Page 2 of Middle of the Night

Then there are the garage lights.

Every house has them.

A pair of motion-activated security lights centered above the garage doors that glare like headlights when triggered. In the evenings, they flick on and off around the cul-de-sac with the frequency of fireflies as residents return from work in the waning light, go out to fetch the mail, haul recycling bins to the curb.

As it gets closer to midnight, a few will continue to spring to life. When deer skulk through the neighborhood on their way to the woods. Or when Fritz Van de Veer sneaks out for a cigarette after his wife, Alice, has gone to bed.

The light that’s caught my attention is the one above the Patels’ garage, two houses away. It illuminates a patch of their driveway, the glow turning the asphalt ice white. Curious, I go to one of the windows in a bedroom I still don’t consider my own. Not technically. The room that once was mine, and in my mind still is, sits across the hall, now vacant. This is my parents’ bedroom, where I rarely ventured as a child. Now, though, through a series of recent developments I’m still grappling with, it’s become my own.

The windows in this new room offer a panorama of Hemlock Circle. From where I stand, I can see at least a piece of every house on the cul-de-sac. I glimpse a sliver of the old Barringer place on the left and a corner of the Chens’ house to the right. Across from me, in full view from left to right, are the Van de Veers’, the Wallaces’, and the Patels’, where the garage light still glows.

What Idon’tsee is anything that could have set it off. Mitesh and Deepika Patel are presumably inside and fast asleep. No animals scurry from the light. No wind blows that could have caused a nearby branch to sway hard enough to trigger the motion sensor. All I can see is an empty driveway on a quiet cul-de-sac in the dead of night.

Soon I can’t even see that, for the Patels’ garage light suddenly goes out.

Ten seconds later, the one at the Wallaces’ house clicks on. It’s next door to the Patels’, separated by the single road that leads into the cul-de-sac, which is currently free of cars, free of people, free of anything.

I draw close to the window, my nose almost touching the glass, straining to see something—any small thing—that could have triggered the light above the Wallaces’ garage.

There’s nothing.

Nothing visible, that is.

Still, I stay pressed to the window, watching, even after the Wallaces’ garage light clicks off. The only thing I can think of that could have triggered it is a bat. They thrive here, as the Chens’ porch lightscan attest, feeding off the many insects that live in the woods circling the cul-de-sac. They’re also notoriously difficult to see in the darkness.

But then the light above the Van de Veers’ garage springs to life, and I know my theory is wrong. Bats flit willy-nilly, chasing prey. They don’t methodically move from house to house.

No, this is different.

This is…worrisome.

Unease spreads through my chest as I think about thirty years ago. I can’t help it. Not after what happened here.

When the Van de Veers’ light turns off, I begin to count.

Five seconds.

Then ten.

Then a full minute.

Long enough for me to think that whatever is out there has moved on, likely into the woods, which means it was an animal. Something simply too small and quick for me to spot, but not small and quick enough to evade the hair-trigger garage lights of the houses on Hemlock Circle. The tightness in my chest eases, and I allow myself a sigh of relief.

Then the light above the Barringers’ garage turns on.

The light itself is just out of view, but the glow it throws onto the lawn and sidewalk makes my pulse do a stutter step.

Whatever’s out there isn’t gone.

In fact, it’s getting closer.

Several scenarios pop into my head, starting with the worst, because that’s my default mode. Always going straight to the most alarming, the most dire. In this case, that would be that someone is circling the cul-de-sac.

Someone I can’t see but who is definitely out there.

Moving from house to house, searching for another child to snatch.

Second in line, and just a shade less worrisome, is the idea that whoever is outside has come to case Hemlock Circle, testing the security lights to see how easy it would be to break into one of the houses here.

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