He did not know what to make of the picture or why Jack Peter had hidden it there, a clue to a crime committed over three years ago. While Jack Peter clearly remembered the drowning, he had never said a word about it in all this time. Nick set the drawing on the bed and rolled back the rug until it butted against the bedframe. On the floor lay four more sheets of paper, stashed like treasure maps. Four variations on a theme, the underwater wrestlers in different poses, but in each case, twin battled twin. He laid them out upon the bed like pages in a murdered and dismembered book, trying to make sense of the story.
He searched for more. In the linen closet in the hallway, beneath a stack of bedsheets, he discovered two pictures: the naked wild man crouched on a rock overlooking the ocean, and the white dog sprinting after someone who was indicated by part of one leg and a foot, the rest of the person escaping the edge of the page. He left them on the hallway floor by the closet door and then investigated Jack Peter’s room.
Drawings had been hidden everywhere.
Another half dozen under his rug, a sheaf of papers tucked beneath the mattress, a batch in the dark cavern under the bed, and still more tucked in the leaves of books. Nick pried open the desk drawer crammed with page after page. It was madness. Hundreds of drawings, page after page after page. All the monsters on sheets torn from the sketch pad, crowding into notebooks, dashed off on scrap paper. Many showed the creature that prowled outside in the woods, by the sea, a wretched haunting thing. He gathered the drawings in a giant pile and spread them out, covering the entire bedspread, thick as snowfall. The pages spilled to the floor. Babies and bodies and bones from the sea. The sight of the pictures quickened his pulse and strained his breathing. His temples throbbed. Glimpsing himself in the mirror, he was shocked by how pale his skin had become and the dark circles under his eyes. Just like an inside boy. Feeling ill, Nick knelt on the floor by the bed and bowed his head to rest in a mountain of drawings. Jack Peter must be stopped.
The wind shifted outside and gathered speed, throwing the snow fine as grit against the windows. The storm made a constant roar, like the ocean in a seashell, but underneath that sound was a human cry, bitter and constant, as if some poor soul was keening. Nick rose from the floor and surveyed the hurricane of papers in the room. Leave it, he thought. When Mr. and Mrs. Keenan come back they will see the mess and realize how far their child has spun out of control. He wanted them to know and in knowing, do something about the problem. At the very least, they could rescue Nick, put him somewhere safe until his parents returned to claim him and take him away from such raw mayhem. He missed his mother and father and wanted to go home. Nearby, the voice outside roared again, pleading and insistent.
He breathed deeply to marshal the courage to go downstairs and face Jack Peter. Perhaps he had gone off his head completely and had been howling from the kitchen, but when Nick arrived, the room was empty. On the table lay his latest masterpiece, another vision of penciled madness, a close-up of the wild man’s face, but the boy who drew it was missing. The entire house seemed deserted, though he knew this could not be. Perhaps Jack Peter had intuited what Nick had been up to and what he had discovered, and was in hiding.
“Jack Peter,” he said. “I know all about the drawings. I know you are here somewhere. Come out, come out wherever you are.”
Not a peep. He tried the mudroom, but it, too, was vacant. Cold air seeped through the slab floor, and Nick could see the steam from his breath when he called Jack Peter’s name again. Thoughts of escape leapt into his mind, and he considered how to flee the scene, find shelter, and wait out the storm until the Keenans returned. Hanging on the peg, his coat was damp and stiff, but below it his boots were dry. From the open door, he yelled down to Mr. Keenan’s workroom, but it was dark and quiet. He made his way into the living room.
Another log had been added to the fire, for it blazed, popping and crackling behind the hearth. The ornaments on the Christmas tree threw back the light, and the bare furniture absorbed the glow. Had he not thought to look toward the front door, Nick would have missed him. Jack Peter stood with his back to him but ramrod straight, transfixed by a face in the window. The monster was staring back at him, his hands pressed against the glass.
Unable to resist, Nick stepped forward and whispered, “Jack Peter.”
The creature’s mouth was moving and it appeared to be speaking, though no words penetrated the boundary between the outside and inside. His face was gaunt, marked with smallpox scars and wrinkles, deathly pale with deep circles under hollow eyes and teeth as brown and jagged as a broken fence. Snow covered the crown of his head and clotted in his mangled beard. Below his neck his skin was white as paper and laced with blue veins. His attention had been focused on Jack Peter, but when he saw Nick he thumped his palms onto the window and let out another doleful wail.
*