The Night Strangers

by Chris Bohjalian

  “Goodies for the girls?” she asks, motioning at the grocery bag that you have just now plopped onto the passenger seat.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Here, take these, too,” she says, reaching back into her pickup and handing you a plastic bag with cookies she has baked. “Vegan,” she informs you. “And totally scrumptious. They’re maple. There should be a sugar run tomorrow, so I decided it was finally time to use the very last of last year’s syrup.”

  “Thank you, Anise. That’s very kind of you.”

  “Try one,” she says, and to be polite you are about to open the bag she has given you. But before you can, she is handing you a cookie that she has, seemingly, pulled out of nowhere. “I baked this one especially for you,” she says, and for a split second you are a bit flustered because you presume she is serious. But she winks, and you decide she is kidding. Then you bite into a soft maple cookie that melts in your mouth. It’s delicious—far and away the best thing this culinary lunatic has offered you since you arrived here in Bethel.

  Emily didn’t know Molly Francoeur’s family at all, but she wasn’t about to say no when Molly’s mother, Jocelyn, called, absolutely frantic, to ask if Molly could stay for dinner that night. Emily had just walked into the house herself. It seemed that Molly’s grandmother had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her hip. So Jocelyn Francoeur didn’t expect that she would be back from the hospital much before eight-thirty or nine that evening.

  “Of course she can stay with us,” Emily said, adding that the girl could spend the night with them if need be.

  “No, I’ll be back before bedtime for sure,” Jocelyn said, her tone a little crazed—which made all the sense in the world, given the accident that had befallen her own mother. “If not, then I’ll have Molly’s aunt come get her. She lives down around Hanover.”

  “That’s almost an hour and a half away!”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, we have plenty of room and extra pj’s if you change your mind,” Emily said.

  “No. She is not spending the night,” Molly’s mother said adamantly, and that was that.

  Hallie didn’t think Molly was all that worried about her grandmother. In truth, Hallie wouldn’t have been especially alarmed if her grandmother in Connecticut had broken her hip, either. She knew a hip was serious, but didn’t broken bones heal all the time? Back in West Chester, there had been a boy in Garnet’s and her class who had broken an arm falling off the zip line at the playground and, a year later, his leg learning to play ice hockey. Another boy they knew who was three years older than Garnet and she had broken his collarbone playing football.

  “I think we need some leaves and grass and stuff,” Molly was saying now. “Enough of the snow has melted that we can get some.” They had done their homework after having snacks with Dad when they came home from school, and now, after dinner, they had bundled up and come out here to the greenhouse. The place didn’t have lights like most of the greenhouses in Bethel, but they had brought two battery-powered lanterns—essentially big flashlights that sat on the floor. It wasn’t going to be light enough to read with them, but they were able to build scenes with their dolls. It was a little after eight o’clock, and Molly’s mom had called from the hospital and said she would get here around nine-thirty. Emily hadn’t wanted the girls to head out to the greenhouse, but Hallie had reminded her that it was come out here or stay inside and play one of the computer games she really didn’t approve of or watch another DVD—and they were all bored to tears with their DVDs. And so Mom had relented and here they were. Molly wanted to gather some sticks and leaves because the scene they were constructing for their dolls was supposed to be in the woods. She wanted the dolls to be witches, and while Hallie didn’t believe that any of their dolls had the face of a witch, she was happy to go along with the game. They had put the dolls under the spell of witches the other day; making their dolls the witches themselves was refreshing and new.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Garnet, grabbing one of the lanterns, and the two girls zipped up their parkas and wandered from the greenhouse. For a moment, Hallie was surprised at how quickly she had been left alone in the structure. She realized she had never been out here alone after dark and considered joining the girls outside. But even through the steamy, smudged glass she could see the lights of her house, and she could see the glow from Garnet’s lantern as it bobbed like a buoy in the dark. And then, abruptly, it was gone. She guessed either Garnet was holding it in front of her and walking away from the greenhouse or they had simply crossed the meadow and wandered into the edge of the woods. Either way, it wasn’t a big deal. And so she resumed work on their scene, standing the dolls erect in a circle around a toy copper kettle that was going to be the cauldron. She raised one of the dolls’ arms and extended it over the kettle as if it were sprinkling some sort of herb or powder into it. She wondered: Did the women around here who Molly insisted were witches use cauldrons? Or did they mix up their potions in everyday-looking, normal kitchen pots? One day, those pots were boiling spaghetti or potatoes. And the next? Love potions. Or, maybe, some sort of potion that made a person’s eyes less blue—or not blue at all. That was it: Maybe there was a witch with blue eyes and she used her magic to make sure that no one in Bethel could have eyes as blue as hers. Whenever a woman was pregnant, that witch would cast some sort of spell to make sure the baby had eyes that were brown or green or whatever colors eyes could be, so long as they weren’t blue like hers. Hallie liked this story: It could be the start of whatever scene they created tonight with their dolls.

  Hallie had kept her promise to Molly and not told her mother that some people—including Molly’s own mom—believed that one of the twins who had lived in this house years and years ago had been killed by the local women. But the story had scared her because she was a twin. It was like when a plane crashed: She felt a connection. And so she had asked her mom whether she thought there might be witches living here in Bethel. Her mom, in turn, had said that the women were merely eccentrics, and then she had explained what this new word meant. She had said there were lots of rumors about what the women did, but there were no such things as witches—just as there were no such things as ghosts or vampires or werewolves. The truth, her mom insisted, was that these women were just very, very interested in plants—flowers and herbs, especially. And, maybe because they took themselves so seriously, they had made some enemies. Or, at least, gotten a reputation for being self-important and strange. But that’s all there was to it: Women like Clary and Sage and Anise and Reseda might be eccentric, but they most assuredly were not witches.

  Hallie had moved a third doll in front of the kettle and was surveying her work, wondering what to add next, when she saw the house go dark. One moment she had been aware of the glow from the lights that were on in rooms on every single floor of the place, even the third floor, where she and Garnet slept, and the next the house had vanished completely into the moonless night. The greenhouse was still lit by her lantern, but the rest of the world had gone black. She understood that this was a blackout: They had had them once in a great while in the winter back in West Chester, and they had already had a couple of them here in Bethel. Nevertheless, this was scary. Blackouts always were scary. But this was worse because she was all alone out here in the greenhouse and her mind had been wandering among visions of witches. Her first thought was to race for the main house, maybe calling for Garnet and Molly and searching out their lantern as she ran. But she took a breath and reminded herself that either the lights would pop back on any second or—if they didn’t—Mom or Dad would be out here to get her and her sister and their friend. And the last thing she wanted was to be caught running like some terrified toddler back to the house just because there was a blackout. So, working very hard to remain calm, she started rummaging through the miniature trunk in which she stored the dolls’ clothes, looking for appropriate attire and props for the scene they were constructing.

 
This is fall-of-man blackness, a despairing, debilitating sort of blindness. You hadn’t anticipated the cloak of misery that would descend upon you when you flipped the breaker—a light switch, but a click that is louder, sharper, and considerably more satisfying—and cut the power to the house. But the fuse box is in the basement, on the wall by the concrete pad that holds the appliances, so perhaps you should have known that you would not merely be blind, you would be dealt a body blow of gloom.

  She deserves friends.

  Usually, everything throbs more here in the basement. The top of your head, your lower back, and abdomen—sometimes the pain there is so pronounced that you see white spots of light and fear you will vomit. Back in Pennsylvania, you told a doctor it felt like you had been gored. But it’s not so bad at the moment. You can feel it, but it is more of an ambient twinge.

  You are a pilot—you were a pilot—and so you tend always to be thinking ahead. Prior to flipping the breaker, you had counted exactly how many steps it was to the wheelbarrow ramp and unlatched the dead bolt and the chain, and removed the horizontal beam that Parnell Dunmore had used to keep out intruders. Prior to darkening the house—prior to even starting to clean the dinner dishes with Emily—you had brought down from the attic the carving knife that the Dunmores had left behind for you. Yes, for you. Every tool has a purpose. You cut the power with the fingers on your left hand because in your right you are holding the knife. Now you move across the basement, counting the steps in your mind, and in a moment you feel the start of the incline and you are walking up from the coal black basement into the nearly coal black night. There is no moon, but there are stars, and in the greenhouse there is still some dusky light because your beautiful daughters brought lanterns out there so they could play.

  She deserves friends. Do what it takes.

  And because you are a pilot, you have determined in your mind precisely how you will approach the three girls and who will live and who will die—who will die in addition to yourself. Because you know you can’t live another day after you have tried to atone for the deaths of thirty-nine people with a fortieth. Funny: Your mind formed the words thirty-nine people, not thirty-nine souls. Because you know now that souls don’t die. For a person who is not religious, this is a revelation. It has not been a joyful one, however, because along with your discovery that there is an afterlife has come the knowledge that sadness and pain transcend the grave, too. Children live on, their hair always dripping with lake water and jet fuel, their abdomens skewered with the horrific shards of metal airplanes. Dead fathers watch helplessly as their dead daughters pine for playmates. Young women stagger through the blackness of your basement after interviews for jobs they never will have.

  The blackness of your basement: no white light there. Perhaps there is no white light anywhere. It’s a myth. A vision triggered by dying brain chemicals and desperate endorphins.

  Still, no one will ever understand what you are about to do. You could never explain it. You should have died back in August.

  In the distance, you watch a silhouette move in the greenhouse, and you wonder why you see only one. Aren’t all three girls out there? After dinner, all three went out there to play. Two, you presume, must simply be in corners you cannot see. Or, maybe, the light from the lantern (didn’t they bring more than one?) is angled so that you can only see one of the children.

  Your mind roams back toward the house. It is possible that one or two of the children has gone back inside for something. You pause and run your fingers over the side of the blade, trying to decide what to do. And then you see the second lantern bobbing at the edge of the meadow a good ninety or one hundred yards from the greenhouse, and then it’s gone, disappearing into the brush and the trees. And that’s when it all makes sense. Your judgment is suspect, and so the decision has been made for you. There is but a single girl remaining inside the greenhouse, and so, clearly, she is the one. You take a breath and march ahead, resolved.

  Hallie ran to the entrance of the greenhouse and stared into the dark when she heard her mother’s voice. Her mother was calling out her name and Garnet’s, dashing from the house and spraying the greenhouse and the carriage barn and the woods with one of their regular flashlights. Hallie thought for a split second there was someone else out there—someone other than her mom and Garnet and Molly—though she couldn’t have said whether it was because she had heard footsteps in the grass or because she had seen a shape change the consistency of the darkness enveloping the chasm that now separated the greenhouse from the rest of the property.

  “Garnet? Hallie?” her mother was shouting over and over, and so Hallie screamed for her mother that she was right here, she was right here in the doorway to the greenhouse, and her mother ran to her and knelt briefly before her, studying her in the light from the lantern without saying a word. Then she spoke: “We’ve lost power. Again.” She rolled her eyes, trying to make light of the way, a moment ago, she had been frantically shrieking their names. Then she looked over Hallie’s shoulder into the greenhouse, and Hallie could see the concern instantly return to her face. “Where in heaven’s name are your sister and Molly?”

  “They went to the woods to get stuff for the game.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Twigs and moss and things.”

  “At night?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Her mom shook her head. “I wouldn’t want them doing that any night and certainly not now. Not with a blackout. They won’t be able to see the house to get their bearings.”

  “I saw the porch light go out and the house get dark,” Hallie told her.

  “Which direction did they go in? Do you know?”

  “They were just going to go to the edge—to that path at the bottom of the field.”

  “Okay. You stay here while I go get them. Don’t move.”

  Hallie nodded, but only seconds after her mother started off toward the path, she followed her, suddenly very afraid to be alone in the greenhouse.

  “Wait up!” she cried, and her mother paused, shining the light back on her, and Hallie ran through the mud and melted snow. She realized that her mom was navigating this chilly March slop with nothing but socks on her feet. When she caught up, her mom took her hand and pulled her along, crying out Garnet’s and Molly’s names into a wind that seemed to be increasing, growing more blustery the closer they got to the woods. But it really didn’t take them long to find the girls. Within minutes they were upon her sister and their new friend, perhaps a dozen yards past where the grass would merge with the trees. The small copse of pines where they were standing was illuminated by their lantern.

  “Is everything okay?” Garnet asked their mother, becoming a little unnerved now herself.

  Hallie watched their mom embrace first Garnet and then Molly. She held each child at arm’s length and seemed to inspect them, just as she had examined her back at the greenhouse. “I was worried about you,” she answered. “I didn’t know where you were. What were you two thinking going into the woods at night?”

  “We were just getting things to make it look like the dolls were in the forest.”

  “We lost power,” Hallie said.

  “We did?”

  “Yes, we did,” their mother told them, her voice sounding less unhinged than it had a moment ago but also more stern. Abruptly Hallie watched her mother’s head spin toward the path that led back to the fields. “Chip?” she said into the dark. “Chip, is that you?” Hallie had heard the sound, too: a rustling, a scuffling among the leaves.

  When there was no response, their mother took Garnet by the hand and pointed her flashlight toward the meadow. “Did you girls hear something?”

  Molly, who hadn’t said a word, suddenly started to whimper. “I’m scared,” she sniffled, and she ran the sleeve of her coat across her nose and then wiped at her eyes. “I want to go home.”

  “Oh, Molly, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry. I’m sure we just heard a deer or a fox or something,” Emil
y said, but Hallie could tell that her mother didn’t believe a word she was saying. “I just got spooked by the blackout. Come on, girls, let’s head back to the house.”

  “Where’s Daddy?” Hallie asked.

  “I guess he’s back at the house, too,” her mother answered. “Come on. I’m positive the power will be back on in a couple of minutes and we’ll be able to have some hot chocolate.” Then they walked purposefully from the woods along the path and up the sloping meadow past the greenhouse—retrieving the single lantern there—and into the dark house.

  Silently you place the knife at your feet and push shut the door to the wheelbarrow ramp, locking it from the inside, your fingers spidering along the wood frame in the absolute dark. You feel around for the horizontal beam and drop it back in place, listening as your wife calls your name in the kitchen above you. She sounds anxious, frenzied. You want to yell up to her, Down here, honey. Just checking the breakers in the fuse box. Everything’s fine! But Ethan Stearns is standing between you and the stairs, a beacon that is strangely but perfectly visible in the blackness. He is scowling, incapable of masking his disgust.

  But, really, what were you supposed to do? Massacre all of them?

  You couldn’t have done that. You see in your mind an image of the children at daybreak, all dead, Emily, too, their throats cut as they bled to death in the woods—their parkas and sweaters forever stained red. You see it all in your mind with the sun overhead, the sky the same breathtaking summer cobalt it had been on August 11 over Lake Champlain. But this was never supposed to have been a slaughter of that magnitude: three fifth-grade girls and your wife. This had been about a playmate. A single playmate. You kill a child and then you kill yourself. That was the bargain.

  But Ethan is shaking his head.

  She deserves friends.

  Was it always a plural? Friends? He nods. It was, it was.