Night World 1

by L. J. Smith

  “No, I’ll take the car. I’ll be fine. Really.” Mary-Lynnette fled to the garage before her family could come up with anything else.

  She didn’t pack her telescope. Instead, she put a shovel in the backseat. She looped the strap of her camera around her neck and stuck a pen flashlight in her pocket.

  She parked at the foot of her hill. Before she got the shovel out, she paused a moment to look dutifully northeast, toward the constellation Perseus.

  No meteors right this second. All right. Keys in hand, she turned to open the back of the station wagon—and jumped violently.

  “Oh, God!”

  She’d nearly walked into Ash.

  “Hi.”

  Mary-Lynnette’s pulse was racing and her knees felt weak. From fear, she told herself. And that’s all.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack!” she said. “Do you always creep up behind people like that?”

  She expected some smart-ass answer of either the joking-menacing or the hey-baby variety. But Ash just frowned at her moodily. “No. What are you doing out here?”

  Mary-Lynnette’s heart skipped several beats. But she heard her own voice answering flatly, “I’m starwatching. I do it every night. You might want to make a note of that for the thought police.”

  He looked at her, then at the station wagon. “Starwatching?”

  “Of course. From that hill.” She gestured.

  Now he was looking at the camera looped around her neck. “No telescope,” he commented skeptically. “Or is that what’s in the car?”

  Mary-Lynnette realized she was still holding the keys, ready to open the back of the wagon. “I didn’t bring a telescope tonight.” She went around to the passenger side of the car, unlocked the door, and reached in to pull out her binoculars. “You don’t need a telescope to starwatch. You can see plenty with these.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, really.” Now, that was a mistake, Mary-Lynnette thought, suddenly grimly amused. Acting as if you don’t believe me…just you wait.

  “You want to see light from four million years ago?” she said. Then, without waiting for him to answer: “Okay. Face east.” She rotated a finger at him. “Here, take the binoculars. Look at that line of fir trees on the horizon. Now pan up…” She gave him directions, rapping them out like a drill sergeant. “Now do you see a bright disk with a kind of smudge all around it?”

  “Um. Yeah.”

  “That’s Andromeda. Another galaxy. But if you tried to look at it through a telescope, you couldn’t see it all at once. Looking through a telescope is like looking at the sky through a soda straw. That’s all the field of view you get.”

  “All right. Okay. Point taken.” He started to lower the binoculars. “Look, could we suspend the starwatching for just a minute? I wanted to talk to you….”

  “Want to see the center of our galaxy?” Mary-Lynnette interrupted. “Turn south.”

  She did everything but physically make him turn. She didn’t dare touch him. There was so much adrenaline racing through her system already—if she made contact she might go supercritical and explode.

  “Turn,” she said. He shut his eyes briefly, then turned, bringing the binoculars up again.

  “You have to look in the constellation Sagittarius.” She rattled off instructions. “See that? That’s where the center of the Milky Way is. Where all the star clouds are.”

  “How nice.”

  “Yes, it is nice. Okay, now go up and east—you should be able to find a little dim sort of glow….”

  “The pink one?”

  She gave him a quick look. “Yeah, the pink one. Most people don’t see that. That’s the Trifid Nebula.”

  “What are those dark lines in it?”

  Mary-Lynnette stopped dead.

  She forgot her drill sergeant manner. She stepped back. She stared at him. She could feel her breath coming quicker.

  He lowered the binoculars and looked at her. “Something wrong?”

  “They’re dark nebulae. Lanes of dust in front of the hot gas. But…you can’t see them.”

  “I just did.”

  “No. No. You can’t see those. It’s not possible, not with binoculars. Even if you had nine millimeter pupils…” She pulled the flashlight out of her pocket and trained it full in his face.

  “Hey!” He jerked back, eyes squeezing shut, hand over them. “That hurt!”

  But Mary-Lynnette had already seen. She couldn’t tell what color his eyes were right now, because the colored parts, the irises, were reduced to almost invisible rings. His eye was all pupil. Like a cat’s at maximum dilation.

  Oh, my God…the things he must be able to see. Eighth-magnitude stars, maybe ninth-magnitude stars. Imagine that, seeing a Mag 9 star with your naked eye. To see colors in the star clouds—hot hydrogen glowing pink, oxygen shining green-blue. To see thousands more stars cluttering the sky…

  “Quick,” she said urgently. “How many stars do you see in the sky right now?”

  “I can’t see anything,” he said in a muffled voice, hand still over his eyes. “I’m blind.”

  “No, I mean seriously,” Mary-Lynnette said. And she caught his arm.

  It was a stupid thing to do. She wasn’t thinking. But when she touched his skin, it was like completing a current. Shock swept over her. Ash dropped his hand and looked at her.

  For just a second they were face-to-face, gazes locked. Something like lightning trembled between them. Then Mary-Lynnette pulled away.

  I can’t take any more of this. Oh, God, why am I even standing here talking to him? I’ve got enough ahead of me tonight. I’ve got a body to find.

  “That’s it for the astronomy lesson,” she said, holding out a hand for the binoculars. Her voice was just slightly unsteady. “I’m going up the hill now.”

  She didn’t ask where he was going. She didn’t care, as long as it was away.

  He hesitated an instant before giving her the binoculars, and when he did he made sure not to touch her.

  Fine, Mary-Lynnette thought. We both feel the same.

  “Goodbye.”

  “Bye,” he said limply. He started to walk away. Stopped, his head lowered. “What I wanted to say…”

  “Well?”

  Without turning, he said in a flat and perfectly composed voice, “Stay away from my sisters, okay?”

  Mary-Lynnette was thunderstruck. So outraged and full of disbelief that she couldn’t find words. Then she thought: Wait, maybe he knows they’re killers and he’s trying to protect me. Like Jeremy.

  Around the sudden constriction in her throat she managed to say, “Why?”

  He shook his drooping head. “I just don’t think you’d be a very good influence on them. They’re kind of impressionable, and I don’t want them getting any ideas.”

  Mary-Lynnette deflated. I should have known, she thought. She said, sweetly and evenly, “Ash? Get bent and die.”

  CHAPTER 8

  She waited another hour after he set off down the road, heading east—doing what, she had no idea. There was nothing that way except two creeks and lots of trees. And her house. She hoped he was going to try to walk into town, and that he didn’t realize how far it was.

  All right, he’s gone, now forget about him. You’ve got a job to do, remember? A slightly dangerous one. And he’s not involved. I don’t believe he knows anything about what happened to Mrs. B.

  She got the shovel and started down the road west. As she walked she found that she was able to put Ash out of her mind completely. Because all she could think of was what was waiting ahead.

  I’m not scared to do it; I’m not scared; I’m not scared…. Of course I’m scared.

  But being scared was good; it would make her careful. She would do this job quickly and quietly. In through the gap in the hedge, a little fast work with the shovel, and out again before anybody saw her.

  She tried not to picture what she was going to find with that shovel if she was right.

>   She approached Burdock Farm cautiously, going north and then doubling back southeast to come in through the back property. The farmland had gone wild here, taken over by poison oak, beargrass, and dodder, besides the inevitable blackberry bushes and gorse. Tan oaks and chinquapins were moving in. Sometime soon these pastures would be forest.

  I’m not sure I believe I’m doing this, Mary-Lynnette thought as she reached the hedge that surrounded the garden. But the strange thing was that she did believe it. She was going to vandalize a neighbor’s property and probably look at a dead body—and she was surprisingly cool about it. Scared but not panicked. Maybe there was more hidden inside her than she realized.

  I may not be who I’ve always thought I am.

  The garden was dark and fragrant. It wasn’t the irises and daffodils Mrs. B. had planted; it wasn’t the fireweed and bleeding heart that were growing wild. It was the goats.

  Mary-Lynnette stuck to the perimeter of the hedge, eyes on the tall upright silhouette of the farmhouse. There were only two windows lit.

  Please don’t let them see me and please don’t let me make a noise.

  Still looking at the house, she walked slowly, taking careful baby steps to the place where the earth was disturbed. The first couple of swipes with the shovel hardly moved the soil.

  Okay. Put a little conviction in it. And don’t watch the house; there’s no point. If they look out, they’re going to see you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Just as she put her foot on the shovel, something went hoosh in the rhododendrons behind her.

  Crouched over her shovel, Mary-Lynnette froze.

  Stop worrying, she told herself. That’s not the sisters. It’s not Ash coming back. That’s an animal.

  She listened. A mournful maaaa came from the goat shed.

  It wasn’t anything. It was a rabbit. Dig!

  She got out a spadeful of dirt—and then she heard it again.

  Hoosh.

  A snuffling sound. Then a rustling. Definitely an animal. But if it was a rabbit, it was an awfully loud one.

  Who cares what it is? Mary-Lynnette told herself. There aren’t any dangerous animals out here. And I’m not afraid of the dark. It’s my natural habitat. I love the night.

  But tonight, somehow, she felt differently. Maybe it was just the scene with Ash that had shaken her, made her feel confused and discontented. But just now she felt almost as if something was trying to tell her that the dark wasn’t any human’s natural habitat. That she wasn’t built for it, with her weak eyes and her insensitive ears and dull nose. That she didn’t belong.

  Hoosh.

  I may have rotten hearing, but I can hear that just fine. And it’s big. Something big’s sniffing around in the bushes.

  What kind of big animal could be out here? It wasn’t a deer; deer went snort-wheeze. It sounded larger than a coyote, taller. A bear?

  Then she heard a different sound, the vigorous shaking of dry, leathery rhododendron leaves. In the dim light from the house she could see the branches churning as something tried to emerge.

  It’s coming out.

  Mary-Lynnette clutched her shovel and ran. Not toward the gap in the hedge, not toward the house—they were both too dangerous. She ran to the goat shed.

  I can defend myself in here—keep it out—hit it with the shovel….

  The problem was that she couldn’t see from in here. There were two windows in the shed, but between the dirt on the glass and the darkness outside, Mary-Lynnette couldn’t make out anything. She couldn’t even see the goats, although she could hear them.

  Don’t turn on the penlight. It’ll just give away your position.

  Holding absolutely still, she strained to hear anything from outside.

  Nothing.

  Her nostrils were full of goat. The layers of oat straw and decomposing droppings on the floor were smelly, and they kept the shed too warm. Her palms were sweating as she gripped the shovel.

  I’ve never hit anybody…not since Mark and I were kids fighting…but, heck, I kicked a stranger this morning….

  She hoped the potential for violence would come out now when she needed it.

  A goat nudged her shoulder. Mary-Lynnette shrugged it away. The other goat bleated suddenly and she bit her lip.

  Oh, God—I heard something out there. The goat heard it, too.

  She could taste her bitten lip. It was like sucking on a penny. Blood tasted like copper, which, she realized suddenly, tasted like fear.

  Something opened the shed door.

  What happened then was that Mary-Lynnette panicked.

  Something unholy was after her. Something that sniffed like an animal but could open doors like a human. She couldn’t see what it was—just a shadow of darkness against darkness. She didn’t think of turning on the penlight—her only impulse was to smash out with the shovel now, to get It before It could get her. She was tingling with the instinct for pure, primordial violence.

  Instead, she managed to hiss, “Who is it? Who’s there?”

  A familiar voice said, “I knew you were going to do this. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “Oh, God, Mark.” Mary-Lynnette sagged against the wall of the shed, letting go of the shovel.

  The goats were both bleating. Mary-Lynnette’s ears were ringing. Mark shuffled farther in.

  “Jeez, this place smells. What are you doing in here?”

  “You jerk,” Mary-Lynnette said. “I almost brained you!”

  “You said you were forgetting all this crazy stuff. You lied to me.”

  “Mark, you don’t…We can talk later…. Did you hear anything out there?” She was trying to gather her thoughts.

  “Like what?” He was so calm. It made Mary-Lynnette feel vaguely foolish. Then his voice sharpened. “Like a yowling?”

  “No. Like a snuffling.” Mary-Lynnette’s breath was slowing.

  “I didn’t hear anything. We’d better get out of here. What are we supposed to say if Jade comes out?”

  Mary-Lynnette didn’t know how to answer that. Mark was in a different world, a happy, shiny world where the worst that could happen tonight was embarrassment.

  Finally she said, “Mark, listen to me. I’m your sister. I don’t have any reason to lie to you, or play tricks on you, or put down somebody you like. And I don’t just jump to conclusions; I don’t imagine things. But I’m telling you, absolutely seriously, that there is something weird going on with these girls.”

  Mark opened his mouth, but she went on relentlessly. “So now there are only two things you can believe, and one is that I’m completely out of my mind, and the other is that it’s true. Do you really think I’m crazy?”

  She was thinking of the past as she said it, of all the nights they’d held on to each other when their mother was sick, of the books she’d read out loud to him, of the times she’d put Band-Aids on his scrapes and extra cookies in his lunch. And somehow, even though it was dark, she could sense that Mark was remembering, too. They’d shared so much. They would always be connected.

  Finally Mark said quietly, “You’re not crazy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I don’t know what to think. Jade wouldn’t hurt anybody. I just know that. And since I met her…” He paused. “Mare, it’s like now I know why I’m alive. She’s different from any girl I’ve ever known. She’s—she’s so brave, and so funny, and so…herself.”

  And I thought it was the blond hair, Mary-Lynnette thought. Shows how shallow I am.

  She was moved and surprised by the change in Mark—but mostly she was frightened. Frightened sick. Her cranky, cynical brother had found somebody to care about at last…and the girl was probably descended from Lucrezia Borgia.

  And now, even though she couldn’t see him, she could hear earnest appeal in his voice. “Mare, can’t we just go home?”

  Mary-Lynnette felt sicker.

  “Mark—”

  She broke off and they both snapped their heads
to look at the shed window. Outside a light had gone on.

  “Shut the door,” Mary-Lynnette hissed, in a tone that made Mark close the door to the shed instantly.

  “And be quiet,” she added, grabbing his arm and pulling him next to the wall. She looked cautiously out the window.

  Rowan came out of the back door first, followed by Jade, followed by Kestrel. Kestrel had a shovel.

  Oh. My. God.

  “What’s happening?” Mark said, trying to get a look. Mary-Lynnette clamped a hand over his mouth.

  What was happening was that the girls were digging up the garden again.

  She didn’t see anything wrapped in garbage bags this time. So what were they doing? Destroying the evidence? Were they going to take it into the house and burn it, chop it up?

  Her heart was pounding madly.

  Mark had scooted up and was looking out. Mary-Lynnette heard him take a breath—and then choke. Maybe he was trying to think of an innocent explanation for this. She squeezed his shoulder.

  They both watched as the girls took turns with the shovel. Mary-Lynnette was impressed all over again at how strong they were. Jade looked so fragile.

  Every time one of the sisters glanced around the garden, Mary-Lynnette’s heart skipped a beat. Don’t see us, don’t hear us, don’t catch us, she thought.

  When a respectable mound of dirt had piled up, Rowan and Kestrel reached into the hole. They lifted out the long garbage-bagged bundle Mary-Lynnette had seen before. It seemed to be stiff—and surprisingly light.

  For the first time, Mary-Lynnette wondered if it was too light to be a body. Or too stiff…how long did rigor mortis last?

  Mark’s breathing was irregular, almost wheezing.

  The girls were carrying the bundle to the gap in the hedge.

  Mark cursed.

  Mary-Lynnette’s brain was racing. She hissed, “Mark, stay here. I’m going to follow them—”

  “I’m going with you!”

  “You have to tell Dad if anything happens to me—”

  “I’m going with you.”

  There wasn’t time to argue. And something inside Mary-Lynnette was glad to have Mark’s strength to back her.

  She gasped, “Come on, then. And don’t make a sound.”