Page 115 of The Midnight Knock

It all fell apart in west Texas, just like his mother always warned him it would.

Lola’s Den, the same as it ever was. The sign outside:DEEP-FRIED HAPPINESS. Inside, a smell of biscuits and warm grease. A little rat-faced fry cook scowling at Ethan and Hunter as the boys stepped in out of the cold. The booths all empty. The time on the clock showing 2:02.

The man in the gabardine suit seated at the bar, stirring his coffee with a silver spoon.

Ethan watched himself watch Hunter as Hunter said, “I need a piss.” Hunter headed for the restroom. Ethan watched himself standing at the cash register at the end of the bar, uncertain whether to seat himself. He felt Jack Allen’s presence at his elbow.

But then something new happened.

Jack Allen said, “Good job last night. You and the girl accomplished more than I ever did.”

Ethan turned his head. Jack Allen was smiling at him, but unlike the first time Ethan came to this cafe, he didn’t feel himself trapped in the man’s thrall. Ethan could look away, could look at the clock behind the bar. It was still 2:02.

“Don’t worry, I can’t hurt you,” Jack Allen said. “We can’t change anything about these early hours. Until the silver light strikes at four, you’re just living in the past. But we can make a little time for ourselves, I think. Now that you’re a little more like me.”

So, Ethan thought, and recalled the sensation of silver turning to water on his tongue.This is the power of The Chief’s mirror.

“Why should I talk to you?” Ethan said.

“Because you’ve changed, Mister Cross. You seem… tougher. Clearer. Like you’ve finally decided to grow up.”

Ethan said nothing.

“And you’re curious. You want to know why this is happening.Why I do the things I do. Why I am the way that I am.” Jack Allen sipped his coffee. “Tell me—do you think I was surprised when Miss Hewitt blew off my head with your shotgun?”

Ethan thought of the way this man’s spectral form had clung to his shoulder last night shortly before the mountain exploded. The way he’d seen a glimpse of Jack Allen standing in the parking lot of the motel, two nights ago, when the power had stuttered. The way Ryan Phan had sworn he’d seen Jack Allen’s face superimposed over Stan Holiday last night, when the big man had killed Fernanda and tried to kill Ryan himself.

Ethan said, “No. You’re always there, aren’t you? Like a ghost or something.”

“Or something, yes. I exist in a state even I still struggle to understand. Here and not. Alive and dead. At midnight, my body is given corporeal form and I can undertake my work. Until then, however, I can only bear witness.”

“But if you’re some kind of all-seeing spirit, how come you never found where Penelope was hiding until last night?”

A frown crossed Jack Allen’s face. He looked at the clock, seeming almost embarrassed. “She was… well concealed.”

“It’s like she knew you were coming. Her, or that little girl who was with her.”

“What little girl?”

Ethan grinned. “So you can’t seeeverything.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Jack Allen’s smile returned, though it didn’t light up his eyes. “Penelope has eluded me for an eternity, but now I know where to find her, thanks to you and Miss Hewitt. I knew I was right to let Kyla kill me. To let you people think you were safe. You found what I never could, and now I can complete my work.”

Outside, the world was frozen in the middle of a breeze. Scrub grass was bent back in surprise. A veil of dirt hung over the hood of a glossy black Buick Roadmaster.

Jack Allen was right: Ethan did have questions. “And whatisyour work?”

“Let me ask you a question first. Do you understand what you saw last night? That silver energy bursting from the mountain?”

“The end of the world.”

“I’m sure that’s what Tabitha told you. She’s a weak-minded woman, almost worse than her brother and her father and their loathsome Chief. All of them lacked imagination, just like their ancestors before them. What you witnessed last night at four o’clock was the fulmination of a power beyond our comprehension. You saw the awakening of Te’lo’hi. You saw a god in truth.”

It sleeps.

It wakes.

Jack Allen said, “Te’lo’hi radiates enough power to fuel the ceremony in which we are all ensnared. Hundreds of years ago, the old tribe of the mountain, the twins’ ancestors, used the god’s power to seal it away on this, the night of its full awakening. The tribe was terrified of what the god might do. They couldn’t fathom the potential of its power.”