Page 40 of When the Night Comes Knocking

“Stop,” Thomas repeats, squeezing his eyes shut.

The phone keeps ringing, and Thomas doesn’t falter as he grabs it and chucks it at the brick wall. It breaks into a few pieces as something like a shout sounds from beyond the thick steel of the bathroom door.

A scene plays out in his mind then, one where he steps out into the aisles only to find that everyone has been slaughtered, their bodies lying in tattered, bloody piles that lead toward the entrance. There, the Mimic waits for him with teeth pulled back in a smile, cradling Jane’s lifeless form. When the monster speaks, it is his father’s voice that greets him, his father’s voice that tells him he’s even managed to fail at being a brother, before ripping the heart clean from Thomas’s chest. Then Thomas’s bones soon begin to violently contort, breaking and transforming to hold up Blood Mountain for all of eternity, while his mind and soul are lost to a bottomless darkness older than the earth itself.

Outside the bathroom, another shout materializes.

Thomas shakes the images from his mind as he flings open the door and jogs down the back hallway, turning down an aisle and toward the front of the store where voices carry, high and urgent. “Please, you don’t have to do this! I promise it’s really me, please. Can’t you tell it’s me?”

“That’s exactly what you said when you were pretending to be Evan.”

Thomas spots Ashley first, standing with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Next to her, Kimi is holding the shotgun for once, and he follows her stare to the doors, where the table barricade has been pushed aside.

Jim stands there, looking down at a body that Thomas barely has time to register as Jackson’s. Jim raises a fist up in the air, then thrusts the speared tip of a fire poker down.

“Have you lost your mind!” Thomas yells as the iron pierces through Jackson. Bright red blooms through the new tear in his shirt fabric, soaking just below his collarbone.

Jim tosses the piece of iron aside before he grips around Jackson’s ankles, the latter screaming out in pain.

“Get the door, Kimi,” Jim says as he drags Jackson’s body. Kimi doesn’t meet Thomas’s eyes as she props the right side open with her back and aims the shotgun out at the dark parking lot.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Thomas shouts, taking off in a sprint. “Oh Christ, what did you do!”

Jackson is limp where he lies, his arms flopped out above him. Crimson smears the floor in shiny streaks where his head slides across the linoleum in hard jerks as Jim tugs the young man forward as though he’s merely hauling out a heavy load of garbage.

“What happened? Hey!” Thomas grabs Jim by the arm, forcing him to a stop. The man’s eyes are wild, more animal than human, as he looks up and finally seems to register Thomas’s presence.

“Do you wanna go out too, boy?” Jim snaps, ripping his wrist free. “Get the hell out of my way.”

Ashley tugs Thomas back by the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “It’s not really Jackson,” she says. “The Mimic is playing us again like it did with Evan and Whitmore.”

Thomas searches the woman’s face for the calm determination she showed earlier with Sheila, though now her eyes are blown wide and her hands shake like she’s been drinking too much coffee.

He looks at Kimi where she trembles in the doorway, either from the cold air rushing inside or the body lying at her feet. She gives a small nod of agreement.

“It was just pretending to be him,” she confirms, eyes watering as she looks down at Jackson’s slack mouth. “Sheila saw the Mimic get him back when he and Jane went outside. His real body must still be out in the lot somewhere.”

A strangled noise escapes Thomas, something caught between a laugh and a sob. “And you just believed her?” he asks, ripping out of their grasps and feeling as if he has slipped into an alternate reality, one somehow even worse than what the night has given them.

He recalls that moment of insidious fear that enveloped his limbs as he watched Jane run outside all alone to help Sheila. Jackson was the only one amongst them stupid and brave enough to go after her—who did what Thomas should have done without any hesitation.

Now, Thomas stares at the Boy Scout’s unconscious face and realizes just how close in age they must be to each other. “Look, all night this guy has just tried to help. He’s one of us,” he tells them. “Don’t you think he at least deserves a chance to prove it?”

Kimi stares back at him with a sheen of frustrated pity. “This is what it does, Thomas,” she says. “Don’t you see why we have to stop this?”

Thomas places his hands on his head as he shakes it. “But what about the dog? She goes crazy when the Mimic’s around, we’ve all seen it,” he says in a rush, shifting his eyes between each of them. “She never acted like that with Jackson, not even when he came back inside after helping Sheila.”

Any glimmer of doubt his words spark blinks away in Kimi’s gaze. “That’s not good enough,” she answers. “I’m sorry, Thomas. But it’s just trying to fool us again.”

“The bastard ain’t fooling me,” Jim says. For the first time all evening, his eyes are alert and frighteningly clear. He steps over the door’s threshold, pulling Jackson’s body outside and flinging it several feet away from the doors, just beyond the reach of fluorescent lights. “You ain’t fooling me!” he shouts, then kicks Jackson’s head so it bobbles to the side.

“For God’s sake, he’s a person!” Thomas cries out, nearly suffocating in the spell of madness.

“It’s not a person anymore, Thomas.” Ashley grabs him again, tugging him farther back, farther away from the discarded young man.

Tears sting at Thomas’s eyes as he rips away from her. “This is fucking insane,” he says, though his words are directed only at Kimi—Kimi, who sat close at his side, explaining grief and trying to connect her pain with his.

The cashier swipes at her cheek, staring back at him with a new defiance. “You’ve been saying that all night long. It’s not my problem anymore if you refuse to believe.”