When the strange sounds stopped, Charlie stopped, as well. He stood in mid-step as the minutes stretched. He waited, but the sounds did not return. He wondered if he had done something wrong, but when he turned around, Charlie understood that he had done exactly what he was supposed to do.
Behind him, something was fixed to the silver belly of a mighty birch. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing. It had been an opossum, Charlie thought. They were the only creatures with coiled muscular tails like that. Its head had been removed, its fur stripped. The creature had not just been skinned but disassembled; organs ranging in color from near white to darkest purple were staked carefully side by side among the animal’s strewn musculature. The raw flesh glistened, but there was a strange absence of blood. When he looked closely, Charlie could see the way the pieces were linked by veins and tendons with the finest of textures. The animal’s fur was staked to the tree just below its fleshy remains. It looked as if it had been unzipped and set aside like winter pajamas.
Two large block letters were inscribed between the two presentations of the animal. They were written in red, but Charlie thought it wasn’t blood but a paste formed of mashed flesh.
GO, the letters read. Charlie frowned as he searched the trunk for other marks. Go? Go where? For Charlie, there was no place but this one.
Charlie turned his attention to the animal and touched a flap of its raw flesh. Though the opossum looked as if it had been bled dry, Charlie’s fingertip still came away rimmed with scarlet. He smelled his finger before tasting it. He tried to imagine how a wolf or Hickory Heck or the Watcher itself might like the taste.
The opossum’s blood was warm on his tongue, and that made Charlie smile. He smiled because that meant that the kill had been fresh and personal. It meant that the Watcher had indeed left the opossum just for Charlie. Most of all, it meant that their brief encounter on the mountain had not been the end of their games.
It had only been the beginning.
17
“Moving up here just seems like such an extreme reaction,” Ted said. It was brutally hot outside, but they’d taken a jog with Hudson anyway. “It’s not like you didn’t already have your hands full.”
This conversation had been wearying the first time, and by now Ben was thoroughly sick of it. Ted had been here nearly a week, and Ben had no idea how long he planned to stay.
“I mean, I could see Westchester or Connecticut, but—”
“I’ve run out of ways to say it,” Ben said. “The city wasn’t working for us anymore. We had to get out.” Ben knew that with absolute certainty. For Charlie and Caroline’s sake, they’d had no choice but to leave.
“Yeah, but you had friends there, Benj. You had a life. You had me.”
“And how exactly did you help us when we were there, Ted?” Ben asked. He came to a dead stop in front of the Crofts. “Remind me again? Did you babysit Bub when I had to take Caroline to her doctor’s appointments? Did you help look for Charlie when he went missing? You think this concerned-brother routine is helpful now that you can’t possibly do anything for us?”
Ted stopped and turned around. He looked utterly stricken. Ben had a sudden vivid memory from one of their rare childhood tussles, when Ben had split Ted’s lip. He remembered his feeling of horror at seeing the blood dripping down his brother’s face and the way Ted had stared at him, too dismayed to cry. Ben hadn’t meant to get angry.
“I was in L.A. when Charlie went missing,” Ted said. “You know that.”
“I know,” Ben said. “I didn’t mean to—” He shook his head. “But second-guessing every decision I make isn’t helpful.”
He turned away from Ted to throw a tennis ball for Hudson to retrieve. On their jog, Ben had made sure that they stayed far from the northeasterly fields. He’d woken up once in the night, imagining the stink of the pit on him.
“I get that you’re stressed, Benj,” Ted said. “Maybe you just need to slow it all down a little. Take some time off and relax somewhere, go on vacation or something. Caroline’s trying to do too much at once.”
“There’s a lot to do.”
“She’s manic, Ben. Has she kept in touch with her shrink?”
“She checks in with her psychiatrist once a month to talk about the medications, but she doesn’t want to find a therapist up here.”
“Then you need to find someone for her.” Ted put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I’m serious. Don’t you see how it’s affecting Charlie?”
“Thanks for the advice, Ted.” He shrugged out of his brother’s grip.
“And whenever you don’t have that dopey smile on your face, you look like you want to jump out of your skin. Like right now. Do you think I haven’t noticed?”
“Got it.” He accepted the soggy ball from Hudson.
“Come on, who knows you better than me, Benj?” Ben met his brother’s gaze. Ted looked away first. “Fine. I’m not going to fight with you.” Ted took off his T-shirt and mopped his forehead. “I think I’m going to take off after I shower.”
“Don’t be like that,” Ben said.
“I have to make an appearance at the office at some point. And you’ve got that meeting, anyway.” Lisbeth had called Ben the day before to tell him that there was another meeting in the village this afternoon. At first, Ben had thought that she was talking about the Preservation Society, but this seemed to be something else.
“Well, you should come back soon. Whenever you want.”
Ted turned and took in the view of the Crofts for a few moments. “You got everything you ever wanted, didn’t you, Benj? Your big house, your pretty wife and kids.”
Ben paced his breathing so that he didn’t say anything else he’d regret.
The kitchen door shut, and they turned to see Caroline walking down the steps with a bucket full of paint rollers.
“Ted’s heading back to the city this morning.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sure you don’t want to stay for lunch? I was going to make paninis with the leftover cheese and pork.”
“Nah, thanks, though. I want to beat the rush-hour traffic.”