Trollhunters by Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Kraus Page B

the entire hall. I looked over the edge of my bed for some
kind of weapon, but all I could see was kids’ stuff: half-built models, unfinished homework, and random other evidence of a guy trying to figure out what he was good at. None of it had helped
me before, and it wasn’t going to help me now.
    The first door it reached was Dad’s. Like me, Dad kept it cracked open and all I could do was hope that he was already crouched for attack. A few of the red eyes disappeared from view as
they entered his room. I heard a jangling, as if the thing were reaching into pockets filled with change, and then an unpleasant, moist noise that continued for a good minute:
Sluuuurp.
Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp. Sluuuurp.
    My shoulders shook so violently I grabbed the laptop to steady them. Yes—the laptop! The screen had gone to sleep but all I needed to do was jog the touch pad and it would fill the room
with white light. I reached for it but hesitated. Something warned me that what I might see would haunt me forever. I might end up like my dad. If I was too afraid to do it, though, wasn’t
that just as bad?
    A shadow fell over me. I know that seems strange, as the house was completely dark, but this dark had weight: I could feel it cover my body like a layer of mud. It had texture, too: scaly, cold,
slithering across my skin. And it most definitely had a smell: a brackish funk like a dead animal rotting at the bottom of a well. Though the slurping noise was still emitting from my
father’s bedroom, several of the eight eyes had squirmed their way through the crack of my bedroom door and orbited the foot of my bed like slow, radioactive bugs.
    Faces filed through my mind: Tub, Claire Fontaine, Dad. It was a good-bye, I think, because, in a way, I was doing this for them. I spun the laptop around and swiped the touch pad.
    There was no moment of adjustment; light was everywhere. My eyes, so wide and frightened, instinctively shut, and I had to blink and blink and blink before the spots swam away and I could see
beyond the foot of my bed. I saw the closet at the other end of my room, the door, the hallway outside, the living room.
    Nothing was there.
    Here is the truth. I didn’t feel relief. I didn’t feel joy. I shoved the computer off my lap and sunk my head into my hands, clawing my fingernails into my scalp. This was it, then.
My sanity was bidding me adieu. Impulsively I threw back the covers. I would get out of bed, turn on all the lights, and scour the rest of house. I had to. Maybe there would be some evidence that
absolved me from my derangement. I swung my legs around and was about to stand when my eye caught the closet.
    Like I’d told Tub, it had been my closet that had scared me the most when I was little. Still, it was awful small for the thing I had seen drifting through the house—though with all
those eyes moving around it had been impossible to accurately gauge its size.
    My heart was hammering as I put one foot down. The floorboards creaked. I winced at the noise but kept my eyes on the closet, trying to catch any motion behind the slats. Then, carefully, I put
my other foot down. Again, the floor creaked. Still no movement inside the closet. All the fears of my childhood came rushing back. I had no choice but to go up to it, fling it open, and take
whatever came next.
    I stood and craned my neck for a better look.
    The computer’s light revealed that the closet was empty.
    Then two massive furred paws shot out from under my bed and locked around my ankles, sinewy palms greased with hot sweat, jagged yellow claws cold as a river. After the paws yanked but before my
head struck the floor, I had but a single, rueful thought:
    Tub was right. Under beds, that’s where the monsters live.



Water dripped into my eye. It was acidic and stung. I rubbed at it and became aware of stiff needles of straw poking at my skin. More drops of liquid splashed down, and I sat
up, wiping at my face with an elbow. I saw that I