Page 28 of The Midnight Knock

Kyla reached a hand around her back. For a gun, no doubt. She said, “I’d like to see you try.”

“It’s not us you have to fear,” Thomas said.

“We won’t be the ones to see the guilty punished,” Tabitha said.

“We’re just the stewards of the mountain.”

“We’re just the ones who know what’s coming next.”

Fernanda spoke up, trying to sound confident, scornful. “And what would that be?”

Thomas returned her stare. He let out the smallest sliver of a smile, and the temperature in the room fell five degrees.

“At midnight,” he said, “three things will happen.”

“The door will open,” Tabitha said.

“The lights will go out.”

“And anyone who’s not with us will die.”

Another long, long silence filled the office, broken only by the crackle of the fire. On the fireplace’s mantel, the deer’s antler and the carved white rocks shivered in the weak firelight. The clock’s hands inched forward. 8:18.

Ethan said, “What are y’all talking about?”

In response, a terribleBANGshook the room. Everyone, even Hunter, jumped and stumbled away from the noise. There was anotherBANG, and Ethan realized it was coming from the other side of the walnut door in the back of the office.

A furious scratching sound. Claws on wood. Like talons. Whatever was in there, it released a piercingSHRIEKthat raised every hair on Ethan’s body, momentarily shut down every nerve in his mind. It sounded like the cry of the owl he’d heard earlier in the night, but when his brain came online, he asked himself again: How could any bird be big enough to make a noise thatloud?

Stan Holiday had half fallen from his chair. “What the fuck is in there?”

Thomas shrugged. “The same thing as what’s out there.”

Tabitha raised a finger to the desert through the window. Like the flick of a conductor’s stick, the motion seemed to set a chorus ofSHRIEKSechoing through the night. Out the windows, Ethan saw motion in the shadows at the edge of the motel’s lights, flickers of a deeper black against the dark. He saw a glint of yellow, another, here and gone.

He felt an uncanny certainty that those were eyes. Dozens and dozens of yellow eyes. Watching him. Staring right back.

Thomas said, “At midnight, when the lights die, there will be nothing to stop those creatures from coming inside.”

Tabitha said, “They are the Guardians of this place.”

“The Guardians of this night.”

“They are terrible and fierce.”

MoreSHRIEKStore through the air, the sounds seeming to come from everywhere. The motel, Ethan realized, was surrounded.

Thomas said, “We have a hiding place. Somewhere safe from the creatures of the dark.”

“A place we use, on nights like this,” Tabitha said.

“This happens a lot?” Kyla said. “Why the hell do you even live out here?”

Hunter asked the smarter question. “What’s the catch?”

“We’ll make you a deal,” Thomas said.

“An ultimatum,” Tabitha said.