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

Gasping, he sat up, alone in the light, alive and alone, the fork thrust forward defensively in his right hand. The shank of the weapon was bent at a severe angle from the handle, and the two long steel prongs were twined together as if they were ribbons.

23

THE SECOND GREEN GRAPE DROPPED FROM MINNIE’S FINGERS and passed without a sound through the surface of the mirror. Concentric waves lapped outward from the point of impact, but the grape did not bobble to the surface as it would have done in water.

Spooked but also exhilarated, Naomi said, “Pig fat! Minnie, we have to show Mom and Daddy, they’ve gotta see this, there’s somewhere else inside the mirror, this is like the biggest big news ever, this is so huge.” Pig fat was an expression of her own invention, so she wouldn’t always have to rely on her grandmother’s chestnuts and bullcrap. “It’s not such dumb scum now, is it, huh, is it, when it’s real in front of your face?”

As Naomi started toward the door, Minnie said, “Wait,” in that way she sometimes had that was older than eight.

Returning to the mirror, standing over it, Naomi said, “What?”

“We’ll see.”

In addition to the wavelets made by the grapes, rings of ripples appeared continuously from end to end of the mirror, like raindrops briefly and gently cratering the surface of a pond. Now that phantom-rain activity declined … ceased. The silver surface became calm.

Minnie plucked a third grape from the sprig, held it between thumb and forefinger, hesitated until Naomi began to fidget with impatience, and at last dropped it. The plump fruit hit the mirror, bounced, raised no ripples, rolled across the hard surface, and came to a stop against the frame.

“What happened?” Naomi demanded.

“Nothing happened.”

“Wow, brilliant, I see nothing happened, I’ve got two eyes. Why didn’t something happen, where did the magic go?”

“You said show Mom and Daddy, and it doesn’t want them to see.”

“What doesn’t want them to see?”

“It.”

“It what?”

“The it-what in the mirror, which could be just about anything, except I don’t think it’s your lah-dee-dah fairy-tale prince.”

Deciding to let the lah-dee-dah pass without a withering retort, Naomi said, “Why doesn’t it want them to see the magic?”

Minnie took a slow step back from the mirror and shook her head. “Because the magic isn’t magic, it’s something else, and it’s really, really bad. If Mom and Daddy see, they’ll take the mirror away from us, and the mirror doesn’t want to be taken away from us.”

“The mirror wants to stay with us? Why?”

“Maybe it wants to eat us,” Minnie said.

“That’s so big-baby silly. Mirrors don’t eat people.”

“This one ate grapes.”

“It didn’t eat them. They passed through it.”

“They passed through it to where it ate them,” Minnie insisted.

“Not all magic is black magic, Miss Gloomy Bloomers. Most magic is about wonder and adventure, new horizons and learning how to fly.”

“This isn’t magic,” Minnie insisted. “This is the kind of weird stuff that’s real.”

Stooping, Naomi reached for the grape that had failed to penetrate the glass.

“Don’t touch the mirror,” Minnie warned. “Only the grape. You better listen to me, Naomi.”

Naomi snatched up the grape, popped it into her mouth, then gave the mirror a quick pat.

“Don’t be dumb,” Minnie said.

Chewing the grape, swallowing, Naomi again patted the mirror with her fingertips to prove that she did not possess the fraidy-cat gene that made her sister a superstitious basket case, that she was capable of exploring a scientific phenomenon like this with a clear mind and healthy curiosity.

“You make me crazy,” Minnie said.

Grinning, Naomi patted the mirror a third time, longer than before: pat-pat-pat-pat-pat-pat- pat. “Maybe there’s a shark swimming in there, looking for more grapes to eat, and it’ll come up and bite off my fingers.”

“Something a whole lot worse than any shark,” Minnie declared. “It’ll bite off your head, and then what am I gonna tell Mommy and Daddy?”

Instead of patting the mirror again, Naomi pressed her right hand flat against the shiny surface and held it there.

Suddenly her hand went cold, and the mirror spoke or something within the mirror spoke, its voice ragged, wet, ferocious, sharp with hatred: “I know you now, my ignorant little bitch.”

The words literally stung Naomi, a volley of hot needles lancing out of the mirror, swiftly sewing through her arm, into her shoulder, up her neck, stitching across her scalp. She cried out, snatched her hand away, and fell backward on the floor.

Minnie scrambled to her—“Your hand, your hand!”—certain there must be fingers missing, torn flesh and bristling bones, but Naomi remained whole: no blood, no burn, not even so much as needle pricks stippling the palm of her hand.

The sting was emotional as well as physical, because Naomi had never before been the recipient or the dispenser of such rage and hatred. She loved the world and the world loved her, and all anger was but a momentary irritation, a fleeting exasperation, one petty vexation or another that evaporated soon after being expressed. Until the voice spoke of her with such fury and contempt, she had not fully comprehended that someone might exist who ardently desired that she should suffer humiliation, great pain, and even death. She didn’t need to infer those ill wishes in the voice of the unknown speaker, for they were implicit in the viciousness with which he had spoken.

She and Minnie sat on the floor, hugging each other, reassuring each other that they were all right, untouched and undaunted, and only gradually did Naomi come to realize that her sister hadn’t heard the voice. The man spoke only to her, through her contact with the mirror, and somehow the intimacy of this communication made it worse, creepier, more threatening.

Minnie expressed no doubt that the voice had been real or that it had said to Naomi exactly what she reported that it said. For her part, Naomi no longer questioned that the mirror must be a portal to some kind of hell rather than a door to Narnia, and she was as eager as Minnie to get it out of their room. In the rush of daily life, they were eight and eleven years old, they were as different from each other as salt from pepper, but in either a pinch or a serious crisis, they were sisters first and last.

Again Naomi wanted to tell their folks, but Minnie said, “It’ll sound like a big steaming bowl of the usual Naomi. Besides, I’ve got my own reason for not running around yelling about ghosts and stuff.”

Naomi was about to take offense, but the second thing Minnie said was more interesting. “What reason?”

“You can’t waterboard it out of me. And you know that’s true.”

The mirror had a smooth wooden back, and the girls agreed to lay it flat and slide it along the carpet rather than carry it, in part because it was heavy but also because they could push it with the toes of their shoes, with less need to touch it.

When they got to the storage room, however, they would have to lift it in order to tuck it away behind a bunch of other junk, where no one would notice it. They had no work gloves, but they did have white gloves for special occasions, like church at Easter, and they put those on before proceeding with the task, to avoid