"Wanta hypnotize it?" Ryan asked.
Michael looked dubiously at his cousin. "How?"
"Just hold it upside down and rub its belly a couple of times."
Michael hesitated, then did as Ryan had told him. As he watched, the lizard's torso seemed to arch, and its eyes closed.
"Now put him down."
Carefully, Michael laid the lizard on a log, then stroked its belly a few more times. Finally he drew his finger away. The lizard stayed where he'd left it, its eyes closed, only a faint movement in its throat indicating that it was still alive.
"How long'll it stay that way?" Ryan shrugged. "A few minutes. You can keep it that way forever, if you rub its belly again every time it starts to wake up. Except if you leave it in the sun too long, it'll get too hot and die." The two boys watched the lizard for a few minutes. Then, without warning, its eyes blinked open. It flipped itself over and disappeared back into the safety of the woodpile.
"Ryan?" Michael asked a few minutes later as the two of them once more began stacking the wood neatly against the back wall of the garage. "Do you think I really could have seen a ghost last night?"
Ryan looked at him disgustedly. "No."
"Then what did I see?"
"I don't think you saw anything," Ryan said. "And I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"But I did see something!"
"Bull!" Ryan exploded. "You didn't see anything, and you didn't go into any old barn, and you're just making all this up. All you did was fall off your bike, and now you're trying to make it sound like it wasn't your fault, 'cause you saw a ghost. Well, I don't believe you, and none of the other guys will, either. So if you don't shut up, I'm gonna tell my dad you went into old man Findley's barn. Then you'll really be in trouble."
Michael's eyes blazed with sudden anger. "You said you wouldn't tell anyone! You promised. Besides, I never said it was old man Findley's barn."
"So what?" Ryan sneered. "How was I supposed to know you were going to start trying to con me with a bunch of bull? And I can say anything I want to anyone I want to, so you just better watch out."
Michael fell silent. His head was throbbing with pain, and deep within his mind he thought he could hear a voice whispering to him, urging him to strike out at Ryan. Then, vaguely, he remembered the other day, when he'd suddenly told Ryan to drop dead, and for a moment-just for a second, really-he'd actually thought it was going to happen. He struggled to control himself, afraid of what might happen now if he gave in to that voice inside him, and at the same time knowing that if he kept talking about what he had seen the night before, Ryan would only accuse him of being crazy. But as he went on helping his cousin stack the wood, he kept thinking about the night before. And the more he thought about it, the more everything he'd seen and heard in the darkness began to seem like a dream.
And yet, he had seen lights in the field, and he had gone into Findley's barn.
He had seen a car, and he had seen someone in the light of the lanterns.
But had he seen Nathaniel?
And how could he have seen what was happening in the field? It had been so dark, and he'd been looking through a crack in the wall of a barn.
And that voice, the voice he thought was Nathaniel's.
It had been so strange, so flat. Had he really heard it at all?
He tried to picture it all in his mind: the blackness of the barn and the faint traces of silvery moonlight that had filtered through the wall.
How could he have seen anything? And he hadn't, he realized, really heard anything. That voice had been in his head, like the voice he had heard just now. Besides, he'd had a headache that night, and he could never quite remember exactly what happened when he had one of those headaches.
Maybe Ryan was right. Maybe he was crazy.
He decided he wouldn't talk anymore about what had happened last night, not to anybody. Still, he wished he could talk to his dad about it. His father had always been able to help him figure things out, but now he couldn't do that. Nor could he talk to his grandfather. He shuddered as he remembered the beating a couple of days ago-never his grandfather. But maybe his grandmother. Maybe sometime when he was alone with his grandmother, he'd talk to her about it.
Maybe…
As soon as Janet and Michael had left the house that morning, Amos had begun calling around Prairie Bend, trying to find Shadow's owner.
No one, however, was missing a dog, nor did anyone respond to Amos's description of Shadow. He hung up the phone after the last call and turned to Anna. "Well, I guess it's a stray. I'm gonna get my gun."
Anna glared at her husband. "You mean you're going to shoot that dog?"
"That's what I mean to do," Amos replied, his voice grim.
"No."
Amos turned baleful eyes on his wife. "What did you say?"
"There's no reason to shoot it. What's it done to you?"
"I don't like dogs."
"Sometimes I don't like you, either," Anna retorted, her voice low but steady. "Does that mean I should shoot you?"
"Anna-"
"It's not your dog, Amos. It's Michael's dog. It may have saved his life, and if you do anything to that animal, Michael will never forgive you. Your daughter hates you, and your son ran away from you. Do you want your grandson to hate you, too?"
"He'll never know," Amos told her. "By the time he gets home, the dog will be dead and buried. We'll tell him it ran away. He'll believe us."
"He might," Anna agreed. "He might believe us if we both told him that, but if you tell him the dog ran off, and I tell him you shot it, who's he going to believe?"
Amos's eyes hardened. "You wouldn't do that, Anna. You've never gone against my wishes, and you won't now."
"I will," Anna told him, folding her hands in her lap. "This time I will. You leave that dog alone."
Amos left the house without another word, but he felt his wife's eyes oh him as he crossed the yard to the barn.
His wife's eyes, and Shadow's eyes.
The dog was curled up next to the back porch, his habitual post when Michael either was in the house or had left him behind. When the kitchen door suddenly swung open, and Amos's heavy tread struck the porch, Shadow's body tensed, and a vaguely menacing sound rumbled from his throat. His hackles raised slightly, but he made no move to get up. Amos regarded the dog with angry eyes.
"Get out of here," he said. He drew his right foot back, then swung it forward. Before the kick could land, Shadow had leapt to his feet and moved a few yards from the house. Amos followed him.
A yard at a time, Shadow backed away toward the barn. Amos kept steady pace with him, softly cursing at the dog, constantly trying to land one of his boots on Shadow's flank. But each time he lashed out with his foot, Shadow dodged away from him.
Suddenly the barn was between them and the house, and Shadow stopped backing away. He crouched low to the ground, and his ears lay back flat against his head. His snarl was loud now, and to Amos it appeared that a cunning had come into the animal's eyes.
Amos tried one more kick.
This time, Shadow made no attempt to leap away from Amos's foot. Instead, he seemed to wait until the last possible instant, then whipped his body to one side, at the same time twisting his neck so he could clamp his massive jaws down on Amos's ankle. With a lunge, he threw Amos off balance, and the big man fell heavily to the ground, grunting in a combination of pain and anger. In another second Shadow had abandoned his grip on Amos's ankle, and was at his throat, his fangs bared, saliva glistening on his tongue. For a long moment, Amos stared into the animal's eyes, only inches from his own, sure that those sharp canine teeth were about to begin slashing at him.
But it didn't happen. Instead of attacking Amos, Shadow suddenly moved forward, raising his leg.
A stream of hot yellow fluid spurted over Amos, drenching his shirt front, stinging his eyes, gagging him as some of it penetrated his mouth to trickle down his throat. And then, when he was through, Shadow moved off to sit on the ground a few feet away, his tail curled around his legs, his ears up, his tongue hanging from his open mouth.