The Children Play at Night

George, the nine-year-old product of two alcoholics that met the inevitable end via semi-truck six years ago, met with Kevin and Doug, these two once having parents involved in gang wars yet only seeing the end of such from within pine boxes. Though the children would be allowed to go into the town, it was by escort for obvious safety concerns. Kevin and Doug, however, didn't subscribe to such a caution. "Three people's a crowd, but we look out for each other like brothers. You're a brother, right, George?" He knew what they meant, and he nodded, thus they would allow him to tag along as part of their "family". A family where Kevin carried a butterfly knife and Doug carried a baseball bat; all George had was a lighter.

Friday morning saw the trio make their way out of the orphanage, having finished their breakfast and chores and taking to the streets after a quick hygiene check. Kevin stated, "Hey, we got new neighbors just up the street." He pointed to a recently remodeled house that sat not far from the edge of town, almost like an unwanted child peeking at them. "Some woman came at dusk after the movers unloaded everything."

This piqued George's interest. "Cool, we could meet them! Why don't we say 'hi' and welcome them?"

Kevin looked at George, a sly grin on his face. "See, the thing's that she somehow has a house, expensive after that rebuilding, and she has four kids. But the way I saw her dressed in that long coat...dude, I think she's part of a mob." George frowned at that statement and Kevin answered his disbelief. "Hey, there are mafia that work in places such as this. I mean, the movers practically opened the door and invited her in with shaking hands! Maybe she, you know, provides certain services for a crime boss... or to him."

Doug shook his head, spinning his baseball bat like a top. "Nah. She's probably some nepo baby. Got pregnant a few times, so her parents sent her and the grandbabies to some corner out of sight. That way, they avoid controversies!" He then laughed like someone who thought a simple joke was clever.

"No! That's not it!" George snapped. "She's probably just recently widowed. We shouldn't give her a hard time with rumors!"

Kevin rolled his eyes. "Okay, Georgie, why don't you go ask her then? Better yet, welcome her here, get her to open up, and then we'll know the truth." Before George could protest, Kevin was already behind him and basically shoving him towards the house. "Come on, G-Man, start investigating." Doug followed behind, laughing at Kevin's jest. George didn't want to resist, but Kevin insisted that there was nothing to be nervous about. "She's real beautiful, George. You might like her." He then made a kissing noise near George's ear, remarking, "You might even get lucky with her!" At this, George stopped resisting and practically marched to the end of the street.

No fences. No signs. No pets. They faced the front door of the house, buried between the garage on their right and a hexagonal bulge of shuttered windows to their left. Despite the remodeling, the dark-brown house seemed foreboding and gave off a grave impression. Kevin gestured towards the door; "Go on, George. Knock." When George looked at him, Kevin merely smiled. "You scared? Don't be. Doug and I will be right here."

Doug nodded, placing his bat upon the sidewalk. "Yeah. Go introduce yourself to the lady. See if she's a rich girl or a whore." George gave a disapproving stare at Doug, who merely smiled and winked. As much as George hated that word, there was no point in trying to argue with someone almost twice his size and carrying a bludgeon.

George eyed the door. The path leading towards it from the sidewalk was a mere twenty feet, but it stretched a mile for George; he compared this to the Dead Man Walking tradition from prisoners being escorted to their execution. He soon found himself both at the door and out of breath, although he attributed the latter to the fear. Raising a hand, he touched upon the doorbell; a single ping was heard from within. He waited in the silence following the fading toll. Looking over his left shoulder, he saw Kevin and Doug wave from the sidewalk. A movement in the blinds of the hexagonal section caught his sight; he could have sworn he saw a pair of eyes staring at him. A cat?

No answer. "Oh, well," George whispered, "time to go-"

The door opened quickly.

George's heart stopped for a moment. At first, he saw no one at the entrance leading into the darkness. Then, a tall and pale woman moved to the threshold, her hair up in a rising black ponytail, her body dressed in a dark bathrobe while her brown eyes looked down upon George's trembling frame. She was frighteningly beautiful and smiled at the boy, asking him in a voice that was barely above a whisper yet was as deep as distant thunder:

"Hello. Can I help you, young man?"

It took a while for his own voice to be found. "I...I...hell-lo, ma-ma'am", he managed to squeak out. "I...I...am...G-G-George."

Her smile widened. "Nice to meet you, Mister G-G-George. I am Milinda. Are they your friends?" She indicated towards the two boys. George smiled, his nerves calming down. "They are...my friends. Kevin and Doug." She looked back at him in a manner not unlike a mother doubting the claim of her child; he figured that was because of how he said the word, "friends". He knew that they never bullied him, they just had him along for company and, apparently, as a sacrificial lamb.

"The others...they thought...that you were a, uh, a..."

She narrowed her eyes. "A whore?"

George didn't answer, but he was sure his eyes gave the answer away. Milinda merely chuckled. "No, young man, I'm not a whore. But I am a stripper." She saw George's eyes widen and closed her eyes. "Yes, not a profession that this neighborhood might approve, but it got me and my children this home." George looked up at her and then tried to peer past her into the darkened room, but she was practically blocking it with her robe; all he could make out were the stairs leading up, a patterned metal handrail lining alongside it. "They're asleep, young man", she claimed. "They're...not accustomed to greeting guests. Plus, they get ill in the sunlight."

George nodded, feigning understanding. "Well, I look forward to meet them. I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood, I hope that you and your kids like it here. If you need anything, I can help; I'm an orphan from the shelter not far from here. It was nice to meet you, Misses Milinda." He extended his hand, to which her long and pale fingers wrapped around it. There was a strength in these fingers, like a gentle vice, that George felt. That, and they felt cold, too.

"It was nice to meet you too, George. If you feel like visiting, my door will remain open to you." She then waved to Kevin and Doug, her smile fading as she glared at them. She looked back at George, grinning one last time, and then shut the door. George quickly moved away from the door, meeting both boys and asking them why they didn't come with him.

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Two days had passed since George's welcoming of the new neighbor to town. On the third day, Doug ran over to the two, having left early that day to practice his batting skills. "Dude, Kevin, Buford's kicked the bucket!"

Kevin, looking up from prodding a dead cat that he and George had found, giving Doug a quizzical look. "The bum's bum-ticker finally gave out?"

Doug shook his head. "Nah, man, he was found in his tent! Or rather, what was left of his tent. It looked like a wild dog got in there last night; ripped-up pieces of tarp and carpet, and there was a red stain on the ground. The paramedics already had him in a body bag, but everyone could tell that he was attacked. What's more, his fellow vagrants were telling the cops about high-pitched laughter."

Kevin scoffed. "It's probably just the noise of a pack of stray dogs that decided to get an easy meal." Doug decided that might be the best option and said nothing more. Kevin, however, looked over in the direction of the house where George had met Milinda. "Yes," he whispered, "just dogs."

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Night would fall upon the orphanage, prompting a swift call of curfew, a filling dinner of soup and sandwiches, and the readying for bed. One shower and one brushing-teeth-moment later, George was asleep. Despite his bunk being near a window where all manner of lights from the moon to the lightning from storms of the past would flash heavily upon, he had grown accustomed to these distractions.

The obstruction of the moonlight was what woke him up.

George's eyes slowly opened, as if something had interrupted the pattern of his life. He noticed the moonlight that plastered upon the walls like the old paint. He also noticed the dark shape in the center where the moonlight should have been shining. It was spherical, like someone's head peering into the window. George remembered that he was on the second floor and started breathing heavily. He dared not look over at the window, not even when more of those silhouetted heads started popping up. Sweat poured over his brow while his hands gripped upon the blanket as if worried that the owners of those heads would reach in and yank him out. A rapping was heard from the window:

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

...

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap!

Silence. Then...

"G-G-George."

"G-G-George."

"G-G-George."

"G-G-George."

George closed his eyes. "Knock it off, guys! I know it's you doing that!" He was sure that Kevin and Doug, along with two others, were pulling some sort of stunt on him. It was the high-pitched laughter that revealed otherwise, the laughter of children unrecognized. He snapped his head towards the window.

Nothing.

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There were more police out than usual. Apparently, some rich dude had a night on the town with his friends and then, poof! No more rich guy. Well, until the cops had found him in his car, pale as a ghost and just as dead. This was the news shared by Doug, having gone out early again. Kevin was upset, but not about the death. "Doug, you idiot! There's something going on in this town, people are getting killed, and you are just going out alone!" Kevin motioned for George to come closer before roughly grabbing him. "We've gotta stick together, all of us! Something's going on, and I think your friend Milinda is behind this!" George disagreed, but Kevin was starting to spaz out. "This has to be some sort of crime mafia thing! The rich guy must have done business with the mafia, and they thought him a liability! The bum, Buford, he must have been snooping and got caught! Yeah, they must have made it look like dogs attacked him!"

George felt that Kevin was off his rocker. Still, the events did happen after Milinda arrived. There was another strange thing that George had seen today; there were more dead cats like the one he and Kevin had seen yesterday strewn about the area, especially near the orphanage. Some were strays, but there were a few wearing collars. George didn't dare mention the visitation that he received last night. Kevin stared at him, as if sensing that the young boy was hiding something. Doug scanned the area, his bat patting his palm as if waiting for a fight.

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Certain habits wouldn't die. Doug liked getting out early, finding small items to take to a nearby park and practice his batting. He never missed and his arms would be stronger, as he claimed. He would emphasize this by swinging his bat, cutting the air in a heavy whoosh of wooden determination.

He didn't come back.

Kevin had gone to look for him. When he came back, George saw that he was holding the broken handle of Doug's bat. A bit of red was upon the sharpened wood. What was more frightening was Kevin's expression; there was fear and something almost maniacal. "He's dead!"

George blinked in surprise. "Dead? Doug is dead?"

Kevin walked up to George. "I didn't see his body, but I found his bat and the blood; it's like how he described Buford's death. Something, or someone, had attacked him. He fought back, but it wasn't enough!" He was shaking, but from anger instead of fear. "That's it! That woman! This has to be her doing! Her, and whoever was laughing out there in the park, those damned high-pitched bitches!" He handed the broken handle to George. "Take it! We're going to her house and get answers."

George protested, "But...we don't know that she had anything to do with this! It could have just been some psychopath."

Kevin gripped George's shoulders. "SHE is the psychopath, George! This was her organization's doing! We need to confront her!" George couldn't believe this, but he didn't argue with an adamant Kevin. He reluctantly took the handle, Kevin pulled out his butterfly knife, and both headed towards the house.

Once there, and once again, George was made to go to the door. "Go on," urged Kevin, his knife pointed outwards as he scanned the street, "I'll see if anyone comes up." George wasn't sure about this, but he went up to the door. Remembering what Milinda told him, he reached up and twisted the doorknob. Sure enough, the door opened up to him. The darkened room started to be revealed by the light from outside.

There were the stairs, but there was also the hallway with an entrance to the hexagonal region. George went there, finding the heavy wooden blinds. He went and opened each one, bringing in more light, hoping for more clues. He worked the last one on his left-

"G-G-George."

"G-G-George."

"G-G-George."

"G-G-George."

Each voice sent a chill down his spine. Turning, he found himself facing the stairway, the metal railing, and four children barely illuminated by what little light made it into the house, even from the blinds. They didn't move towards him, nor moved at all, only staring intently at him with what looked like brown eyes boring through the dead light. George kept the broken handle in front of him. The children said nothing, but Kevin did cry out from outside.

"George! She's here-Uuuuh!

Seconds later, Kevin's body landed in the hallway, clutching the knife buried into his chest. The four children looked towards the door, the intensity of their eyes quieting down. The door was heard closing, George's heart started pounding, and Milinda strode before him, making no sound except from her mouth: "Tsk, tsk, children shouldn't play with knives." She saw George and smiled at him. "Hello, George. You came; I hoped you would."

George stammered, "W-w-w-what's going on? Why di-did you do, did you kill...who are you?!"

Milinda moved slowly around George, reaching out and closing the first blind. "My husband and I learned that we couldn't have children. One more curse upon the life I had. My husband had an idea." She closed the second blind. "One child, one orphanage, five total. Each would see the truth and would be given the life I had. My husband couldn't have that life; I swore never to curse him with such. But I didn't want to be alone." Third blind. "The children would age slowly but have no offspring of their own. I would take care of them, even after my husband's passing." Fourth blind. "It destroyed me, but not as bad as the hunters that came. They killed my children one by one, forcing me to flee. I wanted my five children, to honor my husband. Just five!" The fifth blind echoed in the room. She didn't look at George, which scared him even more. "Perhaps, in time, I will find a new husband. I almost did, but he was easily spooked. I couldn't allow him to speak out, or I would risk the hunters finding us. It took me years to obtain these four wonderful and beautiful children, and it costed the lives of young men and the death guardians that lead the hunters to us. The cats, George", she summarized, finally reaching the sixth blind and shutting it. Her brown eyes had turned upon him, seen even in the now-dark room.

George backed away from her, but found the four children outside the room's entrance, two on each side of Kevin. Kevin gripped the knife, trying to speak, but only wheezing quietly. Milinda waved her hand. "The knife went into his lung. He's already finished. Shame, I liked his spirit." She then stepped closer to George and gripped his shoulder with that vice-like strength from before. Her face was inches from his as she continued, "But you, George, are a sweet boy. You don't accuse, you don't assume, and you are braver than you realize. We have so much to share with you. My son, my fifth child, soon to play with the others at night." As she moved her lips towards his neck, George managed to see the four children approach and bend down upon Kevin. The last things George heard were Kevin's gasp and Milinda whispering:

"Welcome to the family."