Ichabod Crane reached out and pulled aside the curtain covering the long window in the living room. The two Witnesses stood side by side, peering out into the gathering gloom.

"Turn off the lights so we can see better," Ichabod said, his voice almost a whisper.

Abbie flipped the switch. Without the lights glaring off the glass it was a little easier to see outside, but there wasn't a whole lot to see. Heavy fog shifted and coiled about the house, obscuring the lines between the driveway, the yard, and the forest on the other side of the street.

Ichabod leaned closer to the window and squinted, not sure what exactly he was looking for.

"Shhh!" Abbie admonished suddenly, even though Ichabod hadn't said anything.

"Did you hear that?" she whispered.

They both listened quietly, waiting. There it was, a wet gurgling sound. Abbie spun around to the source of the noise. It was coming from the kitchen.

Abbie let out a laugh, breaking the tense silence, as she realized what the noise was.

"The coffeemaker! I almost forgot," she said and breathed a sigh of relief. She left Ichabod at the window and went over and shut the coffeemaker off, pouring the hot beverage into two mugs. She set hers on the counter to cool.

Handing a grateful Ichabod his coffee, she said, "I'm going to take a quick look around outside. I thought I saw someone walking around out there."

She grabbed her sneakers from the pile of shoes next to the front door and slipped her feet inside, saying as much to herself as to her companion, "It's probably nothing. Probably some kids from down the street, taking beers down to the river..."

Ichabod followed her lead, quickly pulling on his boots and old blue jacket. "Nevertheless, I shall accompany you, Lieutenant," he said, suddenly not wanting to be left behind.

Abbie was wearing loose pajama pants and a sleeveless shirt. He glanced around, looking for her jacket.

The doorknob wouldn't turn.

"It's jammed," Abbie said, gripping it with both hands and trying again, frustration growing, "The door won't open!"

"Allow me," Ichabod took a last gulp of coffee and set his mug on a small end table. He stepped around Abbie and tried the doorknob as well, to the same results.

"This is not happening again," Abbie declared, their recent haunted house ordeal too fresh in her mind. At least the electricity was still on.

Ichabod's thoughts were not far off course from the Lieutenant's. Outraged at the prospect of some outside force, demonic or not, trapping him and threatening Lieutenant Mills, he released the doorknob and stood back.

Ichabod took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and kicked the door with all his strength, his foot landing squarely above the door jam. The door only shuddered and creaked in its frame.

"Whoa!" Abbie exclaimed at her partner's violent outburst.

Ichabod looked set to try again but Abbie grabbed his arm, "Stop! Crane, that's not going to work!"

"Fine," he shook back the loose hair that had fallen into his face, "We'll try the other exit."

"Alright, back door is this way," Abbie said, taking off down the hallway to the rarely-used back door.

It was also jammed shut.

"No need for alarm," Ichabod said, "We will go through the car house."

"Garage," Abbie corrected, following him back through the house and through the door that connected to the garage.

She hit the garage door opener button with decidedly more force than necessary. The door groaned but didn't budge, prompting Abbie to hit the button several more times. The small motor whirred in protest and there was a faint whiff of smoke and the sound of gears crunching together and stopping.

Ichabod awkwardly tried to find a grip on the inside of the garage door, straining to lift it.

"Lieutenant," he called.

Abbie joined him, trying to push the door up.

"Crane, hold on," she said, "on three, okay?"

"Okay."

Abbie counted, "One. Two. Three!"

They strained against the door with all their strength but it wouldn't budge.

"There is something holding the door down, something pressing against it from the other side," Ichabod said in frustration.

As far as Abbie was concerned, this whole situation was getting old fast. She had always hated haunted houses and now being inexplicably trapped in her own house was simply unacceptable. She decided to take a page from Crane's book, squared her shoulders and closed her hands into fists.

"HYAAAA!" Abbie kicked the door.

Her martial arts instructor at the Academy would have been proud, but the door only creaked and groaned. If anything it seemed to settle more tightly in its frame. The little bit of daylight leaking around the edges of the door was choked off and they were left in only the dim light of a bare overhead light bulb.

"It is futile, Lieutenant," Ichabod said, giving her a little extra space.

He made a mental note not to ever underestimate his partner, despite her petite frame and her pretty smile.

"Let us regroup inside," he said, "There are many ways out of any house."

Abbie followed him back inside, leaving the door to the garage propped open with a cinder block.

"Yeah, great, we'll just sneak out the window."

Ichabod stopped short in the middle of the living room, nearly causing Abbie to bump into his back.

"You were saying?" He asked slowly, stepping out of her way, his eyes focused on the bay window.

"What," Abbie asked, alarm creeping into her voice, "the hell is that?"

Several thick, brown vines crisscrossed the window, thin offshoots branching and spreading out like blood vessels across the glass. It was now very dark outside and the vines blocked out the few fading rays of daylight.

"It appears that somehow," Ichabod said, "that same evil which infected Lachlan's house has found its way to your home."

"I'd better call somebody," Abbie said, not taking her eyes off the window, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

"You were right. I thought I'd defeated Moloch's monster, but I was wrong," Ichabod was thinking out loud, "It didn't die, not completely."

"There's no signal!" Abbie was tapping her phone, trying to make a call, "No reception."

"We are on our own," Ichabod stated, looking at her, eyes wide.

"Shh..." Abbie whispered, "Did you hear that?"

They both held still, looking around, listening carefully. The house seemed to shift and settle in its foundations, the way old houses will, the joints between walls and floors protesting their age, but there was something else too. A muffled, distant scraping crunch.

Abbie abruptly reached out and grabbed ahold of Ichabod's arm, gripping him tightly.

"There's something moving down there," she whispered, turning a frightened gaze towards the only door she had yet to check since waking, "in the basement."

Ichabod didn't say anything about her grip on his arm. If anything, he'd been a second from reaching for her, himself. His heart was racing.

A slow, irregular, shuffling sound came from the basement. Footsteps.

Abbie turned the little bar on the doorknob, locking it.

"There's nothing down there, shouldn't be anything down there. No way in or out. It's empty," she said, talking a little too fast, "The basement always floods in the spring so I don't keep anything there. I don't go down there."

They looked at the kitchen window, the bedroom window, they were all the same, dry brown vines crisscrossing the glass, tightening their grip on the house.

Ichabod picked up a kitchen chair and strode to the living room window, which had only become more obscured by vines in the few minutes they hadn't been looking at it. He gripped the seat back and swung the chair dramatically into the window, but it only bounced back ineffectually. He tried again, and again, then one of the chair legs fell off.

'Well, so much for my IKEA furniture...' thought Abbie, as he tossed the broken chair aside.

"Crane! Here, try this," Abbie said, helpfully handing Ichabod her favorite baseball bat.

"Thank you," he said, taking a deep breath and letting Abbie jump out of the way before resuming his valiant attack on the vine-choked window. He slammed the bat into the window again and again, until the glass started to crack and splinter.

Crane was a good fighter, she knew that, but Abbie couldn't help grimacing at the sight of his stance. His grip and swing were all wrong.

'If we get out of this alive,' Abbie promised herself, 'I'm taking him to the batting cages first thing.' Clearly, their Saturday afternoon routine of watching the community baseball games together was not nearly adequate.

Ichabod slammed the bat into the window again, handling it rather like a sword, and the center pane shattered. He swung again, but this time a vine wrapped itself around the end of the baseball bat. He tried to pull it free but more vines encircled the bat. Ichabod jumped back before they could grab his arms as well.

"Lieutenant," he started, "Please tell me you have an ax!"

Abbie didn't answer. Her attention was back on the basement door. There was a heavy thump, then another, and another, getting louder with each creak of the stairs, each step of the monster.

"It's coming up the stairs! Crane! Help me with this!" Abbie yelled.

Together they pushed the heavy couch in front of the basement door, just in time. The door shuddered as something heavy hit it from the other side.

Abbie looked around desperately, wishing that she owned more heavy furniture, but she'd purposefully bought only things that were light, easy to put together by herself, easy to move by herself. That heavy, old couch would have to do.

Thin snakelike vines were growing, pushing through the corners and edges of the house, where the floor was joined to the wall, around the edges of doorways.

Abbie and Ichabod shared a look that said, as clearly as if they'd spoken aloud, 'We need to get out of here! Think! What can we do?'

The lights flickered ominously but stayed on. The pounding on the basement door continued.

"I'll try the landline," Abbie said, hurrying over to the little-used phone in the kitchen.

"I'll look in here for something that may be of help," Ichabod said, heading back into the garage.

Hopefully Abbie had some flashlights or even an ax in there.

Abbie picked up the phone and was never so relieved to hear a dial tone. She quickly dialed a familiar number, anxiously waiting while it rang.

"Hello? Mills, is that you?"

"Captain Irving, demons are attacking my house!"

"What did you just say?" The captain's startled response was drowned out by the sudden high-pitched whine of a motor, coming from the garage.

"Oh good, Crane found the chainsaw!"

The lights flickered again and then went dark. The phone line went dead. Abbie dropped the phone back onto the counter and opened a drawer, feeling around until she found the box of matches. Lighting one, she ran through the dark towards Crane, giving the blocked basement door a wide berth.

....................................

To be continued!

Preview: Of course our heroes will escape, but at what cost? How does Captain Irving react to such a crazy phone call? And, most importantly, how exactly did Ichabod learn to use a chainsaw anyway?

BONUS TRIVIA: If you find the Lilo and Stitch reference (which is actually the entire reason I started this story), I will mail you a cookie.