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

accidentally touching bare fingers to the mirror.

Daddy was at work. Mom was in her studio. Mr. and Mrs. Nash were finishing their lunch or cleaning up the kitchen.

Only Zach might step out of his room and see them toeing the mirror along the hallway, but Naomi was confident they could handle Zach with one fib or another. Fibbing wasn’t like telling whoppers that could land you in Hell. Fibbing was lying lite, sort of like the caffeine-free diet cola of lying, so your soul didn’t gain any serious weight of sin from it. They would have to fib, because Zach would never believe that grapes had fallen through a mirror or that something in the mirror had threatened Naomi. Zach liked to keep things real; now and then, when Naomi was particularly enthralled with some fabulous new idea or possibility, when she was compelled to share every detail of it with everyone, Zach sometimes said, “Let’s keep it real, Naomi, let’s get it earthbound.”

After Minnie opened the door, scoped the hallway, and found it deserted, they slid the mirror out of their room. Using only their feet, they worked it quickly to the east end—the back—of the house. The reflection of the ceiling sliding ahead of them made Naomi a bit dizzy. Minnie said, “Don’t look at it.” But Naomi continued to look, because the more she thought about the voice from the mirror—I know you now, my ignorant little bitch—the more she worried that by pressing her hand to the looking glass and defying Minnie’s plea to be cautious, she had invited the mirror man to cross over from his side to theirs, that now he might rise out of the silvery glass.

She had thought of herself as a girl absolutely loaded with perspicacity; but now it didn’t seem very perspicacious of her to have done what she had done.

The storage room was the smaller of two guest bedrooms. It was three-quarters full of boxes and small items of furniture in rows with passageways between them. The end tables and chairs and chests and lamps, used in a previous house, were out of style in this one, but Mother was reluctant to dispose of them because they were still things that she liked and about which she was nostalgic.

They stood the long mirror on its side. Naomi pulling, Minnie pushing, hands protected by Easter Sunday church gloves, they slid this door-to-a-not-so-magical-kingdom past all the other junk and hid it behind the final row of boxes.

Mission accomplished, they returned to their room, examined their gloves to be sure they weren’t soiled, and put them away.

Professor Sinyavski would arrive in little more than an hour to torture them with math.

“I’m too emotionally wrung out for math,” Naomi declared. “I’m exhausted, the strain has just been too severe, my strength has been utterly consumed. I’m fatigued, there’s nothing left in me for math.”

“Eat your sandwich,” Minnie said, pointing to the lunch plate on Naomi’s desk. “You’ll feel better.”

They had left the closet door open. The absence of the mirror now posed a problem for Naomi.

“I won’t know how I look. I won’t know if my clothes match, if my hair’s properly combed, if some outfit makes me look fat. I could have a smudge of something on my face and not know and make a fool of myself in public.”

“But without a mirror,” Minnie said, “you gain like three hours a day to do something else.”

“Very funny. Hilarious. Yes, giggle yourself sick, go on, give yourself a massive hernia. But a mirror is absolutely essential to a civilized life.”

Giggles spent, Minnie said, “There’s mirrors in the bathrooms, and there’s one in the hall, and there’s a big one down in the living room. There’s lots of mirrors.”

Naomi was about to explain that the other mirrors were much less convenient, but another and troubling thought struck her. “How do we know the mirror man isn’t in those other mirrors?”

“We don’t know,” Minnie said, and this was clearly not a new idea to her.

“He couldn’t be.”

“Maybe he could. Maybe he couldn’t.”

Naomi shook her head emphatically. “No. Not every mirror can be an enchanted doorway to wherever. Magical things are magical because they’re rare. If everything was magical, magic would be ordinary.”

“You’re right,” Minnie said.

“If every mirror was a doorway to someplace fantastic … well, then there’d be confusion, chaos, pandemonium! The sky would be full of flying horses, and trolls would be running wild in the streets.”

“You’re right,” Minnie said. “It’s only that one mirror.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. And it’s gone, so now it’s safe to sleep at night.”

“I hope so. But what if I’m wrong?”

“Eat your sandwich,” Minnie said.

“Can I have your pickle?”

“No. You have a pickle already.”

“I wish I would’ve asked for two.”

“You already ate one of my grapes, and the mirror ate two,” Minnie said. “Nobody gets my pickle.”

“So keep it. I don’t want your crummy pickle anyway.”

“Yes, you do,” Minnie said, and ate her gherkin with much crunching and lip smacking.

24

HAVING RETURNED TO THE CITY FROM THE STATE HOSPITAL, John parked in front of a store on Fourth Avenue. Above the entrance, silver script on the sign matched the script on the green box that contained the calla- lily bells: Piper’s Gallery.

These two blocks of quaint brick buildings offered specialty shops of many kinds. The caliber of the vehicles snugged against the curbs suggested an upscale clientele.

Shagbark hickories lined the street, trunks gray and flaking. Their dark-green leaves would be deep yellow in a few weeks, and when they shed, the pavement would appear to be paved with gold.

Three customers were browsing in the store, two forty-something women in stylish pantsuits and a young man whose face seemed to be set in a perpetual dreamy smile.

John expected a gift shop, and it was that, but it was something else as well—though he could not quite define its retail niche. The merchandise seemed to be an incoherent mix, yet he suspected that a theme must connect each line of goods to the others. Although the regular customers appeared to understand that leitmotif, to John it became increasingly elusive the more he browsed through the store.

The items on the display tables were of high quality. Exquisite crystal animals: bears, elephants, horses. Coiled crystal snakes, lizards, tortoises. Cats outnumbered other mammals. There were many owls, as well. Goats, foxes, wolves. Another table presented clear and colored crystal forms: obelisks, pyramids, spheres, octagons.…

Past a table of magnificent geodes stood a collection of gold-plated and silver bells, small and superbly detailed. All were shaped as flowers, not just calla lilies but also tulips, foxgloves, fuchsias, daffodils.… Some were single bells, others triune, and the foxglove was a seven-bloom spill along a gracefully curved stem.

There were soaps, candles, oils of numerous scents, and the walls were lined with shelves holding thousands of small green jars of dried herbs. Angelica, arrowroot, caraway, basil, borage. Figwort and fever root. Marjoram and mayapple. Rosemary, sage, sweet cicely. Some jars contained powdered weeds: burdock, creeping buttercup, fireweed, nettle, shepherd’s purse, and thistle. Others had stranger names: wonder of the world, High John the Conqueror, mombin franc.

As he familiarized himself with the store, he became aware that the two women in pantsuits were intrigued by him and curious about what items attracted him. They watched surreptitiously, conversing in murmurs and whispers, not realizing he was alert to their interest.

He was not a man whose looks turned women’s heads. Furthermore, he lacked the aura of authority and the air of perpetual suspicion that made so many cops recognizable to one another and that common citizens often perceived at least unconsciously. His ordinariness in fact gave him an advantage as a detective, especially if he