Sweat.


by Laszlo Q. V. S-J. Xalieri
©2002 Spinnaker Religion Factory WORK IN PROGRESS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Chapter 1

It begins with a prickle on the scalp.

The day's work had been a complete wash. There had been four customers for the entire shift, and in the middle of the last transaction the power had gone out, leaving the cash register a gibbering idiot.

And then there had been the spontaneous collapse of the ill-conceived Pabst pyramid, denting about fifty cans and rupturing two of them. Both of the punctured cans developed angry pinhole geysers and hosed down half of the automotive section, from transmission fluid to air fresheners.

Lindsey thought about it and decided that she had never seen anyone buy anything out of the automotive section who had not also bought beer (unless it was a Sunday), so they'd probably never notice she might not have done the best job cleaning.

It was a shame about the air fresheners, though, since beer was something your car was definitely not allowed to smell like if you got pulled over by one of the State Troopers. State Troopers were as common as deer on the local stretch of interstate highway--either one common enough to be serious hazards for late-night drivers.

Then the power had gone out for good when she was sweeping up after closing.

Not surprising, that. The wind had been sucking the air out of the shop through the louvers in the A/C unit on the roof, rattling the ceiling tiles with a whistling whoop every time the door opened.

Sometimes the door opened on its own.

The wind had obviously dropped a branch on the power line. Or maybe a whole tree. Or maybe even ripped a whole transmission pole out of the ground and hurled it into the Atlantic, some two hundred miles away.

The wind, according to Lindsey's mother, was "uppity."

The phone was dead, too. Of course. No power to the burglar alarm system, no power to the lights in the lot outside. Backup batteries in the alarm panel were dead, too.

Lindsey ripped open a two-pack of double-As and popped the panel open, trashing the old pair of batteries. She taped the card for the fresh batteries to the front of the register, writing "alarm panel - Lin" on the back of the card with the chained-down ballpoint. As she replaced the batteries in the alarm panel, the battery-powered emergency lighting started to fade.

Soon the only light in the store--possibly the only light for a mile in any particular direction--was the red light on the alarm panel, declaring a trouble-state for the phone line being down.

Lindsey decided to give it up for the night.

There was no way to clock out, so Lindsey just wrote 10:14 PM (or so she hoped) on the battery blister-pack card with her note, and fought her way through the darkened store to the door, the calming beep from the alarm system's two minute warning shooing her out.

If someone heaved a cinder block through the window and stole all the shook-up beer, no one would know until the phones were back on, Lindsey thought. Aloud, she added, "but they're welcome to it."

The wind drowned her out, turning nearby power lines, ineffectual as they might be right now at transmitting electricity, into the devil's own harmonica.

Lindsey had never seen it so black outside. The clouds above were swirling shoals of monster catfish at feeding time, lit within their gills by their own lightning. Precious little light made it to the ground.

She looked up to gauge the iffy weather and the first drop of rain struck her square in the eye. She sputtered and swore and cursed in a purely amateur and pedestrian fashion. Emphasis on the pedestrian--since the phones were out, she would not be able to call and wake Elaine to come pick her up. As usual, Elaine would be dozing in her stuffed rocker right next to the phone, just in case.

It was going to be a long two miles.

Even longer since someone had joked about seeing Vole come out of the woods at the turn a half mile down highway 81--the direction she would be walking.

Thinking about the possibility of running into Vole froze Lindsey momentarily to the spot. Her scalp prickled. But she made herself start walking again. Surely he, too--should he actually be anywhere nearby--would not be out walking around on a stormy, moonless night.

Lindsey began to bless the lack of moon. As she thought about her situation more, Lindsey began to pray for rain.

Of course Vole would be walking around on a night like this. Saying that Vole wasn't right in the head was an understatement. Vole, for all of his ability to walk upright like a human being, was three-quarters wild animal.

The other quarter would have to be a demon of some kind.

Old Ike shot Vole with rock salt twelve years ago because Vole had cut open a live dog and tied its intestines to a tree--and then chased the dog through the woods, making it disembowel itself as it zagged around trees and brush.

It was only rock salt because it was Ike's wife's dog. If it had been Bruiser, Vole would have gotten a twelve-gauge slug for sure.

Lindsey, at thirteen, had been glad that Vole hadn't tortured Bruiser. A year later, she had changed her mind.

Vole hadn't been seen for eleven years. Anyone with any sense had hoped that he had wandered off for good, maybe doing time in jail, somewhere very far away. Anyone with any sense and any love for living creatures had hoped that Vole had been shot or hit by a car and been eaten by wild things, vultures, badgers, dogs, and crows.

In Lindsey's imagination, Vole was still alive and screaming while he was being eaten. This was one of her milder fantasies. Usually her fantasies involved badgers, well known for their tunneling abilities.

Mr. Holloway had been the one to say he thought he saw old Vole coming out of the woods on 81. Holloway played poker with Ike. Probably Holloway had not been joking.

Oh God oh God oh God, thought Lindsey, poised midway between prayer and blasphemy. Please let Vole be dead. Please let that not have been Vole that Holloway saw.

But Lindsey knew Vole was back. The sky said it. The wind said it. The smell of the air said it. The trickle of sweat down the back of her neck said it.

The wind was warm, but it wasn't the warmth that plastered Lindsey's shirt to her back. She shivered mightily.

Please, God, don't let me fall into Vole's hands. Again.

Lindsey began to jog, and then to run. Sweat, with the stink of fear, climbed down her neck, crept over her back, dripped down between her breasts. Her jeans clung to her thighs. Her sleeves stuck to her arms. She pulled her sweater around her tightly. The wind stung like being pelted with icicles.

Just a mile and a half to go.

Lightning flashed. Lindsey would have screamed, except the wind did it for her, turning the humming of the roadside power line into a high-pitched keen.

From under the eaves of the dancing pines, a pair of eyes watched Lindsey's progress. Perhaps a gust of wind brought her scent to her observer. But after she had passed, maybe half a minute, a dark form emerged from the edge of the woods and began to lope after her, staying halfway between the edge of the road and the woods, in the middle of the gently sloping verge.

Lindsey just happened to be looking backwards over her shoulder when the next stroke of lightning lit the sky, the road, the ground, the pursuer.

Lindsey didn't bother to scream this time. She just turned and ran. Among the moaning wires and the swarming leaves, she might have heard a barking laugh.

They were both on the road now, running full tilt.

Still a little bit more than a mile to go.

Lindsey felt the sweat running down her legs. Her socks were drenched and squelched in her sneakers.

She was no longer even the slightest bit cold, thanks to the exertion. She shrugged her way out of her white cardigan sweater as well as she could without slowing down.

Lighting hit a tree in a field off to her left. Lindsey let out a yelp and somehow managed to find a way to run faster as the rib-rattling thunder washed over her.

And then the glow of headlights appeared over the next rise ahead of her. They were still a way off, but headed this way. Lindsey struggled to get enough air in her system to keep her legs moving.

Her pursuer had done little to decrease the distance to Lindsey. He's pacing me, waiting for me to get tired so I'll put up less of a fight when he catches me up, Lindsey thought. Old wolf's trick. Tonight I am a deer. I can run forever.

Or at least to grandma's house.

Oh God! What if I won't be safe there? What if I'm leading him to Carlysle and Mom?

If he touches Carlysle I swear to God I'll kill him.

Mom has a gun.

The car crested the top of the distant hill. Lindsey ran toward it. Kept running.

It took no time at all for the car approach. Lindsey waved her arms. The car swerved around her, honking, and zoomed on by.

Lindsey wailed. She spun involuntarily to watch it pass.

The car's headlights lit the road all the way back to the curve before the store. There was no sign of her pursuer.

Her throat and lungs were on fire. It was all Lindsey could do to keep from dropping to the ground. The wind in the trees mocked her, laughing and whinnying. Tears and snot streamed down her face, and the wind turned chill again.

Lightning once again lit the scene. In its stroboscopic glow, she saw her pursuer rise from the trench beside the road, not a hundred yards behind her. And then she was blind, unable to see anything but afterimages.

Her feet found the relative smoothness of the road and she began to run again, gasping and choking on tears and mucus.

Was that just thunder rumbling, or could she hear the sound of his feet hitting pavement as he continued the chase?

Lindsey felt a moment of absolute panic while she tried to work out if she were even running in the correct direction. As her vision recovered and she began to make out the painted lines on the roadway, she became more confident and poured on the speed.

The turnoff for her house's driveway was less than an eighth of a mile away, bracketed by a mailbox and a huge plastic garbage bin. The house, safety, her mother's gun, were another half a mile beyond--and half a mile of muddy, poorly graded gravel, at that.

Help me, she thought. Won't somebody please help me? But she didn't waste any breath.

Lightning cracked a tree somewhere behind her as she ran and then the bottom of the sky fell out. The noise of the rain drowned out even the thunder.

As her sweater began soaking up water, Lindsey flung it carelessly behind her and redoubled her speed, rounding the turn onto the gravel path. She skidded a little on a patch of slick red clay, but recovered easily. And, thank God, the driveway was mostly downhill.

Lindsey bounded down the familiar trail like a gazelle, like a rabbit. On difficult turns she grabbed passing pine trunks and fence posts like she had done as a child, racing her brother home from the school bus. She heaved herself over a fallen tree that had been there for fifteen of her twenty-five years, cutting off a loop of the twisting driveway. She could remember when the driveway had been rerouted to go around the old poplar until it could be cut up, but the cutting never happened.

She could see the lights of the house ahead. The porch light was on, as were most of the lights upstairs.

Through her rain- and tear-blurred eyes, Lindsey could make out at least one figure on the porch. Carlysle? Mom? Mom! Get the gun! But she had no breath to spare. Each gasp filled her lungs with fire and sand. She choked and kept running, now beginning to stumble. Cursing herself, she slowed to a jog, hoping against hope that she had managed to put some distance between herself and her pursuit on the driveway.

After a few rasping breaths, she sped up again to vault a puddle.

It was Elaine on the porch. She had a jacket pulled up over her head and was coming down the steps, heading for the car. Just as her mother opened the door of the car, Lindsey skidded into the yard and into the yellow glow of the porch light.

"Inside, Mom! Get in the house!" Lindsey shrieked.

Elaine stood there, puzzled and dumbfounded.

Lindsey grabbed her arm in passing and towed her away from the car and up the steps.

Inside the house, Lindsey spun the deadbolt and dashed for the back door to repeat the procedure.

"My God, Lin! What's wrong?" Elaine rubbed gently at the bruise on her forearm from having been towed.

Lindsey bent over at the waist, gasping for breath and dripping bucketfuls of rainwater. She said something, a single word, but it was unintelligible.

Elaine went to her daughter and caught her hand between her own. "What is it, honey? What's wrong?"

"Vole," gasped Lindsey. "Vole's back. Chased me. Here. From the store."

"Oh."

* * * * *

Lindsey's pursuer climbed into the culvert that connected the drainage ditches on either side of her driveway, pulling the sweater in after him. He lay on his back, twisting the sweater over his head, sucking the rainwater out of it. Once it was mostly wrung out, he draped it over his head and stroked it, breathing in her scent and the scent of her sweat.

He burbled breathlessly and happily into the muffling sweater, enjoying the ache in his cramping legs. If he said anything intelligible, it was between him and the bullfrogs and the storm.

And he sniggered, wriggling more comfortably into the muck lining the bottom of the culvert.

Later he woke and ate one of the frogs.

Chapter 2

It feels like God his own sunny self is calling you on the carpet.

Carlysle had smelled the tension in the air when got up that morning at a quarter to six. Grandma had still been in bed, but Mom was up, as usual.

She had sat with him on the edge of his bed, stroking his head to wake him up. She usually called him from the doorway--and did it again five minutes later, rapping on his doorframe.

The last time she had woken him up by sitting on his bed was back on the third day of second grade, when she told him that Grandpa had died. He was in fourth grade now, having been held back to repeat third grade because of poor grades in math and science. Grandpa had died three years ago when he hit a deer with his truck.

They had buried Grandpa two days later. They burned the carcass of the deer in the cornfield where Carlysle was told that Grandpa used to keep horses, ages ago.

Kids in his class at school, especially Randy, joked that they should have eaten the deer, especially since Grandpa wouldn't be bringing home any more money from the mill. Carlysle retorted that maybe Randy should eat the busted up old truck. Or Carlysle's fist.

It was one of a couple of fights he had been sent to the Principal's Office for that week, but he never really got into trouble for them--or at least not nearly as much as he expected.

Carlysle felt a prickling on his forehead as the sweat beaded up. It had taken forever for Mom to tell him about Grandpa three years ago. He waited for the bad news. And waited.

But eventually Mom just got up, patted him on his clammy forehead, and said, "Time for breakfast, Carl."

Lindsey padded down the stairs in her blue gown and robe and Carlysle got up to follow her.

As he got to the bottom of the stairs he noticed that the front door was closed and bolted. Mom usually opened it a crack to let a breeze freshen the house if it wasn't too cold outside. All of the air downstairs was still and clingy and syrupy.

Carlysle took a seat at the tiny table in the corner of the kitchen. Even the kitchen window was shoved closed that last half inch--and latched closed. That window usually didn't close until the middle of December.

Lindsey set a bowl of oatmeal in front of Carlyse with a glass of cloudy apple juice.

He ate in silence. As he ate, he heard a television snap on upstairs, signifying that Grandma was up.

The kitchen continued to be stifling. A trickle of sweat walked down Carlysle's nose and stopped at the end. He brushed it off between spoonfuls.

He finished without a word from Lindsey. Elaine came downstairs as Carlysle went upstairs to wash up and brush his teeth. She tousled his hair as he squoze past.

Finally, thought Carlysle. Something normal.

While he finished up getting ready, pulling on jeans and tucking in his shirt, he heard Grandma's car drive away. Normal. Time for her to head to the mill. He shoved his feet into his sneakers.

As he sat there, Cassidy said, "Something's fucked up. Mom's not acting right."

"What's going on, Cass? What's up with Mom?" Carlysle kicked his heels against the bed frame.

"What do you think?" Cassidy punched Carlysle gently on the upper arm.

"She's scared."

"Do you think it has something to do with the store?"

"I dunno. Work makes her pissed off sometimes. She stomps around and stuff. It's funny." Carlysle hopped down off the bed, dragging the quilt off with him. He turned around and threw it back on. "This isn't funny. She's scared."

Carlysle picked up his Army surplus bag with his books in it. "I think she thinks somebody's gonna die."

Cassidy nodded, standing up and stuffing his hands in his pockets. "That's what I think, too. That's what I think Mom thinks, I mean."

Carl nodded. "See you."

"Mom's gonna want to walk you up to the bus stop today."

Carlysle made a face.

"Let her."

Carl nodded again. And clomped down the stairs, letting his bag ride down on the banister.

Mom was wearing one of Grandpa's old flannel shirts and a pair of jeans. She had on her tennis shoes, too. They looked wet and muddy.

Carlysle faked a smile. "Wanna race me to the bus stop this morning?"

Lindsey shifted from foot to foot sorely, squelching quietly with a frown. "It's a bit wet out yet for running. It rained really hard last night. You all ready?"

Carl bobbed his head. Working up his nerve, he asked, "So what's going on?"

A trickle of sweat trailed down the back of his shirt, and his heart sped up a little. The handle of his book bag felt cold and gummy with old palm grease. He worked to swallow, but tried to keep his face calm.

Lindsey made a wry smile. "Old Ike said he saw some strange man lurking around the woods up by the highway yesterday. Whoever it is, I'm gonna make sure they stay the hell away from us."

Carl kept a neutral face and stayed very still. Standing still was a giveaway, though. Carlysle's usual form of ceaseless fidgeting was aerobic.

"I'm sorry your friends on the bus are gonna see me babysitting you up at the road."

Carl shook his head and opened the door. Lindsey followed him outside and locked the door behind them with the key--another odd thing.

Carlysle asked thoughtlessly, "What are you gonna do if you see him?"

"I dunno. But I've been itching to try out your Grandma's new .357."

Carl boggled. Maybe someone was gonna die after all.

"Let's go, Carl."

Carlysle picked up his spider stick and they walked out into the twilit front yard. As they hit the driveway, Carlysle took the lead and waved the stick up and down in front of them as they walked, ostensibly to knock down the huge-ass orb weaver webs that sprung up across the driveway overnight, although Grandma's car had already been through and it was getting to the end of spider weather anyway.

To be honest, Carlysle just felt better with a big stick in his hand. Lindsey knew it. To burn off nervous energy, he jumped and lunged about, practicing the peculiar fencing techniques that come naturally to ten-year-old boys everywhere. He wore the small Army duffel like a backpack, one shoulder thrust through each handle. Textbooks and notebooks bounced against the small of his back as he hopped and spun.

They reached the highway without incident. Carlysle planted his spider stick vertically in the soft ground near the mailbox.

Lindsey spoke. "You tell me if anyone talks about some strange man hanging around highway 81. And if anyone asks you about some strange man, you tell them to call me at the store."

"Yes, ma'am."

Carlysle watched his big toe wriggling through the hole in his canvas sneakers as they waited.

Beneath them in the culvert, a man gnawed a dead bullfrog.

Chapter 3

Like your innards turn into watery lead.

The sun showed its face for maybe half an hour before it disappeared like a dissolving butterscotch candy into the clouds above. The wind stalled out, stacking up a chilled heat, like sultry jelly. Too cool to be comfortable, too warm for the amount of water in the air. Tornado weather, yet nailed into place by God's pickaxe. Solid enough for a slow and careful person to walk on, if he were holy enough.

This man tried to sleep, because he always slept at hot time. His last meal bumbled restlessly through his innards. After the sun melted, he crawled deeper into the woods, undid the straps of his overalls, and expelled a stinking stream that he had the urge to run from even as he made it.

This man wiped himself off with a handful of earth and moss, and wiped his hands on the moss. He dug in the leaf-mold for a full ten minutes to rid his hands of the evil smell. Eventually he pulled his overalls back up and burrowed under a damp pile of leaves.

This man shivered uncontrollably, suddenly, bordering on seizure. A partridge left the vicinity at speed, drumming its disturbance into the air with vigor.

The leaf-pile stopped spasming. This man, under the pile, stank in relative silence, sweat pouring off him like a horde of hellbound slugs in high gear.

His teeth chattered.

After an hour or so the fit had passed, and this man elbow-crawled, dragging his paralyzed legs behind him, the fifty yards or so to the creek. As he put his face in the water, his legs started tingling. He drank noisily, like a horse, and drank as much as a horse would drink after a four-hour trot in summer heat. At some point while he was drinking, this man had pissed himself. He seemed not to care.

By the time he was done drinking, he could pull his legs under himself and stand with the help of a nearby scrub pine. The shivering started again, though, and he sat down on the creek bank abruptly, hugging himself with his bare arms.

The sun shone briefly on the nearby field. This man squeezed his eyes closed and chattered his teeth, wishing that he and the sun were on better terms.

The treetops above him waved and circled but made no sound. The air around him was dead and lifeless. He couldn't smell his own urine, even--the air refused to budge enough to carry the scent from his lap to his nose. This man could not make himself move, held in place by the petrified air.

This man cried, silently, frozen.

Suddenly the pines now screamed with their dancing. This man kept crying now that he was rich with tears. And he knew.

He tried not to know, but that didn't work. He knew.

Tonight he would have the choice again. The bastard lightning would drive him out and make him run. Tonight he would have to run.

And if he didn't hunt, he would be hunted.

This man rocked, defying the stillness of the air. The trees, no longer content to wave and dance, seemed to leap up and down with the wind. Twenty yards away, two branches crashed to the ground. The Hunter was laughing at him.

This man's penis stiffened in a single agonizing pulse, like a foot filling a sock. Then it relaxed, going limp nearly as quickly.

Another pine branch crashed to the ground, farther away this time. This man hunched over, bare shoulders touching his knees.

This man tried to shout, to scream, to wail, but the wind wouldn't let him. When he opened his mouth, the wind sucked the air out of his lungs so swiftly they nearly turned inside out. He dragged in another tortured breath--and the wind sucked it out of his mouth again with a mild "whop."

This man fell backwards onto the bank of the creek, kicking his legs in a tantrum. He could breathe normally as long as he tried to make no sound. The wind, no longer still, whisked up his pant legs and under his bib to gel the sweat in the hair on his chest, on his groin, on his legs, under his ass.

He could feel the Hunter under the earth, walking under the low hills, waiting for the dark time. This man felt him pacing around, kicking his dogs to keep them alert.

This man had to choose.

There was no choice about running. Chase or be chased. This man had to choose.

This man chose to cry, but it would count for nothing. In the dark time, this man would run.

Hunt or be hunted.

* * * * *

In Grandpa's closet, Cassidy tried to sweat but couldn't, regardless of the heat coming through the floor from the kitchen. He put his weight on the knot in the leather strap hanging from the oaken bar, and it held.

Wryly, he put his head through the loop in the old belt and allowed it to tighten around his neck. He picked up his feet and held his legs off the floor, holding his ankles behind him in his hands. Beside him, to his right, old shirts rustled on their hangers.

He swung himself gently, listening to the clothes bar creaking gently. The comforting noise was drowned out by the shifting of the house in the wind. In the distance he heard a semi tractor downshift on the highway.

Cassidy thought about his earlier conversation with Carlysle. He hoped Carl would be okay at school today. Maybe he should go visit him at lunchtime, since he obviously had nothing better to do than hang around the house.

He listened to the sighing of the house's timbers in the wind, to the sounds of Lindsey puttering in the kitchen. Killing time until time to walk to work. He listened to the sounds of distant traffic and the wind kicking the trees to life. The wind would be high again tonight. Maybe another storm. Maybe a tornado, even.

Cassidy started himself swinging again, listening to the wood and the leather around his neck creaking, letting it soothe him. He nudged himself off the back wall with his bare toes, off the closed closet door with his knees.

For novelty's sake, maneuvering with his knees against the walls and door, he wound himself up counterclockwise and allowed himself to spin, still holding his ankles in his hands.

Downstairs Lindsey washed the oatmeal pot clankily in the sink. A television spouted a midday news program, unwatched.

Cassidy swayed aimlessly and wished he could make himself sweat. It was so hot in the closet.

He nudged the door open with his knee. He looked at the stripped four-poster bed, the sheet covered mirror, the sun-faded dresser, the wooden floor, the dusty gray walls.

The window was open a crack at the top and at the bottom, both moving panels having been slid a half-inch towards the middle, fixed in place by dust in the tracks. The curtain billowed out into the room like a person was coming out from behind it.

Cassidy dangled absently, mesmerized by the curtain.

The afterimage of the dark curtain and the lighter background of the window behind it left the image of an apparition on his retinas. He watched it move around the room, fading, as he twisted slowly, locking his eyelids open.

The room faded to gray as he stopped his twisting with a knee and stared fixedly, unblinkingly, at the frame of the window. The only thing that was not gray was the darkening portion of the curtain that moved and the bright area behind it, whirling together in a slow waltz.

Cassidy listened for music, but did not hear any. The birds outside were quiet, too.

Water stopped running in the sink downstairs.

Working his stomach muscles, Cassidy made himself bounce gently in his noose. He closed his eyes tightly, watching the wavering, waltzing apparition fade slowly behind his eyelids. He opened his eyes, face buried in a flannel shirt he had knocked off its hanger.

Arms finally starting to tire, he released his ankles and let his feet gently touch the floor. Standing, he took his head out of the leather loop and worked the knot loose. He left the shirt on the floor.

Cassidy wished he could sweat. It was so hot in the stuffy closet, even with the door open.

Half an hour to kill before lunchtime.

Chapter 4

No matter what you do, you can't get enough air.

Carlysle didn't get nearly as much shit from his fellow bus-riders as he expected. Most of the kids were barely awake, and some of them not even barely. Of the ten or so that were awake, none of them spoke to him as he got on.

In transit, he counted four deer standing on the sloping embankment of the highway. Juveniles, milling around and smoking surreptitiously, daring each other in deer-speak to see which would try to get as close as possible to the bus without touching it. None of them tried it this morning.

Maybe tomorrow.

A little less than an hour later, thirty-eight half-height zombies in jeans and sneakers oozed cytokinetically among the remaining thirty middle schoolers and high schoolers to stumble off the bus at Delwin Elementary.

Carlysle noticed little plastic deer-whistles glued to the outside of the bus and guessed that they didn't work worth a Ronco damn.

Test today. Math.

Carlysle's heart suddenly hammered in his chest. He swayed and took a half-step to the side to steady himself. He continued forward, marching up the steps to the sidewalk to the main walkway to the external entry to the cafeteria where he would have to sit until closer to time for homeroom.

Off to his right, kids who were apparently not so nervous about math tests played basketball on an outdoor court.

Carlysle felt the sudden need to vomit. Sweat stung his forehead and slicked his palms. He fought it down and kept walking, quadrupling his effort to make his legs keep moving.

Grandma had brought Paul home yesterday after work. They watched television on the couch and drank beer. Which meant that he hadn't been able to get Grandma's help studying for the test. He knew better than to ask for Paul's help.

That had only happened once. To the best of Carlysle's shady definition of the term, Paul was a fuckwad.

Paul was tallish, blobular, balding, and testosterone-filled. When Grandma told him that Carlysle could use a little help with math and science--that he had been held back because of math and science--Paul had said, "A dumb shit, eh? Well, we got plentya those around here. You'll fit in just fine. Why ya wanna be a nerd anyway? Ya wanna be a nerd? Find somebody else to help ya."

Then Paul herded him out the front door and locked the bolt behind him.

Carlysle cajoled and pleaded to be let back in for half an hour. Grandma had been upstairs showering and changing out of her work clothes.

It took the help of scrounging two cinder blocks to stand on, but Carlysle had pulled the rag out of the filler tube and managed to piss in Paul's gas tank by way of revenge. Apparently Paul's old orange International pickup ran on piss, because he never heard of any problems coming from it.

His first idea was to light the rag coming out of the filler tube, but Carlysle couldn't find a lighter or matches. And Paul's cigarette lighter in his truck wouldn't work without the key turned. Or maybe it just didn't work.

Carlysle didn't do any of his homework that night--for any of his classes--and just took the lump of the poor grades. A nice fat zero to skew his already tenuous C- in Fourth Grade Math a tad lower.

Test today. Math.

Carlysle took a seat at a table in the cafeteria and took out his math book. He stared at the ratty front cover--a do-it-yourself dust jacket made with brown paper from a grocery bag and inscribed with various starter obscenities, the word "MATH" in wide black marker being one of them as far as Carlysle was concerned.

His green flannel shirt stuck to his back through his t-shirt.

He pulled a notebook from his book bag and turned to a fresh page. Locating the chapter under current academic scrutiny, he found the section of sample questions at the back and inscribed the first one in his notebook with a pencil shaken out of the notebook's wire spiral binding.

As he stared at the first question, Carlysle fought the urge to hop up and run to the garbage can to puke.

He fought the urge to vomit on the sample questions in his textbook.

He fought the urge to fling his pencil across the cafeteria, even with the attendant bonus that it might bounce off the far wall and catch Randy in the eye.

He didn't fight the urge to picture Paul, beer can in hand, sitting on the living room sofa watching his family's television, with a humongous axe through his shattered skull.

Carlysle had never been able to pick up the twenty-four-pound axe in the tool shed more than the few inches necessary to shift it out of the way that one time it was blocking the rake--and Lindsey would have panicked if she had known that he had even tried, imagining crushed or missing toes like any good mother--but he silently vowed to start working out to the point where he would one day be able to swing it effortlessly.

Something like that could come in handy one day. The sooner the better.

Refocusing, Carlysle painstakingly set up the long division problem, carefully counting decimal places and checking the rules stated earlier in the chapter to make sure he moved the decimal point in the correct direction and had put the divisor and dividend in the right places--dividend under the half-box and divisor to the right. He took a moment to draw the portion of the sixes, sevens, and eights multiplication tables, the places where he always had trouble.

The pencil slipped in his grasp a little from the sweat on his fingers. He pressed the pencil harder against his writing callus on his middle finger, denting it heavily.

The point, all of it's own, plus a tiny quantity of lead, slid out of the end of the pencil and rolled a short distance on the notebook.

Tears welled up in Carlysle's eyes and he laid his forehead down on his textbook.

The pencil sharpener on the wall near the tray return turned out to be clogged with one of yesterday's carrot sticks. Any further work would have to wait until he could get into his homeroom classroom and use the pencil sharpener there.

Thirty minutes to kill until then. After homeroom, Social Studies, then Math in second period. Then recess. Definitely the wrong order there.

Maybe Cassidy will show up for lunch break today.

* * * * *

Carlysle would never find out, but he scored a B- on the test. One multiplication error, one set of shifted columns for the subtraction portion of the long division. He got all the decimal places right.

* * * * *

Lindsey sat on the edge of the sofa. The television was on for the picture, mostly, although it was possible to hear, had she really cared to do so, the strident voices from a sound-stage courtroom bickering about who was whose daddy and who ran up whose credit cards.

Her own experience with a courtroom many years earlier told her that no real judge, not even for ratings and television pay, would let people raise their voices in front of the bench. If Judge Renfroe presided over these stupid court TV shows, plaintiff and defendent alike would spend weeks in jail and all of their small claims case winnings--and then some--on contempt charges.

And so she ignored it. She listened instead to the creaking of the house timbers upstairs and wondered what sweater or jacket she should wear this evening in place of the white sweater she had lost last night.

She also wondered if she should find Elaine's gun and carry it to work this afternoon.

There had been no phone calls from Jilly this morning. That meant that neither Morgan nor Jilly had had any trouble with the way she closed up last night or with how well (or poorly) she had cleaned up after the Pabst geysers. Lindsey had made points with Jilly, probably, for not leaving a nasty note about her beer pyramid falling. In return, Jilly made points with Lindsey for not calling to bitch about the dented cans in the display. Morgan, even, had obviously managed not to be too stumped by the empty battery blister card--or had held off on calling and had asked Jilly how to handle it instead when she came in at ten.

Or perhaps the phones were still dead at the store, paralyzing credit card business and saving any potential nastiness for when Lindsey got there at two.

Lindsey considered calling the store to make sure everything was okay, but didn't want to run the risk of the topic of the beer pyramid coming up. She felt her neck getting hot at the thought.

Maybe the store had blown away in the middle of the night and she wouldn't have to walk to work this afternoon--or walk home tonight.

Or maybe I'll set Mom's alarm clock so she'll get up at ten o'clock and come get me in the car. In case the phones go out again. Or haven't been fixed yet.

Or maybe I'll just carry the fuckin' gun and shoot ol' Vole's dick clean off. Maybe I ought to walk both ways just so's I'll get the chance.

Lindsey took a sip of her iced tea--and a deep breath. I ought to buy a box of rounds and practice first, though. That revolver cain't be worth much if Paul gave it to her. Ought to make sure it ain't gonna blow up in my hands, too.

Aloud, to the television, she said, "Scattergun would be better though, and I won't use no rock salt. 'Sides, nobody would think twice about me carryin' a shotgun back and forth to work at night. Not out here. Except for it being illegal to have it in the store with the alcohol."

An Audi commercial came on--which was plenty of wishful thinking on the part of the Audi dealership, wherever the hell it was.

"Shoot the fuckin' Pabst display, too. That would be fun."

Outside the windows in the living room and dining room, she could see the wind yanking the trees around more vigorously than usual, yet the creaking noises from upstairs had stopped.

She went upstairs and chose the flannel shirt off the floor in Dad's closet, blown off the hanger by the breeze in the room. She firmly closed the closet door, wondering how the shifting of the house kept popping it open when it seemed to latch so firmly.

Before wrapping the flannel around her waist, she used it unconsciously to wipe the sweat off of the back of her neck.

Chapter 5

Ants walk up and down your spine and down your ass-crack.

Elaine checked her hairnet to make sure her gray curls were tucked under firmly. She clicked the monitor off on her computer to momentarily use the black surface as a mirror. She got up as it sproinged back to life.

A light on the phone blinked. As she hit the button and picked up the handset, she reminded herself for the fourth time today that the third light down from the top wasn't hers any more--and hadn't been for nearly a year. The second button from the top was her pool.

She hung up the call.

Twice a week she accidentally picked up a call that wasn't hers. Once every two weeks she hung up on whoever was holding out of panic when she realized that she had done it again. Every time she did that, she tried to remind herself that the "park" button at the top of the column would put the call right back where she found it, with them none the wiser except maybe wondering about what happened to the hold music.

Eighteen years of habit. Not Alzheimer's. It was a mantra.

Elaine's face flushed and sweat trickled down inside her blouse from her pits. Both sides.

She smacked the sleek gray handset with the heel of her palm, knocking it off the desk. She smartly replaced it in its socket to the left of the buttons, a distant second in preference to smacking it repeatedly on the edge of the metal desk until it shattered. She wiped a tear off her cheek.

Hanging out with Paul is definitely dropping my I.Q.

Instead of heading down to the packing room to see if Paul wanted to join her for lunch, she sat down in her chair and swiveled to face the window. Yanking smoothly on the cords, she sent the blinds up and watched the stormy skies outside.

She worried about Lindsey walking to work, but not half as much as she worried about Lindsey walking back from work. Completely disregarding being chased two miles home by a madman, she had been drenched to the skin, shivering with exhaustion and exertion. Elaine had made her soak in a hot tub of Epsom salts for half an hour to unkink the muscles in her legs, and this morning Elaine was nearly moved to tears watching her daughter limp around the house with such soreness and stiffness.

She had made Lindsey take a cramps-time muscle relaxant with her morning coffee. It was a challenge to leave the house at all when her daughter was at home all alone, in pain and in need of comfort.

It now struck Elaine as odd that there had been no mention of calling the sheriff, either last night or this morning. And if it had been old Vole.... She thought of calling the sheriff, but she decided that she should talk it over with Lindsey first, or face another of those fights.

Elaine also thought about her new revolver.

The memories of her little girl, fourteen years old, limping into the house that night all scraped and bleeding, shoes gone, jeans ripped through the crotch and one knee, sleeves half torn off, brassiere missing. She and Robert had driven her little girl to Doctor Roan's place to have her patched up and to confirm the rape. Little Lindsey had bawled the entire time, hovering on the verge of shock.

Elaine's clenched fists shook down by her sides. Sweat slicked her ribs.

Sheriff Thomson had met them at Roan's house and questioned her as gently as possible. Lindsey described Vole in horrid detail--between shrieks and wails--and what he had done to her, showing tooth marks and cuts and her splinted ribs and left arm. Thomson sent the word out to the deputies and the authorities in surrounding counties and alerted everyone from the state troopers to the Governor's Office to pick Vole up and hold him for questioning. But Vole had vanished.

Elaine thought more about the gun.

She felt vaguely guilty that she wasn't convinced that Lindsey had seen Vole again after all these years. Yet she didn't doubt that Lindsey had seen somebody, had damned near killed herself running a mile and a half in nearly absolute darkness and blinding rain trying to get away. She had been genuinely spooked. But was the specter genuine?

How much did that really matter?

It would suck, though, for someone to shoot some poor college student hitchhiker, just because someone was flinging around old Vole rumors.

Elaine resolved to call Lindsey at work as soon as she drove home. She waffled on having Paul follow her home again. Paul is a big ole goon, Elaine pondered, but he makes me laugh. And he treats my stringy old boobs with respect. And a big ole goon might come in handy shortly.

* * * * *

Cassidy sneaked out of the house via his secret way and obtained Grandpa's boots from the shelf in the tool shed, checking them carefully for black widows and other wildlife. Last year, at the end of summer, he had to dislodge a bird's nest--under which a tiny black scorpion had been living.

Remembering last year's lesson, he skirted the shed around to the tree's side and walloped the bejeezus out of the boots against the trunk. He was frankly disappointed when nothing fell out of the cracked and creaky footwear but a half-rotted insole, which he tucked back inside. Without ceremony, he stuck his feet in the boots and tied the laces.

According to Lindsey, it was eleven miles to Derwin Elementary. It was only eleven miles by the roads, though. Cassidy made the trip by walking through the woods instead, clomping along the path in Grandpa's only slightly oversize brown work boots.

The path was a clayey red track that followed the pine-guarded creek bed. Except it wasn't a creek bed today. The water was fairly high after last night's rain and likely to get higher yet. Plenty of newly fallen leaves--golden oak, yellow poplar--graced the surface of the sluggish stream, although it was also think with a goodly quantity of last year's leaves.

The sun was hidden behind the boiling clouds. The air was thick with humidity and leaf smells--deer smells, too--and refused to budge. Cassidy pulled himself through it with the help of scrub pines and tree trunks.

As still as the air was down by the ground, it sure as hell made a ruckus in the treetops. In a nearby clearing it was raining pine needles like arrows from fairy bows. Cassidy winced, recalling the last time he had been elfshot like that on the crown of his head. It had stung for hours, and had just been the one needle.

Along the way he kept an eye out for deer sign. It was something to do to pass the time.

Cassidy was half in a trance when he discovered the man. The wild-haired filthy man in equally filthy overalls crouched several yards away, his body facing largely away from the creek. His head was turned mostly in Cassidy's direction, but not quite. The man's beardless face was turned up towards the waving treetops, a look of terror visible even at this distance in the darkened woods.

Cassidy stopped and stared, half-waving a hand tentatively. The man seemed frozen in place, holding onto a scrub pine with whitened knuckles. His neck was at an awkward angle--mouth gaping open, eyes squeezed shut tightly, like someone playing the "open your mouth and close your eyes and you will get a big surprise" game. He could make out beads of sweat, even, but they didn't move either.

Alternately, Cassidy got the impression of a venus fly-trap plant that Carlysle had brought home from school. Like the man was trying to catch something in his mouth by being absolutely still. But it didn't look like he expected to be happy with whatever he would catch.

The man showed no evidence that he noticed Cassidy's presence. Cassidy continued slowly along the path.

Was the man some sort of mime? Carlysle had mentioned being creeped out by a handful of strangely silent, weirdly posturing people in clown makeup--as if clowns weren't creepy enough.

Funny just happens. Anyone looking to force it on somebody else is just looking for a smacking.

This man wasn't wearing makeup, though. His face was smudged and red around his mouth and chin. And he didn't have any eyebrows, now that Cassidy was close enough to see.

The man didn't move at all. He didn't flinch when Cassidy broke a twig under his boots with a loud snap. He held onto his pine and kept his head kinked back and ignored the holy fuck out of Cassidy, like Cassidy wasn't really there.

Or like maybe he wasn't really there, which Cassidy was beginning to think might be closer to the truth.

Cassidy continued along the path, passing within maybe fifteen yards of the man's back at the closest point. As he progressed, he, for all the obvious reasons, kept looking back at the man over whichever shoulder was more convenient, given the twisty track.

The man never moved.

Eventually he was no longer in sight, given the thickness of the undergrowth and the cloudy sky. Cassidy heard thunder off in the distance. Back in the direction that the man had been looking.

Cassidy paid extra attention for the rest of his trip, looking out for mimes or other weird motionless people and listening for sudden pursuit along the trail behind him. When he finally came out of the woods behind the schoolyard, the sky looked grim indeed. He had heard thunder several more times along the way, but had seen no flashes through the trees.

Chapter 6

No man could sweat like Nixon did. No man needed to sweat like Nixon did.

Carlysle and Cassidy sat across from one another at the long row of long tables. Carlysle usually chose to sit all the way down at the end of his group, by way of not being interested enough in what the cafeteria had to offer to fight for a position near the head of the line. He brought his lunch with him, anyway. Lindsey usually made him a sandwich or packed him leftovers that wouldn't need heating.

He slid half his sandwich over to Cassidy, who smiled and picked it up.

"Weather outside is getting pretty bad," remarked Cassidy. "Too hot for normal rain. Hail, most likely, and tornado winds. And the roof still needs work."

Carlysle shifted, kicking at the bar between the front legs of his metal folding chair. "I told Momma I could do it if she could get the tar and roofing paper and shingles. Murray and I helped his dad do their place, and we pretty much ripped the whole thing off and started over. Grandma's just got a couple of shingles curling up on the front side where it gets all the sun."

Cassidy laughed quietly. "You wouldn't wanna do it right now. You'd blow away. You'd only have two storeys to sprout wings and learn how to fly."

"That's what I'm sayin'. Shoulda let me do it already. We all know Paul's afraid of heights. And work." Carlysle bounced a complicated rhythm off the legs of his chair.

Cassidy frowned sideways. "It's not Paul's house--and it's never gonna be Paul's house. Paul and Grandma are just using each other for raunchy sex."

Carlysle put down the last two bites of his half of the sandwich. "There went my appetite. Why do you have to say stuff like that? I already threw up breakfast halfway through the math test, with Miss Arnold watching from the door of the Boy's Room to make sure I wasn't sneaking notes outta my pockets."

Cassidy snorted and snickered.

"I ought to bounce this apple off your head. Block head."

Cassidy laughed like Kermit the Frog, mouth hanging open with a hissing "heh heh heh" coming out. "Hey, if you're not going to eat the apple, maybe I should give it to that weird man in the woods I saw on my way here."

The hair stood up on the back of Carlysle's head. His face scrunched up and he leaned forward onto the table. "What weird man?"

"On the way over here I saw a guy in the woods." Cassidy propped his chair back on two legs and looked up at the ceiling. "Looked like he had never taken a bath in his life. Wearing overalls. He was all crouched down, mouth hanging open, looking up at the sky. Except his eyes were closed. Oh, and he never moved a muscle, never said a word. Some kinda freak."

"I'm supposed to tell Mom if anyone mentions a strange man hanging around the highway. Some guy out there was what scared Momma last night. She mentioned maybe shooting him if she got the chance." Carlysle rubbed the end of his nose. "Now how do I tell her what you said? I can't tell her you told me. Where did you see him?"

"He wasn't too far off the creek path over here. Closer to the house than to the school, maybe halfway to the middle. And on the highway side. Shit. Do you think he was the guy?" Cassidy's forehead wrinkled up, trying to determine whether he'd had a close call.

"Mom was scared, and this man sounds scary. Between the house and the store on highway 81, 'cuz, like, why would she have gone out of her way last night on foot in a rainstorm? 'Tsgotta be the guy. Shit." Carlysle finished off his sandwich half.

"Maybe you can tell her that you overheard Randy telling some other kids about seeing him while he was cutting class?" Cassidy looked up the long table to where Randy was sitting.

Carlysle shook his head, wiping sweat off his forehead with a flannel sleeve. "That's damn near all the way back to the house. She'd think I was cutting and trying to pin it on Randy. Maybe I saw him from the bus window on the way to school? How far was he from the road, you think?"

Cassidy shrugged. "Never seen a map of the creek and the road together. Maybe two miles?"

Carlysle rapped a simple pattern on the table with his index fingers. "I think I can work with that.... Tell me what he looked like."

Cassidy leaned forward onto the table and folded his hands together. They both simultaneously looked up to where Carlysle's teacher was sitting to see if she was going to be getting up soon. When they saw that she was still chewing, Cassidy related, "He looked dark, but not exactly like a black man. He was maybe just dirty. Wild brown hair, looked kinda patchy on top. He didn't have no beard or mustache or eyebrows. His ears stuck out a little. He was wrinkled a bit, like someone about as old as Grandma, maybe, but no gray hair. Nasty looking overalls, no idea if they were blue-jean-colored under all the grime. They almost looked black, but it was dark under the trees."

Carlyle grimaced. "That's okay, it would still have been a little dark if I had seen him from the bus. Anything else?"

Cassidy shrugged. "I didn't get too close. I didn't poke him with a stick to see if he would move. Didn't seem polite."

Carlysle stuck the apple in a pocket just as an eerie wail edged into the realm of hearing. They both cocked their heads. "Cool!" Carlysle exclaimed. "Tornado siren!"

Somewhere in the cafeteria a child started crying. The teachers all got up nearly simultaneously and started walking the lengths of their sections of tables, calmly encouraging their charges to get up and stay together as they edged towards the walls to squat down and cover their heads. Many kids grabbed one more morsel off their trays and a few more started crying.

Cassidy queried, "What's your teacher gonna do when she counts an extra head?"

Carlysle shook his head. "Nothing. Nobody ever notices, nobody ever cares."

Cassidy, dejected, followed Carlysle to the far wall and took a seat next to him on the floor. He nudged Carlysle with his elbow. "Think this one will get your faggy gym teacher?"

Carlysle laughed. "I hope so. If we have to do that thing with the parachute one more time, I'm gonna stuff it up his ass."

Cassidy tipped over sideways. Between snorts he eked out, "Then he could have his own drag chute!"

Carlysle pulled Cassidy back upright. "That was funny, but it wasn't that funny."

* * * * *

The second walk uphill to the highway seemed twice as long as the first one, the muscle relaxant having worn off somewhat. Lindsey was happy not to have to try to hold it together in front of her son. Someone had hammered hot iron spikes into the tops of her thighs and the bottoms of her feet were bruised. The muscles over her ribs were sore, even, from breathing hard. Lindsey considered taking another pill, but she would have to go back to get another--or wait until she got to the store to buy another pack.

Lindsey's legs refused even to contemplate adding another mile to the afternoon's exertions, regardless of the promise of drugs. Onward it was.

The clouds in the sky danced. A peep of sunlight appeared near to directly overhead, accompanied by an impossible three second burst of fat droplets of rain and a smattering of tiny hailstones. Then the wind tried to yank her borrowed flannel away--and yank her off her feet as well.

Lindsey's legs were in instant agony from simply trying not to fall over. A car with Mississippi plates blew past, startling her. Lindsey realized that she had been unable to hear its approach because of the noise of the wind in the trees, now accompanied by creaking and cracking.

And the wind grew even louder, yanking at her arms and legs. Suddenly the air was very still and very hot, and then very swift and very loud. Improbably loud. The angry gale forced Lindsey to her knees, stumbling off the roadway into the mud and grass. Somewhere overhead, the impossible to mistake sound of a steam locomotive chugged past. Lindsey burst into a sudden, all over sweat.

She flung herself the rest of the way to the ground, looking up for the funnel-shaped cloud.

Considering the circumstances, Lindsey found it fairly easy to ignore the pelting shower of pebble-sized hail. The wind tried to strip her clothes off her body with nearly visible fingers. She rolled further away from the roadway, onto her back, looking for the funnel cloud.

She never saw it.

Seconds later, however, the incredible pressure let up, and all became quiet. It started to drizzle.

Lindsey got to her feet and brushed herself off. To no one but the wind, she said, calmly, "That's it. I'm getting a car. If I have to build it myself from parts at the junkyard."

* * * * *

Lindsey's airborne locomotive smacked into Delwin Elementary. In fact, it backed up and smacked into Delwin Elementary three or four times from different angles.

The Hand of God peeled back most of the roof of the cafeteria and flung it carelessly into the woods. Two walls of the cinder-block gymnasium were pushed down--one toward the inside, one toward the outside--and the roof slid down the outside of one of the remaining walls with a grinding squeal like Godzilla eating a busload of tourists. The tornado painstakingly removed the south-facing wall of both of the classroom wings, showering the front courtyard with powdered bricks and ground glass and bending both flagpoles into abstract corporate sculpture. Godzilla, bowling now, had scored a strike on the row of quonset hut classroom trailers--a "temporary" measure that had stood for five years while the school tried to get the funds to build a third wing. Two of them were standing on end. One of them looked like it had exploded at one end, like a jokester's cigar.

Fourteen students and a cafeteria worker were missing, perhaps buried in rubble or hiding in the woods or headed for the stratosphere or maybe Oz--along with English teacher Mr. Phillips' left leg. The rest of him had been fairly easy to locate--just difficult and tedious to gather. Samantha Josten, fourth grade, carried one of his kidneys home in her Pokémon lunchbox, certain that it wouldn't be missed.

The clearer-minded teachers herded all the children who were relatively uninjured to the playground and started sorting them by grade and homeroom class. Lists were made and compiled many times over. Discrepancies were shrilly debated.

There were countless cuts and scrapes, twenty-two broken limbs, six fractured skulls, and five known dead--three girls in a second-grade art class who were painting a paper mural in the gymnasium (one of them killed by a nasty papercut), sixth-grader Todd Franklin who failed to be able to support the weight of the cafeteria's roof-top HVAC unit, and the aforementioned Mr. Phillips.

Ambulances, fire departments, and paramedics arrived from all six neighboring counties. Two school buses were pressed into service for a hospital run for children and teachers with lesser injuries. Some lucky children got to see helicopters take off and land up close, while the less lucky got to see them from the inside.

Carlysle was counted among the missing. Cassidy, as predicted, wasn't counted at all.

The files with emergency notification telephone numbers were distributed over some thirty square miles. It was a problem.

* * * * *

Jilly waved a matronly hand at Lindsey when she came through the door. Art was at the counter, buying his cigarettes and gum. He turned and smiled a bit toothlessly at Lindsey as he accepted his change and shuffled past on his way out the door.

The door opened partially before he got there, just ahead of his reaching hand, and bonked him a good one on the jaw as he tried to step through. He bobbed sheepishly and opened the passenger's door to his station wagon, sliding across the bench seat into the driver's position. Art's driver's door hadn't opened for two years.

"Wow, Lin. You found time to go a coupla rounds at the rodeo before work today, huh?"

Lindsey spun her head around, but Jilly's expression was mild and concerned, not chiding. Lindsey answered, "Wind blew me down into a ditch along the highway. I was just gonna see if I could beat some of the mud and grass out of my clothes and hair in the restroom. Feels like tornado weather, don't it?"

"You got that right." Jilly pulled a notebook out from under the checkout counter and flipped a few pages over. "We didn't have power or phones this morning until eleven. Morgan found our old credit slips and imprint maker, made us about thirty dollars in credit sales we would have missed, bless his heart."

"We had an imprint maker?" Lindsey beat a few grass stalks off of her jeans, making sure she was standing on the mat so she could dump it outside when she was done.

"Morgan worked here eight years ago, before Jeff got sick. It was is a cardboard box on the top shelf in the storage room with a couple of old accounting books. We would never have known to look for it. Wouldn't have been able to get it down, neither. That Morgan's a long drink when he straightens out."

Jilly came around the counter and pulled a couple of straws from Lindsey's hair. "Did you get hurt in the Pabstalanche last night?"

"What? Oh. No, I just got do some mopping that needed doing anyway, wiped down a few automotive products. It was before the lights went out." Lindsey combed her hair with her fingers, looking for more debris. "Have to say I didn't have much of a sense of humor about it at the time. It was a slow night. You know how that makes me."

Jilly grinned. "Slow business ought to bother everybody. Morgan likes it slow."

Lindsey shook her head. "Morgan works fifteen hours straight on Saturdays. He can use some slow."

Jilly half climbed over the counter to get her purse.

"Oh, Jilly. You're gonna pop one of your boobs one of these days doing that. But before you go...."

"Yeah?"

"Have you seen some strange guy hanging around outside the store? Maybe a hitchhiker or some guy walking along 81?" Lindsey rubbed the tops of her thighs nervously, wiping sweat off her palms.

"Holloway mentioned he saw some guy, but I ain't seen anyone. Did you seen him?"

"Fucker chased me all the way home last night. Momma's picking me up tonight. You tell folks to watch out for him."

"Jesus, Lin! Are you all right?" Jilly put her purse down.

"I ran like an all-State track star last night and I'm sore as hell, but I got away. I'm okay."

"You sure?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Jilly picked up her purse again. "You get a clear spot tonight, you call Sheriff Dooley and you tell him. People got no call to be attacking people, scaring people around here. Make him drive around and have a look. You know he'll be happy to."

Lindsey pursed he lips. "You know he keeps hittin' on me."

"You can do worse than Dooley. Tell your momma he's only half black if that'll make her feel any better. I've seen you watch his ass when he walks outta here."

Lindsey narrowed her eyes and waved dismissingly at Jilly. "Shoo," she added.

There was no radio or television in the store, so it was business as usual for a few hours. The gas truck arrived on schedule to refill the underground tanks. The sounds of sirens in the distance never impinged on Lindsey's conscious thoughts, but she remained uneasy.

Chapter 7

Your body's all hot, but it feels like ice is sliding through your brain.

For the administration and staff of Derwin Elementary, the county authorities, the state school board, and the state Emergency Management Agency, the term "clusterfuck" took on a new practical definition.

One of the ambulance services called all of the local radio stations and got them to announce the tragedy to all listeners within their range in order to get the word out to parents the school no longer knew how to reach. Within an hour ambulances had trouble weaving a path through all the parked cars of parents shouting for their children, getting blocked in by more panicked parents behind them. Children were called out of their careful groupings before getting counted as found. Fistfights started between angry parents and teachers and sheriff's deputies trying to maintain order. Drivers were forced to move their cars at gunpoint so that lanes for ambulances and emergency vehicles would stay clear. A team of ten parents whose children had already been carted away were deputized to "re-park abandoned cars by any means necessary." Mostly they just picked them up and moved them, although an abandoned news van was merely tipped out of the way.

It took two hours for the news to reach the mill where Elaine worked where, due to various and sundry abuses in the past, the management had instituted a "no radios, no music" policy. Eventually a teacher at the school got hold of a parent's cell phone so that she could call her husband at the mill--and then he went door-to-door looking for coworkers who had children at the Elementary. Before he had made it too far, the management made an announcement to the building in general through the intercom system, giving carte blanche for employees to depart as necessary provided they checked in with their supervisors first.

Roughly ten second after the announcement had sunk in, everyone in the building who was standing near a phone picked up a handset. The company-wide phone system lit up--and blew--before a single call could be completed.

Elaine once more wept with the phone in her hand. She couldn't call Lindsey. Panicked, she went in search of Paul--who, to his credit, met her halfway. Elaine sent Paul to pick up Lindsey while she went to get underfoot at the school, looking for Carlysle. In fact, half the mill emptied so that every able-bodied person with the urge to do so could zip up to the school to aid, give comfort, get in the way, get threatened by angry parents and deputies with handguns, and eventually get organized into teams to clear rubble and look for the injured and missing.

* * * * *

It was just one of those days.

The tornado had hit right on schedule, totally demolishing Carlysle's school. He had found it frightening, sure--lots of kids had been screaming, almost completely drowned out by the roaring tendrils from the sky. He may or may not have been one of the kids screaming. His throat was raw, but he had been breathing a lot of dust. He didn't remember screaming.

Carlysle wondered absently how much of the dust in his throat and lungs was asbestos from the ancient ceilings.

He had jumped up involuntarily as soon as the cafeteria's roof came off. Disturbingly, he had gone halfway up the institutional wall when he jumped, sliding slowly back down to the floor. Cassidy's eyes had been as big as a car's headlights.

When the huge rooftop air-conditioning unit came back down, smashing into the floor of the stage at the far end of the room, he and Cassidy decided to beat feet. They edged quickly towards the opened fire exit door--just in time to see one of the double doors flying off into the rear parking lot. He and Cassidy hit the dirt and crawled along the exterior wall. As they cowered outside, they saw cars levitating and shifting around in the parking lot. Carlysle felt like they were ants watching a game of checkers played by ghosts.

Car alarms went off. Cars and trucks honked their horns and flashed their lights and squealed like terrified pigs on a frozen pond as they hovered and spun and slewed around and bumped into each other and tipped over onto their sides.

It was the coolest thing Carlysle had ever seen.

As soon as it was over, Cassidy bolted across the lot to the woods on the far side, hopping the low fence--more of a landscaping feature than a barrier. It had posts made of railroad ties and a single hefty chain connected them.

Half-deafened as he was by the wind, Carlysle heard the screaming inside rise to a curdling crescendo. Cassidy beckoned him over. Hesitantly, Carlysle crossed the parking lot at a crouch, one eye on the sky, one eye on the cafeteria's fire exit. Cassidy had the uneasy experience of comparing Carlysle's moving crouch--twisted head, mouth open, face upwards--to the strange man's in the woods.

As soon as Carlysle got to the fence, he said, "Dude! I'm gonna get in trouble!

Cassidy shook his head. "You get in trouble no matter what you do. This place is gonna be a nightmare. Bodies and broken glass and screaming kids all over the place. If you see somebody sucked inside out by a tornado, you're gonna need therapy."

Carlysle crossed his arms. "I will not. I helped Murray's dad gut a deer that one time. I know what people look like on the inside."

"It's different when the deer has a face you recognize--and they're still squirming and screaming. Let's go."

Carlysle shuddered. "It's too late. You've already creeped me out. I may as well see it now."

"Come on!" Cassidy grabbed Carlysle by the arm and dragged him over the fence-- and suddenly stood bolt upright, staring at the hand he had used to grab Carlysle.

"Dude! Your arm!"

Carlysle pushed his sleeve back and looked at his forearm. He wiped at the blood welling up from the gouge, a thin strand of loose skin dangling from the end of the scrape near his elbow. "Stop whining, you sissy-fag. It's a scrape. I'll need to wash it when we get home." He pulled his sleeve back down and pressed the cloth against his cut. He growled and looked brave, but Cassidy saw how pale he was.

They set off through the woods with Cassidy in the lead, holding branches for Carlysle to duck under as he kept pressure on his forearm.

* * * * *

This man heard the wrath in the sky. The storm nailed him in place, crouched, leg muscles bunched.

Sweat poured off of him. As bad as the anger today was, tonight would be even worse. The ground would open. Trees would turn sideways. Arrows would slam down from the sky.

If he would not hunt, he would die. The Hunter would chase this man and catch him like a rabbit in a box. The Hunter would gut this man and hang him in a tree to drain his blood. The Hunter would peel this man's skin and dry it in the sun. The Hunter would pull this man's flesh from his bones. The Hunter would make arrows from this man's bones to slay his kin. The Hunter and his hounds would chase this man's soul to Hell.

The Hunter was coming up the steps from underneath. The hounds already ran, bowling over trees and killing the small things in joy. The sky lit from above, beneath, above. The hounds howled and growled their loudest.

The hounds crashed through the woods, chasing one another and scattering trees in their wake.

This man cowered in a stump hole as trees fell around him. He watched the water erupt skywards from the creek. The ground opened and shook like a puddle when you slap it. The trees hooted and clapped their hands.

This man hooted and clapped too, to be polite. He screamed and hollered. And then cowered in his hole.

In the hole with him, he found a pair of discarded antlers. They were huge--fourteen points altogether. The Hunter had hidden them here for this man to find.

Thunder shook the sky, dislodging ice. Ice rained all around this man.

This man shook, too. Did the Hunter mean for this man to wear the antlers? And run?

This man dare not throw the antlers away.

This man howled his agony. Urine pooled where he sat. Were the antlers for this man to wear, running?

This man would not run. This man would hunt, instead. This man would use the antlers to hunt. This man would hunt.

This man screamed and bawled. Let there be something to hunt. This man would see what the hounds would flush for him to chase. If there was nothing to hunt, this man would die.

This man whacked his thighs with the antlers until he bled.

* * * * *

Carlysle and Cassidy soon lost the sounds of the crying and shouting to the sounds of the trees groaning and whistling. Leaves and needles rained down steadily. Several times, creaking trees leaning across the path diverted them. The half-fallen trees swayed dangerously from side to side.

The tornado had made its own path that paralleled the creek. Suddenly Carlysle pictured the house in ruins, his mother's broken body lying in the yard. He surged forward, ignoring the brambles pulling at his clothes.

"C'mon, Cass! The tornado went by the house! Mom might need help!"

"Holy shit!"

The fallen trees pushed them away from the creek, towards the highway. The faster they tried to go, the slower the going. Carlysle cried a steady stream in frustration and horror, but he did not give up. He wiped sweat and mucus away from his face with whichever sleeve was handy. His forearm glowed and stung like it was on fire.

As the hours progressed, the wind began to howl and hum the zinging song of power lines. The woods gave way and they stumbled up the steep embankment to the verge of the highway. A steady rain began to fall.

"We're almost there, Carl. That glow back there around the curve is the store."

Carlysle wiped the rain off his face. "You think we should go to the store? It's about as far from here as is it to the house?"

"Let's try for the house. You can call the store from there if Mom's not home. And Grandma will be home soon."

As they looked behind them on the road towards the store, they saw an apparition about forty yards away, illuminated briefly by distant lightning. They saw a man with huge curved claws--claws the length of their arms. The man saw them, too, and began loping towards them.

They turned in an eye-blink and ran like hell.

From behind them came a howl the likes of which no man has ever heard while awake. Maybe it was the power lines, or the man with the claws, or both in harmony. Or neither.

Carlysle and Cassidy ran along the very same stretch of highway down which Lindsey had run the night before.

To their credit, they made better time than she had--and Lindsey had not been slow. Carlysle felt the lightning in the sky and the wind at his back. He let the wind shove him along. Somehow Cassidy kept up, flapping along in oversize shoes, helped somewhat by longer legs.

The man with the claws did not stand a chance. In less than a quarter of a mile, he sat down by the roadway and rolled into the ditch, crying in heaving jags, punctuated by lightning.

Cassidy and Carlysle ran all the way home. They found it standing and intact.

Grandma's car was not home and the door was locked. They collapsed on the porch. Carlysle pulled a wristwatch out of his pocket and checked it, panting heavily. Unable to speak, he showed Cassidy the watch and shrugged at the yard where Grandma's car should be. He dragged himself to the door and hammered on it. No one answered.

Cassidy went in by his secret way and unlocked the bolt from the inside. Carlysle fought to catch his breath and went inside. Halfway across the room he zipped back to the door and locked the bolt again.

Cassidy went upstairs to start some water running in the bath. Carlysle picked up the phone and called the number for the store.

Nobody answered.

After fifteen rings, he called the number for Grandma's office. No answer there, either. And the voice-mail thingy didn't pick up on the third or fourth ring, either.

Carlysle whacked the handset for the phone (at a good deal less than full strength) fifteen times on the arm of the sofa.

He dialed 911. It was busy.

Carlysle gave up. He tossed the handset back onto the cradle and went upstairs to tend to his arm and take a bath.

Chapter 8

You have to sweat to unclog your pores.

Lindsey, having called Jilly, made a sign for the door. She set the alarm on the store, locked up, and got into Paul's orange pickup without saying a word. Every time Paul opened his mouth to say something, Lindsey looked at him, mouth half open, eyes like a rabbit staring down an oncoming sports car.

Paul was good at being quiet, really. He just felt like he ought to say something.

It didn't take Lindsey long to convince him otherwise.

By the time Lindsey and Paul got to the site, the nightmare had pretty much come and gone. Two funeral parlors from the county seat had donated pavillion tents for the evening's use--one for administration and emergency management officials and three for the remaining children and the teachers watching over them. Traffic was being stopped a good ways back from the entrance to the school yard, with troopers and deputies turning some people back and passing others through--telling them where they should park if they had any business going to the school.

After about a ten-minute hold-up, Paul's truck was waved through. Lindsey sobbed quietly, leaning against the passenger-side door.

They were directed to a place where they could pull off the road, where the shoulder wasn't too soggy. It was a walk--and it was raining steadily by now. They passed Elaine's station wagon along the way.

A voice from a tear-blurred blob under an umbrella called out. "Parent or volunteer?"

"Parent," Lindsey choked out.

"Yes, ma'am. Check in at the administration tent--white one at the left," the voice said softly.

Lindsey walked quickly to the large white tent. Apparently this was where they kept the sobbing adults instead of the sobbing children. Lindsey got in line, trying her best not to recognize anyone present. Paul hung back, out of the way, just inside the entrance.

Lindsey shuffled forward.

"Grade and name of child, ma'am?"

"Carlysle Leadbeater. He's in the fourth grade."

Lindsey shook visibly as the kind-looking black woman on the other side of the table checked one list, then another. Then she got out another stack of lists--handwritten on notebook paper, and skimmed through those. And then turned around to shuffle through one more stack of notes. She turned back to face Lindsey, already flinching.

"You're his mother?"

"... yes ..."

"We haven't pinned down where he is, yet," the woman behind the table said carefully. "If you can give his description to the fellow at the next table over, he can check him off against the unidentified children that have gone to the hospitals."

Lindsey staggered over to the next table. Behind her she heard a voice say, "Grade and name of your child, sir?"

A harried-looking man waved her over. "Tell me who you're looking for, ma'am," he said gently.

"Carlysle Leadbeater. He's ten-- eleven years old. Short brown hair, comes up to here --" she held her right hand just above the level of her breasts "-- cleft on his chin, always looks a little flushed. Jeans, undershirt, I think he was wearing a green flannel shirt this morning...," Lindsey trailed off.

The man looked his list over, flipping back and forth between pages. "We've only got two boys left on the hospital list who haven't been identified yet, both of them younger than your boy. But don't panic, yet. Wait-- was someone else here looking for your boy?"

Lindsey nodded. "My mother...."

"I sent her off to the childrens' tents to see if he got himself misfiled. Children don't like to stay put. But I have to say, we're missing a number of children that haven't showed up anywhere. Buncha people have been beating the woods to see if they can find 'em. Having good luck with that--found one little girl hiding under the old picnic benches where they do the field-day thing, three more camped out here and there."

Lindsey nodded and forced herself to take a breath. Rainwater and cold sweat dripped down her neck.

A strong voice called out, "Anybody here seen Lindsey Leadbeater?"

Lindsey's heart stopped again, but she managed to wave a hand.

A man in a state trooper's uniform approached, propped his ass on a corner of the table. He gave her a half-smile. "Good news, ma'am. Good news. Got radioed by the county dispatch desk." He nodded his plastic-wrapped Smokey the Bear hat towards the radio table. "Sez your boy is at your house, trying to find you. Couldn't find you at work, couldn't find his gramma, he's been calling nine-one-one for twenty minutes trying to get through. Sez he's okay, was worried you got blown away trying to walk to work or some such."

Lindsey wilted with relief.

"Should we call him back, tell him to stay put, tell him you're coming?"

Lindsey took a deep breath. Her voice cracked. "Can I talk to him?"

He shook his head. "We don't have too many phones, gotta keep the lines clear. I wuz gonna radio back to base and have somebody at the desk call your boy. Is that okay?"

Lindsey nodded. She gave the trooper her phone number.

Looking around the tent, she saw no sign of Paul. She swore under her breath and went to find the children's tents and hopefully her mother, to give her the news.

* * * * *

Carlysle, off the phone now, went back upstairs to fish the apple out of the pocket of his jeans. Padding back down the stairs in a pair of winter-weight corduroys that still needed hemming--halfway down the stairs he rolled up the cuffs because he had nearly slid down the top half of the stairs--he popped on the television and took a seat on the sofa next to the phone. Of the two broadcast stations they received clearly, both showed extended aerial shots of his elementary school.

He cranked the volume down and left it on the station with the worst pictures, the storm outside raising wind-ghosts that kept splitting off from the main picture and blowing off to the left-hand-side of the screen.

He ate the apple as he watched, taking small bites. When the picture shifted back to the usual late-afternoon programming--some sitcom rerun, maybe, with which Carlysle was unfamiliar--he watched the nearby hardwood trees dancing and waving against the oddly too bright stormy sky. Another window showed the same show, only performed by more distant pines.

The two windows, although on the same side of the house, appeared to Carlysle to be windows onto two different landscapes, two different worlds. Each one was fine to look at individually, perfectly normal even. But seeing both at the same time, with both sets of treetops in motion--yet completely out of synch with each other--made Carlysle feel that they were both television sets too, making it three televisions against the same wall, all equally unreal.

The telephone chirped briefly as lightning hit a distant telephone pole. Carlysle saw no flash, but several seconds later a grumpy roll of thunder rolled across the top of the house.

He prodded at the row of seven adhesive strip bandages lined up like pink soldiers along the top of his left forearm, checking for tenderness. Sighing grumpily, he plunked his apple down next to the telephone and stomped up the stairs.

Popping open the door to his bedroom again, he snatched up his damp flannel shirt with the blood-soaked sleeve from the floor next to his bed and carried it into the bathroom. He yanked up the lever for the stopper in the sink and began filling it from the cold water tap, holding the sleeve under the running water and wringing it. The water in the sink turned alarmingly red, so he let it out and kept rinsing. After a few minutes, he piled the whole shirt into the sink, pulled the stopper's lever again, and left the shirt soaking.

Back down the stairs, this time in a controlled slide.

On the sofa, next to his apple, Carlysle checked to see if he had gotten his bandages wet. He flicked a corner of the strip nearest his wrist, checking to see if the adhesive was still holding. Grimly satisfied, he picked up his apple.

He nibbled around where he had already eaten, trying to preserve the large brown patch intact. As the rest of the apple vanished, Carlysle nibbled the concave brown mesa smaller, refining the outline as whim dictated. On the television, a diagram appeared of the plan of Derwin Elementary. Frame by frame, animation tracked the path of God's fingertips, trailing through the woods and the brick-and-block contruction of the school.

In fact, there were five distinct tracks of destruction as Carlysle saw it. It looked like a child had dragged his fingers through a puddle of mud, drawing the fingers together as they tracked. Like a giant ghost had tried to pick up the school but found his fingers to be too insubstantial to do the job--or the school too frail and crumbly.

Carlysle shuddered.

Thunder rumbled outside. The storm bemoaned its inadequacies and promised to try to do better.

Lightning flashed and lit up the yard. Carlysle remembered the image of the loping man with the enormously clawed hands. He checked the afterglow images on his retinas to see if he was visible in the flash from either window. Was that the monster that had frightened his mother?

Carlysle suddenly felt very alone.

The aerial image of the ruined school kept having ghosts blown off of it, like a cartoon cat losing its proverbial extra lives. Carlysle thought of the ghosts of the teachers and students who had probably died, imagining them being ripped away from their bodies by the angry wind.

The air was very still in the room. Sweat trailed down Carlysle's naked chest. But he dared not open a window.

* * * * *

As it grew darker outside, rain obscured the trees through the windows. Headlights, rather than lightning, flashed across the front yard. Carlysle hopped up to unbolt the front door.

Grandma's car. With Paul's truck immediately behind. Fuck.

Carlysle briefly considered hiding in his room. Carlysle briefly considered hiding in the tool shed. Carlysle briefly considered hiding at Great Grandpa Chuck's farmhouse in Wisconsin.

Since the tornadoes had already passed, Carlysle considered that he had probably missed his ride to Fondue Lake--which is what he mentally named the town of Fond du Lac, the nearest "civilization" to Great Grandpa's spread up in Cheeseland. Cheese spread.

He watched his mother get out of the station wagon. Immediately he felt somewhat better about Paul's impending presence.

He opened the door for her as she climbed the steps to the porch. The damp wind immediately froze his perspiring chest.

Lindsey rushed in and scooped Carlysle up, hugging him to her chest. "Carl ... Carl ... Carl.... Why didn't you stay put?"

Carl sniffled into the damp flannel wrapping his mother's shoulders. "The building was coming down. It didn't seem to be a good idea to hang around.... And there was all the yelling and screaming. I had to go."

"Why didn't you go back when things settled down, honey? We didn't know where to find you."

"I wanted to make sure you and Grandma and the house was okay. I tried to call your work and Grandma's work as soon as I got here. Nobody answered anywhere, not even the police...."

They heard the engine of Paul's old International shut down--and the double slam of someone trying to close his driver's side door.

"Did you walk here? Did someone give you a ride?"

"Walked. Ran. Through the woods, along the highway." Carlysle stopped himself from mentioning Cassidy--or the man with the claws.

Lindsey brought the man up instead. "Didn't you hear me telling you about the strange man this morning? You shouldn't be walking out there alone!"

Cassidy nodded. "Don't yell at me, Momma," he whispered.

Paul, somewhat hoarse of voice, asked, "What strange man?" Elaine slipped around from behind him so that she could hug her daughter and grandson.

Lindsey stood up. "Some bastard chased me home from the store last night. Your cousin Holloway saw him a coupla days ago, hanging around on the highway up by the woods. I was gonna call Sheriff Dooley about him this afternoon."

Carlysle twitched when he heard that the man had chased Lindsey also. He flushed red all over his face, neck, and chest.

Lindsey looked down at her son, clinging to her waist. She said, to Carlysle, "Look at me." When he was staring up at Lindsey's face, she asked, "Did you see a strange man on your way home tonight?"

Carlysle's heart thudded in his chest. He hesitated long enough for that to be the answer without speaking. She repeated her question. "Did you see a strange man on your way home tonight?"

Carlysle nodded, unable to swallow. He shook.

"Tell me."

Carlysle sniffled mightily. "Man in overalls, I think. Crazy hair. Didn't see him up close. He chased me and-- we was up by the highway, I had just come out of the woods. He had--," Carlysle choked off, swallowing. "I ran. He was slow. Please don't yell at me."

Paul shook his head. "We don't exactly have to wait around for Sheriff Bart. I'm gonna go get my poncho and my rifle outta the truck and do some poking around out there. I'll be back in an hour or four."

Grandma spoke up. "Paul, that is ten kinds of stupid. It's raining outside and it's getting dark."

Paul stuck up a hand. "And there are still kids missing out there."

Nobody had anything to say to that.

After Paul had tromped off down the steps and out into the yard, Elaine said, "He had a poncho in his truck while we were all out at the school getting rained on."

Lindsey chimed in. "He had a rifle in his truck this whole time, and here we are needing to shoot somebody for his own good."

Carlysle giggled. He showed off his row of adhesive bandages.

* * * * *

The truth is Paul just felt like shooting somebody.

Paul reminded himself that he had only been trying to help. He felt alienated and unwelcome. He was angry that he had nothing serious to offer by way of helping, besides maybe carting moody women around in his truck. Getting cold and rained on and bramble-torn was a step up from what he could have expected by spending the evening at Elaine's.

And it was quite a bit better than another night drinking beer alone in front of the tube at his own house. Illegally descrambled satellite porn and a flatulent dog were poorer company than the rain and the wind. And the chance of shooting a possible madman.

Besides, it was getting close to hunting season.

Plenty of Russians, his dad had told him, stood around in the cold and wet for a chance to buy bread and toilet paper. Hunting was the same thing, Dad had claimed, only you got venison instead. And a hernia from dragging the damned thing out of the woods. And it was tougher to read a book while you waited.

Paul set off into the woods at the obvious place--the trail back into the woods behind the tool shed. He pulled the hood of the poncho up over his head so that the trees couldn't drop slimy wads of leaves and pine needles down his neck, but he kept the opening nice and wide to keep from impacting his hearing and peripheral vision more than necessary.

He kept the lightweight Winchester M70 30.06 pointed barrel-down on its sling, adjusting it carefully to keep the scope and the bolt from digging into his back as he walked the path. He concentrated on walking slowly and quietly, listening more than looking.

He heard constant drizzle. He heard distant thunder.

He didn't hear stony silence from people who had no use for him at the moment. He didn't hear hissing farts from a beagle/basset mix that was too fat to keep up hunting for deer and too loud and smelly for hunting turkeys or quail.

Ol' Heathcliff had damned near popped a valve for real chasing a raccoon last year. Paul had called off the hunt and carried him out of the woods.

Heathcliff had spent two days at the vets, and the doctor had berated Paul for an hour, using words like "lack of exercise" and "diet" and "cholesterol" and "blood pressure" and "salt intake"--the very things that had killed Paul's dad.

If you don't count booze, cigars, and living with Paul's mom.

Heathcliff smoked the occasional Marley Red, by proxy, and only drank the beer from knocked-over cans. Except on Saturday afternoons, when Paul poured a whole one into a special bowl for him.

Paul heard what sounded like a limb coming down, off in the direction of the school. He stopped and waited to hear what sounds would follow. Just drizzle. And a truck shifting gears back toward the interstate highway.

The wind began to pick up, drowning out any other noises with the white-noise rustling of branches and soppy leaves. Listening through a high wind is like trying to look through a fog.

A rumble of thunder shook down more water and dead leaves. The sky lit up, backlighting the waving treetops with a stuttering strobe.

The air at ground level was still though, smelling of ozone, mouldering leaves, and moss. The cheap watertight poncho trapped the heat of Paul's body. Sweat dripped out of his thinning hair and stuck his shirt to his back, but his feet were cold.

Somewhere around here, however, there had been some kind of animal quite recently. Paul couldn't pin down the scent. Somewhere between the goat-smelling reek of a rattlesnake and maybe a bobcat or a cougar.

Not necessarily an odd thing, since the creek was nearby. There was probably a shallow access to the running water nearby.

Paul thought for a moment. If there was someone living out here in the woods, even just for a day or two, water would be a necessity.

He tried to picture the path of the creek in his head. He hadn't been hunting here since he was sixteen, though, some ten years before Robert and Elaine had bought the place. His mother had left them eight years prior to that.

Two years after she left, his father admitted to meeting his mother on a trip to Las Vegas. He said she had been dancing on a table, opening beer bottles with her snatch for tips.

Paul's dad had a pretty strong imagination and a flair for the fantastic. Paul never really gave it the mental effort necessary to try to make the call as to whether it was true. Besides, his mom had said some pretty amazing--and unbelievable--things about his dad, too, before she took off back west. Stuff about blowing the dog when he was out of cigars and trying to rent her out to his friends as a party favor.

Okay, maybe he could believe the last one.

Paul's father had routinely lost a lot of money playing poker. Paul's mom had routinely spent the night at the houses of some of his father's friends.

Paul headed off the path a bit, moving slowly and deliberately away from the highway and toward the creek. Absently he counted the number of shells in the pocket of his jeans as he picked his way slowly between the trees.

It would be nice, Paul thought, to have a family that was worth having. It's a bit late to start one, though.

He thought about Elaine. He found it easy to tell that she was just interested in occasional companionship. She already had a family. Lindsey, who it seemed was making a career out of being bitter and angry, apparently had not realized how clear she had made it already that she did not like or trust men and didn't particularly want or need a replacement for her father. Carlysle, at eleven, was far too serious and worked too damned hard, trying to be the man of the house. He needed to play more often, get into more trouble while he was still young enough to learn from it. Needed friends his own age.

Paul leaned against a tree, facing away from the creek. He lit a cigarette.

I can do better, picking up another family somewhere. Probably don't deserve any better, though.

Besides, they're good people. Soured by hard luck, maybe, but who ain't?

Bet they'll hate my dog.

Paul smoked the rest of his cigarette with his eyes closed, listening, cupping the glow with his hand.

He let the smoke clear his mind. He crumbled the rest of the tobacco out of the end and pocketed the filter and remaining paper.

Steadying the rifle on his back, he ambled towards the creek in mental silence.

He walked slowly along the creek toward the school.

The wind whipped up. It was impossible to tell if it was still raining or if the wind was shaking water out of the trees. Another branched cracked, sounding at first like a rifle shot, but followed by the sound of the branch coming down.

Paul stopped, but moved to continue as soon as he figured it out.

Paul moved to continue. He tried again.

His pant leg was caught on a fallen stick or a stretch of old barbed wire or something. He looked down, prepared simply to kick through the obstruction and screw the damage to his work jeans.

A face looked up at him from the ground with one eye. His pant leg was caught in its teeth.

And then there was pain in his lower back and left buttock and the backside of his thigh. The impact knocked him forward, but his right ankle was still anchored in place. Paul staggered forward with his left leg, injured as it was, and caught himself. He tried to spin and yank his leg free from the man's teeth--and did so, but was off-balance.

Paul toddled forward, trying to catch himself on a tree. He spun around, pulling the rifle forward on the sling.

Something knocked the barrel away to Paul's right. The pain caught him in the gut this time. First his left side, then his right.

Paul's belly was on fire. His eyes couldn't focus.

He saw a man-like shape in front of him. As the rifle slipped out of his grasp, he felt two more raking impacts. This time shoulder, throat, and groin.

Bleeding profusely, Paul slid backwards, toppling into the tree he had caught himself on earlier. A miraculous bounce on the butt of the rifle swung it back into his hands.

Paul managed a half-assed attempt at a shot before he fell.

Chapter 9

Being sorry and working hard just isn't enough. Communion doesn't include Christ's sweat. Transubstantiation has nothing to do with Jesus's tears. Blood is the answer.

Elaine had decided not to wait supper on Paul, as he wasn't likely to be back until nearly Carlysle's bedtime. Lindsey had, after making sure Carlysle had his head on straight, borrowed Elaine's car to go back to work, figuring that people helping out at the school might need to make runs for various comforts and supplies.

On the phone, Jilly had said, "You don't charge them folks that are helping out nothin'. Just write down what you give 'em in the notebook."

Lindsey had been gone maybe an hour, and Paul had been gone maybe two hours when Elaine and Carlysle heard the shot. Carlysle jumped back in his chair at the table--but decided not to get up.

Elaine shook her head.

Carlysle put his fork down on his plate. "What do you think he was shooting at?"

"No telling. And I'm not going out there to find out--and neither are you."

Carlysle thought it was nice to be told in no uncertain terms that he couldn't go--because he would really rather not go looking for any more trouble tonight, especially without a few more people with him, and guns for everybody. He hoped that Cassidy had the sense not to go looking either.

"What should we do?"

"What we should have done last night. I'm calling Sheriff Dooley. When I'm done eating." Elaine stuck her fork in the nondescript, gravy-drizzled batter-fried meat patty and cut herself another bite. Halfway through chewing the bite, she slapped her fork down carelessly and shoved her chair back, dabbing at her lips with a paper napkin.

"Sometimes I am a bitter and angry old woman, Carl. Make sure you can recognize us a mile away before you start looking for a girlfriend."

"You did alright by Grandpa. He said so."

Elaine stopped dead on her way to the phone in the living room, but just for a moment. "Yeah, Carl. I guess. I miss him a lot." As she got to the phone, she picked it up, holding the down the handset switch, and said, "You know who else I miss? I miss Sheriff Thomson, not that Dooley is a bad man. It's a shame that ol' Thomson's still blew up in his basement, took his whole house with it. He made a mighty fine corn liquor, too, and was fairly generous."

Carlysle giggled.

Elaine called the sheriff's office. She explained what had happened to Lindsey and to Carlysle. She told them that Paul had seen how upset they were and had gone out with a gun to take a look--and that they had just heard a rifle-crack out in the direction he had gone.

She listened for a moment, nodding and waving the phone around nervously, trying to sling the phone's wall cord back behind the end table where it belonged. Then she said, "Thank you. Yeah, you, too. 'Bye."

Carlysle looked at her expectantly, chewing vigorously. Elaine slid back into her chair at the table.

"Dooley's out at the elementary school, of course. They've got old Franklin on the desk with a notepad and a radio. Franklin says he'll call Dooley and ask him to send somebody to look--says they should be headed this way through the woods anyway, looking for the last few younguns. When they get here, they might want to talk to you about the man who chased you. And they'll want to talk to your mother, too, naturally."

Carlysle nodded.

"If you're already in bed by then--and I can tell your butt is dragging already, you've been through a lot today--then I'll tell them to come back and talk to you tomorrow. It's not like you're going to school tomorrow."

Carlysle perked up.

"If you're wondering, you're not off the hook until they rebuild the school. You'll probably have to ride the bus even longer, maybe go to another school across county or next county over. We'll know by Monday."

Carlysle sagged.

"Drink your milk."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I hope he didn't shoot no kids, nor anybody looking for 'em.

* * * * *

Morgan was at the store when Lindsey got there. The store was open and Morgan was behind the counter.

He greeted Lindsey with a warm smile. "I take it your boy's okay, then."

Lindsey nodded. "Did Jilly send you up here?" she asked, pitching the borrowed flannel into the back room.

"Naw. I ain't poaching' your hours. I wuz drivin' past on the way to the school to see if I can help out an' I notice the store is closed. I figure you wuz gone up there already on account of your boy. I decided I would be more useful here rather than bein' one mo' old nigga wanderin' around in the woods after dark, bumpin' into trees. This close to huntin' season, I'm jus' liable to get myself shot."

Lindsey laughed. "You don't look nothin' like a deer. Your hair's too white. They'd spot you a mile away even with no moon."

Morgan rapped the counter between them with his knuckles. "That's what I'm sayin'."

They both laughed. "So how is your boy? Busted up much?"

"He got a scratch on his arm. Would you believe he thought it was a good idea to walk all the way home when the school got hit?" Lindsey hopped up on the counter, catching the counter pen before it hit the floor.

"If all Hell wuz breakin' loose where I wuz, I'd think pretty seriously about relocatin'."

"Yeah, but...," Lindsey trailed off. "Did Jilly mention some strange guy hanging around on the highway? Bastard chased me home last night, ran after Carl some too, this afternoon. When he was walkin' home."

"Oh. Yeah, Jilly mentioned it this morning when she came in, asked me did I see anybody hangin' around. I tell her no. What'd he look like?"

"Well, of course it was dark. He was about my height, maybe even shorter. Dark hair, wild hair. No mustache or beard that I can recall. And I don't know whether he was dark skinned or just nasty. I think he was wearing overalls with no shirt. He looked thin and mean. Not much chin. I think." Lindsey tried hard not to superimpose too many of the details of her teenage encounter with Vole on the man from last night, just in case.

Thunder rolled outside and shook the huge plexiglass windows.

"Don't sound right, runnin' around in nasty weather like that. You got no place to stay, you find some place to hole up. I'm not sayin' you didn't see him, I'm sayin' not right in the head."

Lindsey wrinkled up her forehead. "I'm not gonna argue with you there. Somebody chasing people period ain't right."

"Well," replied Morgan, "there's meanness and there's craziness. Mean people seek shelter. Crazy people go out runnin' around when it's thunnerin' an' lightnin'. My momma was a nurse up at the old sanatorium on Cross Forks, said the crazies all got outta line when there wuz a storm. Some would get out an' run around. Break stuff in their rooms. People be fairly normal--or at leas' harmless--'til a storm blows up. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, sorta. We had a dog like that. If he heard thunder, he tore around the house and we had to either let him out or lock him in the cellar. That was back when I was a little girl up in Wisconsin...."

"Hunh. Well, lotsa people feel it ... some kinda excitement in the air, a kind of exaltation, if you understan', when they's a big storm out. It's jus' that sane people stay inside, don' let themselves get caught up. You ever felt it?" Morgan queried, drumming his fingers on the counter.

Carl drums his fingers like that when he's tense, Lindsey pondered.

"Yes," she admitted after a brief hesitation. But I won't say when I last went outside to play in a storm.

"Me too. Momma use to tell me stories about some ol' Guinea spirit that rode the storms and drove people an' animals crazy. But if it's okay with you, I'll save the ol' ghost stories for when it ain' so scary already."

Lindsey smiled. "Let's build a campfire between the gas pumps outside. I'll grab a bag of marshmallows."

"They'll find my big toe in Kansas an' my heart in ol' Dahomey. Why don' we save that for another time? Like when I cain't make it."

They both laughed.

Lindsey got out the dust mop to run it up and down the aisles since the store was empty of customers. "You don't have to hang out here, you know. You work hard enough as it is without havin' to babysit me, too."

"You tell me to go, I'll go. But I think it make us both feel better if I stay. I'll even sit out of the way in the back room, read my book." Morgan leaned forward over the counter, standing up.

Lindsey sighed. "I got better friends than I deserve. You do what you want, Morgan. Truth to say, I won't mind the company if you stay. But the second you want to go home, you go home. You're gonna be here early enough in the morning as it is."

Morgan sat back on the stool behind the counter. "You sweep, I watch. Better than satellite teevee."

"Alright. But you better not be staring at my ass."

"No, ma'am. At least not while you lookin'." Morgan leered, showing a mouthful of strong, yellow teeth.

Lindsey grinned to herself and set about sweeping.

* * * * *

Wind rattled the shingles. Rain rattled the windowpanes. Thunder rattled those and then some.

Carlysle lay on his bed, lights out in his room, window curtains open, blinds up. He watched the storm walking around behind the poplars and oaks, kicking at the ground in restrained frustration. Somewhere far away, dogs barked.

He saw the storm as an erect figure, looking out above the treetops, occasionally waving an arm or gesturing. When the lightning flashed, he took a step. When the thunder rolled, his foot came down. Flash, step--boom, stomp. Flash, step--boom, stomp.

The cloudbank flung wide his clawed arms, sweeping the sky. Lightning arced and branched upwards from his head, illuminating massive horns and antlers.

Carlysle stared in fascination. The figure directed the barking dogs that bumbled through the trees, knocking them about like cornstalks. He imagined what the nearby woods would look like from above--rocking trees showing the paths of running hounds speeding towards the house like watching a rabbit run through tall hay. He could see them closing in on the house from miles away. Their progress seemed slow only because of the scale and the distance.

Sweat pooled at the juncture of throat and chest. The air in the room did not move, for the window was closed. Carlysle could hardly breathe for the stifling heat, but he dare not open the window.

If he opened the window, then the dogs would smell him. If the dogs smelled him, then the hunting man with the miles-long claws and miles-high antlers would come. And if the hunting man of thunder and lightning came, then Carlysle would have to run.

Despite the heat, every window in the house was closed.

At the school, during the tornado warning, the students and teachers opened up all the windows that would open, trying to minimize the potential damage of the suction of a tornado. Carlysle knew that to be a mistake now.

Hounds work by scent. If the hounds could scent you, then they could track you.

There was baying now, not just barking. The distant treetops moved more than the closer ones, showing the hounds to still be far away. But baying meant that they had found the scent.

Not my scent. My window is closed. All the windows and doors in the house are closed.

Flash, step--boom, stomp. Flash, step--boom, stomp. Closer together now. The hunting man in the sky was moving faster, coming closer.

Not coming for me. All the windows are closed. The hounds can't smell me.

The baying came closer, louder. Carlysle could hear the trees shaking as the hounds came bounding towards the yard.

Carlysle was filled with the dread of a thousand math quizzes. Something was wrong. Something.

Flash, step--boom, stomp. Flash, step--boom, stomp. The Hunter was coming.

The humongous dogs burst into the yard. Grandma's car was knocked spinning and the oak behind the tool shed leaned housewards. All the dogs surrounded the house and started baying and howling.

Something was wrong! Carlysle laid still on the bed, paralyzed.

Boom, boom! The Hunter stepped over the car, around the leaning oak. Giant claws reached for the house, prying up the roof!

The dogs howled like sirens. The wind roared into the house. Discarded clothes and blankets blew around the room, and still Carlysle could not move! The wind started dragging the bed away from the wall. And upwards! The bed started to spin as it drifted aloft into the Hunter's clawed clutches.

He waited in terror for the wind to blow his soul from his body. How did he find me?! How did he get in?!

Carlysle sat bolt upright, drenched in sweat.

The air was still, the roof undisturbed.

Grandpa's room. The window won't close in Grandpa's room.

There was barking and the sounds of sirens in the distance. Outside the window was a break in the clouds. The constellation of Orion was visible over the trees.

* * * * *

This man was glad that he had been able to hunt instead of running this dark time. If he had run, this man surely would have died, and died horribly, gnawed by the Hunter's hounds.

He had jumped the gun this afternoon, trying to hunt before the Hunter had come out from under the ground. Even a child could outrun him before dark time. This man had panicked, not wanting to be hunted on a day like this, on a night like this. This man had felt the fear.

This man panted, trying to catch his breath.

This man thanked the Hunter for the gift of the antlers, for the gift of the claws. This man thanked the Hunter and his hounds for flushing him a quarry, for sending this man something else to hunt after he had squandered his chance at a young one earlier, before dark time.

This time he had pleased the Hunter. This man did not often please the Hunter so well.

This man had been afraid the he had angered the Hunter by attacking another lesser hunter, a man like himself. This man had been desperate.

It was not without a price, hunting hunters. But it was not a high price, and the Hunter was pleased.

Running away from the creek, away from the highway, this man grasped his bloody antlers to his chest with one arm and fended off branches and vines with the other. This man jumped fallen logs and a narrow stream, swollen by the rains.

The moon was out and this man could see well enough to run. This man's bare feet ignored the sharp twigs and thorny underbrush. This man ran with the departing storm, although he knew the storm was not gone for good. The Hunter would be back soon.

This man was hungry. This man had not been able to eat and drink his fill before he heard the other people approaching.

There were happy hounds in the woods, and more hunters. Too many people for this man to be comfortable with staying. This man would need to find another place to hide until they went away. Maybe the frog place. Maybe a barn place, where there would be rats. Or maybe a house place, like from the before.

This man knew where there was a house place not too far from here.

Chapter 10

It's part of the excretory system. It takes poisons out of your blood and tissues.

Elaine listened to the sounds of the sirens and dogs.

Jimmy Hanson had seemed downright cheerful when he called her, relating that Franklin had called him from the desk, said to keep an eye out for two more people wandering out in the woods near her place--one of them involved with an assault or two and the other some big doofus with a gun, looking for the first guy--and given that it was Franklin taking messages, he felt he ought to call back and make sure of the details.

As worried as she was, it was hard for Elaine not to laugh. "That sounds about right," she confirmed.

"Well, we got sixteen people out in your woods right now and two packs of bloodhounds, so if there's anyone else wants to go hide in your woods, send 'em on out. Won't have the resources to do this again for a good long while, so now's the perfect time," Hanson remarked.

Elaine worked for a bit to try to guess whether Hanson was serious. "Sounds like you been out there for a while, Jimmy. You doin' alright?" Elaine heard wind and creaking wood in the background.

Hanson laughed. "We're all buzzing on tons of free coffee and trucker stimulants from the store your Lindsey works at. Dogs are getting tired, though. They won't touch the coffee."

"Then they got more sense than y'all do, Jimmy. I won't touch that coffee either. I'd offer to make you guys a fresh coupla pots to get the taste out of your mouths, but it sounds to me like y'all've had plenty already."

Jimmy chuckled. "Don't worry about us. We're good."

"You just remember you're my age. Make sure you get the day off tomorrow," Elaine chided. They said their goodbyes and hung up.

Elaine paced around the house for a while, prodding Carlysle off the sofa and sending him to bed. After putting the supper dishes into the sink to soak, she grabbed her jacket of the bentwood rack near the door and went out to the front porch, closing the front door behind her.

Sitting in an old wooden rocking chair, she fished a cigarette out of her jacket pocket. It was another few minutes before she lit up. She sat listening to the wind and the distant thunder, watching out into the woods looking for the glow of flashlights.

It slowly began to register that she was hearing the barks of searching dogs, that they were getting closer.

Lightning lit the sky. Paul's old International pickup stood out like a foreign object. Like a bright plastic shovel stuck into the sand on an otherwise pristine stretch of beach. A tear formed in Elaine's eye, but refused to roll down her cheek.

Elaine lit another cigarette, putting the butt of the first cigarette carefully into a bucket of sand near the chair. She wondered if she should go get Robert's pipe if she was gonna be out on the porch smoking all night, but figured that she would start crying for sure if she were to smell his pipe smoke.

She stubbed the second cigarette out in the sand. After a moment, she relit it angrily, thumping the sand off the end.

Then she heard the siren. She listened to it approach. Before it passed by on the highway, the siren shut off. After a moment or two, she saw the twirling red and white lights painting the trees on the driveway and an ambulance appeared--basically a panel-van painted orange and white with a light-bar welded to the top. It pulled to a halt next to Paul's truck.

Elaine stubbed out the second butt and walked out into the yard, dazed.

A portly woman in an orange jumpsuit hopped out on the passenger side, heading Elaine off. "It's alright, ma'am. Sheriff's deputy found a man in your woods that needs a ride to the hospital. If we can find a way for you to help, we'll let you know. Meanwhile, just sit tight. We're gonna leave the lights running so they know which way to bring him. Is that okay?"

Elaine nodded. Sweat trickled down inside her jacket, clenched closed at the throat by her left hand. "Is he okay?"

The woman in the jumpsuit frowned gently. "That'll be hard to say, ma'am. We might not know even after we get a chance to look at him. We'll do our best."

The tear finally rolled. I'm sorry, Paul.

Elaine retreated and took a seat on the porch steps.

Somewhere around ten minutes later, Hanson and some man Elaine didn't recognized carried Paul out of the woods between them on a stretcher, draped with his poncho, which looked stained with dark mud. They were hustling and it didn't look like Paul's face was covered, so Elaine took a deep breath. Hanson handed his end to the man who had been driving the ambulance, and the woman in the jumpsuit opened the rear doors of the van and hopped in, guiding the stretcher and hauling it in after her. The driver, also in orange, climbed back into the driver's seat.

Hanson, panting, walked over to where Elaine stood by the front steps.

"That man your beau?" he asked, catching his breath.

"Sometimes," Elaine replied.

Hanson nodded. "He lost a lot of blood. Well, not exactly lost. We know where most of it is. But he's got a decent chance." Hanson stood up straight, wiped sweat off his palms onto his thighs. "I'm gonna follow him in, go write this one up and call it a night. I'll let you know how he's doing as soon as I find out."

Elaine nodded.

"Is it okay if I wait here with you until someone brings my car? Shouldn't be more'n a couple of minutes."

Elaine nodded again.

"Pardon me for asking, but do you have a cigarette on you?" Jimmy Hanson had puppy-dog eyes.

Elaine pulled out two more cigarettes. They sat down on the porch steps and smoked them in silence. Even the trees calmed down and got quiet.

* * * * *

Sheriff Dooley sat in his car, his forehead resting against the steering wheel.

Long day.

It took some doing, but Dooley convinced himself to sit back upright rather than simply fall asleep on the wheel.

His cell phone rang. After two rings, he decided to answer it. "Dooley," he announced, attaching the hands-free and starting up the car.

From the phone: "Sheriff Dooley, um, hi. This is Doctor Shelley at St. Francis. I have some information for you regarding the man your Deputy Hanson accompanied to the emergency room this evening."

Dooley put his car into gear, checking for a glow of headlights on the highway behind him. Not seeing anything but darkness, he pulled gently onto the roadway.

"Go ahead, Doctor Shelley. I'm not able to write this down at the moment, so is it okay if I call you back later and get the details again?"

From his rearview mirror, Dooley saw a glimmer of stars through a break in the clouds.

"Sure thing, Sheriff Dooley. But here are the highlights--patient was damned near bled dry, in deep shock by the time he got here. He was draining out about as fast as we could pour it into him, and given the drain on our supply with the elementary school incident earlier today, he's damned lucky he's AB pos."

"You don't say," commented Dooley, hoping to get the doctor back on track.

"I do say. We had to cork an awful lot of holes before the blood would stay in him. Forty or so."

"Christ. Any idea what the weapon was?"

"Actually, yes. We called in the M.E., who just happened to be in the building anyway. We were looking for signs of what kind of weapon could have been used and the M.E., son of a bitch, just looks at the camo poncho on the floor, spreads his hands between the lacerations, punctures, what have you, and says 'Deer.' Peels off his gloves and walks back out, less than ten seconds. Asshole. Says he sees that sort of thing pretty often this time of year...."

"Deer." Dooley blinked tiredly.

"Yep. Confirmed, too, by a sample of bony antler fragments, apparently from a fairly old buck, given the porousness--and the fact that it was at least a ten-pointer, maybe even bigger rack than that. Looks like your stabbing victim accidentally snuck up on a buck that was feeling a bit territorial and got his ass kicked. Well, not literally. No hoof marks. Your guy must have managed to scare him off before things got really serious."

"More serious than forty puncture wounds?" Dooley considered pulling over again--if only so he could try to remember where he was going.

"A buck in mating season will kick your ass and then dance on your corpse. One of the reasons for the delay of hunting season is to wait until the end of rut, preserves the genetics of the bucks that are about to die through no fault of natural selection--and we lose fewer hunters to angry horny deer that way."

Dooley rubbed at his eyes, stifling a yawn. "The victim managed to fire a shot, which possibly spooked the deer away. We'll go back to the site in the morning and confirm any details we need to rule out foul play. Thanks for your help, Doctor Shelley."

"No problem, Sheriff. No call to call it 'foul play' when 'dumb play' is good enough."

"Right. Oh, um, when do you think I'll be able to talk to him?"

"Not anytime soon, I don't think. He might be awake sometime tomorrow evening, but we had to patch up his throat a bit. Took a big bruise to his larynx--which was actually luckier than what could have happened, taking an antler to the throat. But even tomorrow night, he's gonna be on heavy painkillers and still hating life."

"Right. Maybe we'll see if we can settle this without his help then. Thanks again, Doctor." Oh, that was it. The gas station on highway 81.

"You bet. Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of at the moment, Doctor. You have a good evening."

"You, too, Sheriff." Doctor Shelley hung up.

Dooley checked his watch. It was half an hour before the store was supposed to close. Dooley drove his car away from the starry break in the sky and chased the retreating storm.

* * * * *

Lindsey was outside sweeping and picking up trash around the pumps. One of the garbage can lids didn't fit well, and every time it blew off, a hundred different chips bags and plastic wrappers and cups and paper towels came flying out, headed for the interstate.

She found a large rock to set on top of the fractured lid. It was worth a shot.

She ran around the lot with her broom and long-handled dust pan and collected debris.

Morgan was propped up behind the counter. From where she stood outside, it was difficult to tell whether he was awake. For his sake--and for the sake of his morning shift--she hoped that he was dozing.

She had just re-entered the store, shivering slightly regardless of the exertion, when the Sheriff's patrol car drove into the parking lot.

Lindsey tried to work out whether she should be angry that someone had called him other than herself. Then she considered that he might just be coming by for coffee.

She braced herself either way.

"Sheriff Dooley," she said by way of greeting as he came through the door.

He smiled and nodded. "Howdy, Lindsey, Morgan." He waved to Morgan behind the counter. "Lindsey, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? It's official business.... We can talk in the back or in the car if you'd like some privacy."

Lindsey shrugged. "In here's fine. Morgan knows all about it, and if he doesn't maybe he needs to."

"Well. You let me know if you change your mind." Dooley pulled out a small notepad.

"You want some coffee, Sheriff?" This from Morgan, who manned the urn at the front of the store.

Dooley snorted. "I wouldn't as much say want as need. That would be greatly appreciated, sir, if it's not any trouble." Dooley walked up to the counter as Morgan filled a cup and handed it over.

Morgan tapped can of powdered creamer and gestured toward the assorted pastel packets of sweeteners. "Not many people can take it straight."

Dooley disdained the box. "Sometimes the taste is as good as the caffeine for keeping you awake." They both chuckled in identical baritones.

Lindsey, having put the broom and dustpan away, joined them up at the counter. She helped herself to a cup of coffee while Dooley found a pen.

Dooley began, "You know Deputy Hanson was up at your place tonight, right?"

Lindsey shook her head. "Is everybody okay? Mom and Carlysle?" Her forehead creased and wrinkled.

"Your son and your mother are okay. But Paul Kirkland is a little worse for wear...."

"Paul? What happened to Paul? He was going out into the woods to poke around for--" Lindsey swallowed. "Did he get hurt?"

Dooley nodded. "A bit. He's at the hospital now. What do you know about why he went out there?"

Lindsey tried to swallow again, but couldn't. "He, umm ... I told him about the guy who chased me home last night and Carlysle said he got chased by someone this afternoon when he came home from school and Paul decided he just had to grab his gun and go have a look. This was before I came back here, maybe five or five thirty. Did somebody attack him? Did he shoot somebody?" Lindsey adjusted her grip on her cup, palms covered with sweat.

"We don't think so. But what can you tell me about the guy who chased you? Was he someone you know?"

Lindsey bit her lower lip. "He was about yay tall, wore overalls. I think his hair was dark. No beard, no mustache. He didn't have a shirt on, I don't remember, but he may have been barefoot, too. His hair was all wild, even though it was raining a bit." Lindsey took a sip of coffee to cover her nervousness.

Dooley noticed the missing answer, of course. "Was is someone you know, ma'am? Someone you've seen in the store, maybe?" Dooley, rather than stare at her directly, turned his head to look at her reflection in the microwave--and catch Morgan's reaction, too, while he was at it.

Morgan looked puzzled and concerned, but revealed nothing further. Lindsey showed a flash of anger via her reflection, but controlled it.

"I can't be sure, but he looked a lot like someone who attacked me when I was in high school. And I heard Carlysle's description before I gave him mine--they matched close enough. Close enough to make me worry. And he said he got chased--and I just told him last night that there was somebody about he should worry about, not go off on his own. I didn't tell him I got chased. Scared the jeebers out of me, and I guess Paul could see it. He was only tryin' to help, Paul was."

Dooley nodded. "Anything you wanna tell me about why you think this man might be hassling you or your son? Anything maybe about what happened when you were in high school?"

Lindsey shook her head slowly. "I don't think about what happened back then much--old business, as my dad used to say." Her eyes flickered over to Morgan for a split second. "Maybe you'd be better off reading it out of the old reports than asking me about it today. I don't want to confuse now with back then."

Dooley took a slow gulp of coffee, looking back around to the counter, past Morgan. Morgan was fussing with a notebook, trying to give them some semblance of privacy.

"Thanks, Lindsey. I'll do that. Old records being what they are, do you mind if I ask you any more questions once I've read what they've got to say?" Dooley put away his pen.

"Call, come by here, come by the house--I'm not too hard to find." Lindsey looked somewhat relieved.

Dooley nodded. "Oh, I'm going to want to ask your boy some questions, too. Is that okay, you think, with everything he's been through today?"

Lindsey nodded. "He's eleven years old. Talking to an honest-to-God Sheriff is gonna make his day," she admitted wryly. "We won't be able to get him to shut up about it afterwards, I'm sure."

Dooley grinned broadly. "Kids are resilient. They can get over just about anything in no time."

Lindsey kept a neutral face, nodded once. "Most of the time."

Dooley was serious again. "Thanks for your help so far, Lindsey." He waved to the counter and Morgan waved back. "And thanks for the coffee. I think I can make it home now."

Dooley headed back out to his car and climbed in.

As they heard the car door slam, Morgan said, "You look at his ass mor'n he look at yours. Somethin's not right about that."

Lindsey snorted. "Well. Look at that. Time to close up."

Morgan grinned. "So it is."

* * * * *

Elaine was sitting in her recliner next to the sofa when Lindsey drove into the yard in her station wagon. It seemed that it took a long while before Lindsey came through the door.

Lindsey hung up the flannel shirt on the bentwood rack by the door.

"Paul's in the hospital," Elaine said.

Lindsey came around behind Elaine's chair and rubbed her shoulders. "I heard, Momma. Dooley came by the store, but he didn't really say what happened. Is he okay?"

Elaine shrugged. "Jimmy Hanson followed the ambulance into town. He called just a few minutes ago, said that Paul's coming out of shock. He's pretty bad off, stabbed full of holes they had to sew up."

Lindsey was mortified.

"Oh my God, Momma. Sheriff Dooley didn't say. What happened to him?" Lindsey came around in front of Elaine's recliner and sat on the edge of the sofa.

"They say he got attacked by a deer. An old buck gored him a bunch of times. Paul oughta know better than to mess with them this time of year."

Lindsey noticed that Elaine smelled of pipe smoke. "Oh, Momma."

"Goddamn uppity deer."

Lindsey sat for a while in silence. She reached out and held Elaine's hand. She squeezed it, and her hand was squeezed in return.

Elaine smiled wryly. "What's with the deer around here that they don't care too much for our men-folk?"

"Dad was a fluke, Momma. The deer around here loved him so much they just wanted to be close to him. But I can see why they'd go after Paul."

Elaine chuckled in spite of herself. "Oh, Lindsey. You're horrible. Did I raise you to be like that?"

Lindsey nodded. "More than you like to think."

Elaine shook her head, but said nothing.

"Sheriff Dooley's coming by tomorrow, probably, to talk to Carlysle and me, probably in the morning. But we need to make some cookies for Morgan in the morning--he sat up with me all night at the store when he didn't have to."

Elaine wobbled in her chair, just to be moving. "Morgan likes those molasses cookies I make. We'll bake him some of those first thing. And it wouldn't hurt to have a few extra lyin' around when Dooley comes by. Maybe we could encourage him to visit more often?"

Lindsey shook her head. "He's not gonna be much interested in me once he reads the old reports."

"Oh, c'mon, honey. It's not like that." This time Elaine leaned over and put her hand on Lindsey's.

Lindsey sighed. "Yeah, you never know. Maybe he and Paul can go hunting together when Paul gets better."

"You're horrible!"

* * * * *

The morning sky was bright, painting the clouds white and gold on one horizon and purplish red on the other. Above was simply blue and clear, with a refrigerated crispness that was closer to seasonal than the wind-whipped mugginess of the past day. The wind blew strong, but only from the southwest.

Birds piped and twittered, starting from right before the dawn.

It was like God, having been a total screaming bastard the day before, was trying lamely to make up for it with a bright bouquet of flowers--and the promise of breakfast in bed plus wine and chocolates for the evening.

Whatever God was selling this morning, Dooley wasn't buying any of it. Too many mangled children.

Additionally, Dooley had made himself read the reports on Lindsey's case from twleve years ago. He read it before he went to sleep, dozing in his office on a cot.

He went to sleep on God's side last night. Humanity was flawed and monstrous, in need of torture and cruelty and death. Each of those children who died yesterday would never grow up to be monsters. The ones who were injured will bear the memory of the pain, maybe find themselves less likely to inflict pain needlessly on one another.

This morning was merely sneakiness and duplicitousness on God's behalf, a translucent design to lure the gullible into a false sense of security. So that the future cruelties would sting even more.

Dooley felt that he would never be fooled again.

Breakfast was a pair of tiny sausage biscuits from the refrigerated vending machine, heated for thirty seconds in a prehistoric microwave that dimmed the lights in the room when it kicked on and gave one a creepy warmth in the chest when one stood in front of it. The plastic wrap on the biscuits turned into something between shrink wrap and napalm.

Breakfast at the office went a long way to counteracting the poisonous beauty of the morning. Coffee from the carafe in his office pretty much finished the job--but it was still better than the swill at Lindsey's store. Dooley's tongue was still partly tanned. Sore, even.

Dooley skimmed Lindsey's case again while he sipped.

When he was done with the coffee, he picked up her folder and a fresh notebook and headed out to his car. Moments later he returned, took his jacket off the peg, and departed once again.

* * * * *

Carlysle staggered down the stairs at just past six in the morning. He wore pajama bottoms and apparently, as an afterthought, the matching top--although it was on inside out and unbuttoned. No one had come to wake him up this morning. He was sitting, bleary, at the table before he remembered that there would be no school today. Because there was no school.

Elaine gave him a brief squeeze on her way through the kitchen, headed out the door.

Carlysle's forehead wrinkled as he sniffed the air. The world was upside-down today. He didn't have to go to school on a school day--because the school had been demolished--and apparently Lindsey was baking cookies for breakfast.

Lindsey took a seat at the table, dragging a cup of coffee behind her.

Reality asserted itself as the smells sorted themselves out. The cookies turned out to be the molasses kind he didn't particularly care for, and now that Lindsey had sat, he could see the oatmeal cooking on the stovetop.

Lindsey gave him a wry smile. "You could have slept in a little more this morning. There are no cartoons today, and daytime television blows chunks."

Visibly wilting, Carlysle let his head drift downwards until his forehead touched the table.

Lindsey took a slurping sip of her coffee. "We're taking some cookies to the store this morning. Morgan sat up at the store with me last night for my whole shift, and him having to open this morning. I made the kind you don't like on purpose, just to make sure some are left by the time we get there. Also, they're his favorite kind. We're riding up there with Jilly when she goes in and maybe riding back in Morgan's truck when he goes home. Although it's a beautiful day for walking."

Carlysle finished wilting, laying his head over to the side so he could look at his mother. "Can I stay here?"

Lindsey frowned. "We'll see. There's still some weirdo running around out there, and I don't much care to leave you by yourself for too long.

Carlysle made a tentative motion to pull himself erect, but thought the better of it.

Lindsey reached over and tousled his pre-tousled hair. "I'll share my coffee with yu this morning, Carl. You look like you could use it."

"No, thanks."

"Paul's in the hospital," she added. "They pulled him out of the woods last night and stuck him in an ambulance. I was at work, and it sounds like you slept through it."

Carlysle had no trouble pulling himself upright this time. "Did the man get him?"

Lindsey shook her head. "They're saying a deer got him. A big buck. Gave him the antlers a couple of times--" she stuck her thumbs to her head, splaying her fingers into claws "--and then split." Lindsey picked up her cup and drank another gulp of coffee, waving at her chest as it heated her from within.

"Didn't he take his gun with him? A buck will snort and stomp at your before it tries to run up on you. Did he forget to load his gun or something?" Carlysle seemed legitimately puzzled.

Lindsey shrugged. "They say he got a shot off. Maybe he just missed. You know how it is." She spun her mug around on the table by the handle. "You take aim, you start to squeeze the trigger, and then a leaf somewhere up above tips and dumps ice-cold rainwater down your neck."

Carlysle wobbled his head a bit, unconvinced.

"Your grandpa used to take me huntin' when I was a bit older than you, but he wouldn't even think of taking me along until I could hit a target eight out of ten. But that didn't mean squat out in the woods. There was always an ant in your sock, or a squirrel making a dash, something. And it always waited until your finger was on the trigger. Your grandpa would squirt me with ice-water from a squirt gun when I was shooting targets, skeet, or trap. He nearly got shot his own self a coupla times, I tell you. Your grandfather was an evil man. Don't you listen to your grandma." Lindsey grinned broadly.

Carlysle smiled back at her. She chugged at her coffee now that it was cooling.

"Oh. Sheriff Dooley, or maybe a deputy, will be coming by this morning. He'll want to ask you some questions about the man you saw yesterday." Lindsey got up to check on the oatmeal.

Looking back over her shoulder, she could see shock registering on Carlysle's features.

"No reason to panic, bub. He's just gonna ask you to tell him what you remember. There aren't any wrong answers you can give as long as you tell the truth. And you didn't do anything wrong, so he's not gonna take you off to jail or nothin'." Lindsey stirred the pot with a large plastic spoon.

Carlysle did not feel convinced. He thought about Cassidy. He thought about the man's large clawed hands. He thought about the dream he had falling asleep last night.

Lindsey put a bowl of oatmeal down in front of him and followed it up with a glass of milk and a small cup of apple juice. Carlysle felt sweat trickling down his sides and suddenly he wasn't very hungry.

* * * * *

Dooley eased his car down the driveway, taking care not to brake too heavily or stomp the gas too much. The previous day's rain had left the clay of the driveway as slick as glass. In the morning light, he could see marks where cars going in or coming out had tracked sideways a bit here and there.

He thought about the vehicles that might have used the driveway recently. Elaine's car. Paul's truck. The ambulance. Hanson's cruiser. And now his.

He guided his car gently onto the path around the fallen tree. The car, being heavy, kept wanting to go down the slope faster than it ought to go. He fought it with gentle pressure from the brakes and gunned the engine for a quick pull to tug him out of a slide as often as he used the brakes.

It occurred to Dooley, after six years of service, to think that the cars were probably brown and tan so that clay and mud wouldn't show up on them nearly as much. He shook his head and coasted into the home stretch, pulling into the yard aside Paul's orange monster.

Dooley noted that the orange hid the clay even better than the tan. The bottom of Paul's truck was caked with it. Running Paul's truck through a car wash would drop a couple hundred pounds off of it easy, improving his mileage proportionally. And it would probably have to be repeated daily, given the driving conditions on this side of the county. Some of the roads would probably never get paved and had puddles that stuck around for long enough that catfish had spawned a couple of generations in them. Cars would be flying before the paving trucks got everywhere they were needed.

He killed the engine and got out, leaving the folder in the passenger seat. He shrugged into his jacket on the way to the door.

Halfway across the yard he toyed with the idea of hoofing it down the trail to see if he could find where Paul had been attacked by the buck. He knew why he was stalling. These people had been through enough. They didn't need to deal with him poking around into their private business, too.

He rang the bell outside the porch door. It was an actual bell with a string, anchored to the eaves, barely out of the way of the wind and the rain.

A moment later the front door popped open and a boy came out, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. He crossed the porch and opened the screen door, eyes held captive by the silver badge.

Dooley smiled and introduced himself. "I'm John Dooley, the sheriff. Are you Cassidy or Carlysle?"

Carlysle swallowed laboriously, spoke slowly. "I'm Carlysle. Cassidy's dead. You wanna come in? Mom's got coffee."

Carlysle hopped around to get the front door, hooking the screen with a bare set of toes so as not to let it slam in Dooley's face.

Once Carlysle's back was turned, Dooley winced, screwing up his face in self-loathing. Off to a great start.

Putting his face back into place, Dooley followed Carlysle into the house. Once inside, he shrugged out of his jacket and hooked it on the coat rack while Carlysle rounded the corner ahead of him and trotted off toward the kitchen.

Dooley followed Carlysle around the corner, taking off his hat, and found himself entering the living room as Lindsey came out of the kitchen. "Sheriff Dooley. Want some coffee?"

"If you can spare it. Maybe just half a cup, though. I've been up for a while already and this will make my sixth or seventh cup. Everybody down at the office is living on coffee today." He twirled his hat absently as she turned around. He took in the living room, doing a slow turn.

"Have a seat anywhere you like," Lindsey called from the kitchen.

He took the far end of the sofa, dropped his hat onto the end table.

Lindsey bustled out of the kitchen, carrying two mugs, a couple of spoons, a small pot of milk, and a diner's sugar dispenser. Both mugs were maybe two-thirds full. Lindsey sat one down in front of the sheriff, leaving him the milk and the sugar and a spoon. She plopped onto the edge of the recliner, leaning forward so she could use the coffee table, too.

"Where's--," Dooley began.

Lindsey mouthed, "Hiding in the kitchen." She pointed backwards through her chest.

Dooley nodded. He spoke quietly. "Ms. Leadbeater, I read over your case last night. I am tremendously sorry if I bring up any memories that you don't care to experience. You mentioned maybe there might be a connection, and since that case is still open, by conscience I have to follow up on it. But I only really have one question for you, and we can get this over quickly. If you really think it might be the same guy who attacked you, after all these years, if you saw him again up close, do you think you would recognize him?"

Lindsey nodded. Her eyes were large, and she was looking out the window rather than at Dooley. Dooley looked out the window too. He saw nothing.

"Are you okay, Lindsey?" Dooley asked quietly.

Lindsey smiled gently and picked up her mug, nodding.

"Do you mind if I talk to your boy?" Dooley sampled the coffee, decided to add a small dollop of milk. He didn't stir it, though. He watched the patterns swirl out of the corner of his eye.

Lindsey shook her head. "Carlysle. Stop hiding in the kitchen. Come out here and say hi."

Carlysle popped his head around the doorway and reluctantly drew himself forward into the living room. He came to stand next to the recliner. Lindsey popped the end of the sofa near the recliner and Carlysle obediently took a seat.

Dooley pulled a pad of paper out of his pocket and found a pen.

Carlysle had little beads of sweat along his upper lip. He felt his stomach tremble. Lindsey noted how pale he looked and took his hand, still smiling.

"Lighten up, bub. This isn't even like going to the doctor. No pokings and proddings, no jabbing with needles, no wearing paper clothes, no being gagged with tongue depressors or cotton swabs. If he pulls his gun on you, he has to give you a verbal warning. Not like creepy old Martha at the clinic sneaking up on you with a tetanus booster."

Dooley laughed. "We need you on P.R. down at the county office," he said. Sneaking a look at Carlysle, he noticed a brief twitch of a smile.

"So what can you say about this guy who chased after you? Where did you first see him?" Dooley made a scratch or two on the pad in anticipation of an answer.

Carlysle made an effort not to throw up--and succeeded. "W-- It was just at the edge of the woods, near where the highway bends between here and the store. I had come out of the woods there, comin' home through the woods from school, and I left the old creek trail because some trees had come down. The ground was all soft and the undergrowth was kinda thick, so w-- I headed for the highway. When I got out of the woods, I looked back and saw where the lights at the store lit the underside of the clouds. I wuz tryin' to figure out where I was, so I looked ahead to make sure I saw the right trees and stuff, maybe see if I could see the mailbox and the garbage can, and when I looked back there wuz this guy comin' up the slope to the highway--"

Dooley held up a hand, still smiling. "Whoa, kid. I can't write nearly as fast as you talk. Lemme catch up."

Carlysle looked less pale, but he wobbled back and forth nervously on the edge of the sofa.

Dooley flipped over a page and wrote some more. After a moment he looked over at Carlysle again. "So this guy. What did he look like?"

Carlysle swallowed. "He was-- it was dark, kinda. I might not have seed him if it wasn't for the lightning. He didn't look too tall, and he was kinda skinny. Rattled around in his overalls. He didn't have no shirt on. His hair was all stickin' up, even in the rain. Ca-- He seemed darkish, tan maybe, but he didn' look black. Maybe jus' dirty. And." Carlysle kicked himself internally, squeezing his eyes closed.

"Hold on," requested Dooley, flipping another page. "There we go. And what?"

"It was dark, kinda. I could only see him clear when-- in the lightning." Carlysle swallowed again.

Dooley nodded.

"His hands looked funny," said Carlysle, hoping for a way out of the trap he had stepped in. "Didn't make any sense."

Dooley nodded. "You don't worry about that. It was dark and there was lightning, you only got a glimpse maybe. That's the way the world works. You just say what you saw, we'll help you make sense of it if it don't make any sense. We're not gonna think you're crazy."

A tear formed in Carlysle's eye and ran down his cheek. "His hands wuz like this," he blurted holding his hands wider apart than his chest. His fingers wuz long and skinny and curved, like claws. Both of 'em. Both hands."

"Hey, hey," Dooley called gently. "It's okay, little man. Look at me for a second."

Carlysle looked up. His mother held his hand.

Dooley continued. "Do you think it's possible, maybe, that he was holding something in his hands, like twigs or branches or something?"

Carlysle blushed furiously. I must be an idiot. He was flooded with relief, simultaneous with the shame and self-directed anger. "Branches or twigs. Yeah. Maybe."

The monster with the clawed hands melted into the shadows. Carlysle turned to his mother and hugged his face against her shoulder. She half-turned towards him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Hey," she whispered. "Why don't you run get the plate of cookies off the table and bring 'em in here?"

Carlysle bolted from the room.

"Wow," commented Lindsey. "I didn't hear that part before."

Dooley nodded. "He was absolutely positive we'd think he was nuts. Poor guy. Sorry I shook him up like that. Sometimes my job really sucks," he added.

Carlysle bounced back into the room, plate in hand. "You meant the table, right, and not the tray thing on the counter?"

"Yeah," called Lindsey, pointing to the coffee table. "That tray is for Morgan, remember? For sitting up with me at the store last night?"

Carlysle put the plate on the coffee table where Lindsey was pointing. She grabbed a cookie off the plate before it stopped moving, gestured for Dooley to have one as well, and Carlysle too.

Having already taken a nibble, she said, "I hope you don't mind that it's the irregulars and the slightly charred ones. Somehow I always manage to screw up a quarter of the batch so I'll be allowed to keep them."

Dooley chomped into his, shaking his head. "These were my grandma's favorite kind of cookie," he said. "I never liked them much as a kid, but over the years they became my favorite too. Weird." Dooley smiled around a few crumbs.

Carlysle nibbled on his--and then took a larger bite. They tasted better than he remembered.

* * * * *

Outside, Dooley shrugged back into his jacket. The grim mood from this morning had passed and the day seemed genuinely beautiful. He popped his hat onto his head and wandered around behind the tool shed, scanning the edge of the woods for the trail Hanson had mentioned. Crossing behind the oak, he saw it immediately and walked at a brisk clip towards the start of the trail.

Hanson had mentioned a few landmarks, but Dooley didn't much need them. A whole bunch of people had been up and down this trail last night. There was a lot of scuffed mud and loam, not to mention Hanson's huge-ass clod-hoppers.

On a whim, Dooley radioed in and left a message on the front desk machine, saying where he was and when he expected to be back. Paranoia, probably, but occasionally useful.

Dooley tromped along the trail. If he had been the sort to whistle, he would have whistled.

It was a longer walk than Dooley expected. He was heating up, sweat pooling under his gun-belt and gluing his shirt to his back. He took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. Thinking about it for a moment, he slung it over a nearby branch and continued on, knowing he'd come back the same way.

Farther along he saw the place where feet had left the trail and shuffled around a bit. In the light, he could make out some blood here and there. He paced around the area in a large circle, finding strange marks in the ground--deep and narrow. Kneeling down, he saw a texturing. Rifle stock. There was more blood on the ground. He followed it a short distance over toward the creek. And stopped cold.

The ground was clayey, muddy. There were no hoof prints. But right by his foot was a strange mark. He stared and stared, turning his head in different directions.

A buckle for overalls. And right next to it, prints from a bare foot's toes, digging in deep. And another set. No hoof marks.

A three hundred pound buck would have left hoof marks here.

"Do you think it's possible, maybe, that he was holding something in his hands, like twigs or branches or something?"

"Branches or twigs. Yeah. Maybe."

Antlers. A shed pair of antlers, one set in each hand. Jesus Christ.

Dooley unsnapped his gun's holster. Suddenly the world was an ugly place again, in the hands of a bastard god. How the hell was he going to tell the Leadbeaters that there was a murderous stone-age maniac in the woods near their house?

He radioed in, left a message for someone to scare up a forensic team from somewhere and get it out to the Leadbeaters' place.

He wasn't surprised at all to find his jacket missing. He drew his gun and hurried back along the trail, arms and legs slicked with sweat.

* * * * *

In the tool shed, this man curled up on the floor and gnawed the corpse of a largish rat.

Chapter 11

Only people sweat. Dogs don't sweat. They pant, shedding heat through the tongue.

A line of ants crossed the trail through the moss. Cassidy lay down carefully on his stomach on the moss to watch them.

The moss was soft, dark green on black loam, looking like the stuff Grandpa made the trees out of on his model railroad. Maybe it was the same stuff, or similar.

Cassidy watched the ants. They looked just like the pictures of the ants in the science textbook that Carlysle would be given in the ninth grade, five years from now.

Cassidy watched the ants. There was only one line of ants, but the ants came in two sizes. The larger ants had dark red heads and shiny black bodies, and they were about as long as Cassidy's thumbnail. The smaller ants were maybe a quarter of the length of the larger ants, moved twice as fast, and were a uniform translucent red. Like confections of drawn wires made from melted lollipops.

The smaller ants moved in both directions along the lines, sometimes swarming over the larger ants, stopping, speeding up, examining them. Cassidy got the idea of children running around the legs of walking swing-sets at a playground.

The larger ants took no notice of the smaller ants except to touch them and pat them with their antennae from time to time. The larger ants walked in one direction only, in a controlled scurry.

A grasshopper landed on Cassidy's bedenimed calf. He ignored it. When it left he felt the rocket impact of it kicking off.

Cassidy got up to follow the line of ants. To do this, he became seven years old. Too much older and he wouldn't be able to see them while standing, regardless of the brightness and clarity of the daylight.

The black nylon jacket he wore reached down below his knees. He kept the sleeves bunched up and pushed back so that his hands would be exposed. The front hung open, exposing a white cotton lining, dark in places from accumulated sweat.

Cassidy followed the trail into the woods. The ants kept to the open areas, the trail in particular, in an easygoing fashion. Inside the house the black sugar ants would form trails in convoluted fashions, sticking to the edges of the walls and crevices to avoid detection and casual destruction and disruption. The ants of the woods apparently were more fearless--or had need to travel as quickly as possible, regardless of the risk of detection.

Cassidy, in the house, also preferred to stick to the crevices. Out here in the woods, he followed the trail. This trail did not go to the creek.

He stopped several times to make sure he had not lost his ants. He wondered if he could find a way to pick up individual ants and carry them to places further along their trail, whether they would appreciate the help, whether they would stand stupefied until their place in line caught up to them, or whether they would notice at all.

Cassidy thought that he would notice. He was unsure whether he would be grateful. Would he just be given more work to do when he got there?

The line of ants continued for miles, it seemed. Seven-year-old legs made it feel like longer, perhaps. Cassidy crossed a bend of a stream, as the ants found their way across along a slender pole of a pine that's bark had rotted off. In his early twenties now, Cassidy leapt across the stream easily. Back to seven years old, he tottered along, bare toes digging into the leaf mould.

Over another hill, the trail of ants vanished into a hole in the ground.

Aged four, Cassidy did the same.

* * * * *

"I don' know what to say, Lin. Man sounds crazy on mor'n one count--runnin' 'roun' inna thunnerstorm, 'tackin' a grown man with antlers when the man he's attackin's carryin' a gun. Crazy people's hard to ketch. Maybe you don' need the law 'smuch as you need you some hoodoo." Morgan looked at her out of the corner of his eye as he drove. Third gear wasn't working so well, so he kept it in second.

"Hoodoo? Listen to you, Morgan! You go to church twice a week--two different churches!" Lindsey laughed, but not unkindly.

"Heh. I'd get mysel' to more of'm if there wuz any more aroun'. Old man like me gotta make all the frien's he can in the nex' world. I like to keep my options open."

"Hoodoo, though?" Lindsey's smile was starting to fade.

"All I's sayin' is if you pray, you oughta pray. If folks wuz to offer to pray for you, you shouldn' oughta turn 'em down--no matter if they don' pray the same way you pray. You see what I'm sayin'?"

Lindsey nodded.

"When I wuz a young man, I sail in the Carib, where Gramma came from afore she move to Miami. I want to see some o' what she seed when she wuz a girl. I saw me some mighty strange things while I wuz down there. Some nights wuz like hell on earth, and some nights wuz beautiful. But there's more up in the sky than that ol' Jew with the Beard, meanin' no disrespeck. He's gots people workin' for Him an' agains' Him, an' sometime things don' run so smooth. If you gots problems, you don' have to take 'em alla way up to the top every damn time. 'Tslike any ol' bureaucracy--sometime you jus' gotta know who to talk to and what kinda bribe to offer in order to get things done."

It was obvious that Lindsey hadn't quite been expecting a lesson in practical black-market theology. She was trying to determine whether she should be offended. Or frightened.

Morgan shook his head and watched the road. "An' it's not like I see you at church much, anyway. I ain' naggin'; I's just sayin'. Don' turn down no free help." Morgan turned his head to flash a grin at Lindsey. In his rear-view mirror, he could see Carlysle in the back of the truck waving a hand up and down in the wind, letting their slipstream, slow-moving as it was, pull his hand upwards and downwards as he changed the angle at which he held it.

Lindsey couldn't resist the grin. She smiled back.

* * * * *

Through the living room window, Carlysle watched the vans and cars ooze into and out of the yard. Lindsey unequivocally forbade him to get a closer look at the proceedings.

It was slow going, but it was more exciting than the snowy PBS station on the television, which was itself a step up from adults yelling and screaming at one another on various soundstages or sitting around and talking about things he had no care to try to follow. Carlysle considered that daytime television was possibly a punishment for kids who tried to skip school or adults who tried to stay home from work.

He felt sorry for his mother, who ordinarily didn't leave for work until after one o'clock. His grandmother usually got home right during the worst of it, around three or so. The television cruelly refused to acknowledge that their household was different.

Lindsey needed a car worse than the household needed a satellite dish. And cable television doesn't much go past where the paving ends.

Lindsey had walked to work today. Odds are that Elaine would have no trouble remembering to pick her up tonight. He had overheard Elaine telling Lindsey that she planned to go by Paul's place--break in if she had to--so she could feed his "good-for-nothin' hound."

Carlysle had never seen the dog before, but his grandmother had mentioned to his mother that morning that the dog would probably be better served by occupying the bed next to Paul's in his semi-private room.

Carlysle pictured a portly basset hound with electrodes taped all over it, grunting and wheezing on a treadmill, begging for a beer or a cigarette whenever the treadmill stopped--if it were possible for a dog to beg while lying on its side, ribcage heaving.

Carlysle felt sorry for it. He was glad that his grandmother was going to try to take care of it until Paul could go home.

It didn't seem likely that the dog would bite her for being a stranger. The dog--or at least the version of the dog in his head--could probably be killed by a harsh word.

He hoped that the dog didn't have to watch daytime broadcast television. Plenty of life-threatening harsh words there, if the dog wasn't smart enough to understand that they weren't directed at him.

Carlysle thought about owners breaking up fights between dogs and then taking them to one of these court shows, where the dogs could bark and snarl at one another on television--and maybe break free from their owners' grips and start fighting all over again. Or start having sex.

That was all daytime television was about. Fighting. Having sex. Fighting about having sex. Ads for products to keep menstrual fluids from leaking out and soiling clothing. Ads for expensive cars. Later, ads for breakfast cereals, ads for toaster pastries and candy bars. High-performance sugar foods, incapable of supporting rural life.

Carlysle wondered if there were super-high-performance "feminine protection" products that his mother couldn't afford--analogous to the high-performance cars on television--that worked better than the kinds that ordinary people like them could afford. Carlysle knew that a sleek over-powered sports car would destroy itself on their driveway. Were the sleek, high-powered "feminine protection" products advertised on television incapable of standing up to the rigors of being worn by a woman who did a hard day's labor, like his mother?

Maybe Cassidy would know some of this stuff. Cassidy knew a lot of old people stuff sometimes. Except for when he didn't.

Carlysle watched people in plastic suits carrying boxes into the van marked "Mobile Crime Lab." It looked like maybe they were planning on leaving.

His mother had lied to him, a little, this morning after dropping off the cookies and coming back. He had been allowed to ride in the back of Morgan's ancient Edsel-looking Chevy on the way back. Morgan was known to take the truck completely apart every year and put it back together again, sometimes using fewer and fewer parts, by Morgan's own admission. His truck was starting to look spindly and thin somehow, just like Morgan.

Lindsey had lied a little. She said that the sheriff was bringing in some people to look at the site because they had to make sure that a deer had done it and not this crazy man that was running around. Carlysle knew a spin-job when he heard it--children hear spin-jobs all the time. The strange man with the claws had done it--the claws that were really deer antlers.

Grownups always hedged like that. It was part of the Constitution. You had to think of someone as innocent until you could prove that he or she was guilty. Because sometimes you could be wrong no matter how convinced you were that you were right. You had to act like you might be wrong, even though you knew what was right. Because you could be wrong.

Carlysle wondered if the man carried deer hooves in his pocket so he could make it look like a deer had kicked you, too. He wondered if the man loped like that when he ran because he had deer hooves for feet. He wondered if, when the man opened his mouth, he would show a mouthful of deer's teeth. Or maybe fangs.

* * * * *

Heathcliff barked once as Elaine drove her car into Paul's yard. It sounded more like an old cigar smoker clearing his throat than a legitimate dog's bark, but seeing as Heathcliff was at least nominally a dog, Elaine gave him the shadow of a doubt.

He thumped his tail loudly on the floor of the open porch as Elaine climbed up the steps.

There was no grass in the fenced-in yard. Most of the yard was a giant mud puddle. Like a wallow for hogs.

Heathcliff needed a bath. He was orange from a buildup of clay dust embedded in doggy coat oils. Elaine guessed that Heathcliff was actually white under there. Or maybe a light ginger tan. Heathcliff matched Paul's old orange truck in more ways than one.

Elaine decided that she was here to get dirty anyway. She scratched Heathcliff dutifully on the top of the head, ruffled the greasy fur on his neck. Heathcliff was profoundly grateful.

There was grass--tall and green--right up next to the house. Elaine closed her eyes and imagined the place with a lawn and azaleas. Opening her eyes and coming back to reality, she hopped down from the porch and shuffled around the house, sticking to the grass as well as she could. Heathcliff declined to jump down from the edge of the porch the way she did, maintaining his dignity (dognity?) by walking down the steps and coming around to meet her.

Around at the back door, she noticed that there was a doggy door. It was apparently latched from the inside. The knob of the door was locked, too.

From her perch on the cinder block steps, she swung a healthy kick at the doggy door. Inside, there was a grinding, woody snap and the sound of a small chunk of metal hitting a linoleum floor. And the doggy door swung freely on its double hinge.

Grunting his thanks, Heathcliff trotted up the steps and nudged his way into the house. Elaine got down on her hands and knees and followed him in.

Men and their dogs get along so well because they speak the same language, Elaine decided.

Standing up, Elaine surveyed the damage. It took her a while to turn to notice the doggy door. Heathcliff stood dutifully by an empty bowl beside the refrigerator.

Elaine decided to start with collecting the beer cans and rinsing them out in the sink.

Half an hour later, all of the dishes had been gathered from various rooms in the house and sat drying on a rack near the sink. Heathcliff had not moved other than to scratch periodically. Whenever Elaine looked at him, he looked back at her expectantly.

Elaine crushed the beer cans and put them in a plastic garbage bag that she rustled out from under the sink. Then she found a broom and swept dust and dirt out the kitchen door, setting aside the latch that had popped off the doggy door, having located a spare key to the back door's deadbolt in a drawer.

She removed furry things from the refrigerator and placed them with some amount of care into another plastic bag. When Heathcliff began sniffing around the bag, she broke down and put a single cup full of kibble into his food bowl.

Heathcliff looked dubiously at the food, possibly a reproach about the niggling quantity. Elaine stood firm, and Heathcliff began to eat, in no particular hurry.

It took Elaine fifteen minutes to locate a mop. It took her another ten minutes to clean it to the point where it would be useful to clean a floor, and then she mopped the floor. She worked as well as she could, mopping around where Heathcliff sat next to his empty food bowl. When she moved his bowl to the other side of the fridge, he followed it. Elaine mopped the spot that he had previously occupied.

She rinsed the mop clean and stowed it in the corner of the pantry. Then she located a scrubbing sponge and a couple of rags and set to work on the counters and the range.

An hour passed. Elaine, soaked with sweat and sloshed soapy water, decided that any further work in the kitchen would require industrial chemistry, sanding, and paint. And carpentry. And maybe a controlled burn.

Using a screwdriver she found in the drawer with the key, she reattached the latch to the other side of the doggy door, making sure it wouldn't interfere with the opening and closing of the kitchen door.

She glared at Heathcliff. Heathcliff glared back.

Disappearing down the hall, she started warm water running in the bathtub. Presently, she came back to the kitchen.

Heathcliff stood guard next to his food bowl.

Picking up his bowl, Elaine carried it down the hall to the bathroom. Heathcliff dutifully followed. When they were both in the bathroom, Elaine closed the door behind them.

Heathcliff was too out of shape to put up much of a fight. Another half an hour passed, and Heathcliff emerged clean. He was white with ginger patches and a brown saddle-spot on his back.

Elaine took advantage of all the soapy water on the floor to mop in the bathroom. She went back for the scrub sponge as well. While she was in the kitchen, she replaced Heathcliff's bowl and added another scant cup of kibble. Heathcliff, grateful, chowed down.

After the bathroom had reached a stage similar to the kitchen, Elaine stripped off all of her clothes, rinsed them in the sink, and hung them from the shower curtain's bar. After draining and scrubbing the tub, she bathed herself as well.

Naked and freshly scrubbed, she located the phone in the kitchen. She called St. Francis Hospital and eventually got her called transferred to the nurse station on Paul's floor.

"No, I don't need to talk to Paul. Let him rest. Just give him a message when it's convenient. Tell him Elaine broke into his house and washed his dog. Yes, that's it. Thanks."

She hung up and went into the living room. Making herself comfortable on the sofa, she found the suite of remote controls for his entertainment center. After a few fits and starts, she turned on the television and relaxed.

Naked on the sofa, she and Heathcliff watched hardcore porn via satellite feed, unwilling to fiddle with the controls any further to locate anything else.

Heathcliff didn't seem to mind.

Chapter 12

You aren't graded on effort. You're graded on results. Effort generates sweat, but no guarantees on results.

Feel the world spin backwards forty-four hundred times.

* * * * *

Lindsey kneels down and ties a double knot in her shoelaces, then grabs a light jacket off the coat rack. She is thirteen. She is out the door, onto the porch.

The wind whips through the sky, dragged along by lumpy clouds the color of angry iron.

The sky above the front yard is an oven. It feels like the overcooked air in her upstairs room in the middle of summer. Even though the clouds dance, the air at ground level is still.

She bounces down the steps into the sandy yard. Overhead, the sky spins lazily. The clouds are sharks, circling. There is a spatter of mist, like ocean spray on the edge of a rocky cove.

Even the rain is hot. It mixes with the sweat in Lindsey's hair.

The sun has just set, having given up on piercing the clouds. It had even tried prying them up at the edges, which is usually easier, on its way down. No dice.

The sky lit up sporadically by way of the stuttery flashbulb pops of lighting that the angry clouds toss to one another, playing grimly.

Lindsey stares upwards, offended by the obscuring presence of the trees in the yard, of the two storey house, of the trees lining the yard and the driveway.

The yard and the driveway are empty of cars. Mom and Dad are still at work. Their shifts overlap. Mom will be home around eight, Dad, by midnight. They will both smell mildly of ozone and disassembled chickens and sweat.

A cart path leads from behind the house, past a willow, and through the woods to the cornfield. There is a steel gate, more rust than steel, in the barbed-wire fence across the path. It has been open since Dad stopped keeping horses in the field, before it was used for corn.

Any corn that grows there now is wild corn. Unruly corn. Mostly the field is occupied by old dried stalks and wild hay. The bordering trees are far away, though, when one stands in the center. So is the raised roadbed of the highway, the balancing field on the other wide of the highway, the trees on the other side of the other field. The sky is large there.

Lindsey will go down the path to the cornfield to watch the sky. Lindsey walks carefully, mindful of the mud.

As she rounds the back of the house, the willow whips its branches towards her, reaching, straining. The whole tree leans and roars at her, trying to shoo her back. The tall wheat-grass in the back yard whistles. Lindsey hauls up short, staring.

The willow lunges, but remains rooted.

Lindsey takes a breath and rushes past the willow. Its branches swat at her back and thighs as she runs past, stinging her lightly.

Lindsey sprints from the willow to the open gate. The sky explodes over her, the sound of it nearly knocking her off her feet. She was looking away, watching her feet, but still sees blue spots. Her back is pelted by a hail of small particles, like a rain of pebbles. She ducks into the woods and does not look back.

The wind howls down the cart path like wind in a tunnel. Lindsey has never been in a tunnel. She pulls her jacket around her, trying to keep the wind off her damp chest. Her legs are damp, too, and she can feel the wind through her jeans. For a little while. As she goes farther down the cart path, the wind gradually goes dead again.

Sweat and mist mingle on her neck, running down her back and down her budding chest, down her ribs inside her shirt. She lets her jacket fall open again.

The trees overhead shake and grumble, throwing needles and pinecones. They are backlit by flickering yellow and silver.

Lindsey follows the cart path out of the woods. She is momentarily taken aback by the figure of a giant man, crowned by lightning, bending over the trees on the far side of the field across the highway. Lightning flashes into the ground in the far woods. Lindsey watches as the thunder flattens the hay in a wave sweeping towards her. The deafening crack knocks her backwards into a poplar.

The giant cloud-man is gone. As her vision clears, she rights herself and creeps slowly out into the field. Some of the stalks are taller than she is, so she feels safe as long as she moves slowly. The tall grasses around her move and dance in hissing swirls, like being in the middle of an invisible ballet.

Lindsey has never been in a ballet. She has never seen a ballet, except for one time on television, when she crept downstairs to watch television after her parents had gone to bed. She thought it was beautiful, even though it appalled her to find herself interested in "girly" things.

Lindsey holds her arms out horizontal and spins slowly. The wind over her arms makes it seem like she is spinning twice, three times as fast. She watches the sky and not her feet.

The sky above her swirls in the opposite direction. Enthusiastically. Another peal of thunder tries to knock her off balance as she spins. She closes her eyes to determine whether she is dizzy from the spinning, from watching the sky spin. She falls over into the tall grass, rolling easily onto her back, laughing.

Lindsey feels drunk. Lindsey feels like an idiot.

Lindsey has never been drunk.

The hissing of the wheat-grass goes quiet. The oppressive, stifling heat returns.

Lindsey is in the present. Tense.

She wishes that it would start raining. If it were to rain, Lindsey would have to go home. She is scaring herself by being out here, exposing herself to the storm.

She hears a car zoom by on the highway, but she can't see it through the hay. She can't see the embankment, either, or the highway.

The silent air is hot. Above her the clouds bump into one another and climb over one another, like puppies in a box. Sweat lines her jacket, her shirt, her jeans. She feels her underwear clinging wetly.

She can no longer hear the car that had driven past.

The tops of the pine trees along her field start to wave. A gentle breeze descends.

It feels delicious, but it is not enough to peel the heat away from Lindsey's body. Knowing herself to be out of the view of the highway, Lindsey unbuttons her blouse, starting at her throat. Slowly she opens her shirt to allow the cooling breeze to lift the sweat from between her breasts, from her stomach. Feeling daring, Lindsey peels back her cotton brassiere and exposes her breasts. The wind gusts briefly, spattering her with a spray of droplets and then evaporating them quickly. It is freezing cold, but only for a moment.

Lindsey has not exposed her naked chest outside since she was six, before she moved south with her parents. She feels the risk of discovery as a high-frequency buzz in her spine and skull. The buzzing goes further down, nails her back to the ground.

She hears a distant car approaching, swears to herself that she isn't going to move to cover herself, swears to herself that she is invisible in the hay, in the dried corn stalks, in the spastically lit darkness. As the car swishes past, Lindsey's tension nearly levitates her from the ground. She chokes back a squeal.

Frozen in place, she listens to the sound of the retreating car. She releases her held breath. The sky brightens tremendously for a number of seconds. Thunder laughs at her. The cooling wind caresses her, soothing her raw nerves.

Lindsey can no longer see the circling clouds, but she can feel them. The nearby hay stalks bow over her.

Feeling even more daring, she unbuttons and unzips her jeans. Nervously she nudges the waistband downward, exposing her navel. She stops when she pushes them down to the top edge of her panties. Thunder rumbles again, but the sky remains dark. She waits, listening for the sound of a car. Hearing nothing but the hissing of the grasses, she hooks her thumbs under the elastic of her panties and, lifting her hips from the ground, pushes her jeans and panties down to just above her knees. Grass and shreds of dead cornstalks prickle her backside. Pulling her knees up, she pushes her jeans and panties down to her calves and quickly kicks her legs out straight.

Lindsey trembles with tension, with the fear of discovery. She refuses to allow herself to move.

The wind rises, swishing down into the field, tugging at the edges of her blouse and jacket. Loose stalks of hay are carried aloft, sprinkled over her. Mostly they are stalks that she broke free from the ground when she fell down and rolled over.

The sound of another car coming slowly moves into the foreground, gradually growing louder than the susurrations of the stalks and grasses. Perversely, Lindsey forced herself to splay her knees. And wait. Trepidation perfumed the sweat oozing from her pores.

The wind triples in strength. Lindsey begins to shiver. The trees howl and the power lines along the highway sing, nearly drowning out the sound of the passing car.

A spasm shoots through Lindsey as the car passes. Lightning illuminates the sky as she lies panting. She squeezes her eyes closed from the brightness, the images of the clouds burning into her retinas, slowly shifting to form an evil face. Gasping, she opens her eyes.

As her eyes sluggishly adapt to the blackness of the sky above the field, she realizes that the face is still there. And screams.

Her screams, as always, are drowned out by the thunder. Rain begins to pour from the sky, mixing with the sweat of her efforts to struggle, to inflict pain, to escape.

This moment, for Lindsey, is always in the present. Tense.

* * * * *

When Lindsey emerged from the field, more than half an hour had passed. She held the shreds of her clothes to her and limped down the wooded cart path, drenched to the bone and shivering. Everything hurt. She had thrown up from the pain twice already. Each hopping step jarred her arm and head and made her want to vomit again.

She hobbled along as gently as she could, periodically propping herself up against trees along the way.

As she hobbled into the yard, she saw the remains of the willow, still smoldering.

Lightning had split it into four pieces and strewn half of it around the back yard. Punishment for having tried to warn her, having tried to hold her back.

The lights were on in the house. One of the cars that had driven past while she was in the field had been her mother's car.

Lindsey began wailing. Blinded by tears of pain and shame, she hobbled across the open expanse of the yard and slowly pulled herself up the steps to the back door. Screaming hoarsely, she pounded on the back door with the edge of her right fist, jarring her broken bones horribly with each impact.

Elaine yanked the door open, her face contorted by horror.

* * * * *

Lindsey had been inconsolable. On Doctor Roan's advice, Lindsey was referred to treatment at the Cross Forks Center and placed in care as a resident patient. Lindsey kept trying to hurt herself, especially during thunderstorms. At the storm of Lindsey's incident had been the first real thunderstorm of the season. In her first week, she had tried to escape and had fallen from the exterior brick wall, re-breaking her arm. They had increased the dosage of her tranquilizers as much as they dared and held her through the worst of the stormy season. By the time she seemed ready for release to her parents' care, it was fairly obvious that she was pregnant.

* * * * *

Twins.

* * * * *

Another fragment: When Lindsey was going over her own medical records--she was eighteen before she got her hands on them--she found notes in her files that said that, among the numerous injuries she had incurred on the evening of her attack in the cornfield, that she had sustained first- and second-degree burns on her legs, buttocks, and down her right side. When she asked Elaine about any burns, Elaine remarked that she remembered Doctor Roan pointing them out.

While Lindsey could relive any other detail of the attack, she could recall no time when her attacker tortured her with fire or any kind of chemicals. The man who had pinned her had his hands full merely trying to hold onto her. He had used no weapons or tools that she could recall.

When she closed her eyes, she could remember the smell of the charred willow in the back yard, and a smell like burning hay.

Today, she can feel more than see a faint stripe of a scar from her right buttock, around to the side of her thigh, and down to her knee. But the scar is definitely there. At her hip it takes a strange, nearly right-angled turn. The peach-fine hairs on her leg avoid the stripe, which is the easiest way to tell it is there. And it itches when she sweats, or when there is a thunderstorm in the area.

* * * * *

Lindsey has a couple of other scars from the evening of the attack, but, similar to the scar on her leg, they aren't ordinarily visible unless you know what to look for. Like perhaps her other son.

* * * * *

Carlysle and Cassidy were born when Lindsey had been pregnant for barely more than five months. Her body, according to the best doctor her family could afford, had gotten confused by a teenage growth spurt and the pregnancy happening simultaneously.

Lindsey didn't much remember labor. A day or two passed in a bright blur, leaving her with two babies in glass boxes that she could visit maybe once a day for an hour or so.

Elaine took time off from work while Lindsey recovered, though it quite possibly cost her a promotion to do so. It was Lindsey's choice to accept home schooling rather than try to go back to the county's only public middle school, where she was certain she would suffer at the hands of her peers.

Lindsey was bright and hard-working. She would have her Graduate Equivalency Diploma at the age of sixteen.

* * * * *

Before her children were allowed to come home, Lindsey had a strange nightmare that, during a thunderstorm, a deer had broken into the nursery at the hospital. In her dream, the deer smashed one of the incubators with its hooves and ate one of her children. She was terrified that, in the confusion, she would never know which baby to grieve for.

* * * * *

Feel the world spin forward fifteen hundred times.

Carlysle is downstairs in the living room, on the floor with a book. He places the book on the coffee table, wedging it open with a fat hand. The book has no pictures in it.

Carlysle is proud of the book. It is his mother's book--one she has had since she was ten or eleven. He recognizes words out of it.

Splaying the pages open and smashing the book open with the weight of his elbow, he traces his progress with a finger and pronounces the words he knows. Lindsey follows along, also proud of her son's progress--but also interested in the show on television.

Carlysle has only a portion of his mother's attention, but even that was a hard-won battle.

Cassidy had been playing on the stairs, bouncing down them on his bottom in a way that would hospitalize anyone over the age of twelve.

Carlysle had the book. He was trying to get Lindsey to read to him, to teach him some of the words from this book. Cassidy wanted to show off, abusing himself on the stairs--or perhaps the other way around, as it is up for grabs whether hardwood construction is more durable than a determined four-year-old. It was Cassidy's idea to make Lindsey chase him up the stairs, or even better, perhaps applaud his athletic prowess as a budding stuntman.

Carlysle was angry. He knew that Cassidy was misbehaving, that his own selfish motives for getting and keeping his mother's attention were more pure and yet still doomed to failure. Carlysle began to cry quietly in frustration as Lindsey charged from her chair to go put a stop to Cassidy.

Upstairs Carlysle heard raised voices. Cassidy was ordered downstairs, to sit and be still for a time-out. Carlysle smiled. But he put his smile away when Cassidy's head appeared at the top of the stairs.

Cassidy sat down on the top step and slid down two steps on his bottom, looking petulant. Lindsey stomped down the stairs and grabbed Cassidy by the wrist, hauling him ungently to his feet and walking him at a brisk pace to the bottom of the stairs. At the bottom she pointed her finger to the chair that would normally be occupied by Elaine for television watching time. Cassidy dragged himself with portable four-year-old drama to the chair and climbed into it.

Lindsey resumed her seat on the sofa. Carlysle waved the book, and Lindsey beckoned to a spot on the floor at her feet, between the sofa and the coffee table. Lindsey, still irritated, was unwilling to read. She directed Carlysle to read to her instead.

Cassidy slumped angrily in the chair. Carlysle struggled with pronunciation. Lindsey struggled with concentration.

In the kitchen, Elaine struggled with dishes.

Thunder rattled windows and branches. The television went silent and all of the lights in the house went out. Elaine continued washing dishes.

The power came back on. The television was old enough that it came back on too.

After listening to a page or two of Carlysle's struggling, Cassidy asked to get up.

"Go play upstairs," Lindsey directs. "See if you can behave now. Try to be quiet for half an hour."

Cassidy hops up like he was launched via some spring mechanism from the chair, but tiptoes theatrically past the television and ascends the stairs.

Carlysle tries to read, sounding out words that are too difficult for him. Lindsey makes a game out of it in her head, trying to guess what word he is reading without looking down at the elbow-smashed book. When she has a guess, she says it out loud, then asks him to spell the word from the book. And she watches television. It is ballet. She gets up to change the channel to a sitcom. She twists a knob that clicks, and, vaguely dissatisfied, sits again on the sofa.

Outside wind tries to gnaw off the roof of the house. Upstairs a door slams, but it isn't Carlysle and Cassidy's bedroom door. From the kitchen, Elaine tells the household, "Sounds like the wind out there is gettin' uppity."

The window in Elaine and Robert's room never could close completely. When the wind was high, it constantly rattled the door to the hallway and to the closet. There was an attic entry in the ceiling of the closet as well, and the changes in air pressure constantly rattled the doors and windows in that room.

The entire house shudders when the wind kicks it. The rumbling sky laughs. The power dims and brightens, like in a movie where a man is executed by way of an electric chair.

Lindsey hears a snap upstairs as the closet door in Elaine and Robert's room pops open--and then a slam as the door closes again.

The images on the screen lose their color, and then ghost images tear themselves off and are blown away.

Lindsey listens for a moment and hears a rolling rumble that appears to come from the boys' bedroom.

She goes back to watching television.

There is a blast of lightning that lights the house, inside and out, for nearly a whole second. It is accompanied instantly by thunder that rattles dishes in the china cabinet in the kitchen.

The wind whips up into a loud howl. A door upstairs rattles in its frame. Lindsey assumes that it is the closet door in her parents' bedroom. She is correct.

Sudden hail pelts down onto the roof. It hisses and clatters in the yard, bouncing of the tinning on the porch roof and the body of Elaine's car and the bed of Robert's truck.

Robert is on the front porch, smoking his pipe and watching the storm.

Lindsey considers turning up the television but decides not to. The picture is largely unwatchable, like fireplace flames made of gray static. The sound is more stable, but not much more so.

Thumping comes from upstairs. A fresh peal of thunder makes an effort to drown it out, and the wind rises. There is a grinding, sliding noise as the roof sheds a shingle, followed by a harsh but unintelligible curse from the front porch.

The wind outside pushes a whiff of pipe smoke in under or around the front door.

Lindsey has never minded the smell of Robert's pipe smoke. He refused to smoke indoors, however, since she came home pregnant several years ago. He would sneak a pipeful every now and then in the spare room, but stopped even that when she was allowed to bring the boys home from the hospital.

The thumping upstairs quietened. So did the hissing hail.

Upstairs, hanging by the neck from a belt looped over the bar in Robert's closet, Cassidy stopped sweating, although it remained very stuffy and hot in the closet.

* * * * *

Feel the world spin forward.

Chapter 13

Frog's don't sweat, either. Frogs breathe through their skin. They regulate their temperature by getting in and out of the water, getting into and out of the shade.

Elaine found watching a couple hours of hardcore porn to be exhausting. She helped herself to a beer from Paul's fridge to take the edge off. While she was up, she visited the bathroom to discover that her clothes were still not dry enough to put back on, so, after a brief call to Lindsey to make sure everything was okay without her on the home front, she snuggled back into her spot on the sofa next to a dozing Heathcliff.

She missed Robert. She missed his pipe.

Elaine tried to determine experimentally whether porn was more effective with or without the sound turned up. She asked Heathcliff what he thought, but he didn't offer an opinion.

The vocalizations were occasionally sexy. The trash-talk didn't affect her much. The background music was laughable--but she figured legitimate artists would never agree to allow their music to be sullied like that. And judging by the apparent lack of budget for the productions, the movie producers would never be able to scrape together the cash to pay for anything decent.

Elaine found that odd, considering that distribution of porn was obviously a big business. Paul's entire system seemed to be designed to deliver an endless stream of grunting actors and actresses, glistening with sweat, directly to his living room. The actors and actresses didn't seem to be the types to be paid a lot of money, either. She found it charming that porn actors seemed to have a bit of flab here and there, a couple of pimples, maybe even a legitimate zit or two, and a few sags and wrinkles.

Porn tapes cost more at the video stores--and were usually of horrible quality. Where did all the money go?

Elaine wiped out an ashtray and poured a couple of swallows of beer into it for Heathcliff, who hopped off the sofa to lap it up.

* * * * *

Paul's truck lurked outside in the yard like a demon.

As Carlysle watched it, a large chunk of clay broke free from a wheel well and shattered on the hard-packed yard.

Paul's ancient beast of a truck, squatting in the yard, symbolized the demon in the woods. The one who chased his mother, the one who chased Cassidy and himself, the one who hospitalized Paul, attacking him like a vicious animal--with the tools of an animal.

Carlysle felt imprisoned in the house. He wanted to go outside and watch the storm clouds rolling over the sky. He didn't feel safe in the house, especially since he was all alone. His mother was at work and his grandmother was over at Paul's house, tending to his dog, and wouldn't be home until closer to his bed time.

Television sucked. He'd already read all the books in the house. He was tempted, even, to find his school books, maybe work ahead a little in his math book--and then he remembered that his schoolbooks were probably in Kentucky, or Nevada, or Japan. Carlysle was absolutely shocked to find that he missed them. Even the social studies text that hadn't been updated since 1970. Carlysle felt crazy.

He wanted to go outside.

He had felt a rush he had never felt before while running away from the clawed monster. He had felt invincible, like he was flying. He had been minorly worried that he had left Cassidy too far behind as he ran, but any time he looked, Cassidy was right behind his elbow. He wondered if he should worry about Cassidy, anyway, considering.

But Cassidy was out there, and he was worried about Cassidy.

Thunder crackled in the sky, and he wanted to go out and run until he collapsed. He wanted to know what it felt like to chase, rather than being chased. He wanted to go see the ruins of the school, to see if they found all the bodies, to survey the extent of the disaster from which he had escaped.

Carlysle wondered how many of his classmates were dead. He wondered how many of them he might run into in the woods along the path to the school. He imagined how annoying some of them would be to have around if they hung around like Cassidy did. He wondered if he could ask Cassidy to make them go away.

He wondered if the man in the woods were dead, whether Cassidy could make the man go away. Then he wondered if the man, if he were dead, could make Cassidy go away.

Cassidy was out there, and Carlysle worried about Cassidy.

Carlysle unbolted the front door. His hand hesitated on the doorknob for a long time. Sweat ran down his arm. He turned the doorknob and opened the door.

Cassidy went out onto the porch. He took a seat in the rocker by the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

He started the chair rocking. To his right, he noticed a man sitting on the porch swing.

Carlysle froze. His heart thudded loudly. Carlysle felt a peculiar dizziness wash over himself. He looked again at the porch swing, trying not to turn his head. Two people sat on the porch swing, the form closest to him nearly invisible in the shadow.

Carlysle hyperventilated as quietly as he could. He felt a tightness across his chest and tingling in the fingertips of his left hand that progressed into a mild pain in his left arm.

Nobody moved. Carlysle couldn't tell if his heart was beating. His vision started to darken.

The chain from which the swing hung squeaked. The swing moved slightly in the breeze.

Carlysle's heart thudded back to life in his chest, hammering rapidly. Still, nobody moved.

Gradually Carlysle turned his head. The form closest to him was Cassidy. Carlysle sucked in a slow, hesitant breath.

As Carlysle's vision adapted to the darkness, he gradually began to make out the form of a barefoot man in overalls sitting next to Cassidy on the swing. The man had no hair at all on his face, not even eyebrows. The man's mouth hung open, and he looked out towards the yard.

Cassidy had his eyes closed. But he was breathing.

Carlysle's hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat.

"Nnguh nngnngUH!" said the man, suddenly. But he did not move. Drool dripped from his open mouth onto his lap.

Carlyse nudged Cassidy very carefully with the toe of a shoe.

Cassidy opened his eyes slowly.

Carlysle wrinkled up his forehead drastically and gestured towards the man as well as he could using only his eyeballs.

Cassidy shrugged gently and whispered, "Creepy, ain't it?"

Carlylse whispered back, "You fucker! The both of you nearly scared me to death!"

Cassidy smiled wryly. Still whispering, he said, "He's watching the storm roll in. You could whack him with a stick right now and he wouldn't budge. He needs the storm in the sky to be able to do anything."

"Storm's coming!" Carlysle noted quietly. "It's almost here!"

Cassidy shrugged. "Maybe we should go inside, then."

Carlysle tipped the chair forward gently and slid out of it, gradually lowering his weight onto the tips of his sneakers, and then standing up. He wobbled.

"C'mon," he said.

Cassidy hopped off of the wide swing. It twisted crazily, slinging the man's drool in a long strand onto the wood of the porch.

Carlysle backed through the front door and Cassidy followed him through it, walking forwards, casually. Carlysle slammed it and locked the deadbolt. Outside, through the door, they heard the man say, "Nngnnguh! Uhuhnnguh GUH!"

"Jesus!" swore Carlysle. "How could you just sit there next to him? He's disgusting! And he hurt Paul!"

Cassidy shrugged. "It's like he's hibernating. Have you ever dug up a frog in the wintertime? He won't move until it's warm enough."

Carlysle shivered, covered in sweat. "It's hot as an oven out there!"

Cassidy shook his heat. "He don't need heat. It's like he needs a bunch of electricity in the air. He's frozen in place."

Through the door: "NGUHnnguhuh NNGUH!"

Carlysle looked downright angry. "He doesn't much sound frozen in place. I could have been killed out there!"

Cassidy opened his mouth to say something and shut it again, shaking his head. He shrugged again.

"I'm calling the sheriff. Should I call the sheriff?"

Cassidy half-shrugged. "Storm is coming. You might want him off the porch before Grandma drives up or Mom comes home."

"Jesus!" Carlysle swore again, and picked up the phone by the sofa. "Maybe I should just get Grandma's gun and shoot him or something."

Cassidy shook his head. "Not yet. He's just sitting there. It wouldn't be sporting."

Carlysle dialed 911. He tapped his foot.

"There's a weird man on my front porch." Carlysle looked out the window, but couldn't see the porch from where he stood. "I don't know, ma'am. He acts like some kinda retard or something. He's not moving or anything. He's just sitting on the swing, drooling, and saying 'Nnguh! Nnguh!' every now and then. He's staring up at the sky. Ca-- Can you send somebody by to run him off or something? I'm alone in the house, cuz Grandma's late coming home from work and Mom's at work and I think this guy might be the man that hurt somebody out in our woods last night." Carlysle rolled his eyes. "Leadbeater. I'm Carlysle. Our drive is the first one on the left on highway 81 coming back from route 87 by the Interstate. Beyond that I can't help you much because I'm not allowed to drive yet."

"NNGUHUHUHNGH!" expelled the man on the porch. It sounded like maybe he vomited, too.

"Yeah," remarked Carlysle. "That was him." Cassidy did the Kermit the Frog snicker, as quietly as possible.

The doorknob turned and the door rattled. Cassidy stopped laughing.

Carlysle jumped. "That's him trying to get in the door right now! Should I let him in? Do you want to talk to him? Fuck! Help me!"

"Nnguh UH UH UH NG!"

"I was kidding! No way in hell am I letting that freak into my house!"

Cassidy shook his head sadly. Carlysle rolled his eyes.

"Stop crying! Just get somebody out here! Jesus Christ!"

Thunder rumbled. Carlysle heard the porch door swing open and slam shut.

"Great," said Carlysle. "He's running off. They're gonna think I made it all up."

"I doubt that," giggled Cassidy. "I think he left a puddle on your porch. Maybe a couple of different kinds of puddles."

Carlysle wrinkled his nose. "You'd better be lying. That's nasty."

Cassidy shrugged. "You smelled him out there. You wanna go check?"

"That's okay, Cass. You can do it."

They sat on the sofa together, side by side.

Carlysle spoke next. "What you said about frogs hibernating. Is that why you only show up when it's stormy out?"

Cassidy twitched a shoulder. "Never thought about it. I guess. Maybe. I sleep a lot, but thunderstorms wake me up, make me feel like I ought to be moving around. Sometimes I try to wake up and I can't, like it's a nightmare or something. But most the time I don't have no trouble getting up."

"Where do you sleep, when you're not here?" Carlysle turned half sideways, pulling a leg up under him, kicking the other out repeatedly.

Cassidy waved an arm off to one side. "I got this hole I go down, off in the woods. It's snug and cozy. It feels warm, and it's quiet. I can show you, but you're too big to fit."

"Thunderstorms wake up lots of people," volunteered Cassidy.

Carlysle didn't know what to make of that--and didn't feel much like asking for clarification, just in case the answers would creep him out. "Does Grandpa ever wake up?"

Cassidy shrugged. "I ain't never seen him walkin' around. At least not after the funeral."

Carlysle remembered that the weather had been bad for Grandpa's funeral. He didn't remember seeing Cassidy there, but Carlysle had been very upset during the proceedings and stuck close to Lindsey. He had cried a lot.

Carlysle wondered in silence why his mom didn't want to have anything to do with Cassidy. Carlysle didn't want to die because it would make his mother not want him to be around any more. He felt guilty, because his mother spent all of her available time with him now and ignored Cassidy altogether. Cassidy didn't seem too hurt, though. Maybe a little sad. But Cassidy once voiced that he thought it was no less than he deserved for playing in Grandpa's closet like that and putting everybody through so much pain. Carlysle had found nothing to say to that.

"Do you think you'll ever stop coming around? Like Grandpa?"

Cassidy shook his head. "I dunno. Maybe one of these days I'll want to wake up, but can't, no matter how hard I try. Maybe I'll stop feeling like I need to wake up."

He added, "I never could sleep when it was thundering and lightning."

Wind started hissing through the trees across the yard. The picture on the television started wavering and flickering, throwing off ghosts. They watched as well as they could, trying to make out what was happening through the crappy picture and sound turned all the way down.

When the show was almost over, they began to hear a siren approaching, muffled by the high wind and roof noises. Carlysle almost jumped when he remembered that a sheriff's car would be coming to his house. He nudged Cassidy.

Cassidy wobbled his head back and forth on his neck, rolling his eyes. "I guess I'll go upstairs and visit my old hangout."

Carlysle winced.

Cassidy trudged up the stairs, getting younger step by step. He was maybe five, maybe six as he took off down the hallway.

The siren continued, burping and squawking strangely as the cruiser navigated the bumpy driveway. The siren shut off as the car pulled alongside the orange truck, but the red and blue lights kept swirling.

Booted feet stomped up the steps. Carlysle hopped up from the sofa and went to the door. He was trembling.

The loud knock on the door startled Carlysle badly, even though he was expecting it. Carlysle opened the door, impelled into action by the fear of another loud knock.

On the porch was a tall white man in a tan uniform. He had the same kind of badge as John Dooley. He was smiling grimly.

"Are you Carlysle Leadbeater, sir?"

Carlysle's forehead wrinkled, stunned completely out of his fear by being referred to as "sir." Carlysle nodded.

"I'm Deputy Jimmy Hanson, Carl. Does your porch light work? Would you mind turning it on?"

"Sure!" Carlysle flipped the second switch by the door.

Apparently Cassidy hadn't been lying. Evil smells drifted in through the open door.

Hanson turned slowly, surveying the porch. He pointed at the damp spot on the porch swing. "Did you do that?" he joked.

"Nuh uh," Carlysle responded.

"Your folks home yet?"

Carlysle shook his head.

"Tell ya what, my man. You close this door back and lock it. I'm gonna take a peek around the place with my gun and my flashlight in my hands. If you hear me shout or fire a shot, you call 911 again. If I don't find anybody out here, I'll come back and sit here with you until your folks show up. I'll shine my flashlight through your front windows, one, then the other. Got it?"

Carlysle nodded.

"Good man. Oh, is your Mom still at work?" When Carlysle nodded again, he continued, "Can you give her a call and tell her I'm here and that I'm poking around out here? She'd probably like to know. Franklin back at the desk is a basket case. I'm sure you'd do a much better job of it."

"Sure," Carlysle said.

"Close and lock," Hanson reminded.

"Yes, sir."

"Good man," Hanson remarked again. He spun briskly around and marched off the porch.

Carlysle closed and locked the door.

As he sat on the sofa, Carlysle thought about the hibernation thing that Cassidy had mentioned. If the maniac could move only when there was a thunderstorm brewing, then he would have had to be on the porch swing since early this morning. Even if he had been sitting really still, then his grandmother would have seen him on her way to work this morning, and he and Lindsey would have seen him any of the several times they had been in and out.

It made Carlysle's flesh crawl to imagine them walking past the stationary freak on the swing time and again, acting like he wasn't there. Like it made Carlysle's flesh crawl to remember Cassidy sitting on the swing next to the drooling, staring man. Carlysle's heart started thumping again.

So Cassidy was wrong, and the monster could have moved any time he had wanted.

Or maybe he could just show up places, blip from place to place without walking. Like maybe he could just blip to the spot next to Carlysle on the sofa.

Suddenly sweat ran down Carlysle's ribs. He stared at the spot next to him, willing it to remain unoccupied. He fought to take slow, deep breaths.

Grandma will be home soon, he told himself. Besides, he doesn't need to blip right now. He can walk around.

Lightning flashed outside the front windows, blending with the swirly lights from Hanson's cruiser. The lightning appeared to agree with Carlysle.

Deputy Hanson was cool, but a bit scary. Carlysle decided that he would rather Grandma be here instead. He wondered what was keeping her, knowing that it didn't take six hours to feed a stupid dog.

He decided that Elaine was probably cleaning Paul's house. He imagined that it was probably a pig sty.

After about ten minutes Carlysle remembered to call Lindsey at work.

* * * * *

Deputy Hanson, true to his comments earlier, drew his gun and his flashlight.

Why can't creepy people hang out around houses that don't belong to them in the daytime, when I can see 'em? I hate this. I should have the kid out here with my gun and my flashlight while I cower in the living room, watching television until Mommy gets home. The gun would make him brave, whereas it doesn't do a damned thing for me anymore. Paul Kirkland had a gun and he's laid up at St. Francis right now. Of the four times I've had to fire at people in the past eight years, I've missed. I refuse to count the 'possum that snuck up on me out at Grady's place, and I only winged it. I hate this. I hate this.

Lightning flashed, and a moment later thunder rumbled. The rumbling shook rain free of an overhead cloud. It came down hard enough to be annoying--but not so hard as to make one think it wouldn't come down any harder if it felt like it.

Hanson swore under his breath. Oh yeah? Well I hate you too, God.

He didn't have a hand free to pull his collar up to the back of his neck. Rain blew off the brim of his hat and dribbled down his neck. At least I won't be falling asleep out here while I hunt weird incontinent retard fucks. Homicidal violent fucked-up crackhead weird incontinent retard fucks. And I'll bet he fucks his mother, too.

A spectacular lightning stroke lit the yard all the way around him. He saw a rabbit dashing away across the driveway in a zigzag pattern. He declined to shoot at it.

The bang of the thunder nearly lifted him off his feet, nearly made him shoot the rabbit anyway. Sweat and rain loosened his grip on his pistol.

Hanson sauntered over to Paul's pickup. He hopped up onto the back bumper and looked quickly into the bed of the truck. For the brief instance he was able to see the whole bed of the truck, he was unable to distinguish a single detail of anything that might have been in the bed. He reviewed the image in his head, and tentatively identified a tire, and maybe a wadded up tarpaulin. Maybe an old Styrofoam ice chest, largely demolished. The image in his head didn't seem to contain any spaces into which a grown man, even a small one, would fit, so he didn't take a second look.

Hanson hunkered down and waved his flashlight under the truck. Another rabbit bolted and Hanson thumped his chest with the back end of the flashlight trying to get his heart started again. If a rabbit kills me, I will never live it down.

The logical inconsistency gave him no trouble.

He walked around the house towards the tool shed. Tucking the flashlight in an armpit, he turned the knob and yanked the door open. The beam of the flashlight revealed yard tools, an old bicycle, and an electric pump for a well--pretty much exactly what Hanson kept in his own tool shed. The pump kicked on by way of saying hi. Hanson closed the door again.

On the roof of the shed, a man stood, motionless, staring at the sky with his mouth open. From where Hanson stood, the man's outline blended somewhat with the oak on the other side of the shed. Hanson moved on.

I'm thinking about this wrong, he told himself. I'm dealing with a moron that doesn't know to come in out of the rain. He's not going to be in a shed, or under a car, or under a porch. He's gonna be high-tailing it to the middle of some fucking field somewhere, daring God to smack him down with lightning. I ought to be standing right out there next to him. I hate this.

* * * * *

Elaine to Deputy Hanson, upon finding him in her recliner, watching sitcoms on the static-riddled television with Carlysle: "You again? You can buy your own cigarettes up at the store, you know."

She hung a sweater on the coat rack.

Hanson grinned and stood up. "Not on what I get paid, ma'am. Did anyone tell you what's going on yet?"

Elaine shook her head. Carlylse fidgeted.

Hanson continued. "Carl here gave us another call. Appears somebody came up on your porch while the boy was here alone. They kinda made a mess out there, too. Got sick or something. Carl thinks he run off when he heard the siren coming--which was fine by me. I poked around as well as I could in the dark and I didn't find nothin'. I called in and Sheriff Dooley says we're gonna bring the dogs back out tomorrow. In the meanwhile, keep the doors and windows locked. When it's time for Lindsey to come home, she shouldn't walk--either you or me or someone else from the station should drive her. Will you be up long enough to get her tonight?"

Elaine's face had no clear expression, but her eyes were somewhat wide. "I will now," she replied.

Hanson bobbed his head. "If that's so, then I'll take my leave. Make sure Lin knows that she ain't to walk home tonight, no matter what happens--she can call us if she needs to. And we'll be here round about dawn with a buncha hounds, so don't expect that you can sleep in." He grinned again. "Sorry y'all're havin' a rough time. Don't know what the world's comin' to."

As he moved past Elaine towards the door, he said, "We're gonna have someone drive by every hour or two. Keep the lights on downstairs where you can when you go to bed tonight, and keep a phone close to the bed if possible. And we'll see y'all bright and early. G'night--and lock the door behind me."

* * * * *

Dark clouds spun across the nighttime sky. Legs slowly formed from the clouds in the gradual way that clouds form shapes while you watch--over a minute, an hour, an afternoon--and descended, walking upon a field. The towering thunderhead extruded arms from the anvil top and a head. Horns of lightning arced upwards to the next layer of cloud above. Stars flickered in and out of view as the cloud walked. The head bent down, the arms brushed the tops of the trees aside. The giant lightning-crowned man looked between the parted trees into the woods, searching. The Hunter's hounds howled and bustled between the trees.

* * * * *

What does a rabbit think about when it runs? Does it worry about not being fast enough? Does it secretly want to stand and fight? Does it think, Here comes a hiding place? I need to zig left and zag right?

Rabbits run.

* * * * *

Morgan, done smoking, tapped the ash out of his pipe into a tall glass of clean, clear liquid, perhaps too syrupy to be pure water, but maybe not. He stirred the ash into the glass with a long flat metal spoon, watching the swirling darkness with unblinking yellow eyes shot through with red capillaries, surrounded by raw and sagging eyelids.

He walked slowly with the glass from his backyard shed out into the yard. A goat bleated and bumped his thigh with its head. Ignoring the goat, he held the glass up and looked at the moon through the cloudy swirls.

He drained the glass in one long draft. He set the glass on the ground near a fractured stump.

Taking a seat on the stump, he rolled a large drum to the space between his feet and began a simple, familiar rhythm.

* * * * *

What does a wolf think when it hunts? Does it worry about going hungry? Does it secretly wish that the rabbit would cut out the tedious running and climb into the wolf's mouth? Does it think, Surely the rabbit will think that next shadow is a safe place to hide? I can run forty-five thousand more paces before I fall over from hunger?

Wolves hunt.

* * * * *

Paul felt the hair stand up on his arms and legs, and also what hair remained on his head stood. He lay on his back, spread-eagled on soft loam and fallen branches. A branch lay painfully across his throat, more branches pinned his body to the ground, piercing him. He was unable to move. A beast of some sort--maybe a boar, maybe a wolf, maybe a cat--worried at his throat, biting at it around the branches, trying to open the wound larger to drinking his flowing blood.

Frustrated, the beast ran around his body in counter-clockwise circles, trying to figure out how to him through the branches so that it could eat him. It forced its muzzle between jabbing twigs to peel a strip of flesh from his chest, tugging viciously to pull the meat free. Paul was unable to scream. Or move.

The beast, unable to pull the strip of skin and muscle away, gnawed at it, attached as it was, biting tiny fragments free and chewing, nuzzling branches aside to try to get a better grip.

It wasn't until the beast started grabbing branches with its teeth, trying to drag them off of Paul's body, that he started to panic. The branch on top of his chest was starting to move, and that would expose Paul's throat and the rip across his chest....

Paul was unable to sit up, unable to scream, but he tried both. His body was on fire in a thousand places when he woke, thrashing enough to wake the muffled and plastered person with whom he shared the semi-private room at St. Francis Hospital.

* * * * *

Dooley, exhausted, slept the sleep of the dead in his own bed at his house instead of at his office. In his dream, he saw two white boys--or mostly white boys, given their state of filth--playing tag, chasing each other through the woods.

A man watched them with evil intent from deeper in the woods. On the other side of where they play, a thing watched them--and the man. Somehow he knew that it stalked the man and cared nothing for the boys one way or the other. But it would happily rend them to get to the man.

Overhead, the sky grew dark. The clouds boiled with thunder and lightning and the promise of hail. The sky would kill them all--children, man, and thing.

Sometimes he was the man. Sometimes he was the thing. Sometimes he was the sky.

As disturbing as this dream was, Dooley never even came close to waking up. A sheriff is used to nightmares and sleeps when he gets the chance, like a soldier.

* * * * *

Elaine listened to the wind howl. She listened for the sound of Robert's truck, waiting for the laboring grind of a V8 navigating the tortuous driveway. The sky outside the window was the leaden gray of blizzard season in Wisconsin.

The wind howled like a beast. It tried its best to simulate truck noises, trying to lure Elaine outside, or at least out onto the porch, where it would crunch her old bones like ice.

That's not Robert's truck. Robert's truck is never going to come. I wish that was Robert's truck. I know that's not Robert's truck. Robert's truck is never going to come. Please, God, let Robert's truck come. God, that sounds like Robert's truck!

Elaine waited for the inevitable time that it would be worth dying, being crunched in the teeth of the icy beast, to find out if the freezing, howling wind in the sky might actually be Robert's truck coming down the driveway.

* * * * *

Carlysle dreamed that he could fly. In the sky, he was a monstrous size.

He soared, the wind bearing him aloft. He chased a tiny deer on the ground with his shadow, watching it weave between the trees. He reached out. If he concentrated right, he could lift it with his hand and not drop out of the sky....

It didn't disturb him much that he planned to pop the deer into his mouth and chew it, kicking and thrashing, while it was still alive.

* * * * *

This man dreamed he was a little boy. This man dreamed that he died when he was four and was buried in a secret funeral, attended by frogs and mice.

But his eyes were open, and he was standing on top of a tool shed.

There was no one to chase, nothing to hunt. It was going to be a rough night for this man. The Hunter was above ground and listless, moving in the sky, moving in the woods.

It was time to run. He smelled the Hunter's scent. The Hunter was careless and upwind.

Covered by the noise of thunder, this man jumped from the roof of the tool shed to the bole of the oak and slid down the trunk, toes digging gently into the bark to slow his slide. On his way to the path through the woods to the old corn field, he passed the stump of the lightning-blasted willow in a big circle.

The ghost of the willow whipped his back, leaving oozing welts. He charged past the willow, snarling his pain, and fled down the path.

Behind him, the hounds began to follow.

This man ran for a while, then angled off the path, deeper into the woods and away from the highway. He slowed to a jog, angling for a poplar with boards nailed to it and a rickety deer stand perched among the middle-high branches. This man climbed the tree, carefully, testing his weight on each board. He pulled himself onto the narrow stand.

The wind kicked the tree repeatedly, trying to dislodge him. This man held on with hands and toes and teeth.

Looking around to the nearest trees, this man gauged the distance to a nearby pine. Climbing higher, he waited for the wind to heel his tree over a bit and jumped, half-falling, half-scrambling through the branches of the next pine over. He slid down the tree about fifteen feet, total, before he caught himself on a limb that would hold his weight. Catching his breath, he climbed further up the pine and leaped again. The next pine he landed in leaned way over under his weight, delivering him gently to a sweet gum tree.

He scrambled up the gum tree to the largest branch that would support his weight and kicked off again, finding another pine. This pine cracked when he hit it and shed two dead branches, one of which whacked him on the shoulder as it came down. He fell, but managed to catch himself on a lower branch by his legs. Gently he lowered himself to the next branch down, righted himself, and slid down the trunk.

The Hunter's dogs still worried the old poplar with the deer stand. This man angled back quietly towards the path, picking his pace slowly and avoiding mud and loose piles of leaves. He stopped about thirty yards shy of the path and walked parallel to it towards the field.

At the edge of the field, he stopped again to watch the sky. His mouth hung open, panting. Drool swung down from his lower lip, vanishing in the darkness.

Getting down on his hands and knees, he began to crawl out into the field. The rain poured down, drenching his back, cooling the welts and scratches from the tree branches, both phantom and real.

In the middle of the field, he reverently unbuckled the shoulder straps on his overalls. Rising to his knees, he shoved his overalls down to the ground. The rain soothed and stung his scratches, washed away his sweat, and delineated the creases from the burn-scar he had gotten in this very spot. When he had lain on top of the girl. When the lightning had killed him, more than a decade ago.

This man laid down on the ground, lower than the grass, and hid from the Hunter and his hounds.

Lightning hit him anyway, out of spite.

* * * * *

Lindsey watched while her son was carried aloft by a spinning wind. Blood began to rain from the sky as the winds took him apart.

Lindsey woke, breathing heavily. Her sheets were soaked with sweat.

* * * * *

Thus the night passed.

Chapter 14

The faster you run, the farther apart your drops of sweat are when they hit the ground, and the fainter your scent trail is. But the faster you run, the more you sweat, and the more scent you leave behind. You have to choose.

Heathcliff heard the hounds barking and snuffling even though they were miles away. He shoved his way through the doggie door and trotted around the house, headed purposefully toward the front gate.

Heathcliff howled at the grayness of the pre-dawn fog. He bayed at the emptiness of the house and at the fullness of the sky. He barked at the distant sound of a drum, audible more through the pads of his feet than through the deafening, cloying fog.

He nosed at the latch to the gate, but could not lift it. He sat on his haunches at the gate and whined.

In passing, Cassidy reached over the gate and patted Heathcliff on the muzzle. He also flipped the catch on the gate. Heathcliff nudged it open and headed out of the yard and onto the verge of the highway.

In the chill, Cassidy tucked his hands into the pockets of the oversize black nylon jacket that said "SHERIFF" on the back. The dog trotted on ahead.

* * * * *

The mist sat still--and then lunged about in maddening swirls. The wind knocked the heads of trees together. In a section of the old pine forest where fire had struck earlier in the dry summer, it rained dead branches.

The fog lifted up off the ground, but it did so merely to obscure the loose branches and twigs, to make dodging them more of a challenge.

The hounds took it in stride. Falling branches were someone else's problem. They tugged at their leads and spent their efforts sorting out the smells of wild woods and wild animals, trying to find the trail of a wild man.

They had spent half an hour familiarizing themselves with the scents of people not to track, plus a few moments sniffing at items of interest on the porch of the tame people. Each dog had taken a tour of the site of Paul's attack and had toured the inside of the tool shed. A couple of the dogs had seemed interested in climbing the tool shed's overshadowing oak out of sheer exuberance. These were the same dogs, a scant half hour later, that also wanted to climb up to the deer stand in the poplar.

Six dogs danced around the base of the poplar. A swirling fog obscured the platform itself. Two old men gathered the leads for the dogs, hauling them away from the tree. Two deputy sheriffs, one of whom was Jimmy Hanson, played "Rock, Scissors, Paper" to see who would have to climb up the tree, balancing on fog-slicked boards of unknown age and the growth-weakened grip of ancient nails.

Halfway up the tree, moving slowly and cautiously, Hanson regretted shelving his first impulse of drawing his gun for his choice in the "Rock, Scissors, Paper" game.

Hanson was on edge. The ground seemed misty and distant--and so did the branch where the deer stand was perched. Mysterious grunts and crackles came from the ground, perplexing thumps and vibrations came from above. Hanson tried to think of a way to hold his gun in his teeth and still be able to fire it if necessary.

He imagined that the concussion and mouthful of cracked teeth from firing a .45 clenched in his jaws, even if it were anatomically possible, would probably not impress the chicks at the pool hall. Then he thought about the types of men most of them went home with and changed his mind.

He decided he would need a longer tongue to pull the trigger, which he concluded would possibly also make him more popular with the ladies.

After damned near slipping off of one of the sketchy supports, Hanson decided that if he had somehow managed to sprout a long prehensile tongue, he would have just spat out his gun and would now be using his tongue to hold onto the tree.

Hugging said tree, he absently wondered if he would be worse off or better had he snorted more crystal meth before coming out here this morning. He imagined that the new bark-scrapes on his face would probably be considered fetching to the concussed, broken-teeth fanciers.

Grimly setting his non-dislocated, non-broken-toothed jaw, Hanson scrambled a couple of rungs higher into the poplar. As he twisted around to the side of the tree with the stand, he noted with some amount of relief that the stand was empty. He pulled himself over the raw piece of lumber that served as a rail and sat on the platform, back against the bole of the tree, aware of a fullness in his bladder.

He toyed with the idea of whizzing on the men and dogs below as a form of punishment for sending him up here. He toyed with the idea of faking the sounds of a scuffle so as to trick someone else into making the climb to come to his aid. He toyed with the idea of flinging himself out of the stand and breaking a few limbs, thereby excusing himself from the rest of this brain-damaged manhunt.

A hound below whuffed an editorial comment on the time Hanson was wasting. Hanson mentally willed it to come up to where he was and say that again.

He turned around as well as he could, holding onto any convenient handhold to steady himself. There were no bodily smells he could detect, no fresh breaks or scuffs on the bark that he could see--but he had managed to not mark things up too badly in his own scramble over the rail. No reason to rule out that someone else had been up here, though.

Looking over the rail, Hanson could barely make out that the ground even existed.

The wind chose that moment to give the poplar a mighty kick. In his mind, Hanson flipped over the rail and plummeted to his death. In reality, Hanson slipped to his knees and held onto the rail with both arms, nearly losing control of his full bladder. Sweat positively squirted from his pores, drenching his clothes and chilling his limbs. His vision went red with the flush of blood to his head, and he shook as the blood retreated to his limbs.

"Coast is clear up here," he called down. "Dogs must be smoking something. I'll be down in a moment." Or sooner, should the wind knock me out of the tree.

I hope I land on one of those damned dogs, he added to himself.

Holding onto the bole of the tree, he slid underneath the rail and maneuvered a foot around to the topmost rung, which canted crazily under his unbalanced weight. When his other foot reached it, the rung balanced itself out. Moving his left foot to the center of the rung, apparently spiked in place with a single nail, he slid his other foot downwards to the rung a couple of feet lower, and gradually lowered himself to the ground.

Shortly after his feet touched the ground, Hanson whirled around and leaned his back against the tree. "We're not going anywhere," he declared quietly, "until I smoke a cigarette. Who's got one?"

A brief moment later, they were all smoking except for the dogs.

* * * * *

This man squirmed on the ground, trying to unkink cramp-locked muscles. Grayness filled his eyes and cotton filled his ears. Warmth trickled along his right forearm, and there was a strange sticky pulling further up his arm. It felt like it was being pinched lengthwise. His right hand hurt, too, like there was an enormous crushing weight on the back of his hand.

This man saw a brown crust caking his upper arm, with a thin trickle of red fluid walking along it like a blurry stream of ants. The crust gave way to a row of watery blisters along the back of his forearm. The pounding ache in his hand corresponded to the charring and the two missing fingers. His thumb and forefinger remained, as did his pinky--but he could not feel his pinky finger.

Bile trickled from between this man's lips, but it had no force behind it. It hurt to breathe. He had no strength to vomit.

He needed water. Rolling over onto his stomach, he slowly stretched his legs out behind him. He licked condensation off of the grass and hay stalks. He grazed like a cow or a deer, grinding grasses between his teeth and sucking the juice out of them, spitting out the fibers.

He felt no need to moan. His maimed hand moaned for him. He could feel his missing middle and ring fingers bloating and stretching and shrinking back to miniscule nubbins.

He spent an hour licking and chewing the grass. He licked the rain and dew from his left arm when he found he could draw it to his mouth. He felt a small puddle of water rolling around on the small of his back, mocking him.

This man tried to pull his feet under him. Tortured muscles screamed and creaked, and it felt like his feet were tied together with a rope. Kicking gently, he freed his feet from his overalls. Wriggling around, trying to stay low, he dragged the overalls to his mouth and sucked moisture and rain-diluted foulness from the ancient cotton fibers.

Thunder rumbled nearby and a light rain began to fall as a rustling curtain blown by the wind. He allowed the rain to re-soak his overalls. This man tried to move his right arm as little as possible. He used his left hand, cramped and wet as it was, to try to pluck tiny hairs from where his eyebrows should have been. His grip was too weak, too slicked, too cramped to get a grip on the tiny hair he found.

The throbbing and swelling of his missing fingers mocked him, too. He felt them stretching, growing worm-thin and snake-long, digging into the soil and anchoring him in place.

The drizzling rain pried at the brown crust on his arm. His arm sang its agony at a pitch no human could hear. He felt it gradually go numb--until the time a tickling tremor shook it.

This man laid there until his arm went numb again. The sky flickered briefly and chuckled a baritone laugh.

This man wriggled back into his sopping overalls, listening to muffled barking and snuffling in the distant woods. He buckled them one-handedly and wriggled slowly across the field, heading directly toward the path to the house, dragging his right arm behind him.

* * * * *

An hour later, Heathcliff trotted through the middle of the field, pausing briefly to eat a pair of charred fingers, crunching the toasted bones in an unconcerned fashion.

* * * * *

Morgan couldn't feel his hands any more, but that was okay. Morgan could still feel the beat. He took a break every now and then, when thunder rumbled. Baron Tonnerre could play his own damn drums if he felt like it. He worked the beat around the thunder's periodic outbursts, noting that they were starting to get closer together.

Rain marched across the yard, but none fell on Morgan, the lightning-blasted stump, or his drum. Or maybe it did, but none of the three of them noticed. Nor did the rain disturb the crude drawing of a double-bitted axe sprinkled on the clay in front of them in flour.

It wasn't rain that dripped out of Morgan's white hair. It was sweat.

The thunder would have to take over for Morgan soon, because soon Morgan would have to go to work.

* * * * *

Cassidy fought the wind. It kept whacking at him like a sledgehammer, trying to blow him out into the highway or down into the ditch. At one point it filled his stolen jacket and lifted him fully from his feet, dragging him several paces backwards. Cassidy laughed and leaned forward, pushing back. If Carlysle was here, he thought, the wind would carry him wherever he wanted to go.

From out over a nearby field, Cassidy heard a familiar freight-train sound. The funnel stayed high in the sky, however, remaining blunt and shallowly sloped. Rain whipped at him sideways, from the left and then from the right. Cassidy pulled the jacket closer around himself, wet hair streaming.

The water and wind were horribly warm. Cassidy expected hail any minute.

The tornado wannabe paced alongside him, steadily trying to pull him off the road. Cassidy considered running out into the field to see if it would give him a lift, seeing as it was going in the same direction he was. Off in the distance, he heard old Heathcliff's wheezing, coughing bay.

Cassidy fought to walk faster.

* * * * *

Carlysle stood in the middle of Robert's room. He shut the door to the hallway.

He didn't know why he was here.

After Robert died, Elaine had moved into the room that they had used for storage and for an office. She had not been able to stand the emptiness of their old room, so she had abandoned it. She shoved a few boxes from the old office into the corner of Robert's room and moved in a bed. Gradually more stuff had migrated here or there, most of it ending up in the attic or donated to charity. The room she had shared with her husband was now left to stray drafts and stray ghosts. And, for the moment, Carlysle.

As he walked toward the window, the curtains billowed out into the room, reaching for him. He imagined the wind trying to suck his ghost from his body. He knew he had to find some way to close the window, to stop the soul-sucking draft.

Carlysle knew that Cassidy went in and out of the house through the window. Cassidy would climb the ghost of the old lightning-struck willow and jump to the pecan nearer the back porch, and then walk up to the second story window. The window that never closed.

Carlysle knew he had to find a way to close the window, but he didn't walk to shut Cassidy out. But if Cassidy could get in, so could the monster the dogs were hunting.

Carlysle backed up beyond the reach of the curtains and tried to think.

Stronger people than he had tried to move the panes over the course of ten years. People with access to tools and chisels and screwdrivers and, for that matter, money to have professionals repair or replace the window.

Carlysle batted the groping curtains aside and had a look anyway.

The top pane had slid down maybe an inch. The bottom pane was moved upwards a similar amount. There was steel or aluminum tracking, none of which looked, in the flickering light, crimped or blocked--or at least not in a major fashion.

Carlysle noted that the lower pane raised easily. He was able to force the upper pane lower with a bit of effort, and then panicked when it refused to be coerced into moving upwards. The gap at the top was now eight inches. He whacked upwards at the wooden frame. He tried to twist the frame clockwise and counterclockwise--after which it broke free in its track again and slid upwards fairly easily. Until it got within an inch of the top.

Carlysle wiped sweat from his forehead.

He climbed into the windowsill and inspected the top of the frame. It wasn't very dusty, since the wind had been blowing over it for a number of years. The tracks looked smooth, not painted over.

He considered that maybe the rectangular framing for the window had been compressed as the house settled, that maybe something had shifted while the window had been open, and that the window frame was no longer square.

He considered going to find his grandfather's square from the tool closet, but then thought about what he would have to do to fix the window if it were out of square. What would he have to do? Prop one side of the house a little higher? Push on one side of the house with Paul's old truck? Remove the interior trim, hammer a wedge, and insert shims between the framing and the studs? Ludicrous, at least without help.

He considered hammering on the frames for the panes--and imagined the glass shattering at the first blow. He imagined using a scissors jack from the trunk of Elaine's car, thinking that he could jack up the upper, exterior pane while standing on the roof of the back porch. If he jacked the lower pane down first, then he could open the upper pane, climb out, jack the upper pane closed, pitch the jack off the roof, and shinny down the pecan.

It would help tremendously if we had a ladder, he thought. I'll need two pieces of wood to protect the window framing or I'll never hear the end of it. And the keys to Grandma's trunk. And permission to go outside. Fuck.

If I just had the wood, I could nail it over the gaps. But unless I nailed the panels together, they'd still slide up and down. The problem's that they won't lock closed.

He considered jamming wood in the tracks to keep the window from moving, but any wood jammed in to block the upper panel could be removed from outside. No good locking a door and leaving a key outside.

And then the answer occurred to him. It was a matter of finding some sturdy scraps and blocks of wood and a hammer, all of which were inside the house.

As he turned to jump down from the windowsill, he was wrapped completely by the curtain. He fought himself free and dashed out the door, headed for the scraps of wood kept in the utility room with the washer and dryer.

He came back moments later armed with scraps of wood and an old black claw hammer.

He fought his way past the aggressively minded curtains and established himself at the window seat. He shoved the lower pane up as far as it would go and set a large block in the window sill. Carlysle sorted through the various lengths of two-by-fours until he found one that could brace diagonally, as close to vertical as possible, upwards from the block to a lower corner of upper pane. He tapped the bottom of the two-by-four with the hammer, driving it closer to vertical--and the upper pane shifted upwards microscopically. Encouraged, he tapped a little harder and got maybe a quarter inch of movement.

Carlysle popped the brace free and moved the block to the other side. Mirroring the procedure for the other side, he got the upper pane to slide up another quarter of an inch.

Through the wide-open window, he heard the hoarse baying of an old dog, muffled by the white-noise hissing of the wind in the treetops. Mist blew in his face.

He broke his bracing free and moved it to the other side again. After a couple of repetitions, the bottom edge of the two-by-four was basically splinters, but the top pane was completely closed. Carlysle felt like jumping up and down, but decided to save it for if he survived through the day.

He sat his tools on the dresser and climbed back into the window sill. He forced the lower pane down as far as he could make it go without the hammer and brace. It was close to three inches short of being closed.

He worried about Cassidy. He didn't want to shut Cassidy out. Maybe he could open his own window for Cassidy to come in through when this was all over, but that would leave Cassidy shut outside with the monster right now. Carlysle wondered if Cassidy would be okay in his hole in the ground, whether the monster-man would be able to hurt Cassidy or bother him in his hole.

Carlysle, tottering a bit, held the block against the top of the interior of the window frame and tried to put the brace into place. He dropped the block on his head and had to jump out of the window sill before he fell over. Swearing feebly under his breath, he climbed back up, collecting his tools and trying again.

Lightning lit up the sky and thunder boomed. Carlysle nearly dropped everything, but managed to hold himself in the windowsill by bracing a foot against the dresser.

Covered in sweat, he got his balance and set to work. It was slower going, and he dropped his block again. He even bobbled the hammer once, but managed to toss it onto the bed rather than let it hit the floor.

Lightning illuminated the back yard. There was a man in overalls crouching in the middle of the yard.

Carlysle yelped and smacked his knuckles with the hammer. Whimpering, he moved the brace to the other side of the window and continued. He left the brace in place until he could turn the circular latch and lock the window closed.

The man in the yard watched him work.

Carlysle knocked the brace free and bolted from the room, leaving the block of wood bouncing on the floor.

* * * * *

Elaine shook behind the wheel of her car. She toyed with the idea of pulling over, but decided that if she were to do so, it would happen much further up the road.

She reviewed the images burned into her mind.

First, there was the downed branch in the ditch that looked like, in the darkness and swirling mist, a deer getting ready to run out into the road. She had slowed way down.

Then, coming around the curve, she had seen a naked man standing up in the middle of the field, pulling up his overalls and buckling them. There was blood dripping from his right hand.

She could see it all perfectly in the station wagon's headlights. She saw him again in her mirrors, illuminated by a lightning flash, after she drifted past.

That was the field where her daughter had been attacked and raped by a vicious brute of a man with wild hair and no clothes other than dirty overalls. That was the field where Robert's truck had come to rest, flipping over on the embankment, after he had hit the deer.

And there the monster of a man had been, rising from the ground as if climbing out of a grave, some twelve years buried.

Had he been raping some other girl just then, maybe some poor child still missing from the tragedy at the elementary school? Lindsey was still safe at home, wasn't she?

Should she turn around? Should she go check on Lindsey and Carlysle?

Weren't there some sheriff's deputies out in the woods right now?

Elaine considered turning around. A cold sweat prickled at the base of her neck. The cops should be out there. My family should be safe if they stay inside.

That was the freak that was on my porch last night. That was the freak that raped my daughter and threatened my grandson.

Elaine forced herself to breathe.

Over the horizon, she thought she saw a giant man striding, arms out to the side for balance, with lightning in his hair. Wind kicked the car around on the road.

She blinked her eyes, and now all she saw was bad weather coming.

I'm seeing things. Hallucinating. I didn't see a giant cloud man. Elaine's heart pounded. Did I really see a naked man standing up in the corn field? Did I imagine that, too?

Am I awake enough to be driving? I hardly slept at all last night.

Elaine drove onwards. I should call the house first thing when I get to work. I should call the police first thing when I get to work.

She was looking back in the rear view mirror when she ran over Heathcliff, smashing his ribcage flat with the front tire on the driver's side of her car. At that very instant, lightning hit the station wagon and blew out all four tires.

The car lost control and swapped end for end, spinning counterclockwise, throwing fat sparks from the wheels. The car skidded off onto the verge, tipped up onto the passenger side, and slammed back down, killing the engine.

The interior of the car was silent.

Heathcliff took off across the road, baying and wheezing. He was eight years younger and eight years more spry. And dirty again.

Elaine's memory of this event was cloudy. She remembered seeing her dead grandson Cassidy, four years old, on his hands and knees on the hood of the car, peering in to see if she were okay. But she didn't remember this for a long time.

Later, it would bother her vaguely that it had been Cassidy looking in on her rather than Robert.

* * * * *

Morgan stopped drumming. He breathed deeply for a few moments and rolled the drum aside. Either he had done some good, or he hadn't. He decided he would stick around at work today and get the update from Lindsey when she got there.

* * * * *

The rain came down harder and harder, extending the darkness of the night well into morning. The hunting party had expected harsh weather, so they were mostly warm except for hands and feet.

The hounds didn't particularly care about the rain. The constant barrage of lightning, thunder, and the occasional falling branch made them nervous and aggressive, though.

Hunting frequently took place in the rain was the message they would use periodically to reassure themselves that they were not insane to be out in the storm. They would deliver this message to themselves and each other in grunts and coughs and rolled eyes and wry expressions and waggled eyebrows, the secret language of men and dogs everywhere.

Hanson's legs noticed, and announced by way of aching creaks, that they--legs, men, and dogs--had walked the distance between the Leadbeater house and the deer stand three times now. The dogs were certain that the man had climbed the tree stand. And since he was not currently up there, then he had obviously come back down or had been yanked into the sky by a tornado. The dogs, even on the third try, could pick up no trail other than the one that angled back away from the path. So their quarry had either retraced his steps, or the other trail away from the poplar was simply too faint to keep the attention of the dogs.

And getting fainter with the fall of every drop of rain.

Just like they had done hunting for children the day of the tornado disaster--a disaster Hanson noted was no less likely to repeat itself today--they backed away from the trail thirty yards and circled the tree at that distance, trying to see if the dogs could find another inkling.

The dogs, in their agitation, were tough to read. They kept getting distracted by cracking branches and loud peals of thunder and one another. They dogs were also picking up the irritation and discomfort of their handlers. Lacking what they would normally expect by way of feedback and encouragement, the dogs were less certain of how they were doing, unsure of how much harder they should be trying.

When the thunder rolled, most of the dogs would simply pick a direction and tug that way. Even though they were nowhere near a legitimate scent trail, they often agreed. Their handlers hauled them back to the task at hand.

They completed the circle. The only trail they found led to the poplar with the deer stand.

The dogs were momentarily distracted by the baying of another dog off through the fog. Their handlers dug heels into the ground and barked reprimands.

Obviously we're not the only morons out here hunting this morning. Hopefully we won't all shoot one another, thought Hanson.

Grumbling, coughing, clearing throats, and sneezing, the men and dogs backed up another twenty-five or thirty yards and started on a larger circle. It was considerably slower going due to the density of the undergrowth. But three quarters of the way around the larger circle, the dogs snuffled around excitedly, communicating with each other quietly in yips and barks. They ran backwards and forwards along a vaguely navigable path and then started tugging in a direction angling toward the highway.

The men followed the hounds through the brush, shrugging their way out of clawing thorny vines.

They slowly emerged from the undergrowth into a disused field, lightly peppered with scrawny, shoulder-high pine scrub.

In the middle of the field, a black nylon jacket floated in a breeze, supported by nothing except maybe the wind.

The men edged closer with their dogs. The dogs held back, skittering nervously around the ankles of their handlers.

The jacket twirled slowly. Wind filled the sleeves and spun it. It looked like it was being fought over by two huge, invisible dogs playing tug-of-war, slowly circling one another. The airborne jacket meandered over an area of about twenty feet on a side, drifting up and down sporadically.

Suddenly Hanson was aware that the roaring of the wind in the trees had not lessened as they moved out from under them. The roaring got much louder. Hanson looked upwards and eventually could make out a tiny, dark tendril of dervishing cloud lifting the jacket, waving it back and forth in the faces of the humongous invisible dogs so that they could get the scent.

One by one, the hunting dogs around Hanson sat down on their haunches and began to howl, trying hard to be heard over the wind.

Hanson kind of felt like doing some howling himself. He was afraid that he would start any moment now. The longer he watched, the worse it got.

He wondered if the other men would find it odd. He wondered if they would join in.

Feeling like ten kinds of imbecile, Hanson, eyes wide, walked forward into the clearing where the jacket circled. The wind kicked and trampled at him. He held his hat to his head.

All the hair stood up on the back of Hanson's neck and on his arms. There was a fresh, earthy smell in the air, but with a sharp, sour tang. Suddenly Hanson broke out into a full body sweat.

As he approached the jacket, it tumbled gently to the ground like it was occupied and falling down stairs. The black tendril retreated slowly back into the sky, drifting towards the open path of the highway. There was a stinging spray of damp grit as it lunged downwards and ripped a waist-high pine from the ground, flinging it across the road like a child absently pulling up a weed and tossing it.

They all watched the tendril retreat into the sky, oblivious of the pelting rain and small hail.

Hanson crouched to pick up the jacket. As he reached, the sky went white and then black. A sound he did not hear bowled him over backwards. His muscles clenched involuntarily, rolling him into a compact ball that bounced a couple of times. Dimly, dimly, he could see multicolored foxfire glows playing around the landscape--around the trees, around the jacket, picking out various details. The afterimages formed pictures of the legs of tall, heavily muscled animals, like horses or dogs, as seen from the eyes of a much smaller animal cowering in the tall grass--legs and lower bodies limned in the floating and zipping fireballs.

* * * * *

Hanson squeezed his eyes shut and rolled onto his side, trying to get his arms and legs to unlock, trying to force himself to draw a breath. His chest hurt. He could hear nothing but a single siren-high tone.

He found himself being nuzzled by a small army of dogs. His muscles screamed at him as he fought to push them away. He drew a stuttering breath, gagging on the odor of wet dog. He tried very hard to think of why he might be outside in a thunderstorm, rolling around on the ground, being molested by a horde of friendly dogs.

Human hands helped him slowly to his feet while previous details of the morning trickled back into his head. His arms and legs shook from exhaustion. He drew another ragged breath, this time less doggy. His vision remained gray. His ears remained stuffed with cotton.

A voice, shouted next to his head from a face he couldn't make out, queried, "Are you hurt?"

Hanson was in too much pain to draw his pistol, but he sure as hell felt like it. People who ask dumb questions like that deserve a serious flesh wound and a scar. He hoped it was the other deputy, because that meant he would have the opportunity to administer a beating later, when he was feeling better.

"Whuff," answered Hanson. He leaned heavily on a couple of arms. "...," he said. As he got his throat muscles more under control, he shouted, "Did it get me?"

Shapeless humanoid forms shrugged. A voice he recognized as the other deputy shouted, "It damn well looked like it to me, but you's still standin'. Maybe it didn't bite your ass, but it sure as hell sniffed your crotch."

Hanson staggered a couple of steps away from his helpers. He walked back towards where the jacket lay on the ground. As he reached for it, two pale faces and one darkish one looked on, eyes wide. One of the dog handlers shouted, "You sure you still want that thing?"

Hanson swiveled painfully to glare in what he hoped was the direction of the last speaker. Then he turned around and picked up Dooley's jacket, trying not to fall over but not much caring if he did.

* * * * *

Paul Kirkland passed away at 6:14 AM in his semiprivate room At St. Francis Hospital from an infection in his blood that he didn't have the strength to fight.

* * * * *

Lindsey met Carlysle in the upstairs hallway.

"What was all that racket?" she asked, holding her robe closed at her throat.

"I closed the window in Grandpa's room. I made it latch shut," Carlysle answered. "Momma, he's out in the back yard. He was watching me through the window while I closed it. I was afraid he would come in through the window. Momma, we should call somebody."

He grabbed her around the waist. Lindsey hugged him and stroked his hair.

"What should we do, Momma?" he asked, face pressed between her breasts.

"I dunno, Carl. Let's find the phone. Where was he?"

Carlysle lifted his face away from her body. "In the back yard. You could see him from Grandpa's window. Not by the tool shed, not by the old willow stump. Kinda just out in the middle of the yard. He was just standing there."

They heard thunder, then the howl of a dog.

Overhead, there was a rushing sound that rattled the windows.

"Carl! Go downstairs and sit in the kitchen next to the chest freezer. Sit on the floor."

They both beat feet down the stairs. The sky screamed. The wooden frame of the house growled ominously. The air stretched itself too thin for breathing. Lindsey's ears popped.

The sky battered at the house, trying to get in.

* * * * *

The trees jumped up and down. The oak by the tool shed cast branches into the sky, and the branches did not come back down. The sky came down instead.

The sky was as dark as night time. The sky was a solid thing, pushed to the breaking point and fracturing. The sky had no more room for noise, so it was quiet.

The sky twisted his foot upon the ground like a man crushing a bug beneath his heel.

The orange truck that had been Paul's emptied its cargo into the sky. It rose creakily from a crouch and slowly began to pirouette, turning on its right front tire.

The truck gently lifted from the ground altogether and slammed diagonally through half the porch and the wall of the living room, neatly aced the television, and parked both front wheels on the sofa. The sofa exploded, scattering a muffled shrapnel of wood splinters and cotton and foam.

Lindsey belly-crawled into the kitchen, legs bleeding. Carlysle cowered by the chest freezer as he had been directed, covering his head. Lindsey dragged herself up beside him, covering his body with her own.

Debris danced and swirled in the newly ventilated living room. The kitchen expanded and contracted around them as if it were breathing. There was a distant sound of a tree leaping from the ground. More loudly, nearby, was the sound of the upper floor of the house trying to decide whether to join the lower floor.

Outside, this man climbed out from under the ruined porch. He was half-dragged backwards by an unseen force. By clawing at the ground, he managed to get his legs under him and backpedal into the open yard.

A giant hand tore away the remains of the porch and flung it into the woods like a frisbee. The hole in the front of the house widened. The contents of Elaine's bedroom slid into the living room as the inward edge of her floor dropped lazily down the interior wall.

The telephone from the living room skittered into the kitchen, coming to rest next to Lindsey's thigh. There was no cord attached to the base, however. Lindsey thrashed and kicked it away.

And suddenly it was very quiet.

* * * * *

"NNGUH guh nngnngUH UH UH!"

* * * * *

A black sketch of a truck pulled over onto the verge of the highway opposite Elaine's station wagon and Morgan got out, unfolding himself with dignified precision. Rain and small pellets of hail pelted him. He seemed unconcerned with the weather.

Morgan approached Elaine's car. Wiping her window with his sleeve, he peered inside.

There was a swollen blue lump on Elaine's temple and a smudge on the inside of the window that corresponded to where her head must have hit it.

He opened her door and took a closer look to make sure she was breathing. And she was. He checked the pulse in her left wrist, and it was strong, if slow.

"Missus Leadbeater?" He tapped her hand. She did not respond.

Morgan stood up and closed her door gently. It didn't close all the way, but he was reluctant to slam it.

The car was most of the way off the road onto the grass. He shook his head, thinking that it would have to be good enough.

Looking around, he saw the carcass of the dog. Idly he beat the knuckles and heels of his hands on his thighs. Above, thunder barked.

Morgan stood blinking in the rain.

After a moment, he went back to drag Heathcliff's ruptured body off the highway. He turned to look back at Elaine's station wagon--and this time noticed the blown-out tires. Finishing up with the dog, he walked back to the car and circled it, looking at all four wheels. Then he looked at the lines of blistered and charred paint on the roof.

"I'll be God damn," he said aloud. "You people been pissin' ev'body off."

He trotted back across the highway to his truck. Looking back to Elaine's car, he said, "Need to call you an ambulance. Who gots a phone 'round here?"

He massaged the engine in his truck back to life and slowly pulled back onto the highway.

* * * * *

Having tossed the jacket back to the dog handlers, Hanson, feeling like he'd been hit by a truck, staggered over to the tree line to prop up against a soggy pine. The handlers seemed to be having some trouble with the dogs, but he couldn't really make out the details. He wanted a cigarette, but it hurt to breathe.

He couldn't quite logically make out that he would be breathing anyway, whether he had a cigarette to his lips or not, so he decided against having a smoke.

He also forgot that he wasn't carrying any cigarettes. He remembered that he had a small quantity of meth wrapped in waxed paper and foil, but he decided against that, too. He didn't want to get it wet.

The dogs took sniffs of the jacket and set up howling and yammering like they had been given his meth. They wove their leads around their handlers like they were human maypoles. He watched one dog tug at his handler's pant leg, yanking and snapping his head back and forth like he was trying to rip off a hunk of meat. His handler smacked the hound across the snout with the end of a lead, but the dog completely failed to notice.

Lightning smacked into the ground right where Hanson had picked up the jacket, the thunder deafening them all again. Suddenly the dogs, their two handlers, and the remaining deputy were charging for the tree line where Hanson stood propped against a tree.

Hanson tried not to laugh because it hurt too much. It was like a cartoon for children.

While his companions were in transit, he wondered absently what must have happened on that spot to make God so fond of it. Maybe some atrocity among bunnies. Sodom and Gomorrah for grasshoppers.

Hanson bent at the waist and tried to stretch out his hamstrings. Maybe I ought to run God in for assaulting an officer of the law.

As his companions flung themselves into the woods around him, he thought, If I ever decide to put me together a Frankenstein monster, I know where to set up the table.

He massaged his forearms as the handlers sorted the dogs out from around the trees. He saw that the dogs were barking and yapping, but heard their voices faintly and as if they were oddly delayed, like they were a hundred yards away.

Hanson's ears popped. He looked up and saw the black funnel about the same time as he felt the kick of a stray branch catching him in the chest. As he hit the dirt, he watched the tornado tickling the tops of the trees, heading through the woods away from the field, parallel to the highway. Back towards the LeadBeaters' house.

Hanson heard, impossibly, as plain as day, the distant baying of a single hound. He couldn't hear the tops of trees being snapped off, but he could hear the same hound baying that he heard before he tried to pick up the jacket. All the hair stood up on the back of his neck again, and the sweat started dripping down his chest and down his arms. But the lightning did not come again--or rather, it stayed up in the clouds this time.

The dogs tried their dead level best to drag their handlers through the woods in the direction of the wake of the funnel cloud.

Frankly, Hanson thought that was a stupid direction to go, except the Leadbeaters, who apparently can't even steal a break, might shortly be in need of assistance.

Hanson coughed some leaves out of his mouth and pulled himself to his feet again. He felt the fresh bruising on his chest, not that the pain of the bruise even remotely registered against the backdrop of agony from the full-body cramp. He couldn't really tell whether he had cracked ribs or not, and eventually decided that it wouldn't matter anyway. He'd still have to keep moving.

Maybe if I actually get killed in a little bit, I can get a doctor's excuse not to have to finish this fuckin' hunt.

They all trotted off through the woods.

* * * * *

The willow's ghost splayed its branches. It was an anemone on a coral reef, waving its tentacles in a fashion heedless of the current, replaying winds at its whim from years ago. Cassidy swarmed along the upper branches, transferring to the pecan nearer the house. As he shinnied out along a branch of the pecan tree, he watched the line of the roof shift oddly.

Heathcliff snarled and barked, wheezing with the joy of the hunt. He ran backwards and forwards along the path to the trail to the old corn field, whuffing to himself.

Overhead, the wind peeled shingles of roofing from the house like a child plucks petals from a flower.

Cassidy jumped from the pecan branch to the roof of the house, skating crazily among the loose shingles. He went straight to Grandpa's window and found it locked. He sat down briefly by the window, but not really because he wanted to. Cassidy thumped his heels on the roof, dislodging another shingle. Rolling over, he climbed over the top of the roof.

He noted the missing porch. He noted the ass end of Paul's truck hanging out of the living room. He noted the freak standing in the middle of the yard, howling. He noted the glow of headlights bouncing down the driveway. He noted three tendrils of thready funnel clouds riffling through the nearby woods, plus one more behind him. They were converging on the house.

Above the house leaned a giant man horned with lightning.

Cassidy felt the terror, yet he didn't sweat. Letting go of the roof's peak, he slid down the rain-slicked shingles and landed in a heap in the back of the truck.

* * * * *

Morgan skidded his truck to a halt in the driveway, watching the black tendrils from the sky. He bailed out and scooted to the edge of the yard, protecting his eyes from the swirling grit as well as he could. In his sleepless stupor, he saw the giant figure standing over the house. He saw the much, much smaller figure scrambling over the rooftop. He saw the man in overalls bellowing in the yard. He saw the willow waving branches arbitrarily. He saw a dog running around the house, barking. He saw a bunch of men and dogs emerge from the trail behind the house.

Morgan squeezed his eyes closed, beating his hands and fists on his thighs, and began to pray.

* * * * *

Afterwards, Morgan was never clear who he was praying to. But the drumming on his thighs was for Xango, and Baron Tonnerre.

* * * * *

Hanson fetched up short, leaning on the willow trunk, branches whipping all around him. His eyes showed him hounds, large as houses, bounding through the woods towards the open yard, knocking trees down as they came. There was a Hunter, as well, taller than the sky, crowned with lightning. Great time for a flashback, he considered.

In comparison, the boy scrambling over the roof looked perfectly normal.

Hanson looked behind him. The other men were lying flat on the ground, huddled together with the dogs. Now that Hanson thought about it, that looked perfectly fine, too.

There wasn't much wind under the willow tree. Hanson took a deep breath, listening to his ribs creak. Or maybe it was the willow. Somewhere on the other side of the house, a hound bayed steadily.

As if in a dream, Hanson walked out from under the sheltering willow into madness.

* * * * *

"NNGUH guh nngnngUH UH UH!"

* * * * *

Lindsey heard the strange cry and the sudden thud of weight falling into the back of the truck. She spun herself around and kicked herself toward the shattered nightstand that had fallen from Elaine's room. Pulling her legs under her, she pushed herself up the wall enough to be able to yank at the top drawer. After the fourth yank, the drawer came free, spilling papers and various oddments--and a shiny revolver. Bracing herself as well as she could with a knee that refused to support her weight, Lindsey picked up the handgun. She held her eye up to the cylinder, trying to see if she could detect the rims of rounds.

After what seemed like hours of trying to focus through the pain of her legs and the swirling, screaming darkness, she decided that the gun must be loaded. Gradually she slid back down the wall and edged backwards towards Carlysle.

Lightning tagged a tree at the edge of the yard, visible through the gaping hole in the front of the house. The thunder knocked glass loose from the windows.

During the flash, Lindsey could have sworn that she saw a giant face peering into the living room from the front yard, leaning sideways around the house.

Lindsey's ears popped again. Through the deafened ears, she heard the roaring coming back. Through the collapsed ceiling, she saw the roof of the upper floor being peeled back. She may have shrieked, but no one was in a position to hear her. The abused atmosphere already contained all the noise it could be expected to hold.

The ceiling of the kitchen suddenly angled upwards, showing Lindsey the black, rumpled sky. She felt Carlylse press his face into her side, felt him shaking and wailing. Somehow it calmed her. Still, sweat rolled down her ribs.

She watched through streaming eyes as her son Cassidy, four years old, climbed over the edge of the bed of the truck and came toddling towards her. Reflexes kept the gun trained on him as he made his way over the rubble of the coffee table and sofa.

Lindsey bawled. The lashing wind carried her tears away.

Over the top of the impossible noise, she heard the baying of an old hound.

She felt Carlysle push himself to his feet beside her, crouching. He gripped her shoulder firmly as he stood.

Directly behind Cassidy, Vole crept out of the bed of the truck. He held a huge antler in his hand. He wobbled on his feet.

Lindsey raised the pistol a tad and squeezed the trigger. She felt the click through the palms of her hands. She felt no recoil. She pulled the trigger again. Another click.

Lindsey felt a hysterical scream rising from her chest, ripping at her throat. She felt dizzy. The world wobbled. The trigger clicked again, twice more.

Cassidy was now completely blocking her shot. He bobbled forward, patting her arm. She shifted sideways. As she did so, she saw Vole slip down to one knee, then stand up again awkwardly. He held the antler way out to one side, weaving. His hairless face was twisted in incomprehensible anguish.

Vole went down again. Cassidy turned to watch his approach. Vole shuffled forward on his knees, holding the antler out to the side and behind him.

Lindsey wanted to closed her eyes, but couldn't. The trigger clicked one more time. She put the gun down beside her and held the hands of her children.

Vole dragged himself to where she sat propped up against the wall. He put the antler gently in her lap.

Fighting the incredible noise, he opened his mouth. Half gargling on debris and drool, he shouted, "Lovgh mee! LOVGH MEE!!"

Lindsey stared at him in horror.

Cassidy reached out and took Vole's hand.

* * * * *

Hanson snapped out of his trance when the bullet grazed his ear. He dropped to the ground and clapped a hand to his head. His hand assured him that his ear was still there, but it felt hot and large and heavy, like a sun-warmed grapefruit stuck to his head. As he scrambled to unsnap his holster, he heard three more shots. As he got his gun out, fighting nausea from his pain and agitation, he heard one more. Then nothing

Five shots. Why do they always stop at five shots? It makes me nuts.

He wormed his way towards the front of the house, just to the side of the bed of the overhanging pickup truck. Just in case someone decided to back it up. It would be a perfect addition to the day's traumas--hypothermia and exposure, lightning, falling/flying branches, tornadoes, hail, getting shot in the head, getting squashed by a falling pickup truck backing out of someone's living room. I need me some wild animal trauma action to complete the set. And maybe some cancer.

Behind him, over the impossible noise of impossible winds, he heard a deep-throated growl from a dog. Hanson considered beating his head on the wall, but decided it wouldn't count if he knocked himself unconscious before the dog tore his leg off.

He turned to look behind him and instantly regretted it.

Heathcliff was about half the size of the house. He backed up slightly, barking, and nudged over a couple of trees at the edge of the front yard.

Hanson was a bit relieved when he saw that the dog wasn't baying at him, as such, but at the opening into the house. Bizarreness of the huge dog aside, he knew better than to waste any bullets on it. He hoped the other person with a gun did not know any better, because it would cut down on their ability to shoot him in the head again.

He got the odd idea that he might be dead, or perhaps dying and hallucinating--struck down by lightning or a severed tree branch or shot or any of the other numerous bad things that had happened to him today. The humongous dog's barking seemed to be an argument in favor of not having both feet in the world of the living. The grinning face of the lightning-crowned giant was another.

Of their own volition, Hanson's legs straightened and lifted him out of his crouch. It felt natural to ignore the really large dog, so he did, even as he noticed the hot, moist breath on the back of his neck. He poked his head up high enough to look into the house through the hole the truck had made and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

A barefoot man in overalls jumped over his head. He appeared to be towing a small boy.

Hanson racked his tortured brain. He could recall no details that would have allowed him to predict the presence of a small boy. Carlysle was eleven. The two or three still missing boys from the collapse of the elementary school were older, and, on the average, black.

Mentally, Hanson filed the boy with the giant dog that was absently kicking over trees, turning to track the man in overalls. I think I'll avoid shooting the boy, too. On principle.

As Hanson pivoted to follow the man in overalls with his eyes, another boy sailed overhead. This one, recognizable even from the back, was Carlysle.

Hanson noted that so far no one ejecting themselves from the house had been carrying a gun. Good news. Which meant there was still a gun behind him with somewhere between one and six rounds left in it, depending on the model. Bad news. No sign yet of Elaine or Lin or hordes of flying blue apes. Maybe one of them has the gun. Lin won't shoot me, and Elaine won't shoot me if I buy her a pack of cigarettes. No data on the blue monkeys. Or the whiskey-flavored wombats.

He crouched again, this time with his back to the wall of the house.

Yeah, that's a really big dog.

Portions of the dog seemed to be made from swirls of airborne dust, water, mud, and debris. Hanson was pleased that his mind was making the effort to drag his perceptions back to the realm of reality. He wished it would hurry up and finish the trip.

A naked, bloody leg suddenly dangled next to his head.

Lin, guessed Hanson. I bet she's got the gun. If I try to get her attention, she'll shoot me in the head again. If I wait for her to see me, she'll shoot me in the head again. Maybe I ought to run out there into the yard and take my chances with the giant cloud-man and the dog. Or maybe I should just lift up this edge of the house and crawl under and see who's left here by late afternoon.

Hanson popped his hat off, scraping his face cruelly with the chin strap, and waved it upwards. He felt a hand grab his arm, slide down to the top of his head. He reached an arm over to help Lindsey through the ragged hole. Upon reaching the ground, Lindsey pulled her robe around her and leaned against the house, putting no weight at all on her right leg.

Hanson noted that she didn't have a gun either. He leaned over and shouted, "Did you have a gun?! Where's the gun?!"

Lindsey waved gracelessly back toward the hole in the house without looking. "Empty!" she said.

Hanson decided now was not the time to mention that she had shot his ear. Since he was probably letting God off the hook for nailing him with a lightning bolt, he figured he could afford to be magnanimous about a badly pierced earlobe. Besides, he still hadn't come up with a plan on how to rescue a possibly fictional small boy from a drooling madman, a giant hound made out of weather and various bits and pieces, and the lightning-crowned giant--who was now bending over, reaching a massive storm-cloud-black hand into the yard.

That can't be good, Hanson thought. I wonder what Lin's seeing.

Lindsey's face contorted in horror as the hand picked up Carlysle and tossed him skywards. Hanson could barely hear her shriek.

Okay, she's seeing that. His eyes, squinted against the swirling grit, lost track of him as he cleared the rooftop.

Lindsey collapsed, sliding down the wall.

Hanson, feeling his mind spinning like the wind in the yard, stood up and waded out into the yard. His hat vanished. Maybe if I'm holding on to the bad guy, the next time chaos strikes me, I can take him down with me.

The house-sized dog sat on his haunches, stretched his muzzle skywards, and began to howl.

As Hanson fought the gale, he thought, This is no kind of plan.

The swirling blackness tugged the boy aloft. The boy retained his grip on the arm of the man in overalls. They spun around in slow, lazy circles, the man dragging his toes in the muck of the yard. Something shapeless and brown spun past them all. Hanson guessed that it may have been one of the hunting dogs he had spent his early morning with.

The sky above them lit up like someone turned on all the lights in a huge warehouse. Or a church, with all the colored sunlight coming in through the stained glass windows. St. Elmo's fire swirled all over the underside of the angry mass that was the giant's chest.

Hanson saw the man in overalls rise higher, toes no longer touching the ground. He could see his mouth open, howling like the hound, strings of drool flying away into the wind. Hanson made a half-assed dive, sliding to with grabbing range of the man's legs. He grabbed.

Hanson felt himself losing buttons off his shirt as he was dragged around on the ground. At one point, when he had view of the house, he could make out Lindsey, one leg out in front of her, both hands raised to her face. He also saw Carlysle skidding down the roof of the house. In the improbable brightness, he saw Carlysle slip off the sagging ledge of the roof into the bed of the badly-parked truck.

The balls of luminous plasma danced over the muddy ground. The huge hound skittered backwards. Hanson desperately wanted to do the same, but he kept getting dragged off of his feet as soon as he got one of them under him.

He heard another faint shriek from Lindsey. Twisting, gasping for air, he pivoted to see Carlysle drop from the back of the truck and charge in their direction. Hanson wondered why he would do a damn fool thing like that, especially with evidence in front of him of exactly how bad an idea it was.

Jumping, Carlysle landed half on Hanson's chest. He grabbed the man's legs slightly higher up than Hanson's own grip. Hanson grumbled to himself at how easy the boy made it look, since for Hanson, the trip out into the yard seemed like swimming through molasses.

Out of a twisted sense of fairness, Hanson let Carlysle have a leg of his own. They both hauled downwards, pressing the man's feet into the mud.

Hanson cocked an eye at Lindsey to see if she was going to join them, but she stayed put. Apparently the womenfolk in this area were smarter than the menfolk. Mentally he applauded her wisdom.

The fireballs started drifting towards them and piling on. Hanson felt his hair standing away from his body. His clothes fluffed outwards as well. He considered whether now would be a good time to let go, for the sake of his continued health.

The sky above them doubled in brightness. Then tripled. Hanson had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. All of his muscles began to clench and cramp, slowly, starting at his hands and traveling down his body.

Out of luck now. Can't let go.

Looking upward, he saw the boy waving upwards like a living kite. The man and boy held each others' wrist. The boy glowed like a light bulb. An incandescent fiber trailed skywards from his feet.

Here it comes. Hanson doubted he would be less able to see things if his eyes were closed.

Then there was nothing but light. Dimly he could make out the shadow of the man in overalls. He watched the top of the man's head expand outwards, dissolving into the sky. Slowly the darkness that was the man's body began to glow redly and then burst outwards and upwards, the light traveling down the man's spine and out through his limbs, down his belly, and, inch by inch, down his legs.

Hanson felt the fire between his hands, felt his hands close through it.

Once again the thunder bowled him away. The darkened world spun over him and beneath him at improbable distances. The image of the man burning away remained on his retinas. Everything else was impossible to see.

Eventually Hanson stopped bouncing and fetched up against the house, underneath the back end of the truck. As the front of the house subsided, the truck's bumper gently brushed the ground. The angled truck sheltered him from the rain of lumber and debris.

Hanson felt his heart stutter back to life, thudding merrily in his chest. Then he passed out in a wash of warmth.

Chapter 15

Sweat is a cleansing thing.

"For you being such a lucky bastard, God sure hates you."

Hanson rolled his head over on the pillow to look at Dooley sitting in a chair by the window. Morgan stood next to the chair, looking out the window.

Hanson tried to speak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Is that what it says on my chart?"

Morgan chuckled, quietly and deep in his throat.

Dooley responded evenly. "Pretty much. Burns, scrapes, cuts, bruises. Says you shook hands with a lightning bolt, had a house fall on you."

Hanson coughed--and regretted it. "Twice with the lightning thing. And I think Lindsey Leadbeater shot my earlobe off." He thought for a moment. "Any dog bites? And how about cancer?"

Dooley looked puzzled, but he looked like he was used to looking puzzled by Hanson. "Nobody mentioned dog bites or cancer to me. Don't think they would have noticed cancer, though. But now that I think about it, I don't think any cancer would have survived what you've been through. And now, on top of that, hospital food."

Hanson tried not to laugh. "How are... How is everybody else?"

Morgan shook his head. "Two of the dogs are dead. Just about everybody else is here wid you in the hospital. Lindsey gots a broke leg and she's cut up a bit. It took Farley a coupla tries to restart little Carlysle's heart, and he's got some burns, he's in his momma's room. Lindsey's momma's here, too, she wuz inna car wreck onna way to work. Hit a dog and went off the road. And they's house fell down. Farley's still pickin' splinters outta his head, gotta broke arm."

Hanson wondered whether he should ask after the other little boy. "What about the man in overalls, suspect in Paul Kirkland's attack? He was on the property. Last I knew I had hold of his leg."

Dooley shuddered and Morgan looked away. "If that charred hunk of meat you had in your hands was part of someone's leg, I'm sure the forensics team would be happy to know. Morgan here verifies that you were holding onto someone, but whoever that was, there wasn't much left but your souvenir.

"Ick," affirmed Hanson.

After a long moment, Hanson asked, "Did anybody see a little boy out there, about four or five years old? White boy, dark hair, overalls?" Or a dog the size of a house? Or maybe a man's footprints, maybe about the size of the yard?

Dooley thought for a moment. "Nobody mentioned a little boy. Where did you see a little boy?"

Hanson smiled wryly, unable to back out. "Looked like he was hanging off the suspect's arm."

"Nobody else mentioned a little boy. But you know, seven years ago, Carlysle's twin brother Cassidy accidentally hung himself in that house. Maybe since the house was coming down he decided to get the hell out."

Morgan turned over his lip in a thoughtful frown but didn't say anything.

Hanson wrinkled his forehead and patted his bandaged hands on his lap. "Why would you want to tell me something like that? You want me to put that in the report?"

Dooley smiled and shook his head. "You know the rules. Write what happens as you see it, even if you don't understand what you see. Someone else might make better sense of it than you when they read it, or when it comes to trial. Half the shit we see every day doesn't make any sense until we try to make it, and everybody sees something different. Just write what you saw. Soon as you can bend your fingers. If you feel it starting to slip, you just call down to the station and we'll send someone, maybe me, to come take down what you say."

Dooley stood up and whacked Morgan gently with his hat.

"You get some rest. I'll see you in the morning." Dooley tucked his hat under his arm.

"Yeah, I'm gonna sleep great tonight." Hanson couldn't muster much in the way of a sarcastic tone, but Dooley got the point.

"You get better quick or we're gonna have to give Franklin your badge. Nobody wants that," Dooley remarked. Morgan rolled his eyes at the casual cruelty.

"See you," Hanson said.