Steven shuddered. Mark had saved his life that day, swimming to the bottom of a subterranean lake to wrench his body from where it was trapped beneath the carcase of a dead monster.
‘It came again today when you stepped through the far portal with the key in your pocket,’ Mark continued. ‘It was just like the other times – and it’s happening right now as I sit here, touching Lessek’s key: It’s as though I’m there – as if part of my mind is there – reliving that day on the beach with my family.’
‘So he’s trying to tell you something. If you’d come up Seer’s Peak, he would have visited you there.’
‘Maybe, but if I’m right, he has already visited me, dropping a warm blanket on me that night in Estrad. He didn’t need to see me at Seer’s Peak: he needs me to figure out what the hell he meant by hauling me all the way back to Long Island twenty-five years ago.’
‘Well?’ Steven could barely contain his excitement.
‘Well what?’
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘So, you’ve played it over and over again in your mind. You have the key right now. Talk it out. What looks strange? What are you not seeing that you’re supposed to see?’
‘If we ever get through this, Steven, please remind me to beat the shit out of you,’ Mark said, amused.
‘Why?’
‘Don’t you think I’ve done that? Don’t you think I’m doing that now?’
‘Well?’
‘Christ. Don’t start that again.’ Now he was getting irritated.
‘Tell me what you see.’
Mark closed his eyes and began to speak.
‘Have you ever been to my parents’ house?’
The question surprised Steven. He drew a blank for a moment, then said, ‘Um – yeah – that night after the Mets game at Shea, remember? We decided not to fight the traffic back into the city.’
‘You know that hallway that leads down to my sister’s bedroom, across from my parents’ room?’
Steven cast his thoughts back in time and visualised the house. ‘Okay, right. What about it?’
‘Things begin there-’ Mark shook his head in frustration, ‘no, that’s not right. I guess I should say these visions, memories – they begin there.’
‘In the hall?’
‘Yep.’ Mark reached out with one hand and gestured into the air above the fire. ‘My dad comes down that hall. He has on that old madras bathing suit and a T-shirt from a deli in Amityville, something he got for playing softball one weekend, I think. Anyway, he doesn’t come out of his room, and he’s not coming out of Kim’s room. He’s just there, in the hallway until he turns and moves towards me.’
‘What happens then?’
‘Then we’re outside. I’m helping him load everything into the back of the old station wagon.’ Mark grinned and opened his eyes for a moment. ‘I can’t believe my mother ever drove around in that monster. I know time tends to exaggerate our recollection of things, but that old car must have been forty feet long; it was a beached whale. She couldn’t have been getting more than three or four hundred feet to a gallon.’
Steven laughed. ‘Well, gas was cheaper back then! But go on, what’s significant about loading up the car?’
‘Nothing. That’s what’s so damned frustrating. I can’t think of anything. From the house, we’d go out onto route 27, take that west to the Meadowbrook Parkway, and from there, it was just a few miles out to Jones Beach.’
‘Think about more of the details,’ Steven urged. ‘Slow things down. Take your time. What does it smell like, look like?’
Mark leaned back against the fallen log and closed his eyes. Just when Steven thought he would have to prod him awake, Mark said, ‘The pavement was always hot, but I would leave my shoes in the car. My mom invariably yelled at me about it; she didn’t want me cutting my feet on broken glass or getting splinters from the plank walkway.’
He looked at Steven. ‘Jones Beach has this scrubby pine forest that runs along the north edge of the sand. I suppose, thinking about it now, it’s a curious juxtaposition, pines and sand that way, but growing up out there, I never thought about it.’ He closed his eyes again, took a sip from his beer and went on, ‘I hated getting sand in my shoes and socks, so I’d leave them in the back of the whale, make the dash across the macadam – that was like running across molten rock – and leap for the relative safety of the plank walkway. By the time we went home, late afternoon, it never bothered me to walk back to the car.’
‘This is better. Keep going like this,’ Steven said encouragingly. ‘What did your parents do? Were they fighting about anything? Disagreeing? How do you remember them?’
‘Mom was always dealing with Kim and the food. Dad dealt with the umbrella and his chair. After that, I’m not sure they ever had much to say to each other at all – I remember them holding hands sometimes, even hugging out in the surf, but I don’t remember them chatting on and on all day. Mom played with me and Kim – trying to keep us occupied underneath the umbrella, I guess. Dad always sat and watched the planes taking off and landing at Kennedy.’ Mark hesitated. ‘I guess that’s something strange.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He faced west.’
‘Doesn’t the beach run west to east?’
‘Right, but the water is straight south. Who goes to the beach and doesn’t face the ocean?’
‘Maybe your dad wanted to get the most from the sun.’ Steven tossed a log onto the fire, then looked for Garec; the Ronan was taking a long time to collect firewood. He noticed Gilmour and realised the old man had been listening. Catching Steven’s eye, Gilmour twirled one hand, as if to say keep him talking. Steven nodded almost imperceptibly and turned back to Mark, who hadn’t noticed the little byplay. ‘Was your dad a sun guy? Did he like to lie around in the sun?’
‘Dad?’ Mark grimaced. ‘Never. He hated the heat. It was all we could do to get him to the beach in the first place. Mom had to promise him he could bring a cooler full of cold beer just to get him there, and we always made at least one trip up the sand for ice cream. No, Dad wasn’t much for the sun.’
Mark pursed his lips, picturing his father sitting in a folding beach-chair, his long legs stretched out before him, an incongruous image among the hundreds and thousands who turned their full attention to the sea. ‘He’d sit all day like that, except for when he was in the water or playing with Kim and me.’ Mark closed his eyes tighter in an effort to clarify the image, to bring his memory into sharper focus. ‘He always sat that way. It crossed my mind once or twice when we were coming out of the Blackstones, after I dreamed about it in the underground cavern; I thought there had to be some connection between my arrival in Eldarn, half drunk on beer arriving at the beach, and those days out at Jones Beach when I was a kid, my dad drinking beer and-’
‘And facing west towards Jersey,’ Steven finished Mark’s thought.
‘Or further,’ Mark whispered.
‘Say that again.’
‘Further.’ Mark sat up.
Steven felt the connection begin to form in his mind and he raced to keep up with it before it dissipated in the nebulous fringes of his consciousness, the nether region where so many great dreams and ideas disappeared before he could get a firm handle on them. He stood up and started piecing the fragments together. ‘The hallway. I remember that hallway.’
‘Right. It runs from my parents’ living room down to the bedrooms at the back of the house.’
‘And there are pictures, right?’
‘Yup. A whole family gallery. My father calls it the Jenkins Family British Museum, a complete photo-history of our lives.’ Mark was standing now as well, and Gilmour moved through the shallows towards them.
Steven made several leaps in his mind, hoping to move two or three large pieces into place; he would form the outer edges of the puzzle later. It was time to connect the guts of the thing now. ‘I remember those pictures. There are lots of pictures of that trip he’s always talking about.’