'I have to go, Mother. It's something about school. Don has something I need.' She took her mother's wrist and smiled. 'I need it for tomorrow.
Don't worry, I'll be all right.'
'I don't know. Maybe you should-'
'Mother, the man is dead. Donald killed him. He's dead. I'll be all right, honest.'
She left before the pleading escalated to a command, and took the first three blocks at a run in case her mother changed her mind. Then she stopped and leaned against a tree, breathed deeply a half-dozen times, and shook her head to clear it of the vertigo she felt.
There wasn't much traffic though it was only just seven, yet it felt like past midnight. The air had a feel to it, as if it were weary and hoping the sun would soon give it warmth; the sidewalk felt crisp, with a veneer of ice that cracked and shifted as she walked; and the streetlights were sparkling on their way to the ground, white flecks of whirling mica that made her blink her eyes and look away.
It was cold; and it was silent.
Except for the movement behind her.
He's dead, she told herself as she quickened her pace; he's dead and Don killed him and there's nobody back there.
She looked suddenly; there wasn't.
Four blocks to go and she would pretend to have a headache and Mr. Boyd or Don would give her a ride home.
Dumb, she thought as she stepped into the street; dumb, dumb, dumb. Why don't you just go home and try to call him again? What are you gonna say, you were just passing by? Seven blocks out of your way, and you were just passing by? Gee, Don, I was wondering who you were going to the game with tomorrow. Jeffs already asked me to wait for him after, but he understands if you ask and I go with you. Just passing by, that's all.
She angled to her left, toward the center of the block, intending to turn right at the next corner and save herself a walk past the high school.
And when she reached the center line, she heard the movement behind her again. And the breathing-heavy, slow, something larger than a man moving slowly up on her shadow.
It was the school again, the same thing she had seen down in the lower hall. She felt it without looking, and without looking began to run, mouth open to take the air, arms pumping to propel her While she leapt over the curb and raced down the sidewalk, listening to it follow her though it stayed in the street.
Rhythmic, pounding, sounding so much like a horse that she had to chance it and take a peek, and saw nothing but a huge shadow moving toward her along the road. A gasp-it's a car without headlights, Trace, don't be an idiot-and she whimpered, ran faster and heard the animal-it's a car!
-match her speed.
A second look and she stumbled.
Above the black, in the black, there were two specks of green.
And below it, and moving with it, a flare of green sparks.
Her balance was regained by windmilling her arms and lifting her knees, and the corner was too far away by fifty yards. She was going to be caught. Whoever was chasing her was going to catch her, and she was going to die now because she didn't die the other night.
She was going to be murdered by a shadow with green eyes.
A sob, please don't panic, and something sent her streaking across a lawn toward an illuminated white door. Up three brick steps, and her finger found the bell, slipped off, and found it again, pressed hard and long until the door swung open and she bulled Jeff aside.
'Shut it!' she demanded, and when he didn't move fast enough, she grabbed it and slammed it and leaned against it, and closed her eyes.
'Trace?'
There were narrow windows on either side of the frame. Jeff pulled aside a white curtain, looked out, and frowned.
'Trace, what's wrong? Was somebody chasing you?'
TEN
Don set his desk chair so that he could look out the window, angled it so he could appear to be studying in case someone came in. Not that anyone would. Norman and Joyce were at the concert, and their return would be loud enough to forewarn him should he need it. Now all he had to do was sit and wait, and he got up only once, when the room's lamp turned the pane black and all he could see was his ghost staring back.
He hurried downstairs and switched on the light over the back door, hurried back up and dropped a towel over the lampshade. The backyard was white now, the grass seeming flat, the trees like ragged gaps torn out of the night; there was a wind blowing, a storm coming, and the houses on the next block were infrequently silhouetted by distant flashes of lightning.
He waited, and pondered the dreams, latching on to an image, turning it, poking at it, casting it away for another until, shortly before nine, he concluded there was nothing he could do about it-the horse was real. And not real. A creation out of something he didn't understand, though he knew that because of what it had done to the Howler it was there to protect him.
Real. And not real.
He looked at his other friends, now tinted in orange from the towel over the bulb, and back to the window.
The horse was not going to let anyone hurt him.
The how and the why of it would come later; right now he had to learn more. Real or not, the horse was an animal, and he had to know more about what that animal was, and what control, if any, he had over it, how it would fit into the new Rules he was making.
His lips moved in something less than a smile, and the doorbell rang. He jumped, a hand flat on his chest. A swallow, an embarrassed glance around, and he rushed downstairs, waited for the bell to ring again before pulling open the door.
It was Sergeant Verona, hat in hand and an odd smile, asking to come in.
'Sure,' Don said, stepping back and pointing to the living room. 'Have a seat.'
There were questions, and Don told him he was fine, still a little shaky but planning on going back to school tomorrow. The press hadn't bothered him all night, though he admitted that while it was kind of unsettling seeing himself on television, it was also kind of nice.
'I don't look like a freak,' he said, taking his father's chair.
'You think that? That you look like a freak?' Verona was on the couch, the hat turning over slowly.
'No, not really. Maybe I look like a movie star.'
'Just don't get used to it, son,' the man said kindly. 'Tomorrow there'll be another murder someplace, or a factory fire, and they'll forget all about you.'
'Good,' he said. And: good, he thought, that's real good.
'My mother and father are over at-'
'I know. It's you I wanted to see anyway, if you don't mind. You're not studying or anything?'
'A little. It can wait.'
'The branch,' Verona said.
Don was puzzled. 'The branch?'
'The one you hit Falwick with.'
Verona stopped playing with the hat, looked down at one foot tapping on the rug, looked up at Don. His hand slipped a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped it over his face, but Don saw the eyes-they never left him, never blinked.
'This is hard,' the man confessed. 'I don't know how to say this right, so I'm just going to say it, okay?'
'Sure.' Don didn't care; he didn't know what the cop was talking about.
'I keep thinking maybe you didn't do it,' the man said rapidly, each word a snap followed by a stare to measure his reaction. 'I've had a chance to take a look at the reports, and there's something wrong there, Don. Something wrong I have to get right in my own mind or it's gonna drive me up the wall. You've had that, I'll bet.
