Roland nodded solemnly.
We came to the edge of the boat yards, paused beneath a large oak. ‘So your dad fought with Gribbs, then?’
‘Not really. He met him over in England. They were both volunteers. My dad went in under-age, in the infantry. Gribbs was in the Navy. The way Dad talks about him he was old even back then.’
My gaze on the keeper’s small shack, I said, ‘Does he ever come out of there?’
‘Not much,’ Roland replied, his voice low. ‘But Gribbs is good with engines and stuff. Sometimes Dad goes to him to get something fixed.’
We entered the yards cautiously, but all was silent and there was nobody in sight. On the other side waited Mistress Flight, tucked in between the treeline and another boat. We hurried towards it.
II
Walter poured his tea then leaned back. It was coming, whatever it was, it was coming. And all he could do was wait. There was no questioning his certainty; in his dreams he had heard the chains snap. A maelstrom had come into his sea of thoughts, a storm unlike the witch’s familiar brew – this one couldn’t be talked to. It was mindless, dark and old and full of ancient fury. Walter could hear its approaching roar, and he knew that this was one storm he wouldn’t ride out.
And yet he no longer felt any fear: the dreams had become visions of the future that were clear and simple and final. So he sat back in the easy chair and sipped steaming tea. He heard the four boys enter the yards, their mutterings indistinct but audible. Smiling, he added a small amount of honey to his tea.
Ah yes, the old lady’s found little hands to smooth her wrinkled hide. Gentle, innocent hands, tentative yet eager – as if touching a new and fragile present. Dear Mistress Flight will return to the living this summer. The thought brought a grin to Walter’s lips.
He’d checked her hull about five years ago, before the sight of the yard’s continual decay had finally broken his heart, and he knew she was sound. There were some dry-rot patches near the screws, but they weren’t deep – glass or even putty would do them right. She was well built, mahogany and maple, with solid brass fittings and keel. And the old Sea Horse – well, it was a Sea Horse, wasn’t it? Those damn things would run with half their parts seized up.
It was better to think about stuff like that, he mused, than to brood over the coming darkness. Better to listen to the kids working on Mistress Flight than to follow the rumblings of destruction. Fire and ice, ice and fire – the recurring themes in his dreams.
His tea had gone tepid, and the smoke was making his eyes water. Damn wood stove. Anyway, it was time for lunch. Setting the cup down, he rose to his feet. The kids had been working on the lady the last three weekends running; he reminded himself that he’d have to check on their progress soon. Maybe tomorrow.
III
‘My dad’s in real estate,’ Lynk said as he lounged on the aft deck. ‘We own two cars, and I’m getting a minibike for my birthday.’
‘They also got a Ski-doo racer,’ Carl added.
‘And I can drive it.’ Lynk’s gaze narrowed on me. ‘You know how to drive a Ski-doo?’
‘Yeah, we use them all the time in the city,’ I said, rolling my eyes at Roland, who grinned.
‘What kind of bike you got?’ Lynk pressed. ‘I got a three-speed.’
‘Didn’t know you could count that high, Lynk.’
‘What kind of bike you got?’
‘A Mustang.’
‘Does it got a banana seat?’
I nodded.
‘Can you pull wheelies?’
Again I nodded.
‘For how far?’
I stopped my polishing of the tachometer and turned to him. ‘Farther than you, that’s for sure.’
Lynk barked a laugh. ‘Prove it.’
‘I will.’ I hesitated. ‘As soon as it gets fixed.’
Lynk leaned forward. ‘It’s busted? Hah, must be a piece of crap!’
‘Has it got a flat or something?’ Roland asked from where he was cleaning the starboard ports.
I shook my head. ‘My dad said he was going to do something to it. Fix it up. He took it to the gas station.’
Roland smiled. ‘What’s he going to do to it?’
‘I don’t know. Make it faster, or something, I guess.’
‘I got a slick on mine,’ Lynk said. ‘I can peel out better than you.’
‘How d’you know?’ I retorted hotly. ‘You ever see me peel out?’
Lacing his fingers behind his head, Lynk sneered, but said nothing.
Roland sat down and glanced up at me. ‘You find out what kind of parts you’ll need for the engine?’
‘Just gaskets, mostly. I’m gonna bring some solvent to get rid of most of the guck. And the battery needs charging.’
‘This is stupid,’ Lynk pronounced suddenly. ‘What’s the point? It’s a good enough clubhouse as it is. Christ, I don’t want to fuckin’ have to work here. You’re fuckin’ nutso, Owen.’
I felt my face turn red. ‘I may be nutso, you prick, but I’m not sitting around picking my ass like you’re doing. You can jerk off all you want, but you’re still useless.’
‘Fuck off, you motherfucker!’
I laughed, turned away.
Through the port I could see branches full of buds, and small brown birds flitting around them. A matte of grey and brown filled the background, seeming to have knitted the world tight – there were so many shadows that the sun would never reach. And we lived in those shadows. Sighing, I turned and stepped out on to the aft deck. ‘Let’s go. There’s nothing else we can do here, today.’
‘Yeah.’ Roland came to stand beside me. The forest held an impenetrable wall up before us, and we stared at it in silence.
After a minute Roland said, ‘Ever seen a bear?’
‘Only at the zoo,’ I replied. Somehow, when I confessed my ignorance to Roland, it was all right, though I didn’t know why. Roland didn’t get my back up like Lynk did. It was a nice feeling, and talking to the tall farmboy with the grave eyes was easy. ‘Have you?’
Roland nodded. ‘Yeah. They come down from the north in the spring and fall, when they’re hungriest. My dad took me with him when he went out to shoot one, last year.’
I glanced at him. ‘Did you get him?’
He shook his head. ‘We chased it across the highway and then down to the river. It was a big male. He crossed the ice floes. We watched him jumping from one to the next. He didn’t even get wet.’
I grinned, trying to picture the scene in my mind. Then I frowned. ‘But your dad could’ve shot him out on the ice, couldn’t he?’
‘Sure, it would’ve been easy. He just didn’t want to.’
‘How come?’
Roland shrugged, a strange look on his face. ‘I don’t know. He never told me. He just didn’t.’
I gazed at the trees. ‘I’d sure like to see a bear, someday.’
‘Maybe today, eh?’ Smiling, Roland nudged me, then turned to where Lynk and Carl sat. ‘Let’s head over to the beaver lodge.’
‘Fuckin’ right, man.’ Lynk climbed to his feet, Carl following suit.
I smiled at Roland. ‘Bear-hunting, eh?’
He smiled back.
IV
‘Where’s your mother gone?’
Jennifer shrugged, not looking at her father. ‘Don’t know. She left before I got up.’
He stood there, his hands gripping the back of the chair, for a moment longer, then left the dining room, entering the kitchen. She heard him open the refrigerator door, heard him snap the beer bottle’s cap, heard the door shut, then the sound of his footsteps on the buckled linoleum floor, and a moment later the grate of the back door’s spring.
She reached across the table for her Player’s Filter cigarettes, wondering why she was bothering – she hated the damn things. But she lit one anyway, exhaled a stream of blue smoke towards the ceiling.
It was going to be a strange day. Last night had been another night in the city. And she and Mark
had had a fight; even Dave, when he drove her home, had been cool towards her. They’d made her feel like a little kid, and it was all because of that new girl, the one that Mark and Dave took turns drooling over. The new girl – Debbie Brand. The one whose first words to Jennifer last night were: ‘You wear too much eye make-up. Makes you look like a hooker.’
Jennifer took a defiant drag on her cigarette. ‘The bitch.’ Still, she mused, it would’ve been worse had she taken Sandy and Barb with her – in a lot of ways those two were little kids. And worse yet, they would’ve witnessed her being made to look like a fool.
And, to top things off, she woke up this morning to find her bedsheets stained with sticky blood. Even her periods were coming in haphazard fashion. She thought those damn things were supposed to be predictable. ‘Christ,’ she muttered. ‘What a lousy way to start the weekend.’
Stubbing out the cigarette, she climbed to her feet and walked, her limbs feeling leaden, into the bathroom. It stank of beer and vomit and she felt a tremor of nausea rise up inside her. ‘Hah, sympathetic barfing.’
Well, one thing was for certain. She wasn’t about to spend her day in the house – not with him for company. And where had Mom gone, anyway? A wave of fear ran through her suddenly. Maybe she’s taken off. Maybe she’s left me – here, alone with that madman–
Jennifer rushed from the bathroom, ran down the hall and then up the stairs. Breathing hard, she entered the master bedroom, hurried to the closet door and flung it open. All her mother’s clothes were there, and so were the suitcases. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you.’
No, Mother wouldn’t have run away. It was stupid to even think that. Hell, if anyone’s going to run away it’ll be me. And I’ll tell her first. I’ll tell her. I’ll invite her, for Christ’s sake.
In any case, Jennifer wasn’t planning to stay in the house today. With Barb sick with the flu and Sandy visiting relatives in the city, she’d be on her own, and in a way that was good. It would give her time to think of what to do about the bitch – about Debbie Brand.
‘Jennifer?’
She whirled. Her father was standing on the bedroom’s threshold, his face flushed, his eyes red. She suddenly felt trapped.
He ran a hand through his greasy hair. ‘You sure Mom didn’t tell you where she was going?’
‘No.’ She stepped towards him. ‘I’m going out.’
He moved to one side. ‘Where you going?’
Pushing past him, she crossed the hallway and entered her room. Without turning around she replied, ‘Out,’ then slammed the door in her father’s face.
V
Somewhere above us crows laughed. We moved through the bracken like hunters, eyes hungry for movement, ears eager for sound. In our hands we gripped stout clubs of water-worn wood, and they made us feel like killers.
The afternoon had clouded over, bringing with it a chill, as if the old winter was reluctant to surrender. The shadows spread a cool blanket down on the world. In the gloom it seemed the forest breathed an awareness; unseen eyes followed us – every knot in every tree trunk was a dwarf’s gnarled glower; the humus seemed alive, as if churning with worms just beneath the surface. The cold, damp air brushed our faces, smelling of earthy sweat.
‘Maybe we should head back.’
The three of us stopped and turned to look at Carl. He was carrying a stick far too heavy for him, and it now lay on the mulched ground at his side. He drove his hands into his pockets, shrugged, then glanced at Roland. ‘Maybe we should go back,’ he said again.
‘What the fuck for?’ Lynk demanded.
‘Well, it might rain.’
‘So what?’ I retorted. ‘A little piss going to make you cry?’
Carl’s face flushed and he looked down at the ground. ‘No,’ he mumbled. Then, taking a deep breath, he raised his head and met my gaze. ‘It’s close to dinner-time. And I think we should go back.’
Suddenly, I realised that Carl was frightened. I smiled. ‘Okay, you go back, then. And if you run into that bear, just yell. Maybe we’ll come running.’
‘And maybe we won’t,’ Lynk finished, grinning.
Carl looked at Roland. ‘Is there a bear around here?’ he asked.
‘Didn’t you hear?’ Lynk said, his eyes wide.
‘Roland?’ Carl’s gaze did not waver from the boy’s face.
Roland shrugged. ‘Can’t say. Don’t know. Might be.’
Lynk and I grinned at each other. We knew we’d won. Turning about, we continued on our way to the beaver lodge. And Carl followed. Moving past us, Roland took the lead. After a few minutes he stopped. As I came up to him he glanced at me, frowning.
‘You smell that?’ he said.
I sniffed. ‘Yeah. Something rotten.’
‘Something dead.’
I stared at him. ‘At the beaver lodge?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Fuckin’ dead beaver,’ Lynk said.
‘Let’s go back.’
Ignoring Carl, the three of us crept forward, our clubs raised. The lodge was just ahead, beyond some thickets. As we approached the stench grew worse. From overhead came once again the laughter of crows.
‘Mink guts,’ I muttered.
‘Only worse,’ Roland said.
Off to our right I caught glimpses of the river through the branches. We came to the edge of the thickets. There were no trees here, only gnawed stumps and deadfall. There were trails running through the brambles, but they were only knee-high.
‘We’ll have to crawl,’ Roland said, dropping to his knees.
‘We can go around like last time,’ I said.
Roland looked up at me, his face pale and expression stern. ‘What for?’ And then he crawled into the trail.
I had to push Lynk to one side to follow the farmboy.
‘Asshole,’ Lynk muttered behind me as I crawled after Roland. The branches wove a net of brown and grey on all sides, making the trail feel like a tunnel. The bare mud under my hands was slick, cool and strangely yielding to my weight. It felt like flesh. Up ahead all I could see was the bottom of Roland’s sneakers and his jean-clad behind.
A moment later he cleared the trail and, with a grunt, climbed to his feet. I quickly did the same. Roland glanced at me and nodded. ‘It’s coming from the beaver lodge.’
The uneven mound squatted against the riverbank about twenty yards upstream from us. The stench was overpowering in the still air. Side by side, Roland and I walked towards it. Behind us, at the mouth of the trail, Lynk had snagged his jacket on some thorns and, swearing, he stopped to extricate himself. Still inside the tunnel, Carl whimpered.
The water was making an odd sucking sound at the lodge, and there was also a faint clicking sound. We stepped up on to a muddy ridge that marked the side nearest to us, and looked down.
A dead man was lying in the mud, one arm snagged in the beaver lodge’s branches. His lower half was submerged in shallow water which seemed to be gently boiling. But no, the man’s lower half was crawling with brown crayfish, and there was hardly any flesh left; every now and then a flash of pallid bone appeared.
He was naked, his skin a dull white. His head was tilted back, hiding his features. Long blond hair – almost white – lay fanned out on the mud all around his head. And he was a giant.
I managed a dry swallow, but I could not pull my eyes away. Somewhere, far away inside my head, someone was screaming. While I just stood there, numb and silent.
‘Holy fuck,’ Lynk said beside me.
‘Where’s Carl?’ Roland asked.
‘He’s barfing in the bush,’ Lynk replied in a dull voice. ‘Bawling his eyes out. Holy fuck, holy fuckin’ Christ.’
I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again, determined to speak. ‘He’s, uh, he’s too big.’
‘Yeah,’ Lynk rasped. ‘A fuckin’ giant.’
‘Big as a bear,’ Roland said.
I glanced at him, a torrent of undefined thoughts filling my head. He met my gaze, and it was as if
I was staring at a blank wall. ‘Think we should go and tell someone?’
He didn’t reply.
‘What the fuck for?’ Lynk demanded.
With an effort I pulled my eyes away from Roland’s and glared at Lynk. ‘What do you mean, what for?’
Lynk’s sudden grin shocked me. ‘It’ll just bring all these fuckin’ people out here – pigs and stuff. And what’ll we get out of it? Eh? Just a bunch of fuckin’ kids. I say fuck ’em all.’
‘So what the hell are we going to do with him, then?’ I barked a laugh. ‘Take him home?’
Lynk placed his hands on his hips, looked down on the body. ‘All I’m saying is, we just leave him here. Don’t tell anyone. Pretty soon he’ll be nothing but bones, right? Besides, he was probably murdered—’ He stopped, a wild light coming into his eyes. ‘And maybe, if we go to the pigs, the murderer will come after us!’
‘Holy shit,’ I breathed, suddenly terrified.
‘We keep it a secret.’ He looked at each one of us. ‘Anybody finks, and we’re all dead.’
My gaze returned to the body. ‘Ever seen anybody so big? Christ, must’ve been eight feet tall.’
Roland grunted, then turned around. ‘Carl? You all right?’
I followed his gaze, saw Carl on his hands and knees, facing the river. There was a muffled reply that Roland seemed to take for ‘yes’, for he nodded and turned to me.
‘Let’s look at the guy’s face.’
‘Yeah,’ Lynk added breathlessly. ‘Who knows, maybe we know him.’
In spite of our voiced eagerness, we walked slowly, giving the body wide berth. When we were on the other side we approached cautiously.
The three of us screamed and leapt back. On the bank on the other side Carl jumped to his feet and shrieked. And then we were running, clawing our way through the thicket, then whirling past trees, weaving between the boles as if their branches were making grabs for us. There was no time for more screams; the world had closed in to the ground at our feet.
And in my mind, four words pounded with my heart over and over again, each utterance bringing on yet another wave of horror – He had no face. He had no face.
VI
Jennifer emerged from the old lot’s narrow track and stepped on to the asphalt road. She had just spent the last two hours sitting on the crumbling foundation wall of the ruined house, smoking one cigarette after another, and thinking. And all that had come from it was a greater feeling of hopelessness and a sore throat.