Read the title story from Rebecca Turkewitz’s debut story collection Here In The Night

Rebecca Turkewitz is a high school English teacher living in Portland, Maine. In addition to teaching, she is also a writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The Masters Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Electric Literature, and The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts.

Here in the Night, her debut story collection, features thirteen stories that are like R.L. Stine horror for adults. They’re dark, surreal, and will give you goosebumps. The atmosphere of every story is pitch perfect and are filled with memorable, fully-formed characters that you’ll love.

Here in the Night is available now. You can read the title story below.

Ellie and Jess are driving down Highway 17, away from South Carolina’s Winyah Bay. They’re coming from a visit with Ellie’s parents, headed to the airport and then back to Maine, where they’ve lived together for five years. The first several miles were lit with motel signs and seafood shacks and passing cars, but now it’s so dark, the only things visible outside the cone of the rental car’s headlights are a thumbnail moon and a spray of stars. They’ve driven past the café where Ellie used to sling fried clams to sunburned tourists, the field in which Hurricane Hugo had stranded two shrimp boats, and Ellie’s grandmother’s little yellow cottage with its gingerbread trim. Ellie has pointed out these landmarks to Jess on previous drives, but tonight the car is quiet. 

It’s June 12, 2016. Some of you already know what this means. It means that in the early hours of the morning a man walked into a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida and opened fire, killing forty-nine people in a place that was supposed to be their haven. It means fifty-three wounded. It means Ellie crying in bed that morning as she scrolled through Twitter. It means Jess wondering why she hasn’t cried yet. It means Ellie’s mother trying to console them, even though she still stage whispers the word “lesbian” every time she says it. It means Jess telling Ellie to stop checking her phone if it only makes her sadder. It means Ellie accusing Jess of being strangely unmoved by the tragedy. It means guilt at being safe and alive and able to bicker, able to make-up. It means that by the time they’re on their way to the airport, exhaustion has settled thickly around them. 

Static cuts into the song on the radio and Ellie changes the station a few times before she finds what she’s looking for: the updated death toll and then a summary of a survivor’s account.
“Can we turn this off?” Jess asks. “I don’t want to think about it right now.”

“How can you think about anything else?” 

Jess fiddles with the air conditioner and then turns her attention to the tiny slice of scenery that falls within the headlights’ reach.

“Baby. That wasn’t an accusation,” Ellie says. 

“I know. I just want to be home.”

Ellie switches the radio off. “Me too. But it’s always hard for me to leave my folks.”

Jess knows she should let things be, but she can’t resist saying, “Even today? Your dad was driving me crazy. He’s so obsessed with the idea that the shooter must have been secretly gay.”

“He was trying.”

“He’s been trying for a long time.” 

Jess always feels prickly and out of place on these annual visits. She looks out of place, too, with her half-shaved head and lopsided tumble of messy curls, the spindly pine trees tattooed down her arm, her knee-length boys’ shorts and thick thighs. She grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts with progressive parents and she hates that Ellie’s family still refers to her as Ellie’s friend. She hates how the couch is always made up for her so she has to sleep without the comfort of Ellie’s long limbs. She hates that they can’t hold hands or kiss in front of Ellie’s dad. 

When Jess looks back over, Ellie’s crying. “I’m sorry,” Jess says, putting her hand on the back of Ellie’s neck, under the soft swoosh of Ellie’s ponytail. “What’s wrong, baby?” 

“I’m sad,” Ellie says. “Why are you acting like this doesn’t have anything to do with us, like it’s just something that happened to other people?”

“I can be sad and not cry.” 

Jess usually loves driving with Ellie. She likes how the car creates a little pocket world just for them. But now Ellie has let the horror of the day in. What Jess wants—all Jess wants—is for her and Ellie to be alone in the car without the crushing weight of other people’s tragedy. She wants to free them from the tangle of other people’s sorrow and other people’s hate. 

They hit a pothole—not even a very big one, Jess will think later—and the car begins to make a clunking sound. Ellie maneuvers it to the side of the road and the headlights catch a cloud of insects so thick it looks like a snow squall. 

“Shit,” Ellie says. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” 

“What was that?” 

A car whizzes past them and their seats shake. “A flat tire, I think,” Ellie says. 

When Jess opens her door the air is so humid it feels thick. The chorus of insect noise sounds like millions of teeth chattering. Ellie comes around to Jess’s side of the car and the bushes erupt into movement as something darts off into the high grass. 

Ellie kneels by the traitorous tire and thumps the wheel well. When she gets up pebbles cling to her bare knees. A mosquito lands in the crook of her elbow. She slaps it. 

“We’ll miss our flight,” Jess says.  She’s embarrassed that neither of them knows how to change a tire. But if she were to attempt any heroics, it wouldn’t be on this dark road with this unfamiliar car. “What happens if we miss our flight?”

“There are other flights,” Ellie says. She’s already dialing AAA, putting the phone to her ear. Ellie’s always the emotional one until there’s a task to complete. Then she’s all business. “If we need to stay another day, we’ll stay another day. No big deal.”

Now Jess does feel like crying, which she would never admit to Ellie. She goes to the trunk to search for a long-sleeved shirt. Even in the heat, it’ll be better than letting the gnats bump against her bare skin. She sits on the edge of the open trunk to wait. A little ways down the road there’s a water tower perched on bowed legs. Against the velvet sky it looks like a hovering UFO.

“They’ll be here in forty minutes,” Ellie says. “Maybe less.”

“Thanks, El.”

“We probably will have to reschedule the flight,” Ellie concedes. “So we might be stuck here another day. Your worst nightmare.” She perches next to Jess, leaving a thin gap between their bodies that Jess longs to close.

“I am sad about what happened,” Jess says. “But I also feel…I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

“Can you at least try?” Ellie can never abide a mystery. And now that Jess has had some time to think, she does want to explain.

“I don’t know if you remember this,” Jess says. “But last year there was a story in the Times about a funeral home in Mississippi that wouldn’t pick up the body of an eighty-year-old man after they found out he was gay.” 

“I remember,” Ellie says.

“I read the article while I was eating breakfast. It upset me so much that I had to throw away the rest of my toast. But I didn’t cry then, either. I felt angry, or like I should be angry. Mostly I wished I hadn’t read it. It felt so awful to be reminded, before I’d finished my coffee, that there are people in this country who wouldn’t even lay my body to rest.” 

“I don’t need a newspaper to remind me of that,” Ellie says. She takes Jess’s hand. It’s the first time she’s held it since they got off the plane a week ago.

“But that’s not our lives. At least not in Portland.” 

“Enough of that,” Ellie says, swatting the air. “Maine is not better than here.” 

“But isn’t it?” Jess says, laughing. Then she adds, “I’m sorry I make these trips hard for you. I’m a true New Englander. We’re wary of everything.”

“Especially outsiders,” Ellie says. “Like me.”

“Not to be trusted,” Jess agrees. 

She leans in and kisses Ellie. The kiss is slow and deep and reminds Jess of kisses from early in their relationship, before things between them became so steady and certain.  

They’re still kissing when a green pick-up truck rumbles into view. The sound of the horn makes them jerk apart. There are two men in the cab. The driver is leaning over the passenger to shout at them through the open window. They don’t understand the first part of what he yells, but the sentence ends with “dykes” and then an ugly bark of laughter.

As the truck passes, they take in the confederate flag decal on the truck’s rear window and the man in the passenger seat craning his neck to watch their reaction. They’re too surprised to show any emotion, which they’re grateful for. They both know that in situations like this, it’s best not to react. 

When the truck disappears around a bend, Jess rolls her eyes. “Assholes.” 

“Do you think we should get in the car and lock the doors?” Ellie asks.

“Oh, sweetie. We’re okay.” Jess puts her arm around Ellie and kisses her temple. Ellie stands up and steps back. “They’re gone,” Jess says. Ellie nods, but stays where she is. Jess furrows her brow but doesn’t reach for Ellie again. 

“I love you,” Jess says. 

“I love you, too,” Ellie says softly, pulling at the frayed bottom of her shorts.

Jess swivels so she can search through the outer pocket of her suitcase, finally pulling out a deck of cards. She’s about to ask Ellie to come play rummy, but Ellie is staring at the road behind Jess. 

When Jess turns, she sees a pick-up drawing nearer. Against the glare of the headlights she can’t tell if it’s the same truck, circling back. She watches the orange glow of the blinker as the truck eases to the side of the road. She listens to the pop of gravel under the tire treads. When the truck comes to a full stop, there’s no doubt that it’s the same one. Jess stands and joins Ellie. They link arms. 

The driver looks middle-aged. One side of his jaw droops slightly. “It seems like you ladies are stranded,” he calls across the empty road. There’s something in his voice—a forced and teasing lightness—that would set off Jess’s alarm bells even if she weren’t already on edge. 

Jess tries to think of the magic words that will keep the men inside their truck, away from her and Ellie. Nothing comes. She can only shake her head. 

“I’m happy to help,” the driver says.

“Thank you, but we’ve got things under control,” Jess says.

“It sure doesn’t seem like it.” The man laughs.

Ellie is scanning the brush behind them, perhaps considering escape routes. Jess wonders if their fear is an overreaction, fueled by the stress of the day and the night’s inky blackness and the isolation of the rural road. She wonders what they’ll do if the worst happens. She wonders if next week someone will read an article about this and be unable to finish her toast. 

The driver opens his door and steps out onto the road.

*

And, I’ll tell you: they survive this. They survive, shaken but unharmed. They survive and they get back to their small third-floor apartment that catches the sunlight and glows like amber for half an hour every day. They get back to their six-toed orange tabby. To the waft of hot ginger-scented air that escapes the bathroom when Ellie gets out of the shower. To Jess rubbing her feet together like a praying mantis to get any dirt off every night before she climbs into their shared bed. To their bed. To books with cracked spines, to grumbles about alarms going off too early, to an extra ten minutes of stolen sleep. To their heavy door that keeps the noise out. To their quiet, complex lives, which are, on the whole, happier and calmer than either of them expected. 

You can know this, but they cannot. And so, in this long and jagged moment, the sound of the truck door opening is like a gunshot. Even the bugs seem to quiet; even the wind seems to stop. And their hearts are rioting in the cages of their chests, and their limbs are pulsing, and their bodies are electric, and they are ready to flee, together, into the hot and waiting night.