The Ultimatum Ethan
The office was cold, the air clotted with shadows.
The fire in the grate had burned down to embers.
A single gold lamp with a green glass shade glowed on the front desk, barely bright enough to illuminate the walls around it.
The windows looked out on nothing but the ring of light surrounding the motel, the vast desert blackness beyond.
The walnut door, set into the room’s far wall, was little more than an outline in the dark.
Five of them filed inside: Hunter and Ethan, Kyla and Fernanda, Stanley alone.
Penelope was still nowhere to be seen. Kyla and Fernanda stood very near the office’s front door, looking like a pair of rabbits ready to bolt.
Stanley collapsed into one of the office’s easy chairs.
He shivered, his lip trembling: a big, frightened child.
A child with a very large gun on his hip.
Hunter went all the way to the back of the office and settled against the wall near the walnut door. He vanished into the shadows, his eyes a pair of hazel jewels in the gloom.
Ethan looked at them all. He thought of the exposed flesh he’d seen in Sarah Powers’s room. The bloody pillows where her head should be.
Who in this office would have a reason to do that?
And where on earth was that teenaged girl, Penelope?
The twins stepped inside as Ethan tossed a spare log onto the fire, and in the long shadows of the sudden flame, Thomas and Tabitha looked far, far older than they had all evening.
Older than should be possible. The pair walked in unison, made their way around the front desk, stood very still for a long, long moment.
Finally, Thomas said, “A grave crime has been committed on our land.”
“Against our family,” Tabitha said.
“Against our blood.”
“We will see justice done,” Tabitha said.
“Even if it means watching all of you die.”
Kyla reached a hand around her back. For a gun, no doubt. She said, “I’d like to see you try.”
“It’s not us you have to fear,” Thomas said.
“We won’t be the ones to see the guilty punished,” Tabitha said.
“We’re just the stewards of the mountain.”
“We’re just the ones who know what’s coming next.”
Fernanda spoke up, trying to sound confident, scornful. “And what would that be?”
Thomas returned her stare. He let out the smallest sliver of a smile, and the temperature in the room fell five degrees.
“At midnight,” he said, “three things will happen.”
“The door will open,” Tabitha said.
“The lights will go out.”
“And anyone who’s not with us will die.”
Another long, long silence filled the office, broken only by the crackle of the fire. On the fireplace’s mantel, the deer’s antler and the carved white rocks shivered in the weak firelight. The clock’s hands inched forward. 8:18.
Ethan said, “What are y’all talking about?”
In response, a terrible BANG shook the room. Everyone, even Hunter, jumped and stumbled away from the noise. There was another BANG, and Ethan realized it was coming from the other side of the walnut door in the back of the office.
A furious scratching sound. Claws on wood.
Like talons. Whatever was in there, it released a piercing SHRIEK that raised every hair on Ethan’s body, momentarily shut down every nerve in his mind.
It sounded like the cry of the owl he’d heard earlier in the night, but when his brain came online, he asked himself again: How could any bird be big enough to make a noise that loud?
Stan Holiday had half fallen from his chair. “What the fuck is in there?”
Thomas shrugged. “The same thing as what’s out there.”
Tabitha raised a finger to the desert through the window.
Like the flick of a conductor’s stick, the motion seemed to set a chorus of SHRIEKS echoing through the night.
Out the windows, Ethan saw motion in the shadows at the edge of the motel’s lights, flickers of a deeper black against the dark.
He saw a glint of yellow, another, here and gone.
He felt an uncanny certainty that those were eyes. Dozens and dozens of yellow eyes. Watching him. Staring right back.
Thomas said, “At midnight, when the lights die, there will be nothing to stop those creatures from coming inside.”
Tabitha said, “They are the Guardians of this place.”
“The Guardians of this night.”
“They are terrible and fierce.”
More SHRIEKS tore through the air, the sounds seeming to come from everywhere. The motel, Ethan realized, was surrounded.
Thomas said, “We have a hiding place. Somewhere safe from the creatures of the dark.”
“A place we use, on nights like this,” Tabitha said.
“This happens a lot?” Kyla said. “Why the hell do you even live out here?”
Hunter asked the smarter question. “What’s the catch?”
“We’ll make you a deal,” Thomas said.
“An ultimatum,” Tabitha said.
“Prove to us who killed our cousin,” Thomas said. “By midnight, tonight.”
Tabitha said, “We will then take the innocent to safety.”
“And leave the guilty to die,” Thomas said.
The twins spoke so simply, it took Ethan a moment to realize what they were saying. “You want us to solve a murder?”
“Yes, Mister Cross,” Thomas said. “That is exactly what we want.”
Ethan hesitated. Had Thomas ever heard his last name?
Kyla said, “You’re idiots. We’re not cops. We don’t have, like, forensics and shit. Just call the police in the morning. It’s not like any of us can go anywhere.”
Tabitha said, “At the rate you’re going, Miss Hewitt, there won’t be a morning for you.”
Kyla went very still.
“But she is right. This is absurd. Like something from a cheap novel,” Fernanda said. “We are not detectives. Crimes are not so easily solved.”
Hunter nodded. “And how do we know this safe room of y’all’s even exists in the first place?”
“You can believe us or not,” Thomas said.
“We will be safe,” Tabitha said.
“If you wish to join us, bring us proof of who killed our cousin.”
Tabitha said, “Strong, incontrovertible proof.”
“But how the fuck are we supposed to do that?” Kyla said.
“We don’t care,” Thomas said.
“You have until midnight,” Tabitha said.
“That’s our offer.”
“There’s no negotiating.”
“Learn who killed our cousin and live,” Thomas said.
“Or die screaming in the cold,” Tabitha said.
Stanley was up on his feet, spitting and furious. “You people are insane, aren’t you? This is some kind of game for you. How do we know it wasn’t y’all who killed her in the first place?”
“It is absurd,” Fernanda said again. “All of it, absurd.”
Stanley’s hand rested on his Desert Eagle. He said to the twins, “You crazy fucks know we’re armed, don’t you? If we wanted to, we could get you to open this safe room of yours. It wouldn’t be too difficult.”
The twins didn’t blink. Thomas said, “You wouldn’t be the first to try.”
Tabitha said, “Or the first to fail.”
Ethan leaned back a little at that.
Kyla was clearly done with this. She turned on her heel, grabbed Fernanda by the arm, said, “We’re going to our room. Now.”
But as she started for the office’s front door, someone opened it from the outside.
Someone new. A man stepped in, a man with a face Ethan had seen for just a moment, watching him from the back door of Sarah Powers’s room.
The man was in his forties, Asian, with dark hair, a broken nose, a bright sneer.
He wore black leather boots and a motorcycle jacket.
A tattoo of a dragon crawled up his neck and peeked up from his collar. He smelled of menthol cigarettes.
Who the hell is this? Ethan thought.
“I think we can clear all of this up right now,” the man said, his bright sneer widening. “Can’t we, Stanley?”