“No, I tell you, I ain’t done it. It weren’t my fault. No, no, no. You got to let me be now, y’hear?”
He also stopped shaving and combing his hair, because doing those things meant looking in mirrors, and Ron didn’t like looking in mirrors anymore, because Ron’s reflection wasn’t the only one he saw when he looked in the glass.
On the night that Ron died, Carl had left him to go meet up with some people down at the Rudder. Ron had seemed pretty lucid, clearer at least than he had been in months.
“Hey, little brother,” he said as Carl headed for the door. His brother was sitting slumped in an easy chair, staring at the fire. “I been thinking. I forced you to do a bad thing that night with the woman. I shouldn’t have made you get involved.”
“You’re my brother,” said Carl. “I’d do anything for you.”
“They’re gonna make me pay,” said Ron. “I have to pay for what I done. There are boundaries that you’re not supposed to overstep. They won’t tolerate that, so you have to pay.”
“Who? Who’s going to make you pay?”
But Ron didn’t seem to hear him.
“But I figure that if I pay, maybe that’ll be enough. Maybe they won’t want no more. Maybe they’ll leave you be.”
But when Carl tried to get more out of him, Ron had drifted off into a boozy sleep.
He remembered sitting at a table in the Rudder, not drinking much because he was so disturbed by his brother’s words. He heard the sound of the approaching chopper, then someone came in and said that Snowman, that cop with the dumb name, had been shot, and that—
And then the guy had looked at Carl, and Carl had known.
They said later that his brother had been shooting at the houses nearby, that he was all fired up over some imaginary boundary dispute with his neighbors, but Carl never believed that was true. Ron wasn’t shooting at houses when he died, and the boundaries of which he spoke had nothing to do with hedges or lawns. He was shooting at the things he imagined were speaking to him in the woods, and it was the transgression of their boundaries that led to his death. It was bullshit, of course. Ron’s mind had just collapsed under the weight of his guilt. But since then Carl had kept well clear of the woods that surrounded his house, sticking to the roads and the main paths. Whatever had tormented his brother might have been all in his head, but Carl recalled an incident a week or two back, shortly after the fourth anniversary of Ron’s death, when he was out in the yard bringing in supplies from his truck and he looked out into the forest and saw someone watching him from among the trees. Carl didn’t panic, though. Instead, he laid the brown paper bags down on the ground and, never taking his eyes off the figure in the woods, removed his shotgun from its case in the back of his truck. He loaded it up with the truck shielding him, then headed for the trees.
The figure was dressed all in gray, and seemed to shimmer.
“Who are you?” asked Carl, as he drew closer.
And then the figure had exploded, shards of it spreading in all directions, into the trees, into the sky, along the ground.
And toward Carl.
Carl turned his face away and shielded himself with one arm. He felt things striking him, felt them moving as they did so. When at last he lowered his arm, there was nothing before him but darkness and trees, but something was caught in the folds of his coat. It fluttered and beat against him, until he released it and allowed it to fly free.
It was a moth, a gray moth. Somehow, Carl had managed to disturb a whole bunch of them in the trees. That was the only excuse he could find, even as he backed toward his truck and recalled the shape that they had somehow formed: the shape of a woman.
That was all beside the point. Joe Dupree, the freak cop, had killed Carl’s brother, and now there would be payback for what he had done. For the chance of revenge, Carl was prepared to risk a trip into the woods. After all, he would not be going in alone.
Carl looked at his watch, hissed in irritation, and returned to the engine of his truck.
The first boat, piloted by Scarfe, came in sight of Cray Cove shortly before nine. They could barely see the island through the wall of snow, but Scarfe knew what he was doing. Without him, they would have run aground on rocks and drowned before they even came within sight of land.
Despite the weather, Scarfe had enjoyed being in command of a boat again. Being on the sea was one of the things he had missed most while locked up. Scarfe’s father knew about boats, and had passed on that knowledge to his son. As soon as the diesel engine began to turn over, and the vibrations commenced beneath his feet, Scarfe was at home. Under other circumstances, he would have cranked the boat faster as soon as they were out on the bay. Instead, he throttled down and kept a steady pace across the water in the face of the wind, until at last they came to the jetty. Powell tied the boat up, and, with a hint of regret, Scarfe cut the engine. He looked out on the silhouette of the island, barely visible through the falling flakes, and thought again that it was strange to see an outer island so thickly forested. Most of them boasted little more than sawgrass and burdock, but Sanctuary was different. Sanctuary had always been different.
The snow, thought Moloch, was a mixed blessing: the weather would keep other people indoors, and permit them to move about with greater ease, but there was now the risk of some of them getting separated and lost. And if anyone did spot them, they would have a hard time explaining why they were wandering around in a near blizzard.
Yet as soon as he set foot on the island, Moloch’s fears seemed to dissipate. Images flashed through his mind, pictures from his dreams and other, less familiar thoughts. He saw trails hidden from the eyes of others. He recalled the names of trees and plants. A great wave of understanding broke upon him.
I know this place.
I know it.
Moloch gestured to Dexter, Powell, Shepherd, and Scarfe, inviting them to follow him. Tell said nothing. Willard just watched them quietly.
“You stay here for now,” Moloch told Tell and Willard. “Watch the boat. When we get back, we’ll need to leave fast.”
Then they moved away, slowly fading into the gathering whiteness.
The water taxi was within sight of the island when Leonie appeared at the boatman’s shoulder. The crossing had been rough, and both she and Braun were wet and cold, their heads and shoulders sprinkled with snow.
“How do you find your way in from here?” Leonie asked.
The boatman shrugged. “The worst is past. This is easy. A child could do it. Truth is, I could put this boat in anywhere along here. Dock is just as good a place as any.”
He smiled, and she smiled back. She was a good-looking woman. It was nice to see a mixed-race couple happy together, he thought. He looked over to the little parking lot by the shelter, expecting to see the shape of the police Explorer, but it wasn’t there. No call for it, he supposed, now that Thorson’s ferry was docked.
“You folks are looking for a place to stay, the motel’s over there,” he said, pointing to his right. The motel had four rooms, and backed onto a slope that led down to the small, rocky cove that gave the town its name. “If there’s nobody around, call over at the bar. Jeb Burris owns both. His house is just behind it.”
Leonie thanked him, then added: “Looks quiet.”
“Yeah, sure doesn’t look like there’s anyone around.”
Leonie stepped away, raised her silenced pistol, and shot the boatman in the head.
Willard watched the group of men depart. Cray Cove was a small inlet with a jetty made of rocks that jutted out a little from the shore. It was secluded and Willard could make out no lights on the shore. A pathway led up from the stony beach and he could see flashlights dancing, the only visible sign of the ascent to the road above.
During the crossing, Moloch had sat beside him and told him that he would not be joining them.
“You don’t trust me,” said Willard.
Moloch touched the younger man’s shoulder. “I’m concerned about yo
u, that’s all. Maybe you’ve been forced to do too much this last week. I just want you to bring it down a couple of notches, take a breather. As for trust, it’s Tell I don’t trust, not you. We’ve never worked with him before. If things go wrong and he tries to leave without us, you take him apart, you hear?”
Willard nodded, and Moloch left him and returned to the wheelhouse.
Willard wanted to believe him. He wanted to believe him so badly. He might have stifled his doubts too, had it not been for Dexter. As Dexter had disembarked, he had glanced back at Willard and Willard had understood that as far as Dexter was concerned, it was the last time that they would look upon each other.
Dexter had even smiled at him.
The five men were making slow progress on the track, slipping on the new-fallen snow and stumbling into one another. Dexter reached the top before the others, followed closely by Powell. Moloch, Shepherd, and Scarfe were some way behind.
It was Dexter who saw the man first. He was standing at the doorway of a small, three-story tower with slit windows, one gloved hand shielding his eyes so he could better see the lights of the approaching men. Dexter’s first impression was that the man was pulling a face at him, taunting him, but then Dexter spotted the heavy lids, the muted curiosity in the eyes, the slight slackness at the jaw.
“We got trouble,” said Dexter.
Richie Claeson liked snow more than just about anything else in the world. He thought about waking Danny and asking him to come out with him, but then he reconsidered. Danny was small, and didn’t know the woods like he did, so Richie dressed quietly, then put on his boots, his thick coat, and his hat and gloves, and headed out. He didn’t tell Momma. She was asleep in front of the TV and he didn’t want to wake her. Anyway, she would tell him no, and he didn’t want that. He wanted to see the island in the snow, but instead of heading directly through the forest, he had stuck close by the road until he found himself upon the shore.
Richie usually felt no threat from the woods, and he was, though he would never have been able to put it in such terms, acutely sensitive to danger, a consequence of his condition that had kept him safe from harm on those occasions when he was at risk from older boys or, once, while he was in Portland with his mother and an old man had tried to entice him into an alleyway with the promise of discarded comic books. He had smelled the threat the old man posed, a stale scent of raddled discharges and unwashed clothing, and had walked away, keeping his head down, his left side to the wall, his eyes slightly to the right in case the man should choose to follow him.
The woods were different. They were safe. There was a presence in the woods, although Richie had long believed that he had no reason to be afraid of it. The woods still smelled as woods should, of pine and fallen leaves and animal spoor, but there was a stillness to them, a watchfulness that made him feel safe, as if some stronger, older being was watching over him, just as Mrs. Arbinot in the kindergarten had tried to look out for him before they took Richie away from the other children and put him in the special school in Portland. He liked the special school. He made friends there for the first time, proper friends. He even kissed a girl, Abbie, and recalled with embarrassment the feelings that she had aroused in him, and how he had half-shuffled away from her to disguise his growing discomfort.
But the woods had changed in recent times. In the past, Richie had caught glimpses of the boy, the one who stood at the water’s edge staring out at the sea, the boy who left no footprints on the wet sand. Richie had tried calling to him, and waving, but the boy never looked back, and eventually Richie had given up trying to talk to him. Sometimes he saw the boy in the woods, but mostly the boy stayed by the shore and watched the waves break. The boy didn’t frighten Richie, though. The boy was dead. He just didn’t want to leave the island, and Richie could understand that. Richie didn’t want to leave the island either.
But the Gray Girl did frighten Richie. He had seen her only two or three times, hanging in the air, her feet not quite touching the ground, her eyes like the backs of black beetles that had crawled into her head and nested in her sockets, but she scared Richie bad enough to make him piss his pants. The Gray Girl was angry, angry with everyone who lived because she wanted to be alive too. The boy was waiting for something, but the little Gray Girl didn’t want to wait. She wanted it now. So Richie had begun to stay away from the Site, where the woods were thickest, and from the tall watchtower at the center of the island. He used to like the big watchtower a lot. From the top, he could see for miles and miles, and the wind would blow his hair and he could taste the sea on his tongue when he opened his mouth. But that was the Gray Girl’s place now. Joe Dupree came by to check on it, and he would make sure that the door was locked, but the Gray Girl didn’t like it when the door was locked so she found ways to open it again. The Gray Girl wanted the door open, because if it was open, then people might come in.
And if people came in, and they weren’t too careful, then they might get to play with the Gray Girl.
She was the worst, but there were others too, and the area around the tower and the cross belonged to them. To go in there now would be like standing in front of a train. The train wouldn’t mean to hit you, wouldn’t have any intention of hurting you, but if you got in its way, it would kill you as it hurtled toward its destination. That was what the woods now felt like to Richie: a dark tunnel, with a train rushing through it, ready to smash anything in its path.
But the shore was still safe, and there were trees beneath which to shelter. Except tonight the snow had started to fall really heavily, heavier than Richie had ever seen it fall before, and the wind had grown very strong and had blown the snow into Richie’s eyes. He had sought cover in one of the old observation towers, a little one by the road, hoping to wait out the bad weather. Then the boat had come. He could barely make it out until it got close to shore, but he heard the men as they reached land.
And suddenly, he was afraid.
He wanted to go home.
He left the shelter of the tower just as the black man appeared and saw him.
Tell’s voice brought Willard back. He could no longer perceive Moloch and the others, for they had now ascended the slope, but he thought that he could still catch glimpses of their flashlight beams through the snow. There was a pain in Willard’s belly. It made him want to curl up in a ball, like a little child. His eyes stung and he felt tears creep down his cheeks.
“I said, you want to stow these away?”
Willard wiped his face hurriedly as Tell handed him a stack of life jackets. He pointed to the storage chest at the stern of the little boat.
“In there.”
Willard took the jackets in his arms, then knelt down to store them. Behind him, he heard Tell rummaging in his pack, then sensed the little man moving close behind him. He looked over his shoulder and into the barrel of the pistol. Tell’s own gun, a Colt .45, was still in his belt. The gun in his hand was a one-shot .22, silenced to hell and back.
No noise, that was Moloch’s instruction to Tell. No noise and no pain.
“You’re a crazy bastard, you know that?” said Tell. “You gave us all the fucking creeps.”
Willard didn’t blink as the trigger was pulled.
“He’s a dummy,” said Dexter.
Powell looked at him.
“What did you say?”
“The guy’s a dummy,” repeated Dexter. “He’s handicapped.”
Richie stood across the road from them, but didn’t move. Powell squinted against the snow and saw the man’s face, except now that he looked, the man seemed younger, more a kid than an adult. But Dexter was right. The kid, or man, or whatever the hell he was, was retarded.
“What are we going to do with him?” asked Powell.
“Take him back to the boat, I guess,” said Scarfe. “Let Tell keep an eye on him until we got to go, then turn him loose.”
He heard a scrabbling sound behind him, and turned to see Moloch hauling himself up the last stretch
of trail with the aid of a sapling.
Moloch looked at Richie, and Richie stared back.
“Bad men,” said Richie.
“What did he say?” asked Powell.
Richie began to walk quickly away, but they could hear him muttering to himself.
“He recognized me,” said Moloch.
“The fuck could he do that? Dex said he was a dummy.”
“I don’t know how. TV maybe. Stop him.”
Dexter and Powell began to move after him, but the snow was thicker up here on the exposed road, and they struggled and slipped as they tried to catch up with him.
“Hey, wait up!” called Dexter, but Richie kept his head down, his face set determinedly. It was the face he wore when other boys taunted him, or tried to show him pictures of naked ladies.
It was the face he wore when he was afraid, and trying not to cry.
“Bad men,” he whispered to himself. “Badmenbadmenbadmen.”
Behind him, he heard the black man swear loudly as he stumbled.
Richie started to run.
Carl Lubey was beginning to panic. He had tried everything he knew and there was still no sign of life from the truck. As a last resort, he’d decided to change the battery. He was lifting the spare from the back of the garage when the radio in the truck exploded into life, almost deafening him with the last bars of “Freebird.” The radio was permanently tuned to the island’s amateur station, run by Dickie Norcross out of his attic, except Dickie broadcast only between the hours of two and six, and it was now well past Dickie’s good-bye time.