March 2010 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

There was a crack in the sky.

But no one noticed. They were in too much of a hurry to find shelter from the sudden afternoon storm. They rushed to their houses, to their cars, and ducked beneath their umbrellas to shield themselves from the rain falling in large heavy drops. Thunder hissed and crackled with the promise of worse to come as lightning tore jagged paths through the night. The last flash had left something behind – a tiny hairline fissure – at the very top of the sky. As the sun, moon, and clouds revolved around the earth, shifting their position throughout the day, the crack remained – at all times and no matter where on the Earth you stood to look at it.

There was a crack in the sky.

And it was growing…

****

Maddie Grey had hoped to be out with her friends on Friday night, window shopping at the Gallery (a local shopping mall), people watching, and stuffing her face with nuggets from Chick Fil-A. But the storm dictated otherwise. It was no ordinary storm, either. At school, ten minutes before the final bell, the sky gave way. There were none of the usual warning signs – no overcast, no light drizzle, no thunder. One second it was clear blue skies, and the next huge raindrops the size of water balloons splattered all over the city. Maddie had tried to convince her friends that they could still go out, that it couldn’t possibly rain that hard for too long. She reminded them that the Gallery was an underground mall…

“Sorry, Maddie,” Jason said, “My mom just called and told me to come right home after school.”

Jason’s mom was the superstitious type, and no doubt she thought the storm was some kind of omen. No one could’ve guessed that she’d be right.

With her Friday night plans dashed against the rocks, Maddie resigned herself to a movie marathon and microwave popcorn buffet. Three hours in, her mind wandering and her eyes glazing over, she decided to mute the sound and make up her own dialogue.

It was a black and white movie, with one old guy was saying something to another old guy, both looking pretty upset. Maddie decided that they must be complaining about the storm, too.

“Is it ever gonna stop raining, Jim-bob?”, she said aloud in her best old man voice.

“Doesn’t look like it, Sam.” A slightly gruffer voice.

“And if that isn’t bad enough, Jim old boy, now we’re out of popcorn!”

Maddie’s fingers scoured the bottom of the bag and found only kernels. Sam was right. She rolled off of the couch and headed into the kitchen to make another bag. The clock on the microwave read 11:56 PM. Maddie was surprised that her mom hadn’t come down yet. She had probably nodded off reading or watching something on Style channel. But if Maddie knew anything for sure, it was that her mother was never fully asleep. So she decided to milk it for as long as she could. A small concession for a spoiled Friday night.

Ding.

She pulled the popcorn from the microwave, careful to hold the bag by the corners so that she didn’t burn myself.

Halfway back to the couch, the conversation between “Jim-bob” and “Sam” had gone south in a hurry, and Jim-bob pulled out a really big gun and shot Sam clear off the screen.

“Blast it, Sam!”, Maddie said in her Jim-bob voice, “You should’ve never taken the money!”

Jim-bob tossed his gun into a nearby flower pot and took off running. There must’ve been some kind of set-up, because the cops were already closing on his location.

“We’ve gotta get outta here…”, Jim-bob said, facing the audience with his chest and shoulders heaving, face drenched with sweat.

“Yeah, we’d better hurry.”, Maddie said.

Then she froze.

“We?”, she thought, realizing that Jim-bob had just spoken in his own voice. That was impossible, she knew, because the sound was muted, and television characters didn’t talk to people in the real world. Yet, as sure as Maddie had two feet on the ground, Jim-bob was staring directly at her through the television screen.

“By the way Maddie,” he said, leaving no doubt as to who he was speaking to, “Have you ever heard of the zero hour?”

Before Maddie could even attempt to make sense of the question, or the fact that a fictional character was talking to her, her front door exploded from its hinges. Or more like the whole front wall of the house collapsed. She barely saw the three dark things as they entered the house and fanned out across the living room. Within seconds they converged on her with blades, claws, and sharp teeth.

Orville Redenbacher saved Maddie’s life. As the bag of popcorn hit the ground and spilled all over the floor, she snapped out of her daze and took off running. She looked back once, hoping to get an idea of what was chasing her but the creatures were always hidden by shadow, even as they passed under the 100-watt bulbs in the kitchen. Looking at them was like trying to recover an old memory – fuzzy and not fully formed. Maddie caught a glimpse of something shiny, maybe metal, but it was quickly absorbed back into an inky darkness. As best she could tell, one of the creatures was tall and lean, one fast and spider-like, and one short and fat. The last one seemed to roll more than run.

Then there was the Voice, like a knife scraping against stone, coming from every direction at once – from the walls, up through the floors, a whisper inside Maddie’s mind. It gave the creatures direction, focused their wild and destructive energy into a single objective.

“Find her.” it said, “And kill her.”

No matter where she went, how much distance she put between herself and the creatures, the Voice stayed with her. It stalked her from room to room, hall to hall, flushing her out whenever she tried to hide. Even when it wasn’t speaking there was an underlying snarl reverberating throughout the house, the breathing of some great beast. No place was safe.

At the top of the stairs to the second floor, Maddie stopped to consider her next move. She pressed her back against the wall and peered around the corner, towards her mom’s bedroom at the end of the hall. She was breathing so hard that it felt like someone was reaching inside her chest and squeezing her heart. Every breath burned her throat. But she couldn’t stay in one place for long. One of the monsters was very close. She could hear it. She could smell it. Some weird combination of gasoline and white chocolate. Downstairs there was a glint in the darkness, followed by movement – something massive thrashing about in a small space.

The fat one.

Further away she heard what sounded like a heavy metal door opening and slamming shut on rusty hinges, followed by wood splintering and brick crumbling. The creatures were destroying the living room – or whatever was left of it after their grand entrance. At this point Maddie knew it was only a matter of time before they ate their way to her location or brought the whole house down on top of her. She knew she’d be just as dead either way.

A loud crack drew her attention towards something large flying up the stairs. She barely had time to take cover behind the wall as the thing sailed past her face. With a loud thunk, a broken table leg had become lodged halfway into the adjacent wall. Maddie let out a deep breath. But before the relief could set in, a loose floorboard whined beneath her feet.

She had crept through this hallway countless times for a bedtime snack or to sneak in a half hour of late night television, yet the house chose now to give her away. “Perfect,” she thought.

“Get her!” the Voice hissed with excitement. She could practically feel its breath on the back of her neck.

Turning on her heels, Maddie dashed back through the corridor. She didn’t look back. The passage opened out into the center of the house and the second floor loft. To her left was a row of supply closets lining the wall, just big enough for her to hide. On the opposite side of the loft was a set of stairs leading down to the study. She weighed her options carefully as the rumble of heavy footsteps and the screeching of something – a rusty wheel, maybe – closed in from multiple directions.

“Catch her. Kill her!” The Voice was nothing if not determined.

Maddie dashed to the row of closets, opening and closing each one as hard as she could. As she reached the last one, she noticed for the first time that it was bright red. With golden engravings carved into the wood.

“When did Mom paint this door?”, she wondered.

Then she shook her head. There was no time to think about it. She tried to turn the golden knob, tried to put her full weight into pulling the door open, but neither would budge. A shifting black mass appeared at the edge of her vision.

She hurdled the loft railing and dropped to the floor below. Landed. Rolled. Returned to her feet and sprinted through an open door on the other side of the study. She stopped just long enough to catch her breath. Above she could already hear boxes tumbling, glasses shattering, and linens being shredded as the monsters gutted the supply closets. “Good,” she thought, “They fell for my little trick.”

The creatures shrieked and hissed with rage. But the Voice was silent.

Whether it was pure instinct or just good luck, Maddie’s on the spot tactics had allowed her to avoid the monsters so far. And truly, there was only one word to describe her little jump from the loft.

Ninja.

But there was hardly time to celebrate; a loud crash at the end of the hall disrupted her thoughts. The lights flickered and popped, and the east side of the house went pitch-black. It sounded like entire third floor had collapsed. Maddie didn’t stick around long enough to find out. She fled in the opposite direction, almost falling as she turned the corner.

Then she ran into something dark. Towering. A sudden forward motion, and something sharp buried itself in the flesh of her abdomen. The pain came later – spikes of cold that pierced the bottoms of her feet, ran up through her bones and burst between her temples. In spite of herself, Maddie pushed against the darkness, feeling the shifting of metal plates, gears, and chains beneath hardened sinew. The weapon withdrew – warm and slick with her blood.

She lifted up her head, trying to get a better look at her would-be killer, but even up close it just looked like shadows moving inside of shadows. It stood over her, growing at a crooked angle towards the ceiling and gradually filling the hallway.

Stumbling backwards against the wall, barely able to stand, Maddie pressed her hands against her stomach. Something soft and warm pushed back. Looking down, she almost threw up at the sight of the gaping hole in her abdomen, but then she saw something impossible. Instead of blood or gore, the wound was filled with…

“Stuffing? Why…”

She reached down inside the wound to pull out handful after handful of wooly white fluff, with no end in sight. A tickling sensation started deep inside her chest and quickly expanded into her throat. It was too dry to be vomit but whatever it was, there was a lot of it, and it was coming up in a hurry. She coughed and gasped and sputtered as it completely filled her nose and mouth. She clamped her hands over her face in a desperate attempt to keep it all inside.

“Come, pets.”, said the Voice, this time coming directly from the massive creature in front of her, “Eat, while it is still warm.”

A massive black hand, with too many fingers growing in all the wrong directions, reached towards her.

“Run,” a small voice whispered inside her head. A voice that wasn’t her own.

But Maddie couldn’t move. Her body felt heavy, muscles stiff and blood like acid in her veins. It took all of her effort to remain standing. She heard the creaking and grinding of metal joints, the deep rumbling of a heavy wheel rolling on carpet. There was an eagerness in those sounds, a hunger.

“You must run…”, said the-voice-in-her-head-that-wasn’t-hers, “Now!”

The Now! was spoken aloud, in a voice like a child’s combined with a crystal chime. It came from the far end of the hallway to her right. Maddie thought she saw something small and colorful out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned her head the hall was empty. The misshapen black hand was inches from her face now. It radiated an intense cold that bit her nose and frosted her lips. Her eyelids grew heavy and her posture started to sag.

“Don’t give up!” the crystalline voice chimed.

Maddie blinked. Then the black hand exploded and she was awash in a sea of darkness. Gone was any sense of up and down and left and right. She was only aware of her body where the needle points of metal teeth dug into her arms and the sharp edges of blades sliced into her legs.

Oh my god, she thought, as the monsters tore the flesh from her bones, They’re eating me alive.

Suddenly two points of golden light – maybe eyes – penetrated the darkness. A small hand, soft like a glove, took hold of hers and pulled with a surprising strength. The strength was contagious; it coursed through her body and knocked her attackers away with a thought. The towering one loosened its grip – just barely – enough for her to squeeze free.

They were running then, Maddie and her unknown rescuer, tightly clenching each other’s hands and wading through the infinite dark. A door – bright, red, and encrusted with gold – appeared so abruptly that Maddie wondered if it hadn’t always been there. It kept the darkness at bay, but the colors around its edges were already starting to fade. A gloved hand touched the door and it swung open from the middle, golden light issuing forth from beyond. The darkness screamed, and the crushing weight of its presence lifted enough for Maddie and her rescuer to pass through.

For just an instant – before body and mind and thought and action became one with eachother and one with the light – Maddie caught a glimpse of her rescuer: a small child-like form with what looked like two long ears shooting out from the top of its head.

“Who are you?”, she asked.

But the question, and Maddie herself, were swept away by the golden light – swept away to another world…