situation here in Millhaven.”
Another glance at Shane Auslander’s photograph brought with it an unpleasant jab of remembrance. An unwelcome fragment of nightmare flickered in view, and he glimpsed something feral extending a bony hand to yank him out of his life. Goose bumps raised on his arms, and little dark hairs stuck up like quills. Hastily, Mark turned to the arts pages and grazed over the movie advertisements. He had nothing to do until Jimbo Monaghan finally got out of bed, an event that in summertime rarely took place until eleven o’clock had come and gone.
Mark put his dishes in the sink. Hoping to both save his mother some unnecessary worry and preserve his mobility, he folded the newspaper and thrust it into the wastebasket.
Without having made any conscious decisions, he wandered out the back door into the yard. His feet took him to the place on the defeated grass and exposed earth where the monstrous creature had seemed to lift its snout and look up at him. He smiled, thinking that he should send his uncle Tim an e-mail telling him that
The Divided Man
had given his nephew a grade-A nightmare. Maybe people wrote stuff like that to him all the time.
Your book scared the hell out of me. Thanks!
Mark did not feel so grateful.
Mark discovered that while conducting a kind of mental dialogue with his uncle, he had stepped over his father’s broken fence and moved into the middle of the alley. This morning, the eight-foot wall still looked ugly and said
Keep out,
but it did not seem quite so sinister. Lots of people took what other people considered excessive measures to make sure they got the privacy they thought they needed.
And where was he walking now but down to the lower end of the alley to Townsend Street? And at the bottom of the alley which way was Mark turning, east toward Sherman Boulevard, where he could kill a little time mooching around in the shops, or west toward Michigan Street?
It occurred to Mark that he was retracing his path of yesterday afternoon, when he had rounded the corner of Townsend and Michigan on his skateboard. This time, he wanted the reassurance of finding that the front of the house held no more fascination for him than the wall behind it now did. He wanted his normal world back again.
Mark came around the corner, looked for an introductory moment up at the whole of Michigan Street, and felt the breath in his lungs turn to vapor. Even before he had taken in any details, his nerve endings had registered a sense of essential
wrongness
. For perhaps as long as five or six seconds, familiar Michigan Street struck him as enemy territory. Only then did he notice the profound stillness. Drained of life and dimension, Michigan Street was as flat and dead as a landscape on a billboard. Skip lay curled on his porch as if dead. Mark’s knees weakened and trembled, and his heart stuttered in his chest.
With an enigmatic, self-conscious authority that suggested he had been there all along, a thick-bodied man facing the other direction stood silhouetted against the dead sky at the top of Michigan Street. He was there now, in any case, and perhaps he had been posed up there from the start, and in his shock, Mark had failed to see him. The sense of wrongness flowed from this man, Mark understood—this figure with his back turned. Mark took in the unkempt black hair curling past his collar, his wide back covered by a black coat that fell like a sheet of iron to the backs of his knees. Willful, powerful wrongness came off of him like steam.
No, Mark thought, this creature had not been standing at the top of the street all along. He had set the scene, then placed himself in it. He had created an effect, and the purpose of the effect was to get Mark’s attention. With the clarity that sometimes follows in the wake of terror, the boy saw that he had been given a warning. A warning against what, the being at the top of the street would let him figure out later. For now, it was enough that
Another glance at Shane Auslander’s photograph brought with it an unpleasant jab of remembrance. An unwelcome fragment of nightmare flickered in view, and he glimpsed something feral extending a bony hand to yank him out of his life. Goose bumps raised on his arms, and little dark hairs stuck up like quills. Hastily, Mark turned to the arts pages and grazed over the movie advertisements. He had nothing to do until Jimbo Monaghan finally got out of bed, an event that in summertime rarely took place until eleven o’clock had come and gone.
Mark put his dishes in the sink. Hoping to both save his mother some unnecessary worry and preserve his mobility, he folded the newspaper and thrust it into the wastebasket.
Without having made any conscious decisions, he wandered out the back door into the yard. His feet took him to the place on the defeated grass and exposed earth where the monstrous creature had seemed to lift its snout and look up at him. He smiled, thinking that he should send his uncle Tim an e-mail telling him that
The Divided Man
had given his nephew a grade-A nightmare. Maybe people wrote stuff like that to him all the time.
Your book scared the hell out of me. Thanks!
Mark did not feel so grateful.
Mark discovered that while conducting a kind of mental dialogue with his uncle, he had stepped over his father’s broken fence and moved into the middle of the alley. This morning, the eight-foot wall still looked ugly and said
Keep out,
but it did not seem quite so sinister. Lots of people took what other people considered excessive measures to make sure they got the privacy they thought they needed.
And where was he walking now but down to the lower end of the alley to Townsend Street? And at the bottom of the alley which way was Mark turning, east toward Sherman Boulevard, where he could kill a little time mooching around in the shops, or west toward Michigan Street?
It occurred to Mark that he was retracing his path of yesterday afternoon, when he had rounded the corner of Townsend and Michigan on his skateboard. This time, he wanted the reassurance of finding that the front of the house held no more fascination for him than the wall behind it now did. He wanted his normal world back again.
Mark came around the corner, looked for an introductory moment up at the whole of Michigan Street, and felt the breath in his lungs turn to vapor. Even before he had taken in any details, his nerve endings had registered a sense of essential
wrongness
. For perhaps as long as five or six seconds, familiar Michigan Street struck him as enemy territory. Only then did he notice the profound stillness. Drained of life and dimension, Michigan Street was as flat and dead as a landscape on a billboard. Skip lay curled on his porch as if dead. Mark’s knees weakened and trembled, and his heart stuttered in his chest.
With an enigmatic, self-conscious authority that suggested he had been there all along, a thick-bodied man facing the other direction stood silhouetted against the dead sky at the top of Michigan Street. He was there now, in any case, and perhaps he had been posed up there from the start, and in his shock, Mark had failed to see him. The sense of wrongness flowed from this man, Mark understood—this figure with his back turned. Mark took in the unkempt black hair curling past his collar, his wide back covered by a black coat that fell like a sheet of iron to the backs of his knees. Willful, powerful wrongness came off of him like steam.
No, Mark thought, this creature had not been standing at the top of the street all along. He had set the scene, then placed himself in it. He had created an effect, and the purpose of the effect was to get Mark’s attention. With the clarity that sometimes follows in the wake of terror, the boy saw that he had been given a warning. A warning against what, the being at the top of the street would let him figure out later. For now, it was enough that
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