheese and dried fruit, take a quick look around to see what had spoiled, and then go back to the kitchen to eat. She could tell her dad about the bad food later, when he wasn’t mad.

Stolen novel; please report.

Her mind made up, Molly continued down the stairs. The scent got stronger, though the heat remained stable. As she descended the last step, Molly turned and looked out into the main space of the cellar.

A small noise escaped her lips. Not a gasp, not a name, just an inarticulate squeak. Molly wasn’t frightened. She didn’t know enough to be scared yet, but the sight that greeted her was so startling that she had forgotten all about stealth.

What she had seen as she turned from the bottom of the stairs was not a dark cellar, empty but for the food. Instead, Molly found her parents, kneeling and looking down at the floor side by side, surrounded by candles. They seemed intent on drawing some pattern in the wood in front of them.

Her mother whirled around at the noise. At the sight of Molly, her face twisted into a rictus of horror and despair. She screamed.

“Patrick! Shut it down!”

Molly’s mom burst upright and barreled towards her daughter, who stood frozen in confusion. Fear had arrived, now, the natural fear of a child in a situation so far from their known world that they can’t understand what they’re looking at. Molly watched, though. She saw it happen.

Her dad twitched at her mom’s words, turning his head just slightly, but it was enough. As soon as his concentration broke, the air in the room changed; Molly’s ears popped. A section of the ground in front of him began to glow.

Molly missed the next few seconds, swept up in her mother’s arms. She was carried to a corner of the cellar, ignoring the stairs. Her mom put her down behind a crate of radishes, pushed her to the ground without resistance. The older Prescott woman was crying now.

“Stay here. I love you, baby. Stay here and don’t move.”

When Molly next looked, peering around a corner of the box, her parents were doing…something. Her father was carving the floor with a knife, moving fast. She could just barely see his hands shaking in the dim light. Her mother had joined him again, kneeling. She had taken something from her pockets and was spreading it on the ground in front of them. None of it made sense, everything had happened so fast. Molly didn’t think about what was happening, didn’t try to generate explanations; she just watched.

Within a few seconds, both of her parents slowed in their frantic work, then stopped. The heat had ramped up dramatically. Molly was sweating in her pajamas, and the smell was nearly unbearable. She could finally place it. The smell was the stench of carrion, what remained after even the birds and the dogs had eaten their fill.

“That’s it,” her dad said, so quietly she could hardly make it out. “We did what we could. I love you, Hannah. I’m sorry about this.”

Her mom hugged him, still crying. They sat like that, embracing on their knees, for a long moment. Then, without fanfare or warning, there was a thing in front of them. It stood on three thin legs, with another two waving in front of it. It was long and pale, and its skin looked hard like a shell. It was at least the size of a human, but low to the ground.

Molly’s parents didn’t see it coming. Their last moments were spent in each other’s arms, eyes closed. She knew somehow, in her young heart, what was about to happen. She wanted to turn away. She couldn’t, though; her body was frozen. Molly could only watch as the two waving limbs stopped moving, then struck simultaneously, punching through her parents’ skulls like needles through thread. There was a horrible silence as the man and woman who had raised and loved Molly for eight years slumped to the ground.

Molly’s overwhelming fear saved her in that moment. Her mind couldn’t take it anymore, the waves of powerful emotions crashing into each other. She would have yelled, anyone would have, and she hadn’t thought to stop herself. Instead, the sight of her parents’ deaths was the last straw for her overburdened brain, and she passed out, crumpled behind a box of vegetables.

* * *

When Molly woke, a faint sound was just barely reaching her ears, muffled by distance and the walls between them. It was the overlapping noise of screams from many throats, and she would never forget it.