Page 37 of The Midnight Knock
He wasn’t exaggerating. Kyla shot a glance at Fernanda. How did the woman know a trick like this?
“You might as well lift up the other one,” Hunter said, gesturing to the pillow over Sarah’s face. “We should make sure it’s actually her. Just a formality, though.”
Kyla nodded. The blood in the pillow had frozen to Sarah’s long black hair, and as Kyla lifted it free, she heard strands of hair crackling like cold grass underfoot. They found a head staring straight down into the coverlet.
Hunter came to Kyla’s side. With a little grunt of effort, he grabbed hold of the dead woman’s shoulders and flipped her over, though they didn’t learn much. This was, indeed, Sarah Powers. Now that they could see her face, Kyla thought the woman looked like she’d died in the grip of some awful insomnia, staring at the ceiling with an expression of absolute dread.
But Fernanda had been wrong about one thing. The woman had died with her mouth closed. That second pillow hadn’t muffled any screams.
From where he was seated on the floor, something caught Ethan’s eye. After lowering himself to his stomach and reaching his arm under the bed, he emerged with a long knife in one hand and a brown leather sheath in the other.
The knife’s blade was crusted with blood.
Ethan dropped the knife onto the frozen pillow. “Sarah was wearing this knife in the office.”
Kyla looked up, nodded. “I remember.”
Hunter frowned, running his tongue along his teeth. “They killed her with her own weapon.”
Before this could settle in, Fernanda made a discovery of her own. Stepping down the short hallway at the back of the room, she flipped the switch in the bathroom. A moment later, an infernal red glow washed over her.
Fernanda took a sharp step back. She gestured to Kyla. “You must see this.”
Sarah Powers had replaced the plain light bulb above her sink with a red one. A piece of black paper had been taped over the glass block that served as the room’s only window. The tub was filled with a thin layer of water, in which sat three glass bottles with handwritten labels bearing the names of chemicals Kyla didn’t recognize. A toiletries bag and pair of nail scissors rested on the vanity. Sarah’s camera—theone Fernanda had been so enraptured with back in the office—was perched beside them.
Next to the camera were a pair of tweezers and two plastic cylinders, one big and one small. The small cylinder was a yellow roll of film—Kodak 400 Gold—the sight of which sent a thrill of déjà vu through Kyla, considering the reason they’d had to leave Fort Stockton in such a hurry this afternoon. What were the odds?
The other cylinder on the counter was much stranger. It was black, and when she picked it up Kyla found that the cylinder was made of thick plastic, bulky enough to need two hands. It had a screw-on top, at the center of which was a wide mouth that tapered inward like a funnel. The lid felt loose.
Fernanda practically snatched the cylinder out of Kyla’s hand. Bringing the black cylinder to her ear, she gave it a soft shake. “Close that door. We cannot risk any light coming inside.”
“Is that what I think it is?” Kyla said.
“Yes. Sarah was not lying about one thing. This is a development tank for exposing photo negatives.” Fernanda gave it another shake. “And there is still film inside.”
ETHAN
When the girls closed the door of the bathroom, Ethan turned his attention to the junk on Sarah’s corner table. Most of it looked like the sort of trash he assumed people accumulated on road trips: granola wrappers, water bottles, receipts, fast-food napkins. A pair of bifocal glasses, a plain watch. A small brass coin with a Roman numeralIand the wordsTo Thine Own Self Be True.He almost smiled. After the mess his brother had made of his own life, Ethan knew an AA chip when he saw it.
“Sarah was in recovery,” Ethan said to Hunter.
From where he stood near the corpse, Hunter said, “Not much temptation left for her now.”
Ethan refocused on the clutter. He found a book of matches printed with the Brake Inn’s name, one of its matches missing. He found a porcelain dinner plate that Sarah had used as an ashtray. But something was off.
The plate was full of ash, but the room didn’t smell like any sort of smoke. Instead of cigarette filters or burned stubs, the only things he saw mixed in with the ash were a few bits of darkened plastic, their edges perforated with tiny squares.
A glint of silver caught Ethan’s eye.
He tipped the ash onto the table. A strange, metallic substance had hardened in the center of the plate, almost like liquid chrome frozen mid-pour. Ethan wiped away the ash and saw that while the substance was charred around the edges, its center was still polished and reflective. As he lifted the plate, the metal caught the light, sent a bright silver glare across the wall.
His breath hitched.
Where had Ethan seen a glare like that before?
Hunter appeared beside him and glanced curiously at the plate before poking through the junk on the table. He knocked an empty water bottle to the floor, a greasy take-out bag, before his hand flinched away from a strange object concealed near the edge of the table.
It looked like some kind of stone ornament. After plucking it up cautiously, turning it to the light, Hunter passed the object to Ethan. “Careful. It’s heavier than it looks.”
