Behind him, where the screening bushes by the creek were thickest, greenish-blue eyes watched all of this, and they watched as Larry at last continued up the lawn to the house, still laughing a little and shaking his head. They watched as he climbed the porch and tried the front door, and found it open. They watched as he disappeared inside. Then the bushes began to shake and make the rattling sound that Larry had heard and dismissed. The boy forced his way through, still naked except for his shorts, brandishing the butcher knife.
Another hand appeared and caressed his shoulder. The boy stopped immediately. The woman came out - she was tall and imposing, but seemed not to move the bushes at all. Her hair was a thick, luxuriant black streaked with thick blazes of purest white; attractive, startling hair. It was twisted into a cable that hung over one shoulder and trailed away only as it reached the swell of her breast. When you looked at this woman you first noticed how tall she was, and then your eyes would be dragged away to that hair and you would consider it, you would think how you could almost feel its rough yet oily texture with your eyes. And if you were a man, you would find yourself wondering what she would look like with that hair unpinned, freed, spread over a pillow in a spill of moonlight. You would wonder what she would be like in bed. But she had never taken a man into herself. She was pure. She was waiting. There had been dreams. Once, in college, there had been the Ouija board. And she wondered again if this man might be the one.
"Wait," she told the boy.
She turned his agonized face up to her calm one. She knew what the trouble was.
"The house will be all right. Why would he hurt the house, Joe?"
He turned back and looked at the house, longingly, worriedly.
"When he goes, we'll follow him."
He shook his head viciously.
"Yes; we have to. I have to." And she felt that strongly. He was not the one, perhaps, but even if he was not, he was a link in a chain she had followed for years, a chain that was now nearing its end.
Joe - that was not really his name - raised the knife wildly, as if to plunge it into her. She made no move to protect herself or to flee, and he lowered it slowly. He turned toward the house and jabbed the knife at it.
"No, you won't," she said. "Because he's a human being, and he'll lead us to..." She fell silent. Other human beings, she had meant to finish. He's a human being, and he'll lead us to other human beings. But she was not sure that was what she meant, or even if it was, that it was all she meant. Already she felt pulled two ways at once, and she began to wish they had never seen Larry. She tried to caress the boy again but he jerked away angrily. He looked up at the big white house and his eyes were burning and jealous. After a while he slipped back into the bushes, glaring at her reproachfully. She followed him to make sure he would be all right. He lay down and curled up in a fetal position, cradling the knife to his chest. He put his thumb in his mouth and closed his eyes.
Nadine went back to where the brook had made a small pool and knelt down. She drank from cupped hands, then settled in to watch the house. Her eyes were calm, her face very nearly that of a Raphael Madonna.
Late that afternoon, as Larry biked along a tree-lined section of Route 9, a green reflectorized sign loomed ahead and he stopped to read it, slightly amazed. The sign said he was entering MAINE, VACATIONLAND. He could hardly believe it; he must have walked an incredible distance in his semidaze of fear. Either that or he had lost a couple of days somewhere. He was about to start riding again when something - a noise in the woods or perhaps only in his head - made him look sharply back over his shoulder. There was nothing, only Route 9 running back into New Hampshire, deserted.
Since the big white house, where he had breakfasted on dry cereal and cheese spread from an aerosol can squeezed onto slightly stale Ritz crackers, he had several times had the strong feeling that he was being watched and followed. He was hearing things, perhaps even seeing things out of the corners of his eyes. His powers of observation, just starting to come fully to life in this strange situation, kept triggering at stimuli so slight as to be subliminal, nagging his nerve-endings with things so small that even in the aggregate they only formed a vague hunch, a feeling of "watched-ness." This feeling didn't frighten him as the others had. It had no feeling of hallucination or delirium about it. If someone was watching him and just lying back, it was probably because they were scared of him. And if they were scared of poor old skinny Larry Underwood, who was now too chicken even to go putting along on a motorcycle at twenty-five miles an hour, they were probably nothing to worry about.
Now, standing astride the bike he had taken from a sporting goods shop some four miles east of the big white house, he called out clearly: "If someone's there, why don't you come on out? I won't hurt you."
There was no answer. He stood on the road by the sign marking the border, watching and waiting. A bird twittered and then swooped across the sky. Nothing else moved. After a while he pushed on.