Chapter 73

Thom said they needed to make one more stop. They needed to stop at home.

Charley didn’t like that idea.

Instead of Thom and Dawn going home with their whole family, a different teenager rode in the back seat. She wondered how Henry was.

Dawn sat in the back seat with Charley and looked out the window. She had not said a word since they left the school.

The upper level of the Murphy house appeared above the cresting hill in front of them. The lower level was still hidden. In a few hundred feet they would—

Dawn suddenly clutched her chest and struggled to breathe. Charley leapt at the sight.

“Dawn? Are you alright?”

Dawn clenched her shirt with white knuckles.

Thom slammed the brakes. He looked back at her. “Dawn?”

Her breathing was labored.

“What’s wrong?” Thom said.

She shook her head. “No, we can’t go back there,” she said and pointed. “It’s in there . . .” Dawn whispered. She stared unblinking ahead, eyes wide and voice hushed, “ . . . the darkness . . .”

Charley strained her eyes to see the house in the distance. There were long shadows, now in the middle of the afternoon, that hung over the house, the kind that seemed out of place because the sun was still high above the trees. Fleeting visions went by the windows, nearly unperceivable shadows. Their movements were sudden and swarming, like a fog of mosquitoes hidden in the night that is only seen through the light of a lamp.

“I haven’t seen you do that since we crossed the Veil,” Thom said. Worry permeated his voice. “I didn’t know the situation was this bad.” Thom backed the truck down the road and into a neighbor’s driveway. Then he sped the other way. “I wish we could have gotten Phred back. We could’ve used him.”

“I know,” Dawn said. “Phred will have to wait. He’ll be safe inside the nightlight.”

A few moments later, Dawn released the death grip over her chest and relaxed into her seat.

“How long is it to the safe house?” Dawn asked, looking at her wrinkled shirt where she had clenched. “That feeling—it’s been a long time since I felt it. There is something more to this, more than we know.”

She clutched her chest again. She snapped her head up and looked at Thom with realization and renewed fear. “Thom, get us back to the safe house. Henry’s in trouble.”