Chapter 6 - When Night Falls

  Arlo froze at the unexpected din. It came from the forest they’d just left behind.

  “Those are shriekers,” Emery warned, picking up her pace again. “Night wraiths. It’s now dark enough for them to leave the shadows and manifest. They’ll be over the village as the night deepens, and they’ll shred the skin from your body if they get a hold of you.”

  It took a moment for her words to sink in, but when they did, Arlo shuddered.

  He was keenly aware of the streets rapidly emptying. The tavern turned out its customers, doors and windows slammed, and the dusky evening air fell as silent as when the Skiff from Midway had descended from above. In less than a minute, the village was deserted. The sunlight had gone.

  “It’s quiet around here,” he muttered as Emery’s home came into view ahead. More distant shrieks sent shivers down his spine.

  She waved him inside her cottage and pushed the door shut behind her. The eerie shrieking cut off, and she heaved a sigh and smiled. “We’re safe now. No shrieker has ever come in before. But we must not venture outside until dawn.”

  Emery had an oil lamp in the kitchen that she kept on low overnight. It seemed like a waste of oil, but Arlo found it comforting. Better than being left in total darkness with a bunch of phantoms floating around the village.

  Already, impatience began to gnaw at the pit of his stomach. “So we can’t do anything until the morning? We’re stuck here?”

  She shot him a glare, then shuffled off toward the bedroom. “You can sleep on the floor wherever you like,” she said. “I have blankets you can bundle up in. I’m going to read for a while before sleeping. Feel free to choose a book from my shelf.”

  He realized he’d upset her. “When I say we’re stuck here, I don't mean your home is a horrible place to be.” He paused, hearing no response. “Emery? I mean it. If we’re gonna be stuck anywhere, I’m glad it’s here.” He started across the room to follow her. “It could definitely be a lot worse for me if you hadn’t— Oh, sorry.”

  Emery had lit another lamp, kicked off her boots, and was already half undressed. Facing away from him, she made no comment but let her tan dress fall around her ankles, then snatched a white nightdress from the bed and tugged it over her head.

  Once the garment hung to her knees, she twisted to face him and frowned. “A gentleman would have averted his gaze.”

  “Sorry,” he said again. “I, uh . . . I noticed a scar on your back.”

  This was true—a long slice of white scar tissue across her shoulder blades. It had stood out quite plainly.

  Rather than answer, she reached above the wardrobe and brought down a few folded blankets. She tossed these on the floor at the foot of the bed, then offered him one of her two pillows. “It’s not much, but—”

  “Oh, it’s fine, thank you,” he said quickly. “You’ve been really nice, letting me stay here. This is great.” He knelt to arrange the blankets. “It’s early yet, though. What do you do in the evenings, with all that shrieking going on outside?”

  Emery also knelt, but she reached under her bed to pull out a bronze, lidded chamberpot. “What do you mean, what do I do? I read a page or two, then go to sleep.”

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  He paused. “You said that, but it’s only just got dark. Hell, I can’t believe it’s sunset already.”

  Sitting in full view, Emery squatted, and slid the pot under her nightdress.

  This time, Arlo averted his gaze. He pulled off his shirt and crawled into his makeshift bed.

  Once she’d finished, she said, “Do you need the pot?”

  “Uh, no, thank you.”

  He listened while she stoked the fireplace. Then, the creak of bed springs and the soft flutter of pages told him she was settling down with a book.

  Arlo felt completely out of sorts. His body told him it was mid-afternoon, yet night had fallen. Now that the two of them were still, the only sound was the gentle crackling of burning logs . . . and the muted howls and shrieks in the distance.

  “What are those things?” he asked.

  Emery sighed and snapped her book shut. “The dead. Their numbers grow as our people die. My mother is one of those shriekers. She died from a sickness.”

  Arlo swallowed. “I’m sorry.” He changed the subject. “What’s that scar on your back?”

  “It’s where I was whipped by one of Layton’s men years ago. It was a single lash with a red-hot burning flay stick.”

  Arlo sat bolt upright so he could peer over the bed at her. She now lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, her book closed on the nightstand. “What the hell could you have done to deserve such a punishment?”

  “Like Indira, I was chosen by the village to be his wife,” she murmured. “Only I wasn’t to his taste.”

  Arlo clenched his fists and ground his teeth. This poor young woman. He wanted to leap up and yell through the ceiling for Layton to come get him. He huffed through his nostrils for a moment, hell-bent on revenge when he made it to Midway, dreaming of the things he would do to those monsters . . .

  “How old were you?” he asked eventually.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, roughly how long ago was it?”

  “I . . . can’t remember.”

  “How old are you now?”

  She paused, and even then her answer was tentative. “Twenty?”

  If the constant threat of soul-sucking, skin-flaying shriekers wasn’t bad enough, these people really suffered from memory loss as well. “Okay, so what’s your earliest memory?”

  She paused, then said, “This. Living here. My mother once lived here, too. I don’t know how long ago that was. It seems like four or five years ago, maybe more, but it’s all a blur. Sometimes, it feels like forever.”

  Arlo lay back down, and Emery extinguished the lamp. Darkness enveloped them, but embers still glowed in the fireplace, and a lantern flickered in the kitchen, all of which offered a comforting orange glow.

  A long silence followed.

  When Arlo heard her soft, slow breathing, he realized she’d dozed off. To his surprise, he now felt pretty tired himself. This place seemed to be recalibrating his circadian rhythm.

  To his annoyance, he realized he needed to pee after all. If he didn’t go now, he’d need to even more during the night. He sat up again. Use the chamberpot, or go outside? Dangerous creatures floated around somewhere, but he only had to step out for a moment and pee against the wall. He’d be done in thirty seconds.

  Don’t be a moron.

  Slipping out of bed, he headed for the front door and gently pulled it open. The night air had dramatically cooled since his late-afternoon visit to the forest, and goosebumps rose on his bare upper half. Leaving the door ajar, he took a few steps outside and glanced all around to check the night sky. He saw nothing but darkness, though the constant shrieking echoed in the distance.

  You’re really doing this?

  It would be easy. A few more steps to the nearest wall. He’d be done in thirty seconds. Maybe twenty.

  In the end, he sighed and let out a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, no. I’m not that dumb. I’ll use the chamberpot.”

  He turned to head back inside—

  And at that moment, a terrible, ear-splitting shriek sounded directly above his head as a shrieker descended on him.

  Idiot!