Page 96 of Middle of the Night

I shift, uncomfortable. Despite the cushion of the sleeping bag, the ground is harder than expected, not to mention slightly uneven. I wiggle to the left, trying to even myself out, and stare up at the tent’s vaulted ceiling.

It is, I realize, the exact view I had when I was ten. I remember watching the shadows gathered there, as they are right now. A vaguely threatening darkness looming over the interior of the tent. And while it summons a dozen memories—my mother bringing out the oven-made s’mores, the way the tent’s zipped flap trapped the July heat—none of them strike me as vital. They certainly don’t shed light on the hazy half memories depicted in The Dream.

Thescriiiiiiiitch.

The moment Billy was pulled from the tent.

Definitely not a hint of the person responsible for both.

I shift again, try to start over. It dawns on me that staring at the tent ceiling could be a distraction and that I should instead focus on how the space affects my other senses. How does the inside of the tentsound and smell? How does itfeel? Thinking the key to unlocking my memories lies in the aura of the tent and not in visual clues, I close my eyes and take a few deep, cleansing breaths.

Then I concentrate.

At first, I notice nothing but the new-tent smell that surrounds me. A cross between a plastic bag and a latex glove, it’s powerful enough to make my nose twitch. Once I get used to it, though, other things emerge.

The chirp of a single cricket, louder than the others, suggesting it’s right outside.

The hint of grass that can still be felt underneath both the sleeping bag and the tent’s floor.

The trapped air itself, motionless and hot as it covers me like a second sleeping bag. Beads of sweat form at my temples, and I get my first true flashback to the night I’m so desperately trying to remember.

Me zipped inside the tent, waiting for Billy to arrive, wondering if that will happen after the events of earlier in the day. Guilt churned in my stomach—a sensation I would become intimately familiar with over the next thirty years. But then it was still something foreign, something unsettling. I remember worrying that something bad had happened to Billy. That he was still trapped in that gate and that I’d never see him again.

Little did I know that would soon come to pass.

Outside the tent, there’s a noise. A soft whisper of movement so faint I can’t tell if it’s real or a memory. Then I hear it again, closer this time, and I tense inside the sleeping bag.

Something has entered the yard.

It sounds again. Less a whisper than a rush across the grass.

Deep in my pocket, a noise bursts from my phone.

Ping!

My entire body clenches, for I know what it means.

Billy has arrived.

Friday, July 15, 1994

8:05 p.m.

Ethan huddles in the tent alone, quaking with nerves after the most agonizing few hours of his young existence.

It began when he returned to the house after agreeing with the others not to tell anyone about Billy being caught at the Hawthorne Institute. His arrival startled his mother, who was still in the kitchen, staring at the wall. Ethan expected her to immediately ask him about the argument with Russ, Ashley, and Ragesh that she surely had witnessed from the kitchen window, but there was nothing. Nor did she mention how he’d seen her crying in the kitchen—an incident Ethan thought would definitely be acknowledged.

Instead, his mother simply stood and went about her day, cleaning the kitchen and prepping dinner. She did it all with an unspoken yet palpable sadness, her bad mood evident in every heavy footfall, every slam of a drawer. Even Barkley felt it, retreating to a corner of the living room and softly whining.

Ethan tried to escape it by going upstairs to his room while his father hauled his orange tent from the basement and set it up in the backyard. Ethan watched from his bedroom window, surprised by the reminder that he was supposed to camp out with Billy tonight. He’dforgotten all about it. He wondered if Billy had, too. That is, if Billy was even around. Ethan had had no contact from him since they were at the Hawthorne Institute, a fact that allowed all sorts of bad thoughts to march through his brain. That Billy was in trouble. Or still stuck in the gate of that horrible mausoleum. Maybe he was even dead. If so, it would be all Ethan’s fault because he had left Billy instead of facing punishment together.

At dinner, Ethan barely ate, picking at his single slice of cheese pizza while staving off nausea.

“Aren’t you hungry?” his mother asked, and not in a concerned way. It was annoyance Ethan heard in her voice, which made his stomach clench even tighter.

“Not really,” he said, barely able to push out those two very simple words. Caught between the urge to confess everything and the fear of getting in trouble, he found it hard to speak at all.

“You’re not sick, are you?” his father said, making it sound like an accusation.

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