Darkfall

Rebecca was already at the door, pulling it open. Jack called to her. She glanced back.

He said, “Wait for me downstairs, okay?”

Her expression was noncommittal. She walked out.

From the window, where he had gone to look down at the street, Walt Gresham said, “It's like the arctic out there.”

II

The one thing Penny liked about the Jamisons' place was the kitchen, which was big by New York City apartment standards, almost twice as large as the kitchen Penny was accustomed to, and cozy. A green tile floor. White cabinets with leaded glass doors and brass hardware. Green ceramic-tile counters. Above the double sink, there was a beautiful out-thrusting greenhouse window with a four-foot-long, two-foot-wide planting bed in which a variety of herbs were grown all year long, even during the winter. (Aunt Faye liked to cook with fresh herbs whenever possible.) In one corner, jammed against the wall, was a small butcher's block table, not so much a place to eat as a place to plan menus and prepare shopping lists; flanking the table, there was space for two chairs. This was the only room in the Jamisons' apartment in which Penny felt comfortable.

At twenty minutes past six, she was sitting at the butcher's block table, pretending to read one of Faye's magazines; the words blurred together in front of her unfocused eyes. Actually, she was thinking about all sorts of things she didn't want to think about: goblins, death, and whether she'd ever be able to sleep again.

Uncle Keith had come home from work almost an hour ago. He was a partner in a successful stockbrokerage. Tall, lean, with a head as hairless as an egg, sporting a graying mustache and goatee, Uncle Keith always seemed distracted. You had the feeling he never gave you more than two-thirds of his attention when he was talking with you. Sometimes he would sit in his favorite chair for an hour or two, his hands folded in his lap, unmoving, staring at the wall, hardly even blinking, breaking his trance only two or three times an hour in order to pick up a brandy glass and take one tiny sip from it. Other times he would sit at a window, staring and chain- smoking. Secretly, Davey called Uncle Keith “the moon man” because his mind always seemed to be somewhere on the moon. Since coming home today, he'd been in the living room, sipping slowly at a martini, puffing on one cigarette after another, watching TV news and reading the Wall Street Journal at the same time.

Aunt Faye was at the other end of the kitchen from the table where Penny sat. She had begun to prepare dinner, which was scheduled for seven-thirty: lemon chicken, rice, and stir-fried vegetables. The kitchen was the only place Aunt Faye was not too much like Aunt Faye. She enjoyed cooking, was very good at it, and seemed like a different person when she was in the kitchen; more relaxed, kinder than usual.

Davey was helping her prepare dinner. At least she was allowing him to think he was helping. As they worked they talked, not about anything important, this and that.

“Gosh, I'm hungry enough to eat a horse!” Davey said.

“That's not a polite thing to say,” Faye advised him. “It brings to mind an unpleasant image. You should simply say. “I'm extremely hungry,” or “I'm starved,” or something like that.”

“Well, naturally, I meant a dead horse,” Davey said, completely misunderstanding Faye's little lesson in etiquette. “And one that's been cooked, too. I wouldn't want to eat any raw horse, Aunt Faye. Yuch and double yuch. But, man-oh-man, I sure could eat a whole lot of just about anything you gimme right now.”

“My heavens, young man, you had cookies and milk when we got here this afternoon.”

“Only two cookies.”

“And you're famished already? You don't have a stomach; what you have is a bottomless pit!”

“Well, I hardly had any lunch,” Davey said. “Mrs. Shepherd — she's my teacher — she shared some of her lunch with me, but it was really dumb — awful stuff. All she had was yogurt and tuna fish, and I hate both of 'em. So what I did, after she gave me a little of each, I nibbled at it, just to make her feel good, and then when she wasn't looking, I threw most of it away.”

“But doesn't your father pack a lunch for you?” Faye asked, her voice suddenly sharper than it had been.

“Oh, sure. Or when he doesn't have time, Penny packs it. But—”

Faye turned to Penny. “Did he have a lunch to take to school today? Surely he doesn't have to beg for food! “

Penny looked up from her magazine. “I made his lunch myself, this morning. He had an apple, a ham sandwich, and two big oatmeal cookies.”

“That sounds like a fine lunch to me,” Faye said “Why didn't you eat it, Davey?”

“Well, because of the rats, of course,” he said.

Penny twitched in surprise, sat up straight in her chair, and stared intently at Davey.

Faye said, “Rats? What rats?”

“Holy-moly, I forgot to tell you!” Davey said. “Rats must've got in my lunchbox during morning classes. Big old ugly rats with yellow teeth, come right up out of the sewers or somewhere. The food was all messed up, torn to pieces, and chewed on. Grooooooooss,” he said, drawing the word out with evident pleasure, not disgusted by the fact that rats had been at his lunch, actually excited about it, thrilled by it, as only a young boy could be. At his age, an incident like this was a real adventure.

Penny's mouth had gone as dry as ashes. “Davey? Uh… did you see the rats?”

“Nah,” he said, clearly disappointed. “They were gone by the time I went to get my lunchbox.”

“Where'd you have your lunchbox?” Penny asked.

“In my locker.”

“Did the rats chew on anything else in your locker?”

“Like what?”

“Like books or anything.”

“Why would they want to chew on books?”

“Then it was just the food?”

“Sure. What else?”

“Did you have your locker door shut?”

“I thought I did,” he said.

“Didn't you have it locked, too?”

“I thought I did.”

“And wasn't your lunchbox shut tight?”

“It should have been,” he said, scratching his head, trying to remember.

Faye said, “Well, obviously, it wasn't. Rats can't open a lock, open a door, and pry the lid off a lunchbox. You must have been very careless, Davey. I'm surprised at you. I'll bet you ate one of those oatmeal cookies first thing when you got to school, just couldn't wait, and then forgot to put the lid back on the box.”

“But I didn't,” Davey protested.

“Your father's not teaching you to pick up after yourself,” Faye said. “That's the kind of thing a mother teaches, and your father's just neglecting it.”

Penny was going to tell them about how her own locker had been trashed when she'd gone to school this morning. She was even going to tell them about the things in the basement because it seemed to her that what had happened to Davey's lunch would somehow substantiate her story.

But before Penny could speak, Aunt Faye spoke up in her most morally indignant tone of voice: “What I want to know is what kind of school this is your father's sent to you. What kind of dirty hole is this place, this Wellton? “

“It's a good school,” Penny said defensively.

“With rats?” Faye said. “No good school would have rats. No halfway decent school would have rats. Why, what if they'd still been in the locker when Davey went for his lunch? He might've