Page 94 of The Midnight Knock
“My whole family, we’re archaeologists,” Tabitha said. “Thomas and I, we grew up on dig sites. We used to joke that dirt’s in our blood. Father’s specialty was Indian history. That was in our blood, too, seeing as our family is descended from those very same Apache. They were one of the largest tribes to live in this area, and Father made the start of a brilliant career excavating some of their old encampments. Indigenous people and archaeologists have a long history with one another. A bad history. Father wanted to change that. I won’t bore you with the technicalities. Just know that he was a reasonable man. A true scholar. In light of what came later, you might think him… a sensationalist.”
Tabitha found a shot glass, a bottle of whiskey from the shelf behind her, poured an impressive measure. The glass chittered against her teeth. “A few years ago—a few years before ’55, I mean—Father fell out of the scholarly mainstream. He found a few relics in this region that were much, much older than they should have been. Much stranger. Like nothing else we’d ever seen. Father became convincedthat they were relics of a tribe that predated the Apache’s arrival in Texas. This isn’t especially novel. There are several branches of Apache, and we know that all of them absorbed dozens of smaller tribes as they settled across the southwest. Some of those tribes were brought in as a consequence of warfare, or famine, or simple convenience. This area can be a harsh place to live. Many small groups decided there was strength in numbers.” Tabitha hesitated, a hand on the bar as if to stabilize herself, her story. “Things became strange, however, when Father convinced himself that these relics he’d discovered—these traces of a tribe that predated the Apache—that they belonged to our family. Thatwewere descended from that precursor tribe. And as its descendants, we had inherited a sacred duty. An obligation to keep a great evil at bay.”
“That’s a hell of a jump from a few dusty rocks,” Kyla said.
Tabitha said, “Me and my brother… we thought the same. Apparently, when he was a boy, our father had a grandfather who told him stories about our precursor tribe, our original tribe, the tribe our family belonged to before the Apache came. His father said that, according tohisgrandfather, our tribe used to live in a mountain, in a grand city concealed from the outside world. The precursor tribe believed the mountain had a special power. They said it ensured things always worked out the way they were meant to. That power, the stories said, kept us safe. We prospered thanks to the mountain, but one day a curious little boy strayed from the city. The child wandered into the caves of the mountain, deeper and deeper, and at the mountain’s heart he discovered something… terrible.”
Oh no, Miss Hewitt.
It is I who shall have audience once more.
Behind the motel, the mountain moaned, shaking the cafe so hard Kyla’s fork skipped across her plate. Everyone’s eyes, even Fernanda’s, were riveted now to Tabitha’s face.
Tabitha said, “According to the stories, the little boy had discovered an ancient creature, something almost as old as the mountain itself. They called it—”
Kyla spoke, almost without thinking: the name from the dream. “Te’lo’hi.”
Tabitha stared at her for a long, long time. “Yes. That’s one of thefew words we still have from the precursor tribe’s language. Te’lo’hi. It was a hungry force, a being of pure destruction. According to the stories, Te’lo’hi had slept for thousands of years, but now that the little boy had disturbed it, the god was beginning to stir. The tribe’s Elders knew that if it woke up, nothing could stop the destruction it would unleash. Their city would be doomed. Maybe even the world. So they devised a ceremony that would harness some of Te’lo’hi’s own power. According to the story, the ceremony sealed the god away, but in the process, they had to seal away their home as well. The city. Our people left the mountain and were banished into the desert, where they were soon absorbed by the Apache and began to forget their true history.”
The clock was racing forward. 1:22. Ryan Phan was getting jumpy. “Can you pour me a shot? And hurry to the part where this concernsus?”
“I was getting to that.” Tabitha frowned, her unease making her peevish. She sloshed whiskey into another little glass, pushed it his way. “According to the stories our father grew up with, our precursor tribe knew that the ceremony they’d performed to seal away the god wouldn’t last forever. At some point, it would have to be repeated, or else Te’lo’hi would awaken at last. This idea began to haunt our father. He became… obsessed with it. There are plenty of similar stories in many tribes—people living in caves or underground, dangerous beings lurking in darkness—but Father didn’t believe this one was a mere story. He feared that hundreds of years ago, our tribe had indeed forestalled disaster. If the ceremony wasn’t performed again, soon, calamity would break free. He started…” Tabitha trembled. “He started having dreams. Nightmares. Visions of the world ending. We all did. Me and my brother and—”
Another moan came from the mountain, so loud Kyla would swear she saw the air itself tremble.
Kyla remembered being in her bathroom last night, shortly before Jack Allen killed her, when the mirror in her bathroom had shattered and they’d both seen the city of her dreams spread out on the other side. Kyla had seen it again, earlier this evening, when her mirror had broken before dinner. She looked at the bandage Hunter had knotted around her fingers to staunch the wound left behind by the shattered glass.
She said, “The stories are true. There is a city in the mountain. I’ve seen it.”
Tabitha stared at her. “Seen it? How?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Kyla said. “All I know is that Jack Allen wants to go there. He wants to have audience with the god inside.”
Ethan said carefully, “If Te’lo’hi is so dangerous, why would anyone want that?”
“I don’t know. Butthisis the ceremony, isn’t it?” Kyla said to Tabitha. She patted the bar, her chest, held out a hand to take in everything around them. “Allof this. I’m just firing in the dark here, but I guess it makes a sort of sense. The same night repeating over and over—you people have us trapped here, but it’s also trapped Te’lo’hi. You’re keeping it from waking up. You did the same thing to the people in 1955. You trapped them, now you’ve trapped us, maybe down the road you’ll trap some more people, right? It’s a fucking curse for us, but if we try to break free, the world will end. Or am I just talking out of my ass?”
Tabitha said nothing.
Ethan said, “It’s not that simple, is it?”
THOMAS
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been alone. For as long as he could remember—which was averylong time by some measures—Thomas and his sister had always been at each other’s sides. Once, years ago, their father had taken Thomas aside and asked, in as few words as possible, if he shouldbe concerned. If the twins’ intimacy might not havegone too far.
Thomas had been shocked. Their father was so hopeless at human connection, he apparently couldn’t imagine any chaste reason a man might want to stay close to his sister. Thomas’s connection to Tabitha wasn’t like that. The world simply madesensewhen she was around. Thomas sometimes felt like they viewed it through each other’s eyes. A competitive advantage. A wider perspective.
Without Tabitha, Thomas felt vulnerable in a way he never had in his life. Afraid. If Tabitha was doing what Thomas thought she was doing, it could be the end of everything. Of them. The motel. The entire world.
Truly, the world.
“Then why don’t you do something about it?”
The voice came from behind Thomas, just over his shoulder. He felt a tingle on the back of his neck, a chilly itch like the creeping of a hundred tiny legs. He flinched, turned—and found nothing.
The voice came again. Again, just behind his shoulder. Again, whispering in his ear.
“You can stop her, Thomas,” the voice said. It was a man’s voice. A familiar voice.
