Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 7: Now

"Come with me," a low voice growls in my ear.

Maybe it's the last fragment of a dream that has already slipped away as my eyes adjust to the darkness of the bedroom. I turn to see if Owen has spoken, although I know it wasn't his voice there, so close and so real that I could feel the hot breath on the back of my neck.

Owen is splayed on his back in the bed next to me, one arm tucked behind his head, his jaw slack. A half-empty glass of water stands beside a prescription bottle of Ambien on his bedside table, where the clock indicates that it's just after 2 o'clock in the morning.

Thomas is also sleeping soundly on his back, wedged between us in his small, portable bed, just the right size for him with a pillow bumper around its edges. We let Diana talk us into co-sleeping with Thomas because, apparently, it helps with bonding (which, she didn't need to explain, we clearly needed more than most families). I don't mind having the baby nearby while I lie awake during the long nights. I like to watch his belly rise and fall as he breathes the same air I'm breathing.

As if he can feel my eyes upon his swaddled little body, Thomas shivers dramatically, then gives a heavy sigh and relaxes again.

A light flashes across the far wall of the bedroom.

I gasp. Owen's breath catches for a moment as well, but then returns to its gentle rhythm.

Thomas doesn't stir.

The light flashes again. It's coming through the bedroom window from somewhere in the backyard. This time, the beam remains trained on the door leading to the upstairs hallway for a moment, then swings across the opposite wall, illuminating Owen's large dresser and the changing table before disappearing.

There's someone outside the house.

My ears begin to pulse.

Come with me. Was someone just in the room a moment ago? Is that what woke me?

The wood of the bedroom floor is icy beneath my bare feet as I quietly make my way to the window overlooking the backyard. I carefully approach it from the side. If there's someone out there staring back at me with a flashlight, at least I won't be caught in the beam like a terrified deer.

I press my forehead against the cool glass, the chill shocking any lingering drowsiness from my skull. The beam of light bobs and fades, concentrated now in one spot just beyond the line of trees.

It's coming from inside the Dolans' shed.

I can't remember ever having been inside the shed, but I can imagine the old lawn chairs, nearly complete craft projects, and weathered boxes of sporting goods that clutter its interior. I try to picture whoever is wielding the flashlight tripping around in there, navigating among the parts of the Dolans' lives that are best kept stored away.

The simplest explanation is that it's either Carmen or Marcus out there, searching for some misplaced Thanksgiving centerpiece or extra chairs.

But come to think of it, I've never seen either one of them so much as open that shed's double doors. And what kind of insomniac goes outside to rummage around in their storage shed in the middle of the night during winter?

I glance back at Owen and Thomas, asleep in the big bed, wondering whether it will be possible for me to just crawl back in and join them again. Daisy stirs and whimpers from her bed in the corner, as if to cast her vote for this course of action.

But no sooner has the thought occurred to me than I push it aside, replaced with determination. Maybe it is Carmen out there, and after the awkward way things unfolded earlier tonight, catching her alone and off-guard might not be such a bad idea. I should at least say thank you for the lasagna. The alternative is to walk over there tomorrow and apologize for hiding from her while she sat in the kitchen with Marcus and my depressed husband, and I don't think I'm brave enough to face her in the daytime.

As I tip-toe downstairs and through the kitchen for the second time that night, I consider that it might be Marcus out in the shed rather than Carmen. Despite the tenderness with which I saw him holding her in the woods earlier, I can't shake the sinister look he gave her in the kitchen when he thought they were alone.

Another flash of light pierces the window over the sink and the kitchen around me is suddenly visible. A nearly empty bottle lies discarded on the counter beside the burp cloth with the dancing elephants. Owen's dirty dish is still in the sink, speckled with remnants of the Dolans' lasagna.

The floorboards creak warnings to me as I cross them.

The bolt on the kitchen door slides open with a heavy click and I step into the frigid night.

I hesitate on the back porch, then reach beneath the heavy black tarp that's been draped over the grill since long before last summer. My fingers close around the handle of the long, two-pronged grilling fork that Diana and Paul gave us as part of a housewarming gift. As I continue making my way across the yard, I imagine what it will feel like to stab Marcus in the eye with it.

I'll have to take careful aim to make sure one of the two sharp tips makes its mark. I picture the fear in his other eye as he stares at me, startled, the fork's wooden handle protruding perpendicular from his face.

What the hell am I doing? I slow down as I reach the edge of the woods, suddenly and awfully aware of how vulnerable I am. Did I really just go outside to "investigate" something in the middle of the night, against the collective wisdom of everyone who has ever seen a horror film?

I stop walking now and look back at the house, up at the bedroom window. Beyond it rest Owen, Thomas, and Daisy, two of them sleeping peacefully, the other one only able to rest at all with the help of prescription drugs. I belong in there with them.

So what brought me out here?

"Come with me."

There's no mistaking it this time. It sounds like the gravel that grinds into your palms and mixes with blood when you're suddenly thrown, face down, from whatever you trusted to carry you. The voice is no louder than when I first heard it, but now it's tinged with aggression.

Come with me. It's not an invitation.

I clutch the grilling fork in front of me and choke up on it, digging the tips of my fingers into the base of the metal prongs. The shed's sloped roof becomes visible in the thin moonlight that trickles through the trees.

Crunch.

My feet carry me into the woods, over the leaves that lie waiting to dissolve into the earth. I step carefully over a log that's fallen across my path.

And then the shed is right there, revealed at once from the darkness, its double doors within an arm's reach of my face.

The doors stand ajar.

The deadbolt, which earlier that night had secured the handles, hangs helplessly from its chain.

I take a step closer. One of the doors yawns slightly open, just barely widening the long strip of blackness that leads inside the shed. My face is so close now that I can smell its musty air.

Just as I reach for the handle, both doors swing forcefully outward at me. A scream pours from within the shed so powerfully that I'm thrown back into the dirt. Its high-pitched, desperate rattle floods the winter night and grips my bones. It vibrates in my own chest, burns in my own throat, and now I must be screaming too, and running –

My shin shatters bright with pain as I trip forward over the fallen log and thud to the earth, hard.

The prongs of the grilling fork are lodged in my side.