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

unchecked anger, he used the poker to finish her.

So the boy’s mother did not abandon him, after all, and what he had been told about her growing revulsion at his appearance proved to be only another lie in the wilderness of lies that was Crown Hill and the Blackwood family.

With Anita dead and unable to lobby for her child, Teejay might have considered killing the boy at last, but instead he banished his only living son—who in the twisted limbs of the family tree was also his grandson and great-grandson—to the lonely tower room, as a vivid and living reminder to himself that in the quest to refine beauty into perfect beauty by incestuous breeding, the rose can be plucked only at the risk of an occasional thorn.

After drawing a card, Regina took three queens from her hand of eight cards and put them on the table.

“I tell you all this because Melissa and I, each of us, is in her first month with a new child. I’ve come to feel I’ve done enough—more than enough—to earn all that I should have coming to me.”

The awkward boy stood staring at the three queens, and in his mind he saw the cards bearing the faces of his beautiful mother, his beautiful aunt, and his even more beautiful cousin.

Not finished putting meld on the table, Regina revealed two threes that she augmented with a joker.

“While you’re deciding what all this means to you and what if anything you should do about it,” she continued, “you must remember three things. First, that I’m your mother’s sister. Second, that Melissa is not only your mother’s niece but also her half-sister. Third, of everyone at Crown Hill, only I—not even your mother— only I have ever told you the truth.”

Later, the boy understood that she expected him to kill Teejay. Instead, that night, he packed a knapsack that included only what he thought essential—including the photograph of naked Jillian hanging from the rafter. He forced his way into Teejay’s private suite and with a knife demanded money. He had no intention of harming the old man—who was a hardy seventy-three at that time—because to do so would make him a fugitive and ensure that he would be hunted down. He wanted freedom more than revenge. Teejay had twenty-two thousand dollars in a wall safe. The boy also took ten antique coins worth perhaps fifty thousand more.

At midnight, the boy set out along the driveway toward the front gate of Crown Hill. The raven had given him the night, and the night had been his tutor.

The boy now knew everything that the night knew, lessons for the life he would henceforth make for himself. Everyone was born to die. Sex was death. Death was sex. Being a predator was better than being prey. Hell must exist because there was an urgent and abiding need for it. He had no need of Heaven because he would secure a place of honor and privilege in Hell.

Mere minutes after midnight, the boy passed through the main gate, into the world beyond Crown Hill. At that moment, he became me. I am Alton Turner Blackwood, and I am Death.

49

AFTER LEAVING NAOMI IN THE THIRD-FLOOR MASTER SUITE, Melody Lane—talented spinner of tall tales about other worlds and cross-time sleighs with billowing sails, the willing and eager servant of Ruin and therefore a kind of spiritual sister to Alton Turner Blackwood—descends the back stairs to the ground floor. As she opens the door between the stairwell and the kitchen, she hears voices, the anxious mother and the father, coming from the nearby dayroom. She remains in the stairwell, behind the door, which she holds ajar, listening. When John and Nicolette hurry away somewhere, Melody enters the kitchen.

They have many handsome and meticulously sharpened knives to choose from: bread knife, butcher knife, turkey carver, pot-roast slicer.… They are good customers of Williams-Sonoma, and they buy the best quality. Though she admires their purchases, she believes they might be consuming more than their fair share. We all have a responsibility. Well, tonight their consuming ends. When she opens a drawer and sees the cleaver with the flat- grind blade, she picks it up and considers her reflection in the polished steel. For a child a year old or younger, Melody prefers drowning in a bathtub. For a child between two and four, smothering or vigorous strangulation. Blunt objects for any age. But for a fit boy of thirteen, who has been made wary by his recent experiences, an edge weapon wielded aggressively seems more advisable.

After closing the knife drawer, while still gripping the drawer pull, she asks for guidance, because she isn’t now being ridden and therefore does not share Ruin’s omniscient awareness of the family members’ whereabouts. The boy is in his room—and in a moment the youngest girl will join him there. The tender girl must be saved for later, and Melody will receive assistance with Minette’s bloodless detention. The boy is hers, and this reward excites her. He will be the oldest child that she has killed to date, and when she drinks his last exhalation, she will lick every wisp of it from the deep recesses of his ripe mouth.

Holding the LEGO wheel-like thing against her chest with her left arm, Minnie rapped on Zach’s door with her right fist. “It’s me and it’s important.”

He invited her in, and she found him sitting at the slantboard on his desk, just closing the cover on his drawing tablet.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Something bad is going to happen.”

“What’ve you done? Did you break something?”

“Not me. I haven’t done anything. It’s in the house.”

“Huh? What’s in the house?”

“Ruin. Its name is Ruin.”

“What kind of name is Ruin? What’s the joke?”

“Don’t you feel it in the house? It’s been here for weeks. It hates us, Zach. I’m scared.”

He had risen from his chair as she talked. Now he walked past her to close the door that she had left ajar.

Turning to her, he said, “I’ve had some … experiences.”

Nodding, she said, “Experiences.”

“I thought I was going freaking nuts.”

“It’s been waiting for the right time.”

“What’s been waiting? Who is this Ruin guy?”

“He’s not people like you and me and Naomi. He … it … whatever, it’s a kind of ghost I think, but also something more, I don’t know what.”

“Ghosts. I’m not so big on ghost stuff, you know. The whole idea seems stupid.”

Minnie could see that he didn’t really think ghosts were as stupid an idea as he might have thought they were back in September or August.

“What’ve you got there?” he asked, pointing to the LEGO wheel-thing she had trapped against her chest with her left arm.

“I built it from a dream, except I don’t remember how I could have put it together.”

Frowning, he said, “You can’t lock LEGOS together like that, not everything round and smooth and layered like that.”

“Well, I did. And we’ve got to keep it with us every minute tonight, ’cause we’re gonna need it bad.”

“Need it for what?” Zach asked.

Minnie shook her head. “Damn if I know.”

He stared at her until she shrugged. Then he said, “Sometimes you’re a little spooky yourself.”

“Don’t I know it,” she agreed.

In John’s study, Nicky had not switched off the computer. A page from the hologrammatic journal of Alton Turner Blackwood waited on the screen. John glanced at it, surprised that an apostle of chaos could have recorded his crimes in such neat handwriting. Of course, evil of the most refined variety had a respect for certain kinds of order—enemy lists, gulags, extermination camps.