Page 119 of The Midnight Knock

“It’s the home stretch, Miss Hewitt.”

Jack Allen, the gabardine man, stood before the archway that awaited them all. His smile was so tight she could hear those teeth, grinding together like stones.

The light was wailing behind Jack Allen. Behind Kyla, she heard a great crash as the first of the city’s stone towers began to fall.

Blood dripped from the blade in Jack Allen’s hand.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

“I hope you’re ready, Miss Hewitt,” Jack Allen said. “Tonight, we play for keeps.”

Kyla awoke at four o’clock in Lance’s Malibu, just in time to watch the silver glare pass over the desert sky. The light was brilliant, it was everywhere, and when it passed, she realized that her body was her own again. That the ceremony had restarted once more.

Maybe for the last time.

In the driver’s seat of the Malibu, Fernanda said, “How did you sleep?”

Kyla reached down to touch the gun in her door’s pocket, to unzip the green backpack they’d taken from the safe house this afternoon. She found the roll of camera film they’d stashed at the bottom: their ticket out of this mess.

If they survived the night.

Kyla said, “I’ll live.”

Fernanda rubbed her temples, clearly in pain.

“Are you all right?” Kyla said.

“Just a headache.”

Kyla didn’t know what to think of that.

Up ahead, the great dark shape of the mountain sprang up on the horizon. Fernanda said, “Do you want to hear a story?”

On all the other days, Kyla had said,No stories. I feel like I’m already living in one of the awful ones.

Now, though, she suspected this might be her last chance to hear a story in a long, long time. Kyla tried to smile. She said, “Tell me one I’ve never heard before.”

THE TWINS

The end of the day is just the beginning.It was one of the few things their father used to say about running this motel, back in the months when he and The Chief prepared for their grand reopening. Not that the men had any intention of running the motel like an actual business. Not that their father ever cared about the place. Like so much else, their father never really explained what he was trying to say, almost like he didn’t trust his children to understand him.

Had their father known, even then, that Thomas really wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing? Tabitha had always had the keener mind; Father had never forgiven her for it.

Tabitha watched herself and her brother empty the motel of the last guests’ belongings, the guests from the fifties, the guests from the grand reopening. In Mister Hewitt’s room, Tabitha and Thomas gathered up shoes and pants and a letter to his son (Kyla Hewitt’s father, no doubt) that would never be mailed. From the dresser of Jack Allen Cross, they removed a small diamond necklace and a card that read simply,Sorry. Again.In the room shared by Mrs. Holiday and Mrs. O’Shea, the twins discovered that only one of the room’s two beds has been slept in. Tabitha hoped the women had found satisfaction last night, or at least a warm presence at their side as the world ended.

All of these people had once had hopes, lives, futures. Just like Thomas and Tabitha themselves.

No more.

In 1955, their guests had stopped here because they’d run out of gas. The gas pump outside had been empty by the time they’d arrived—The Chief had seen to that, but thankfully Father had left a few cans stockpiled in the twins’ room. It had been enough for Thomas and Tabitha to load up the guests’ cars with their suitcases and bags and drive the vehicles into the desert, around the side of the mountain, out of view of the road. Thomas and Tabitha walked back together, silent.

This was what they had done the first day. This was nothing Tabitha could change.

Thomas and Tabitha stripped the beds, cleaned the windows, scrubbed out the blood left behind in the bathtub of room 5. But as Tabitha watched the events of the day play out, she thought also about last night, the most recent last night, the night in which Kyla Hewitt regained her memories and killed Jack Allen before he could begin his midnight rampage. For all the good it did them. Not three hours later, when Tabitha had wrapped up her story, as Ryan Phan and Fernanda went to check on Stanley Holiday and Kyla and Ethan asked more questions, Tabitha had smelled danger. She’d stepped into the cafe’s kitchen and discovered Thomas standing in a rainbow haze, the stoves all pouring gas, a book of matches in his hand.