motion with his hand and Roosevelt was quiet.
He found a house trying its best to look nice. It was shabby and old but it had a fresh coat of white paint and its yard had once been clean and organized. Rows of flowers in the front. A doormat. A knocker and a mailbox. It was a home more than simply a house.
This would be the place, he knew. Connelly’s instincts said so in a way that had no words.
“Stay out here,” he said. “Stay here and watch. Watch if he comes out. If he does, yell.”
“You think he’s in there?” Roosevelt said.
“We’re about to find out.”
Connelly surveyed the house once more in the pallid light. There was no noise but the wind. He pushed the fence out of the way and came up the front walk. Windows dead. Door slightly ajar. Something had come here and disturbed this dead place, like an animal whose path had stirred up fallen leaves.
He stood on the porch, minding the creaking boards, and pushed the door open a bit. Its hinges squawked and he winced, then squatted and spat on them and tried once more. Now it was barely a whisper. He moved to look about in the doorway but saw nothing, then he took off his shoes and padded inside.
Everything was dark and cramped. A hallway led away before him and there were stairs up to his left. Pictures hung from the walls and sat on shelves, their glass catching the light from the street and shining slick. The wind picked up, battering the windows, the panes rattling in their frames. Besides that there was no noise at all. The sense of abandonment was overpowering, and Connelly felt like he was not in a home but some stone chamber far below the earth, with narrow atriums splintering off into the dark.
He moved down the hallway and came to the kitchen. Cupboards all closed. Dishes on the countertop. A child’s drawing on the far wall.
On the table was a light. A single candle, its flame innocently dancing on the tabletop. Next to it was a placemat and a dish, a nice one, white with flowers on the edge. Probably the nicest dish in the house. But in its center was a muddy brown stain, almost a smear. It was copper or red at the edges. A knife and fork sat directly to the sides of the plate, also stained. Connelly paused, then reached out to touch the smear. It was still wet. He lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed. Its scent was thick and coppery and he knew without doubt it was blood of some kind.
A black fly alighted on the fork. It twitched and flew to the plate, then back to the fork. It was joined by another fly, then another, their reedy whine near impossible to hear over the wind. Connelly looked around, then glanced into the living room. There he saw the blue light filtering through the window outside, yet it was strange. The light or the room itself seemed almost alive. Everything moved and pulsated, everything shuddered.
Then he noticed a low, wet buzzing coming from in the living room. He thinned his eyes and walked in.
The air was thick with flies, dozens of them at least, swarming through the air. They filled the room and seemed to make the shadows twitch. As he stood in the darkness he felt them invade his arms, his neck, his legs. He suppressed a shiver and tried to see where they were coming from. They seemed to be pouring out of one of the walls.
He approached and saw he was at the top of the stairs to the basement. They led straight down, ending at a small brown door with cracked paint. Connelly reached forward and pawed at the air and felt a string hanging from the ceiling. He pulled and nicotine-yellow light filled the stairs from the bulb above. The door seemed to change, to move in the light like it was awoken or disturbed. It was slightly ajar and Connelly could see the oily-black forms of the flies flowing out its crack, as though the basement was bleeding or leaking.
Suddenly a wave of stench washed over him, thick and heady, like the door before him had exhaled a putrid sigh. He almost staggered back, unable to bear it. His eyes watered and he turned his head to the side and the flies seemed to increase, like they were fleeing something from the basement, something that was waking up and stirring to greet him and pushing out that horrible stink.
How long has he been here, thought Connelly. Days? Weeks? It couldn’t have been more than a few days.
He took a step down toward the basement, hesitated, then took another. He could be down there, he thought. The scarred man could be down there. But Connelly did not know if he could bear to see what the man had been doing for so long. What foulness had been gestating here in this deserted town, what prey had he been feeding on? And feeding was what he had been doing, after all.
Connelly rubbed his mouth and wondered what had been on that plate.
He stopped halfway there, the door staring up at him like some brown, blind eye. He held his hand to his mouth yet again and fought back retching.
No. He could not do this.
He walked back up the stairs and took a breath. As he did there came a tapping noise from upstairs, quiet and brittle. He froze and listened. It did not stop.
Connelly sped up the stairs and through the kitchen and came to the stairs leading to the second floor. He put his foot on the first step and the tapping halted.
He waited. No other sound came. He treaded up the stairs on the balls of his feet, gazing into the darkness. He could see nothing, no movement, no light. He was nearly to the top when the sound of the wind rose and he felt air in his face. He thought for a moment and leapt forward and rushed around the right doorway at the top of the stairs.
Some room, a child’s room, but on the west wall was an open window with the wind blasting through.
He raced to the window and looked out. There was no pole or fence or tree to climb down near the window, yet he had felt it open and the pressure change. Someone had been in here and opened the window, opened it to escape, he felt sure of it. He looked again. The yard was below him and beyond that the trees and the creek, but after that there was nothing. The trees raged and shook in the wind. Besides them and the swirls of dust he saw nothing move.
He heard something. There was a sound in the wind. A howling, like an animal. Something screaming in the violent night.
Connelly sprinted back downstairs and out the front door and saw Roosevelt standing in the street, shielding himself from the wind. “What the hell is that?” he shouted, but Connelly was already following his ears and running for the creek.
The howls grew louder. As he dodged through the trees Connelly saw him ahead. A man kneeling over a crumpled form on the bridge, shaking the thing before him and screaming wildly. Connelly slowed and walked forward. It was Jake. Snot and spit ran down his face as he shrieked yet again. Connelly looked at the thing at Jake’s knees and could only tell it was Ernie by the clothes he was wearing. Blood shone black in the quivering starlight and the night seemed to go mad.
The others ran up behind him. They looked at the slain man and began screaming and swearing. Some went to try and pry Jake from his brother but he snapped and struck at them and clung ever tighter. Pike and Hammond began running through the streets and the nearby fields, crying that the scarred man could not be far, not far. Lottie struggled to hold Jake back and called to Connelly to help her, but he turned and followed Hammond and Pike.
He tried not to think about how the man had gotten out of the house and how he had gotten to Ernie so fast. How he had done what he did and moved on. Connelly couldn’t think of such things because then he might be something more than a man and then Connelly might not be able to do anything at all.
He wouldn’t like open spaces, thought Connelly as he ran through the streets. He likes small things. Alleys and boxcars and basements. He likes being contained. He likes little roads…
There was nothing. The town was deserted as before, nothing but coils of dust and blank windows, some broken, and here and there a dog or cat cowering at the onset of the storm.
Connelly ran until his legs burned and his throat hurt. The town turned into a blur as the wind picked up and his search became more desperate. He ran down a large street and then an alley and stumbled as he came out. He lifted his face from the gravel. The countryside unfolded before him, the dry creek running across the face of the hills like a scar and trees thrashing along it. And there crossing the creek at a quick but steady pace was a figure in a ragged gray cloak streaked with ashes, striding over the fields as though he had business on his mind.
Connelly stood and stared, unable to believe. It was impossible that this man was real. Then his body took over and he began running, trying to close the gap, but the man seemed to melt through the night, like he was being dragged forward by invisible strings. Connelly realized he was screaming, bellowing at the top of his lungs. He wanted some name to call, some name to curse, but the man had none and so Connelly did no more than
