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CHAPTER TWO D'ARGATAN
The Henderson house is quiet. Too quiet for Abby's comfort. Abby has watched enough kids to know that when the house is silent like this, they're up to no good. This is the kind of silence that causes the hairs on the back of your neck to stick up and chills to run up and down your spine, the kind of silence where you know that everything is about to go wrong but there's nothing you can do to stop it. She knows Dustin Henderson, she's been babysitting him for years now, and she knows that the kid can easily wrap himself up in a sticky web of trouble. She isn't entirely sure why she's still being hired to take care of a thirteen-year-old boy, but she can use the money, so she doesn't complain.
And then she sees Dustin.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit!"
He's dressed in old hockey gear and old floral print oven gloves and armed with an old hockey stick. There's a football helmet over his head that hides his face, but she can tell that something has clearly scared him. There's a trail of lunch meat on the carpeted floor that Dustin seems to be following. His runs are desperate jumps, hindered by the old hockey shin guards secured around his legs.
Dustin's wild, panicked eyes land on Abby. "Abby, run!"
"What?"
"No time to explain━━just run if you wanna live!"
"Okay, fun, I'll play."
She's quick to follow Dustin out of the house and into the front yard. Leaves and twigs snap under their feet as they run to the old, faded, and chipped green-painted potting shed in the front yard. Dustin closes the old wooden door behind them with a loud bang and bends over with his hands on his knees as he catches his breath. She glances around the small dark shed as her eyes adjust to the dimness, the shed itself is empty, save for the leaves and twigs that had been blown in by the wind and coat the floor, there are a few gaps in the wooden walls, perfect to spy out of without being seen by the outside, which Dusting is quick to peer through.
Abby fixes him with a quizzical stare. "So ... are you going to tell me exactly what exactly we're running from and why you're dressed like an orange wannabe Pillsbury boy?"
"Shh," Dustin hisses. Abby furrows her brows before peering through one of the gaps in the wood. She could just barely make out the front porch and wide-open front door. The shed is filled with the same tense hair-raising silence before Dusting starts to whisper, "Come on. Come on, I know you're hungry."
As if on cue, something the size of a dog scurried out of the house. It moved on all fours, and it seemed to be eating the meat left in the trail. It lets out a small growl that sends a shiver down Abby's spine as it travels closer and closer to the shed. Abby clamps a hand over her mouth as the creature draws nearer and its mouth opens up like a flower, but this isn't a beautiful flower with a fragrant scent found in a sun-lit meadow. No, this is a rancid flower, this is a deadly, poisonous flower, lined with rows upon rows of sharp teeth, a flower one would find in the depths of a dark jungle. The creature is slimy, the sun glints off of its shiny, sticky skin as it draws nearer and nearer to the wide-open basement doors just across from the shed, its tail wags almost happily.
