At her side, Marsh exhaled heavily. She reached out and dug her fingers into his fur as the narration finished and the red curtains drew back across the screen. She took up the remote and rewound it again.

Margot hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but Marsh was pleasantly warm at her side, and the coffee was doing little to stave off the tiredness, and sometime around the tape’s fourth replay she slipped under, curled on her side on the rug, the golden retriever’s flowing fur grazing across her face.

She didn’t wake until the bells rang.

33

Margot gasped as she came to. A shudder ran through her, prickling her skin into gooseflesh and settling into her bones. She lay curled on her side. The television behind her played static, pouring a stream of gray, sickly light across the room.

As she stared into the dark, open doorway in the room’s back, she felt sure there were lights there. Bright, shining, piercing eyes, fixated on her. Then she shifted, and the lights vanished, leaving the doorway empty once more.

The bells were ringing. That fact took a second to register, and then her heart thumped, heavy and loud, like a drum beating through her veins. The bell in the dim back of the room leapt like it was on fire. She scrambled to her feet. Her mind was fogged from sleep, leaving her scattered and slow to react. A hundred discordant thoughts flashed through her before catching on the one most important: The lights. Turn out the lights!

She mashed her thumb into the television’s power button and watched the hissing static die. Then, across the hallway, into the kitchen. She had to skid to the side to avoid hitting the Watcher on her way through, then she smacked the light switch and paused for a second, her shoulder against the doorframe, as she soaked in the darkness.

The kitchen curtains were still open. The others had said to keep them closed, to make the house look as cold and empty as possible. They had also said not to let herself be seen. She crept toward the window, keeping her body low and to the side, where the moonlight couldn’t graze over her. The kitchen bell screamed at her back, a rattling, shrieking chime, mirrored by dozens of others across the house. Then, abruptly, they all fell silent.

She strained forward, daring to look through the window. Moonlight touched the grass. Beyond that, the closest crops of trees. She thought she could see the fence in the far distance. Nothing moved within her line of vision. She reached out and dragged the curtains closed.

Now, the house truly was dark. Margot’s wide eyes fought to see through the pitch-black. She reached out her good hand, fingers questing for the table, but couldn’t find it until her hip grazed it on the way past.