“I should get going too, honey, and let you get to bed. Big day tomorrow, apparently. Though I sure as hell ain’t going to sleep too good to night. C’mon, sport,” she called to Steve as she headed for the door. “You sure you’re all right, honey? Call me if you need anything. Have you got all the windows and everything locked? You’re sure?” She pushed the screen door open against thick darkness. “Steve? You following me to the highway?”
“Good idea.” But he remained with Athena a moment and dropped his voice to a whisper. “About Barry…”
“Don’t. Please. I don’t even know what I feel yet. I just can’t believe he’s gone. No, please, don’t say anything.”
He took something out of his pocket and placed it on the table. “Belonged to my wife.” Then he hurried out the door.
“Night, honey.” Doris’s voice drifted back through the dark.
“Steven?” She could hear their footsteps fading on the gravel around the house, and she wanted to run after them but could only stare at the bracelet.
It was an antique, quite lovely really, but not the sort of thing she could ever wear, she thought. Designed of interlocking grape leaves, it lay there on the table like a sprig of some strange, tarnished plant. Puzzled by the gift, she picked it up, wondering what Steve’s wife had been like.
Her blood went ice.
It was silver.
He drove slowly, the taillights of Doris’s station wagon bright in his windshield.
But his mind was on something faraway. And long ago.
It could only be played at night, he remembered, and it had been a very popular game, especially with the bigger kids, especially with the boys. All the kids would gather around a lamppost to chose who’d be “It.” Then, talking in hushed whispers, those not chosen would go up a “safe” alleyway where—giggling nervously—they’d count to a hundred, then trickle out in quiet groups.
And the game would begin.
As deep shadows poured across the block, loose, fearful waves of children would sweep along the tree-walled street. At times, the quiet would be broken by a laugh that was almost a scream. They were hunting the “werewolf.”
In memory, the maple trees always swayed and whispered, dropping enormous blots of shadow over the sidewalk. A child could enter those blots and vanish. Was it hiding behind that car? On that porch? Sometimes they would disperse in screaming flurries. Sometimes they would search alone. And soon would come the time when the werewolf crept up behind some kid, and that kid would become a werewolf too…but no one else would know.
And that had been the beauty of the game.
He took his sweating hands off the wheel, wiped them on his pants. His high beams picked out pines, holding them until they whipped past to merge with other ghostly shapes.
When he was about nine years old, there had come a night when, all unknowing, he’d been the only kid left on the block who wasn’t a werewolf, when suddenly all the other children had turned and grinned….
Doris honked her horn at him, the sand road having run out. She honked again, in farewell, then turned her car onto the asphalt. He stared a long time at her diminishing lights. The paved road surged away in front of him, hard and straight.
Pam was finishing the doughnuts. “Anyways, you should see him, he’s real handsome,” she continued in a possessive whisper. “You know, real dark and tall. So Al rents him Lonny’s old room. You know? Overtop the gin mill?” She sucked the sugar off her fingers with smacking sounds. “Course I ain’t actually seen him myself yet. But I heard all about him and all. They say he’s real strange.”
Not listening, Athena sat across the table from her, examining the bracelet, turning it over and over in her hands.
“They say he was a camper, and he had a run-in with the dogs too. And his arm was all bleeding.” Her eyes shone. “Like it been bit.”
Tuesday, August 11
Wallowing in softness at the turns, the car crept along the shore road, while a radio voice, fuzzy with static, jabbered cheerfully on about the heat. Driving with one hand, Steve checked the map. Barely able to read the directions he’d scrawled in the margins, he decided Doris had been right about his handwriting. The flat sameness of the countryside became hypnotic. Pines drifted in the wind, coasted in the billowing grass.
Finally, after cruising the same stretch of road three times, he stopped the car. This had to be it. The people back at the last general store had been very specific. Getting out, he stepped over a low guardrail and struggled up a sandy hillock. Panting, he stood at the top.
Leeds Point. The name rang in his brain.
Nothing much of the shack remained. Below him, a scruffy line of dunes hemmed the salt marsh. At the far edge of the marsh slumped the remains of a crude structure, just a few charred timbers scattered about the tilting remnant of a corner post.
He stared down at it, the sea air stinging his eyes. Could this really be the original shack? It couldn’t be reached without a rowboat, he now saw: floating vegetation had hidden the dark water. It could be the one. Or it could just be some old hut the locals liked pointing out to tourists. Did it really matter? If the Leeds house did still exist somewhere, it would be in similar condition. He hadn’t expected to find anything here; yet he’d felt compelled to come.
Below him, beyond the shack, beyond the marsh, sandy hillocks humped down to the sea, a grayly wavering band from which sunlight glinted in liquid fragments.
“You okay, honey? You sound sort of groggy.”
“The heat. And I didn’t sleep.”
“After last night, who did?”
“Hang on a second.” Athena set the phone down while she poured another cup of coffee. “No, I haven’t heard from him yet either, and I tried calling him again right after I talked to you the last time. I don’t understand it. A whole morning wasted.”
“Now you listen to me, honey. I’m going to come right over, but you are not to do anything until I get there. You understand me? I don’t care how antsy you are to get started. Under no circumstances are you to go anywhere yourself. Especially if you’re right about this guy. Hmm? No, I don’t think we should call the police until we’ve talked to Steve.”
“All right, Doris. You’re probably right…. No…I’ll wait for you. I promise.”
Pam was playing with the Ouija board. “You’re drinking more coffee, ’Thena? You’ll never sleep.” Pamela looked frowzier than usual today, and the hot kitchen reeked of bacon grease and unwashed breakfast dishes. “My name! Oh look, ’Thena! It spelled my name! See?”
“I still don’t understand, Pamela.” She set her cup down. “Why didn’t you mention this man last night?”
“I tried to tell you! But you wouldn’t listen. Nobody listens to me.”
Claws scraped dully across the linoleum. Stiff legged and wobbly, Dooley paced into the room. Following, Matty stumbled into the kitchen.
He watched the dog drink, listened intently to the lapping. Suddenly, the boy jerked his head around. “I…d-ddooo you…?” In the sunlight from the back door, his eyes glinted. “…know if…?”
Athena cringed away from his stutter, from the unbearably jumbled syllables.
“W-will it g-get like…?” His face twisted with concentration as he forced himself to hold his mother’s gaze. “Like when it gets all yella and thick like…will…?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Amazed, she stared at him. “No, Matthew, I don’t think it will get infected. I’ve been watching him pretty closely.” She refilled the dog’s water dish, the boy close beside her. “Though I think it’s time he had his pill. Would you like to give it to him? Then later we can change the bandages again and put on more salve.” She took a small brown bottle from the shelf—antibiotics left over from an illness of Matthew’s—uncapped it and broke one of the pills in half. “Just do it the way I showed you. Put it on the back of his tongue and hold his mouth closed.”