The front door swung open when she turned the knob, and she called out for her family and flipped on the lights. Nobody appeared. Tim should have heard her arrive, seen the car in the driveway, and Jack usually greeted her after she had been away all day. The room was cold and quiet. She left her coat and hat on the edge of the sofa and turned up the thermostat, the furnace blowers thumping, as though the house itself had been holding its breath for her. On the kitchen table were the remnants of a male bacchanal, dirty plates with pizza crusts, an open bin of pretzels, the peel of an orange curling upon itself. But no boy, no father. Where the hell were they?
Something pattered across the floor overhead, and she stuck her head into the stairwell to call for her son. Nick Weller appeared on the landing, followed by Jack, a wild grin on his face. Bounding down the steps in their hooded sweatshirts, they looked like trolls descending from the hills, and Jack nearly bowled her over. She circled her arms around his head and shoulders to return the embrace, but he pulled away at her touch. Beyond him, Nick stood on the stairs, watching.
“Nick, what a surprise.”
When he bowed his head, his hood concealed his eyes. “My mother dropped me off so they could go to my dad’s Christmas party. I guess they forgot me.”
Holly suddenly remembered the last-minute phone call the night before from Nell with an urgent request that they watch Nick. Not the first time they had left him late, but the boy before her was so penitent, abject really, that she sensed trouble far greater than his parents’ absentmindedness. “But where’s Mr. Keenan?”
“Gone,” Nick said.
“What do you mean gone? How long has he been gone?”
“I went out to look for him, but I couldn’t find him anywhere.”
Clamoring for attention, Jack stuck his face next to hers. “He chased it. He went outside and chased it.”
“Chased who? What are you talking about?”
“He’s out there.” He pulled at her arm. “Daddy tried to catch it.”
“Jack, please—”
“The monster.”
She wriggled free from his grasp. “Nick, tell me what really happened. Where’s Mr. Keenan?”
“It’s true, Mrs. Keenan. He saw something out there on the rocks, by the ocean. And he wanted to get a closer look.”
“Mom, do you want to see my drawing of it?”
“Jack, honey, I have to listen to Nick, now—can you please be quiet, please?”
He did not like it when anyone raised their voice or reproached him, so Jack turned his back to her and faced the wall, but at this particular moment, she did not have any desire to consider his feelings. Nick was acting queer as well, shrinking into that ridiculous hood like a turtle retreating into its carapace. But she had no room for his feelings either, and she pressed the question by stepping closer so that she was nearly touching Nick. The boy’s face shone with perspiration and a dark red stripe of skin above his upper lip had been rubbed raw.
“When Mr. Keenan didn’t come back, I got worried. Not at first. We watched him go over the rocks, but then he vanished, and I didn’t know what to do.” He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his jacket.
“And what was he after?”
Nick moved to put himself between Jack and his mother. “I can’t tell what it was. Me and Jack watched him and then he never came back and then it just was later and later and Jack said he was hungry. I didn’t know if I was supposed to stay inside with him or if I should try helping Mr. Keenan, so I made him some lunch, but we got hungry and ate it. After, when he still didn’t come home, I thought maybe something bad happened out there, and I told Jack to stay here, and I went out—as far as the ocean and up to the highest rocks I could—but I never saw him, I’m sorry.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Maybe three or four hours.”
“Jesus,” she said and then covered her mouth with her fingers. A kind of paralysis came over her, and she could not decide whether it was wiser to search for her husband, flashlight in hand, or wait for him at home with the boys. Or perhaps she should call the police or the fire department, and what would she say, my husband ran out of the house and hasn’t come back for four hours? Darkness swallowed the last of the twilight, and she stared through the bay window as the land and sea lost shape. “Tim, Tim, Tim,” she whispered under her breath until his name became mere rhythm, the drum on her heart, and still he did not come. The sudden closing of a car door in the cold air gave her a moment of hope—he’s home—but it was only Fred and Nell come to fetch their son. They rolled into the house, slightly drunk and worn from the party. One look at her snapped them into sobriety.
Big Fred Weller swayed in the middle of the living room and then steadied himself next to the Christmas tree. “You look both tragic and worried,” he said. “Have you just seen Hamlet’s ghost?”
“It’s Tim,” Holly said. “He’s disappeared.”