Back in her neighborhood, she has that hunched-down feeling of being hunted, but she chose the families to text carefully, knowing she wouldn’t want to drive down Mrs. Reilly’s street. Luckily, it’s a huge, sprawling neighborhood with multiple entrances, so big that most families don’t know more than a couple of their neighbors. Halloween is like a huge block party where strangers wave but don’t know one another’s names or faces. Right now, that’s a great thing.
At the Zelinsky house, there’s a car outside, which might mean they’re home or could mean nothing. She continues on to Mrs. Hunt’s house, which is definitely not her favorite. Mrs. Hunt is nice but…kind of a crazy cat lady. And a bit of a hoarder.
Ella parks right behind where Mrs. Hunt typically keeps her car in the garage, knowing that if she’s gone, that’s the only place her car will fit, thanks to piles and piles of stockpiled paper goods and Amazon boxes. She glances around as she heads for the front door, glad, again, not to see anyone walking around or watching her.
She knocks a cheerful sort of knock and waits, but no one answers. She tries the doorbell and hears the thunder of dozens of cat paws thumping toward the door. Horrific visions fill her mind of abandoned cats eating Mrs. Hunt and growing fat, but then the door opens just a few inches, and Mrs. Hunt peeks out, her eyes wide and red and haunted. The scent of fouled litter and cat piss mixed with human body odor and baby powder rolls out.
“What? What?” Mrs. Hunt asks, her voice shaking.
All of Ella’s embarrassment flees as she realizes Mrs. Hunt is so messed up that Ella is the one in charge.
“Mrs. Hunt, are you okay?” she asks.
Mrs. Hunt glances around as various cats meow and try to squeeze out the door around the legs of her filthy sweatpants.
“Otis is dead,” Mrs. Hunt says. “I don’t know what happened to him, but he’s dead. It was awful. I just found him lying there, crushed to bits. And then Leo. And then Keanu. All crushed and torn up. I don’t understand.”
Ella understands.
“Have you been watching the news or…um…talking to people?” she asks.
“No. Of course not. Conspiracies. Lies. The lizard people in Washington put trackers in the Covid vaccines so they could turn us on and off like the Terminator.”
Ella would like to help, but she’s a seventeen-year-old girl, and this is just way, way too big for her. She starts backing away.
“Okay. Well, I was just checking on you. Bye!”
“You’re the Martin girl. You fed my babies when I went to San Antonio.”
Ella stops by her car’s open door. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You knew Otis.”
“He was a good cat.”
Mrs. Hunt nods like this is the news she’s been waiting to hear. “He was, wasn’t he? Gone too soon. I’ll call you if I go to San Antonio again. If I can find my phone.”
The door shuts, and Ella lets out a shuddering breath. It would be great if there was something she could do, but…there’s just not. Mrs. Hunt is a grown woman, and if she chooses to spend the rest of her life locked in her house with her cats, slowly going crazy, sick with the Violence, that’s her business. What’s Ella going to do—offer her therapy? Clean up all six overflowing litter boxes? At least Mrs. Hunt is fully stocked on food for herself and her cats, judging by the stacks and stacks of bags and boxes she’s always seen in the garage.
She pulls away, glad to be far from the mad terror of Mrs. Hunt and her house. Pulling into a cul-de-sac, she flicks through her contacts, trying to figure out who might be the next best target.
But wait.
Mr. Reese said he took his cat with him. Which means he left his house.
Which means it might be empty.
It certainly looks promising when she arrives, the grass knee-high and a pile of moldering newspapers on the front doorstep. Old Mr. Reese is very particular about his mail and papers—Ella was always supposed to bring them inside whenever he was out of town and keep them in order by date. With a lift of hope, Ella pulls into the driveway behind where Mr. Reese usually parks his truck in the garage. She gets out and heads for the front door. When she knocks, no one answers, and Leroy the cat doesn’t come paw at the door like he usually does. She walks along his porch to peek through the break in the blinds that Leroy made in the front window, noting that the house looks extremely empty. These are all good signs.
Hoping that she’s not about to get the cops called and that Mr. Reese didn’t suddenly become paranoid, she punches in the code for the garage door, and it lifts up to reveal an empty parking spot. The hot reek of garbage smacks her in the nose, and she knows well enough now not to look in the garbage can—and she also knows Mr. Reese really is gone, because he’s very sensitive to smells. Before pulling in, she hurries to the door and opens it, calling, “Mr. Reese? Leroy?”
There’s no answer, and the house feels just as empty as it looks. The air is stale, the temperature set to what feels like bathwater. But Ella’s been catsitting Leroy for three years, and she knows that the real proof will be the dust.
Mr. Reese hates dust. He pays her extra to run an electrostatic wand over everything before he gets home, and yet she finds a thick layer of gray on the bottom edge of the TV.
No way is he here.
No way has he been here for weeks.
And, she notes with the weirdest sort of gained experience, it doesn’t smell like anyone or anything died in here, which is swiftly becoming a major bonus.
Ella hurriedly pulls the Miata into the garage and lowers the door, then does a brief circuit of the entire house before bringing her things in. Everything she sees confirms that Mr. Reese conscientiously cleaned house before leaving, taking his butterball of a tuxedo cat with him. The fridge is empty and spotless, there are vacuum marks on the carpets, and Leroy’s litter box is empty and scrubbed clean, his food and water dishes gone.
She breathes a sigh of relief.
Finally, finally, she can relax for a little while.
And as a bonus, there’s no one here she can accidentally kill.
32.
“Brooklyn?” Patricia calls again as the sound continues. “Brooklyn!”
Thud, thud, thud.
Her heart clatters back up as she drops her bags and runs toward her bedroom. The sound is getting louder, and it’s the most terrifying thing she’s ever heard. It doesn’t falter, doesn’t slow, is almost robotic in its unnaturally steady rhythm.
Thud, thud, thud.
Her closet door is open, and she steps inside to find a chilling scene.
Brooklyn holds her big mirror in both hands, slamming her forehead into it again and again. The girl’s beautiful golden hair is matted with blood, her long eyelashes painted red.
“Brooklyn, you stop that this instant!” Patricia shrieks, so scared that she’s moved into anger. But Brooklyn can’t hear her, doesn’t respond.
She doesn’t have to see her granddaughter’s eyes to know what she’ll find there: nothing. Just like with Miguel.
Brooklyn’s fingers are so tiny as Patricia’s much bigger hands pry each finger away from the mirror’s ornate frame. Her skin is burning, feverish. Red-splatted shards of glass dangle and fall with each strike. The girl’s soft little body is taut and hard as a china doll as her grandmother pulls her away from the mirror that so enraptured her just a few short hours ago.