Enter, Night

House before dawn. Morgan looked at her mother. “Mom, this is Finn Miller, my friend. The one I told you about? The one who walked me home?”

Christina stared at the dirty, half-dressed boy in the foyer. “Of course,” she said automatically, extending he hand. He stared at it blankly. “Hi, Finn,” she said. “I’m Morgan’s mom. This is her uncle, Jeremy. Come inside where it’s warm.

Then Christina took his full, unkempt, tattered measure with instinctive maternal tenderheartedness. She was horrified by what she saw-dirt, blood, dried tear-tracks on his cheeks sluicing through the grime. “Are you OK, Finn? What happened? Where are your clothes? Why are you in your pyjamas? Where’s your mom?”

The last question turned the key in the lock of Finn’s composure. He stumbled into Christina’s arms and collapsed there, weeping. Again, instinctively, Christina gathered Finn in her arms and held him tightly while he sobbed. She could barely understand what the boy was saying, but she made out the words Mommy, my father, Sadie, window broke, and dead. Then there were more sobs, even more wracking this time than before.

“What’s going on?” Jeremy whispered to Morgan. “Who is this kid? Where are his parents?”

Morgan shrugged and shook her head. “He’s Finn. He’s my friend. He lives over on Childs Drive. He lost his dog a couple of days ago.”

“Sadie died.” Finn turned his wet face away from Christina’s shoulder. “She burned up. We were going for a walk and she went to catch a ball I threw, then she burned up.”

Jeremy said, “What do you mean ‘she burned up’? Finn? That doesn’t make sense. What are you saying?”

“Hush, Jeremy, let him talk,” Christina said over the top of Finn’s head. Then, to Finn, “Sadie is your dog, is she? Did she get lost?”

“No, she’s dead. She burned up.” His voice was calm now, and matter-of-fact.

Shock, Christina thought. Just like my voice when I first heard about Jack’s car crash. Whatever has happened to this little boy is obviously very, very bad.

“And then my dad went to look for Sadie last night,” Finn continued. “He didn’t come home for dinner, or even later. My mom was so sad, and she waited up for him. She was worried. She called the police. Then she told me to go to bed. And then… and then my dad came home. He killed my mom. He came in through the window. He broke it. There was glass all over the place, and then he… then he bit my mom and he… he… took her with him. Out. Out the window!”

“Finn,” Christina said carefully, looking only at him. “Were you in the house all night? When this… well, when this happened-whatever happened to your mom and dad? Were you there all night, in the house?”

“No,” he said in a hushed voice. “I got away-I hid.”

“Where did you hide, Finn?”

He hesitated. “I went to the church. I went to St. Bart’s. I got in through the basement window. I waited there till I knew grownups would be awake. When the sun was going to come up.”

He held out his hand, still clutching the jar full of liquid. When Christina tried to take it out of his hand to examine it, he held on more tightly. But when she said, “Shhhh, let me look,” and gave him another little squeeze, he let her take the jar.

Christina held it up. “What is this, Finn? What’s in here?”

“Holy water,” Finn said. “It’s holy water. In case my dad comes back.”

“The phone’s out at Finn’s house,” Jeremy said, replacing the receiver in its cradle.

“Are you sure you got the right number, Uncle Jeremy?” Morgan looked down at the open Parr’s Landing directory on the table. “Do you want me to read the number to you again?”

“No, sweetie-I’ve tried it twice now. No answer. His folks aren’t picking up.”

Morgan’s voice quavered. “What if it means they-what if it means they’re hurt or something?”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Jeremy said. Even has he spoke, he realized how ridiculously adult and fake-rational he sounded. Yes, of course, by all means-a little boy stumbles through the door of Parr House at seven in the morning and says his dog burst into flames and that his father broke through a window and murdered his mother, and you assure your fifteen-year-old niece that you’re “sure” they’re “fine.” You sound like your mother right now, Jeremy Parr. “I’ll take a run over there in a few minutes, Morgan. I’ll knock on the door and see what’s what.”

“OK,” she said. “Can I come?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “You stay here with your mother and your friend. I’ll be right back. And Morgan?”

“What?”

“Go on upstairs and knock-very gently-on your grandmother’s bedroom door and tell her we have a bit of an emergency situation going on here.”

“What’ll I say?”

“Tell her… tell her you have a friend who got hurt.” When he saw the trepidation on Morgan’s face, he smiled comfortingly and said, “It’ll be all right. She’s not going to bite your head off. You’re the one she loves, even if she doesn’t like the rest of us much.”

“Yeah, right,” Morgan said. “She hates me, too. Why can’t Beatrice do it?”

It suddenly occurred to Jeremy that there were none of the usual pre-breakfast sounds coming from inside the kitchen-no cutlery being laid out, and no clatter of china plates being placed on the mahogany sideboard in the dining room. Where was Beatrice? He’d never known her to be late-not in a lifetime of meticulously orchestrated breakfasts at Parr House.

“I don’t think Beatrice is here yet,” he said slowly. “And no, your grandmother doesn’t hate you. Now, wait till five minutes after I leave, then knock on her door.”

Morgan sighed. “OK, Uncle Jeremy. I will.”

“Good girl. Now, go wait in the sitting room with your mother and your friend. I’m going to run upstairs and get dressed, then go and check out his story. Go see if your mom needs anything for Finn.”

The Miller house on Childs Drive was exactly as Finn had described it- entirely nondescript except for the fact that the picture window facing the street was shattered.

When Jeremy entered the house-trying the door handle and finding it unlocked and, indeed, empty-he saw that the broken glass from the window was sprayed all over the carpet. There was none on the scrubby lawn outside. In other words, whoever had broken it had done so by smashing it from the outside.

Jeremy looked dubiously at the lawn. How did he get in here, assuming someone had? On a trampoline? Did he pole-vault in? He examined the glass on the floor, nudging it with his foot. Under an orange corduroy cushion he saw that the carpet was stained a brownish-red. He reached down and touched it. The carpet was still sticky, and his finger came away smeared red. Uh-oh, Jeremy thought. This isn’t good. Not good at all.

Fighting rising panic, Jeremy called out, “Hello? Is anyone here? Mrs. Miller? Mr. Miller?”

There was no answer. Jeremy would have been surprised had he received one. In a corner of the dining room floor, he saw the wall telephone. The jack had been ripped out of the wall, the exposed wires protruding like bones. He thought of checking the rest of the rooms in the house, but he already knew they would empty and he didn’t want to spend one more minute here than he had to.

“OK,” Jeremy said aloud. The rawness of his own voice in the grey dawn light filling the living room from the broken window startled him. “OK,” he said again, trying to sound calm and reasonable, if only to himself.

“Morgan, I know what happened to Sadie,” Finn said weakly. “I know what happened to my parents.”

“What happened, Finn?”

They were seated together on a divan in Adeline’s sitting room off the foyer. Finn had calmed down somewhat, but was still shaking from head to toe. Little bodily earthquakes, unsettling him.

From the kitchen, Morgan heard Christina making breakfast in Adeline’s vast kitchen. Her grandmother was still not up, and Morgan had not gone up to check on her as Uncle Jeremy had asked. Instead, she’d sat in an uncomfortably spindly chair next to the divan where Finn sat.

Finn turned his face away as though he changed his mind. “You wouldn’t believe me,” he said. “No one will. You’ll just say I’m crazy, or fibbing. My mom didn’t believe me, and now she’s dead.”

“Finn, try me,” she prodded. “Tell me. I’m your friend. I’ll believe you.”