Page 8 of When the Night Comes Knocking

Jane doesn’t realize how badly she is shaking until Jackson places a hand on her back and asks if she is okay. She shifts away from the touch soundlessly, focusing her attention on Jim as he drops next to Billy’s mangled body again.

The clinical overhead lighting seems to highlight each wrinkle around the man’s sea-blue eyes. He wipes his hand across his mouth and mumbles something like a prayer before brushing Billy’s eyelids closed.

Everyone else has pulled into an uneven circle, watching with wide, glassy eyes as though this convenience store has actually been a funeral parlor all along. Jane swallows down the metallic taste of copper in the air and kneels next to Jim.

“Please, sir,” she says, tracking the path of a tear as it slides into the dark scruff of hair on his cheek. “Please tell us what did this.”

Jim’s body is stiff as stone as he remains hovering over Billy like an angel of death, staring down with haunted, all-seeing eyes. When he looks at her, the devastation there is all too familiar, reaching out toward her own rooted pain in the way of learned friends.

“It was a monster,” he says. His gravelly voice drops to a near whisper. “It’s still waiting outside, right now.”

Four

It weighed her down like iron…

The others huddle around where Jane and Jim sit beside Billy’s body. The air feels colder, heavier with the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. When Jim finally stands again, the joints of his knees crack loudly.

“These noises—they were coming from the edge of the forest, like scratching on bark,” he begins, turning to look out the glass of the front doors. “I got a whiff of this rotten smell, like we’d stumbled on a hunter’s dumping ground or something. Then the thing just ran at us.”

Jim clenches and unclenches his hands as he continues to stare out into the darkening night. “I’ve never seen something move so fast,” he mutters. “It got to Billy in seconds.”

“What do you mean ‘thing’? What was it?” the husband asks. His arm remains firmly wrapped around his wife’s shoulders, keeping her close to his side as though they are one entity.

Jane sees a shudder roll through Jim as he bows his head. When he turns back around, it’s her eyes he meets.

“By God, it was huge. It had these long talons, got ’em hooked into Billy real deep.” Tears slip down his face as he shakes his head. “I don’t know what the damned thing was,” he says.

Across from her, Jane notices her brother’s face flushing even further as he eyes the deep, even gashes across Billy’s body—what used to be his body, anyway. She’s never seen human mutilation like this so closely and clearly before, splayed out beneath the bright lights like they’re conducting a twisted autopsy. The wrongness in the air rivals the coppery smell of blood, assaulting her senses so that only churning nausea remains.

Kimi steps forward uneasily, tugging her thumbnail from her teeth. “Jim, please. You’re not making any sense,” she says, with a deep frown emphasizing the premature worry lines across her forehead. “You’re sure it wasn’t a big bear or something?”

“It wasn’t no goddamned bear!” he shouts, and Kimi flinches back, holding up her hands in silent surrender. His shoulders sag as he shakes his head again, staring at where the pool of Billy’s blood has finally stopped spreading across the linoleum.

“This thing was…It was like the devil was looking back at me,” says Jim as another silent tear slides down his face through a smear of Billy’s blood. “I can’t make it make any more sense than that.”

“We need to call the police. A man has just died, for Christ’s sake,” the pregnant woman says, looking far steadier than her husband, whose eyes keep flicking around the room as though someone might reveal themselves to be an ax murderer at any moment.

Everyone reaches for their phones, swiping across lock screens in near unison.

“I have no bars,” Jackson says first, followed by several agreements.

“Service works best toward the back corner of the store,” Kimi says. “I’ll be right back.” She directs the words to Jim, squeezing his shoulder once before disappearing between the aisles.

The husband and wife exchange looks with each other, seemingly having their own silent conversation. Thomas’s wide eyes are still locked on where Billy’s arm was almost severed.

Jim begins to ramble, raking his hands back through his salt-and-pepper hair, then down his puffy face, streaking Billy’s blood across his skin like war paint. “It had this skin that was stretched too tight,” he says, pressing the palms of his hands against his closed eyes. “And the sound of it—it kept making these sounds like…like bones breaking over and over.”

“That’s it,” Thomas snaps, and he takes one large step over Billy’s dead body. He grabs Jane by the forearm and pulls her up from Jim’s side. “We’re leaving now, Jane. This guy is fucking crazy.”

She stills, glancing back at Jim’s ghostly pale face, then down at all the blood. “Thomas, wait. What if something is really out there? How are we going to get to the car?”

Her brother cuts a cold glare at Jim, that resolute rage surfacing in his dark eyes that has hardly disappeared over the past two months. “We walk like normal people,” he says, tugging her toward the door.

Jim curls his hands into fists. “Don’t you dare open that door. Don’t you dare, boy!” His voice cuts through the store like a bullet, teetering a fine line of fury and hysteria. “You’ll get us all killed, you hear me? If you open that door, you’ll get us all killed!”

Goose bumps spread across Jane’s skin as her feet seem to plant themselves to the floor of their own accord. The sky has given way to a dark charcoal now, creating far too many shadows around the single streetlamp that stands near the back of the parking lot.

Far too many places for something to hide.