Page 106 of Goldilocks
Sam tried to wrench his foot free, and the ghoul wrenched it back with several times the force. Sam managed an awkward hop, but his remaining foot tangled in overgrown weeds and he fell to the dirt. A garbled noise that sounded likeSamspit from the ghoul’s lipless mouth. The ghoul stood to its full height, its ugly hairless head blocking out the sun so that its face was a black and featureless shadow. Déjà vu washed over Sam. The ghoul turned and marched, dragging Sam along the ground by his heel.
He twisted, kicked, writhed, and the ghoul walked onward with huge loping steps, as if Sam wasn’t even bothering him. His golden knife was in his hand, and Sam clutched it so tight the metal handle dug painfully into his palm. As the ghoul dragged him around the corner at the front of the house, Sam lunged sideways and got the corner in his grip. His entire body stretched, and the ghoul’s garbled sam sam Sam sAm SAm SAMrose louder until he was shrieking it.
Its bony fingers slipped on Sam’s sock, and the sock along with the shoe slid right off. The stretch abruptly ended, and Sam fell onto his side, a rock jamming between his ribs. He scrambled away, prone, then on hands and knees. The ghoul’s screech crashed over him. A tsunami wave come to drag him under and never let him up for air ever again.
Weeds mixed with loose gravel beneath Sam’s arms and legs. A burst of fragrant wild jasmine hit his nose. A revving engine roared, challenging the ghoul’s high-pitched screech with a mechanical roar of its own. A pale blue blur flew through Sam’s peripheral vision and into the side of his house.
Rubble and dust kicked up into the air. Sam ducked and laid his hands over his head as rubble rained down on him. If any of it landed on him, he couldn’t feel it, his body too keyed up with adrenaline. Sam rolled onto his side to look behind him.
A pale blue, no longer shining-new, SUV pinned the ghoul to the collapsing wall of Sam’s house. Clenched fists beat on the bonnet in fury as the ghoul attempted to twist itself free. The metal creaked and bent beneath battering fists, but the ghoul couldn’t budge itself. Panting, Sam dragged his gaze from the ghoul to the driver.
For some reason Sam couldn’t even begin to understand, Fionn was there, eyes wide, face flushed. The window at his side was shattered, and he looked crazed and manic as he turned to Sam. “Did I do a good thing? I feel like I did a good thing.”
Sam didn’t have an answer for him.
The backdoor nearest Sam opened, and Roan leapt out, face contorting in wild pain, and then he fell to his knees next to Sam.
Shaking, Sam got to his knees as well. “You’re here,” Sam said, dazed.
“I feel sick,” Laurence said thinly from the back seat of the car.
“Car sick?” Fionn asked.
“Crash sick!” Laurence called back. And for some reason, they both laughed.
The ghoul roared, and a thin fist came down on the windscreen, caving it in.
“Get out!” Sam jumped to his feet, only for his leg to buckle beneath him and crash right back down to the ground. Roan caught him, saving him from planting face-first into the gravel. “Fionn!”
Sam heard the mechanical sound of someone frantically trying to open a door that wouldn’t yield. “It’s stuck!” Panic edged Fionn’s voice. He sank down, trying to avoid the fist pounding the windscreen to pieces, but any second now, the ghoul would be through that, and it would be Fionn’s head beneath that fist.
Sam gripped the arm wrapped around his side. “Roan?”
Roan released Sam. “Leave,” Roan urged. He grasped Sam’s jaw and forced him to look at his own car, mere feet away with the car door open, engine still running. “Leave,” he repeated.
“Eric’s here, and Ivan and Jasper—”
A cry of pain cut Sam off.
Roan rose to his feet, and Sam saw the pain that twisted his features as he threw himself toward the car.
He’s struggling to hold this form, Sam realised. He roughly struck his own thigh, and when he got to his feet, what felt like iron rods shot through his ankle. He gritted his teeth. His knee quaked but didn’t buckle again.
Roan grabbed the ghoul’s arm, and he wrenched it with power. The ghoul screamed as the cracking of bones filled the air. The ghoul grabbed Roan, clawing at his face. Sam tore his gaze away as he got to Fionn’s door and tried to force it open. Laurence had crawled from the back and looked at Sam struggling with the door, then turned about and sprinted to Sam’s car.
A loose fist from somebody – either Roan or the ghoul, Sam didn’t know – smashed into the car’s windscreen, and the entire thing broke apart and rained down on Fionn. All the ghoul would have to do was reach in, and Fionn would be in his grip.
“Here.” Laurence skidded against Sam, thrusting a crowbar into his hands. Sam jammed the tool between the car door and its frame, and he threw his weight into it. Be it adrenaline-fuelled strength or already damaged joints, the leverage was enough to force the door open.
Fionn scrambled out through the gap just as Roan’s growl turned to a yelp. Sam, holding the door leveraged open as Fionn pulled his legs free, watched as the ghoul hooked his fingers beneath the gills at Roan’s neck – that delicate pink flesh – and ripped. A gurgled sound tore from Roan’s throat; his grip on the ghoul loosed as it reached for the other side of his neck.
“Roan!” Sam cried.
The ghoul lunged. Trouser-fabric tore as Roan’s tail emerged, and he fell to the ground, landing on his side. The ghoul, snarling, hooked its fingers into the frame of the car and pulled itself free, crawling onto the bonnet, his limbs all folded up as if he were about to start galloping on all fours. Its eyes fixed on Roan on the ground beneath him, and it leapt on top.
Roan’s skin, which hadn’t been damaged in the slightest by the ghoul on Sam’s ship weeks ago, tore open under the ghoul’s touch now as if he had blades for hands.
“Sam?” Laurence’s voice was fearful.