If the past and future relationship of Sarah Huggins and William Carmel was distilled to three defining days, it would be the weekend of April 18, 1987. 

On Saturday, Sarah wore a dark-blue bustle-back dress with elbow-length sleeves and a bow in back. Her shoes were simple--nude, closed-toe heels--and she borrowed a pearl necklace from her sister. William wore jeans and a tan blazer over a blue v-neck.

That afternoon, the couple was married at the Grand Rapids courthouse with Allison Huggins as their only witness.

The next day was Easter Sunday. William was dunked three times into Lake Michigan by Pastor VanDuyn, then emerged shivering and smiling, a wingless phoenix with a forgiven past. He hugged Sarah on the beach with lumbering, wet arms. A handful of friends skipped their traditional Easter dinners to be present at the baptism; mostly young Brandywine couples who became acquainted with the Carmels through The Church of the Dunes. When Sarah invited the gathering to their home for finger-food and fellowship, she didn’t expect anyone to accept. But they did--every one of them--and those with children brought them. With the impromptu potluck at the base of the hill, the Carmel family accidentally began a new tradition.

On Monday, Sarah Carmel arrived home with a five-week-old black and brown puppy with the face of a Labrador and the coat of a German Shepherd. She wrapped the dog in a picnic blanket from the trunk of her car, then knocked on the screen-door and beckoned her new husband to the porch. “Did you smoke pot today?” she asked.

“Quite a greeting,” he said and pecked her cheek. “How was your improv class, beautiful?”

“Did you smoke pot today?” she asked again.

“Why would you ask me--”

“Did you smoke--”

“No!”

“Did you drink today?”

“No.”

“Did you do any other illegal substances today?”

“No, Sarah!”

She tilted her head and grinned. “Do you remember what today is?” The bulge squirmed in her arms.

“April twenty is a counterculture holiday... but I promise I didn’t--”

“Do you know what else today is?”

The corners of his eyes drooped.

“Think hard, Bill Hikock,” she said and winked.

He finally got the hint. He tried to stay cool, but the effort only forced more blood to his cheeks. “I don’t know how you do this to me,” he said. “I’m a thirty years old man, hard as a rock, and you come along and make me blush.”

“It’s because I’m your wife,” she said. The blanket moved again.

“Whatcha got there?” he asked and peered over her arms.

“It’s a present to celebrate a year of staying clean.” The feisty gift pushed its face against the blanket. Sarah readjusted her hold while trying to keep a straight face. “You changed your whole life to be with me that day... and I wanted to get you something special to show how much I appreciate you.” She couldn’t contain the animal anymore. It yipped, wiggled its tiny nose through the blanket, and cocked its head at William.

He plucked the puppy from under it’s shoulders and held it over his head. The dog--glad to be free of the blanket--scrambled its legs against Will’s chest and licked his face up and down.

“She’s gorgeous,” he said.

“She’s blind in her left eye. They had two male pups without any problems, but they weren’t as cute and not as special.”

“Your eye’s just a little cloudy, that’s all,” he told the puppy, then looked to his wife. “She’s perfect.”

By morning, the dog had a name and her name was Challo. William said he didn’t know where the word came from, but thought it fit the little lady nicely.

Sarah wondered if Challo’s transformation from pup to dog was reminiscent of Will’s trip through puberty. The pudgy puppy fat was shed within six months, leaving behind a lean creature with pencil legs, broad boney shoulders, and a perfect blend of eagerness and mellow temperament.

Although she would never tell her husband, Sarah had an ulterior motive for buying a dog: Challo would be a temporary distraction from her longing for children. One year of sobriety may have been enough to marry William, but it wasn’t enough to bring a child into the relationship. She blamed her trepidation on her desire to experience life as a couple while Challo relieved the tug in her heart.

In 1996, Sarah encouraged William to respond to a classified ad for a piano player at a new bar on Boulevard. The job wouldn’t be a legitimate source of income, but they were still living comfortably off interest from the original land deal. He can show off his talent to the world, she thought. Maybe he can write and perform his own songs at the bar!

At the bar? With drinking and smoking and her husband at the center? He would be out until midnight... three to five days a week!

But Sarah didn’t consider the venue’s temptations until after William got the job! With eight sober years behind them, Sarah realized that she finally trusted her husband.

The new epiphany uncovered a repressed longing in Sarah’s loins, and as William entertained the masses, her hipbones squirmed with possibility. She was thirty-two. She was ready. She discussed it with Will. He was ready too.

Less than a year later, Sarah and Challo stayed up late to greet William when he arrived home from work. She met him at the door, flicked off his fedora, then inched her hands beneath his shirt.

He lifted her up and Challo barked. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pressed her lips against his ear and whispered, “We’re pregnant,” though he already knew. With their bodies entwined, a budding life between them, and Challo’s rhythmic panting at their knees, Sarah had never felt more complete.

*  *  *

Sarah was in the tub when she heard the music. A Christmas song? She couldn’t recall the title.

The phone rang. She ignored it.

The phone rang again so she pulled the drain, planted her hands on the porcelain rim of the tub, and hoisted herself out.

The music initially seemed like it was coming from downstairs, but as she stepped out of the bath and approached the bedroom window, the melody grew louder.

She wrapped her hair in a towel, then tilted her head and squeegeed her ears with the corner.

For the third time, the landline rang from its perch on her nightstand. Sarah left a trail of meandering tiptoe prints across the carpet, grabbed the phone and said, “This is Sarah.”

“Sarah, it’s Morgan. I have a copy of the winter schedule in my hand, and the first of December clearly reads, ‘No Show.’ Am I missing something?”

“Nope. No show. I’m looking at the hill now, and the only lights are security lights.”

“Well the music is disrupting my shows.”

Sarah removed the towel from her head and covered her body, then unlatched the bedroom window and cracked it. The tune was clear. “O Holy Night.” “I hear it too,” she said. “I’ll check with Will, but I’m sure it’s not us.”

“Please do. The noise is bad enough on the scheduled days.”

“Goodbye Morgan,” Sarah said and dropped the phone on the charger. She dried off with a second towel, wiggled on her underwear, then slipped her arms through a baby-blue robe and tied it off at the waist.

“William?” she called down the stairs. “Janie?”

Only the music replied.

She stepped into her pink slippers and walked downstairs. 

A chill trickled through her limbs as she reached the last step and she thought it was the eerie music... but then she noticed the open front door. She double checked the security of her robe’s bow-tie, then tiptoed through the living room and peeked outside.

Her eyes adjusted to the dark. More than twenty neighbors decorated her lawn like statues at a cemetery. They were staring at her. She panicked, and nearly slammed the door before realizing her stupidity. They were looking past her. 

They were looking at the hill.

Sarah narrowed her eyes and saw her husband’s gaping mouth and her daughter’s pointing finger. Her concern for modesty fell to the porch with her hair-wrap, and the piano grew louder as she stepped from the porch to the snow.

She walked toward her family. Hyde emerged from his home and lumbered across the street at a similar pace. They all met in the middle.

“Mom! Do you hear it?” asked Janie.

“Unbelievable!” added William.

She looked at Hyde, hands tight in his jacket pockets, shoulders pressing his cheeks, and lingering wisps of breath rising and dissipating around an unmistakeable look of concern.

“Yo Will!” Dave Melbourn shouted form his bedroom window. “You messin’ with your neighbors?”

“No sir!” William called back. “No idea what’s going on!”

Janie snuggled into Sarah’s side and wrapped an arm around her back. “Aren’t you cold?”

She was cold. Her hair was freezing in dread-lock icicles. But she couldn’t respond.

More neighbors ventured to their porches and crossed their arms in the chill. Sloan sat on Doctor Elfman’s shoulders, her eyes lit with the magic of the unknown. Sharon and Tracy Cavenaugh stood beside a yellow backhoe in the slushy front yard of the future neighbors.

Cars arrived in droves. They parked on the edge of the woods and lined up down the sides of the road. One man called his parents and told them to come to his house to hear the music. “No,” Sarah heard him say, “says he’s got nothin’ to do with it!”

Two figures scampered down the side of the hill. As they approached, Sarah recognized them as Jenny and Trent Johnson. They darted toward the group of spectators and shouted, “Mom! Dad! The speakers are all turned off!”

Matt Johnson gave his kids a high five. “How did you get inside?”

“The back gate was unlocked!”

Sarah didn’t know what kind of responsible adult would let their kids trespass up a snow-covered hill at night... the stage brought out the worst in people.

She wasn’t cold anymore. Her face was feverish and her body was beginning to arouse its dormant adrenaline. “Where is the music coming from, Will?” she asked.

He looked down with that shit-eating smile plastered across his Santa Clause beard. “I don’t know!” he said. “It must be a miracle!”

She already knew the whole story; she knew it the second the music rattled her eardrum: If God wasn’t going to fill the stage with his visible presence, William would do it for him.

So she left them there; the whole heard of believers with Janie stuck to her father. Hyde jogged a step behind.

Sarah stormed right through the Whitaker-Reid front door. Kayla was also in her robe, balancing a delicate mug of coffee between her fingers and leaning against the kitchen island like a trophy’s platinum figurine.

“He’s lying to me,” Sarah said. “Look at those people. He’s lying to the whole fucking world.”

Hyde clamored in before Kayla could respond and clomped his boots and shut out the cold. The three friends exchanged glances while “O Holy Night” cooled the room.

“Decaf?” Kay asked.

“Black,” Sarah said.

Hyde led her to the couch and wrapped a Detroit Lions blanket around her back. Kayla handed her coffee and the mug warmed her hands. Hyde sat in his chair. Kayla sat at across the couch. No one made eye contact.

“Now,” Kayla asked, “what’s wrong?”

Sarah spoke carefully at first as if she had to consult a dictionary before uttering each word. “I saw teeth,” she said. “I saw teeth sticking out of the bandshell arch the morning they honored William at the church service.”

“Teeth?” Hyde asked. 

“Fangs. And I stood there and I couldn’t move and I wanted to tell the minister to run but I couldn’t. The choir was dancing in their red robes, lapping back and forth like they were the tongue. More teeth rose up from the foot-candles but they had their eyes closed, clapping and singing and then it started to move. The wings of The Stage began to collapse. Slowly--just a few inches at a time--but I could see it, Kay and nobody noticed it but me. William was up there dancing and singing with no clue that he was about to be caught like a piece of food in the teeth of this monster. But I was frozen. My feet were frozen to the ground and those lips moved faster and the stage-lights quietly fell to the ground and the catwalk broke in half but it didn’t make a sound. The tongue licked and lapped and twisted and the top fangs closed in on the bottom teeth until they were touching. I couldn’t see the tongue anymore but I could see William’s feet dancing between the jaws. As the top of the stage lowered, I saw them; two eyes mounted on top like on a frog. But the eyes weren’t stone like the rest. They were alive. They were wet and they moved in plaster sockets. When the lips finally met, the eyes closed and the orchestra pit bobbed out like an Adam’s apple and I knew it swallowed them whole. The eyes looked through the cheering crowd and they found me, Kay. They found me and watched me and I swear the wings lifted and it smiled at me.”

The music stopped. Despite the coffee and blanket, Sarah was shivering.

Kayla motioned to Hyde. “Turn up the heat.”

He stood and left the room.

Sarah looked to Kayla. “It’s always watching. Every time I tell a lie, every time William talks about his mission, every time I look across the street and see the lights on in your home... I feel it watching me.”

Kayla nodded. “We tried to stop it. We did everything we could.”

Hyde returned to his seat.

Sarah leaned forward. “Everything you could? That’s bullshit, Kay. You could have stopped this a thousand times but you let it go.”

“We did try! Hyde brought home all the same equipment--”

“Kayla...” Hyde interrupted. “No.”

“Why does it matter now? It’s not any worse than what we did before.”

“What happened?” Sarah asked.

Kayla glared her husband into remission, then turned back to Sarah. “Hyde brought home the same equipment a couple weeks after the prank. The computer, the recording program, the microphone... and the speakers were still in the shed. So we did it again.”

“What did you do?”

“We waited until Will was alone by his piano, and then I told him to stop building the theater with the same silly voice as before. I told him to stop production completely. I said the mission was a test of his faith, that he passed, and that he needed to stop. I said it ten times. Over and over I yelled. ‘Stop production, William Carmel,’ I said. ‘Stop building the theater, William Carmel!”

“We watched him,” Hyde said. “We assumed he heard it from the way he reacted. He ran out the shed and tripped in the yard. Looked terrified. You came out and helped him up. Guess we were wrong.”

“We tried to stop it,” Kayla said. “I promise, Sarah. We tried to stop it.”