Page 22 of What Happens at Nightfall

He’d put it off as long as he could. Adam crossed the landing to Ben’s room. He could hear a voice speaking in a low tone, kind of gravelly. Not Ben’s voice. Goodness only knew what kind of YouTube videos Ben was watching. Adam could feel his heart sink. Not that he needed another thing to yell at Ben about. He tried not to be too hard on them—but it was a difficult balance, trying to be permissive enough but not too permissive.

He wondered if that was where Ben had gotten the idea of using a Ouija board to call upon the dead, from a YouTube video.

He’d tried putting controls on their iPads, but Melinda was so good at hacking them that he’d eventually given up, not sure whether to be annoyed or proud.

Mostly proud. Because he trusted they wouldn’t watch anything they really shouldn’t watch.

But maybe he was wrong.

Gently, Adam pushed open the door to Ben’s room. “Ben?”

Ben was fast asleep on top of the plaid comforter. His iPad was on the bed next to him, but the screen was dark. Huh. Adam gently extracted the iPad from under Ben’s arm, setting it down on the desk. He must have heard someone talking in the street below.

Ben’s old bedside lamp, a relic of his dinosaur days, cast a gentle light over his sleeping face. He looked so vulnerable in his sleep, one arm flung up over his head, like the little boy he’d been. Adam stood there, staring down at his son, frustrated and guiltily relieved. They’d have to have it out at some point—but maybe that point was better tomorrow, when he’d had time to cool down. Never parent in anger, they said. And Ben had had all night to feel bad about what he had done.

It was for the best. Probably.

Not wanting to wake him, Adam took a fleece dinosaur-patterned throw blanket from the foot of the bed and shook it out over Ben. Only a couple of years ago, it had covered him and then some. Now Ben’s feet stuck out at the bottom.

Adam took Ben’s beloved old Cookie Monster stuffy from the foot of the bed and tucked it in next to him. Clicking off the light, he felt his way to the door, moving carefully to avoid any odd Legos that might have made their way to the center of the floor.

He was so busy trying not to step on anything that he didn’t notice the eyes of Cookie Monster suddenly glow red in the darkness.

Chapter Seven

Jess could feel her eyes starting to glow red like a character in an old cartoon.

“No, I can’t pick up in store,” Jess said for the sixteenth time. “That’s why I selected the shipping option.”

“Hold, please.”

Jess held.

Her precious Petunia of a goddaughter (who was, in fact, named Petunia, because that was Kimmy for you) had requested a very specific Sephora set that could only be obtained at the outer edges of the universe in a fortress guarded by dragons. Or at a Kohl’s somewhere in Indiana.

This task was supposed to be low-hanging fruit, something to knock off her to-do list to make her feel better about herself. Instead, it was making her doubt her sanity. Had she selected the shipping option? Jess could have sworn she had, but what did she know? She also could have sworn someone had been talking to her in the cemetery last night. Someone other than the arborist.

Quick, quick.

She’d had strange dreams last night. Dreams of fire and people running and screaming and a horrible voice growling, “Burn them—burn them all.” For some unfathomable reason, Jess was trying to fight her way toward the source of the devastation, rather than away from it, pushing through the panicked crowd.

There was a person standing there, a person in an old-timey opera cloak. Jess wasn’t sure if it was male or female, because when it turned toward her, the face was the face of Cookie Monster. But evil Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster as imagined by the makers of Friday the 13th.

Cookie Monster’s googly eyes, a deep ruby red, fixed on Jess’s face and his voice echoed through her nightmare. “You. I know you.”

She’d woken up, soaked through with sweat as though she’d been on a treadmill.

Jess spilled her coffee as a voice came out of nowhere, filling her tiny living room. “Thank-you-for-calling. Your-call-will-be-processed-in-the-order-in-which-it-is-received.”

Just a recorded message. Jess steadied her precious coffee and took a long slug, glad no one was there to see how her hand was shaking.

She hadn’t drunk anything stronger than water last night. It was no fair to feel this miserably hungover. Aching head, churning stomach, pins and needles in her palms. . . . Anyone would have thought she’d been chugging back vodka sodas instead of blamelessly invading other peoples’ family crypts.

Even her apartment, pristine, minimalist, looked like the aftermath of a hot night out, with her shoes kicked off by the door, her sweater dumped on the back of a chair, and other peoples’ belongings scattered around: the arborist’s battery pack on her desk and the tour guide’s parasol propped up next to the front door.

It had been a long time since Jess had had that sort of night, but she vaguely remembered the concept.

What had possessed her to offer to return that blasted parasol?