Yet he had seen that thing on the road. He pretended to Mr. Keenan that he had witnessed nothing—in part because he could not believe his eyes and in part because he was not completely sure the figure was not simply of his own imagining, an illusion based on Jack Peter’s sketches and the power of suggestion. Whatever it really was. By the time Mr. Keenan had exited the car in pursuit, it was too late for Nick to confess. Anyhow, he had shut his eyes when it looked his way, and then the creature simply vanished into the night, no more presence than if he had never appeared in the first place. Even now, with the drawing spread across his lap, Nick could no more be sure what he had seen or what he may have conjured.
He blamed Jack Peter. That boy had always had a way of pulling him into his inner world, with a strange hold stemmed from their shared affinities and lifelong history. They had been linked from the cradle. Born just two weeks apart, they were raised together. Their mothers seemed like best friends to Nick, and he could not remember a single birthday or Halloween or Christmas that they had not spent together. Separated only by Mercy Point, they were always playing at either the Keenans’ or the Wellers’ house, especially in those long winter months when life at the shore can be so lonesome.
Of course, Nick had other friends, boys from school mostly, but he rarely saw them outside the classroom. They were scattered widely across the peninsula; but most of them, he knew, avoided him on account of his parents. Couple of drunks. By default, his family had remained loyal with their oldest friends, the Keenans, and he to Jack Peter. Once upon a time, they had been equals, or so it seemed to him now, looking back to those years when Jack Peter was unafraid of the outdoors. They would play hide-and-seek in the fir trees that bordered the Keenans’ house, or fly kites in May and June. They were just friends, but all that changed after the accident. Jack Peter emerged out of the ocean an entirely different child, more demanding and in control, and without thinking, Nick began to bend to his wishes. From that time on, he had followed Jack Peter’s lead, always. He, too, had been changed by that day on the beach, though not in the same way.
Daring one more glance at the monster, he rolled up the scroll and tucked it back into the hiding place. The hard wooden floor felt cold beneath his bare feet, and his bed beckoned, soft and warm. He hopped across the room and just as he snapped off the light and settled under the comforter, a crash came from beyond his closed door. A thump of something heavy landing on the floor.
The first thought to flash through his mind was the image of the bogeyman from the drawing come to get him. Hadn’t that thing crossed the headlands moving northerly? Right in this direction. Nick pictured the creature as just beyond, pacing the hallway, readying itself to smash the door and wrest him from the covers. Counting to ten, he steadied himself and waited. A game of hide-and-seek, but when no bony fist turned the knob and no curdling groan was uttered, he realized that his imagination had raced ahead of all reason. He eased his way from under the covers to investigate.
At the far end of the dark hall, his parents’ bedroom door stood ajar, but no light shone from within, so he tiptoed to the entrance and peeked inside. After his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Nick could make out the general contours of the furniture, the pair of mirrored bureaus, and the king bed with one body curled beneath the blankets. His mother snored quietly in her usual spot. On the far side, the white sheets were twisted and wound like wind-wrecked sails. Nick crept over and saw his father passed out in a heap of limbs on the floor. From the angle of repose, his father looked as if he had no head, and for a moment in the stillness, Nick wondered where it might have gone.
“Dad?” he whispered in a soft voice, and when the body did not respond, he laid one hand on his father’s shoulder and shook him gently. “Dad, are you all right?”
His father grumbled something in his sleep but did not respond to his son’s entreaties, so Nick pushed harder with both hands.
“Whozat? Ah, Nicky. I seemed to have missed the bed.” Whiskey breath, but his clothes smelled like sour milk. Still dressed in his bulky sweater and trousers, he had at least remembered to take off his shoes and socks, for his bare feet shone white in the darkened room. As he tried to stand, he struck a pose that mirrored the man in Jack Peter’s picture, a kind of fishlike crawl from out of the primordial ooze. Nick bent to offer support, and his father used him as a crutch to stand, wobbling and uncertain. “You’re a good boy.”