She couldn’t sleep now, though, not while this unnatural silence was eating at her nerves. Opening her eyes again, she grabbed her cell phone and slipped into the hall, trying to keep her bare footsteps quiet. With each press of her weight, the ancient floorboards whined and complained with small cracks and squeaks. Tiptoeing up to each room, she peeked inside, comforted by the Ty-, Tio-, and Dee-shaped lumps on each bed.
Glancing at the door to Sam’s third-floor room, Jules decided against checking on him. The stairs were noisy enough to wake him if she attempted it, and she didn’t want to disturb his sleep just because she was having a paranoid moment.
Instead, she checked the other second-floor rooms. The nearly full moon streamed into the uncovered windows, making the light spaces brighter but the shadows deeper. Even her almost-silent footsteps seemed to echo in the empty rooms, and Jules kept having to stop to listen, unsure if she’d made a sound or if it came from somewhere else.
By the time she crept down the stairs to the first level, her heart was racing and her breathing came fast.
“Stop it,” she hissed at herself, and then jumped at the loudness of her whisper. The absurdity of that made her laugh quietly, and her heart slowed slightly. Now that the risk of waking her siblings was lessened, she forced herself to walk briskly through the hall to the living room, rather than tiptoe in like a jumpy mouse.
Moonlight slanted through the windows, breaking the room into geometric shapes of light and darkness. Familiar objects—the couch, Dee’s open backpack, a book on the coffee table—looked foreign in the strange illumination. Drawing herself up, Jules made her feet step into the room, and she checked each shadow, each dark corner, until she was satisfied no boogeymen were hiding in there.
In each first-level room, she did the same, until she ended up in the kitchen. When she glanced at the door to the basement, her stomach dropped to her feet. There was no way she was going down to the cellar-like, dirt-floored, lit-by-a-single-bare-bulb, creepy-as-heck basement in the middle of the night. Jules didn’t care if there were multiple serial killers taking refuge in the subterranean space; that was how people got their dumb selves killed in horror movies.
With a shudder, Jules turned away from the basement door. Through the window above the sink, a dart of movement caught her eye. Startled, she stepped back, but then caught herself. A few weeks ago, she might have been able to avoid checking it out, to run back to bed and hide under the covers. Now, though, she was responsible for four other people, younger people, vulnerable people. If something—or someone—was outside, she needed to know so she could decide what to do.
Her phone slid in her damp grip, and she switched it to her other hand. Dialing 9-1-1, she kept her thumb next to the send button and took a hesitant step toward the window, and then another. When she finally was close enough to see outside, she leaned in, watching for another movement.
The evergreens and aspens danced in the wind, their branches lifting and swaying and making Jules wonder if that was the motion she’d noticed. It didn’t seem right, so she kept watching, her gaze scanning over the forest and the listing structure of their barn.
She’d thought the moonlit living room was creepy, but their backyard was ten times as scary. There were so many dark spaces where someone could be hiding, so many flashes of movement that Jules was almost—almost—positive were the wind in the trees. It was hard to see much from the window, though, much less distinguish what was always there from what might be suspicious.
Her teeth caught the inside of her lip as she headed for the back door. “There’s nothing there,” she muttered. “Just open the door, take a quick look, and then you can go back to bed, knowing for sure there’s nothing there.”
The knob was slick in her hand, rattling loosely as it turned. As she pulled open the door, a gust of wind pressed against her, as if urging her back into the house. Setting her jaw, she stepped onto the back porch, and one of the boards creaked under her weight. Closing the door behind her, Jules let her gaze scan the area. With the trees and weeds and even the barn swaying in the wind, finding something—someone—moving in all that chaos seemed impossible.
Standing outside of this remote house in this mountain town, Jules felt alone and very, very small. How was she supposed to protect her family when she was jumping at every imagined noise? The task seemed impossible. Maybe kidnapping them had been a stupid move, a destructive move, something that would damage them all.
At that thought, she dragged herself out of her gloomy imaginings. She’d done the right thing, the only thing that could’ve been done. Her siblings had thanked her, and they all seemed surprisingly content in their new, more bedraggled life. It was just the dark and the wind and the strangeness of a new place that was getting to her, making things seem hopeless.