doing. The doctors have a phrase for people like Grove.
Slow sleepers.
Which is why he was partially awake when the first noise came drifting across the backyard.
At first, it hardly registered. In fact, Grove wasnât even sure how long he had been listening to it. It sounded like a branch tossing in the wind out in the woods beyond the property line or maybe leaves rustling. He tried to ignore it, rolling over and pressing his uncooperative eyes shut. But the noise persisted.
It was muffled and distant, but it seemed to be changing shape, coming into focus, refining itself. It had an awkward rhythm, like a faint snapping noise, a jittery tattooâ¦and as it clarified itself in Groveâs groggy ears, he became aware of something vaguely troubling about it.
It seemed to be approaching the house.
ELEVEN
Looking back on that tense moment in the basementâspecifically the point at which Grove recognized the noise was coming from the backyardâhe would be hard pressed to precisely recount all the subsequent details. It was as though some silent alarm had sounded inside him, drowning all his other senses, even eliminating his awareness of the passage of time. It seemed like an eternity between the moment he sat up on the sofaâ¦and the point at which he finally rose on creaking, sleep-numbed legs to pad over to the window.
There were two narrow, horizontal basement windows, both of them on the west wall facing the backyard, one at each end of the room. The windows were shuttered and positioned near the ceiling. Each looked out upon a little gravel concavity, which was slightly below ground level, drastically hindering the view across the lawn. Maura had planted a clutch of multicolored petunias in each window well, further obstructing the view. At night, shadows latticed the little wells. The flowers looked black and funereal.
Another eternity passed as Grove peered through the nearest window, seeing nothing but moonlight and dancing shadows out on the lawn, his head cocked with the rigor of a satellite dish, listening for that sound, that arrhythmic noise which had halted, for the moment at least. For an interminable length of time Grove stood wondering if he was hearing things. He wondered if the noise had been part of a dream. Maybe he was still dreaming. He didnât want to turn on a light. Something told him to stay immersedâat least for the momentâin the safe anonymity of darkness.
How long he stood there at the window, waiting for that maddening noise to return, would never truly be known. Maybe five minutes, perhaps less.
Grove rarely lost track of time like that. In fact, if pressed, he could recall only two or three times in his career that he got so panicked or involved in the moment that he felt time slow down to a crawl. It happened in Alaska a couple of years ago, on a mountainside, when Grove finally came face to face with Richard Ackerman. Ackerman had been crazy as a loon, but also had displayed something behind his eyes which Grove had come to think of as Factor X.
Factor X could turn a meek, persnickety accountant like Ackerman into a dangerous psychotic. Or transform a frightened Tulane grad student like Michael Doerr into a ritualistic killer. Factor X existed, it seemed, solely in order to turn people into puppets, make them perform off-the-scale evil acts. A Catholic might have called it a demonâ¦but Grove believed that such an assessment was too easy. He believed that the jury was still out about Factor Xâs true nature.
Maybe this was why Grove, over the past two years, had become such a homeschooled expert in demonology and gnostic depictions of evil. After poring over the ancient texts, from the Greeks to the medieval period, he moved onto the modern acolytes such as Aleister Crowley, Bertrand Traviere, and Winston Baines Walker. Grove then created a virtual database of occult connections to the modern serial murderer. He saw consistencies in Old
Slow sleepers.
Which is why he was partially awake when the first noise came drifting across the backyard.
At first, it hardly registered. In fact, Grove wasnât even sure how long he had been listening to it. It sounded like a branch tossing in the wind out in the woods beyond the property line or maybe leaves rustling. He tried to ignore it, rolling over and pressing his uncooperative eyes shut. But the noise persisted.
It was muffled and distant, but it seemed to be changing shape, coming into focus, refining itself. It had an awkward rhythm, like a faint snapping noise, a jittery tattooâ¦and as it clarified itself in Groveâs groggy ears, he became aware of something vaguely troubling about it.
It seemed to be approaching the house.
ELEVEN
Looking back on that tense moment in the basementâspecifically the point at which Grove recognized the noise was coming from the backyardâhe would be hard pressed to precisely recount all the subsequent details. It was as though some silent alarm had sounded inside him, drowning all his other senses, even eliminating his awareness of the passage of time. It seemed like an eternity between the moment he sat up on the sofaâ¦and the point at which he finally rose on creaking, sleep-numbed legs to pad over to the window.
There were two narrow, horizontal basement windows, both of them on the west wall facing the backyard, one at each end of the room. The windows were shuttered and positioned near the ceiling. Each looked out upon a little gravel concavity, which was slightly below ground level, drastically hindering the view across the lawn. Maura had planted a clutch of multicolored petunias in each window well, further obstructing the view. At night, shadows latticed the little wells. The flowers looked black and funereal.
Another eternity passed as Grove peered through the nearest window, seeing nothing but moonlight and dancing shadows out on the lawn, his head cocked with the rigor of a satellite dish, listening for that sound, that arrhythmic noise which had halted, for the moment at least. For an interminable length of time Grove stood wondering if he was hearing things. He wondered if the noise had been part of a dream. Maybe he was still dreaming. He didnât want to turn on a light. Something told him to stay immersedâat least for the momentâin the safe anonymity of darkness.
How long he stood there at the window, waiting for that maddening noise to return, would never truly be known. Maybe five minutes, perhaps less.
Grove rarely lost track of time like that. In fact, if pressed, he could recall only two or three times in his career that he got so panicked or involved in the moment that he felt time slow down to a crawl. It happened in Alaska a couple of years ago, on a mountainside, when Grove finally came face to face with Richard Ackerman. Ackerman had been crazy as a loon, but also had displayed something behind his eyes which Grove had come to think of as Factor X.
Factor X could turn a meek, persnickety accountant like Ackerman into a dangerous psychotic. Or transform a frightened Tulane grad student like Michael Doerr into a ritualistic killer. Factor X existed, it seemed, solely in order to turn people into puppets, make them perform off-the-scale evil acts. A Catholic might have called it a demonâ¦but Grove believed that such an assessment was too easy. He believed that the jury was still out about Factor Xâs true nature.
Maybe this was why Grove, over the past two years, had become such a homeschooled expert in demonology and gnostic depictions of evil. After poring over the ancient texts, from the Greeks to the medieval period, he moved onto the modern acolytes such as Aleister Crowley, Bertrand Traviere, and Winston Baines Walker. Grove then created a virtual database of occult connections to the modern serial murderer. He saw consistencies in Old
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