"Don't Look"

By December21st

Fandom: Haven

Rating: PG

Pairing: Nathan/Audrey

Warnings: Spoilers for "Sins of the Fathers"

Beta: Thanks, as usual, to my Haven cohort, Lone Pyramind, for making it all better. Any remaining errors are mine alone.

Summary: I think there's a monster outside of my door.

I think there's a monster outside of my door.

It all started yesterday afternoon. I was in our room at the bed and breakfast watching cartoons on TV. It's lucky there's a TV at all; Mom was complaining that the rooms don't have phones and her cell phone doesn't work out here. My mom and my baby brother and I are visiting my grandparents in this little town in Maine called Haven. My dad couldn't come because he had to work, so he stayed home with our dog, Buddy.

All of a sudden, my mom burst into the room and handed me my baby brother. "I need you to take care of Aiden, Kai," she told me. She was breathing hard, like she'd been running. "I'm going down to the office to call for help. I need you to lock the door behind me when I leave. And I don't want you to unlock it for any reason. Not until I tell you it's okay. Can you do that for me, baby? Promise?"

I nodded. "I promise." I wondered why she didn't just lock it herself, but then I remembered the secret my grandpa told us the night before. There's this superpower that runs in our family. When we lock a door, nothing can get through it. No matter how hard they try. It doesn't always work, though. And grandpa is my dad's dad, so my mom doesn't have the superpower.

She smiled at me, but she was crying too. She kissed me on both cheeks, and then she kissed Aiden. And then she left again. She called out to me from the other side of the door. "Now lock the door, Kai."

I got the big metal key from the dresser and locked the door. A few minutes later there was a loud thump outside and the sound of something heavy being dragged. I wanted to go see what it was but I promised.

I don't mind taking care of Aiden. I've done it before. I put him in the middle of the bed so he couldn't fall off, and I gave him one of his toys that makes him gurgle and blow spit bubbles because it makes him happy. And then I went back to watching cartoons, but I sat where I could see Aiden just in case he decided to get adventurous.

About an hour later there was this sound outside the door. It sounded like our dog, Buddy, when we feed him the good dog food that he really likes. It's kind of a wet chewing sound, when he gulps down the food, barely stopping to breathe.

A few minutes after the noises stopped, something red started seeping in under the door, so I got one of the big towels from the bathroom and stuffed it against the bottom of the door to keep the red stuff from getting into the room. I tried not to think about what it might be. There was a thumping at the door, but it stopped after a while.

That was yesterday.

Ever since then, I've been hearing a few television sets in the rest of the bed and breakfast. This morning, I could hear a couple alarm clocks. They went for a while until they turned themselves off, I think. I haven't heard anyone talking or taking showers or anything like that. Every now and then there are funny noises, bangs and bumps and sometimes there's thumping or scratching at the door. When that happens I stay very quiet until it stops.

When I look out the window, we have a good view of the garden because we're on the third floor. It's a nice day, but there's nobody out there. Yesterday there were people out there all the time, but not today.

There was this big fruit basket in the room when we got here. I mashed up a banana for Aiden for dinner, and another one for breakfast. I had some of the fruit you have to chew, like apples. I'm not sure what to do with the pineapple. And we still have about half of this huge bag of trail mix that Mom bought for the drive up here from Bangor.

It's about lunchtime, and we're out of bananas, so I'm trying to figure out what to give Aiden when I hear people downstairs. After a while, one of the other TV sets turns off. About ten minutes later, the other one goes quiet. My TV is not very loud, because I wanted to hear it if my mom came back. But now that there are no other noises, it sounds really loud. I can just barely hear people talking to each other in the distance.

After a while I hear more sounds outside my door. I wonder if maybe it's the monster except someone says a bad word very loudly, and then some more bad words.

"That doorknob burned me," a man's voice says. He's the same one that was using the bad words.

"That's ... different," a woman's voice replies.

"Let me try it. It won't hurt me," a different man's voice says.

"Nathan, we're not having this conversation again. I'll try it," the woman says. The doorknob rattles, but there's no more swearing. "It's locked."

"Do you really think there's anything in there? I mean, other than what we've already found?" the first man says.

I think about it for a minute. Aiden and I can't stay here forever. What if Mom's hurt or caught amnesia like on TV or something? "Do you guys know where my mom is?" I ask, loud so they can hear me.

They're quiet for a few seconds. "Can you let us in there?" the woman asks.

"I promised I wouldn't."

"Listen, kid, your mom sent us to come get you." It's the man that said the bad words again.

"So what's the password?" I'm not supposed to believe that Mom or Dad sent someone to get me unless they know the password.

The man called Nathan laughs. "Kid's smarter than you, Duke."

"We're cops!" the man called Duke says. I wonder if he thinks that I can't remember that he lied to me a second ago.

"iWe/i are, are we?" the woman asks.

"Okay, these two are cops. I'm ... wait, why am I here again?"

The doorknob starts rattling. "You know how to pick locks?" Duke asks. I grab Aiden and hide behind the bed.

"Apparently," the woman comments drily.

"You sure you don't want to dump your boring boyfriend and go out with me? A girl with your talents, we could have some fun." A moment passes after Duke's question, and then he says, "Ow! Police brutality!"

"No jury in the world, Duke ..." Nathan retorts.

"Really sure." the woman replies, the doorknob clicks, and the door swings open.

The three of them come into the room and shut the door behind them. The woman and one of the men have badges and guns, and the other man, who has a funny scruffy beard, is carrying a shotgun. (My Uncle Liam told me a little about guns - mostly he told me to stay away from them.)

The woman smiles when she sees me. "Hi, I'm Audrey. This is Nathan," the other cop nods, "and Duke." The scruffy-looking guy waves at me.

"I'm Kai Hopkirk," I explain, "and this is Aiden. He's my brother."

"Well, Kai, we're going to get you and your brother out of here."

"What about my mom? She told me to stay here." A part of me knows that something Bad happened, but if I pretend that it didn't, then maybe everything will be okay.

"Your mom would want you to be safe. I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you came with us." Audrey reassures me. She looks at the two men. "Nathan and I can carry the kids, and Duke, you can take point."

"Besides, if we find whatever did this, it should probably be me that kills it," Duke agrees. "At least then this won't happen again."

Nathan looks at him, surprised. "You think a person did all this? That it's someone's Trouble?"

"It always is, isn't it?" Duke argues. Nathan doesn't answer, and Audrey gathers up Aiden in her arms. She does it right, too, I watch and make sure.

"I can walk," I inform them. I'm not a baby.

"Kai, there's some ... pretty scary stuff out there, and so it's really important that you close your eyes while we bring you outside. I'm going to carry you downstairs, and then once we're outside, you can walk as much as you want," Nathan tells me patiently. He talks to me like I'm a grownup, like it's my decision, and that's what makes me decide to let him carry me. When he picks me up, I see that he's looking at the woman, Audrey, with Aiden in her arms, and he looks like he's thinking about something else, and he even smiles for a second. Then he looks at me. "You ready?" I close my eyes tight and bury my face in his shoulder. His aftershave smells nice.

"Okay, let's blow this popsicle stand," Duke says from over by the door, and I hear him opening it.

I feel us going out of the room and into the hallway. Nathan and the other two are making wet squicky noises while they walk, like they're walking through really gloppy mud puddles. I think I'm glad I didn't look at their feet while we were in the room.

We go down the stairs, and I can hear Aiden start making fussy sounds. Then Audrey starts making a quiet shushing noise, and she must be doing something right, because Aiden gives a happy coo and stops fussing.

When we get to the second floor, there's a pretty bad smell that smells like something rotting. Somewhere in front of us, Duke says "That wasn't here before."

Nathan just replies, "Keep going," and I feel his neck muscles tense up.

We go down more stairs and when we get to the bottom, I hear a kind of growling sound. It reminds me a little of when Buddy sees another dog coming into our yard, except it sounds much bigger and meaner than Buddy. "Good boy," Duke says. "Sit. Stay."

"I think that thing dropped out of obedience training," Audrey tells him.

"You really think that's a person?" Nathan asks.

"If it was, it's not anymore," Audrey responds. She sounds mad.

There's a clicking sound and I feel Nathan holding me just a little tighter just before there's a loud BOOM! and more clicking and another boom, and we're running as something splatters against me.

"I got it! I got it!" Duke's shouting, and he's behind us now, and we're going through a door and I can tell we're outside now.

We get a little ways away before Nathan slows and stops and puts me down. "You can open your eyes now."

We're in the driveway, far enough from the building that I can't really see anything though the windows or anything. The five of us are all splattered with this funny gray-green goop. The three grown-ups are all grinning, and Audrey reaches over to Nathan and kisses him on the lips, like she means it.

"I'll take one of those," Duke offers, and Audrey kisses him on the forehead, and then does the same to me. We're all okay.

Years later, I'm still okay.

Over the years, when my life has not gone the way I wished it would, I've looked back on that "we're all okay" feeling and drawn strength from it. I'm in college now, and sometimes I pass someone on the street wearing the same aftershave that Nathan wore. It's still reassuring. It makes me think that I should go back to Haven some day, and see if I can find him. I want to thank him for not letting me see what happened in that bed and breakfast; for getting me out of there with both my mind and my body in one piece.

Part of me is afraid that I'll find out that he didn't survive the next time he encountered something like whatever it was that killed my mother that day. I can't imagine that the bed and breakfast was either his first experience with that particular brand of horror, nor that it was his last. Part of me imagines Nathan and Audrey and Duke fighting monsters in Haven, side by side, just like I imagine they always have. But regardless of what the truth is, I can handle it.

My eyes are wide open.