He grabbed a sweater off the back of a chair and eased himself into the hallway. Using small steps and memory’s projection, he felt his way down the hall, not flicking on the light until he got to the tower stairs. There were naked bulbs here, the cold light of corkscrew fluorescents. He shielded his eyes against the glare, knowing now that it would take him forever to fall asleep. On his way up the stairs to the attic, he caught his reflection in one of the windows. In the morgue lighting, he looked thin and startled.
Tracking a phantom sound in a house as large and old as the Crofts was a frustrating exercise. The acoustics of the building were strange. At times he could hear a noise in his bedroom and be certain it came from upstairs, only to ascend the stairs to find the place deathly quiet. He assumed it had something to do with the air vents that ran through the walls, the fickle wind from the valley, and the fact that the house had been constructed in stages. So when he opened the door to the attic, he wasn’t surprised to find the room utterly silent. This was a game he’d played before.
With the exception of the nook where he wrote, the lighting in the attic was poor. There were just a handful of bulbs to light the immense space. He flicked them on and grabbed a roll of duct tape, a candle, and some matches from where they sat on a table near his desk.
The next room was in the center of the attic. He was sure this was where the noise had come from, but the way the scream ricocheted confused his senses. He rarely ventured beyond his writing nook and was struck by the emptiness of the space, which seemed to have grown in the dark.
A draft raised the hairs on his arms and sent a whistling cry through his ears. He quickly lit the candle to track the sound. He’d hunted gaps in the ancient windows enough to know not to waste the evidence left by a strong gust. The flame blew east, so he headed to the windows on the western wall. One by one he traced the frames with the candle. While he checked the last window, the flame was blown out by the wind. Ben felt along the side of the window: The current was cold fire on his fingertips. He ripped off a measure of duct tape to mark the spot and unfastened the lock on the window. Sometimes fiddling with the window was enough to temporarily disrupt the wind’s noise.
The window did not want to be opened, but Ben coaxed it halfway. The breeze from the valley tore through his hair and filled the room. The chill from the December wind was as complete as a plunge into the ocean. It was a bell-clear night, the sky an unfathomable blue, with only the boldest stars visible beyond the immensity of the waxing moon. It could still catch him off guard: how beautiful the world could be when no one was there to see it.
The sound was gone now. The attic was still in the new silence of the night.
As he reached up to close the window, a flash of movement pulled his gaze to the ground. Something ran through the dark.
It was a person, he was sure. He caught flashes of pumping arms as the figure loped through the ghost-lit field.
Ben was on the tower stairs before he realized he was running. He thought of poor lost Mrs. White and her son with his shotgun. He thought of the man in the smoke from Charlie’s drawing and of the mutilated deer and the pit in the north woods. Death and violence and blood. Ben thought of his boys asleep in their beds. He had an abstract thought that this was the point in the story when the man got his gun. But he had no gun. When he reached the kitchen, he crashed through the baby gate they kept on the stairs, sending it spiraling into the counter. On his way to the door, he pulled a knife from the rack.
He burst out of the house.
His heart thudded in his chest, but beyond the rustle of grass in the wind, the world was quiet. Walking quickly in front of the house, he ran his eyes over the Drop, searching for movement. He looked down at the knife. In the story, the knife would seize a malicious gleam from the moonlight; in his hand, it looked as dark as the sky.
The fields had been tamed by the morning frosts, and the grass was half its summer height but still tall enough to hide a man who did not wish to be seen.
“Hey!” he screamed. He screamed again before taking the time to consider whether this was a good idea.
He turned to the south woods and saw someone running toward him. Announced by ripples of windswept grass, the figure ran with the beat of the land. Its footfalls punctuated the gusts from the valley and matched the cadence of the forest’s swaying trees. Ben dropped the knife.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” Ben shouted.
Charlie slowed to a stop in front of Ben.
“It was different in the dark,” Charlie said. His little chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. “Everything was different.”
Ben knelt down to grab the boy at the shoulders, to force his son to look him in the eyes. “You can’t be out here by yourself. It’s too dark; it’s too cold.”
“Yes,” Charlie said. He turned to the valley. “It will get darker.”
“You could trip and hurt yourself out here. And we wouldn’t know, because we’d assume you were in your bed, because that’s where you’re supposed to be. If you were out here alone all night, you’d die of hypothermia, except you wouldn’t be alone because of the goddamn coyote packs.” Ben realized he was screaming.
The sound of barking made Ben turn around just in time to see Hudson speed by him, a blur. The dog moved so quickly that Ben could only watch as the beagle launched himself at Charlie, knocking the boy to the ground.
“Hudson!” Ben shouted. The dog stood on Charlie’s chest, growling, inches from the boy’s face. Ben grabbed his collar to lead him away. “What’s wrong with you?” He tried to get the dog to shift his focus to him, but Hudson would not stop. “Are you all right?” Ben asked Charlie.
“Yes,” Charlie said. He got to his feet slowly, rubbing his side.
Spikes of grass lit up around them as light burst from the kitchen windows.
“What are you two doing out here?” Caroline called from the kitchen door. Her voice was nearly lost over Hudson’s growling. She wore a red robe that turned a shade closer to black with every step she took from the house.
“Did you see him?” Ben asked her. He still had a grip on Hudson’s collar.