As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  They passed a tiny, lit-up cabin, but Mandy shook her head when Tim started to brake.

  “It’s that one,” she said, pointing. “Up there.”

  Tim was taken by rare surprise. He kept himself from muttering out loud. Vacationers had been coming up to the Adirondacks since the turn of the last century, imposing their great camps on the land. But their descendants would’ve rehabilitated the family lodge rather than constructing a new, shiny version of it. People who built houses like this one were hard for Tim to wrap his head around; brightly colored rain-forest creatures who bore no resemblance to any animals he knew. Living here, but not from here, submitting to north country conditions by choice instead of lack thereof.

  They passed a camp, sprawled across a half-acre of land, dying a slow death. Unoccupied, it looked like, although the field in front showed the recent cuts of a snowmobile, not entirely filled in yet. Kids probably, exploring. Not the best night to enter the wilderness, but since when did kids choose the best night for anything?

  The tires of the patrol car sent up a wake of snow as Tim pulled into a circular section of drive at the top of the hill.

  “Chief?” Mandy said. “Can I ask what we’re doing here?”

  She was eyeing the house with the same emotion Tim had sought to hide. Something akin to awe.

  “We’re here on a hunch,” Tim replied, opening his door and climbing out. Snow pelted him like BB shot. “If it proves out, I’ll explain my thinking.” He drew the brim of his hat down to keep the snow from dashing his face, and looked across the roof of the car to Mandy. “This is as good a time as any to learn that if half of the job is driven by rules, the other half should be steered by your gut.”

  Walking through the untouched drifts to a stone deck at the front of the house, Tim looked for hollows signifying footprints, but if there were any, they’d been obscured by fresh snowfall.

  Mandy followed. She knocked first, Tim happy to let her take the lead. When nobody answered, he took a turn, pounding his fist against the wood.

  Tim turned and looked around, the wind and the snow limiting sight. “Notice anything?”

  “The lights in the house are on,” Mandy said, “but no one seems to be home.”

  “And there are two cars,” Tim said, pointing. To the right, a Jeep and a late model sedan were buried to their hubcaps.

  “What can we do?” Mandy said. “That might be strange, but if no one comes to the door, we aren’t allowed to go in.”

  Tim eyed her. “One thing to know about Wedeskyull,” he said, reaching down to the fancy metal pull and squeezing with his gloved hand, “is that nobody locks their doors.”

  The door swung open, letting out a breath of welcome, heated air.

  “Hello?” Tim called. “Anybody home?” He looked at Mandy. “Come on. Let’s give a shout to make sure.”

  —

  In addition to warmth, the house breathed cooking smells.

  Spaghetti. Or pizza.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Tremont?” he called out. “Hello? Anybody home? This is the chief of police.” He walked toward a high, carved archway, still calling, indicating to Mandy that she should take a look around the rest of the first floor.

  In the kitchen, the remains of a meal were spread out.

  “Hello?” Tim said, the sound of his voice loud in the empty room.

  Too empty. Not only unpeopled, but—

  Tim frowned, looking around.

  He didn’t want either himself or anyone on his force to pursue practices like these—a search with no probable cause—but something about the scene gave him pause.

  He crossed to the stove, where a jug or urn of some sort sat on one of the many burners. Tim bent over and took a look. Tomato sauce. But what a strange way to heat something up.

  So now it’s a crime to use the wrong cooking implement?

  Tim squared his fists on his hips, adjusting his belt. He made a mental note to check for cross-country ski or snowshoe tracks in the fields, although the snow had been coming down hard enough that any trail was likely to be blanked out already. Maybe the Tremonts had been the ones on that snowmobile.

  He turned once more in the enormous space. His gaze took in a pair of sliding glass doors, huge walk-in pantry, an entrance to what must be the basement, and food and water bowls for a dog. Idly, he opened a cupboard door, drew out a drawer.

  Mandy walked back in with a shrug. “Everything checks out. No signs of disturbance.”

  Tim pulled open another drawer. “There’s something weird about this kitchen.”

  “Yeah,” Mandy said. “It cost more than my whole house.”

  “That and every single drawer is empty.” Tim circled the room, looking down, looking up. “That fancy pot ring doesn’t have any pots hanging from it.”

  Mandy followed his gaze.

  Tim walked across the floor—swept clean, and made out of some ultra slick, mottled substance he’d never seen before—not thinking, trying to empty his mind. It was how hunches usually resolved. In a state of non-thought, impressions aggregating until they formed a coherent picture. Tim squinted through the window above the sink. A black-and-yellow snowmobile had landed like a wasp to the left of the old camp.

  Tim crossed the room to the basement entrance.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked, his hand on the doorknob.

  “What?” Mandy said. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  Tim hadn’t either really. He paused before the now open door. The barest of noises, so faint as to not even count as sound.

  Mandy watched as Tim took the first stair, her face open, curious. “Chief Lurcquer? You going down there?”

  Whatever Tim did now would become part of this young officer’s breed of policing. And Tim had seen what lay down this particular road. Where it led, what it turned people into. How it made them do things until they were no better than the criminals they locked up, unfit to take care of the people they were charged with protecting.

  Everything was dark below, and silent. Tim turned and climbed back up.

  “I’ll call in our location to dispatch,” he said, unclasping his radio from his belt. “And then let’s go see who’s home at that other residence.”

  “You have a problem out there?” asked his dispatcher. “Want your men at the ready?”

  Tim glanced at Mandy to see if she’d taken offense at the men. Something else to put a protocol in place for. Changing times.

  “Negative,” he said. “I got nothing. Just a kitchen that doesn’t look right to me.”

  The radio crackled. “The wife got you doing the cooking these days, Chief?”

  Tim gestured to Mandy and they walked back through the bulk of the downstairs, pulled open that soaring door, and stepped outside into the snowfall.

  “Negatory on that, too,” he said before signing off.

  NOVEMBER 13, 1988

  Barbara stood by the front door, waiting for Gordon to get home with Nicholas. She’d expected them back earlier, and had been standing in her heels long enough that her feet had started to hurt. She kicked off her shoes and rubbed the ball of each foot.

  It was a late autumn twilight, purple and blue. Not enough light at this hour for them to be out there, doing what they were doing. Barbara walked across the house, shouting upstairs crossly. “Cassandra! Are you on the phone?”

  “No, Mama,” came the response. “And we have call-waiting now, remember?”

  Barbara returned to her perch by the door. A glossy pickup was just turning into the drive—the wood-paneled station wagon junked for parts years ago—and Barbara let out a relieved breath. She grabbed her coat, slipped her shoes back on, and hurried outside, the ache in her feet forgotten.

  Nicholas let himself down from the truck, his boot on the runner, not tall enough yet to step out at one go. He never wound up gaining much weight either, although his slightness didn’t seem to pose any sort of encumbrance in his life. Then again, could anything possibly encumber Nicholas? Barb
ara walked forward, about to pull him into her arms, when something stopped her. Not the blood that dabbed Nicholas’ camouflage jacket, but the look in his eyes.

  “Nicholas?” she said on a high, piping note.

  Her son turned away.

  Gordon climbed out of the truck. “Nick’s got some washing up to do.”

  Barbara watched Nicholas trudge into the house, not bothering to kick off his boots. Upstairs, a light signaled the occupancy of the spare bedroom. If Barbara could’ve transferred the poisonous brew from Nicholas’ face into that glowing room, she would’ve done so in a heartbeat.

  She looked around for Gordon.

  He had gone into the barn. The generator rumbled and the lights kicked on. Barbara took another look around, noticing the kill for the first time. In the truck bed, a six-pointed buck. Two rifles lay on the rack on the roof. Gordon walked back outside, wiping his hands on a rag.

  “I’d better go after Nicholas,” Barbara said.

  Gordon reached for her arm. “Might be best to leave him be.”

  Barbara looked down at her coat. Despite the rag, her husband had left blackish smears on the light-colored wool.

  “Look what you’ve done,” she protested. She tried to tug loose, but uncharacteristically, Gordon resisted.

  Finally, he freed her. “I think you should give the boy some space.”

  Barbara was halfway to the house, but something in Gordon’s voice—or maybe it was his demeanor, the unexpected way he’d held on to her arm—made her return.

  “Why?” she asked. “What happened?”

  Gordon looked up at a pocked moon rising. “Nick wouldn’t let me field dress the kill. That’s why I brought the deer home intact. Gonna make a helluva mess in the barn.”

  Barbara squinted in the deepening dusk, trying to make out the buck. Even fallen, he was a beauty, large and muscled, angled head still proud.

  Gordon’s voice drifted forth again. “He said the strangest thing.”

  Barbara felt as if a cold wind were rushing through her. Whatever Nicholas had said, she didn’t want to hear it. She lifted her head slowly, finding Gordon’s eyes in the descending dark.

  Her husband dropped his face into his red-smeared palms.

  “Gordon?” Barbara said faintly. “Are you—are you crying?”

  He looked up swiftly. Blood lent his cheek a clownish streak. “He told me that I’d better not cut the deer. Because once I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

  Gordon’s eyes changed focus then.

  Barbara turned around in her heels to see what he might be looking at.

  Nicholas stood in the entrance to the house. The moonlight gave his shadow an odd, lurching cast as he took a few steps into the dooryard, an oblong box thrust forward in his hands.

  “Is this for me?” he asked.

  —

  Gordon reached for the box. “It was, son,” he said. “But I can hold on to it for now. Why don’t you go on back inside? Let me finish up out here.”

  Nicholas turned in the direction of the deer. “You need my help to get that bad boy off the truck, Dad.”

  The tone made Barbara blanch. It was her boy’s voice—light, humorous, warm—but at the same time it wasn’t. There were depths beneath that statement, as if the words were only a thin skin of air over an alive and pulsing world. Barbara had always known Nicholas was smarter than she was, that there would come a day when she wouldn’t understand all that was going on in his mind. She just couldn’t believe that day had come so soon.

  Gordon flinched as if he had heard the same thing.

  “Besides,” Nicholas said. “I want to see what’s in the box. I want to see what you got for me, Dad.”

  Barbara turned back, an encouraging smile painted on her face. “Go on, Gordon,” she said. “Let Nicholas see his present.” She stepped close to her son, touching him on the shoulder. “I’d like to know what’s in the box myself.”

  Gordon’s mouth set in a thin, firm line.

  Nicholas lifted the lid. “Oh wow.”

  “What is it, darling?” Barbara asked, and looked.

  “Just lookee, Mama,” Nicholas said happily. “It’s a knife.”

  Gordon stared down at the dirt of the dooryard, hands linked behind his back. “I bought it before we went out today, son. But if you’re not going to hunt anymore, then I can return this, and get you something else.” He looked up. “Anything you want. Maybe some new records? We could even talk about a car for next year.”

  Barbara frowned. They had both been in agreement that a car was out of the question. Gordon felt it was too extravagant a gift, and Barbara worried that Nicholas might get hurt, especially if his friends encouraged him to drive recklessly.

  Nicholas studied the knife in its nest of padding. The handle looked to be made out of bone, stripped clean and smooth, its silver blade reflected in the moonlight. Nick lifted his arms, raising the box toward the sky.

  Barbara spoke. “You don’t want that, do you?”

  Ivory lit Nicholas’ features while he gazed upwards. He was so beautiful, like a statue carved out of marble. Barbara’s throat clutched. She moved in her son’s direction, pulled as the tide was now being pulled, many hundreds of miles away, by the very same moon.

  “You’re better than the men around here,” she said softly. “There are great things you’re going to do, that you’re destined for.”

  A cloud slid across the sky, blotting out the moon.

  Nicholas pulled the blade free, letting the box it had come in fall to the ground. He ran to the pickup, lowered the tailgate, and hoisted himself inside. Then he threw himself onto the dead animal, burying his face in its wiry coat. It looked at first as if he were sobbing, remorse and regret, into the stricken creature’s flesh. But then the stabbing motion of his hand revealed itself.

  Barbara let out a terrible cry, like the high, manic whistle of some faraway wind. She ran forward herself, arms flailing, stumbling in her heels, and climbed into the truck bed. Her knees smarted as she crawled toward Nicholas. Barbara gathered her boy into her arms, holding on to his hand, trying to stop it, so that for a second it seemed they were both driving the knife, again and again and again, into the deer’s belly.

  —

  Back inside the house, Barbara saw Cassandra bolt down the stairs. The girl entered the kitchen, its door swinging shut behind her.

  Barbara stilled just outside. A column of light shone from underneath the doorjamb. She blinked at its brightness.

  “Daddy?” Cassandra said. “What’s wrong?”

  The rush of water through the pipes signaled that the shower was on. Nicholas upstairs, cleaning up. Barbara turned around so that she could go dole out towels and soap.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Cassandra said then. “Things always seem worse at night, remember?”

  Minutes meted themselves out.

  “Nick was scared,” Gordon said at last. “But not of me. I mean, he said that he was, that he didn’t want me to start cutting. But really, I think he was scared of himself.”

  Another long, clawing silence.

  “It’s like what happened with your hands did something to him. Took the safety off. And today out there, hunting the deer, he had to ask for it to be put back on.”

  “You knew?” Cassandra whispered. “You knew he hurt my hands?”

  Oh, for God’s sake, Barbara almost said. She was pushing at the kitchen door when Gordon’s voice stopped her.

  “I do now, sweetheart,” he said heavily.

  “He’s going to kill somebody someday,” Cassandra said after a while. “Not a deer. A person. You know that too, don’t you, Daddy?”

  Barbara let the kitchen door fall shut, making sure it didn’t brush audibly against the jamb. She reached down and slipped off her shoes. Quietly, on tiptoes, she backed away toward the stairs.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Harlan, get me a knife from the kitchen.”

  Sandy’s heart gallop
ed upon hearing the command. She whirled around.

  Hark and Anita lay facedown on the shoe-abraded rug on the floor in front of their shabby couch.

  “Just for a little while,” Nick was saying as he wielded the roll of duct tape. “Once my friend and I are good and gone, Cassie—um, Sandy—here will come back and free you.” He smiled down at his captives, a light lifting of his lips that looked more menacing than a scowl. “That’s what neighbors are for, huh?”

  Tape, Sandy thought. He just wants to contain them for a while.

  The medication didn’t seem to be having any effect. Perhaps it was too soon. Or perhaps Nick was so fueled by adrenaline that it would’ve taken a boatload of pills to subdue him.

  “Harlan,” Nick said. “A little help here.”

  Harlan edged by Sandy, handing Nick a short, sharp knife and placing one of his boots upon Hark to hold him in place. The expression on Harlan’s face was wide and placid. His boot covered most of Hark’s back.

  Suddenly, Nick paused, sticky lengths of tape dangling from his teeth. His back had straightened and his eyes gone wide, ears all but pricked. Sandy shot a look around, wondering what he was responding to. The kitchen drawer where Harlan had gotten the knife snagged her attention. It hung open, a tempting silver array inside, blades and teeth and tines.

  Sandy took a step in that direction, already picturing her choice of weapon, and what she would do with it. Nick first. His throat. She couldn’t waste time on warning or an ambivalent attempt. With Nick gone, the threat Harlan posed would disperse like sand blown into the wind.

  Sandy squinted as she drew closer. There were other knives in the drawer, and what looked like skewers of some sort.

  “Harlan,” Nick said. “Take hold of my sister.”

  It was as if she’d been given the ability to fly. One moment Sandy was contemplating a move of desperate brutality, the next she was in Harlan’s arms and hovering above the floor.

  “And then all of you shut up,” Nick added.

  He stayed quiet, breathing, listening.

  With a single slice to the pieces of tape he’d applied, Nick set Hark and Anita free. Sandy frowned, watching her brother help them both into sitting positions.