Page 48 of The Midnight Knock

Yes. Well. Kyla sure wasn’t one to talk about unintended acts of violence.

She and Ethan lapsed into an uneasy silence. They were poking through the contents of the maintenance room, but what were they even looking for? That mythical satellite phone? Penelope Holiday? The girl certainly wasn’t here—there was nowhere for a sixteen-year-old girl to hide in a room this size—and the other junk seemed just as gone.

Why were they even bothering? Kyla could practically feel time slipping away from them, vanishing underfoot like a highway under the wheels of a speeding car. She was genuinely afraid to ask Ethan to check his watch. Judging by the way the light of the room was flickering, the motel’s generator hadn’t discovered a surprise second wind.

The lights were going to die, sooner or later. Kyla couldn’t accept that the same would happen to her, but it was getting harder and harder to believe otherwise.

Ethan looked just as unnerved. “What do you think Tabitha meant after Stanley died? She said she and Thomas had done this before, done this with other guests, but how is that possible? It would draw attention. That’s probably the last thing someone like Frank O’Shea would tolerate in his backyard.”

“Unless the twins work for Frank,” Kyla said. “I say we give this five more minutes and then we go find the others. We take matters into our own hands. We’ve all got guns. It’s four on two. Whatever game they’re playing, I’m not going to end like anyone else they stuck here.”

“Do you really think that will work?”

“It beats the shit out of this.” But then something occurred to Kyla. “Your man went for a smoke break earlier this evening, right?”

Ethan didn’t seem thrilled at this new line of questioning. “Yes.”

“He’s sick in the lungs. Why would he do that?”

“Old habits die hard. I thought I’d convinced him to quit, but I realized today I can’t convince that man of anything.”

“What kind of cigarettes?”

“I don’t know the brand. I didn’t even know he still had a pack.”

“No, no.” Kyla shook her head. “When he came back inside, did he smell like menthols?”

Ethan glanced over from a corner in the back of the supply room. “How did you know that?”

“Lucky guess,” Kyla said. “But don’t you remember who else smelled like menthols tonight?”

Whether he did or not, Ethan didn’t get the chance to say. A new noise rolled over the motel, a sound unlike anything Kyla had ever heard before. She thought at first it was the cry of a whale in pain, the moan of a massive animal in agony, but there was something inorganic about it, like a massive piece of metal being bent out of shape, stone shearing from stone.

And yet stone or not, the moaning noise still soundedalive.Alive and afraid and in pain.

The sound sent a tremor through the earth, subtle butunmistakable. It made the lights flicker, warped the air of the supply room, sent a wave ofSHRIEKSspreading across the desert. The creatures outside: call Kyla crazy, but they almost sounded afraid.

Ethan said, “That noise came from the mountain.”

But Kyla was distracted by something else. When the lights had flickered, they’d briefly grown brighter, bright enough for her to see something that had been too murky to notice a moment before. The concrete floor of the supply room was coated with a thin layer of dust. No doubt the twins never bothered to clean in here. Why would they? The guest rooms must have kept them plenty busy.

Which was a good thing for Kyla and Ethan. There was a mess of footprints near the door and around the shelves that must have seen the most activity: the sheets, the glass cleaner, the plates.

But there was only one set of prints that weren’t like the others. They were boot prints. Not a large boot, no more than a size nine, with a rounded toe and grooved soles. The boots had walked from the door of the supply room to the furthest corner, ending at a shelf full of paint supplies.

Kyla looked at Ethan’s feet. They were big, easily an eleven or twelve, and shod in cowboy boots with pointed toes. Not a match.

She could only think of one other person who’d worn boots tonight.

Kyla followed the steps in parallel, careful not to disturb them. She stopped at the can of paint supplies and surveyed its contents. Cans, brushes, acetone, a folded tarp.

And tucked away on the edge of the shelf she found an empty paint can with its lid removed. It held a few wooden stirrers, a screwdriver, a weathered pencil. Shaking the can under the light, Kyla found something else squirreled away in the clutter. Something small and round and yellow.

Fishing her fingers into the can, Kyla plucked out a plastic cylinder with a yellow case. Even without reading the letters on the side, Kyla knew what the little cylinder contained. She’d seen plenty of ones just like it today.

On the side of the cylinder were the wordsKODAK GOLD 400.

35 MM NEGATIVE FILM.