Night, Forgotten

Original Edition - Chapter 21: Now

"Come with me," a familiar voice whispers in my ear, the last fragment of a dream that has already slipped away.

Where's Owen? I turn over in bed, although I already know it wasn't his voice there, so close and so real that I'm sure now I couldn't have dreamt it.

Owen is splayed on his back beside me with his jaw hanging open, one arm tucked behind his head. 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 two o'clock in the morning.

Thomas is also sleeping soundly, wedged between us in his small, portable bed, the perfect size for him with a bumper around its edges. We let Diana talk us into co-sleeping with Thomas because it apparently helps with family bonding, and 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.

Perhaps feeling my eyes upon his swaddled little body, Thomas shivers dramatically. Then he gives a heavy sigh and relaxes again.

In that moment, a beam of light flashes across the far wall of the bedroom. I blink and the light disappears as quickly as it came.

Was that a flash of lightening? Are we going to have a storm? I listen for a clap of thunder, but none comes.

The loudest discernible sound is Daisy's snoring, coming from her bed at the foot of the floor-length mirror. Owen's breath catches for a moment, but then it returns to its gentle rhythm.

Thomas doesn't stir.

I'm about to settle back under the covers when once again, a light shines through the bedroom window.

It's coming from somewhere out in the backyard. This time, the beam remains trained on the door leading to the upstairs hallway. Then it sweeps across the bedroom wall, illuminating the highboy next to the door, before disappearing.

A beam of light doesn't behave that way on its own. There's someone outside the house.

My ears begin to pulse. Was someone just in the room a moment ago? Standing there beside the bed, whispering in my ear? Is that what woke me up?

The wood of the bedroom floor is icy beneath my bare feet as I make my way to the window overlooking the backyard. I approach its casing 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.

As I press my forehead against the glass, the chill shocks any lingering drowsiness from my skull.

The beam of light bobs and fades, concentrated in one spot, now, just beyond the line of trees.

It's coming from inside the Dolans' shed.

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. I can imagine the old lawn chairs, nearly complete craft projects, and weathered boxes of sporting goods that clutter the shed's interior.

The simplest explanation is that it's either Liza or Marcus, searching for some misplaced Thanksgiving centerpiece or extra chairs for the upcoming holiday season. But what kind of insomniac goes outside to rummage in their storage shed in the middle of the night when it's this cold?

I glance back at Owen and Thomas, asleep in the big, four-post bed, wondering whether it will be possible for me to simply 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 the thought slides away, replaced with determination.

Maybe it is Liza out there. After I was too anxious to even say hello when she and Marcus came by with a meal earlier, 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 to their house tomorrow and apologize for hiding from her while she sat in the kitchen trying to socialize with Marcus and my poor husband. I don't think I'm brave enough to face her in the daytime.

As I tiptoe downstairs, the floorboards moan warnings to me. I reach the landing and follow the stairs to the left, into the kitchen, moving slowly in the darkness.

From outside, the beam of light pierces the window over the sink. The kitchen around me is suddenly visible. A nearly empty bottle of formula 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.

Then the light disappears again, plunging the kitchen back into moonlit grayness.

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, noticing the shape of the unused grill beneath a black tarp. We'd been meaning to use it this past summer. It would have been the first season we'd be able to eat outside on the newly renovated porch.

But then Thomas came so early, and we never got the chance.

Now, I lift the heavy black tarp and my fingers close around the handle of a long, two-pronged grilling fork.

I'll carry it with me. Just in case there's someone out in the shed who is isn't Liza.

It might be Marcus.

As I continue making my way across the yard, clutching the grilling fork, I imagine what it will feel like to stab him 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 watched a horror film?

It could be anyone out here, waiting for me. What if it's the person who raped me?

I stop walking and look back at our 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's the same voice that beckoned me awake, speaking the same words. 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 urgency. It's not an invitation.

I extend the grilling fork in front of me and choke up on it. The tips of my fingers dig into the base of the metal prongs. My feet carry me into the woods, over the leaves that lie waiting to dissolve into the earth.

The shed's sloped roof becomes visible in the thin moonlight that trickles through the trees. I squint at the path ahead of me.

A big, fallen log blocks my way. I've never noticed it here before, on any of the previous trips I've made through these woods. But of course, I haven't walked on this path since the summer and we've already had a few storms since then, strong enough to have amputated branches or even to have mowed down some of the smaller trees.

I carefully step over the log.

When I look up 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 secured the handles, hangs helplessly from its chain.

I take a step closer. Despite the stillness of the cold night air, one of the doors yawns open. The long strip of blackness that leads inside the shed widens. My face is so close now that I can almost make out what's inside.

Just as I reach for the handles, both doors swing forcefully outward at me, against the direction of their hinges. A scream pours from within the shed so powerfully that I'm thrown back into the dirt.

The high-pitched, desperate rattle floods the night and grips my bones. It vibrates in my own chest, burns in my own throat, as if it belongs to me somehow. I must be screaming too, and then I am up and running as fast as I can away from the terrible sound, without even looking at the ground in front of me.

My shin shatters bright with pain as I trip forward over the fallen log. I land on the earth with a wet thud.

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