The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [81]
“I saw the porch light go out and the house get dark,” Hallie told her.
“Which direction did they go in? Do you know?”
“They were just going to go to the edge—to that path at the bottom of the field.”
“Okay. You stay here while I go get them. Don’t move.”
Hallie nodded, but only seconds after her mother started off toward the path, she followed her, suddenly very afraid to be alone in the greenhouse.
“Wait up!” she cried, and her mother paused, shining the light back on her, and Hallie ran through the mud and melted snow. She realized that her mom was navigating this chilly March slop with nothing but socks on her feet. When she caught up, her mom took her hand and pulled her along, crying out Garnet’s and Molly’s names into a wind that seemed to be increasing, growing more blustery the closer they got to the woods. But it really didn’t take them long to find the girls. Within minutes they were upon her sister and their new friend, perhaps a dozen yards past where the grass would merge with the trees. The small copse of pines where they were standing was illuminated by their lantern.
“Is everything okay?” Garnet asked their mother, becoming a little unnerved now herself.
Hallie watched their mom embrace first Garnet and then Molly. She held each child at arm’s length and seemed to inspect them, just as she had examined her back at the greenhouse. “I was worried about you,” she answered. “I didn’t know where you were. What were you two thinking going into the woods at night?”
“We were just getting things to make it look like the dolls were in the forest.”
“We lost power,” Hallie said.
“We did?”
“Yes, we did,” their mother told them, her voice sounding less unhinged than it had a moment ago but also more stern. Abruptly Hallie watched her mother’s head spin toward the path that led back to the fields. “Chip?” she said into the dark. “Chip, is that you?” Hallie had heard the sound, too: a rustling, a scuffling among the leaves.
When there was no response, their mother took Garnet by the hand and pointed her flashlight toward the meadow. “Did you girls hear something?”
Molly, who hadn’t said a word, suddenly started to whimper. “I’m scared,” she sniffled, and she ran the sleeve of her coat across her nose and then wiped at her eyes. “I want to go home.”
“Oh, Molly, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry. I’m sure we just heard a deer or a fox or something,” Emily said, but Hallie could tell that her mother didn’t believe a word she was saying. “I just got spooked by the blackout. Come on, girls, let’s head back to the house.”
“Where’s Daddy?” Hallie asked.
“I guess he’s back at the house, too,” her mother answered. “Come on. I’m positive the power will be back on in a couple of minutes and we’ll be able to have some hot chocolate.” Then they walked purposefully from the woods along the path and up the sloping meadow past the greenhouse—retrieving the single lantern there—and into the dark house.
Silently you place the knife at your feet and push shut the door to the wheelbarrow ramp, locking it from the inside, your fingers spidering along the wood frame in the absolute dark. You feel around for the horizontal beam and drop it back in place, listening as your wife calls your name in the kitchen above you. She sounds anxious, frenzied. You want to yell up to her, Down here, honey. Just checking the breakers in the fuse box. Everything’s fine! But Ethan Stearns is standing between you and the stairs, a beacon that is strangely but perfectly visible in the blackness. He is scowling, incapable of masking his disgust.
But, really, what were you supposed to do? Massacre all of them?
You couldn’t have done that. You see in your mind an image of the children at daybreak, all dead, Emily, too, their throats cut as they bled to death in the woods—their parkas and sweaters forever stained red. You see it all in your mind with the sun overhead, the sky the same breathtaking summer cobalt it had been on August 11 over Lake Champlain. But this was