I’d first thought that the troop had reacted with fright to the engine noise, that they had fled in fear of being spotted, pursued. They spend most of their time in the hills, in the wild, coming into Moonlight Bay — on what mysterious missions I do not know — only after sundown, preferring to limit their visits to nights when they have the double cover of darkness and fog. Even then, they travel as much as possible by storm drains, parks, arroyos, dry riverbeds, vacant lots, and perhaps from tree to tree. With rare exception, they do not show themselves, and they are masters of secrecy, moving among us as covertly as termites move through the walls of our houses, as unnoticed as earthworms tunneling the ground under our feet.
Here on turf more congenial to them, however, their reaction to the sound of an engine might be bolder and more aggressive than it would have been in town. They might not flee from it. They might be drawn to it. If they followed it without showing themselves and waited for the driver to park and get out…
The engine roar grew steadily louder. The vehicle was in the neighborhood, probably only a few blocks away.
Abandoning caution, trying to shake the pain out of my leg as though it were a biting mongrel that could be kicked loose, I hobbled out of the kitchen and hurried blindly through the monkeyless dining room. As far as I could tell, none of the flea farms lingered in the living room, either.
At the window from which I had watched them earlier, I put my brow to the glass and saw eight or ten members of the troop in the street. They were dropping, one by one, through the open manhole, into which their comrades had apparently already vanished.
Happily, Bobby wasn’t in jeopardy of having his brain scooped out and his skull turned into a flowerpot to beautify some monkey den. Not immediate jeopardy, anyway.
As fast as flowing water, the monkeys poured into the manhole, gone in a quicksilver ripple. In their wake, the tree-lined street appeared to be no more substantial than a dreamscape, a mere illusion of twisted shadows and secondhand light, and it was almost possible to believe that the troop had been as imaginary as the cast of a nightmare.
Heading for the front door, I returned the spare magazine to the pocket in my shoulder holster. I held on to the Glock.
When I reached the porch, I heard the manhole cover being slid into place. I was surprised that the monkeys were strong enough to maneuver that heavy object from the storm drain below, a tricky task even for a grown man.
The engine noise reverberated through the bungalows and trees. The vehicle was close, yet I saw no headlights.
As I reached the street, still working the last of the cramp out of my leg, the manhole cover clanked into its niche. I arrived in time to see the curved point of a steel grappling hook wiggle out of a slot in the iron, extracted from below. City street-department crews carry such implements to snare and lift these covers without having to pry them loose from the edge. The monkeys must have found or stolen the hook; hanging from the service ladder in the drain, a couple of them were able to leverage the disc into place, covering their trail.
Their use of tools had ominous implications that I was loath to consider.
Headlight beams flashed through the spaces between bungalows. The truck. It was passing on the next street parallel to this one, behind the small houses.
Although I hadn’t seen any details of the vehicle, I was sure Bobby had arrived. The pitch of the engine was similar to that of his Jeep, and it was speeding toward the commercial district of Dead Town, where we were supposed to meet.
I headed in that direction as the roar of the truck rapidly diminished. The pain was gone from my calf, but the nerve continued to flutter, leaving my left leg weaker than my right. With the cramp threatening to recur, I didn’t even try to run.
From above came the shearing sound of wings, cutting the air into scimitar shapes. I looked up, ducking defensively, as a flock of birds made a low pass, in tight formation, and vanished into the night ahead.
Their speed and the darkness prevented me from identifying their species. This might have been the mysterious crew that had roosted in the tree under which I’d placed my call to Bobby.
When I reached the end of the block, the birds were flying in a circle over the intersection, as if marking time until I caught up with them. I counted ten or twelve, more than had kept watch over me from the Indian laurel.
Their behavior was peculiar, but I didn’t feel that they intended any harm.
Even if I was wrong and they posed a danger to me, there was no way to avoid them. If I changed my route, they could easily follow.
As they passed across the face of the descendent moon, traveling more slowly than before, I saw them clearly enough to identify them tentatively as nighthawks. Because they live by my schedule, I am familiar with this species, also known as nightjars, which encompasses seventy varieties, including the whippoorwill.
Nighthawks feed on insects — moths, flying ants, mosquitoes, beetles — and dine while on the wing. Snatching tidbits from the air, they jink this way and that, exhibiting a singular swooping-darting-twisting pattern of flight that, as much as anything, identifies them.
The full moon provides them with the ideal circumstances for a banquet, because in its radiance, flying insects are more visible. Ordinarily, nighthawks are ceaselessly active in these conditions, their harsh churring calls cutting the air as they feast.
The lunar lamp above, currently unobstructed by clouds, ensured good hunting, yet these birds were not inclined to take advantage of the ideal conditions. Acting counter to instinct, they squandered the moonlight, flying monotonously in a circle that was approximately forty feet in diameter, around and around over the intersection. For the most part, they proceeded in single file, though three pairs flew side by side, none feeding or issuing a single cry.
I crossed the intersection and kept going.
In the distance, the sound of the engine abruptly cut off. If it was Bobby’s Jeep, he must have arrived at our rendezvous point.
I was a third of the way into the subsequent block when the flock followed. They passed overhead at a higher altitude than previously but low enough to cause me to tuck my head down.
When I arrived at another intersection, they had again formed a bird carousel, minus calliope, circling thirty feet overhead. Although any attempt to take a count would have resulted in more vertigo than waits in a bottle of tequila, I was sure the number of nighthawks had grown.
Over the next two blocks, the size of the flock swelled until it wasn’t necessary to take a count to verify the increase. By the time I reached the three-way intersection in which this street ended, at least a hundred birds were circling quietly above. For the most part, they were now grouped in pairs, and there were two layers to this flying feathered ring, one about five to ten feet higher than the other.
I stopped, gazing up, transfixed.
Thanks to the circus between my ears, I can seize upon the smallest disquieting observation and from it extrapolate a terror of cataclysmic proportions. Yet, though the birds unnerved me, I still didn’t believe they were a threat.
Their unnatural behavior was ominous without implying aggression. This aerial ballet, humdrum in its pattern yet inexpressibly graceful, conveyed a mood as clear and unmistakable as any ballet ever performed by dancers on a stage, as affecting as any piece of music ever meant to touch the heart — and the mood here was sorrow. Sorrow so poignant that it pinched my breath and made me feel as though something more bitter than blood were pumping through my veins.
To poets but also to those whose stomachs curdle at the mention of poetry, birds in flight usually evoke thoughts of freedom, hope, faith, joy. The thrum of these pinions, however, was as bleak as the keening of an arctic wind coming across a thousand miles of barren ice; it was a forlorn sound, and in my heart it coalesced into an icy weight.
With the exquisite timing and choreography that suggests psychic connections among the members of a flock, the double ring of birds fluidly combined into a single ascending spiral. They rose like a coil of dark smoke, around and up and up through the flue of the night, across the pocked moon, becoming steadily less visible against the stars, until at last they dissipated like mere fumes and soot across the rooftop of the world.
All was silent. Windless. Dead.
