"Go on, T.J. Unless you want an Indian burn."
T.J. doesn't. Ebbie Wexler's Indian burns hurt like a mad bastard. He gives a theatrical sigh, backs his bike out of the rack, mounts it, and rides back down the mild slope of the hill, holding a handlebar in one hand and his Slurpee in the other. He expects to see Ty right away, probably walking his bike because he's just . . . so . . . tiyyy-urd, but Ty doesn't seem to be on Chase Street at all — what's up with that?
T.J. pedals a little faster.
In the men's room, we are now looking at the line of toilet stalls. The door of the one second from the left is closed. The other three stand ajar on their chrome hinges. Beneath the closed door, we see a pair of gnarled, veiny ankles rising from a pair of filthy slippers.
A voice cries out with surprising strength. It is a young man's voice, hoarse, hungry, and angry. It echoes flatly back from the tile walls: "Ab-balah! Abbalah-doon! Munshun gorg!"
Suddenly the toilets flush. Not just the one in the closed cubicle but all of them. Across the room the urinals also flush, their chromed handles dipping in perfect synchronicity. Water runs down their curved porcelain surfaces.
When we look back from the urinals to the toilets, we see that the dirty slippers — and the feet that were in them — are gone. And for the first time we have actually heard the sound of slippage, a kind of hot exhale, the sort of sound one hears escaping one's lungs when waking from a nightmare at two in the morning.
Ladies and gentlemen, Charles Burnside has left the building.
The crow has backed right up against the hedge now. Still it regards Tyler with its bright, eerie eyes. Tyler steps toward it, feeling hypnotized.
"Say my name again," he breathes. "Say my name again and you can go."
"Ty!" the crow croaks obligingly, then gives its wings a little shake and slips into the hedge. For a moment Tyler can still see it, a mixture of shiny black in the shiny green, and then it's gone.
"Holy crow!" Tyler says. He realizes what he's said and gives a small, shaky laugh. Did it happen? It did, didn't it?
He leans closer to where the crow reentered the hedge, thinking if it shed a feather he will take it for a souvenir, and when he does, a scrawny white arm shoots out through the green and seizes him unerringly by the neck. Tyler has time to give a single terrified squawk, and then he is dragged through the hedge. One of his sneakers is pulled off by the short, stiff branches. From the far side there is a single guttural, greedy cry — it might have been "Boy!" — and then a thud, the sound of a pet rock coming down on a small boy's head, perhaps. Then there's nothing but the distant drone of a lawn mower and the closer drone of a bee.
The bee is bumbling around the flowers on the far side of the hedge, the Maxton side. There is nothing else to be seen over there but green grass, and closer to the building, the tables where the elderly inhabitants will, at noon, sit down to the Strawberry Fest Picnic.
Tyler Marshall is gone.
T. J. Renniker coasts to a stop at the corner of Chase and Queen. His Slurpee is dripping dark blue juice over his wrist, but he barely notices. Halfway down Queen Street he sees Ty's bike, leaning neatly over on its kickstand, but no Ty.
Moving slowly — he has a bad feeling about this, somehow — T.J. rides over to the bike. At some point he becomes aware that what was a Slurpee has now dissolved into a soggy cup of melting goop. He tosses it into the gutter.
It's Ty's ride, all right. No mistaking that red twenty-inch Schwinn with the ape-hanger handlebars and the green Milwaukee Bucks decal on the side. The bike, and —
Lying on its side by the hedge that creates a border between the world of the old folks and the world of regular people, the real people, T.J. sees a single Reebok sneaker. Scattered around it are a number of shiny green leaves. One feather protrudes from the sneaker.
The boy stares at this sneaker with wide eyes. T.J. may not be as smart as Tyler, but he's a few watts brighter than Ebbie Wexler, and it's easy enough for him to imagine Tyler being dragged through the hedge, leaving his bike behind . . . and one sneaker . . . one lonely, overturned sneaker . . .
"Ty?" he calls. "Are you jokin' around? Because if you are, you better stop. I'll tell Ebbie to give you the biggest Indian burn you ever had."
No answer. Ty isn't joking around. T.J. somehow knows it.