As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  Mommy.

  The word was a whimper in her head, bitten back, swallowed down, a cry that would make Darcy laugh for sure, although even she would have to admit that Ivy had been right to skulk around her house like a character out of a movie.

  Thank God she hadn’t just run downstairs and barreled into the kitchen.

  Ivy reached out a hand, placing it on Mac’s furry head. The dog stayed as still and silent as she. Of course, making noise had never been what Mac was known for.

  Still, Ivy mouthed, Good boy, the praise rolling up her throat on a sob, threatening to make a noise in the hushed cavern of the house.

  Mac blinked, holding his place like a soldier on stakeout. As long as Mac had his family, he was all right. But still, her dog was Ivy’s biggest problem right now.

  He wouldn’t attack anyone, even a menacing growl was above Mac’s pay grade, as her dad liked to put it, but Mac wouldn’t let Ivy out of his sight either. If not for that one aspect of his personality, which had never presented a problem before for Ivy—she actually found it kind of sweet—she could’ve snuck out. Gone somewhere to get help fighting the intruder.

  Not with Mac, though. Ivy couldn’t trust him to get out of the house unnoticed. His claws would click once they moved off these boards and onto the slate part of the floor. The cold, hard part Ivy hadn’t liked from the moment they moved in, and now hated for a really good reason. Mac didn’t do it as often these days, but he might even give a happy yelp upon catching a whiff of the outdoors.

  Although the look in Mac’s eyes told Ivy he wouldn’t do that. He knew something was wrong, even if he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Another stupid sob, louder this time. Ivy put her hand over her mouth.

  What a crazy idea, needing her dog to defend them. Of all the complaints Ivy had, things that ticked her off about living here, some horror movie scenario that depended on isolation had never occurred to her. Ivy realized, with a perspective that felt altogether new, that she didn’t come from a scared family, nor a particularly imaginative one either. Neither of her parents had ever laid out far-fetched scenarios for Ivy to worry about. Or made up rules about stranger danger like other kids were taught. Ivy’s mom was calm, capable, and confident. And her dad? He was just plain strong.

  Ivy couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to realize.

  Where was her dad?

  He’d only be doing nothing while some huge guy stood over her mother if he’d already been outmatched. Which Ivy once would’ve had trouble believing, except now fairy tales had turned real in one blink of an eye, and almost any possibility seemed likely. Even something happening to her father.

  She gagged, harsh and sour.

  If she could just get out, she’d go get help, drive for a working phone, or for the police. Ivy hadn’t started really practicing yet, just loops up and down their long driveway, but she’d watched enough of her friends. First step, find the keys to one of the cars.

  Her mom’s purse would be upstairs.

  And so was Ivy’s sleek, gleaming, always connected computer.

  She looked down at Mac. For years he had been like an extension of her own body, and when Ivy started to move, so did he.

  —

  They crept back up to the second floor, Ivy glad for once to have the muffling acoustics of this house on her side.

  The hall that led past the bedrooms felt longer than ever. She and Mac wouldn’t be heard downstairs, footfalls overhead, but what if the big guy decided to come up?

  Ivy inched her head around, taking a look over her shoulder.

  Shadows fell in a way they never had before, cast down from the ceiling fixtures and lying low on the floor. There were cones of light on the smooth gray walls, and the photos her mom collected, nature shots mostly, seemed to leap out of their frames, coming crazily to life. A snowy tip of mountaintop looked like a single extracted tooth. Branches stirred, scissoring the sky. An alpine lake lay as unblinking as an eye.

  Ivy shivered in her thin top. It was her favorite, but it seemed worse than silly to have chosen this one now that she’d have to go outside without a chance to find her coat.

  She didn’t have to make it far. She could blast the heat in the car.

  Mac pushed forward a step, moving through air as if it were solid, and his boldness freed Ivy’s gaze. She bent over her dog, rumpling his fur with quaking hands. Mac nudged her with his nose, cold and wet, and Ivy began to move on.

  Was that a hump of shoulder appearing over the rise of the stairway?

  She was stuck again, her feet planted, and this time even Mac couldn’t budge her. If the man came up, she wouldn’t be able to think of one more thing to do. Possibilities hovered just out of reach, like answers on a test, but Ivy couldn’t conceive of anything right now. Her brain hurt, throbbed in its canister as if she had worn it out, studying too hard.

  The hall closet lay ahead—that would be a good place to hide. Or should she go backwards? If the big guy was on the stairs—that open run of wood—and Ivy came at him, she might just be able to push him over, gigantic or not.

  She had to act, had to do something.

  In the end, though she cursed herself for being one of those silly girls in the movies, not clever or brave at all, Ivy simply ran. Full out, Mac loping along beside her, past her own room, the guest rooms, headed for her parents’ bedroom. If they were being chased, Ivy couldn’t hear it, whether because of the soundproofing or the buzzing in her ears. It didn’t matter; she hadn’t been stopped. No hand came down on her shoulder. There was the doorway just ahead. Ivy put on a burst of speed, and so did Mac. They reached the door and fairly fell against the long, lean boards, bursting inside.

  Mac pushed past her to go in first, and then Ivy entered, easing the door shut.

  She squinted into the bedroom’s dark nooks and crannies. A sitting area, the place where a TV came down from the ceiling, the opening to a bathroom that was more like a spa.

  A crazy thought beckoned, comforting as a cup of hot cocoa. Maybe her dad didn’t know what had happened yet. Maybe he was just being his usual out-of-it self, lost in a river map, or marking up a new trail to a summit, while her mother struggled downstairs with a super-huge foe.

  They’d been studying antagonists in English class.

  What if Ivy flicked on the bank of lights, only to see her dad lying back on the king-sized bed, against a swirly mound of pillows, hiking boots on—her mom would be annoyed about that, even though she’d never say anything. He’d grin at her, and Ivy would let out a rush of words, and her dad would take in her story before rising and racing downstairs.

  To save the day.

  Mac nosed her, and as a cold bath of air descended—neither of her parents having turned on the zoned heating for the night—Ivy let the image roll away like a ball down a street.

  She knew she and Mac were on their own.

  —

  Ivy was smart enough not to go for the light switches. For all she knew the big guy had left, and Ivy didn’t want him summoned back by the flash of a bulb from the second floor. She moved around the bedroom by feel, finding her mom’s purse on a hook in the walk-in closet. She was tempted to run right then, but she didn’t want to be fumbling around as she tried to make her exit. Ivy pawed through the contents of the purse until she located the keys.

  As she pulled them out, she couldn’t help but pause.

  The key chain her mom used was ten years old. Ivy had made it in first grade—a tiny shrunken piece of plastic with a photo of her and her mom somehow mounted inside. In the picture, her mom’s arms were flung around Ivy. A hundred photos like that had probably been snapped, but it was the raw emotion in this one that fixed Ivy’s gaze. She couldn’t believe she had let her teacher—her whole class—in on this moment of such pure and sublime joy. Actually, she couldn’t believe she and her mom had taken that kind of happiness in each other’s embrace. They might as well have been captured naked. Right there and then, with t
he home invader below and a car she didn’t know how to drive waiting outside, Ivy cringed, as if Darcy had been looking over her shoulder and laughing.

  Mac poked her with his snout.

  Ivy looked down. “I know, Mackie,” she whispered. She folded up the keys in her hand, then jammed them into her pocket. “Let’s go.”

  The house was dead quiet as they reversed their trip along the hall.

  Mac paused outside Ivy’s bedroom, and Ivy looked at it, torn. It was worth a minute’s delay to check her phone again, turn on her computer. She could tell Melissa via Facebook to send the police to her house. Blast the whole school, for that matter. Ivy leaned against her door with her shoulder, pushing it open before crossing to her bed in three long steps.

  The screen on her phone stared back at her, dark as a lake bottom.

  NO SIGNAL it taunted when she fired it up.

  Ivy stuck the phone in the pocket of her jeans, then ran to her desk and lifted the lid on her laptop. The screen saver imploded to a pinprick of red before disappearing altogether. Ivy madly typed in her password and hit Enter.

  A message she’d never seen before appeared on the screen.

  NO CONNECTION TO THE SERVER.

  With TRY AGAIN below.

  Ivy clicked the button, and got the same implacable message.

  Her dad had promised when they moved. Wi-Fi meant that she would have all the connectivity she’d had in town. No matter what, she could always chat with her friends.

  Ivy didn’t try again.

  Instead she backed soundlessly away from her useless, voided computer, and she and Mac began to descend the stairs.

  She questioned herself the whole way down. Ivy couldn’t have seen what she’d thought she had, could she? It was crazy. But if everything was normal tonight, then where were her parents right now? And what explained her computer, the soundless bubble she now inhabited?

  Ivy swallowed, letting her foot reach for another step. Darkness yawned on both sides. Ivy clung tight to a clump of Mac’s fur instead of the twig railing, and her dog didn’t protest. They kept to the middle of each step, avoiding the precipices, because a fall of some sort seemed destined. Ivy couldn’t believe that what she was planning would actually work, that she might be able to save her family.

  She dared a peek toward the kitchen. It was silent, and dark. Whatever the man was doing in there, it couldn’t be that bad. Unless it had been that bad—and was already over.

  Ivy’s heart bucked in her chest. She stumbled, and Mac sidestepped, barricading her body with his. Reflexes like he’d had as a pup. Ivy gazed down at her dog, her throat solid.

  It occurred to her when they reached the bottom step.

  They couldn’t just leave through the front door, go out as if Ivy were running for the school bus in the morning. Opening the door would let in cold air, and night noises, making what she was up to altogether apparent.

  She congratulated herself on keeping her wits together enough to understand that. Ivy gave Mac a nod, jerking her chin in a different direction.

  Her plan might have a few holes in it—Ivy wasn’t that great a driver yet, hardly a driver at all—but she couldn’t think of a better one right now. At least this approach would get them outside, and let Ivy send help back. Bottom line, now that trouble had come to these mountains, the only place she could think to head was home.

  There was a door from which she and Mac could make a camouflaged getaway, where even a startled whine from her dog wouldn’t matter. The motion detectors would help them. It got so dark out here that without light you could stumble around for a while, trying to find your car. And Ivy didn’t have time for wandering.

  She and Mac would leave through the basement.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Harlan stood over the chair, looking down at Sandy from his great height.

  With the other man in the basement, Sandy’s heart stopped gonging; her palms lay flat on her lap. For the first time since the sun had fallen that night, taking along with it her life, Sandy felt able to pause for a moment, assess and regroup.

  Harlan’s brows drew into a fat, fuzzy vee.

  And then Sandy’s heart did start ponging lightly, because there was an opportunity here. She sensed it the same way she did whenever a new client walked into her office.

  How much time did Sandy have before the man with the terrible eyes returned? Thinking about him sent a spike through her brain, so she simply stopped. Only—what relationship did he have with Harlan? Why had they come here? If Sandy knew that, then she might be able to figure something out. But it was like there was a wall inside her head, one that would have to be dismantled brick by brick, mortar scraped at, hard pieces of baked earth clawed out.

  Sandy didn’t have time for that now. She had minutes at most.

  Four or five for the other man to locate the safe—their basement was big—another few for him to fiddle with the combination, one or two more to remove the weapons.

  Weapons they owned, but had never anticipated any need of using for protection.

  Sandy had stepped into a different way of life when she married Ben, and a more different one yet when they moved up from town. Not that Sandy’s hometown was any sort of metropolis; actually Cold Kettle was even smaller than Wedeskyull. But Sandy’s mother had lived differently from those around her, reading books instead of turning on the TV, talking about careers and being an artist and going to college. She’d also bucked several customs of the town, right down to a paranoid locking of the door every night to keep whatever was outside from getting in. Her mother had always been scared of the wrong things.

  One of Ben’s guns was a rifle. His outfit didn’t offer hunting expeditions, but Ben sometimes went out during buck season with friends. The other was a decent-sized pistol, although Ben had said Sandy would be able to hold it comfortably. She’d just never had any interest in trying. Violence was something she’d always intended to avoid.

  Harlan’s form blocked the light as he peered down at her. Sandy felt stunned by the sheer size of him; up close he was even bigger than he appeared from a few feet away. The idea of thwarting him by force was laughable; she might as well have tried to break apart a cliff with her bare hands. Could she get past him, though? Harlan’s body was like a building, his chest the high outer wall, peaked rooftop shoulders overhanging. Sandy had no hope of pushing him over, but she wondered whether down might provide a way out. If she slumped suddenly in her seat, Harlan wouldn’t expect that. She could slip through the space between his legs.

  And if he brought them together, he would crush her.

  Therapists didn’t use physical means to encourage people. They had other techniques.

  Sandy glanced over at Ben just long enough to see his back form a slight hump before leveling out as he lay prone on the floor.

  Then she looked up, high enough to put a crick in her neck.

  —

  Harlan had a face to match the rest of his body. His nose resembled some sort of rodent, loosely formed and plunked down in the middle. His eyes also lacked precision and fine-honing, round as half-dollars. His mouth was like the bend in a creek, curving and wide, although unsmiling. There was no emotion in his face, and the constellation of his features appeared only loosely related to whatever he might be feeling.

  Sandy sat on her hands to quiet the itch, then forced herself to begin, just as if there was no demon about to make his way back upstairs, as if they had all the time in the world, or at least fifty minutes of it.

  “Rough night,” she said.

  Harlan continued to loom over her, unresponsive.

  “Tonight, I mean. It’s been rough.”

  Harlan’s expression didn’t change. “What?”

  IQ of seventy-five, Sandy thought shrewdly upon hearing the thickness in Harlan’s voice. Eighty tops. Fastest WAIS-IV ever administered.

  She shrugged. “Coming all the way out here. On such a cold night.”

  Harlan turned away, consideri
ng the moonless expanse through the window. “It’s okay. We’ll be out of here soon.”

  Sandy’s thoughts scrambled to keep up. They were planning to leave. Why, then, had they come? “Right,” she said. “I know. I just meant that you’ll probably be glad to go.”

  Harlan’s face did amass something of a frown then. “You know?”

  She’d been trying to shield her reaction to that welcome piece of news, act as if it were expected. Now she sensed a mistake. “Well, I mean, I guessed,” she said, backtracking. “Why would you want to stay here?”

  Harlan’s head swiveled slowly, taking in the kitchen appliances, the glass-walled sitting area, the salvaged wood archway that led into the rest of the house. “Right,” he said. “Why would we want to stay here?”

  Sandy felt an uncomfortable swirl start in her stomach. She couldn’t tell if Harlan was toying with her, being ironic, or if he meant what he’d said, but she added ten points to the IQ score she’d given him simply for the ambiguity.

  At a loss, she waited for him to say something else, but Harlan didn’t seem the type to speak unprompted. Sandy’s mind flashed to the way she got the most difficult patients in the world to open up: recalcitrant teenagers dragged in by their parents. She did it by subtly aligning herself with them, instead of with the people who held all the power.

  Harlan clearly didn’t hold much power. So far, his friend had given the orders while Harlan carried them out.

  “He’s pretty bossy,” Sandy remarked. Talking about the other man threatened to slow her thoughts like freezing water, but she forced herself through the sludge in her mind. “Just decides what to do and does it.”

  Harlan turned back to her. “He does?”

  Or had it been, “He does?” There was irony in Harlan’s response that time. For sure.