The Night Visitors

Chapter Nineteen Alice

I HEAR OREN running up the stairs and follow him, but when I get to the top he’s nowhere to be seen and all the doors in the long hallway are closed. He’s hiding from me. I could be mad but that’s on me. I taught him to play hide-and-seek. It was our first game together when he started hanging around my back porch.

Our porches were next to each other. In the summer I sat out there to smoke after my shift at the diner. Davis would come out and offer me a beer. Oren would play with his toys. Han Solo and Luke and Leia, that was all he talked about. I told him I thought Star Wars was cool, even though I wasn’t really into all that spaceship and lightsaber stuff. But it was nice to have company and Davis—Davis had this slow smile that made you feel like you were something special, and I didn’t have anyone else in my life who made me feel like that. So maybe at first I was nice to the kid because I liked Davis, which is ironic because by the end I was just staying with Davis because of Oren. But back then I wanted to spend some time alone with Davis, so I told Oren that I’d play hide-and-seek with him.

“Yeah,” Davis said, winking at me, “you go hide, son. We’ll come looking for you.”

Oren had looked at his father doubtfully, but then he’d turned to me and handed me one of his grimy little toys. A plastic dog with its tail broken off. “This is Chewbacca,” he told me. “He’ll help you look for me. I’ll leave clues that you can follow but you have to count to a hundred before you come looking so I have time to hide good.”

“We’ll give you plenty of time, sport, now . . . scram!” Davis had lunged forward and shouted in a scary growl that made Oren yelp and my heart skip a beat. But then Oren was laughing as he ran and I figured that was just how they played. What did I know about how fathers played with their kids? The foster parents I lived with never had time for that “nonsense”; even Travis and Lisa, who gave us big speeches about being a “family,” always had another chore we had to do when we asked to play games. So I laughed too and started counting, but Davis started calling out random numbers to mess me up and then he pulled out a joint and we sat out there smoking and drinking. When we did get around to going inside and looking for Oren we saw that he’d set up this whole elaborate game for us to find him. He’d left his toys with goofy messages taped to them, like “Look someplace stinky,” which turned out to be in Davis’s Nikes, where we found another toy with another message—“Look someplace sweet,” which meant the sugar bowl.

That’s what he’s done now. I see the Wookiee standing on the windowsill on the landing with a Post-it note stuck to its feet.

I turn the Wookiee over and read the note.

“Find me where the hunter stalks the hare.”

Well, crap, Oren’s gotten a little more sophisticated since “Look someplace stinky.” This clue probably has something to do with the mythology book or that constellation book Mattie gave him. Could he have read it so fast? Maybe. I forget how smart he is sometimes. Scary smart, Davis used to say.

If it’s stars, then I know where he’s hiding. Caleb’s room, with the stars on the ceiling. Plus if Oren did take the Star Wars toys he’s probably looking for more. I’ll give him a few more minutes to sit and stew, though. There’s something else I need to read.

I take the newspaper out of my pocket and glance down the stairs to check for Mattie, glad there’s only this one staircase up, no back stairs like in some old houses. But there’s no one there. Mattie’s probably in the kitchen calling that cop. Maybe that’s not a bad idea. If that figure I saw was Davis . . . but no, there was no one in the barn and it’s snowing too hard for Davis—or that cop—to get out here.

I unfold the old newspaper and read the rest of the story about how Mattie’s family died.

Judge Matthew T. Lane was found dead in his home in Delphi, New York, along with his wife and ten-year-old son. Police suspect accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. The only remaining family member, Judge Lane’s 25-year-old daughter, Mattea Lane, discovered the bodies when she came home in the morning after being forced to spend the night at a friend’s house because of a blizzard. When she entered the house she smelled gas. She found the judge in his study, unconscious and unresponsive. Mrs. Lane, née Celeste Van Allen, was found dead in her bedroom. Ten-year-old Caleb Lane was not at first discovered, leading to the conjecture that he had escaped his parents’ fate, but after an exhaustive search of the house and grounds, Chief Henry Barnes discovered the body of the boy outside in the barn, where he had apparently died of hypothermia and exposure to the elements.

Froze to death, I think, remembering the boy in that story Travis and Lisa had told us. Mattie didn’t mention that detail. My parents and brother died of carbon monoxide poisoning, she’d said, not My parents died of carbon monoxide poisoning and my brother froze to death trying to get the hell out of this batshit-crazy house.

A gust of ice pellets hits the window, making me jump. There’s more to the story, but I’ve read enough. I fold up the newspaper and tuck it in my pocket. Then I walk down the hall to the boy’s room. It’s easy to tell which one it is, because it’s got a pattern of plastic stars on the door—a pattern just like the one that showed up on the window downstairs. I consider knocking, but I’m afraid Oren will just crawl under the bed, so instead I open the door slowly.

At first I’m so dazzled that I’m not sure what I’m seeing. Pinpricks of light dance around the darkened room. It’s like the star show I took Oren to see at the planetarium. He had begged to go because it was called “Star Wars.” I thought he’d be bored when he found out it wasn’t like the movie, but he liked it so much we stayed straight through three showings, hunkering down in our seats so they wouldn’t kick us out between shows.

“Oren?” I call quietly, scanning the room. It’s hard to make out anything through this crazy light show, which I realize is coming from a lamp on the night table. A constellation projector lamp. Oren asked for one at Christmas but it was too expensive. He must have been over the moon when he found this one.

I move cautiously across the room, expecting Oren to jump out at me any minute. But there’s nothing really to hide behind. The only place he could be is under the bed.

I walk slowly to the night table, offering up my bare and vulnerable ankles. “I wonder where Oren can be,” I say, mock-serious. “It’s too bad he’s not here to tell me the names of all these stars. Hmm . . . I think that one’s called Rumplepotomi Doofus. And that group over there must be the Three Stooges.”

I think I hear a tiny giggle from under the bed.

“And that must be the constellation of Snuffleupagus.” This time I hear a definite snort. “And this one, under the sign of the bed, must be—” I drop to my knees and grab under the bed, ready to pull out a giggling boy, but instead my hands close on dust balls. I sweep the space, finding only one small plastic figure, a miniature R2-D2 with a Post-it note that says: “These are not the droids you’re looking for. Look inside the house inside the house.”

What the—

I flatten myself on the floor to look under the bed for a trapdoor, somewhere Oren could be hiding, but just as I do all the lights go out. Followed, two heartbeats later, by a scream from downstairs.