man after him made his bowels watery. But Tris was right.
“Okay,” Nicholas gasped. “Over the ridge. We’ll split.”
Tristram nodded.
Nicholas stole a glance back, and let out a yelp. The man was only two body lengths behind, striding up the sharp rise, arms stretched out for balance. Years later, he would be watching Boris Karloff in James Whale’s Frankenstein, and the image of the monster lumbering, arms out wide, made him suddenly lose control of his bladder. The most terrible thing of all was the man’s face. It was slack and expressionless. There was no anger, no lust. He was as emotionless as a crocodile. And he would catch them.
Nicholas felt fresh hot tears sting his eyes. Lungs burning, he drew the deepest breath he could and yelled: “Help!!”
The word died without an echo, swallowed by the trees. What idiots! Why didn’t we yell when we were near the street? Their stupidity made Nicholas cry harder.
“Help us!” yelled Tristram. Again, the words were held tight by the greedy trunks of black figs, the dark ferns, the endless leaves.
They were nearly at the top of the slope. Nicholas looked at Tristram. No tears, but his face was tight and pale. A wave of jealous love went through him. Tristram pointed at himself, then left. Nicholas nodded-he’d go right. They crested the hill.
Their plan fell apart as Tristram suddenly vanished.
Nicholas, a step or two behind, saw him simply drop away into nothing. He slowed a second, just enough to brake his momentum so he, too, didn’t fall over the steep edge. Crash! Tristram hit the gully floor three meters down.
“Oh.” The small sound was much worse and packed more pain than a scream.
Nicholas swung to look behind. The man was only a few steps away, powering up the last of the slope-close enough for Nicholas to smell him: a mist of sweat and cigarette smoke and Old Spice.
Without another thought, Nicholas jumped.
He dropped through the air for what seemed an endless moment, waiting for huge hands to snatch him back… then hit the moist, leafy gully floor. Tristram was rolling onto his feet, nursing his right arm; his wrist was bent at the wrong angle.
“Your arm-”
Tristram shook his head and looked up.
The man had reached the cliff edge above. His massive chest, thick as a horse’s, swelled and sank with huge breaths. He regarded the boys, the drop, the cliff that diminished as it ran left. Then he cocked his head as if listening to something far off, some distant siren song only he could hear.
“Come on!” hissed Nicholas.
He and Tristram ran up the creek bed at the bottom of the gully, their feet rocking on the smooth stones, risking sprains for speed.
Tristram stopped. “Oh, no.”
Ahead, a huge shape had appeared behind the trees. Horrible despair returned like a forgotten nightmare. “The pipe.”
They’d rarely come this far in, and only once down here to the gully and the huge, old water pipe that crossed it.
The man was clambering down the cliff face, hands neatly grasping the wild quince and cudgerie saplings growing stubbornly from the rocks. He moved with the speed of a gorilla born to the forest.
There was no splitting up. The woods to the right were choked so thick they were impenetrable. The very air seemed dark green-not a glimmer of sunlight, just ancient shadow. Nor could they go back: their pursuer was less than thirty paces away. Left was the only course, unless…
Tristram peered at the base of the pipe. Two tunnels, like barrels of a giant shotgun, penetrated the concrete. Nicholas knelt to look in. The circles of light at the far ends were thickly dotted with familiar shapes. Spiders. Hundreds of them.
His heart seemed to stop in his chest and his eyes watered. The thought of a single spider made his skin crawl. These long, dark nests turned his terror into panic. The world grew silver at its edges-he was going to faint.
“Tris, I can’t…”
“Get help.” And without another word, Tristram dropped to his knees and crawled into the closest tunnel.
Nicholas looked around. The man was striding toward him. His hands were huge. For the first time he noticed the bulge at the man’s crotch.
“Fuck you!” he yelled. He turned and ran.
Smack into a branch.
He had just enough time to stagger back and see the man’s silhouette fill his vision… then everything fell away to instant, coal-black night.
H e woke to the whisper of leaves.
His eyes flickered open. The trees surrounding him were so deep and dark that he could have been a drowned sailor on the cold floor of the sea. No wind moved the ocean of black branches above him, yet leaves still rustled somewhere out of sight. He turned his head.
The movement made nausea flood through him. He opened his mouth and a pitiful stream of half-digested biscuits and cordial spilled out. But now the sound of movement was louder. His vision rolled like a poorly tuned television, lurched, rolled, then steadied.
A small distance away, white flesh drifted above the ground. Limbs drooped like the necks of dead swans. Everything was so dark. Nicholas raised his head and strained to focus.
Tristram was being carried past, cradled in large, dark hands. The boy’s naked limbs were starkly white in the stygian gloom, swaying loosely. His head lolled back too far, his fulvous hair streaked with something darker. A wedge of darkness divided the white of his throat. Then Nicholas caught a glimpse of bone.
He tilted his head to see who carried Tristram, but the world slipped off its axis, heeled, and fell… He retched again, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
H e woke a second time to feel tears on his cheeks.
No. Not tears. Rain. Drops clattered on the canopy of leaves overhead, coalesced, and fell in heavy, cold dollops.
Nicholas rose to unsteady feet, and, arms outstretched in a pose that, had he been able to see himself, would have reminded him horribly of the man who had pursued them. Nicholas began shuffling his way home.
F our hours later, he was wrapped in his mother’s arms. After seeing her brother was home safe, Suzette had curled on the sofa and fallen asleep. Police cars were parked out front, their blue lights coruscating sapphires in the downpour. A bath, and a policewoman with his mother inspecting his head, his neck, his penis, his bottom. Questions, questions, questions. Did he know the man who chased them? What color was his car? Did he say anything while he chased them? Was he bearded or clean-shaven? Tris’s parents sat with Gavin in the next room. Mrs. Boye sent hollow glances through the doorway at Nicholas, as if by the intensity of her concentration he might suddenly transform into her youngest son.
The Boyes left. The police left. The kettle boiled. Sweet tea. Bed.
And, through it all, rain.
T he search of the woods for Tristram Hamilton Boye was postponed due to the unseasonably heavy rain. As it turned out, a search was unnecessary: the Frankenstein’s monster man told police where to find the child.
Nicholas sat rigid beside his mother watching the news. A television reporter described how Winston Teale, second-generation owner of furniture retailer Teale amp; Nephew, had presented himself at Milton Police Station and told the desk sergeant where they could find the body of the missing Tallong child, Tristram Boye. The television flashed images of plainclothes detectives poking around a demolition site not a kilometer from the police station, two suburbs from Tallong.
A week later, Katharine Close made Nicholas wear a tie for his court appearance. All through the hearing- including when the prosecutor asked Nicholas to point out the man who had chased him and Tristram on November 1-Nicholas watched Winston Teale. The man no longer looked terrifying. He seemed smaller. His eyes shifted like
