What the Night Knows (with bonus novella Darkness Under the Sun)

The nightmare from which he had awakened was not that of a grown man. Boys dreamed such comic-book scenarios, boys with their newfound fear of death that came with hormonal changes as surely as did an interest in girls.

John’s and Nicky’s cell phones lay on the granite top of the vanity, recharging in a duplex plug. His cell rang.

Infrequently, he was called out at night on a murder. But the summons usually came on the third line of the four-line house phone, which was his private number. Charging, the cell phone should have been switched off. No caller ID appeared on the screen.

“Hello?”

His mellifluous church-choir voice at once recognizable, Billy Lucas said, “Did you have to throw away your shoes?”

John’s first thought was that the boy must have escaped from the state hospital.

He put his second thought into words: “Where did you get this number?”

“Next time we meet, there won’t be armored glass between us. While you’re dying, I’ll piss in your face.”

Conversation would serve only Billy; he was not likely to answer what he was asked. John did not respond.

“I remember them soft against my tongue. I liked the taste,” Billy said. “After so long, I still remember the sweet and slightly salty taste of them.”

John stared at the cream-colored marble floor with its diamond inlays of black granite.

“Your lovely sister, your Giselle. She had such pretty little training-bra breasts.”

John closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and swallowed hard to quell his rising gorge.

He listened to the killer waiting, to a gloating silence, and after a while he seemed to be listening to a dead line.

When he attempted to ring back his caller with *69, he had no success.

15

THE WIDE NIGHTSTAND BETWEEN THEIR BEDS ACCOMMODATED two reading lamps. Minnie left hers on the lower of two settings, the goose neck straight, so that the cone shade directed soft light at the ceiling. One of the little fraidy-cat’s dreads that sometimes tested Naomi’s saintlike patience was bats, specifically the possibility that a bat might get tangled in her hair, not only clawing and chewing open her scalp but also driving her insane so that she would have to pass the rest of her life in an asylum where they never served dessert. In this case, Minnie probably wasn’t worrying about bats, even though she had adjusted the lamp to the bat-banishing angle.

They were both reclining against piles of pillows, a position from which they could see the closet door and the barricading chair.

Although their parents expected a great many things of the Calvino brood, going to bed at an established hour was not one of them. They were permitted to stay up as late as they wished, for any purpose except to watch TV or play video games; however, they must be showered, dressed, and ready for breakfast with their mother and father promptly at 7:00 A.M. and alert during their home-schooling, which began at seven forty-five.

This coming Saturday, like every glorious Saturday, they would be allowed to sleep in as late as they wished, and breakfast would be an individual responsibility. Of course, if the shadowy thing swooping through the mirror was as hostile as Minnie seemed to think it must be, they might not survive until Saturday, in which case Saturday breakfast would be moot.

“Maybe we should tell Mom and Daddy,” Naomi said.

“Tell them what?”

“Something’s living in our mirror.”

“You tell them. Hope you like the nuthouse.”

“They’ll believe us when they see it.”

“They won’t see it,” Minnie predicted.

“Why won’t they see it?”

“Because it won’t want them to see it.”

“That’s the way it would be in a story, not in real life.”

“Real life’s a story, too,” Minnie said.

“What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t mean nothing. It just is.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“I’m thinking,” Minnie said.

“You’ve been thinking.”

“I’m still thinking.”

“Chestnuts! Why am I waiting for a pathetic eight-year-old to figure out what we should do?”

“We both know why,” Minnie said.

The chair under the knob of the closet door looked less sturdy than Naomi would have liked. “Did you hear something?”

“No.”

“You didn’t hear the doorknob turning?”

“Neither did you,” Minnie said. “Not this time, not the nine times you thought you heard it before.”

“I’m not the one who thinks a flock of bats will carry me off to Transylvania.”

“I never said flock or carry off, or Transylvania.”

A disturbing idea rattled Naomi. She eased up from her pillows and whispered, “There’s a gap under the door.”

Minnie whispered, “What door?”

Whisper discarded, Naomi said, “What door? The closet door, of course. What if it comes out of the mirror and slips under the door?”

“It can’t come out of the mirror unless you ask it.”

“How do you know? You’re in third grade. I’ve been through third grade—the spectacular tedium of it—I finished it in three months, and there was no lesson about shadowy things in mirrors.”

Minnie was silent. Then: “I don’t know how, but I know. One of us needs to invite it.”

Sinking back against her pillows, Naomi said, “Well, that’s never going to happen.”

“You can invite it all kinds of ways.”

“What ways?”

“For one thing, by staring at it too much.”

“Mouse, you’re just making this up.”

“Don’t call me Mouse.”

“Well, you are making it up. You don’t know.”

“Or if you talk to it, ask it a question, that’s another way.”

“I’m not going to ask it beans.”

“You better not.”

The room seemed colder than usual. Naomi pulled the blanket under her chin. “What kind of thing lives in a mirror?”

“It’s a people, not a thing.”

“How do you know?”

“I know in my heart,” Minnie said so solemnly that Naomi shivered. “He’s people.”

“He? How do you know it’s not a she?”

“Do you think it’s a she?”

Naomi resisted the urge to pull the covers over her head. “No. It feels like a he.”

“It’s definitely a he,” Minnie declared.

“But he who?”