As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  There was a gift-wrapping station down here, a long, broad table and shelves filled with rolls of colorful paper. Ribbon too, in the sheerest, prettiest gold. Her mom was gearing up for Christmas, and the thought gave Ivy a pang, then made her lift her chin.

  She and Mac passed a stack of bins that contained old clothes, toys Ivy used to play with, and picture books. She should look through these things. Not now, of course, although the doll-sized outfits did beckon. Neatly folded, laid flat, with no person inside to give them form and life. As soon as this was over—whatever this was—Ivy was going to make a point of coming down here. Read the books. Ask her mom to tell her which dresses Ivy had worn to what.

  She walked past two barrels where her dad was aging some kind of nasty liquor even the most daring of her friends probably wouldn’t touch, then caught a glimpse of the outside door. Cold air breathed from around its frame.

  Ivy paused a moment to picture their route. This exit led out to the side of the property: fields, then the creek, woods that climbed a mountainside. The circular driveway in front of their house wouldn’t take long to reach at a run. If both cars were here, and her mom’s happened to be behind her dad’s, Ivy would have to pull around the Jeep since she didn’t think she could handle reverse very well. The long road down would be a breeze, though, she promised herself and also Mac, whose tongue lolled as he brushed up against her. They would stop at the icky Nelsons’ first. Maybe their phone would work. Or else the Nelsons could come up here and help.

  Help how? a small voice inside her asked, but she ignored it just like she tried to do with Darcy. Ivy needed to get some grown-ups involved. Then everything would be all right.

  She tugged at Mac and they crossed the remaining space to the door.

  Mac started to whimper.

  The sound was startling in the huge space. Aside from the white noise of the systems down here, it was totally quiet. Even though she knew Mac couldn’t be heard back upstairs, a rush of chemicals coursed through Ivy’s body, making her heart leap and her limbs feel shaky.

  Plus, Mac was still doing it.

  “Shh,” Ivy begged, but Mac only yelped louder.

  Ivy placed her hand on the exterior doorknob. It was freezing cold, and she could just imagine what it was going to feel like outside. She looked down at her dog.

  Maybe he didn’t want to leave her parents alone. Her mom anyway; her dad must’ve gone out somewhere. That was the only explanation for his ongoing absence. And then a man had come, and was doing who-knew-what to her mom. Except her mom was talking, using her therapy voice, so things had to be basically okay, didn’t they?

  She got down beside Mac. “It’s all right. We’re just going to go and get some help.”

  Mac buried his snout in her shirt, the fabric going sheer beneath his nose and tongue. Ivy gave his head a pat, then twisted the doorknob and stepped outdoors into the frigid air.

  Mac lingered behind in the heated confines of the house.

  Ivy started in surprise. “Really, Mackie? You’re going to stay there without me?”

  It was darker out here than she’d pictured; the sky moonless and starless. The first of the motion sensitive lights hadn’t come on yet. Ivy actually found herself glad for once that her dog had his phobia. Even though Mac wasn’t much of a protector, she wouldn’t have wanted to go any farther without him.

  Mac seemed to come to his senses then, taking two loping steps to catch up.

  Ivy scrubbed his head again. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said as they began to walk. The driveway lay some distance to the right. “I would’ve been very proud of you if you’d decided to stay by yourself. It would’ve been so”—she had to hunt for the word—“evolved. But I love you, Mackie, don’t you know that?” Another pat, though her fingers felt stiff and numb as she delivered it. She was starting to shiver, tremors that slowed her down. “Just the way you are.”

  Now that they were outside, whatever she’d left behind in the house didn’t seem quite real. It was more like she’d imagined there being a problem. Except that Mac was still whining. He hadn’t let up since they’d crossed over the basement threshold. Other than that, Ivy might’ve simply been going over to Melissa’s, just like any other night.

  Without your coat in November? Darcy’s voice jabbed her, and then the enveloping darkness assailed her, too. Where were those lights? It was so quiet out here, a pressing, crushing silence. Ivy broke into a run that felt a little flailing, almost panic-stricken. She yanked on Mackie’s collar, and he started to trot.

  It was hard to make out shapes in the dark, but she thought that was her mom’s car, in front of the Jeep. At first Ivy felt only relief: she wasn’t going to have to reverse. But then it hit her. Her dad’s car was here. There were definitely two hulking shapes, including the higher outline of the Jeep. Her dad hadn’t gone out. So why was he leaving her mother alone to talk to that horrible man?

  And why weren’t the damn motion sensitive lights her dad was so proud of coming on? In addition to feeling assaulted by the cold, Ivy realized that her nerves were absolutely frizzled, contributing to the shakes that now had hold of her body.

  Not to mention the fact that Mac was still whining, high in his throat, which was starting to bug Ivy.

  “Shh,” she hissed. The admonishing pat she gave him was clumsy, even a bit rough. The car keys bit into her hand, so hard was she clenching them.

  The first of the lights flared on—finally—just as Mac’s whines exploded to a completely unfamiliar lone bark.

  Ivy came to an abrupt halt, brought up short by her dog before her feet registered the danger, and dug into the earth.

  Illuminated in the center of the bright cone of light was the utterly still figure of a second man.

  —

  The sky pressed down, a suffocating layer of gray.

  The man faced her, blocking Ivy’s path to both cars.

  She gave several rapid blinks of her eyes, trying to adjust her vision to the sudden onslaught of light.

  The man’s coat was unzipped and he wore the weirdest green outfit underneath. Other than that, he was actually kind of good-looking, in a bad boy sort of way. Old, though, like at least forty. His hair was buzzed, and he had some tats that started at his throat and traveled down beneath the collar of his shirt. He looked muscular, like he worked out a lot. Way too strong for Ivy to be alone with out here.

  She had her dog. She wasn’t alone.

  Mac had already let out a loud woof. Only one, but Ivy hadn’t known her dog was capable of making such a sound. Now he seemed back to his old self though, shrinking against Ivy, black lips pulled over the pointed tips of his teeth.

  “Keep a grip on your dog,” the man said flatly, “or I’ll shoot him.”

  Mac’s throat trembled with a dying rumble beneath Ivy’s hand.

  Ivy’s fingers dug into his fur; they hooked around his collar. But when her voice came out, it sounded surprisingly normal. Or not normal for her actually—more like Darcy’s perpetual jeer. “Mac? He’s not going to hurt a fly. Can’t you tell that?”

  The man lifted a gun almost lazily, and Ivy took an instant, twisted step back. She’d never had a gun held on her before. Shocking, Darcy intoned. Most kids have by this age. It looked just like in the movies.

  “You might as well learn now that there’s no place for you to go,” the man said. “Don’t try something like this again. If you do, I’ll get there before you. Every single time.”

  How long had the man been standing here, just waiting for Ivy to make a run for one of the cars? Couldn’t be too long; he didn’t look cold. He must’ve been watching her the whole time she was walking through the basement, and slipped out just before she did.

  Ivy’s skin, already raised and warty, broke into a million stinging bumps.

  “Who—are you?” she asked stupidly.

  Stupid because it was a dumb thing to do, just ask the bad guy for his name.

  There were two of them, she r
ealized. The big dude plus this guy.

  Ding, ding, ding, Darcy said inside her head.

  And stupid also because she knew who he was. Sort of.

  He looked like an older celebrity or something, like the guy who played James Bond in the movies. Super buff. Maybe he was part of some hipster band her parents listened to? Somebody recognizable anyway. He could almost have been someone’s hottie dad, the kind that made you a little bit psyched when you had to babysit his kid. Like Emily Randall’s husband. One way or another, this guy looked familiar. The only weird part—totally out there strange actually—was that he was at her house.

  The man thrust the gun in her direction. “Back inside.”

  Ivy hesitated. If she made a run for the car, he would outpace her, especially given Ivy’s unfamiliarity with driving. It would take a little while for her to start the engine and get going. Unless Mac interfered, let out another uncharacteristic bark, maybe even worse than that. But Ivy couldn’t count on such a thing from her pet, and anyway, what if the man really was willing to shoot Mac? She couldn’t imagine anybody hurting an animal, but Mackie’s early life proved there were people who would.

  The man took a menacing step in her direction, gesturing for Ivy to go ahead.

  Better to wait, see what he wanted, look for a less risky way out.

  Silently in the dark, Ivy stuffed the keys back into the pocket of her jeans.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The lights in the basement came on when they reentered, bulbs embedded in the ceiling. With just a few of them shining, weird shadows were cast: great wings flung out across the walls. Ivy felt dumb—Darcy would definitely say that she was—because she hadn’t thought to wonder why the lights had been on when she and Mac first came down from upstairs.

  The man had set them off. He’d been here, following their progress toward the door.

  Ivy went on thinking, so hard that it hurt.

  Then he’d gone outside to hide in the dark, await her arrival with Mac. Without even getting a chance to zip up his coat first. But if he’d wanted to hurt Ivy, he could’ve just grabbed her in here. It was like he was trying to prove a point by getting to the cars before they did, demonstrate who was in charge. Which maybe meant that he didn’t intend to hurt them.

  He hadn’t laid a hand on Ivy so far.

  She was still shivering, way too underdressed for the temperature, but her heart started to chug a little less violently.

  Against a near wall stood the junction box, its door hanging open. Her dad called this his command station, and it did look like something out of a dystopian movie, all blue lights and sheathed wires. Only not right now. The box was half-darkened, and wires poked out stiffly at odd angles, like miniature elephant trunks.

  Which, Ivy supposed, explained the Wi-Fi.

  She gulped around a clump of something in her throat. She felt as if the controls had died while she was on a chairlift. Here she and Mac and her mom and dad were, dangling in midair, cut off from everyone and everything.

  Ivy hunched over, aware of the man’s presence behind her as she and Mac walked across the vast space. She pulled her dog close, wanting the feel of his warm flank against her leg.

  Her dad’s other gun, a rifle, had been taken out of the safe and was lying on the floor. A whole bunch of stuff was arranged there. Ivy took everything in with a confused blur. A rough, thready webbing of rope; then a brighter coil, which her dad used for climbing, along with their carabineers; a roll of silver tape, dirt encrusting its sticky sides; a knotted chain; gleaming metal tools with hooked heads and jagged edges like fangs.

  Mac let out a series of high, hysterical yips.

  “You’re going to lock up that dog,” the man said. He pointed to a room where Ivy’s dad kept bottles of wine.

  Ivy began to shake her head. “No,” she said. “You don’t understand. I can’t. He can’t—”

  “Doesn’t matter if I understand,” the guy said, hard and fast.

  He looked a lot less attractive now, illuminated by the light inside. His buzz was too short, probably camouflaging gray, and his tat wasn’t cool or artistic, just kind of dark and blotchy. He wasn’t anybody famous. Who did he look like, then?

  “Please,” Ivy said, a totally alien warble in her voice. “Mac’s a rescue dog. He was traumatized—we don’t know how exactly—but anyway, he wouldn’t hurt a bug on the ground.”

  Mac rubbed against her, as if corroborating the point.

  “Please,” Ivy said again, detesting the strange croak in her voice. “He’s not any kind of watch dog.”

  “Save your sob story, or your dog’s going to die.” The guy twirled the gun so it wound up pointing in Mac’s direction. “Do you understand?”

  Ivy looked down at Mac. She nodded.

  “Good,” the man said. “Then do what I said.”

  Ivy began walking Mac toward the wine cellar. She turned back once, picturing letting Mac go, the leap he might make for the guy’s throat. But more likely was that he wouldn’t know how to do it, or be able to even if he did.

  The gun stayed aimed at Mac’s head. More effective than if it had been pointed at Ivy’s.

  They reached the little room and Ivy twisted the knob.

  Mac stopped walking. He became a lean, pointed dart of pure muscle, unwilling to be budged.

  Ivy bent down and wreathed her dog’s neck with her arms. “I know, Mackie.” She was crying, stinging pellets on her cheeks. “I know.” She caressed the soft fur on his legs. How much bonier those legs felt since the days when she used to pet them all the time. “But please go, Mac. Please. You’ll be safer this way.”

  Mac started that high yipping again.

  “Mac,” Ivy said, sniffing in a long, rattling chain. “I’ll come back for you. I promise—”

  When the safety came off, it made a noise like a detonation. Ivy ducked, expecting everything around her to explode.

  She turned, and saw the man curl his finger around the trigger.

  “Please,” Ivy said in a calm, level tone. She knew Mac wasn’t fooled, could smell the fear inside her. But maybe he also scented the sense of her words. “It’s just a little while in a nice, quiet room. I’ll turn on the light.” Her dad hardly ever used it, just ducked inside to grab the bottle he wanted. Ivy found the switch and flicked it. “And I’ll come back. Just like I said.”

  She went on, varying the repeated reassurances, stringing them together like beads. She didn’t hurry, even though she had no clue what might be going on behind her, where that gun was trained and when the guy might fire it.

  The slow drum of her words finally took effect, and Mac began to move. Backing up, he entered the room, holding Ivy’s gaze.

  “Good boy,” she said in the same voice.

  It sounded like the one that came out of her mother’s mouth. Ivy listened to its echo and despite everything going on around her, a distant memory came into her head. Two winters ago, her jacket had gotten soaked when she’d gone sledding. Ivy had forgotten to put it in the dryer and when it came time to leave for school the next day, her mother went and found one of her own coats instead of scolding Ivy about responsibilities and how could she be so forgetful. Ivy had expected the coat to billow, for her arms to be lost in its sleeves, but when she slipped it on, it almost fit. When she got compliments during the day, she’d replied casually, “Thanks, it’s my mom’s,” and the words had felt natural, too.

  At a certain point that connection had been lost, like a dropped call. Lately, the last thing Ivy had wanted was to be like her mom.

  Mac turned in a slow circle, then lay down on the floor and wound his tail around him.

  He looked at Ivy, and she expected the room to be shook by another volley of yelps, for the wine bottles to shatter from Mac’s high weeping, which she knew she had heard even if everyone said that dogs couldn’t cry.

  But Mac only closed his eyes, and Ivy was able to shut the door.

  It had just latched when the man came up
from behind and grabbed her around the waist.

  —

  He tilted her backward until Ivy’s feet left the floor. His arm felt like an iron band.

  Ivy wrenched and twisted the top half of her body, one hand clawing at his face.

  The man grunted, reaching for Ivy’s arms, and succeeding in clamping one of them. But the man had use of only one hand—he was holding on to something with the other—and so Ivy was able to keep her left arm free. She used it like a lever, throwing it upwards and making contact again with the man’s face.

  He roared at a volume that in any other house would’ve carried, brought Ivy’s parents dashing downstairs to see what was the matter. Tears of sheer, hopeless rage blistered in Ivy’s eyes. In any other house, at any other time, her parents would’ve come running.

  She kept pinwheeling her arm around, hitting the man, hitting herself, until the man hurled whatever he’d been holding. It spun through the air, coming to a stop when its snub metal end hit the cement wall. A volcano of dust erupted, then the object dropped. A hammer.

  The man had both arms available now, and he used them to try and wrestle Ivy still, but Ivy kept fighting. He almost had her, though. She was no match for those humps of muscle, which ground against her with lethal force. But just at the moment that Ivy was about to wilt in his hold, the man let out an enraged shout, and threw her down onto the concrete floor.

  Ivy landed with a thud that jarred her, kept her from getting to her feet. All she could manage was her knees, which ached, every part of her now ached, and tears began to fall as she tried to crawl.

  She tore a look back over her shoulder—oh, how it hurt her neck to do that; Ivy felt like an eighty-year-old woman—as she lurched forward.

  The man reached for her, and now he appeared totally different. No longer a hot older guy; in fact, hardly a man at all. More like one of the boys in Ivy’s school when they lost a game, or even one of the kids she babysat for, red hot and tantruming over something they’d smashed.