“Only one way to find out.” Trevin reached around Jadine and cranked the dial as high as it would go. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“We die of heat exhaustion in the middle of a snowstorm,” Stacy interjected. “Besides, it isn’t going to work.”
“How do you know?” Trevin asked defensively.
“Because they shattered one of the doors, remember?” Stacy answered, her good arm cocked on her hip. “We won’t be able to send enough heat into the main body of the store to do any good. Maybe if we could trap them all in here or in the bathroom or something, but not out there.”
“Dammit! I forgot about the door.” Jadine rubbed at her forehead. The headache was getting worse.
“So, what are we going to do?” Trevin asked. “Just sit here and hope help reaches us before the clowns do?”
“As I said before, I’m open to suggestions,” Jadine said with a heavy sigh.
As if in answer to her comment, the lights flickered twice and then the power went out, plunging them into total darkness. There was a moment of ear-shattering silence that was quickly followed by the hum of the gas heater kicking back on.
Hope rekindled in Jadine’s chest. Maybe all the time they’d been trying to find a way to destroy the clowns, the clowns had been destroying each other. Maybe they were gone.
“Do you hear that?” Trevin whispered, his voice seeming unusually loud in the quiet.
Jadine was about to shout, “Yes! Silence!” when she heard a peculiar sound. A dragging followed by the creaking of metal, up high near the ceiling. It was a sound she recognized.
“They’re in the vent,” she whispered hoarsely, fear strangling her hope.
The sound came again. This time accompanied by a wet squish shlurp, squish shlurp that made her heart skip a beat.
“What was that?” Stacy whispered, fear raising her voice an octave.
No one answered.
The room was steeped in darkness. A killer clown could have been standing inches from Jadine’s face without her knowing it was there. Anything could be happening around her. Anything could be in the room. The deprivation of sight had her skin prickling with anticipation, her heart pounding in her chest so hard, she feared everyone could hear it.
“Trevin, where’s your phone?” Jadine asked, her voice trembling.
“I still have it,” Stacy whispered.
“Hand it to me, please.” Jadine held out her hand in the direction she remembered Stacy standing. Seconds ticked by.
“Where are you?” Stacy asked.
Jadine heaved a sigh. The sounds from the vent were getting louder and decidedly closer.
“I’m here,” Jadine hissed. This time, she felt her way along Trevin’s torso until she felt Stacy’s arm. Stacy yelped at the touch. “Good God, it’s me.”
“Sorry.”
Jadine followed the arm to the wrist, to the hand, to the phone. Carefully, she removed it from Stacy’s grip.
“You know, you could have opened the screen,” Trevin pointed out. “Then we all could have seen.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Stacy protested. “I’m scared half to death.”
Jadine pushed the button and a soft glow appeared. Quickly she swiveled around them. The light showed a few inches around her, but it was too dim to tell if any clowns in the room. Yet.
“How do you turn on your flashlight?” She asked, swiping through his apps.
“I don’t have a flashlight,” Trevin said, adjust the brightness of his screen to one hundred percent.
“What do you mean you don’t have a flashlight?” The soft glow illuminated her incredulous expression.
“I don’t have a flashlight,” Trevin repeated. “It’s an old phone, okay? My parents are cheap, and this job pays shit. This is all I’ve got.”
Jadine swung the screen towards the vent. The home screen was brighter than the locked screen, but it still wasn’t bright enough to see more than a foot in front of them.
“Damn!”
The sounds were closer now. A disturbing drip, drip had joined the chorus of sounds coming from the vent. Goosebumps rose on her arms. With hands shaking so badly she feared she’d drop the phone, Jadine swiped for the next page. There she found what she was looking for. Aiming the back of the phone towards the dripping noise, she fired up the camera app and pushed the button. The flash flared, lighting up the vent for a moment, and showing an echo of the area on the screen. Then the room and the screen went dark again.