Night of the Purple Moon (2 page)

But what was a lobster truck doing on the Couture’s front lawn across the street? There had been some kind of accident, she thought. The truck had smashed through the white picket fence and scattered boards outward from the point of impact. The wheels had mashed up a pile of sod where they skidded to a stop. The driver must have gone to the Couture’s house first to get help, but Mr. and Mrs. Couture were very old. They were probably still sleeping. So then the driver came here.

Abby ran into the hallway. “Dad,” she shouted. “Dad. Dad.” The banging sent chills down her spine.

She passed by Toucan’s room. “Cheeries, Cheeries,” her sister called out, standing up in her crib. Abby knew that something wasn’t quite right. Toucan should have been up and dressed an hour ago. She should have eaten already. Why hadn’t Dad made her breakfast?

“Be right there, Touk,” Abby cried and raced into her parent’s room.

No Dad. The bed was made. Abby pressed her nose against the window, thinking he might have fallen asleep in the back yard last night. The lawn chairs were empty. But the blanket from Dad’s chair was missing. Toucan kept calling out.

On her way to Jordan’s room Abby lifted Toucan from her crib and lugged her on her hip.

Her brother was fast asleep. “Jordan, wake up!” she shouted. “Wake up!” When he didn’t stir, Abby waded through the mounds of dirty clothes on his floor and gave him a sharp poke.

He blinked, momentarily confused. “Get out!” he shouted angrily.

“Jordan, a truck crashed across the street!”

Bang. Bang. Bang…
His eyes widened. “What’s that noise?”

“The driver’s at the door. He needs help.”

Jordan rolled out of bed and raised his window shade. “Whoa. Purple. Where’s Dad?”

Abby gulped. “I don’t know.”

Still clutching Toucan, she joined Jordan. From this angle, she could see the side of the lobster truck. MARSH SEAFOODS. She knew Colby Marsh, a burly eighth grader. Sometimes his father drove him to school in the truck.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“How do you know it’s the driver?” Jordan said.

“I just do. Let’s go.”

Abby gripped Toucan tighter as they crept down the stairs.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The door vibrated like a drum. Abby thought that only a crazy person would keep pounding like that. What if it wasn’t Mr. Marsh?

She felt a sudden stab of fear. Nobody locked doors on Castine Island. “The door’s unlocked,” she whispered to Jordan.

“Lock it,” he said. “I’ll look out the window.”

Abby breathed easier once she had hooked the security chain in place.

“Huh?” Jordan exclaimed. “It’s only Kevin and Emily.”

Kevin seemed surprised that someone had finally opened the door. He was in his pajamas and his cheeks were glistening wet. Abby had never seen him without his glasses. He looked different—younger than thirteen. Emily, wearing a nightgown, stood behind her brother with a blank expression, absently twisting strands of her long brown hair. She had always reminded Abby of a fawn, timid and shy.

The road was empty, silent… none of the usual bustle of Saturday traffic heading out to the harbor. It was like an eerie dream. A crashed truck. The sun and sky different shades of purple. Shafts of lavender light spearing great swirls of dust. Not a single car, not a gull soaring overhead. Dad mysteriously missing. Her neighbors, distraught and half dressed, saying nothing.

Abby stared at them and they stared back.

Toucan pointed with a crinkled brow. “Kevy, sad.”

The words broke the spell.

“Our parents …” Kevin buried his head in his hands and sobbed. When he looked up a moment later, Abby had never seen such a sad expression. “They’re dead,” he cried.

Abby put Toucan down and guided the neighbors to the couch. She couldn’t think, as if her brain had frozen solid. But instinctively she closed and locked the door.

Kevin, his right hand red and swollen, continued to cry hysterically. Emily remained silent and dazed. Jordan, with Toucan clinging to his leg, stared wide eyed.

Abby took a deep breath. She had to find out what had happened to Mr. and Mrs. Patel. But Kevin would need to calm down before she could ask him. Most urgently, she had to find Dad. It was unlike him to leave them without a good reason. Maybe he was responding to the emergency next door, or assisting Mr. Marsh. Maybe he was… Abby forced the darkest of thoughts from her mind.

“Call 911,” she said to Jordan. The blood pounded so forcefully in her ears that she didn’t recognize her own voice.

“I already tried that,” Kevin blurted. “The police don’t answer!”

The police always answer
. “Hurry up,” she added.

Jordan raced upstairs. He returned, phone to his ear. “They’re not answering.”

“Are you sure you called 9-1-1?”

He held out the phone and she heard ringing. “Yes, Abby, I know how to call 9-1-1.”

There had to be some explanation. “The police are on their way here,” she said. “Someone else must have called them. Jordan, call Mom.”

“What’s she going to do?” he asked sarcastically.

“Just do it!” she snapped.

He punched in the number. “The circuits are busy. It’s a recording.”

“Well, try again.”

He thrust out the phone. “You try.”

“Call the Coutures,” she said.

“You think I know their number?”

Abby grabbed his phone and called 4-1-1. The robotic voice prompted her responses. “Couture, Castine Island, Maine.” The call engaged, but their phone just rang and rang and rang.

Kevin’s wailing sobs had lessened to sniffles and whimpers. Abby, in a gentle, but quaking voice, said, “What happened to your parents?”

He started crying again.

Abby held her hand in front of Emily’s face. The twelve-year-old seemed to stare right through it. Abby slowly moved her hand back and forth, but Emily’s gaze remained fixed. She was in shock and needed to see a doctor. But there were no doctors on Castine Island. As soon as Dad returned, Abby thought, he’d take Emily and Kevin to the police station, or to the hospital in Portland.

When Kevin finally settled himself, she asked again what had happened. His words tumbled out in spurts. “I overslept. We were supposed to take the seven o’clock ferry. I ran into my parents’ room to wake them up. They were still in bed. I touched Mother’s hand. It was cold.”

“Sometimes I get cold when I’m sleeping,” Jordan said.

Kevin scrunched his brow. “Do you think I’m stupid? I felt for their pulses.” He broke down again.

Abby moved to the window. Still no traffic. No approaching wail of a police siren. No sign of Dad. Blinking back tears, she took Jordan aside. “I’m going outside to look for Dad. Watch Kevin and Emily. Keep Toucan busy.”

Jordan turned pale. He picked up a box of blocks without an argument and sat beside Toucan on the floor.

Abby crept into the kitchen, hoping she’d find a note that explained where her father had gone. Only a mug of cold tea and a leftover slice of purple pizza were on the counter. Except for Kevin’s jagged sobs, everything was eerily quiet.

She stepped into the narrow breezeway that led to the back porch. Her heart was racing, almost a steady hum, and she felt light-headed. The walls of the breezeway seemed to close in on her. She stumbled on one of Toucan’s rubber boots. Through the storm door she saw nothing unusual in the backyard, apart from the electric purple glow. She stepped closer to the door. The three lawn chairs were in the same place as last night. The blanket she had used lay draped over the back of her chair, but Dad’s chair was empty. No blanket, no binoculars.

He heard the crash, she thought. Half asleep, he must have stumbled out to the front yard. But then what did he do? Where did he go? And why hadn’t he told them?

Abby rested her hand on the door handle, surprised it was wet and slimy. Then she realized her palms were sweating.

She feared breathing the space dust. She was even worried the tiny particles were likely floating inside the breezeway and throughout the house. Abby took a gulp of air and held her breath.

She stepped outside.

Her father was to her right, curled on the deck. The blanket stretched behind him, and the binoculars lay beside his head, the strap still around his neck. She knew immediately that he was dead.

Abby emptied her lungs of air with a guttural scream.

She closed the door and slumped to the breezeway floor. Shudders wracked her body and she became aware of her breathing, of the lub-
dub
of her heart, of every swallow. She squeezed her eyes shut and vines of lavender spread across the insides of her eyelids.

Toucan’s warm breath touched her cheek. “Abby. Sad.”

Abby felt her sister’s small hand patting her face and then Toucan’s finger went up her nose.

Abby blinked. Jordan was sobbing next to her, the color drained from his face. Kevin was at the other end of the breezeway, rocking side to side. Abby hugged Toucan and stood.

“Daddy. Daddy,” Toucan squealed, pointing excitedly.

“Touk.” Abby swallowed hard. “Daddy’s sleeping.”

Abby herded everyone upstairs and into Jordan’s room. She bit her lip to keep from crying, to keep from falling apart. Someone had to be strong now, and she was the oldest.

“We’ll stay here,” she told them. “Sooner or later the police will show up, or we’ll see a neighbor. Melrose Street is one of the busiest on the island. Someone will drive by. Mr. Couture will come outside when he wakes up and sees the truck in his front yard.”

Had any of them heard a word? Emily, who was sitting on Jordan’s bed, still hadn’t spoken. Kevin paced with a vacant stare. Jordan slumped in the corner, covering his face to hide his tears.

Abby crouched beside her brother and placed a hand on his knee. Usually he’d pull back from any type of contact she initiated, or would slap her hand away. He looked up with red-rimmed eyes.

“The Coutures are dead, too,” he said.

“Don’t say that.”

He lowered his head.

“Jordan, Mom’s arriving on the noon ferry. She’ll know what to do.” Abby thought that if her mother took a cab from the harbor, she’d reach the house at 12:15. If she had to walk, she’d be here at 12:30. “She’ll be here before we know it.”

“What if Mom isn’t on the ferry? What if there is no ferry?”

Abby couldn’t remember hearing the ferry horn this morning. She must have slept through it.

Toucan grinned. “Mommy! Mommy!”

“Touk needs to eat,” Abby told her brother. “I’ll fix her breakfast. Can you change her diaper?”

Downstairs, Abby sat on the kitchen floor and hugged her knees. What if Mom wasn’t on the ferry, as Jordan had said? What
if
there was no ferry? She wept as quietly as possible. She avoided looking at the breezeway entrance, but the image of her father kept flooding into her mind. She checked the signal on her phone. Three bars, strong. She tried to call Mom again, the police, her friend Mel—none of the calls went through. She grabbed Touk’s favorite cereal and a banana.

Upstairs, Abby dragged her damp eyes across her shoulder before going into Jordan’s room. He was changing Toucan on the floor. His tears, for the moment, had dried up.

Fresh and content, Toucan sat on the bed next to Emily and ate Cheerios.

The sky had turned a deeper shade of violet over the past hour. Mr. Emerson had told the class the space dust would saturate the atmosphere for two whole weeks. After several months, the moon, sun, and stars would return to their normal colors as the dust settled into the ocean and ground. But the particles of space dust, her teacher had said, would remain part of the Earth’s environment forever.

Abby pressed her nose against the window pane and peered to the right and to the left. Up and down the street there were no signs of life. The sky was empty of birds and airplanes. She couldn’t see inside the truck cab, but deep down she felt that Mr. Marsh was behind the wheel. She had an unsettling feeling that he and the Coutures and many others all across the island had met the same fates as her father and Mr. and Mrs. Patel.

If space dust hadn’t killed them, what else could it be? It seemed like an obvious answer.

Abby started to speak, but her throat crimped shut. She took a sharp breath and managed to swallow. “Do you think…the space dust is poisonous?”

“It didn’t kill us,” Jordan said with a sniffle.

“Maybe some people are allergic to it?” she said.

“Who? Old people?”

“The comet tail is twenty million miles long,” Kevin said in a listless tone. “The earth is completely inside of it. The dust is everywhere. People are dead everywhere.”

“Shut up,” Jordan said.

Abby felt her knees wobble. “Mom will be here soon,” she said.

The clock radio caught her attention. Abby turned it on and spun the dial, but got only white noise. Experts had predicted the space dust might affect cell phones, so it made sense it would also affect the radio.

Kevin sprang to life. “Try FM. The wavelengths are longer.”

“How do you know that?” Jordan said in a tone of disbelief.

Abby had seen her classmates react the same way when Kevin first started sharing scientific facts in class. After a while, everyone just accepted that Kevin was some kind of genius.

“When it’s foggy,” Kevin added, “have you ever tried to listen to an AM station? They don’t come through. But FM is always clear. That’s because—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jordan said.

On FM Abby found a station, KISS 108, with a strong signal playing pop music. It was the only station on the air. Only one station was troubling. But one station was better than no stations. She was desperate for news.

Two more songs played and then a commercial came on. Nobody spoke as they all waited anxiously. But a new song followed the commercial. No deejay introduced the song.

“Some stations are computerized,” Kevin said. “They don’t need people.”

For the next half hour they heard music and three commercials. No news, no weather.

Jordan stood. “Let’s go up to the roof. We can see what’s happening at the harbor.”

“There’s too much space dust outside,” Abby said. “It’s not safe.”