Mr. Keenan went to the window to check on the weather. The morning was clear and bright, and nothing lurked on the beach. He pressed his hand against the cold glass. “Bundle up, if you go, and don’t be gone too long. But first have some breakfast. Pumpkin waffles on the griddle.”
A short time later, a fully stuffed Nick Weller excused himself from the table, leaving Jack Peter in the middle of a short stack of waffles, and hurried upstairs to change clothes in the privacy of the bedroom. He fished the scraps of paper from his robe and crammed the lot into a front pocket of his jeans. Careful not to rustle as he walked, he returned downstairs in search of his coat and gloves and watch cap. Mr. Keenan was at the kitchen sink, washing the sticky dishes, and Jack Peter sawed through his last waffle, all the time watching Nick prepare to leave. With his little finger, he chased and cornered a bead of maple syrup and stuck it in his mouth, and his words came out garbled. “Whey youf going?”
“Just out,” Nick said. “A little fresh air. Maybe I’ll walk to Mercy Point and back.”
“Mebbe I’ll go wif you.”
“Ha-ha, very funny,” he said. “I won’t be long. Maybe when I get back, we can do something different today.”
“We can always draw.”
“I’m tired of monsters.”
Jack Peter picked up a strip of bacon and munched it like a bone.
From the mudroom, Nick heard the Quigleys’ dog barking, so he made his way quickly around the house and climbed the hillock to the safety of the ocean and the beach. Colder air blew off the water, and he considered for a moment just hunkering down on the spot and looking at the clues, but he feared Mr. Keenan might wander about and accidentally catch him. As he walked away from the house, Nick kept glancing over his shoulder at the back facade, now drenched in sunshine. The windows of Jack Peter’s room shone like great eyeglasses, and he could picture himself with his head through the opening of one of the lenses and seeing those terrible infants swarm all over the walls. The memory gave him the willies, and he resolved to put some distance between himself and the house.
Not another soul on the beach as far as he could see, and he inhaled and savored the lonesome feeling. Since he had arrived at the Keenans’, he had not been alone except for stolen interludes in the bathroom, and wherever else he went there was always someone not far away. At home he might go hours without seeing his mom or dad. No, Mr. and Mrs. Keenan seemed to be hovering, ready with the next meal or popcorn in front of the television set. And Jack Peter was incessantly following him like a puppy that couldn’t be shaken. Not that he was particularly demanding, but all the more bothersome for his dumb attentiveness. His friend seemed unable to abide being alone, as though he had saved up years of solitude and was now cashing in on Nick’s company. Even when they were doing nothing or sleeping or drawing those stupid pictures, Jack Peter was suffocating him. It felt good to be away from that particular burden.
Bound by his thoughts, Nick did not realize how far he had traveled till he looked back and saw the sloping roof of the Keenans’ house. He rightly figured that if he could not see them, they could not see him either. Looking for a windbreak, he walked further and found a trio of pines rooted in a fissure. Beneath the boughs, he crouched and dug out the scraps from his pocket. The spot was calm, but he made sure to weigh down each strip with a little stick or pinecone or piece of shell. He spent a good twenty minutes figuring out the jigsaw puzzle, and he would have been done sooner had not the images bothered him so.
Jack Peter had drawn the babies.
They were as horrible as he remembered, the distorted faces and limbs, the pale misshapen bodies, the lizardlike way they clung to the walls. The torn paper halved some of the images, while others escaped from the page entirely. He had drawn them before they showed up, and then he had ripped the drawing to shreds after they fled. Why? When could he have possibly seen them? Why would he not wake up when they threatened to climb into the room?