CHAPTER 28 RILEY

28

Riley

RILEY SANCHEZ STARED DOWN at the drain in the kitchen sink.

She knew she heard it, some weird scratching noise deep in the pipe, but it only did it once.

She ran the water till the basin started to fill, even flicked the garbage disposal switch—let it grind away at nothing for a few seconds—then turned it back off and waited.

But the sound didn't come back.

A few hollow drips, then nothing.

Maybe she imagined it.

Who knows.

The internet had gone down about ten minutes ago, and the second that happened, the house got crazy quiet. Like some big monster sucked all the air out of the place through an open window. Riley had been watching Umbrella Academy , and Vanya froze midsentence. Unmoving, she was still up on the screen, but half her face was missing; the image had gone to a pixilated mess of tiny squares.

Riley unplugged the router just like her mom had shown her, counted to ten, and plugged it back in. The little light had gone from solid red to flashing yellow when she heard the scratching.

Imagined the scratching , she told herself. Duh.

Because things don't live in the pipes.

Alligators in the sewers, snakes in the toilet. Those things only happened in the movies or on the internet, not in real life.

But what if something was in there? Maybe crawled in last night and couldn't get out. Worse yet, what if it could?

She picked up her phone to text her mom, then dropped it back on the counter.

No.

She was acting stupid.

Acting like a baby.

There was nothing in the sink, and it's not like the power went out, only the internet. What could her mom do, anyway?

Riley knew exactly what her mom would do. She'd stop letting Riley stay home alone when she was working at the diner. That's what she'd do. She'd have her abuela drive in from Barton and stay with her like last year, or worse—pay Patty Norhouse to babysit again. Patty was fourteen, only four years older than Riley. It's not like she watched her. She didn't even play with her. Whenever Patty came over, she spent the whole time on the couch texting her boyfriend. She only—

Scritch, scritch, scratch.

Riley's heart thumped.

Okay, that time she heard it for sure, and it came from the drain.

Came from the drain for sure .

Riley leaned forward and looked in the sink, saw nothing but her cereal bowl from this morning filled with milky water, the handle of her spoon sticking out, and the dark maw of the drain beside it. The black rubber, still glistening from the water she'd run and slightly gummy with mac and cheese from last night's dinner. Her mom dumped everything down the disposal.

Maybe whatever's scratching is still hungry.

The second that thought popped into her head, Riley wanted it to go away.

Her mom was always telling her she had a good imagination—her teachers, too. Sometimes that was good, other times it was bad, and right now, it was decidedly bad. Whatever this was, there was a reason for it, something silly, and if she let it scare her, it would be her own fault.

Riley reached for her phone, ignored the fact that she was shaking, and switched on the flashlight.

Held it over the drain.

Played the light around the hole.

She couldn't see much.

Couldn't really see anything.

Because there's nothing to see , she told herself.

Scratch, scritch.

She fumbled the phone, nearly dropped it.

Okay, that was real, and it was loud. It was right near the top.

Whether she could see it or not, it was right there.

Without taking her eyes off the drain, Riley reached over and hit the garbage disposal switch.

Nothing happened.

Of course not, because that's how these things worked. She'd seen enough horror movies to know the garbage disposal didn't work when it was supposed to, then someone would stick their hand down the drain, and it would roar to life. Chew them up. She wasn't an idiot.

That particular realization made her feel good, made her feel strong. Real or not, she wasn't going to let this scare her. She was going to deal with it. And when her mom came home, she'd tell her how she handled it. Handled it like a grown-up, not some spooked kid.

Riley switched off the garbage disposal, then reached under the cabinet and unplugged it for good measure. Then, with her flashlight above the drain, she took her spoon from her cereal bowl and stabbed it down into the hole. Wiggled it around, beat it against the sides. When it caught on the blades, she yanked it out and shoved the handle down in there—if something was down inside, she'd either kill it or run it off, send it scurrying down the pipe to wherever all the gunk in the sink went. It could find someone else's sink to call home.

"Screw you!" she yelled, and that felt good, too.

Felt good to let it out, so she yelled again.

When she finally stopped, she was out of breath.

She dropped the spoon on the counter, leaned over the sink, and listened.

Silence.

That brought a grin.

Her mom couldn't have handled that any better. Her abuela or Patty Norhouse, either.

A minute passed with nothing.

Riley switched off the flashlight and was ready to go and tackle the internet problem when she saw it.

Something was swimming in her cereal bowl.