As Night Falls Read online

The front door banged downstairs. Hard. It made the wall in her bedroom, which was right above the entryway, vibrate. Ivy’s dad always yelled at her for being careless with the door. “Hypocrite,” she said out loud, the word a surprising, bitter tablet on her tongue. Plus now her dad would probably be buffing out the mark on the wall when Cory arrived.

  Her phone trembled in her hand and Ivy looked at it again.

  so what do u say

  Ivy glanced out into the hall. She typed swiftly, before she could change her mind.

  sure come on over

  There came the sound of twin thuds then—hard to place, different from the door—and Ivy set her phone aside.

  “Mom?” she called out. “Dad?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sandy surprised herself by cleaning her plate. Pasta, salad, bread, all gone. A balloon of red wine drunk even. By dinnertime, she wasn’t usually all that hungry; actually, Sandy had never been the biggest eater. But tonight Ben had awakened all sorts of appetites, and Sandy felt a slow, grateful burn as she looked across the table to him.

  “This was nice,” she said softly.

  He gestured to the plates. “Great meal.”

  “Great lots of things,” she said, and he reached out, closing her fingers up in his.

  “Not much left to clean,” Ben remarked as they stood. He surveyed the lone pot on the stove, the sparse place settings required by just the two of them.

  “We could even leave it for tomorrow,” Sandy teased. She could no sooner imagine her husband putting off chores than she could see him resisting the challenge of a climb.

  But Ben surprised her, appearing to consider the idea before glancing at the clock. “It’s early,” he said, and it was, just a few minutes after seven. “I’ll finish up. Meet you upstairs.”

  A long, luxurious night stretched ahead. Sandy decided she would fill the oversized tub in the master bath, big enough for two, although they almost never used it. Maybe she’d even light a few candles, put on one of the CDs Ben had reminded her they used to enjoy.

  Sandy smiled at her husband. “Let me fix a dish for Ivy before you put that away.” She began to fill a bowl from the serving platter in the middle of the table.

  She was reaching for a chunk of garlic bread when the front door slammed against the entryway wall and a blast of cold air shot in.

  Ben frowned. “Did Ivy go out?”

  “She’d better not have…” Sandy began.

  The fact that it wasn’t Ivy registered in some low column of her brain. An oozing, primordial cluster of cells that lay beneath thought, beneath sensory input even. Long before Sandy heard the two sets of footsteps thudding toward their kitchen—and parsed that they were too heavy for Ivy or even some male friend of hers—she knew they were in danger.

  Sandy lifted her head. It felt as if she did it slowly, in discrete steps. First her eyes came off the bread plate with its gloss of butter upon the china. Her gaze sought out Ben, finding him by the fridge. And only then did she take in the two bodies that suddenly occupied her home.

  In truth, mere seconds must have passed, for both men were moving fast, one knocking over a chair with the bulk of his hip before the other appeared from behind.

  Everything inside Sandy came to a stop. Her blood turned to sludge in her body; her eyes were unable to blink. The muted light of the kitchen showered sparks across her line of vision. When she could finally see again, the second man was staring in her direction. His gaze pierced her like a spear. Then something came down in her mind—a garage door rumbling shut—and Sandy was able to turn away.

  A forest now filled her kitchen—brown stumps and green stalks—the color of the intruders’ clothes. Plus a strange, shocking slash, appropriate to autumn woods. Fierce scarlet painted across one of the coats, still tacky and glistening.

  Blood, recently spilled.

  Dimly, Sandy registered the fact that Ben hadn’t wasted a moment on any of the things people usually did when faced with a reality they couldn’t process. There was no protest or denial. Not a single who the hell are you or what are you doing in my house came from her husband’s lips. Instead he seized the closest weapon at hand, a bread knife lying on the counter, and leapt forward.

  The man he was trying to jump was enormous, but Ben had intuited the physics of the situation. He thrust the serrated edge of the blade out at a sharp angle, arm raised high above his head.

  The big man leaned down and wrapped his fist around the knife’s handle, stopping it in midair. In the next instant, the knife was in the big man’s hand and Ben was looking down at his crumpled fist. He didn’t seem able to open it, to uncurl any of his fingers. Ben bit back the howl that must’ve been building, but his eyes had gone muddy with pain. Sandy could see her husband suffering, and it made her want to weep.

  She started forward and the second man turned.

  His eyes were like bits of ash, cold and dead and gray. They were the eyes of a nightmare from which you never woke up.

  Sandy’s step faltered and her vision wavered, along with her hold on place and time. This couldn’t be the year 2015, and she couldn’t be a grown wife and mother, in the kitchen of her recently completed home, a house built with so much love and devotion by Ben for his family. A place to grow old in, to finish raising their child.

  Ivy.

  Sandy felt a fizzing in her hands, her wrists, an itchy sensation she almost remembered for a second, then just as suddenly was gone. She whirled around, Ben coming into sight. He ignored his injured hand to face off with both men.

  Sandy had the mad idea to pretend she simply didn’t see them. Maybe she and Ben could make it to the second floor, still have their night together. Unlike Ben, who had adapted so instantly to their new circumstances and acted so fast, Sandy was unable to resolve the place they had been moments before with where they were now. One part of her recognized her dissociation, but elsewhere images swarmed. Of Ben kneeing open their bedroom door, Sandy going for one of her prettier nightgowns, Ben remarking that she didn’t need to wear anything at all. She wanted this other version of the night so badly that she swayed.

  Her daughter’s name arrowed into her brain again, obliterating everything else. What was Ivy doing? Had she heard the commotion downstairs? Sandy couldn’t let Ivy walk into this blind.

  Her gaze spun, seeking Ben amidst the madness that had come.

  —

  Her husband had positioned himself on the opposite side of the table. He crouched low, a fighter’s stance, although Sandy took in the sheer impossibility of the task even if Ben couldn’t see it in his adrenaline-charged state. The man she’d been thinking of as the big one was more than big. He was an ogre, less human than creature from lore. He looked as if he would crush Ben beneath the sole of his shoe if he came around the table. En route, without even trying, simply by taking his next step.

  Except that Ben clearly had an idea, some sort of plan in mind. It moved behind his eyes, like a ticker scrolling across a screen. Although Ben’s gaze was aimed straight ahead, he looked as if he were considering something in their surroundings.

  What was it? Sandy’s gaze shot around the kitchen before the knowledge that Ivy was still unaccounted for slammed back into her consciousness. Thank God for earbuds and texting.

  Texting.

  Ivy might be able to summon help if she determined that something was wrong, and figured out not to come down. It was a lot to hope for from a fifteen-year-old, but Ivy had always been smart. Not only smart—capable, too.

  Thinking about Ivy, Sandy was assailed by one irrefutable thought. She could not, would not let these men near her child. Especially not the one with flinty eyes.

  Sandy shuddered.

  She had to assist Ben. She couldn’t just stand here, helpless. Options came at her like darts. Another knife, a different utensil from one of the drawers, some sort of lethal kitchen spray, maybe cleanser with bleach. Which would be closest at hand? Sandy turned around.

  The intrude
rs began to circle the table, Ben waiting in place, motionless.

  Only her husband’s eyes moved. Back and forth, between the two men, assessing the risks and dangers with laser precision, his gaze coming to settle on the enormous one. Which made sense. If he took out the threat who had twelve inches and a hundred pounds on him, that would even the odds dramatically. But Ben didn’t know what Sandy did, he hadn’t seen what she had in the other man’s eyes.

  Sandy tore her focus off her husband, and looked upward. The rack with its ring of copper pots hung above the island. Not two feet from where she stood.

  She took a sideways step, unobserved. Brought her hand up from its position by her thigh. At hip-level now. Then over her head, reaching, stretching, as she rose on tiptoes to touch one of the handles. The column of metal felt long and lean in her grasp, the welded-on pot heavy enough to require a second hand as she unhooked it and lifted it free.

  Bring it down on his head. The command was a horn blast in her mind. The second man was within her sights, then within her reach as he moved around the table, closing in on Ben. Each bristly hair upon his scalp grew magnified, a forest of buzz-cut splinters.

  Sandy honed in on her target.

  In an instant he was at her side, as if he had sensed her intent all along.

  The pot dropped with a thunk, denting the floorboards. At the same time, the man’s knee slammed into Sandy’s stomach and sent her flying backwards. She landed squarely on the chair behind her, as if the whole sequence had been choreographed.

  Ben saw the violence with which she had been struck, and fury arced from his eyes like electrical current. Sandy was surprised that the force of it wasn’t enough to flatten the man now holding her in place. Ben didn’t roar with rage, nor make a single sound that would’ve warned he was coming. At least, Sandy didn’t think he did; she was having trouble hearing over the buzz in her ears, and a sick thrum in the place where she’d been kneed. She felt as if she was going to throw up. Through blurred eyes, she tracked Ben’s movements. He had made his way over to the woodstove. The poker was on the far side, tucked into its tricky, notched stand. Ben bent down and picked up a log that was closer at hand.

  Sandy gasped to regain breath while Ben crossed the floor, silently, stealthily, the man pinning Sandy to the chair in his sights.

  The man turned around, still guarding Sandy. His fists were held up to block and parry a blow, and if Ben had already raised the log, the two men would’ve gone down in a clash of wood and limbs. But Ben was smarter than that.

  Without lifting his weapon more than a few inches off the floor, he drove it down punishingly onto the man’s foot.

  A great gust of time seemed to pass.

  The man didn’t double over, or make so much as a move. For a moment it seemed as if his foot hadn’t just received a shattering blow. Ben raised his arms, readying the log for a killing strike at the man’s head.

  There was a bellow, a wounded animal’s bleat of pain—“Harlan!”—and the big man jerked to.

  Ben hoisted the log higher to adapt to the new threat, and swung in a wild trajectory. Ben was an athlete though, well conditioned and strong, and for a moment it looked as if the wood—good, hard, seasoned oak—was going to make contact with the big man’s neck.

  Then the big man got up on tiptoes so that when the log struck, it hit his upper arm. An arm that was wider around than the piece of wood, and possibly as strong. The man straightened, rubbing his biceps as if he’d been bitten by an insect. He reached out and took the log out of Ben’s hand, a mere matchstick in his grasp. The man threw the piece of wood across the room; it landed on the loveseat with enough force that the small couch tipped over backward and fell.

  The other man stood over Sandy, his face chalky. “Harlan, take him out.”

  There was resignation in his tone. Whatever was coming, he hadn’t meant for it to happen, at least not right now. What would it be? What did take him out mean? Sandy had an image of Ben being released into the outdoors.

  The big man seemed as confused as she.

  They were both idiots.

  “I said, hit him,” the other clarified.

  The growl that came in response was more vibration than sound. It seemed to shake the whole room. “Okay,” Harlan said, and lifted his football-sized fist.

  Ben spun to find Sandy, opening his mouth. An idea, a command that he never got a chance to say. Harlan’s club of a hand came down on the back of Ben’s head, and Ben struck the floor face-first.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ivy got down off her bed, setting both feet on the floor with a stealth that almost made her laugh out loud. Stealth had been a vocabulary word last week. She was like a character in a video game, or in one of the old movies she and Melissa liked to stream. If Darcy could see her now, Ivy would never live it down. It’d be all, Who do you think you are, that dumb girl from Scream? for the rest of time.

  Mac was standing, blue eye and brown eye both narrowed and alert. He didn’t make a sound—Mac wasn’t a barker—but Ivy knew what her dog was telling her. No way would he stay behind while she went to scope things out. From the time Mackie had come to them, the one thing he could never stand was being alone. The guy at the shelter told her parents it was a reaction to trauma, but Ivy had never wanted to know too much about that. Anyway, she could see the effects. Being without one of them nearby was impossible for Mac.

  Solitude was his Kryptonite.

  Ivy liked superhero movies more than horror flicks. The old ones, not the glitzed-up new versions. How wrong the Green Lantern was had been the first conversation she and Cory ever had.

  Maybe Cory had come over. Could he be the one who’d made those loud noises downstairs? But Cory hadn’t had enough time to get here since Ivy sent her last text. He would’ve had to have just been sitting at the bottom of Long Hill Road or something, trusting that she would say yes. Which, Ivy realized, wasn’t as far-fetched as all that. Cory was one of the guys at school she and Melissa called sleek. They had sleek cars. Sleek, muscled bodies. Sleek lives. Cory was probably one hundred percent convinced that Ivy would invite him over when he asked. Who turned Cory Gresham down?

  He might also have banged the front door that carelessly, and then, oh, would he be off to a bad start with her father.

  Ivy entered the hall, speeding up to run interference with her dad. He and Cory should get along well; they were a lot alike. Athletic—no, outdoorsy—and both so easy and confident, as if they were certain that everything was always going to go their way in life.

  Ivy herself had never believed anything like that.

  Mac treaded along at her side, his flank pressed to her thigh as if held there by a magnet. His tail pointed straight down at the floor. Another sign of age—losing his jaunty wagging—or an indication that Mac was disturbed about something? For a second, Ivy wished he would growl. She and her dad used to joke about getting a kitten so that they would have a better watchdog. It was sad, though, really. Part of Mac had been buried during the first year of his life.

  Ivy squinted straight ahead. The hall to the stairway seemed endless when she wanted to fix herself a snack late at night, or had the idea to sneak out, even if she hadn’t done it yet.

  Mac sort of sniffed and jumped forward—a momentary leap back to puppyhood—before retreating and sticking himself to Ivy again.

  Ivy found herself whispering, even though she knew they wouldn’t be heard.

  “Something’s weird down there, right?” She felt it, too. She hadn’t just been watching too many movies, and it didn’t even matter if Darcy laughed.

  She and Mac reached the staircase, which seemed to float in place, no wall on either side, only a slender branch of railing to hold on to. When you were on the steps, it felt as if you were suspended high up in the air. A masterpiece, the builder had called it, after finally succeeding in bringing her father’s design to life. Ivy herself hated the staircase, hated this whole enormous house, in fact. She missed their old one
, a cozy Victorian back in town, painted the prettiest shades of pale green and lilac. Ivy and her mom had labored over those colors, going outside again and again, holding up sheet after sheet of tiny colorful squares. They’d been accompanied by some woman with a black Lab who was in charge of the whole fixing-up process—the woman, not the dog—and who swore that she loved this stuff, Ivy and her mom could take as long as they liked choosing.

  But then her dad had decided that their house—Ivy’s childhood home—was too small for them, not to mention too old-fashioned, and began creating this one from scratch. It was big enough that it couldn’t be in town, and the new school bus driver complained every single day about making the trip out here. Felt like a long haul trucker, he said. Her old school bus driver never would’ve complained. But Earl had retired, just one more piece of Ivy’s childhood gone.

  She stepped onto the top stair, Mac squeezing himself down beside her. She peered over the side, perplexed.

  Through the empty air to her right, Ivy could see that it wasn’t only the front door that had been treated with careless abandon. A chair was also overturned. And no way, even if Cory had gone and done something bizarre like that, would her father have just left it there. He liked his furniture—made by some master craftsman in Ohio and shipped all the way out here—almost as much as he liked this precious house.

  Ivy stopped her foot from reaching for the next step. She paused in place, motionless on the level plank of wood. Then, soundlessly, she began to back up.

  —

  She needed a few moments to think. Mac padded along toward Ivy’s bedroom in his own position of consideration, or relief.

  Another thing about this house, it was virtually soundproof. Ivy hated that, too. Someone could be practically on top of her before she heard them. Her mother, she’d always been able to feel somehow, at least know when she was around. It was like the two of them were connected by a sheer, invisible thread, something spun by an insect. Although lately that thread seemed to have gotten snipped. But with her father, Ivy might be lost in a homework assignment, or a conversation with Melissa, only to look up and see him looming in her doorway.