As Night Falls (15 page)

She spun around unsteadily, peering into unseen corners of the room. Nicholas had fallen, he'd gotten hurt—

The room was empty.

Barbara ran into the hallway. About to cry out for Gordon, something called her attention at the end of the hall. She drifted soundlessly, feet padding over the runner of carpet, in the direction of the spare bedroom.

Nicholas stood there, his little hands clasped like cuffs around the bars of the crib.

T
he four of them climbed the stairs single file, an unlikely group of compatriots.

“I didn't see a computer downstairs,” Nick remarked. “You must keep them in the bedrooms? Family like you has to have more than one computer.”

“You don't know what kind of family we are,” Ivy muttered.

An inner cymbal clanged—
you tell him, Ive
—but then Sandy saw Nick's shoulders level out, a single blade of bone. He turned around on the step, deftly checking his footing.

“I'm getting kind of sick of you,” he said. “Are all kids today as nasty as you?” His tongue flicked between his teeth as if tasting something bad.

“Right,” Sandy said. “It's the kids today who are bad.”

Nick shifted his gaze to her. “Interesting comment,” he said, like a teacher addressing his class in hell. “Care to elaborate?”

Sandy pressed her lips together.

“Mom?” Ivy spoke up. “What are you—”

“You want to see our computers?” Sandy interjected. “I'll show them to you.”

Nick began to mount the steps again. “That's the kind of attitude I like.”

They reached the top, Harlan positioning himself on the broad swath of landing with a burst breath of relief. The sleek wood steps, while wider and deeper than standard, weren't big enough to accommodate him comfortably.

Nick turned to Sandy. “I'll need your cellular phones, too.” He seemed to have forgotten his desire for a nicotine fix.

“The signal isn't good here,” Ivy said instantly. “And it's out now anyway. Because of the snow.”

“I don't recall asking you about the weather,” Nick replied, extending his hand.

After a moment, Ivy reached into her pocket and took out her phone.

“Where's yours?” Nick asked Sandy.

“I don't know.” Sandy rarely kept hers on her. “Probably in my room. Along with my laptop.”

“Harlan,” Nick said. “Don't let either of them move.”

Sandy parsed the command. Not
stay with them.
Or even
keep your eyes on them
. Harlan was highly literal; he would do just as Nick commanded.

Nick returned, arms laden with a teetering stack of technology. “I'm assuming the princess has one of these?” he said, using his chin to indicate the slim sandwich of a laptop.

Someone capable of laying waste to their whole world should be ugly—hunched and gnomic. But Nick wasn't. He was a rough-looking, gritty, but appealing older man, and you could see that fact reflected in Ivy's posture, the way she jutted her chin before responding, “Yes. I've got a laptop.”

Nothing could have horrified Sandy more.

“Okay, then,” Nick said, giving an approving nod. “Shall we enter your chamber, princess?”

Ivy's room lay between the master bedroom and the stairway.

Nick edged in front of Sandy to go inside. He placed the cell phones and laptop on the floor, taking Ivy's computer off her desk and adding it to the accumulation.

Nick pointed. “Stamp on these, Harlan.”

No sooner had Nick asked than Harlan lifted one enormous shod foot. He brought it down on each of the phones, then jumped on the laptops, until all the devices had been smashed into an eely mass of black shards.

The pounding echoed in Sandy's ears. Two long trenches had been dug in the floor.

Nick began stalking around, looking into corners, checking the windows. “No locks?” he asked over his shoulder.

A pang sealed Sandy's throat shut as she watched him move about. Because she'd realized that something was missing from Ivy's room: Mac. How could she have forgotten about him? Nick must have put their dog away somewhere. Alone.

“You should've spent some time considering how to keep the bad guys out,” Nick added.

“No one's getting in through one of those windows,” Ivy scoffed.

She was right. Ivy knew the way this house had been built, its back to a bluff that resisted even Ben's skilled efforts.

Nick took a step in Ivy's direction. “Well, good. Then you'll be safe up here.” He turned toward Sandy. “Now say goodbye to the princess.”

Sandy yanked her head up. “What? We're not splitting up. Remember? One big slumber party, you said.” She and Ivy couldn't be apart right now. They had to stay close in order to snatch any opportunity for flight that might present itself. And if no opportunity appeared? Then being together would be even more important.

“I did say that,” Nick agreed. “And I can understand why you'd feel misled.”

“So why change the plan?” Sandy asked. “Sticking together is safest. And from up here, you can see all the way down to the road at the same time as you keep an eye on the weather—”

“My turn,” Nick said, his voice a brittle wind.

Sandy ground to a halt.

“I want some insurance while we wait.” Nick's gaze slid past Ivy. “A reason you might choose not to flee this place too quickly.”

Sandy's hands folded, nails sharp enough to dig ditches in her palms, and her face went stony, Botoxed with hate. Ivy had taken a step back when Nick ordered the separation. She took another one, and another, until meeting the plane of Harlan's chest.

Harlan had been locked up for armed robbery. He wasn't a killer, Sandy told herself, or someone who had sick predilections better left unnamed. Still, franticness descended upon her at the thought of leaving Ivy alone with him. She felt as if she were on the top floor of a building, looking down as it collapsed beneath.

Nick studied her with something like understanding. “Harlan's not going to do a single thing except what I tell him to. And all I'm telling him to do is stay with the princess. If you keep bugging me, though, I might just have to change my directive.”

Sandy felt her shoulders sag. Two escaped prisoners, and trusting them seemed her only option. Ivy stuck out her hand, and Sandy grabbed it.

“Mom,” Ivy said softly.

Sandy's head snapped up. “Yes,” she hissed. “What, sweetie, tell me!”

“You're pressing too hard.”

Sandy looked down and saw Ivy's hand flaming red inside hers. She loosened her grip.

“Please, Ivy,” she said. “Just hold on for a little while longer.” The look in Ivy's eyes was heartbreaking, the same one she'd worn on the brink of her first day of school.

Nick clamped his hand around Sandy's arm, and pulled her into the hall. “No more stalling. You and me downstairs, Harlan and the princess up here.”

“Okay,” she muttered. She tried to wrench free. “
Okay.
” She sent a reassuring glance toward Ivy, all the love that could be delivered in a look. “I'm going.”

Harlan's hand grazed Ivy's bedroom door, the lightest of touches on a solid plank of wood. The door swung shut on its hinges before closing with a
click
.

I
vy was alone again with Harlan. She could smell him, feel heat coming off him. He had lips as thick as sausages, and round, blank eyes. Ivy couldn't help shrinking away. Then she heard Darcy telling her that was the dumbest thing she could do. Harlan would know that she was scared, and maybe worse, disgusted by his presence. Ivy put her foot down, halting the backward step she had been in the midst of taking.

“It's okay,” Harlan said softly.

Ivy jerked her head up. Waaay up. His big body filled her room like foam. The room she'd only just begun to think of as her own, bestowing on it a handful of personal items: the hopeful, colorful rug she'd made sure came from their old house, a photo that her dad had printed out of her and Melissa on the summit of Mount Marcy.

Now this room would never be hers. She could never rid it of this intruder's presence.

How was Mac doing? Was he okay all by himself? And oh God, what about her dad? But Ivy clamped down on that thought. The world blurred, and she scrubbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands.

She plunked herself onto her bed. It didn't matter, standing or sitting, she was still snail-sized in comparison to Harlan. Ivy lowered her head so that he wouldn't see how close she was to crying.

He took slow, plodding steps in her direction.

Ivy scooted backward on the bed.
Scooch
, she heard her mom say, and then she really did start to cry. How could it have been only a few hours ago that she'd been sitting next to her mother on this bed? And how could Ivy have refused to go down for dinner? If she just got the chance for them all to be together again, Ivy would eat dinner every night with her parents till she was twenty.

Harlan stood over her, and Ivy waited, as far back on her bed as she could go. If he sat down, Ivy was going to fall off. Try to scrunch underneath. He'd never reach her there—he was too huge. Big balls of his hands hung by his thighs, which were as wide around as silos. Ivy could hardly see past him into the rest of her room.

She swallowed.

“Why are you scared of me?” he asked.

“I'm not,” she said, a stupid response, the first one that came to her lips.

“Yes, you are,” he said, softly again. His eyes looked a little less empty, more aware.

He sat down, and the mattress sank almost to the floor.

Ivy didn't fall off. She was cemented into place.

“They're always scared,” he said. “And they always think I don't know.”

A slick of disgust coated Ivy's tongue. “Who?”

“Well,” Harlan said at last. “Everyone.” He lifted his arm, and it was long enough that all the way across the bed, his hand landed on hers.

Ivy muffled a little shriek. “Don't touch me!”

He looked down at the offending hand. “I didn't mean to!”

Ivy could no longer conceal her revulsion in the hopes of lulling Harlan. Things were colliding in her head with the force of cars piling up. She brought her hands to her ears to try and dull the impact.

The words she'd said to her mother earlier that night.

Her stupid, girly attempt to fight Nick in the basement, flailing at him, hurling herself around, and only succeeding in lashing his face.

How ugly and swollen his foot was. He'd never be able to walk miles into the woods.

Another memory, from longer ago. When the school year had started, Ivy attended her first boy-girl slumber party. She'd expected an ordinary Saturday night with Melissa and Darcy, plus a few others. Hair, nails, popcorn, a movie.
Maybe
a few giggly texts to some boys they were crushing on, asking them to come over, accompanied by hoots and hands clapped over mouths, the curtains immediately drawn if anyone was dumb enough to take them up on it.

But when Ivy arrived, there were boys hanging out in the finished basement, twirling around on bar stools, slouched over on the couch.

Darcy had laughed at her. “No one has just girls at sleepovers anymore.”

“Yeah,” another faux friend added. “We're juniors now, you know.”

When midnight crept around, they'd started playing a game called Hook Up, which went just about how it sounded. Maybe because Ivy hadn't been that into it, she was the last one chosen, by a wormy boy named Dave Parks who had a bristle of growth above his lip that he either liked or didn't know to shave. Ivy had kissed boys before and she wasn't worried about that part, even though Dave totally icked her out. But after pushing his slimy tongue into her mouth, which she tolerated for a while, Dave went to pull down the zipper on her jeans, and stuck his hand in her waistband. Ivy had begun to twist and turn in some weird dance, finally flinging herself free, and the boy's laughter had followed her the whole way out.

Now Harlan's hand was touching hers, and Ivy had no chance of getting loose. It was like a tree stump upon her.

“Please,” Ivy said. The word broke and grated like glass in her mouth. “Please don't.”

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

Ivy looked at him. “I…I don't know.”

His big, rolling mouth changed, and after a second, Ivy realized he was trying to smile.

“I don't want to hurt you, you know,” he said.

“What…what do you want, then?” Ivy asked.

Harlan's hand plopped down, hitting the mattress with enough force to rock them. “This, I guess.”

“Our house?” Ivy demanded. Good. Let 'em have it.

“No.” He looked frustrated. “This,” he repeated. “What we're doing now.”

“What are you doing?” Ivy ventured. She felt as perplexed as he did.

He took a breath, as if relieved to be on surer ground. “Whatever Nick tells me to.”

Ivy wasn't sure it was a good idea to say the next thing that came to her mind. “Do you always do what Nick says?”

Harlan's face folded. “Nick's my friend.”

That was too much. “He's a jerk!” Ivy burst out. “He grabbed me downstairs—hurt me even—and he did something terrible to—” She swiped at her eyes and nose, both of which were wet. “—to my—”

“Shh,” he said, reaching out and lowering Ivy's hand with his own. She couldn't have resisted if she'd tried. “Don't do that.”

Ivy's face smarted. It was a relief to stop trying to stem her tears and just let them flow.

“I've known Nick a long time,” Harlan said. “You know how someone you know that long can be a friend even if they're not very nice to you?”

Ivy was silent. She didn't know what to say, and anyway, she'd figured something important out. It wasn't Harlan she had to worry about. It was Nick.