“It’s nighttime,” he thought, meaning that it didn’t seem fair to him that he should have to go to bed and be quiet if other people were not required to do the same. Or were his parents making something for him in the kitchen, a nice surprise? That surprise he’d expected during the day, and that hadn’t happened – was it about to happen soon?

He probed the soft nullity around him with his hearing, and, without discovering anything definite, he did become aware of action in the night, in the house, down there. Like a low rumble, more felt than heard. Lucas wanted to know what was going on, if only so that he could stop thinking about it and get back to sleep. Smokey lay in his nest at the foot of the bed, asleep, very still. The noise didn’t faze him, or even wake him.

As the top of the stairs came into view, he saw a faint illumination sifting up from below, throwing the railing into dim relief against the darkness. Padding down the steps, he saw that the glow shone from the small gap beneath the kitchen door, making it a livid stripe with a powdery halo. A hushed voice sounded briefly on the other side. If he crept through the dining room he could come around and see into the kitchen without having to open the door; he would be able to see the surprise without being seen, without their knowing he was there.

It was only just a moment before he turned the corner that the odor struck him again. Sharp, rancid, and bitter, like stale sea water. It wasn’t a composite smell, that was what bothered him about it, not just that it was bad, but that it was the smell of some special bad thing, not a chance mixing of smells.

They were all there, as if they hadn’t left at all, but had only concealed themselves in the house until he’d gone to sleep. They stood in the light of a lantern that blazed with the transparent glare of a very pure and dazzling light that burned a blue-black flaw into his vision, forcing him to blink and look down. In the glare of that pale light he had seen them all congregated around the wide-open door to the little room; someone he couldn’t make out for the brilliancy of the lamp was directing its beams over the threshold, and everyone was waiting, leaning, looking in. He was reminded of pictures he’d seen of surgical operations in books.