Charlie ventured into the night only when the moon lit the land. Caught in the wind and its cold light, the fields of the Drop ebbed and flowed like an ocean. Tonight was chillier than his other watches had been. He had worn a coat but no shoes so as to cross the land without a sound.
A family of deer had been drinking at the south end of the lake. They had paid Charlie no mind as he slid into the faerie circle and up the rope ladder that led to the platform from which he watched. As he climbed, he heard coyotes in the distance. He’d heard them many nights, but they never ventured into this part of the forest. This part of the forest had already been claimed.
Once up in his blind, Charlie searched the contours of the lake and saw that the deer were gone. The Drop was different at night. Sometimes he saw bats flutter against the stars and heard the mourning of owls from deep within the woods.
Charlie had learned things about the dark during that long night in his old school’s furnace room. He knew that the dark was not one thing but many. Like layers of fabric stacked upon one another, each with its own texture. The longer he watched, the more these layers fell aside to reveal something more of the world beneath.
A loud crack shattered the silence. Charlie sat up straight; this was new. The first sound was followed by three more. The noises seemed too loud for broken branches. There was a sickening quality to them that Charlie could not place. The sounds had to be the work of the Watcher, but still he could not see anything.
While Charlie sat on his perch and wondered if he was supposed to follow the sounds, he heard more noise: a rustling followed by an urgent pattering. He could not imagine what made these sounds, but it was coming closer.
It was then that the massive bulk of the Watcher became visible. Charlie had never been this close before. If he had draped his arm off the platform, he would have grazed the creature’s bristling head.
The Watcher was entering Charlie’s faerie circle. And it wasn’t alone. It took Charlie a second to understand that it was dragging one of the deer, a full-grown doe. Charlie hadn’t realized it was a deer at first, because of the way it was crumpled against the ground. As the Watcher pulled the animal into the center of the circle, its legs dragged behind, splayed at terrible angles. Its useless feet pawed hopelessly at the frozen ground.
“Soon,” the Watcher said. Its voice was deep as the mountains and broken from disuse. Charlie had never heard the Watcher speak; it had not occurred to him that it could. He knew it could write and read, but to hear the sound of its voice filled him with wonder and horror. The Watcher propped the deer against the stump in the center of the faerie circle, stretching its neck so that Charlie could see the profile of the doe’s face. Short puffs of panicked breath clouded the air around its blinking eyes.
Though Charlie thought himself well hidden, the Watcher turned toward him. Without breaking their gaze, it plunged something into the deer’s neck. A gush of blood arced high into the air, followed by another and another.
“Soon it will be you,” the Watcher said. The pale eye of the moon shone in the sheet of crimson that rippled across the ground. The doe’s breathing slowed. “In the cold, in the dark,” the Watcher said. The deer twitched, and became still. “All alone. That’s when you die.” The Watcher’s frozen face changed for a moment before turning away. It let the deer’s limp body slump against the ground.
The Watcher disappeared into the woods, leaving Charlie with the dead deer. After a time Charlie realized he was shaking. He’d thought himself immune to the cold, but now it was all he felt.
He staggered down the rope ladder and into the wide pool of congealing blood. Once through the tree line, he began to run. Past the lake, he darted back into the trees. He wanted to purge the cold from his bones and the drying blood from his feet. When he turned back for the Crofts, he saw the illuminated windows of the attic and his father’s silhouette against the light.
Even now Charlie’s hands trembled in the heat of the faucet’s stream. He would have to hide these pajamas. They were splattered with blood. As he took them off, he tried to imagine what the Watcher wanted.
The match between them was uneven; Charlie realized that now. Charlie could run and hide and search and watch, but if the Watcher in the forest decided to do something, Charlie knew that he could not hope to stop it.
27
Ben paced the edge of the forest for an hour, calling Hudson’s name. When he became too cold to continue, he sat in the kitchen, listening and hoping for the beagle’s scratch at the door.
He woke just before five, his face smeared against the table, his spine a tangle of pain. Outside, the moon had set; the land lay under a thicket of total darkness.
Ben returned to the forest, to walk along the trees and shout for Hudson. He shone a flashlight into the maw of the woods. Still no sign. The beagle might have found a quiet burrow in which to sleep through the night. This was possible, and this was what Ben made himself believe as he trudged back to the Crofts. After breakfast, Hudson would scratch on the kitchen door, 100 percent okay and in need of a bath.
Since this was going to be just another normal day, he should begin it in the usual way, Ben thought. He made coffee and brought his laptop down from the attic. By the time he got settled, the eastern sky had begun to lighten. Along the Drop, the fields were glazed with frost that gleamed purple in the day’s nascent light.