Lori sat on the Wiesses’ living room couch, a protective pillow held across her chest while she used the television remote to flip through the cable channels. Upstairs, she hadn’t heard a word from BJ since putting him to bed, which she took to mean he’d sleep peacefully through the night.
Their talk about creatures lurking in the darkness had gotten to her more so than she’d known, however. With the kid in bed, sitting there alone, the house seemed eerily large and unsafe. There were so many rooms, so many windows for a prowler to sneak in through. She kept thinking about the noise she’d heard earlier, behind the attic door, and she imagined that whatever made it had slipped out of sight before she turned on the light, slinking within the walls to emerge somewhere else in the house.
“Some hero,” she thought aloud, thinking of the bravery she’d tried to display earlier.
Thud!
She stopped channel-surfing and looked to the ceiling.
Thud!
Lori sprang to her feet. The muffled noise came again, the sound of a door slamming shut.
Clicking off the television, she hurried to the foyer and looked up from the foot of the stairs to the second floor landing. She should’ve been able to see the glow of BJ’s lamp from where she stood, but the hallway appeared dark.
The only light where Lori stood came from the outside lamp over the front steps. Its whitish gleam shone in through the sectioned windows lining each side of the main door and cast bar-like shadows over the floor and steps. In this strange setting, the entry seemed murky and uninviting, specifically designed to repel guests rather than to welcome them. She flipped on the entry light to dispel the mood.
“BJ? Are you all right up there?”
When no answer came, she mounted the steps two at a time, now fearing that what she’d heard could’ve been the sound of the boy falling out of bed, possibly injuring himself and breaking the lamp in the process.
“BJ?”
From the landing she could see through the crack in BJ’s door, and even in the dark she could tell he wasn’t in bed. The noise thumped again, closer this time. She spun to face the other half of the hallway.
Stepping into the lesser gloom below one of the hallway’s two skylights, she said, “For someone who was so afraid of going to bed earlier, you sure don’t seem too scared of playing hide-and-seek in the dark.”
He didn’t answer.
Of course not, she thought. That would ruin the fun.
She sighed and began moving from room to room, flipping on lights along the way. She reached BJ’s sister’s room at the opposite end of the hall with no sign of the boy.
“Come on, BJ,” she said, adding force to her tone. “Enough is enough.”
Every light on the second floor went out with a snap.
Lori backed up and groped for the nearest light switch, sweeping the wall with her hand faster and faster with each unsuccessful pass. Then she had it.
Click, click, click. The switch didn’t work.
“Shit.”
“Lori,” the boy called from his room.
She stumbled into the hall and took three steps toward the boy’s door, ready for an explanation, when that heavy thump came yet again, this time much louder. She stopped in her tracks.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the window in Mr. Wiesses’ study slammed shut. Before she had a chance to question what closed it, the air darkened around her. She snapped her head up, looking to the skylight overhead.
And saw the silhouette of man peering down at her.