Night Owls

9

ELLY DIDN’T KNOW how long she’d been running. The sun had come up, so she could have stopped, but by then she wasn’t running from the Creeps anymore. Instead, she was running from the awful things she’d seen.

She should have been inured to it by now. She and Father Value had done gruesome things in the name of eradicating evil, and she’d approached it almost clinically, every time. But this . . . this was beyond anything she’d imagined. They’d come howling through the woods, black shapes writhing against the night. It had seemed like hundreds of them; she’d heard their claws scrabbling at every window. But Henry had said there were only a few. He said one of them must have been something else before the turning, and he’d brought tricks with him through the veil.

He’d been so calm, telling her these things as he chalked the last runes on the doors and checked the salt wards lining the windows. Helen had sat on the floor in the middle of the upstairs library, weapons laid out around her like a deadly corona. She’d checked the stakes for sharpness and made sure the guns were loaded with silver bullets as if she’d been handling them all her life.

Then the Creeps had come, breaking the downstairs windows, tearing the doors off their hinges. They paid for it; Elly’s ears still rang with their pained yelps from forcing their way past the wards. Two or three pups had made way for the others, whimpering as they rubbed out salt lines so their superiors could cross. The smell of charred fur had preceded them up the stairs. When the first one died due to the sigils at the top, Elly’d let herself think she and the Clearwaters might have a chance.

But the elder three weren’t nearly as reckless. They’d roamed throughout the house, smashing and breaking things, taking their time. It sounded like an army of dogs down there, snarling and slavering. Helen’s eyes had been wide as she clutched a baseball bat to her chest. The Creeps thrived on fear. Elly knew that. Henry knew that. But their own calm hadn’t been enough to soothe Helen.

Maybe you had to be born to the Brotherhood. Maybe you simply couldn’t learn to suppress terror in an hour.

It didn’t matter. Helen broke first, fleeing the safety of the library and destroying God knew how many carefully laid wards. And what else could Henry have done? He followed his wife into the darkness, shouting her name.

It had been blood from there until the end.

Now, with a crisp autumn morning beaming sunlight down upon her, Elly’s legs finally gave out. She wobbled over to a patch of recently raked lawn, wondering where she was but not really caring. As she sprawled beside a pile of leaves, she realized she needed to take stock. But she was so damned tired. It was shock, she knew, and she ought to fight it.

But what does it even matter now? Father Value’s dead. The Clearwaters are dead. The Creeps will sniff out where the book went before long, and it was all for nothing.

She put her head between her knees and dragged in lungfuls of air. Father Value would never have allowed such a defeatist attitude. She could imagine him now: the disappointment in his eyes, the tilt of his head as he said, You’re stronger than that, Eleanor.

She hated it when he called her Eleanor.

Okay. Okay. I have the clothes on my back. I have my wallet. She patted the lump in her back pocket to confirm. I have ten dollars and a handful of quarters. I have Silver and Pointy. The weapon in question was strapped along her forearm beneath her sweater. Its weight was a comfort.

That’s where the list ran out. She had nothing left and nowhere to go.

That’s not true.

Elly blinked. No. She couldn’t. Not ever. He said he never wanted to see either of us, ever again. It was more than two years now since he’d left them, and she and Father Value had let him go. They’d hardly spoken his name in that time; she’d pretended the empty seat at the table was just another chair, and Father Value had thrown away the extra plate.

But they both knew where he’d ended up. It was just how they worked. Father Value knew someone who knew someone who knew this medium, and word got back to him. Not a lot, mostly that he was okay, that nothing had killed him yet, but Elly’d eaten those reports up like Halloween candy on All Saints’ Day.

One night. I’ll knock on his door, and if he even answers, I’ll only stay one night. Maybe borrow a few dollars so I can get a change of clothes and a new backpack. Then he can forget all about me again.

Having a plan—no matter how shaky it was—made her feel better. Elly pushed herself to her feet and dug out her wallet. Her legs still felt like they’d been stuffed with jelly, but she could walk a little longer, then stick her thumb out if she had to. She slipped a piece of paper out of one of the credit card pockets and read the address for what must have been the millionth time since she’d sought it out last spring.

He’d walked away from them, but he hadn’t gone far. Maybe because, as mismatched and screwed up as they all were, they were family.

Or maybe that’s just where he was when he ran out of money.

It didn’t matter; she’d find out either way soon enough. Elly set off down the road, composing apologies to her brother with every step.

SHE HAD TO hitch with three different people to get there. Cavale lived about twenty minutes from Edgewood, in Crow’s Neck. In the early nineteen hundreds it had been a booming industrial town, but the Great Depression saw most of the textile mills closed, and Crow’s Neck had never recovered. Eighty years had taken their toll: the abandoned factories had been overtaken by grass and trees, the glass long gone from their windows. Whole neighborhoods were nothing but boarded-up houses and lawns gone to seed.

It wasn’t so much that Cavale lived in a bad part of town, as it was simply a place no one really wanted to go if they didn’t have to. The last driver, though, did seem to think local thugs were going to steal his hubcaps while Elly got out of the car if he brought her all the way to Cavale’s door. He’d insisted on looking up directions on his phone to ease his conscience. It had taken him longer to describe how she could walk to that address than it would have taken him to drive her the last couple of miles.

That was all right, though. Walking gave her time to prepare herself for the possibility that he might slam the door in her face. Always have a contingency. It was another of Father Value’s lessons. In this case her contingency consisted of two steps:

1. Do not cry on Cavale’s doorstep.

2. Practice her best panhandling face.

Hitching rides was fine, but rare were the drivers who’d offer to buy you lunch, too. She’d never stolen—well, never money or food; artifacts buried in churches were a different matter—and she wasn’t sure she could get away with it if she tried. Something about her made shop owners suspicious even if she walked in waving cash around.

There were signs of life in most of the houses: children’s toys left out on this one’s lawn, a few early Halloween decorations in that one’s windows, even a television blaring the twelve o’clock news—but there was an air of abandonment here, like the people who lived in these houses weren’t really there. This was the kind of place you went when you couldn’t afford better. She wondered how many families said, “When money’s not so tight, we’ll get out of here,” as their substitute for grace at dinner.

Forty-five Greenwood Street loomed like something out of a Lovecraftian dream: its chocolate brown paint was peeling, half the posts were missing from the porch railing, and the whole structure canted slightly off true. Cavale’s house was the last in the row of inhabited fixer-uppers. Beyond his residence, the street was all collapsing houses and broken pavement.

Where the other residents at least made token attempts at keeping their lawns neat, Cavale had let his grow wild. Dry, dead summer grass came up to Elly’s knees as she cut across the expanse, leaving a swath of beaten-down straw in her wake. She might have thought Cavale had moved on and abandoned the place if it weren’t for the mail in the box beside the door. The mailbox itself was holding on by one last nail, its body at a crooked angle. She wondered if she should take the letters out and have them ready to hand to him when he answered. Then she wondered if that was creepy. “Hi, we haven’t seen each other in over two years. Now here I am with your gas bill in my hand. Look how helpful I am!”

Not to mention she’d have to follow that up with “And by the way, Father Value’s dead. How’s your year been?”

Right. No mail.

It took three tries before she got up the courage to knock. Then, her first rap on the door was more a pathetic tapping than anything. Cavale would have to have been standing on the other side, his ear to the wood, to even hear it. Her second was better, louder. She thought it was the way a neighbor might knock, even: light and airy and oh-just-dropping-by.

She waited, fighting the urge to peek in the windows. Was he in there, keeping himself out of line of sight in case she looked in, hoping she’d go away?

She knocked again, putting more force behind the blows than she’d intended. From cheery neighbor to angry bill collector. I wouldn’t answer, if it were my house. Someone knocks like that, they’re not here for anything nice.

Well, she wasn’t there for anything nice, now, was she? The man who’d raised them was dead and she’d landed herself in a world of trouble.

The silence stretched. She started feeling awfully exposed, out there on the porch. It was broad daylight, so it wasn’t like there were any Creeps around, but her shoulders started itching all the same, like someone was watching her. Probably just a neighbor, wondering who the strange girl is, hanging around the run-down shack. She whipped around, looking for the telltale twitch of a curtain or a shadow ducking behind a corner, but she was alone.

Still not a peep from inside. Maybe it’s Cavale watching me. I should take the hint and go.

She meant to leave, to head back to her swath of trampled grass and plow through it to the street. She toyed with the idea of writing “HI” in it like a crop circle gone wrong, for him to see. But as she turned to go down the steps, she felt the sob break.

No. No. Rule number one is DON’T CRY. She’d planned for this. It was more likely than any other outcome, really, so why did it hurt? He’d been the one to walk away from them, after all. He’d said he didn’t want to see them again, and here she was ignoring that one simple request. Could she blame him for not answering? Or maybe he wasn’t even home to ignore her, and here she was taking it personally. She stayed on the porch and leaned against the railing. A few gulping breaths didn’t stop the fat tears rolling down her cheeks or the awful squeezing feeling in her chest. Everything pressed in on her, the world closing to a pinpoint. Her knees buckled. Splinters dug into her palms as her grip on the railing twisted.

Then someone was speaking behind her: “Are you all right, miss?”

She squawked in surprise as she turned, flopping over onto her butt instead of rising smoothly to her feet like she’d meant to.

The man before her in the doorway was sleep bedraggled. His hair was mussed and he was blinking against the brightness. He’s let his hair grow out since he left. Then his eyes went wide. “Elly? Jesus fuck, is it you?”

He was there, then, on his knees next to her on the porch, pulling her into his arms. She couldn’t answer, only nod miserably as she lost the struggle with a fresh spate of tears.

“Shhh, it’s all right. It’s all right.” He stroked her hair and murmured to her, the way he’d done when they were little and she’d woken in the dark from a nightmare. Father Value had never been good with comforting either of them, but Cavale had always made her feel better, made her feel safe.

She clung to him now, smelling soap and shampoo and laundry detergent, and was horrified at how she must seem to him. The Clearwaters had let her shower, but that was sometime yesterday, before the Creeps had come. She hadn’t changed her clothes in two days, and now that she was smearing tears and snot across Cavale’s clean white tee shirt, she realized there were still flecks of dried blood beneath her fingernails.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, I’m kind of a mess.” She pulled back, swiping at her nose and eyes with the cuffs of her sweater like a little kid.

Cavale let her have her space, but kept one hand on her shoulder. “You look like hell.” He gave her half a grin, but his sky blue eyes were filled with concern. And . . . were those tears he was blinking back? “Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk?”

“Are . . . are you sure? I know you said you didn’t want to see us again, but—”

He cut her off, waving away the thought. “I’m sure.” He stood up and held out a hand to pull her to her feet. Now that she wasn’t snivelling anymore, or at least, not as much, they stood together awkwardly.

The physical affection had stopped sometime after puberty hit, when Father Value had made them start sleeping in separate rooms and had held separate stumbling, embarrassing talks with each of them. There’d never been anything untoward between them, and she and Cavale had never spoken about it—even when they’d still snuck into one another’s rooms late at night to talk—but sometime ten years ago, they’d stopped touching each other at all. It was more for Father Value’s peace of mind than anything—hell, Elly’d been disturbed by the incestuous twins in Flowers in the Attic when she was twelve.

But even with Father Value gone, it felt somehow wrong for them to touch any more than they already had.

Cavale stepped back. He ran a hand along his jaw; his palm on the stubble sounded like he was rubbing sandpaper over his skin. “Christ, Elly, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” she said, her voice tiny. Oh God, no more crying. Then her belly growled, saving her.

This time Cavale’s grin reached his eyes. “What would you say to burgers and tater tots?” He stepped into the front hall and turned to wink at her. “I’ll give you a hint: you should probably say yes, since it’s all I have right now.”

“Then I’ll say hell yes.” She made one more pass at her eyes with her sleeve and followed him inside.