V

The night was cold. Even with the fire going. Matthew relit it after supper, but he built it light. Too light. Lee could tell it wasn’t likely to last until morning, and if his father noticed he didn’t say anything. Instead, he sent them all off to bed just after they finished their food.

The sheriff left quickly. He was unsettled. Lee could sense it. Though he couldn’t understand why. They broke bread together, a sign of kinship. Yet he drove Thomas out like a mule, pushing him out the door with an urgency Lee hadn’t seen before. His father had shut the door before he had a chance to say goodbye.

And he was still hungry.

So Lee lay in the dark. The straw underneath him crinkled, and the wood underneath that groaned as he shifted back and forth. Straw poked out of the cotton slip underneath his head and into his neck. He tossed it away and lay flat.

Scritch.

Lee froze, his body went rigid. His wool cover was pulled to his chin in the chill and his hands gripped it tight, but he didn’t have it in him to close his eyes.

Scritch—scritch.

Just scratching from a mouse. Lee looked around the bedroom. It was coming from underneath him. Matthew was turned over in the opposing bed, his snoring barely audible. Barely a whisper. The scratching was clear enough to cut through.

Craning his neck, Lee looked for his pillow slip and found it just under Matthew’s bed.

Scritch.

“Just a mouse,” he told himself. Lee pulled the cover off and let the cold wrap around him. He swung his legs around the side of the bedframe and dangled them.

Scri—

His feet hit the floor. Nothing. No scampering across the wood. No squeaks. Lee bent underneath the bed, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Vacant. He traced the planks supporting the tick, feeling the cracks in the wood from the years of use. He checked the tick for cuts or holes where a critter might get themselves in and out. He crawled under and looked at the far wall. Empty.

He checked Matthew’s bed. The snoring somehow became louder as he crawled under the bed. More violent. “The hell are you doing under my bed?” Lee heard him say, in his mind. He envisioned the grip on his ankles, dragging him out and pinning him to the floor for a beating.

Lee scurried out. A mouse wasn’t worth a bloody eye tomorrow. He picked up the slip and tossed it to his bed, crawling back under his wool blanket and closing his eyes once again, drifting into slumber.

—

Horse hooves pounded against the dirt, kicking up dust in their wake. A man and a boy sat against each other, the glow of a large fire barely illuminating them in the darkness…

Scritch—scritch.

Lee groaned. Absently, he waved an arm from underneath his blanket. The man by the fire blurred.

Scritch—scritch.

Lee tried to open an eye, but it was too heavy.

Scritch—scritch.

Lee groaned again. Louder this time. Forcing himself to wave the blanket off and let the chill wake him. He rubbed an eye, then the other, and slowly rose from the bed.

Scrit—eek.

Lee felt something hit the bottom of his bed and heard the thudding of it escaping the dark. It hit the wall in front of him with a thud and ran into the opposite corner. As it passed the doorway Lee realized the light coming from underneath had dimmed. The fire was dying.

He pulled the cover over his head and lay there as still as he could. A quiet gnawing came from the edge of the room, and it was only then that he realized Matthew’s snoring was no longer audible.

Lee pulled the cover down enough to peer one eye over the wool. He squinted in the darkness.

Matthew was not in his bed. At the base of it, he could see the faint outline of a nightshirt, crouched, which looked to be painted in something red. Matthew’s head bobbed up and down, and his jaw did the same.

“Matthew?” Lee called.

The bobbing stopped. His jaw froze and Lee could see his hands were cupped in front of him.

“Matthew, what are you doing?” Lee’s covers were still pulled tight to just below his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Matthew rose. His nightshirt dropped to below his knees and something dangled in his left hand. It was dripping. Matthew tossed it to the corner and turned around.

His mouth was darker than the skin on his neck. His eyes were wide, wider than they should have any right to be. The skin around his mouth was stretched tight as if to imitate a smile.

Matthew pounced.

He was across the room in a single stride, and Lee had just enough time to pin the cover over himself before Matthew was on top of him. The elder brother came with claws, scratching at the wool, hissing as he swung. Over and over again, Matthew laid into Lee. Pounding his fists against Lee’s head. Trying to rip the blanket from his grip. Trying to tear at him.

There was a pounding on the door, and the assault ended. His breath came quick and ragged.

Thud. Sharp. The wood rattled. Lee lay sweating underneath his cover. He felt the air push from his lungs and out his mouth. Little whimpers he couldn’t stop.

Thud. Louder. Lee brought himself out of his cave inch by inch.

Thud. Violent. Lee looked to Matthew’s bed, and found him fast asleep. In the stillness he could hear the snoring. The kind of peaceful sleep that only came with longevity.

He turned to the table between them and picked up a Lucifer match from the drawer. He only had one left from the box Thomas had given him a year ago. He struck the match and forced his shaking hand to bring it to a candle in the middle of the table, giving the room a sulfur smell but also a glow.

“What’re you doing?” Matthew asked, groggily.

“What are you doing?” Lee retorted.

“Sleeping.”

“You were just in the corner—”

“Could you put that light out?”

Scritch.

“We got a mouse?”

“I don’t know,” Lee quivered. “I’ve been trying to find it but—”

Scritch—scritch.

“All right, let me look.” Matthew took the candle from Lee and kicked off his own blanket, which had twisted itself between his legs. Blue streaks ran across his thinned legs and his chest sank as he breathed in the early morning air. Lee made a careful note that his shirt was no longer soaked.

Scritch—scrit—

The moment Matthew’s feet hit the floor the sound stopped. He dropped to his belly, looking left and right for the source. He crawled himself over to Lee’s bed, and Lee pushed himself into the corner.

“I don’t see anything,” Matthew called.

“Well, maybe it’s—”

Thud.

“Lee?” Matthew asked, pulling himself out from underneath the bed. “Are you okay? Was that you?”

“No,” Lee responded, keeping his eyes ahead. His voice sounded too high, even to himself.

Thud.

The door shook. From the glow coming through the bottom two shadows were stretched underneath the door, growing wider and wider.

Thud.

The darkness took over. The only light in the room stemmed from the candle Matthew held. He raised it higher, creeping toward the door.

Thud.

He jumped back. Dropping the candle as his hand jerked back toward Lee. It extinguished itself as it hit the floor and the room was swallowed by the dark. Matthew let out a yelp and Lee curled himself into the wall.

Matthew ran for his bedstead and put his hand between it and his tick. He pulled out the pistol he’d kept with him for weeks now. He drew the hammer back to a half-cock and poured in the black powder he stashed in the table behind him.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Matthew…”

Lee watched him take a lead ball and press it into the chamber mouth. He pulled the pistol’s loading lever to ram it in tight.

Thud. THUD. THUD!

Splinters were flying from the edge of the door. Matthew aimed at the center. He pulled the trigger.

“Shit!” he yelled.

“What?” Lee cried.

“No cap!”

He thumbed the hammer back to half-cock and reached behind him for a percussion cap, pinching it onto the cone.

THUD! THUD! THU—

He pulled the hammer back the rest of the way, and fired a round into the door.

A bright flash blinded Lee as a thick cloud of smoke filled the air. Lee took his hands from his ears as they rang. He hadn’t realized they were there in the first place. He watched as his older brother leapt from his position on the floor and bounded across the small bedroom for the door and flung it open.

There was nothing on the other side.

“Please shut it,” Lee cried. “Please, please shut it.”

Matthew stuck his finger in the splintered hole, but before he could pull it shut the door on the other end of the house flung open. Emmett stood twenty feet away, rifle in hand, aimed directly at Matthew.

“What in God’s name is going on?” he shouted.

“I thought there was someone in the house,” Matthew said.

“Is there?”

Matthew shook his head.

“Then why did you just put a hole through my door?”

“I thought—”

“I know what you thought. Why would there be someone in my house?”

“I—I didn—I don—” Matthew stuttered.

“Boy, get the words out.”

“Someone was knocking,” Lee said. His father’s attention jumped, and Matthew’s shoulders dropped. Lee saw the grip on his pistol tighten as they did. “Not knocking. Pounding. Trying to break down the door.”

“Well how come I didn’t hear nothing?”

“I don’t know how you didn’t,” Matthew said.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, sir.”

The house settled. The wind whipped past the doorway and rain pattered the shingles above them. Lee thought of Thomas. Of him and the sheriff on the road, and hoped they’d made it home safe. He thought of the night, of something just out of reach in the darkness.

“Go to bed,” Emmett said. He lowered the rifle and turned back to his room. Eveline stood just behind him, and between his legs Lee could see her clutching the bone charm that was supposed to reside on the mantle. He wanted to call out, feeling the urge to warn his father. The bone charm, it held in the fire from the hearth. It had taken away the light. He knew it.

The door closed to the other bedroom, and Matthew stood ahead in the darkness. His pistol at his side, Lee heard him sigh before closing their own door. He heard steel rub against skin as Matthew rubbed his forehead, and eventually placed the pistol back on the table between them.

“I don’t know what that was,” Matthew said. “You swear you heard it too?”

“Yes.”

“The knocking and the scratching?”

“Yes.”

The rustling of wool came from his side of the room and Matthew pulled himself into bed. He grunted like their father, though Lee knew better than to mention it. Matthew liked to think himself his own man.

“Go to bed,” he said. Lee sat upright, staring at the back of his brother’s head. Soon he began to hear the faint snoring once again, the familiar rise and fall of deep sleep. He crawled from the bed and gently put his feet on the floor.

Lee tiptoed across the room. He crouched by the front post of Matthew’s bedstead and felt the floor where he had been earlier. It was dry to the touch. The tension in his shoulders fled.

He ran his hands along the walls, and then back to the floor, desperate to make sure. Paddling his hand from front to back he searched, finding nothing but the same wood he had always known.

A splinter drove itself into his palm. Lee stifled a cry, and turned his hand around. In the darkness, he could only decipher shades, hardly any color. His hand was a different shade of darkness from the splinter, and different from the drop of blood that came with it.

He gripped the wood tight, and in one swift motion, just like his daddy taught him, pulled it out. A dark trail ran down his hand, he could feel the warmth of his blood. He watched his skin darken as gravity did its work.

As it dripped off his palm, he noticed the difference in the shades of the floor. There was a large puddle of dried blood in front of him.