Page 32 of The Midnight Knock

Where had Stanley seen that man before tonight?

Stanley threw the van into reverse, gunned the engine, slewed out of his parking space, and tossed it in drive and went bounding toward the road. Through the passenger window Stanley saw that the other guests—the surviving guests, God in heaven—had come out to the front porch to watch. Someone was missing, he registered that, but Stanley was such a fundamentally self-interested man it didn’t occur to him for several seconds that he was abandoning his granddaughter to this awful place.

Penelope would be fine until the cavalry arrived. That’s what Stan told himself. Just until the cavalry arrived.

Stan pounded on the gas and the van rocked and bucked on the run-flats, but it kept him going, kept him moving, kept him fuckingzoomingaway from this clown show.

A ring of light surrounded the motel, a halo of illumination almost like the glow of a campfire in the wilderness, and as Stanley neared the edge of the parking lot—the edge of that light—he felt something that might have been instinct or his guardian angel or some sort of inherited primal fear start to whisper just behind the ear.

“Think about this,” the little voice seemed to say.

“Think.”

Stanley told himself he was imaging this, just like he’d imagined the man in the mirror earlier. He kept driving. Driving and driving and driving even as every instinct, every nerve ending in his body said this was a terrible, no good, very fucking bad idea.

The edge of light was twenty feet away. Ten. Five. A cold sweat had broken out on Stanley’s arms. That awful whispering voice wouldn’t quit. “You really sure about this, Stanley? Are you really sure you want to go out there?”

Stanley wasn’t a coward. He gunned the gas and sent the Odyssey rocketing over the gravel.

He reached the edge of the motel’s lights. He crossed it.

He drove into the dark.

Stanley was going to Fort Stockton. He was going to Frank, the man who had protected him his entire life. He was going to get revenge. He was going to get answers.

He didn’t make it thirty feet.

It was a struggle to keep the run-flats driving straight on the gravel drive, a full two-handed operation, but Stan risked a second’s loss of control to take one hand off the wheel and fumble for the headlights. He found the toggle, twisted them on.

In the sudden light, he saw something very big and very dark and very strange—Were those feathers that caught the light? Scales?—whisk across the road ahead. The thing moved on two legs. It was almost seven feet tall.

It movedfast.

The thing vanished into the blackness of the desert to the left, but not before it let out aSHRIEKthat sent the flesh crawling on Stanley’s thighs, sent his balls clambering into his stomach. The same sound came again, somewhere behind him. Was it an echo, he wondered, or—

A great blow struck the side of the van, sent it slewing off the gravel. Stanley let out a scream, fighting with both hands to keep the wheel straight, but another blow came and whipped Stanley’s head against the doorpost. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt. Why had he forgotten to put on his seat belt?

The blow to the head dazed him, but Stanley kept his foot on the gas. It occurred to him that he was armed, that he should get hold of his gun, but when he risked another hand coming off the wheel, risked pulling his eyes off the dark road, he found the passenger seat was empty. The Desert Eagle must have gotten knocked to the floor somewhere. To retrieve it, he would have to stop the van and bend over and look. All of which seemed like very bad ideas, because when Stanley’s eyes returned to the windshield, he realized he was surrounded.

Dots of yellow were watching him from the dark. Yellow eyes. Dozens of them. Everywhere.

In that moment, something strange occured to Stanley. He realized that once, long ago, the human race had been just like any other animal. That it had been stalked. Chased. That it had been eatenby things that used to live outside the edge of the campfire’s light, things with names long forgotten. Stanley, in that moment, recalled a fear so old it almost didn’t have a name.

Stanley had discovered the fear of being hunted.

Panic washed through him. He floored the gas. At that exact moment, a third blow struck the van. In the corner of his vision, Stanley saw the passenger door buckle and curve inward. He heard the reinforced metal creak and squeal.

And then he felt the van lift off the ground.

With a lurch in his stomach, Stanley found himself suspended in the air, the van balancing on the driver’s-side wheels. The world tilted; his heart stopped—the angle of repose.

The van tipped over, and took Stanley with it.

He fell, hard, against the driver’s window. Pain screamed through his body, but Stanley didn’t have time for pain. He didn’t even have time to catch his breath. There was a furious scratching above him, a high squeal of shredded metal, and the passenger door—reinforced frame and all—was wrenched free from the body of the van. Up, up, and away.

A rush of cold air flooded into the cab. It brought the stench of carrion.

Stanley looked up. He saw what awaited him—what awaited all of them—out here in the dark.