The Summer Sisterhood (Part two)

The Summer Sisterhood (Part Two)
fiction by Brad Zockoll

My throat grew dry with fear. There was someone out there, moving toward our house.
It wasn’t a dog slinking among the corn, ’cause dogs can’t bend the corn the way humans do. I could see the stalks moving to the side widely, and even though the person slinking up to the yard was really quiet, I could tell exactly where he was. I didn’t think he could see me because I was pinched into a small, shadowed corner, but suddenly the rustling stopped, and I could see the corn at the very edge of the yard part slowly. Very slowly.
And I saw a face peering hard in my direction.
I could hear Kimberly call, “Who’s out there? Huh? Who’s out there?”
The shadow made a move in my direction, coming out of the cornstalks.
I bolted for the door and slammed it, flipping the locks and running to shut the windows. The dark figure ran toward the house and grabbed at a window just as I slammed it down and flipped the upper lock.
As I ran to the front, breathing and praying in sheer panic, I heard the others running in the house, locking windows and doors. As I slammed down the front window and flicked on the front porch light, I saw the man’s form dive into the cornstalks. He was moving fast. I tried to keep up with his movements, but he ran deep, a few rows back. I could tell by the way the cornstalks were bending that he was circling to the back of the house again.
The girls tromped quickly to the front room. “It’s all locked, I’m sure. We got everything on the first floor,” Amanda said as she panted. “But who is it? What’s going on?”
“Stupid question,” snapped Kimberly. “If we knew, do you think we’d be running around like this?”
I whirled around. “Where’s Denise?”
“Upstairs,” said Kimberly, gulping in nervousness. “Checking the windows and stuff. The guy might be able to climb, you know?” I could hear Denise running about, slamming and clicking.
“Okay, who do you think it is?” demanded Amanda. “Why would he choose this place? What would he want with us?”
Denise came bounding down the stairs. “Upstairs is secure. Does your dad have any rifles or guns in a closet or in the cellar?”
“No,” I answered, glancing out the window. “Like I told you last week, the only rifle he has is being repaired in town.”
Denise nodded solemnly. “Then we’re defenseless, huh?”
We heard a harsh cackle outside. We all dashed to the kitchen.
“Get to the phone!” I screamed. “Amanda, flip that outside light switch! It’ll light up the field near the house!” While Amanda ran to the switch, Kim grabbed the phone and started punching 911.
Amanda moved the switch numerous times.
“Once is enough,” hissed Denise.
“It’s out! The yard light is dead!” Amanda shrieked back.
“Can’t be,” I mumbled. “Dad just replaced the bulb on Friday.”
Kimberly was holding the phone to her ear, shaking visibly. “I can’t get a dial tone! There’s no dial tone!“
“He’s cut the phone line!”
I sank to the floor.
“Wait!” yelled Amanda. “I’ve got my cell phone! It’s out on the front porch!”
Kimberly reached out and grabbed Amanda’s shoulder. “No, not by yourself! Are you nuts, go out on the front porch? We don’t know where he is!”
Amanda pushed Kimmy’s hand away. “Let go of me! That man could be the one who robbed the convenience store, or he could be the Collins’ oldest boy wanting revenge on Heather’s daddy, or maybe even that escaped convict that we saw in the newspaper.” She trembled. “Whoever he is, he wants to get at us, and I’m not going to stand here and make it easy for him. I’m going to get help.”
Kimberly spun her around. “Since when did you get all brave?”
Amanda looked at her coolly. “Aren’t we supposed to be relying on God for protection right now? So I’m relying.” She held a gaze on Kimberly. Amanda had never spoken this way before. She burst down the hallway, heading toward the front door. “Stop her!” screamed Kimberly.
Truth is, I would have stopped her myself. Christian bravery or not, I wasn’t going to let her do something stupid. I would have gotten off that linoleum floor and jumped right after her.
Except that as soon as I stood up, all the lights went out. It was pitch black.
Whoever was out there had cut all the power to the house.
Where Do We Turn? We sat huddled on the floor of the dark kitchen, with two candles giving us all the light we could find. The clouds still covered the moon, and we couldn’t see a thing outside. Denise sat with her arms wrapped around her legs, rocking slowly. Amanda kept a wary glance outside, scanning the cornfield for any movement of the stranger, even though she couldn’t see more than 20 feet into the inky black.
It was Kimberly who spoke. Her mascara had run down her face in long, black, splotchy lines, and her mouth drooped low. The candlelight gave her an eerie look. “I can’t handle it. I know, I know, you’re shocked, aren’t you? Tough, smart Kimberly is panicked out of her gourd. Well, I am,” she said with a sniffle. “I can’t see it, Mandy. I can’t see anything beyond what we’re living right now.” She squeezed her eyes hard.
Amanda was visibly shocked. “But you’re a Chr — “
“Oh, yeah, I know I got ‘saved’ and ‘baptized’ and all those little wonderful words,” she said, wiping her nose with the back of her sleeve. “But the truth is, if whoever-he-is out there would kill me, I’d have no idea where I’d go.” She nodded her head toward the window and gave a hollow laugh. “I guess when you stare eternity in the face, you see your true colors, huh?”
Denise shrugged. “So what are we gonna do now?”
I bit my lip.
There was a hair-raising cackle outside the window. Amanda took the candle over to the glass.
“Mandy, that’s not going to do much good if you’re trying to look outside,” I protested.
“I wanna see,” she argued, and pushed the candle up to the window. On the other side of the glass, a bony hand rose and pressed against the glass and rubbed across the pane, making a squeaking noise. Amanda screamed and dropped the candle, letting it clatter and blow out. She darted through the dark house, sobbing and falling. Denise leaped up to get her. Kimberly watched as I lit the candle. As the match flared up, I could see her shaking.
“I don’t want to die,” she said, her throat tight.
Denise pulled Amanda back into the room and sat down quietly with her arm around the shivering girl. “Oh, shut up, Kimmy. You’re not going to die.”
Kimberly looked viciously across the candle flame. “Who are you? Some kind of psychic? You think you know what’s going on in his brain out there?”
Denise shrugged and looked at the floor, thinking. She lifted her gaze to meet my eyes. “What do we do next, Heather? It’s your house, and you’ve always been the leader of the group. What do we do?”
My mind was numb. All I could think of was the word “siege.” The man had our house completely shut off from any help.
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, shouldn’t we pray or something?”
“What for? God knows the fix we’re in.”
“Yeah,” Denise nodded, “but isn’t it at times like this that He wants us to pray?”
I threw up my hands. “How am I supposed to know? You act like I’m supposed to have all the answers.”
“Of course you don’t have all the answers,” retorted Denise, “but doesn’t He have them?”
If it weren’t so dark, the whole Sisterhood could have seen my beet-red face. I mumbled something about wanting to look out the window and crawled across the floor. That’s when we heard the rumbling sound.
“What is that?” Kimberly said as she started to shake.
I swallowed the fear that was starting to freeze my throat shut. “Uh,“ I stammered, “th — that’s the cellar door. He’s yanking on the cellar door.” My legs were weak. “It’s got a lock, but it’s old. If he yanks hard enough or long enough, he could break that lock away from the bolt.”
We heard continuous yanking and pounding.
Amanda crawled to the window just above the cellar door. “He’s got both hands on the lock, pulling as hard as he can.”
“You know, I’ve had about enough,” Kimberly whispered, as she scooted over to the bottom kitchen drawer. “I want to see this clown. I remember your mom putting this in the drawer after we went on that hike down by the creek last month.” She lifted a flashlight from the drawer and held it aloft. “Now,” she said, “let’s get a positive look at the intruder. I wanna see who’s trying to get at us.”
Denise shrugged again. “I don’t see what good it will do.”
Kimberly turned from the window and stared at Denise. “Because, Brainless, if — when — we get out of this mess, I want to be able to make a positive I.D. on the criminal out there. You don’t want him to get away, do you?”
Denise looked away. It puzzled all of us.
Amanda squealed. “Over here! Hurry! Let’s get a look. Maybe the light will scare him off.” Kimberly slid over and pointed the flashlight on the head of the man below. She clicked on the light, and the wide beam of the flashlight illuminated the intruder. Startled by the sudden light, he looked up, and we all got a clear look at him.
It was Kent Albert, one of our high school classmates. The guy we tried to hit with water balloons.
Kimberly was beside herself, half with relief and half with rage. She almost exploded. “KENT! KENT ALBERT! I could hurt you right now.” I saw Kimmy shaking and crying and laughing all at the same time. I could feel the relief sweep over all of us. Even so, Amanda was livid.
“This is supposed to be his idea of FUN? Who does he think he is, anyway?” She glared at Kent’s grinning face. “Just who gave him the right to come on this property and pull these kind of stunts?”
The Truth Comes Out“I did.”
We heard the voice, but it took us a second to realize that it came from Denise. She stood behind us, hands in pockets, quiet as usual. I thought she would be snickering, but she wasn’t. Her face was grave.
“I arranged to have Kent come over and cut the lights and stuff.”
Kimberly would have tackled her if it weren’t for the fact that Denise was about three inches taller than her. She threw down the flashlight. I saw the veins pop out on Kimberly’s neck as she screamed in Denise’s face. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you? You wanted to freak us out, didn’t you? Well, congratulations. You got your wish!”
Amanda shook her head and gave Denise a withering look. I’ll admit I was upset, and I was about to turn away, but there was a look in Denise’s eyes that caught my attention. I realized that she had a definite reason for doing this, because she had no gloating or mocking look on her face. She seemed totally serious.
Denise calmly said, “I wanted to see what you guys were like under . . . well . . . different conditions.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean by that?”
She continued. “Look, you know that even though we’ve been together for years, it wasn’t until three months ago that I first came to church and became interested in being a Christian. I didn’t want to make a stupid jump into it, blindly, you know.”
She wiped her nose, even though she wasn’t crying. “I knew you three had been Christians for years, so I watched you closely. Even when I made my decision to give my life completely over to Jesus, I wanted to know how a person would grow in the Lord. I wanted to see what you had, deep down. I always wondered if you ‘veteran’ Christians were on autopilot.”
Amanda crossed her arms. I could tell she was still angry, but she was also interested in hearing more. “When you say ‘autopilot,’ what are you getting at?”
Denise shrugged. “You know, the kind of Christian who lives on the social part of church — the parties, lock-ins, music concerts, holiday events — that sort of thing. Look, anybody can act great under those circumstances. It’s sorta like being in a cocoon. So, I got to thinking, What would it be like if the three of you were out of your comfort zone? How would you react?
“So when you told us about the Sisterhood weekend, Heather, I arranged with Kent to put us in a ‘life and death’ situation, ’cause I wanted to see how you all would act.”
“You’re sick,” Kimberly said.
“Maybe so, but I wanted to see more than how you guys act. I wanted to see how you would react. And tonight, I think I saw your true colors.”
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. “Yeah, great. I’m one of the prayer leaders in the youth group, and when it came down to it, I couldn’t even think straight. I didn’t even try to pray or call us together to ask God for help.”
“You?” snorted Kimberly. “What about me? I’m one of the youth group ‘elected’ leaders, and when it came down to it, I couldn’t even be sure about my salvation.” She sniffled.
Denise nodded. “But I did learn a lot about Amanda. Scared as she was, she tried to do what needed to be done. I saw her really trying to rely on the Lord.” Denise lowered her head. “Sorry if I scared you all too bad, but I’m not sorry I did this. I learned a lot.”
In the faint light of the two candles and fallen flashlight, we stood looking at each other silently. Amanda walked slowly to the window and gazed out. There was a pulling on the back door, firm and consistent.
Finally she said, “Kent’s at it again. Trying to scare us.” Denise walked over to say something to Amanda, but when she looked out the window, I heard a gurgled cry escape her lips.
I hurried over to the window. The moon came from behind the clouds and we could see Kent lying facedown on the lawn.
“Real funny, Denise,” I said. “Show’s over. Tell Kent to get up.”
When she turned to me, I knew something was wrong. Candlelight showed that her face was paler than I’d ever seen. “Kent’s hurt, and I don’t know who’s pulling on the door.”
“Shut up, Denise. It’s not funny.”
“You gotta believe me,” she said, trembling for the first time that night. “Kent swore he would be the only one out here. The other guys are at a basketball game in town. Nobody else was with Kent.”
The rattling continued. In the moonlight we could see through the window of the back door. It was the shadow of a man much older than our friends.

What will happen next to the Summer Sisterhood.
Read the conclusion tomorrow!!!