That’s how I feel, Doc. That’s how I feel, all the time.
The boy places the rifle back in the trombone case and slides down from the sandy perch. He steps back onto the pavement of the parking lot and heads north.
The house, the Murder House, on his right, just two houses from the beach.
He knows the house. His mother comes here once a week for her job.
He stops at the iron gate. Looks up at the sad monster of a mansion, at the gargoyles and the spears on the roof, aimed at the sky, as if angrily threatening the gods—
A loud, sudden noise, the slap of doors flying open, wood hitting wood.
The boy crouches down, fear swirling inside.
A man’s mumbling, angry voice carrying in the wind.
The house, still dark. But the boy finds it. The second floor, south end.
His eyes adjust. He makes out a bedroom. A balcony that wraps around the west and south sides. Double doors, flung wide open.
A man—the man, it must be him. Six, they call him, or Number Six, or just The Sixth. But it’s him. Holden Dahlquist VI.
Shirtless, hair blowing in the wind, leaning over the balcony, looking down.
Trying to get his leg up on the top of the railing that borders the balcony. Trying to stand on top of it?
The boy gently places his trombone case on the ground.
Unlocks the latches.
Removes the air gun.
Looks through his scope, moving through darkness until he finds the man, illuminated by the bedroom light behind him.
With a final thrust, the man pushes himself onto the top of the railing. He rises, wobbly, standing on a narrow perch, a tightrope walker getting his balance.
He’s only on the second story, but this is no ordinary house. The man must be thirty, forty feet up. No way he’d survive a fall, especially when his landing would most likely be on the spiked fence below him.
The man arches his back, raises his arms as if beseeching the heavens. As if preparing to jump, as if preparing to fly off the balcony to another world.
The boy watches all of this through the rifle’s scope.
He pulls the trigger.
The man takes the blow, staggers, flutters on his perch, his arms doing tiny circles, his legs buckling, before he falls backward onto the balcony.
Aim-fire-click. The boy can do it well. He fires two, three pellets at the man. The man, injured from his fall, confused, reacts to each shot, jumping with surprise before scurrying back into the bedroom, out of sight.
The boy smiles. Then he packs up his rifle and runs back to his house.
88
THE BOY RETURNS the next day. An itch he has to scratch. He hasn’t stopped thinking about the man. Can’t get the images from last night out of his head.
No trombone case this time. And this time, during the day. No school today, and Mom says dinner isn’t until two.
Ocean Drive is empty. The beach is empty. Even the beach bums, the drifters, have found someplace else to be today. It seems like everybody has someplace else to be on Thanksgiving.
The boy slips through the iron gates. It takes some effort, but he’s small enough.
He walks into the front yard, which slopes upward to the house. Colorful leaves dancing all around him, the air brittle with cold, the wind coming off the ocean downright treacherous.
He’s staring at the monument by the fountain—Cecilia, O Cecilia / Life was death disguised—when he hears the noise in the back.
He rushes to the back of the house, his feet crunching the blanket of leaves.
The first thing he sees: a rope, dangling from a tree branch, knotted in such a way that an oval circle hangs down, bobbing in the wind.
A noose. He knows the word for it. That’s a noose.
A ladder. A man—the man, it’s him—standing on the top rung, reaching for the noose, struggling to fit it over his head. Crying, sobbing, cursing.
And then suddenly noticing him, a trespasser, a boy, having just come around the corner.
“Get … get outta … get outta here … kid.” His words thick and slurred. The noose in his hands, not yet around his neck.
He is so terrified, he can’t respond to Mr. Dahlquist.
“I said … get out … get—” The man swaying, the ladder rocking, the man losing his grip on the noose as the ladder topples over, the man falling with the ladder to the blanket of leaves below with a muted thump.
The man cursing, then sobbing, his shoulders heaving. Punching the ground, swatting leaves, gripping his hair, grunting and screaming, like something inside him is trying to get out.
Then he stops. He’s worn himself out. He looks around and he finds the bottle, half-filled with some brown liquid, obscured by the leaves. He unscrews the top and takes a long guzzle, empties most of the bottle, wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
Then he turns and looks at the boy.
“It was … you … last … last night,” says Holden Dahlquist VI. The words struggling to escape his mouth, heavy and blurry.
The boy doesn’t answer. Doesn’t confirm, doesn’t deny.
But he walks toward the man.
“You my … guardian angel … or some … something?”