The rent for Craftwood Plaza was seventy dollars a month and for that alone, Hester was tempted to move in on the spot. However, she had to see the building first. Her mother came with her and commented on how Hester was wearing horizontal orange stripes with vertical black striped tights that day, as if Hester hadn’t worn clashing stripes every day her entire life.
“If I’m comfortable, it shouldn’t matter,” Hester said when they entered the red-carpeted apartment lobby. “And look, see that woman there? You see her?”
“Yes, on the sofa? It’s rude to point –”
“Look. She’s wearing 3D glasses. And for what? Because she can. We’re all adults here.”
Hester waved cheerfully to the doorman at the high desk. He wore a red vest and bowtie. He was also her age with light-brown skin, a wide nose, curly black hair, and large, almost bulbous brown eyes – quite similar to Hester’s own. He had an awkward smile.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi!” Hester said. She hopped over to him. Her wild, dirty blonde bounced atop her shoulders. “Hi, I’m Hester Lorne? I’m here to about apartment 22? Is Mr Berry here?”
“Mr Berry’s my boss. He’s away but he passed on the message. I’m Truro.”
“Trur…oh… Like Truro the place?”
He nodded slowly, lips thinned. “Yup. I usually get ahead of that question… Been a weird day. I’ll, uh, show you up.”
On the inside, Craftwood Plaza was old. It had clean, varnished dark wooden floors, bannisters, railings, doorframes, and ceilings – black wall-phones with circular dials which still worked, stairs that creaked, and it had its own Wi-Fi, which fell more in-line with its modern, brick and glass exterior. Shaded lamps lined the paneled walls partnered by a variety of small, thrift store-style paintings of meadows and golden retrievers. The elevators had grated gates and dials to indicate each floor.
Apartment 22 was on the second floor. It had one bedroom, one bathroom, and a large living room with a bay window. Truro the doorman showed Hester every inch of the space. Her major concerns were well-looked after: the plumbing worked fine, the water was drinkable and hot on command, and the heater was easily adjustable.
“You don’t shut the heat off at night, do you?” Hester’s mother asked.
“No, no, nothing like that,” said Truro.
“Oh! It’s just so cheap, I thought…”
“Well, it’s cheap because we have some pest problems,” Truro said carefully.
“Oh, Hester, I don’t like that.”
“Mom, my last dorm had a mouse who camped out in the shower. Is it, like, serious?”
“We’ve been able to handle…almost all of it so far,” said Truro.
When Hester’s mother left for the bathroom, Hester asked, “Anything else I should know? Legally or other?”
“Pets aren’t recommended.”
“Is that a polite way of saying ‘not allowed’?”
“No, they’re allowed. Just not recommended. They don’t get along with the pests. And the man who lives two doors down from here is allergic to basically anything with fur. Do you have any pets?”
Hester shook her head. “No,” she said.
When Hester’s mother returned from the bathroom, that bathroom was officially Hester’s… as long as she paid the seventy per month.
Hester fell in love with Craftwood Plaza immediately. It was quiet, close to her new university, and nicely tucked away from the street by neatly planted trees. But she didn’t know anyone. So when she was feeling down, she sat in the lobby to do her homework and bother Truro.
“Do you mind?” she asked him, kicking her feet up on a red, pleather sofa. “Am I distracting you or what?”
“Nah, nobody new really comes in here.”
“Do you know everyone in the building?”
“Oh yeah,” said Truro. “Kinda have to.”
“Good. If I see anyone I don’t know, I’m gonna expect you to tell me everything about them.”
“How many people in the building have you met so far?”
Hester grinned out at him from behind her laptop. “None,” she said.
Truro’s lips thinned again. “Awesome.”
But this ended up being a good deal for both of them. Hester and Truro became fairly close over the span of a few days simply by discussing the people Hester stumbled upon in the building.
While heading out for a morning class, Hester crossed paths with the woman in the 3D glasses again. The woman was in her late thirties with striking red hair and was crawling along the wall with her cheek pressed against it.
“Morning!” Hester offered. “What’re you…doing over there?”
The woman stopped and stared at her. “I am looking for the pests,” she said.
Hester slapped her own forehead. “Oh yeah. Duh,” she said. Then, when she turned away, her brow furrowed and she mouthed, What?
“That’s Holly Hollander,” said Truro over lunch.
Hester was making herself a blueberry bagel in the plaza’s shared kitchen next to the lobby. “She’s a little weird but everyone here is. Her husband’s pretty nice. And she kinda has a right to be worried about the walls. I’m pretty sure something in the vents got to Chester. He lives two doors down from you. He’s already pretty paranoid and one day, he just walked out of his apartment a different man.”
“Something in the vents? What was it?”
“I dunno. It was, like, four years ago. But I remember it banging around in there.”
“Damn,” Hester breathed. She glanced up at the ceiling nervously. Then, her bagel popped up with a ding and she forgot everything Truro had said to her.
Hester met Chester Tolly in the middle of the week, two days after seeing Mrs Hollander. She was trying to unlock her door with an armful of groceries. Truro stood behind her with more groceries as a way to conquer his boredom.
“You should invest in, like, one of those rolling shopping bags,” he suggested.
“For old ladies? Are you serious right now?” Hester asked through her teeth, trying to turn the key and doorknob with one hand.
“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
“Couldn’t…fit it all in there…anyway –”
She was caught off guard by the rattling and clicking of someone else trying their own door handle. She and Truro looked two doors down from them to see a man in his late fifties or early sixties with large, rimless glasses, hair the colour of dying straw, and a nose that resembled a parrot’s beak if the parrot had been punched in the face and its beak had swollen.
“Hey, Chester,” said Truro.
The man looked up with startled green eyes. Truro gave his awkward smile and wave.
“Hey. Have you met Hester yet? Hester, Chester. Hester?”
Hester was trying her lock again. Truro nudged her and she abruptly grinned up at the man.
“Hallooo!” she said.
The man blinked. His head jerked in a sort of half-nod. Then, he leaned back, turned away, and sneezed loudly three times into the arm of his windbreaker before he slipped away into his room. Truro exhaled.
“He’s from England. Nice guy…. I think.”
“You think?”
“Well, he’s pretty quiet. Makes Lester look like a mosh pit regular. And he has the worst hay fever I’ve ever seen in a man.”
“It’s September.”
“I know.”
Hester sucked air in through her teeth. “Yikes. And who’s Lester?”
“Oh, Lester Luthor. He lives at the end there, behind us. Next to the window.”
“Oh. I haven’t talked to him yet.”
“Yeah, you’d know if you did. He’s… he’s a little like you, I guess. Writes a lot, got a lotta books.”
“Oh yeah? That’s cool. Has he done any library work?” That was what Hester had been working on at school.
“To be honest, I dunno. I’ve never really had the desire to ask him. Come on, lemme try that.” And he took over the door handle.
Lester Luthor and Hester crossed paths the day after she saw Mr Tolly. It turned out Truro had a very good reason for having no desire to ask Lester Luthor anything. She was returning from an afternoon class, standing by her door, when he passed by. He was short with naturally pinched lips, large dark eyes like Hester and Truro’s, a thin nose that turned up and round at the end, and a forehead that looked high because of the line of his dark hair. He was carrying a large grey rubber bin and stopped at the door Truro had indicated to her the day before.
“Hey!” she called out. “Hi! Need any help?”
“No, no. I’m perfectly fine,” said the man. He had a soft voice which bordered on an English accent.
“You’re Mr Luthor, right?”
“That’s right,” said the man, picking up his bin after unlocking his door. He smiled and suddenly, his small mouth was huge with large teeth and lips. Hester smiled back.
“Hi. I’m Hester, by the way. I just moved in a week ago.”
“Ahhh. So you’re the new meat.”
Hester froze. “Excuse me?”
“I only call it like I see it,” said Lester Luthor and he raised his eyebrows.
Hester looked down at her jean shorts and fishnet tights. She wrinkled her nose at him. “Uhhh, fuck you?”
“No, no, no. You’re saying it wrong,” said Lester Luthor, his back against his door. “You have to say it with gusto, like this. Ahem. Fuck you.”
And he backed away into his apartment, cackling.
“He’s writing a book about the building,” Truro explained to Hester in the lobby that evening. He was playing with an early 2000s PSP. “He’s American.”
“He’s American?”
“Yes. And he does, in fact, think he’s smarter than everyone else.”
“Okay, so he’s an idiot.”
“Well… he’s fairly smart. He reads a lot.”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side!”
“I am! No one really likes him. Laney thinks he’s okay but she’s nine. She and her mom – the Childs – they live directly across the hall from you. They’re pretty cool. You should say ‘hi’ sometime.”
Miss Childs got to Hester first. She and her daughter Laney knocked on her door with a pack of store-bought cupcakes. Miss Childs was a forty-year-old woman with black hair that clung to her long face, dark blue doleful and bulbous eyes (Hester wondered if Craftwood Plaza had an unwritten rule for the eye-size in its tenants), and large front teeth. Her daughter Laney had the same teeth and dark but reddish hair.
“Hello, are you Hester Lorne?” asked Miss Childs in an airy voice. “I’m sorry I didn’t say hello earlier. We wanted to do something special for you. Not many tenants stay long enough for us to welcome them…”
“Damn, not even a week?” Hester asked, taking the cupcakes. They were vanilla with rainbow sprinkles.
“No, no. I don’t think they really…got along with us,” Ainsley laughed uncomfortably. “I think they thought we were all crazy.”
“Well, they’re missing out,” said Hester with a smile. “And judgy people are boring anyway. Hear that, Laney? Judgy people are boring. Don’t give ‘em the time of day.”
Laney smiled shyly from behind her mother’s legs. Behind them, Mrs Hollander slunk across the wall.
Miss Childs worked at a gas station as a cashier so Laney was often looked after in the afternoon by Miss Childs’ sister across town. However, there were times where Hester – at the end of the day – could walk home with Miss Childs and Laney when she was able to pick Laney up. For the next week, the Childs became an extended family. Hester bought them thank-you cupcakes, went grocery shopping with then, and offered book recommendations for Laney whenever she devoured the ten books she got from the city library.
Miss Childs was also a better cook than Hester. So, on the off chance she was home and could look after Laney, she offered to cook for all three of them. They would pool their ingredients together, cook and chat about Laney’s school day in the plaza’s shared kitchen, and eat in Hester’s living room – as it was nicer and Laney liked the film posters on the walls – while listening to Hester’s Tragically Hip CDs. Hester didn’t neglect Truro but it was nice to have another friend, even if Ainsley was older.
“Question. I saw this sign,” Hester said to Ainsley, one day on her futon couch with her knees against her sternum. “…for the laundry? In the basement? Do I have to pay for it?”
Ainsley watched Laney hit two of Hester’s Star Wars action figures together on the floor. Her brow furrowed as she sipped some tea.
“No, no, honey. Don’t use those. Go to the laundromat down the street. No one goes into the basement. Theresa does. Theresa Muhoza. She’s from Rwanda. She’s so kind but my goodness, I don’t know how she does it.”
“What’s wrong with the basement?”
“All the…pests come up from down there. We have part of it blocked off.”
“Mr Tolly is scared of the basement,” said Laney, looking up. “I know because he gets really sweaty when you ask him about it. He was by the basement stairs one day and I asked him about it and he got all sweaty. But I’m not scared of it.”
Ainsley laughed. “No, no, Laney’s not scared of a lotta things. Except new people.” She leaned over to Hester and whispered, “And Aiken Drum.”
“The…the song?” Hester asked. “Damn, that’s a name I’ve not heard in a while. Seriously? I thought kids loved that song! We used to make him out of underwear as kids, it was like peak comedy for us.”
“No….no, for whatever reason, it makes her really uncomfortable. She was crying about it to her aunt the other day,” Ainsley said. “Food shouldn’t move. That’s what she said.”
“Reasonable. But has she tried making him out of underwear?”
Ainsley laughed. “Oh, I don’t…Oh! Oh, Hester, I meant to ask you! This Friday, I have a late shift. It just came up and my boss…Oh, he just plopped me in there and my sister is out and – Oh, I know this is short notice and we don’t know you too well but I was wondering, from 2 to 10, would you be willing to look after Laney? When I have the money to pay you, I will, I swear, I just –”
“Yes! Holy crap, yes! Of course! I just have homework. You want me to put her to bed?”
“Would you? Her bedtime’s at 8.”
“She can sleep here on the futon.”
“Oh, you are a godsend. I’ll give you my key in the morning. I’ll be away all day. Laney?”
Laney looked up from making Boba Fett jump on Greedo’s back.
“You wanna spend Friday evening with Hester?”
Laney’s eyes lit up. “Yes, yes yes!” she cried. “Please!”
That Friday, at the end of Hester’s second week at Craftwood Plaza, Hester picked up Laney from her elementary school. Laney was so overjoyed to see her that she thrust herself directly around Hester’s middle. All the way back, Laney chatted about the crosswords she had to do in class and how she couldn’t draw a maple leaf to save her life.
“Hey, that’s alright. I can’t either,” said Hester. “Do you have any homework?”
“Uh, yeah. I have to do a sheet of multiplication equations. I’m not supposed to count on my fingers…”
“Eh, do it anyway. I still count on my fingers. If you’re figuring it out yourself, who cares how you do it? Drawing it out works too. They’re gonna be obsessed with you showing your work anyway. What do you want for supper?”
“Pizza?”
“Done.”
While sitting on the futon and listening to some of her new vinyls, Hester tapped away at quotations for her class paper and Laney drew circles and lines on her homework sheet to plot out the equations she couldn’t count off on her fingers. When she got frustrated, she would ask Hester questions about the film posters on her walls and Hester would have to find an explanation for Back to the Future that did not involve the incest. When Laney finished her homework, Hester let Laney play with her action figures again. However, around six, when they sat together and shared some pizza from the oven, it was clear that Laney had gotten bored.
“Can’t you please play with me?” she whined.
“I really can’t, I’m so sorry. I gotta sh- heck ton to do tonight.”
Laney slumped into the futon. “I just want someone to play with,” she said.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no…” Hester paused. Then, her eyes lit up and she smiled. “Come on. Get up. Come with me. You’re gonna love this.”
She took Laney by the hand and led her into the bedroom. Even before she switched on the light, Laney saw the terrarium at the foot of the bed and gasped.
“You have an iguana?!” she shouted and rushed directly to the glass. Mr Stevens, Hester’s large green and striped iguana, looked over at her lazily from a branch. “You’re so lucky! You get a pet! I wanted a dog but Mom says we can’t afford one and we’re not supposed to have them anyway because Mr Tolly is allergic to them…”
“Well, this is not a dog. You wanna pet him?”
“Can I, can I?”
“Oh, sure. But this has to be between us. Okay? Laney, are you listening? This has to be a secret. Promise?”
Laney nodded. “Promise.”
Hester beamed and opened the terrarium. “Come here, buddy,” she said. She picked up the iguana and held him down so Laney could touch him on the back and scratch under his chin.
“He’s so soft! I didn’t think he’d be soft! What’s his name?”
“Mr Stevens,” said Hester. Laney gave her a look. “Ha! It’s complicated. It’s the name of a butler. He looks kinda like a butler, doesn’t he?”
“You could’ve named him Alfred.”
Hester laughed. “That’s true, actually! Come on, we’ll take him into the living room and you can hang out with him. He doesn’t move a lot so you have to be patient.”
For the next two hours, Laney lay on the carpeted floor of the apartment and watched the iguana, utterly enraptured. She pet him, watched him scramble around on the floor, and helped feed him a bowl of strawberries. At one point, she opted to lie still so he could crawl onto her chest, blinking with his unamused expression. Hester was also so fond of Mr Stevens and so engrossed in her homework that she was nothing short of horrified when she saw, in the small corner of her laptop, that it was past eight.
“Shiiioot,” Hester hissed. “Laney? Laney, it’s past your bedtime. You gotta take a bath and get to bed.”
“Awww,” said Laney, staring at the ceiling while Mr Stevens still lay on her chest. “I’m not tired! Honest!”
“Yeah, you’re not tired now. You will be tomorrow. I’m gonna run you a bath, alright? You can stay there for the time being. He looks pretty comfortable on you there.”
Hester hopped into her small bathroom and pushed back her black and white zig-zagging shower curtain. She sat on the edge of the yellowish tub and turned the opaque knob to the left. A loud rushing sound filled the bathroom as water poured from the tap, striking the tub floor with spattering splashes. As Hester ran her fingers beneath the rushing water, she could’ve sworn she heard something that resembled a low droning. It tickled the top of her head, as if emanating from within the ceiling. Hester never ran the tap for this long so the easy assumption was that it was the pipes groaning. Sure enough, when there were about two inches of water, the droning stopped.
Then Laney started screaming.
Hester almost fell into the tub from shock.
“Laney? LANEY?”
“HESTER! HELP ME! HELP ME!”
Hester scrambled up from the side of the tub and threw open the bathroom door. She stumbled backwards, clinging to the doorframe, and stared into her living room, completely frozen.
The ceiling was lumpy and yellowish, like curds and cream cheese. It had stretched downwards in an upside-down funnel shape towards Laney, who was still lying on the ground and screaming with Mr Stevens on her chest. And then it ate her. Laney’s screams snapped out of existence as soon as the funnel enveloped her before it retreated back to the ceiling where it rumbled like a waterbed. It flattened back into its original white plaster in the blink of an eye.
That was when Hester started screaming. She screamed in the doorway for a few seconds before tearing out of her room and down the hallway. She clawed at her face and hair, half-staggering, screaming for help, almost falling down the staircase that led into the lobby. It was empty, leading Hester to run into any open door she could find – including the bathroom – shrieking Truro’s name. When she stumbled into the shared kitchen, Chester Tolly, in a green shawl-collar cardigan, was sitting with his back to her at the end of the long wooden table. He had been eating mac and cheese and now stared at her with wide eyes.
Hester slammed her fists against the table, spluttering and sobbing at him. He leaned far back away from her as she reached out to him –
“Hello?!” An elderly Black woman with a round face, rose pink housecoat and hair bonnet rushed into the kitchen. She spoke with a smooth, songlike accent. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Hester spun on her and gasped out, “IT – ATE – THE CEILING – IT – LANEY – CREAM CHEESE – CEILING – ATE HER!”
“The ceiling…”
“Hester?!” Truro now entered the room in a black t-shirt and plaid pajama pants. “What is – Mrs Muhoza – what’s going on?”
“The Drone ate Laney Childs,” said the old woman. Truro shook his head.
“No – no, that’s not possible! The Drone only eats pets! Hester, you said you didn’t have any pets!”
“I LIED!” Hester bellowed. “FUCK! I LIED!”
“Oh land,” muttered Mr Tolly.
“What the ever-loving fuck is a Drone?! What do you know? Truro, what the fuck do you know?!” Hester launched towards him but Mrs Muhoza held her back.
“Sit down here, sit. Truro, dear, get the rest of her section down here. Where’s Ainsley?”
“She’s at work, she’s…” Truro looked back into the lobby and his eyes almost glazed over. “…right there.”
The next ten minutes or so, for Hester, were a haze of angry, confused, and distraught screaming – now also from Ainsley Childs. She had gotten off work early and her relief was transformed into horror, as she accused Hester of leaving Laney with a secret pet to be prey for The Drone, whatever that was. Hester screamed back at her for not telling her there was any such thing as a “Drone” in the building at all and then, she did the same to Truro when he came back followed by the rest of her section. Soon, the kitchen was filled by Mrs Hollander and her red-haired husband, a blonde woman and her two ghostly-looking paternal twins, a middle-aged Indian couple in floral prints, and Lester Luthor in a sweater vest. Everyone argued and chattered except for Chester Tolly, who was staring at his mac and cheese, very pale.
“You knew there weren’t pets allowed!” Ainsley blubbered. “And you brought one anyway!”
“So it’s your fault then,” said Lester from a corner, looking at Hester.
“Shut up, Lester! I wasn’t told that pets weren’t allowed! I was told they weren’t recommended!”
“Why did you tell her that?!” Ainsley yelled, spinning on Truro.
“Because we hadn’t discussed making ‘no pets’ a rule!” Truro said.
“We had five tenants in the past year lose their pets to that thing! Why the hell isn’t it a rule?”
“This has happened before?!” Hester yelled.
“Five times!” Ainsley repeated. “Five times!”
“Didn’t Truro mention the pests?” asked Mrs Hollander. Hester scoffed.
“That? That was not a pest! That was an abomi-fucking-NATION! And all of you knew!”
“So it’s Mr Williams’ fault then.”
“Shut up, Lester, it is not my fault! We never tell anyone about this crap!” Truro snapped. “We’d sound freaking batshit!”
“It is batshit!” Hester yelled. “The ceiling ATE LANEY!
“Not the ceiling. The Drone.” said Lester.
“What is –”
“We call it the Drone because of the sound it makes,” Mrs Muhoza said. “But the Drone is not the only creature that lives in the building. There’s quite a number of beings from other worlds that exist here.”
“And none of you told me!”
“How were we supposed to tell you?” Truro cried. “Like, how would that conversation go?”
“If I’d met you earlier, dear,” said Mrs Muhoza. “I’d have told you. I tell everyone.”
“So really, it’s your fault that you didn’t –”
And the entire room, minus Chester Tolly, shouted, “Shut up, Lester!”
In the brief silence, Ainsley fell her knees and sobbed into the floorboards, arms clasped over her head.
“Muh-my daughter is dead!” she wept. “My baby! My baby is duh-dead! Some-wuh-one is to blame! Someone! My baby…”
“Then you do not hear her.”
Ainsley’s crying ceased. The room stilled. Hester lifted her eyes from the palms of her hands. Every head in the room stared towards her but she hadn’t spoken. The voice was male. It was strong, deep, but familiar… In a delayed reaction, Hester looked to her right.
“Mr Tolly?” she whispered. “Mr Tohooh. Whh – what the fuhhh –”
Mr Tolly’s nose was running or bleeding. Or both. Or neither. But regardless, whatever was coming out of him was blue.
Hester spluttered. “Wuh – wh –”
Mrs Hollander shushed her. Truro leaned in.
“Chester? Chester, can you say that again?”
Mr Tolly’s head swiveled towards him. His anxious brow was forgotten, replaced by a brow of utmost, complete certainty – as if he perfectly was certain of everything in the universe. His eyes watered beneath his drooping lids and his tears had a dark, bluish tinge to them.
“Do you hear her?” he repeated slowly.
“What her, Mr Tolly?” asked Mrs Muhoza. “Do you mean…”
From the floor, Ainsley gasped and clutched Mr Tolly’s hand. “Chester, do you mean Laney? She’s still alive?”
He looked down upon her, no change to his expression.
“I hear her,” he said.
Ainsley sobbed and kissed his hand.
“Do you know where she is?” asked Truro.
“She is down,” said Mr Tolly. “You must go down.”
“But the ceiling…” Hester whispered.
“The basement,” Lester said. His eyes were shining hungrily. “The sinkhole.”
Mr Tolly nodded. Bluish tears ran down his cheeks, blue ooze from his nose. He did not blink.
“The origin of the thing you call the Drone, and the origin of me,” he said. “Down. You must follow it. That is where she is.”
“He wants us to jump into the sinkhole,” whispered Mrs Hollander to her husband.
“Which is all fine and dandy and even possible. But if we just throw ourselves into it, there’s no telling where we’ll end up. How do we find the Drone’s dimension?” Lester asked.
Hester shook her head. “Possible?”
Mr Tolly lifted his plate of mac and cheese before him.
“This,” he said. “Give this.”
He tipped the plate. Some of the mac and cheese spilled out onto the table with a splat. Then, he took his finger and wiped away the blue ooze from his nostrils. He drew a blue ring around the mac and cheese. It stained the table like blood.
“The thing you call The Drone has never eaten your kind before,” said Mr Tolly. “It tries tonight.”
Then, he collapsed face first into the rest of the mac and cheese with a squelch. Hester yelped but saw that everyone was else was still silent, waiting for more. Sure enough, Mr Tolly’s body toppled back in his chair – face smeared with cheese and ooze – and hit the floor, completely passed out.
Air flooded into the room. Truro quickly ran a cloth under the sink and passed it down to Ainsley. She pressed it to Mr Tolly’s forehead.
Lester clapped his hands together. “Well, you all heard him. Let’s quit lallygagging and get into that sinkhole, shall we? I have just the supplies to do it and –”
“Oh, do you?” Mrs Hollander said impatiently.
“Yes, I do. I happen to have been waiting for this moment for a while now. What have you been doing, Holly? Sniffing the wallpaper?”
“I will bite you,” hissed Mrs Hollander.
“She will,” said Mr Hollander.
“And you’re not going, Lester.” said Truro.
“What? Why not?”
“Because I’m on duty. And you just want material for your stupid book. So…I’m going.”
“Me too,” said Ainsley from the floor. “I have to – She’s my baby –”
“No.” Hester said in a daze. “No. Miss Childs – if…if we go down there into another…gosh, dimension, we should try and bring out Laney first. You should be there for her in case we…freaking die. I guess.”
Ainsley considered this and nodded. Truro looked down at Hester.
“Sorry, we?”
“Yeah. I’m going too. It’s my fault. And there are eldritch horrors in the basement, anyway. So.” Hester exhaled. “Fuck it.”
The basement was accessed by a set of grey concrete steps. Mrs Muhoza went down first, praying under her breath as she went. The basement itself, also concrete, was chill and musty, filled with mops and buckets. A line of washers and dryers were along the wall. All of it was illuminated by a single LED bulb which hung over a circle outlined by large, old and peeling wooden road-blockers. Hester and Truro stared down into the circle.
“How did you get these?” Hester asked.
“Yes, because that’s a question that really matters at the moment,” Lester said from behind. He had brought down his big grey rubber bin, in which there were two harnesses, ropes, and military-issued gas masks, in case the Drone’s world wasn’t safe to breathe in. He grinned, holding up the harnesses. “Ever seen Poltergeist?”
They had nothing to tie the harnesses to, so the capable adults opted to split up and hold onto them when Hester and Truro jumped into what was currently solid concrete. Unfortunately for Mr Tolly, he had come around just in time. Hester and Truro could hear Lester pushing him down the basement steps (“What’s to be so afraid of, Chester, really?” “EVERYTHING!”). and Hester deduced that based on his wild look when he finally entered the basement, Mr Tolly had no memory of his episode in the kitchen.
The adults picked up the ropes to their respective harnesses. Mr Tolly stood at the front of Hester’s and Lester stood at the front of Truro’s. Mr Tolly, whilst getting a grip on the rope, sneezed into his arm loudly. Lester started to make a comment about what would happen if he did that while Hester and Truro were in the sinkhole but Mrs Hollander kicked the back of his leg to stop him.
Hester spotted Mr Tolly wiping some blue ooze onto his sleeve and decided, if she was going to die, she may as well ask: “How, uh, long have you been doing…that?”
“I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Right. But, uh, did it start before or after you moved into Craftwood?”
“Oh heavens. After.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Truro moved the road blockers and slid on his gas mask. His voice emerged gravelly and muffled. “Okay. let’s try this. Miss Childs?”
Shaking like Mr Tolly, Ainsley approached the circle with the plate of now cold mac and cheese and a spoon. She stood at the edge of the circle and scraped the food into it. It splattered onto the concrete floor. After a few moments of waiting, Hester heard the droning sound from the bathroom, now beneath her feet.
“Oh…my gosh,” she said.
The floor cracked beneath the mac and cheese and gave way with a droning that shook the basement. They were hit with bright, swirling lights of pink, blue, and white which blasted up from the crumbling floor – now a great circular pit.
“Oh geez,” Truro said. “I didn’t think this through at all…”
“Send her up!” Ainsley called. “When you find her, send her up!”
“Yeah,” said Hester, pulling her mask on. “We’ll find her…we’d better. Holy crap.”
“Bend your knees!” Lester shouted to the adults holding the ropes.
Hester took a deep breath and kept her eyes on the light. She linked arms with Truro.
“Okay,” said Truro. “On three. One –”
And Hester dove into the pit.
If either of them was screaming, they couldn’t hear it. Everywhere was white. No air, no sound, no gravity. And then there was no light at all. There was nothing. It was black but the black was arbitrary, likely something the brain identified because nothingness was not compatible to a human being. In the nothing, Hester felt something in her legs – like someone was actively grabbing her ankles and pulling her downwards. She was pulled down faster and faster, mouth agape in a silent scream, until her feet and knees hit real, solid ground. And as quick as there was nothing, there was suddenly everything.
“Shit!” she gasped out.
She and Truro were kneeling in what looked like an eternal, living tunnel as it moved and shifted. The ground, walls, and ceiling were a whitish yellow, lumpy like the cream cheese ceiling but with bits shaped very much like curled macaroni. The low droning noise surrounded them.
“Oh, this is awful,” said Hester over the kssh-haa of her breathing mask.
“Yeah, this…this sucks.”
“Sucks? This is foul! Look at this shit!” Her stripey tights were stained with lumpy yellow.
“The good news is that we had these monsters in the plaza before that left this green mold and that came out with some Shout –”
“Don’t you dare good news me! I’m still mad at you! Not telling anyone about this is crazy!”
“Can we do this after we find Laney?”
“And how are we supposed to get out of here once we do that?”
“I don’t know! Tug the rope or something?”
“But we didn’t tell them about –” Hester reached up to grasp the rope and her stomach dropped. It wasn’t there. “Oh no – oh no – Truro, there’s no rope.”
“What do you mean there’s no rope?”
“I mean there’s no rope! We have harnesses and no rope! They’re gone, Truro!”
Truro waved his hand over his head and stamped his foot. “Shit!”
“If we get out of here, can I kill Lester Luthor? Before I kill you, I mean,” Hester said because sarcasm was the only thing preventing her from breaking down into hysterical laughter.
“Hello? Mom? Hello?!”
Hester and Truro’s heads snapped from left to right at the small voice.
“That’s her!” Hester said.
“Mom? Is that you? I’m down here!”
“Laney! It’s Truro and Hester!” Truro yelled. “We’re here! Where are you?”
“Over here! Here!”
Hester’s head wheeled around. She spotted – down the tunnel on the left – a part of the floor where something was protruding with a slightly pinkish shade. It looked like fingers.
Hester gasped and pulled on Truro’s sleeve.
“There!” she said, pointing.
They half-ran, half-trudged across the floor until they came upon Laney’s fingers. They slid to their knees and looked down. Laney was pale and covered in the tunnel’s substance but alive. She held Mr Stevens the iguana in her left arm and with the other, reached up through what looked like jail bars made from the tunnel’s substance.
“Hester?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s me! We’re here to bring you home! Laney, can you breathe okay?”
“Yuh-yeah but my legs – this stuff keeps rising – he’s trying to drown me! Get us out!”
Hester lifted her gas mask and was hit with cool, musty air like the basement’s. She reached down into the makeshift bars.
“Laney, you’re okay. You’re gonna be okay. Hand me Mr Stevens…Truro, can you try and pull her up… Here, baby. Good boy.”
Hester clutched Mr Stevens, still looking around unamused, while Truro reached down into the floor towards Laney. But there was then a loud groan far down the tunnel behind them. Hester and Truro turned and saw a large mound of tunnel substance starting towards them. Laney screamed and started to cry.
“He’s coming, he’s coming!”
“Him? What is that?” Truro cried.
“Aiken Drum!” Laney cried. “Help me!”
“Aiken…” Hester hesitated. “His hat was made of good cream cheese. Shit. Truro! Pull her up!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?”
Hester watched, hardly breathing, as the mound in the tunnel stopped a few meters away. It bulged and bubbled and then spread into a great wall, blocking them in on one side. In tandem with the wall’s movements, a low groaning voice erupted from within the tunnel around them.
“WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE HERE?”
Hester shook her head, silently.
“YOU ARE INTERUPPTING THE INTAKE OF MY SUSTENANCE,” said the Drone. “SUCH A THING HAS NOT HAPPENED BEFORE.”
“Y-yeah? Yeah?” Hester said, nervously but now, honestly and angrily. “Well -well, maybe that’s because you hadn’t been eating kids before!”
“Hester! Shit!” Truro hissed.
“YOUR YOUTH WAS IN MY WAY,” said the Drone. “BUT IT IS HARDLY AN ISSUE. I HAVE NEVER TRIED YOUR KIND. I NEEDED A CHANGE.”
“A change? Then eat a Big Mac! That youth is nine! She has a mother!”
“WHAT IS A MOTHER?”
Hester scoffed and spluttered. “Someone who loves her! Who takes care of her! Who brought her into this crazy world and is losing their mind that she’s missing! Because you took her away! Where did you come from then?”
“WHERE I COME FROM, WE DO NOT CONCERN OURSELVES WITH MOTHERS. WE EAT. WE EAT AND WE LIVE.”
“Yeah, and it looks like you do fuck-all of anything else!”
“Hester, stop!” Truro said.
“No! This is stupid! So what? You sit around all day and eat people and pets! That’s it?”
“THAT’S ALL THERE IS.”
“And that’s fulfilling for you, is it? You sit around all day with your friends and eat and that’s a good day for you.”
“MY KIND AND I ARE CURRENTLY SEPERATED. I AM AWAITING THEIR RETURN. NOW. PUT MY FOOD BACK.”
Truro had managed to pull Laney up from the floor. The three of them stood, Laney behind them, the bottom half of her torso and legs covered in substance. Hester glowered.
“No,” she said.
“NO?”
“Yeah! In fact, why don’t you make me?”
“MAKE YOU?”
“Uh, no!” Truro said quickly. “No, no, that’s fine!”
Hester hoisted Mr Stevens onto her shoulder. “Yeah! Make me! Come on! Is that all you got? A gross Kraft Dinner-ass looking wall?
Why don’t you come out and face me like a man?”
The Drone rippled and rumbled.
“FINE,” it said.
A man stepped out of the wall. He looked perfectly human – white skin, sixty or so with some age weight around the middle, light grey and white hair pushed back from his round face, black eyes – wearing a black suit and trench coat with a dull yellow spotted tie.
“How is this?” he asked in a quieter voice.
Hester jumped against Truro and started slapping his arm.
“Truro – Truro, he’s a person now.”
“He was always a person! He’s – he’s just an…an us person now…”
“I assumed this would be satisfactory,” said the Drone with a cutting smile. “Now put back my food.”
Hester shook herself. “I – no! You’re telling me you could turn yourself into a human this whole time? And you’re still sucking up pets and kids into the ceiling?”
“To live is to eat. To eat is to live. Your youth is, thus, my reason to live. As will you be when I tire of our conversation,” said the Drone.
“And who said eating was the only reason you had to live?” Hester snapped.
“It has been this way for us since the beginning and will continue to be so when my kind and I are reunited.”
“Oh yeah? And where’s the rest of your kind anyway?”
“As if you could understand.”
“My ability to understand is hanging on for dear life! So what, you’re just waiting for them to come back from wherever? How do you know they’re even coming back?”
The Drone’s jaw tightened. “You don’t understand as I do not understand. Why are you so insistent that I do not eat you now?”
“We’re food now too. Perfect,” said Truro.
“You can’t just eat people like that! Are you getting this? You shouldn’t be sucking people out of their dimension to eat them! Okay? It’s sick!” said Hester.
“And what of your…pets? The food resting there on your shoulder.”
“You shouldn’t eat them either! They belong to people like us! We love them! Just like we love youth like her!” Hester said, pointing to Laney.
“But what exactly makes this food –” The Drone pointed at Mr Stevens. “– different from this food?” It pointed at Laney. “You’ve come for this food. You’re protecting the youth.”
“First off, her name is Laney,” snapped Hester. “And what makes her different – geez, she’s human! And humans and animals – we’re – well – ugh, I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Between the pet and the youth, who called for help? Laney did. She felt scared,” said Truro.
“And your pets don’t feel? Do you not have a common creator? Don’t you all feel?”
“He believes in a creator?” whispered Truro.
“And you don’t?” asked the Drone.
“Of course!” said Truro.
“It’s complicated,” Hester added.
“But look,” said Truro. “We feel differently than animals! We don’t feel instinctually.”
“Laney has a mother she misses,” said Hester. “Someone she is really connected to. Mr Stevens – my pet – he doesn’t miss me in the same way.”
“Your kind is not connected. You are individual organisms,” said the Drone. “Do you see the end there?” It pointed to the end of the tunnel behind them. “When my kind is here, that tunnel lasts forever, connecting me to them.”
“And where are they?” Hester asked.
The Drone paled a little and scowled. “They stepped away from the life the Creator gave us. I stayed.”
“Did the Creator command you to stay?” Truro asked.
“Your kind went to experience other dimensions and you stayed to do nothing but eat,” Hester said. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” said the Drone.
“And now you’re not connected to them physically,” said Truro.
“No, but –”
“Well, Laney’s connected to her family! Emotionally!” Hester cried.
The Drone’s dark eyes darted to them.
“Family,” it said. “I don’t understand.”
“My kind,” Laney whispered.
Hester and Truro looked down at her. She cleared her throat and looked at the Drone. “My family is the closest kind I have. My mommy made me and we were connected once, like you and your kind were. So I want to see her again.”
The Drone’s face was pasty. The wall it had emerged from crumbled behind it. The Drone looked behind itself at the tunnel’s other end.
“They will come back,” it said.
“When?” asked Hester.
The Drone did not answer.
“See? If you could just turn into us and come into our universe any time you want, then what’s stopping you from trying all the food we try? Like, what about pizza? Or sushi? You can eat anything you want without separating people from their kind. And if the rest of your kind have gone off…” Hester shrugged. “Why can’t you?”
The Drone was still staring down the tunnel. Hester groaned and looked to Truro, who shrugged.
“Look,” she said. “We just wanna take Laney home to her connected kind and, ideally, avoid anyone else getting eaten by you in the future. Can we do that?”
The Drone looked at Laney. It swallowed.
“Your home. You eat things that don’t move,” it said.
“Yes! Yes, exactly! Why don’t you try what we try? Why not? Why don’t…” She hesitated, closed her eyes, and said, “Why don’t you come with us?”
“What?” Truro exclaimed.
“I mean, we can’t kill him!” Hester hissed “He’s – it’s – whatever! We can’t force them to stop eating if it’s what they live for, right? And if they come with us, they can try anything they want while doing what they think they’re called to do!” She turned to the Drone. “Seriously! Why don’t you visit our dimension?”
“Mom wouldn’t like that,” said Laney.
“And if the Drone comes with us, they can find out why,” said Hester. “Right?”
Laney paused but nodded. “Right.”
“Right! So why not?”
The Drone’s eyes focused and unfocused. “Why not…” they repeated. “They’ll come back. They said they would.”
“And if – when they do, you’ll be right here,” said Hester. “And you can tell them what our food tastes like.”
“We did give you that mac and cheese,” said Truro.
“You have more of that?” the Drone asked.
“Lots more,” Laney said, nodding.
The Drone thought about this for about thirty seconds or so. Truro’s head craned forwards and he shifted back and forth on his face.
“So…can we go home?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the Drone. “You are home.”
Hester’s body was pulled upwards by the shoulders. Her head had a feeling of cold scrambled eggs being dropped over her hair. There was nothing again, the light returned, and then, she was back staring at Mr Tolly, Lester Luthor, and the others in the basement. They were still holding the ropes, which had reappeared, and stared with open mouths. Ainsley dropped the plate of remaining mac and cheese to the ground where it shattered.
“MOM!” Laney cried out.
Ainsley sobbed and met Laney halfway at the edge of the circle. Despite being covered in the tunnel’s substance, Ainsley kissed every inch of Laney’s face, weeping.
“He let me go, Mom! Hester and Truro got Aiken Drum to let me go!”
“Aiken – Baby, who –”
Ainsley’s eyes fell on the Drone, who watched her unblinking. She gasped and clutched Laney protectively.
“Who is that?” she whispered.
From across the room, Lester Luthor grinned. His eyes glittered hungrily once again.
“Who is that indeed,” he said.
The Drone looked at him, blinked a few times, and slowly – almost like a child – mirrored his expression.
