Page 46 of When the Night Comes Knocking

The Mimic yanks him again.

Thomas barely glances down at his feet, where the claws pull. When he looks back up with wide, horrified eyes, only a few seconds pass before Jane feels him squeeze her hand hard. “Let go,” he tells her, grunting in pain. “You gotta let go.”

“No.” She grips him tighter, pulling as hard as she can, though it only causes him to scream louder. A sob catches in Jane’s throat as she glimpses the blood staining his pant leg, where the talons have him hooked. She slips forward then, dragged with Thomas a few inches before regaining the grip of her shoes against the floor.

The sheen of sweat on Thomas’s forehead breaks, speeding down his red face. “Let me go, Jane,” he says through gritted teeth.

She shuts her eyes, picturing the dead doe and fawn in the woods—picturing her dangling body and Thomas’s pinned one.

“No,” she whispers.

Thomas shouts at her again, just as a boom blasts through the air. Jane’s eyes fly open to see the Mimic’s crooked body nearly fall forward atop her brother’s, dripping black blood. Its talons flail in the air as it tries to screech, though only an airy wheeze comes out from the gaping bullet wound across its throat.

The creature begins to twitch, bones cracking and shifting again until only traces of Sheila remain. Jane lurches forward, gripping Thomas and pulling him to his feet as an iron skillet cracks across the Mimic’s face.

When it hisses and writhes toward the floor, a horrified scream escapes Ashley as she pulls the skillet back to swing again. The creature chokes on the bullet, swiping its talons outward in a blind flare.

“Move!” Kimi shouts from the end of the aisle. She cocks the shotgun and repositions it on her shoulder while the monster attempts its disabling screech again.

Thomas grabs Ashley as the Mimic crawls toward them. “Go, go!” he says, limping behind Jane as she takes off down the aisle.

Shelves come crashing down as the Mimic rises and stumbles after them toward the front of the store. Jane pauses at the cashier’s counter, knowing there is nowhere else to run except for out into the night this creature was born from. Thomas stops next to her, eyes wide as he looks back to the Mimic.

But before it can reach them, the monster veers to the side, flinging its body against the barricaded door. Its leathery gray form struggles to hold, morphing and regrowing Sheila’s features as it flinches down toward the floor, away from the ceiling.

Away from the light, Jane realizes.

Before it bursts through the doors and back out into the night, the Mimic’s eyes find hers. Its smile is a promise.

Seventeen

she wouldn’t be bested.

“How bad is it?” Thomas asks, lowering Ashley down onto the stool by the cashier’s counter. The cut along the woman’s collarbone is a near-perfect straight line, seeping out bright red blood.

“It’s just a scratch,” she replies, barely glancing down at where the Mimic’s talon swiped. “Just needs a bit of pressure.”

Thomas winces as he limps forward, reaching around to one of the display shelves along the checkout line. He ignores the generous drops of blood his leg leaves behind with each step he takes and tears open a pack of travel tissues before handing them to Ashley. “Jane, could you grab some water?” he says, though when she doesn’t respond, he turns around.

He catches sight again of the gaping hole in the front entrance, where Jim and Kimi are trying to create some sort of barrier between them and the outside again. Jim sways slightly as he stands atop the table and hangs an iron fire poker from the top of the doorframe like it’s mistletoe.

A few feet away, Jane stands completely still, eyes trained on the linoleum tiles near the front entrance. Beneath the dusting of broken glass and spilled bags of dog food, the smear of red is still slick and shiny.

“Where’s Jackson?” she asks, following the trail of blood until it disappears at the door’s threshold.

The dull hum of the fluorescents buzzes over their silence, clipped by the sound of the fire poker swaying and knocking gently into the doorframe. As Thomas looks closer, he sees blood drip down from the iron’s tip from where it earlier impaled Jackson.

Jane looks back at them, revealing a shallow cut on the surface of her cheek and several poked holes along her ear leaking red. When she asks it again, the words feel less like a question and more like a warning.

Jim hops down from the table, taking a few heavy steps forward. “I put him outside,” he admits, even and entirely calm.

Thomas knows his sister is not a violent person, and yet there are a solid three seconds where he believes she might actually punch a grown man in the face.

“You put him outside,” she repeats, one eyebrow raising. She clenches her fists at her sides, glancing between Kimi and Ashley. “Is that true?”

At their continued silence, Thomas clears his throat. “They did. I saw it happen.”

Kimi’s words spill out in a rush as she steps around Jim. “It tricked us, Jane. I swear we thought the Mimic had gotten him when you both went outside.”