Brayden Knocks

“Maybe we need to knock harder.”

I shook my head.

“Come on,” Brayden said. She stood over me where I sat on the floor, slouched against the wall. “You’re the big tough boy, so knock, damnit.”

She was never going to listen. If I had learned anything in the six months my mom had been married to her father, it was that my being 11 while she was 10 and my extra weight only made me a bigger target for Brayden. But that didn’t mean I had to help her. “I won’t.”

“Pussy.”

I shook my head again, so she grabbed a couch pillow and hurled it at me. When I deflected it from my face, the pillow knocked our parents’ wedding photo from the small table onto the hardwood. I heard the small, sharp crack that meant broken glass.

Brayden laughed. “Asshole.”

“You did it.”

Brayden fixed her dirty blonde smirk on me. “That’s not how I see it. Only one of us is strong enough to have moved the couch.” She added in a childish, singsong voice. “When you shoved it, you weren’t very careful about the end table, Alex.”

“Do you really want to tell them we moved the couch?”

We both turned to what we had found. The iron ring of the trapdoor was rusted, heavy, and impossible to pull. After we’d discovered it instead of the missing remote control, we’d both tried lifting. The door was stuck. In between Brayden’s grunts from pulling, I had heard a low sound from below. The sound made my cry out and shrink down against the wall. It made Brayden try knocking.

“Our parents don’t know about it,” Brayden said.

“You’re messing with me. It’s your house. Your dad’s lived here for like 30 years, and you don’t think he knows?”

“If he knows, your mom knows.”

“She wouldn’t. You probably did.”

“What, you think this is some sort of family secret, Alex?”

“How could you not know? Brayden, you’ve lived here your whole life.”

“Yep,” she said. She stared down at me. She held her hips with her elbows sticking out, daring me to say something. I only wanted not to whimper. “You’re pathetic,” she said.

She stepped to the trap door in the hardwood. She stomped, and then she jumped on it: nothing. Angry, she gestured expectantly toward me. I shook my head. She snorted and unplugged the floor lamp next to her dad’s leather recliner, carried it to the trap door, and smashed the base against the iron ring. She struck again and again. She held the lamp aloft for another blow when we both heard the click.

The sound was brief but unmistakable. Processing it, my brain amplified the click so much it had an echo. Brayden still held the lamp.

“I think I knocked it loose,” she said.

“What?”

“That click. I knocked the door loose.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Of course it makes sense! What the hell else could it be?”

“It clicked while you were holding the lamp in the air! It couldn’t loosen when you weren’t hitting it!”

She set down the lamp and looked at me. Her face seemed soft. For the first time in our months as siblings, Brayden seemed uncertain, and I had an opening to sway her. “Brayden,” I began, but I didn’t have the next words. The mantle clock began to chime for nine; we listened to each of the tones.

She still hadn’t moved. “Brayden,” I tried again, “whatever that click was, it’s not—”

Her scream followed the knock of metal and wood on wood so closely that they seemed to happen at once. The dark paw or hand that had flung the trap door open had sunk claws into her ankle and ripped. Brayden collapsed on her shredded ligaments and screamed until the other too-long arm buried more claws in her side. Brayden’s eyes bulged wide and her ruined lungs guttered and gasped while the matted fur dragged her below, and I leaped to the trap door and I closed it. I pushed the heavy couch back over the iron ring, which couldn’t hold the thing but could maybe slow it down, and then I ran through the front door, headlong into our parents.

They stared at me quizzically as I panted. My mom knelt to look me in my eyes. “What is it, bug?”

I couldn’t make sense but I tried. “Brayden,” I said, “there was an arm that took her, she knocked and it—”

A strong hand gripped my shoulder. “Come inside, son,” my stepdad said. I shook my head frantically, but he repeated, “come inside and tell us all about it.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Don’t be silly, Alex,” my mom said, and they brought me to the door. When mom put her hand on the knob I nearly ran, but the grip on my shoulder felt firm.

Everything inside was quiet. I was still shaking, but I could see no blood, no signs of anything wrong except the picture frame facedown and the lamp in the wrong place. I looked to my mom. “Brayden’s gone,” I said, but now both my shoulders had a firm grip on them, holding me in place from behind, and Mom began to pull the couch. She turned her face to me as she finished pulling and I saw the iron ring. “Everything’s fine, bug.” She smiled.