Page 35 of When the Night Comes Knocking

But over the past eight months, unhappiness seemed to fall over her like a weighted blanket growing heavier and heavier.

Find the source, she had told herself sometime around month five of her pregnancy. But the answer only seemed to add to the heaviness.

Now, she places her hands over her belly and closes her eyes, pictures the impossible, frightening thing lurking outside the walls of this dreary building—the thing that caused the pool of blood that has wrecked her shoes and forced her to be alone amongst a group of unpredictable strangers.

What if there is no cause and solution? she wants to yell at her father, who passed away years before from heart failure, of all things. What do I do then, huh?

“Are you alright?”

The voice startles her, and she turns to see where Kimi hovers in the doorway, taking in the office with a new pallor to her face. The cashier’s eyes drop down to the baby bump hidden beneath shirt fabric that’s flecked with blood. “Maybe you want to sit down for a bit?” she suggests while nudging her chin at the sagging couch against the far wall.

Ashley swallows down the snarky annoyance that seems permanently lodged in her throat every time she interacts with people nowadays. Somehow doing the very meek task of growing another human in her body has allowed others to view her as woefully incapable of lifting a single grocery bag or standing up on her own.

“I’m fine,” she replies, turning back toward Sheila, toward the problem she can find a solution for. “But if you want to help, then you can soak this rag with cold water.” She hands a clean cloth to Kimi, who nods before moving to the small water tank in the room’s corner.

When she returns with it, Ashley nods her thanks and places it along Sheila’s warm head. The officer’s leg wound has stopped bleeding, though it is the blood loss that is most concerning. She holds Sheila’s wrist, fingers pressed against the pulse point as she watches the seconds tick by on her watch.

Kimi takes a tentative step closer. “She seems to be doing okay.”

Ashley grunts after a moment, dropping Sheila’s hand. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t start to develop a fever. Otherwise we’ll be losing someone else.”

Kimi’s eyes darken almost immediately as they drop toward the blood congealing on the floor. She reaches forward and picks up a roll of ACE bandages from the open first aid kit on the table, fumbling with it for a moment.

Ashley recognizes the look on the young woman’s face, the same unsettled one she wore when facing Officer Whitmore earlier. If there was any chance the forest wasn’t haunted before, Ashley has no doubts that Whitmore certainly fixed that. His dying screams seemed capable of waking up a graveyard.

She focuses her attention back on Sheila’s chest, rising and falling in a steady rhythm. “Did you have big plans for tomorrow?” she asks, calmly changing the subject. It is a tactic she has practiced many times in the ER, usually when trying to distract a patient or helicopter family members while doing stitches or using large needles.

Kimi clears her throat, placing the bandage tape back on the table. “If you count eating an entire pumpkin pie while bingeing shitty true crime TV alone, then sure.”

“Alone?” Ashley says, noting the small collapse of the cashier’s shoulders as she turns and sits back in a rolling chair that looks as well worn and faded as everything else in the office.

“Thanksgiving was my grandmother’s favorite holiday,” Kimi says, fiddling with the gold medallion at her neck. “She was my only family, really, so yeah. It’s kind of just another day now. With lots of pie,” she adds, shrugging.

Ashley furrows her brows at the realization the words leave behind, until there’s an awful cold spreading in her gut like a leak has sprung loose somewhere.

Will Thanksgiving become an alone day for me too? What about Christmas? New Year’s?

She pictures Evan standing on the other side of the door at every holiday for the rest of her life, only it’s not really her husband—no, something is off and his eyes aren’t kind anymore and he doesn’t know that he wants the baby to be born on New Year’s Day or that he’ll have to love it enough for the both of them. And what will the rest of her life even look like after tonight? How is she supposed to live with this awful knowledge, with the sound of bones rattling and her husband’s cries ringing out in a depthless dark? What if the baby is all him, all softness and light and warmth? And what if it’s not enough and her life turns into a hollow shell of what-ifs and shitty diapers and sleeping pills?

She sucks in a breath, ignoring the harsh sting of tears pricking her eyes. Focus on what’s in front of you, she reminds herself, once, twice, a third time, until she settles her attention on the injured woman lying before her.

It felt wrong, the shot of exhilaration that flooded through her swollen body upon first assessing Sheila’s wound—at being able to find the source of the bleeding and put a stop to it. It is the last feeling her body should have space for right now, and yet it is the first time in months she has felt useful—the first time in months that she has truly felt like herself.

Evan’s face doesn’t have a chance to stain her mind with more guilt this time. Sheila’s eyelids crack open.

The officer’s pupils struggle to focus as she licks at her dry lips.

“Hey, you’re okay. You’re safe, Sheila,” Ashley says, leaning in closer. “Get some water,” she tells Kimi, who jumps up and fumbles for a chipped coffee mug from the desk before filling it at the water tank.

Ashley takes it, then carefully lifts Sheila’s head to tilt some water into her mouth. After a few sips Sheila grabs at Ashley’s hand, tugging with little strength.

Ashley grips her hand back in reassurance. “Your leg was seriously injured, but I’ve gotten the bleeding to stop. It’s important you rest now until we can get more help, alright?” she explains, though it is the sudden, urgent clarity that has filled the officer’s eyes that causes her to freeze.

Sheila licks her wet lips, sucking in an uneven breath. “Inside,” she rasps, low and weak. Her eyes flit toward the office’s cracked-open door.

Ashley looks at the strip of bright fluorescent lighting reaching in from the store before meeting Kimi’s nervous stare.

“What’s she saying?” Kimi asks, keeping a few feet of distance between herself and the blood on the floor.