As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  Ivy began scrambling faster, and the man grabbed her leg, pulling her backward.

  She screamed, loud and long.

  He dragged her like a sack behind him, headed in the direction of that awful array of items, rifle and rope and tape and tools. Lengths of wood, too; Ivy saw two-by-fours her dad had never gotten around to using. Ivy kept screaming the whole way, until finally the man whipped his body around, maintaining his hold on her leg so that it twisted at a pain-splitting angle. He dropped her just before the bone would’ve cracked, but Ivy’s sudden freedom meant nothing. Her leg throbbed so badly, it might as well have been broken. She couldn’t scream anymore; she could hardly even whimper.

  The man lunged toward the pile on the floor. Then he came for Ivy.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Not a second passed between the moment Sandy registered the bud of Ben’s recovery and the time when her gaze shot back to Harlan, to her lap, anywhere but the other side of the room. It was as instantaneous as fire igniting. She had to keep Harlan distracted so that Ben would be able to take him from behind. If he acted quickly, her husband would have the advantage of surprise this time. Or would it be better for him to simply run out of the house, go and get help?

  Ben would never run.

  It occurred to Sandy that it was taking an awfully long time for Harlan’s companion to return from the basement, and just as swiftly followed an explanation as to why.

  Maybe he’d found Ivy.

  Sandy suppressed the idea before it could take hold of her. Time got distorted during crises, slowed and pulled like rubber cement, or hastened to the speed of a lightning strike. It was possible that far less had passed than it seemed.

  More than likely, Ivy was still upstairs, blithely texting away and hanging out online. Her daughter could spend an entire night this way, even if she hadn’t been trying to prove a point by not joining her parents for dinner.

  Sandy took another look at Ben.

  Her husband wasn’t going to be able to act fast.

  He had risen to his feet, but barely, bracing the overturned chair with both hands for assistance. His legs wobbled as he tried to take a step toward Harlan.

  A megaphone seemed to magnify each noise Ben made as he stumbled, although Harlan appeared ignorant, focused on whatever Sandy had unleashed inside him during their talk.

  She had to keep him occupied, give Ben time to recover. Sandy opened her mouth, and the question that came out had been rising inside her ever since Harlan took off his coat.

  “Why did you get sent to prison?” she whispered. Making Harlan lean down, get closer to her.

  “Armed robbery,” he said. No pause, as if a question required a response whether Harlan liked it or not. “I’m a bandit,” he added with a slower bloom of pride.

  Sandy nodded, hardly hearing. Ben was walking on his own now, but wavering, as if someone were tugging at him. His vision looked unfocused; a starfish of red floated in one eye.

  Sandy clutched at something else to say. “How much time did you serve?”

  Harlan’s features bunched. “Enough with the questions.”

  Ben took another step before his knees buckled and he went down. His flattened hands hit the floor, which at least spared his head.

  Harlan began to turn around, his body moving slowly, like the barrel of a cement mixer, and Sandy lashed out for something, anything that would summon him back.

  “Sorry. Stupid question,” she said.

  Harlan gave her a nod, then began to frown.

  “I mean, you escaped,” Sandy offered casually. “So what does it matter what your sentence was supposed to be?”

  Harlan bent down, and Sandy got a whiff of the threat he could apply without even intending to. His torso was so big, it overtook her own. Harlan could cut off air, constrict her like a python, just by leaning in too close.

  Ben got back to his feet. He pressed both temples so hard that it looked as if his fingertips would penetrate his skull. Then he gave a hard shake of his head, wincing with pain.

  “It’s okay,” Sandy said wildly, speaking as much to her husband as to Harlan. “I don’t care if you escaped. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  Mollified, Harlan straightened.

  Sandy slid her chair forward, trying to shift Harlan within reach of Ben. Harlan took a step back when the wooden seat touched his shins, and Sandy went on, gathering words that were sure to please, the reflecting phase of therapy where you didn’t challenge a thing. “Sounds like you were right to escape. I mean, robbery isn’t such a bad crime.”

  “That’s what my daddy says,” Harlan replied.

  It took Sandy a moment to parse that. “Is your father a rob—a bandit, too?”

  Harlan’s fists began to knot, great coils of roped fingers. “How do you know so much?”

  “I just like to talk to you,” Sandy said. Another few inches with the chair, another few steps backwards on Harlan’s part. “You’re interesting to talk to.”

  No longer any kind of therapy; this was sheer, blunt flattery.

  “Me?” Harlan said.

  Despite everything, Sandy felt a bolt of sorrow at how completely he seemed to doubt it.

  Ben took a look around the kitchen, flinching with pain as his neck and shoulders swiveled. Ben had been knocked out for the part where Harlan had rid the room of anything remotely resembling a weapon. Now he bent down, as slowly as an old man, and tried to hoist the only object left, one of the chairs.

  “Yes!” Sandy said, though she was no longer sure what she was responding to. The cry was both an answer to Harlan and a cheer for Ben.

  She scooted her chair a final few inches forward. Harlan stepped back, clumsy but unresisting, as if getting moved around was the condition of his life.

  The chair leg pitched forward in Ben’s trembling grasp. It was going to drop, alerting Harlan, surely, maybe even reverberating all the way down to the basement.

  An idea slammed into Sandy.

  Harlan followed instructions. Yet there was one he had failed to heed.

  “You were supposed to decide,” she said, in a tone of command.

  Harlan’s gaze traveled a long way down. “What?”

  “You were supposed to decide what to do about my lying,” she said. “Remember? That’s what your—” She broke off, swallowed. “—friend said before he left.”

  With quivering arms, Ben lifted the chair into the air. Not high enough. It would splinter against the massive wall of Harlan’s back. Ben needed to go for the soft spot just below Harlan’s skull. But any blow would be better than none, at least catch Harlan off guard.

  Her husband’s biceps shook as he sought altitude.

  “You’d better do it now!” Sandy shouted, the message applying to both men.

  Harlan gazed down at her, unaware of the missile level with his shoulders.

  Sandy could see her husband’s chest heaving. His vision still appeared cloudy and unfocused, but luckily his target was huge, not requiring precision.

  “I did decide,” Harlan said. His mouth lifted in a rusty smile.

  Ben gained a final margin of height.

  The movement of his body changed subtly though detectably then, at least to Sandy, who sat forward in her own chair, clenching its lifeless wooden sides.

  “Don’t make me change my mind,” Harlan added, but his words sounded listless. Harlan appeared to be somewhere far away, carried there on the wings of what had transpired between him and Sandy, a brute misuse of her training.

  Ben started to bring the chair down. Arms still wobbly, shaking, but gaining strength as gravity aided his swing.

  At the moment Ben began to attack, the flinty-eyed guy entered the kitchen. His timing was pinprick accurate, as if he had been standing nearby for a while, allowing Ben to struggle, and for Sandy’s hopes to rise. One hand was twisted behind his back, its contents concealed by the pantry door. The other swung the butt of the gun in a high, arcing trajectory through the air, knocking the
chair out of Ben’s hands, and breaking a bone in his wrist with a firecracker snap.

  —

  Ben appeared to consider his useless right arm for less than a second, a field examination when the conditions that had led to the injury continued to pose a threat. Then he wheeled around, lingering unsteadiness gone, and slammed his fist into the other man’s firing hand before the man was able to pirouette the gun into position.

  The gun flew across the room, landing with a metal thwack.

  The man had been slowed because he was still one-armed, keeping hold of something at an odd angle, by the pantry. Sandy made out a slash of red across his cheek. He’d gotten cut.

  Harlan would be distracted now, awaiting his orders.

  Sandy assimilated all of this in the cluster of seconds it took for her to stand up. It felt as if she’d spent her whole life yoked to that chair. Freedom beckoned, but like any longtime prisoner, she was at first unable to conceive what to do with it.

  The gun. She had to get the gun.

  She raced forward, but skidded to a halt when she heard a second crash. She tore a look over her shoulder.

  Ben had gone down, stumbling as he aimed for one of the wooden daggers on the floor, pieces of the broken chair. He got up, right arm hanging by his side while the other wielded the makeshift weapon. Ben lashed out with the piece of wood just as the tattooed man yanked hard and brought out what he’d kept hidden.

  Sandy whipped around, fast as the strike of a snake, all thoughts of the gun instantly expunged from her mind.

  “Ben! Stop!” A paralyzing shriek, sufficient to freeze everyone in the room.

  But Ben had a plan to pursue, and the enemy in sight. In the wake of Sandy’s cry, he lifted the spike of wood and drove it forward.

  There came a ferocious shout—“Take her!”—and the call to action animated Harlan.

  Then the man with the deadened eyes spun around, and Ben tripped as his spear met air instead of a body. The wood left his weakened grasp like a bar in a relay race, winding up in the other man’s stronghold.

  Sandy scarcely registered the smooth exchange because her gaze was pinned to Harlan, who had reached down to pick up Ivy as if he were plucking a weed out of the ground.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Her daughter let out a yelp, muffled by a slash of silver duct tape, and Sandy blinked away the afterimage of the gun lying on the floor across the room. Too late to try and get it now; Sandy needed to concentrate on her child. Ivy had twisted to get a look at the enormous man holding her aloft. Harlan frowned upon seeing the tape. With the fingers of his free hand, he nudged the tape loose, pulling it off as gently as if he were peeling a slice of fruit.

  Sandy felt a pulse of bitter, throbbing regret. Ivy never should have had to face this. If there was one thing Sandy would’ve wanted for her daughter, it was to preserve her from this.

  What kind of denial had she been in to imagine Ivy tucked away in her room this whole time? Sandy helped her patients dismantle walls in therapy every day, yet she herself had bricks enough to fortify a whole city. How stupid was she, picturing Ivy upstairs, doing what? Playing with dolls? While her parents were taken prisoner below. Did Sandy even know her own daughter anymore? Ivy would never be so out-of-it, so unknowing. Ben, yes. Sandy herself maybe. But not Ivy.

  A sob crawled up Sandy’s throat as her gaze roved over Ivy’s dangling form. Sandy knew every inch of her daughter. Had watched her go from a round nugget of baby to a teetering toddler; grow from a coltish, overlong little girl into a lithesome teenager. She’d noticed the changes, seen them coming before anyone else—before Ivy herself did.

  And so she saw what was different about Ivy, what hadn’t been there when her daughter flopped down on her bed earlier that night. There were red streaks on Ivy’s fingertips, muddy half-moons beneath her nails.

  Sandy’s gaze traveled to the cut on the other man’s face.

  Ivy had fought.

  It explained the strange way her daughter held herself as she hung from Harlan’s hand. Cradling one arm, keeping her legs from swinging. She looked stiff, as if she’d taken too challenging a yoga class, or gone on too long a run. Or as if someone had hurt her.

  Sandy felt a searing, sucking pain in her chest. A heart attack, an attack on the heart.

  Ben stood nearby. She saw him looking at the floor, scouring it for new shears of wood. And mixed with love and admiration for her husband’s strength came a poisonous rinse of rage. Sandy had always counted on Ben to guide and steer things, allowed him to at least, but now those traits were putting them all in danger. The loss of her reliance on him was as vast a shift as any she’d had to make since the intruders had entered her house.

  “Ben!” Sandy screamed. “Stop! Don’t you see?”

  The cry had a cruelty to it because Sandy realized that Ben really might not be able to make sense of this situation. He was acting on instinct—fight not flight was Ben’s way—but that sparkler of red persisted in his eye.

  Now he executed a wobbling turn, and Sandy pointed to Ivy.

  Ivy went still, her legs dangling eight inches above the floor. Harlan held her by the scruff of her shirt like a kitten.

  Ben’s good hand rolled into a fist again, and Sandy suppressed a shriek. But Ben just stood there, blinking up at Ivy, as dazed and disbelieving as Sandy.

  The other man had been eyeing them both. Now he bent to shove the gun into his sock, and crossed the room in a few swift strides. Something seemed to make him flinch; he looked down at his foot. Then he swept up the pieces of chair with a clatter. Using the sole of his left shoe, he broke the wood into shorter lengths, one dry, bone-cracking split after another. The stove let out a baked gust of breath, greedily gobbling the fresh fuel as the man fed it.

  Sandy watched the blue-green flames shoot out, reaching for the air beyond the door.

  Ben readopted his defiant stance, thighs slightly bent, good arm raised, panting as he confronted Harlan.

  “Ben,” Sandy pleaded. “Stop. Just stop fighting and see what they want.” They had to want something, right? Harlan had said they planned to leave soon.

  The other man kicked the stove door shut with a thud. “I would listen to the lady,” he drawled. “She sounds pretty smart.” He made no move for the gun he had stashed. He didn’t consider Ben a threat, or perhaps he simply knew that Harlan could handle any threat.

  “If I tell Harlan to dislocate one of your daughter’s arms, he will do it,” the man went on, in a voice flat as an untouched sea. Numbingly cold, depthless, devoid of any emotion. “If I tell him to dislocate the other one just to make it match, Harlan will do that, too. If I instruct him to break your daughter’s neck…” The man stooped for a final shard of wood, snapping it in half to demonstrate. “…no problem. Are you getting the pattern here?”

  Any lingering trace of defiance left Ivy’s face, and her body went rigid in Harlan’s grasp.

  Sandy reached in her direction. “No, honey, it’s okay—” Laughable words, ridiculous, to tell her daughter all was well while she dangled from King Kong’s fist.

  “Ah-ah.” The other man held up a hand. “I’d really prefer that everyone stay right where they are until we get things straight between us.”

  Sandy stopped. Better to be still anyhow. So that she could hear, and figure out what needed to be done to save her family.

  “Listen,” the man went on brightly. “This is a good-news/bad-news kind of thing. If I don’t tell Harlan to act, he won’t. And that means that your precious princess should be all right, so long as the two of you cooperate.”

  Ben turned slightly, settling narrowed eyes on the man.

  “Would you like a demonstration?” the man asked.

  Sandy instantly swung back around. “What?” she said, an awful whisper, alive and frantic. “No, please—”

  “Harlan,” the man said. “Let go of her.”

  Harlan’s huge hand opened, and Ivy tumbled from his grasp.

  —


  As soon as she was on the floor, Ivy scooted backward as far as she could go. Her back banged against the kitchen wall, and Ivy hunched over, trying to catch her breath. She gingerly felt for her shoulder, then her leg. A small whimper left her mouth.

  The tattooed man looked down at her. “Quit complaining.”

  Sandy needed his eyes off her daughter. “What is it that you want from us?”

  He turned in her direction. “Too bad you didn’t ask that an hour ago. Then maybe all of this—” He wafted an arm out over Ivy on the floor, Ben’s pain-bent form, and the destruction of the kitchen. “—could’ve been avoided.”

  “What do you want?” Sandy repeated, enunciating each word.

  The man pointed to Ivy on the floor. “Make sure she stays there, Harlan.”

  Harlan got down beside Ivy, carefully lowering his big body. Still, the room trembled when he sat, and Ivy curled into a smaller ball. She was moving more ably already. The resiliency of youth. But Sandy knew that things had happened tonight from which her daughter wouldn’t rebound so readily.

  Sandy could at least cap it at this. She clenched her hands, awaiting the man’s response.

  He regarded her. “Well,” he said, the same empty brightness in his tone. “You’ve probably already figured out that we—Harlan and me, that is—have got ourselves a bit of a situation. Kind that says we can’t stay around too long.”

  Sandy glanced at Harlan. Seated on the floor, his eyes met hers straight on. His cheeks looked swollen and flushed; he didn’t like this topic.

  “So we came here for some help,” the other man went on. “Equipment. A little route-planning. Due north should do it.”

  So Sandy needn’t have bothered pretending she didn’t know the combination to the safe. Ben had the knowledge these men required to complete their escape. Sandy’s family might have gotten out of this without a scratch if only Ben had been less of a combatant.

  The realization was a slug to the chest.

  She lifted her chin, emboldened by the role her husband was to play. “I need to treat his arm before anything else,” she said. “Splint it, I guess. He’s in a lot of pain.”