Page 49 of When the Night Comes Knocking

All around him it feels as though a collective breath is being held, like even the mountain beneath them is hungrily listening. It occurs to Thomas in a rampant flash then, how this whole night began with Jim carrying in Billy’s lifeless body, the very first of the Mimic’s attacks—how in the story Jim shared about the Mimic knocking at Billy’s door, the monster was always disguised as his dead little sister.

The words escape Thomas in a violent rush. “I think you had something to do with whatever happened to Grace,” he says, feeling the anger swim behind his eyes, nearly drowning him. “You and Billy both did, didn’t you?”

A strangled sound comes from somewhere next to him. “Thomas, what are you—God, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kimi says, then shoves closer in his periphery. She sinks her fingers deep into his left arm, though he hardly registers the warning bite of her sharp nails; in fact, he barely even notices the pain in his leg anymore where the Mimic’s own pair of claws dug in.

Kimi squeezes him harder, turning her grip to iron. “Look, you’ve made your point, alright? Now you need to back the hell off.”

Thomas yanks away. “You’re really still defending this guy?” he says, locking in on her dark gaze as she recoils back, staring at him like she’s been burned. “I mean, Jesus, Kimi, he’s talking about letting my sister die! Do you honestly think he wouldn’t give you up in a second too if it meant saving himself?”

Jane’s voice is vague against the sound of blood pumping through his ears. “Tommy, just stop, okay? Just calm down.”

He knows she’s standing there next to him, panicked and mentally playing out the worst-case scenario; she has always been a bad-news-first kind of person, even before the accident and the monster stalking the trees outside, now likely watching their every movement play out in a pitiful melodrama.

“Just stop, Tommy. Please, just stop,” Jane repeats.

At the growing smile on Jim’s face, Thomas grits his teeth and tosses the man away. Jim is quick to lose his balance, stumbling down to the ground with his mouth curved upward. His shoulders shake with laughter as he braces his palms against the floor.

Thomas turns toward Jane, ready to tell her it’s time they take their chances outside. But multiple gasps draw his attention back, and he sees what Jim is now holding.

“Jim!” Kimi shouts, backing up instinctively with Jane and Ashley.

Thomas doesn’t move, not even when Jim steps closer, not even when the barrel of the shotgun is only a foot from his gut.

A gust of wind blows through the entrance, raising goose bumps along Thomas’s skin. He keeps his feet firmly planted, refusing to let a shiver run through him. Of all the danger he has faced tonight, somehow, having a gun pointed at him is the least scary.

“Do it, then,” he tells Jim, surprised at the evenness of his own voice. “Shoot me.”

“Tommy?” Jane whispers, horrified.

Thomas keeps his alert eyes trained on the man’s drunken ones. His heart is racing, thundering in his ears, yet it isn’t fear that fills him. No, the anger is there in his chest, burning like always, though now he thinks his blood might catch fire with it, might send his entire body up in flames before a bullet can even touch him.

He steps closer to Jim until the muzzle presses into his abdomen. “Do it,” he repeats, placing his hand around the barrel to hold it in place.

“Don’t tempt me, boy,” Jim warns.

Thomas raises an eyebrow and tightens his grip on the gun until the steel feels melded with his skin. “It came out of the woods and attacked you and Billy,” he says, measuring the pupils widening in Jim’s eyes as the man fights not to look at his cousin’s body at their feet.

“Now you’ve been hiding in here all night, and the Mimic hasn’t stopped trying to get inside,” he continues as Jim’s cheek twitches. Thomas shrugs then, staring back at the man’s dilated pupils with a stillness he never knew he was capable of. “So you tell me, Jim. Are you sure you really want to talk about who should be playing bait?”

“That’s enough!” Ashley’s voice cuts through in a sharp croak, as cold as the night leaking in. She winces as she presses harder against her collarbone, tilting her head back so she stares up at the blinding lights.

“People have died,” she says, and when her voice chokes on the word, she flings the soaked wad of bloody tissue onto the ground, where it lands at Thomas’s and Jim’s feet. “People have died because of that thing out there, but we hurt Jackson. We did,” she continues, and her words give way completely as she places her face in her hands.

She squeezes her eyes shut and sucks in a long, shaky breath before muttering into her palms, though the only thing that Thomas can make out is something about a solution.

After a few seconds, Ashley looks back up with a weariness that seems to radiate from her body like an infectious disease. “Maybe it does want Jane’s heart or Jim’s. Maybe it wants mine,” she adds through a trembling lip. “All I know is that I won’t be a part of hurting anyone else. I can’t,” she says, and Thomas tenses when she places a hand on Jim’s forearm.

Ashley ignores all the wide and terrified eyes measuring the distance between her belly and the shotgun. Instead, she glances between each of them, her expression now schooled into one of calm resolution. “We have to stop making assumptions and start working together. Otherwise, what happened to Jackson will happen again,” she says while raising her other hand and placing it on the gun’s barrel. “Otherwise, none of us will survive this.”

Around them, the store falls dead quiet. Thomas feels the sweat building on his forehead as he keeps his stare locked on Jim’s, and there’s a split second when he thinks this might finally be it—every debilitating injury from the accident, all the close encounters with the Mimic’s curved talons, and his end would simply come down to a crime of passion by a small-town drunk.

Then the pressure on his gut disappears.

Jim pulls the gun back and shakes Ashley’s hand off him. “Y’all can go right down to hell,” he says before placing several feet of space between himself and the group. He drags his gaze to Jane. “When it comes back, I don’t want her anywhere near me, understand? She stays the hell away from me.”

He props the shotgun up over his shoulder, pulling his hat lower as he starts to walk away. He makes it only a few steps before glancing back at Kimi. “Are you coming or not?” he asks.

Another strong wind gusts outside, spilling in a new wash of cold air through the cracks in the door’s remaining glass. Kimi crosses her arms tightly over her chest, remaining at Ashley’s side. Her watery eyes harden to steel in seconds.