Then he saw his grandfather’s house, a mile ahead. A single pool of light in the wide open desert. Owen couldn’t come racing into the dooryard at this speed, with the radio going loud. How would he explain that behavior? It’d been years since he’d really gotten in trouble for anything, but sometimes he’d do something dumb and he could tell Grandpa was disappointed in him. Even with those things, though, Grandpa always understood that he hadn’t meant to do wrong. That helped. But driving like crazy for no reason at all—no reason he could talk about, anyway—would be a different kind of deal. He wasn’t sure what Grandpa would say about that.
A quarter mile out, Owen dropped his speed to twenty and killed the radio. He’d no sooner done it than the voice came back as strong as ever.
Tell me your name and I’ll leave you alone for a while. I promise.
Owen could see Grandpa in the pole barn, the big sodium lights turned on inside. Grandpa was working on the tractor Mr. Seward had brought over last Friday.
Tell me your name. That’s all I want for now.
“Owen,” he said. It came out of him like a cry of pain.
The rest of it, too. Your whole name.
This time he didn’t even get as far as saying it. All he did was think it—his whole name like it appeared when he signed up for a fishing license—and just like that the voice repeated it back to him.
Owen Carter. Thank you, Owen Carter.
*
The voice stayed away all that evening, through dinner and through the TV shows Owen watched, while Grandpa read and checked the computer for e-mails from customers. Owen went to bed at eleven thirty. He turned the light off right away; he’d found himself holding tight to the idea that if he could get to sleep quickly, everything would be fine in the morning. A good sleep could make a lot of troubles go away.
He’d been lying in the dark no more than thirty seconds when that hope came to an end.
Hello, Owen.
No Ozzy Osbourne to distract him here. No wheel ruts or turns to grab his attention either.
“Stop,” Owen whispered. “Please.”
He was sure he was only talking to himself, but pleading felt like the thing to do, all the same.
This doesn’t have to be bad for you, you know. It can be good, if you don’t fight me. Here, I’ll show you.
Owen was breathing fast again. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt fear like this. Confusion, yes. There had been lots of confusion in his life, and it was always a little scary, but this—
All at once, something happened. Some change of his mood. It came over him so quickly, he didn’t recognize what it was right away. And then he did.
“What in hell?” he whispered.
Go with it, the gravelly voice said. There’s nothing wrong with feeling good.
Owen had felt this way many times in his life, though in recent years the intensity of it had faded a bit. When was the last time it’d felt this strong? Maybe when he was twenty or so.
Beneath his underpants, he felt his erection swelling.
It’s good, right?
Owen only nodded. His mind was filling up with pictures of girls now. He’d never been with one for real, had never even seen one with her clothes off in person, but he’d seen pictures and videos. Back in high school his friend Bobby Campbell had shown him his father’s stash of magazines and DVDs. Bobby was a good guy, and had made Owen copies of three of those discs, and all these years later Owen still had them hidden behind the loose paneling board inside his closet. How long had it been since he’d watched one of those? A couple years, he thought, but the images came back to him now, and so did the feelings those movies had given him.
Go with it. Go on.
It felt real. Not like watching a movie now, but like the real thing—at least like the dreams he’d had a few times in his teens. Like there was a girl here with him. Sliding around on top of him, warm and soft and smooth. Tearing her clothes off, and—oh Lord—
He was still breathing fast, but fear no longer had any part in it. He had his shorts down and his hand around himself in one quick move, and he finished in no more than twenty seconds. He lay there panting afterward, the images in his head still there but fading, every other thought a distant wisp in the dark.
Good for you. You can have that every night if you don’t fight me.
Almost in spite of himself, Owen felt the question rise in his thoughts: What if he did fight? What then?
We’ll see about that tomorrow, the voice said.
*
The next day they saw about it. Grandpa went into town for groceries, and when Owen was still watching the dust from his tires settle in the yard, the voice spoke up.
Think of something your grandfather cares about. Some object of his, there in the house.
“What?”
Do it.
Owen wanted to resist, but even the suggestion was hard to ignore. The answer popped into his mind a second later. He thought of the porcelain cat statue on Grandpa’s nightstand. The one Grandpa had bought for Grandma Lilly when they were just kids themselves, way back.
That’s perfect. Go into his room.
“I never go in there,” Owen said.
Go. Trust me.
Owen felt uneasy but did as he was told. He crossed the living room to the threshold of his grandfather’s bedroom. He could see the cat statue already. A slender little thing, standing upright, the cat frozen in the middle of licking a raised paw.
Knock it over. Shatter it on the floor.
“What are you talking about? I’m not doing that.”