"What?" I asked.
"What?" he said, as if shaken from a dream. "Oh, John, you're still here. It was nothing, just a poem."
"Never heard it," I said, turning back to the fire. It was smaller now, still strong, but no longer raging. I should have been terrified, alone in the night with a demon—I thought immediately that he must have found me out somehow, must have known that I knew his secrets and left him the note. But it was obvious that his mind was somewhere else—something had obviously disturbed him to put him into such a melancholy frame of mind. He was thinking about the note, perhaps, but he was not thinking about me.
More than that, his thoughts were absorbed in the fire, drawn to it and soaked into it like water in a sponge. Watching the way he watched the fire, I knew that he loved it like I did. That's why he spoke—not because he suspected me, but because we were both connected to the fire, and so, in a way, to each other.
"You've never heard it?" he asked. "What do they teach you in school these days? That's William Blake!" I shrugged, and after a moment he spoke again. "I memorized it once." He drifted into reverie again. " Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?'"
"It sounds kind of familiar," I said. I never paid much attention in English, but I figured I'd remember a poem about fire.
"The poet is asking the tiger who made him, and how," said Crowley, his chin buried deep under his collar. " 'What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?'"
Only his eyes were visible, black pits reflecting the dancing fire.
"He wrote two poems like that, you know—'The Lamb' and The Tiger.' One was made of sweetness and love, and one was forged from terror and death." Crowley looked at me, his eyes dark and heavy. "'When the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears—did he smile, his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?'"
The fire rustled and cracked. Our shadows danced on the wall of the house behind us. Mr. Crowley turned back to the fire.
"I'd like to think the same one made them both," he said,
"I'd like to think it."
The trees beyond the fire glowed white, and the trees beyond those were lost in blackness. The air was still and dark, and smoke hung like fog. Firelight caught the haze and lit it up, overpowering the streetlamps and blotting out the stars.
"It's late," said Mr. Crowley, still unmoving. "You run on home. I'll sit up with the fire 'til the coals die out."
I stood and reached in with the poker, preparing to spread the coals around, but he put out a shaky hand to stop me.
"Let it be," he said. "I never like to kill a fire. Just let it be."
I set down the poker and walked across the street to my house. When I reached my room, I looked back and saw him, still sitting, still staring.
I'd watched that man kill four people. I'd watched him tear out organs, rip off his own arm, and transform before my eyes into something grotesquely inhuman. Somehow, despite all of that, his words by the fire that night disturbed me more than anything he had ever done.
I wondered again if he knew about me—and if he did, how long I had before he silenced me the way he silenced Ted Rask. I was safe at the party, and afterward, because there were too many witnesses. If I'd disappeared from his yard, after fifty or more people had seen me there, it would raise too much suspicion. I decided there was nothing I could do. If he didn't know, I needed to keep going with my plan, and if he did, then there wasn't much I could do to stop him. Either way,
I knew that my plan was working—my note had bothered him, maybe very deeply. I had to keep up the pressure, building more and more fear until he was terrified, because that's when I could control him.
The next day I sent another note, another way, to make my intentions clear:
I AM GOING TO KILL YOU
12
Brooke woke up every morning around seven; her dad got up at six-thirty, showered and dressed, and then woke up the kids while their mom made breakfast.
He went into Ethan's room and flipped on the lights, sometimes yanking the covers away playfully, sometimes singing loudly, and once actually tossing a bag of frozen broccoli into his bed when he refused to get up, Brooke, on the other hand, was more privileged— her dad simply knocked on her door and told her to wake up, leaving only when he heard her answer. She was a young woman, after all, both more responsible than her brother and more deserving of privacy. Nobody barged in, nobody peeked in, nobody saw her at all until she wanted them to.