Page 64 of When the Night Comes Knocking

She tilts her head back, feeling the tears slide off the edges of her jaw. “She just ran out into the middle of the road,” she cries, trying to shake the image of the wrong angles of her friend’s limbs from her head. “It all just happened so fast. Nate was terrified of what might happen since we were both eighteen, and his training for the police academy was starting that week. We just—we didn’t think—”

“Wait a minute. Nate? As in Officer Nate Whitmore?”

At Kimi’s tearful silence, Thomas slides a hand up his face, shaking his head like he’s trying to wake himself up. “Jesus Christ, Kimi,” he murmurs, shifting away. He lets the bat clatter to the floor before gripping tightly to the stair railing next to them.

A minute passes where she nervously watches the heavy rise and fall of his back as he hangs his head low, faced away.

I wouldn’t look at me either.

“What did you do with her body?” he finally asks.

Another hot tear rolls down Kimi’s cheek; she used to think she had used them all up in the weeks after Grace’s death, but the hole inside her seems as limitless as the night sky she used to cling to so fiercely.

She curls her hands into tight fists, digging her nails in until the cut she carved across her palm screams back at her. “We hid her in the woods,” she whispers. “Deep enough that it’d take a while to find her.”

Thomas shakes his head again, cursing as his shoulders move with another deep breath. He moves to lean back against the wall, staring at the floor as though he might see straight through it, might see Grace’s body lying there, young, crooked, and perfectly dead.

“Why the hell are you telling me this?” he says.

Kimi knows it is not often you can look at a person and see their suffering resting so thoroughly just beyond their eyes, but it is there in Thomas, heavy and paralyzing. Grief has had its way with him, just as it’s pulverized her.

“Because you’ve already made up your mind about me,” she answers quietly. “And maybe because it’s too late to tell Jim or Billy the truth.”

Thomas looks at her, with either disgust or pity, she isn’t sure. “You realize how completely fucked this is, right? I mean, Jesus, Kimi, what if you’re the one the Mimic has wanted all along?”

A mix between a laugh and a sob lies lodged in her throat. “You don’t think I’ve already thought of that?” she says, drawing her arms up across her chest. “Look, there’s something else—something you should know,” she continues, just as the sound of the walkie-talkie chirps between them.

Jane’s voice comes through the speaker. “Y’all? Is there an issue with the lights?” she asks.

Thomas avoids meeting her eyes again, and Kimi wonders if he’s about to flee back downstairs to join his sister and Ashley.

Maybe they’ll throw you outside, let a murderer fend for herself. It’s what you deserve, isn’t it?

He clears his throat and pushes a hand back through his hair, messing it up further. He raises the walkie-talkie. “Everything’s fine,” he says into it before bending down to pick up the baseball bat. “The lights are going out now, Jane.”

He gives a single, finite nod in Kimi’s direction.

End of discussion.

She sucks in a deep breath, then kisses Ama’s medallion before dropping it back down the front of her shirt. “You should know that I regret it,” she says, reaching out toward the first power switch on the circuit board. “I regret what I did to Grace every single day. I will for the rest of my life.”

She flips the switch, then the one below it and listens with bated breath as the power in the store shuts off completely with a low whir. “It’s time to face it,” she whispers.

Around them, the darkness rushes in.

Twenty-four

With shaking arms

The overhead lights shut off in a swift cascade, sinking Blackwell’s into a cavernous darkness so that Jane feels more like she is sitting within the belly of a beast than a grocery store. She shifts closer to the front doors, where the remaining blockade and blinds have been entirely removed and tossed aside in a junk pile.

Outside, across the parking lot, there is only the dim orange glow of the single streetlamp, hovering just above where her RAV is parked. It all looks more like a ghost town now—the abandoned police cars with their doors ajar, the various patches of dried blood, and the spill of glass along the entrance.

It takes her eyes a minute to adjust, but once they do, every movement outside seems predatory, and the store’s newfound darkness feels like an impending sacrifice. She forces herself to remain standing, facing forward despite the innate instinct to run and hide, brushes her fingers across the iron fire poker hanging awkwardly from the belt loop of her jeans, reminding herself that this monster is not invincible—that nothing can be.

Still, for added assurance, she plucked a can of hair spray from the beauty aisle and a Zippo lighter from behind the counter, ready to fire off her own flamethrower if the Mimic gets past Thomas and Kimi’s first line of defense.

The crackle of the walkie-talkie comes to life in her hand. “Balloons are dropping now,” Thomas says before the radio chirps.