What the Night Knows

41

AFTER THE MORNING LESSONS WITH THE KIDS, NICOLETTE retreated to her third-floor studio, intending to make significant progress on the painting in which Zach, Naomi, and Minette were prominently featured. She’d had an excellent night of dreamless sleep. She felt rested and buoyant. Yet when she returned to the unfinished canvas, she was as disturbed by it as she had been the previous evening. It still struck her as being about loss, despair, which was far from her intention.

She decided not to address the troubling canvas for a few days and instead to do some preliminary composition sketches for another picture. She moved the vase of yellow humility roses and the thermos of fortifying tea from the tall table by her easel to another tall table by the draftsman’s board.

More often than not, she worked in a silent studio. Art was not just images but also a kind of music in her mind, and sometimes real music could be a distraction from the inner melody.

That morning, however, she had watched the news while dressing for the day, had seen the terrible story about the rampaging cop and the murdered family, and had been unable to stop thinking about it. In the silent studio, the photo of Davinia Woburn, shown on TV, kept coalescing in Nicky’s mind like the visage of a ghost materializing from a cloud of ectoplasm. She programmed a few hours of Connie Dover CDs, haunting Celtic music to distract her mind from the haunting face of that tragic child.

In spite of the news and the disturbing painting of the kids, the mood of the house remained felicitous. As inexplicable as it had been persistent, the oppressive pall of recent days, which lifted the previous afternoon, was gone—until ten minutes past two o’clock.

As Nicky refined a third iteration of the preliminary sketch, the atmosphere in the house changed so distinctly and suddenly that she glanced at her watch as she might have done to mark the exact moment of a car crash in the street or the first note of a doomed airliner’s shrieking descent.

She started to get up from the draftsman’s table, as though some urgent situation demanded her attention, but then she hesitated and sat down again. She’d heard no alarming noise. No screams. No anxious shouts. The house sailed on as calmly now as it had at 2:09.

On reconsideration, she acknowledged that the mood shift surely must be hers, internal. A house couldn’t change moods any more than it could change its mind.

Nevertheless, the suddenness of the transformation seemed strange. Nicky wasn’t a manic-depressive. She didn’t abruptly drop off cliffs of emotion or feel her heart soar like a helium balloon.

Instead of picking up her pencil, she sat listening to Connie Dover sing “The Holly and the Ivy,” which charmed her bar by bar. When she began to draw again, however, she couldn’t entirely shake the feeling that somewhere in the house, something wasn’t right.

After Lionel Timmins left, John thought he wouldn’t be able to nap anymore. When he sat with the Daily Post in the armchair in his study, however, he soon put the paper aside.

In sleep, he walked vast subterranean chambers and endless corridors of cold stone, climbed and descended chiseled staircases that curved like Mobius strips: an exitless architecture that said, Your quest is hopeless, your strength inadequate, your escape plan useless. He trudged alone except for one moment when a cruel voice spoke to him out of the labyrinth: “Ruin.” It was as intimate as Lionel’s voice when he had leaned over the armchair to shake John’s shoulder, and it woke him, but only briefly, long enough to blink at the clock on the desk. He had been asleep less than an hour. It was 2:10 in the afternoon. He dropped once more into the maze that was carved from a mountain of tombstone granite.

Because that afternoon there would be neither a math session with old Sinyavski nor an out-of-house art class with Laura Leigh Highsmith and her radically perfect mouth, Zach went down to the small gym on the garage level to work out with free weights. Although more buff than most thirteen-year-olds, he would be fourteen in two months, signing up for the marines in maybe three and a half years, so he couldn’t slack off. He needed to jam the freaking weights like a starving monkey in an experiment pumping a handle for treats.

Weights were stupid, but lots of things were stupid that you had to do to get where you wanted. He shifted his brain to Neanderthal, where he could concentrate narrowly on dumbbells, on barbells, and on trying to avoid torsion of the testicles during certain exercises. He recently read about torsion of the testicles, and it sounded like about as much fun as being circumcised with hedge clippers.

For about forty minutes, he rocked great, pumped like a starving but careful monkey, until he was soaked with a godawful lather of reeking sweat, his motion smooth and rhythmic, his form correct. The humiliating and fully weird Rubber Boy moment came when he was lying on the bench, pressing the weights high, arms extended straight up and locked in the eighth repetition in a set of ten. He began to bring the bar down toward his chest, and suddenly it seemed to weigh three times what it should. His arms quivered, he couldn’t control the barbell, he strained harder, his arms seemed to turn to rubber, and the bar came down on his freaking throat instead of on his chest, right on his Adam’s apple. Wimp.

Zach had for totally damn sure not put too much weight on the stupid bar. He didn’t do bonehead things like that. He increased the weight only when his dad was there to spot him, to help if the new poundage overwhelmed. He felt as if some superfreak was pushing down on the bar, like a reverse spotter who wanted to crush his windpipe. He could half hear this crazy wicked laughter inside his head, not his laughter, a mean ugly laugh. The thing in the service mezzanine—I know you, boy, I know you now—would have a laugh like this.

Zach strained so hard he could feel his pulse hammering in his temples, eyes bugging out, throat swollen with his effort, so like in maybe two minutes he would die from a crushed airway or from a stupid artery popping in his idiot brain. Couldn’t take the stress longer than that. He checked the wall clock for his time of death—2:10 now. If he held out two minutes, he’d die at 2:12, because this wasn’t San Quentin, the freaking governor wouldn’t call the warden at the last minute like in those dumb-ass prison movies. Zach was crying, damn-damn-damn, not with fear or self-pity, really, but because he was straining so freaking hard that tears popped from his eyes like sweat popped from his pores.

When the clock of doom ticked from 2:10 to 2:11, the weight of the barbell abruptly returned to normal. Zach thrust it off his throat, racked it with a clang, and sat up on the edge of the bench, gasping, shaking. When he wiped his surprisingly cold hands across his face to slough off the sweat, he discovered he had strained so hard that his nose was bleeding.

Sometimes Naomi enjoyed reading in the queen’s eyrie. That was what she called the second-floor window seat in the guest bedroom. The space was about eight feet long and almost three feet deep, with plush cushions and piles of comfy decorative pillows, which allowed her to recline elegantly, regally, as if she were the queen of France in a chaise longue, taking a much-deserved respite from the rigors of being a benevolent ruler to adoring subjects. Three French windows looked into the massive oak and down on the south lawn, which the tree had recently begun to carpet with scarlet leaves. Très belle.

Only eighty pages remained in the novel about the cultivated dragon who was tasked with civilizing a savage young girl and turning her into a Joan of Arc who would save an imperiled kingdom. Naomi was eager to finish the tale and begin the sequel. The story was kind of like My Fair Lady but with sword fights and derring-do and wizards, and instead of Professor Higgins, you had a dragon named Drumblezorn, which made the whole thing just fabulously more interesting without sacrificing literary quality.

Immersed in the story, Naomi was rudely yanked back to reality by a sudden burst of wind that thrashed the oak and rattled a storm of leaves, like scarlet bats, against the windows. Startled, she peered out into the red chaos, half expecting to see a funnel cloud. The whirling leaves clicked and hissed and tap-tap-tapped across the glass for at least a minute, such a beautiful spectacle but also a bit disquieting. This was one of those moments that wise Drumblezorn called is-but-is-nots, when ordinary objects and forces—leaves and wind—created an effect that appeared to be entirely ordinary but was not, when the hidden reality beneath the apparent reality of our world rose almost into sight.

In front of the window seat stood a tea table and two chairs, creating a charming conversation area where Minnie Half-Pint always steadfastly refused to play ladies-at-tea and improvise worldly dialogues. The whirling wind died as suddenly as it arose, and when the leaves fell away from the windows, Naomi turned her attention once more to her book—and from the corner of her eye saw a woman sitting in one of the nearby chairs. Startled but not alarmed, Naomi gasped and leaned forward from the bank of decorative pillows.

The stranger wore what might have been antique clothing: a simple ankle-length tunic dress with bishop sleeves, a high round neckline, gray with blue piping. She was pretty, but she did nothing to accentuate her attributes. She wore no makeup, no lipstick, no nail polish, and her unstyled brown hair hung straight and drab, as though she might be some kind of Shaker or Amish person.

In a soft, gentle, and magically musical voice that mesmerized Naomi, the woman said, “I am embarrassed and greatly sorry if I startled you, m’lady.”

M’lady. Whoa! Naomi knew instantly, even more instanter than instantly, that this was beyond a mere is-but-is-not moment, that here was Something Big unfolding just when she thought she might never experience any adventure outside of what she found in books.

“I would have preferred not to come to you by way of the wind and the tree, with so much drama. But the mirror was painted over, m’lady, leaving me with no other door.”

“My sister,” Naomi said, “she’s only eight, you know how it is, her skull’s not totally full of brains yet, she’s a fraidy-cat. But—what am I going to do?—I love her anyway.”

She realized she was babbling. There were a gazillion questions she should ask, but she couldn’t think of any; they blew around in her mind like a tumult of leaves and wouldn’t remain still so that she could grab one.

“My name is Melody,” the woman said, “and when the day comes, it will be my great honor to serve as your guardian and your escort home.”

Honor? Guardian? Escort? Home?

Putting aside her book, swinging her legs off the window seat to sit on the edge of it, Naomi said, “But this is my home. Isn’t it my home? Well, of course it is. I’ve lived here since … since I’ve lived here.”

Leaning forward conspiratorially, Melody said, “M’lady, for your own protection, the memory of your true home has been repressed by a spell, as have those same memories in your brother and sister. The agents of the Imperium would long ago have found you if you knew from where you came, and the assassins of the Apocalypse would by now have run you down.”

All that sounded thrilling and romantic and precisely the most desirable degree of scary, and Melody almost glowed with sincerity, and her stare was direct and unwavering and piercingly honest, and her plain-Jane manner wasn’t what could be expected of some faker. But although Naomi couldn’t put her finger on the problem, she felt that something wasn’t quite right with this scenario.

As if sensing her lady’s doubt, Melody said, “Your true home is a kingdom bright with magic, which you have long suspected.”

With that declaration, the woman raised one arm and pointed to the ceiling with her index finger, as if calling down some power from on high.

Every drawer in the dresser, the highboy, and the nightstands flew open as far as they might without crashing onto the floor, and the book about Drumblezorn levitated off the window seat three feet, four, five. When the woman closed her raised hand into a fist, every drawer slid shut—thump, thump, thump, thump, thump!—and the book flew across the room, slammed into a wall, and fell to the floor.

Electrified, Naomi shot to her feet.

Rising also, Melody said, “In a month or slightly more, m’lady, the circumstances in the kingdom will be ripe for your return, all your enemies destroyed, the way made safe. I’ve come today only so that you will be prepared when I appear again on the night that we must travel. At that time, your memory will be restored, and it will be most essential then that you do as I, your servant, request.”

In all the years that she fantasized about a moment of revealed destiny like this, Naomi had imagined a thousand times a thousand clever responses to such a messenger, but she had never expected to be speechless. She heard herself speaking disconnected syllables that might have been the start of words, and then she managed to stammer full words but couldn’t put them in coherent sentences. Feeling not at all like a m’lady but very much like a pathetic eight-year-old half-pint booby, she finally said, “Does do Zach Minnie know, like you told me, does you did you tell them, and my parents?”

Melody dropped her voice to a whisper. “No, m’lady. You are the supreme heir to the kingdom, and only you need to be prepared ahead. It would be too dangerous for all of you to know until the very last assassins of the Apocalypse are rendered powerless. This must be your secret, and you must guard it well until the night I return, or else you and everyone you love might die.”

“Chestnuts!” Naomi declared.

Pointing to the windows, Melody said, “Regard the tree, m’lady. Regard the tree.”

As Naomi turned toward the windows, the wind from nowhere burst into the calm day again and shook the great oak as if to shatter it and cast its broken limbs against the house. Stripped from branches, flocks of scarlet leaves flew against the windows, with a sound like wings beating frantically against the panes. The exhibition was scary but, oh, so beautiful as well: sunlight and shadow playing on the glass, trembling multitudes like crimson butterflies.

As the wind abruptly died, Naomi remembered Melody and turned to her, but the woman was gone. Evidently she had departed by way of the wind and the tree, whatever that meant.

The door to the second-floor hallway stood slightly ajar. Naomi couldn’t recall if she had left it that way, but she didn’t think so.

She ran out of the guest bedroom, glanced left, right, and found the hallway deserted. She listened for rapid footsteps on the front or back stairs, but she heard none.

In the guest room once more, she hurried to the book that had levitated and flown. She snatched it off the carpet. She dashed to the window seat and knelt on the cushions to watch the last leaf in the glorious multitude settle toward the lawn. Pressing her forehead to a cold pane of glass, straining for a glimpse of Melody dwindling through the branches toward some magical realm or an impossible door closing in the trunk of the oak, she saw nothing more than a big beautiful old tree readying itself for winter.

Her heart raced and she thought it might never stop racing. She was exhilarated although confused, delighted but frightened, totally convinced yet riddled with disbelief, amazed, astonished, eager but wary, impetuous, cautious, buoyant but sad as well, as close to crazy as she had ever been.

Naomi couldn’t imagine how she could keep such a secret for one week, let alone for more than a month, for one day, let alone one whole week. On the other hand, she knew in her heart she was a protagonist, not an antagonist, not the secondary female lead who might or might not go over to the dark side, who might lack the perspicacity to do the right thing. She was the true lead, the right stuff, a veritable Joan of Arc who could be mentored by dragons but never-ever defeated by them. Perhaps she should have her hair cut in a pageboy, like Joan of Arc was sometimes depicted, or maybe even shorter and a little shaggy, like Amelia Earhart, the vanished aviatrix. So much to think about, so many possibilities to consider. Pig fat!

Earlier, Melody Lane drives from the Nash house to the Calvino residence in her Honda, aware that she is possessed, with a full understanding of the nature of her rider. She offers no resistance. She has no fear. Even more than Reese Salsetto, Melody welcomes her rider. She is delighted by the possibilities of cooperation with it, pleased to have the benefits of its protection and its power.

When she was twenty-four, Melody killed her three children—ages four, three, and one—after deciding that motherhood is limiting and boring, and after she learned that humanity is a vile planet-killing plague that Earth can’t survive. She saw it on TV. A documentary about the end of the world and about how it is unavoidable. We all have a responsibility. As each brat died, Melody kissed it, inhaling its final exhalation, which symbolized that she was participating in the salvation of the planet by eliminating the CO2 breathers who were polluting it every time they exhaled. The planet is a living thing. We are lice on the planet.

She murdered her louse, Ned, her husband, and made it appear to be suicide. She saw it on the Internet: lots of ways you can make a homicide appear to be a suicide. Her attempt to stage the children’s murders as Ned’s work deceived the finest crime-scene investigators with all their high-tech devices and scientific wizardry. Not such a bunch of smarties, after all. Her alibi proved ironclad.

This success has enhanced Melody’s self-esteem. Self-esteem is the most important thing. You can’t make the life you deserve if you don’t have enough self-esteem.

Too long, she believed that she was ordinary, unimaginative, not very bright, something of a schlump, as colorless as dishwater. But then she gets away with four murders, and she is doing something socially useful, even important, at the same time. She realizes that, after all, she is interesting, just like Dr. Phil and so many other famous TV hosts have been for so long telling her she is.

Over the past four years, she has murdered three other children, in two different towns. She wishes she could have disposed of dozens, but she is cautious when selecting her targets. The oil companies need new generations to exploit, and if they ever discover she is eliminating their future customer base, they will be ruthless.

All her life, Melody has been ignored by everyone but Ned. And Ned was a bully. He liked her only because she could never stand up for herself and always just hung her head and let him curse her and heap abuse on her—until the night she didn’t. They say you are what you eat, and Ned ate a lot of ham and pork and bacon. Now she knows that she is as interesting as most people and more interesting than many, with her secret life.

They say that the meek will inherit the earth, but if that’s true, by the time the inheritance is paid, it won’t be worth spit, the earth will be used up, burnt out, like Mars. On TV they have all these dance competitions, talent competitions, chef competitions, designer competitions, and no matter what kind of competition it is, the meek never win. The prize always goes to the most aggressive, to the most confident, to the person who has the most self-esteem. Melody has noticed.

She parks in front of the Calvino residence, walks boldly to the door, and lets herself inside, using the key she got from Preston Nash. She has no fear of discovery. Her rider knows where everyone is in the house at all times, and it will guide her through these halls and rooms without an encounter that might compromise her mission.

With a brief conjured windstorm provided by her rider, she makes a dramatic appearance before Naomi Calvino. The rider knows the girl to her core, but Melody knows how to talk to the girl. She has always been able to talk to children at their level, to charm them, to tell stories in ways that enthrall them, to make them laugh. This seemed like a worthless talent until she started killing children to save the world, whereupon it facilitated gaining the trust of her prey. Each of her own children giggled in delight when she started to kill it, certain that this was just another of her fun games. Well, it was fun, but not for them. They are the plague. She is the antibiotic. We all have a responsibility.

After she finishes the job with the Calvino girl, Melody leaves the second floor by the front stairs, as quiet as a wraith. As she puts her hand on the knob of the front door, the rider departs her to remain with the house.

Melody Lane is aware that the rider will summon her to return, no doubt more than once. She will come when called and will welcome its renewed presence in her blood and bones. When the time to kill arrives, she hopes that Naomi will be hers and that she will be able to suck the dying breath from the girl’s mouth.

Meanwhile, the rider has given her several tasks to perform. She must acquire and then make ready certain items, and she understands precisely how to prepare them. Melody doesn’t need to be ridden in order to do her master’s bidding. For the pleasure of participating in its slaughter of the Calvinos, especially the ruination of the children, she intends to serve it of her own free will.

Minnie had just gotten a bottle of juice from the refrigerator and was twisting off the cap when she turned toward the French door between the kitchen and the terrace—and saw the golden retriever peering in at her from outside.

Willard had been dead for two years, but she still remembered exactly what he looked like. This was Willard, all right, or rather it was Willard’s spirit, just like those ghosts at the convenience store except that half of Willard’s face wasn’t shot off.

He was beautiful, like he had been in life, the best dog ever. Minnie’s heart swelled—it actually felt as if it were swelling like a balloon in her chest—at the sight of him. She could feel her heart ballooning all the way up into her throat.

But then she realized that Willard hadn’t come back from Heaven to play or to wring tears from her, but to show her something. He was pawing at the glass, not making any noise, but pawing at it anyway. His tail wasn’t wagging, as it would be if he wanted to chase a ball or beg for a treat. And the expression in his eyes, in the lift of his upper lip on the left side, meant what it had meant back in the good old days when he was alive: I’m trying to tell you a thing here. It’s so obvious even a cat would get it. Will you please, please, please pay attention?

Minnie put her juice on the kitchen island and hurried to the door. Willard scampered away as she approached, and when she pushed through the door and stepped onto the patio, the dog was waiting for her on the north lawn.

Willard’s forelegs were splayed, his head thrust forward and slightly down, in that partial play bow that meant Chase me, chase me! You can try, but you can’t catch me! I’m a dog, I’m faster than the wind!

She ran toward him, and he sprinted out of sight along the north side of the house, toward the street. When she turned the corner, she saw him standing on the front yard, looking back at her.

As she raced toward Willard, the retriever faded: first red-gold and beautiful, then gold and beautiful, then white and beautiful, then semitransparent and still beautiful, but then gone. Minnie felt her heart swelling again, and she just wanted to drop to her knees and cry. But she kept going until she stood on the very grass where Willard had last been visible.

On the public sidewalk, as though she had just stepped off the flagstone front walk that led from the porch, a woman in a long gray dress moved toward a car at the curb. She looked like she had come to talk someone’s ears off about Jesus, but she didn’t have magazines or pamphlets, or even a purse. Apparently she heard Minnie running to the spot on the lawn where Willard vanished, because she stopped and turned to face her.

They were only about twelve or fifteen feet apart. Minnie could clearly see the woman’s face. It was pleasant enough but seemed not quite done, as if it lacked the final details that would allow you to remember it ten minutes later, a face like one of those in Mom’s paintings that was still a stage away from being finished. The woman was smiling sort of absentmindedly, as though she saw Minnie but was thinking about something else and didn’t want to be distracted from that.

They stared at each other maybe fifteen seconds, an eerily long time without saying anything. Minnie didn’t know why the woman kept staring at her, but she kept staring at the woman because she sensed something not right about her. Minnie kept thinking she was going to figure it out, figure out the not-right something, but it eluded her.

Finally the woman said, “I like your pink shoes.”

This statement baffled Minnie for a moment, because she didn’t own any pink shoes. If anyone ever gave her pink shoes, she wouldn’t even risk saying, I’ll wear them when Hell freezes over, because you never knew what to expect of the weather. She didn’t want to be a marine, like Zach, but unlike Naomi, she didn’t swoon about wearing tiaras and diamond-studded capes and pink glass slippers for the rest of her life.

Belatedly registering the stranger’s meaning, Minnie looked down at her feet, at her sneakers, which were deep coral, not pink at all. She realized the woman must be color challenged.

“You remind me of a little girl I used to have,” the woman said. “She was very sweet.”

Minnie was taught never to be rude, and being polite included speaking when spoken to. But in this case, she kept silent. For one thing, she didn’t know what to say. More important, she sensed that speaking to this woman would be a mistake for the same reason that speaking to a spirit was a bad idea: Just responding with a single word would be an invitation.

The stranger didn’t appear to be a spirit, but she had something in common with spirits that Minnie sensed but couldn’t quite name.

After another, shorter silence, the woman in gray took a step toward Minnie, but then halted.

Although they were in a public place, Minnie began to feel alone and dangerously isolated. No traffic passed in the nearby street. No pedestrians were in sight. No kids were at play on any of the front lawns. The sky was pale, the air still, the trees limp, so it seemed as if time had stopped for everyone in the world except the two of them.

Minnie wished Willard hadn’t done a fade. She wished he would reappear, not just to her but also to the woman. When alive, the dog had a totally phony but threatening growl, and his spirit still had big teeth even if it couldn’t bite anyone.

The woman’s dreamy smile, which had been nice enough, now seemed like the fixed smile of a snake, which wasn’t a smile at all but only the shape of a smile.

Just when Minnie was about to spin away and run for all she was worth, the woman turned from her and went to the car at the curb. She glanced back as she got into the vehicle, but then she pulled the door shut and drove away.

As she watched the car dwindle along the street, Minnie finally realized what the woman in gray had in common with ghosts. Death. They were both about death.