Jayne was explaining to the fascinated parents why she had to go to Toronto next week when I suddenly had to excuse myself. I simply said I was tired. The pavement was wobbling beneath me and my skin was alive with perspiration. Jayne was about to say something when she saw Sarah attempt a cartwheel and yelled out for her to be careful. I said goodbye to everybody, assured the Allens that we were looking forward to Sunday night and then handed Jayne the camera. I knew that leaving was not a smart play but I had no choice but to go with it. I noted her ambivalence and dissatisfaction and headed back toward the house, which was dark, except for the jack-o’-lanterns, whose faces were already caving in. I could still feel Robby’s relief when I stumbled away.
In my office I poured myself a large glass of vodka and wandered outside onto the deck overlooking the lit pool and the backyard and the wide expanse of field leading to the woods. The trees looked black and twisted beneath the orange light of the moon. I sipped the vodka. I wondered: Were the strange lights flickering in the low gray sky that people had reported seeing back in June somehow connected to the disappearance of the boys, which began around the same time? The other explanations I came up with made me hope so.
Something passed over me and then flew away.
Suddenly Victor rushed out of the house and was standing near me, barking and panting. He was facing in the direction of the woods.
“Shut up,” I said tiredly. “Just shut up.”
He looked at me worriedly and then sat down with a whimper.
I tried to relax, feeling the hot wind on my skin, but my eyes were drawn to something lying next to the Jacuzzi, which I also noted was bubbling—someone had turned on the jets—and steam was rising off the heated water. I set my drink on the barbecue and moved hesitantly across the deck until I was standing over a pair of swimming trunks. I assumed the trunks were something left over from the party but when I picked them up they were soaked, as if someone had just climbed out of the Jacuzzi and removed them. And then I noted the patterns on the shorts: large, abstract red flowers. Hawaii suddenly was flying through my mind and it landed at the Mauna Kea Hotel, the resort my family stayed at when I was a kid. Are these mine? I asked myself silently, because I had once owned a pair (as did my father), yet almost immediately knew that the answer was no. I calmly wrung out the trunks and draped them over the deck banister to dry. I sipped my drink and then took a deep swallow. I breathed in and looked back into the woods.
The night was drenched with darkness and the darkness really was dazzling. And the sound of the wind seemed amplified, and I noticed that Victor was standing up again and staring out into the woods, the hot wind ruffling his golden coat. I just kept staring into the blackness of the woods, drawn toward the darkness as I always had been. And the wind rushed up against me and the wind felt . . .
. . . feral . . .
There was no other word for it. The wind felt feral.
“Hello darkness my old friend . . .” The lyric drifted into my thoughts and I felt as if a boundary were being erased. I closed my eyes. I suddenly realized how alone I was. (But this is how you travel, the wind whispered back, this is how you’ve always lived.) I opened my eyes when a moth landed on my arm. It looked as if the entire world were dying and turning black. The darkness was eclipsing everything.
And then Victor started barking—much more insistently this time, shaking as he stared out at the woods, and his barking was soon interspersed with growls. And, just as suddenly, he stopped.
He stood still. He had heard something.
He kept looking into the woods.
And then he leapt off the deck and ran toward them, barking again.
“Victor,” I called out.
I could see his shadow loping along the field as if he was chasing something and he was still barking, but when he entered the woods the barking stopped.
I sipped my drink and decided to wait for him to come back.
I looked at the bathing suit. I thought about the Mercedes cruising down Elsinore Lane. How long had it been following us? Who had been in the Jacuzzi?
And then I thought I saw Victor. A shape, low and hunched over, had emerged from the woods but I couldn’t make out what it was. It was the size of Victor, perhaps larger, but its movements were spiderlike as it lurched grotesquely sideways, clumsily darting in and out of the trees at the edge of the woods.
“Victor!” I called again.
The thing stopped moving for a moment. And then its dark shape scuttled sideways and picked up speed and it began shambling back into the woods. I realized, sickeningly, that it looked as if it was hunting something.
“Victor!”