Seize the Night

the time of their grandparents, however, and references in time-yellowed public records confirm their claim. The carving seems to embody some primitive knowledge long lost to civilized man, yet the name of the hill predates it, and evidently the anonymous carver meant only to create a pictorial landmark sign.

This image was not like the bird on the message left with Lilly Wing, except that both seemed to radiate malevolence. As Charlie Dai had described them, the crows — or ravens, or blackbirds — left at the scenes of the other abductions were also unlike this carving. Charlie would have remarked on the resemblance if there had been one.

Nevertheless, the coincidence was creepy.

As we approached the crest, the crow in the stone appeared to be watching us. The raised planes of the bird’s body reflected white in the headlights, while shadows filled the deep lines that had been cut by the carver’s tools. This was a colloidal stone, and chips of some shiny aggregate — perhaps nuggets of mica — were scattered through it. The carving had been artfully composed to position the largest of these chips as the eye of the bird, which was now filled with an imitation of animal eyeshine and with a peculiar quality that some visiting mystics insist is forbidden knowledge, although I’ve never understood how an inanimate hunk of rock can have knowledge.

I noticed that everyone in the Expedition, including the cat, regarded the stone crow with an uneasy expression.

As we drove past this figure, the shadows in the chiseled lines should have shrunk from us in the rapidly diminishing light, as the entire carving settled into darkness. But unless my eyes deceived me, for an instant the shadows elongated, violating the laws of physics, as if trying to follow the light. And as the crow disappeared into the night behind us, I could have sworn the shadow pulled loose of the stone and took flight as though it were a real bird.

As we headed down the eastern slope of Crow Hill, I restrained myself from remarking on the unnerving flight of the shadow, but Bobby said, “I don’t like this place.”

“Me neither,” Roosevelt agreed.

“Ditto,” I said.

Bobby said, “Humankind wasn’t meant to travel this far from the beach.”

“Yeah,” Sasha said, “we’re probably getting dangerously close to the edge of the earth.”

“Exactly,” Bobby said.

“You ever see any of those maps from the time when they thought the earth was flat?” I asked.

Bobby said, “Oh, I see, you’re one of those round-earth kooks.”

“The mapmakers actually showed the edge of the earth, the sea just cascading into an abyss, and sometimes they lettered a warning across the void: ‘Here there be monsters.’”

After a brief but deep group silence, Bobby said, “Bad choice of historical trivia, bro.”

“Yeah,” Sasha said, gradually slowing the Expedition as she peered into the dark fields north of Haddenbeck Road, evidently looking for Doogie Sassman. “Don’t you know any amusing anecdotes about Marie Antoinette at the guillotine?”

“That’s the stuff!” Bobby agreed.

Roosevelt darkened the mood by communicating what didn’t need to be communicated: “Mr. Mungojerrie says the crow flew off the rock.”

“With all due respect,” Bobby said, “Mr. Mungojerrie is just a fuckin’ cat.”

Roosevelt seemed to listen to a voice beyond our hearing. Then: “Mungojerrie says he may be just a fuckin’ cat, but that puts him two steps up the social ladder from a boardhead.”

Bobby laughed. “He didn’t say that.”

“No other cat here,” Roosevelt said.

“You said that,” Bobby accused.

“Not me,” Roosevelt said. “I don’t use that kind of language.”

“The cat?” Bobby said skeptically.

“The cat,” Roosevelt insisted.

“Bobby’s only a recent believer in all this smart-animal stuff,” I told Roosevelt.

“Hey, cat,” Bobby said.

Mungojerrie turned in my lap to look back at Bobby.

Bobby said, “You’re all right, dude.”

Mungojerrie raised one forepaw.

After a moment, Bobby caught on. His face bright with wonder, he extended his right hand across the back of my seat. He and the cat gave each other a gentle high five.

Good work, Mom, I thought. Very nice. Let’s just hope when all is said and done, we end up with more smart cats than crazed reptiles.

“Here we are,” Sasha said as we reached the bottom of the hill.

She shifted the Expedition into four-wheel drive and turned north off the highway, driving slowly because she had doused the headlights and was guided only by the much dimmer parking lights.

We crossed a lush meadow, wove through a stand of live oaks, approached the boundary fence surrounding Fort Wyvern, and stopped beside the largest sports utility vehicle I had ever seen. This black Hummer, the civilian version of the military’s Humvee, had undergone customization after being driven off the showroom floor. It featured oversize tires and sat even higher on them than did a standard model, and it had been stretched by the addition of a few feet to its cargo space.

Sasha switched off the lights and the engine, and we got out of the Expedition.

Mungojerrie clung to me as though he thought I might put him down on the ground. I understood his concern. The grass was knee-high. Even in daylight, you’d have difficulty spotting a snake before it struck, especially considering how fast a motivated serpent can move. When Roosevelt reached out, I handed the cat to him.

The driver’s door opened on the Hummer, and Doogie Sassman got out to greet us, like a steroid-hammered Santa Claus climbing out of a Pentagon-designed sleigh. He closed the door behind him to kill the cabin light.

At five feet eleven, Doogie Sassman is five inches shorter than Roosevelt Frost, but he is the only man I’ve ever known who can make Roosevelt appear to be petite. The sass man enjoys no more than a hundred-pound advantage on Roosevelt, but I’ve never seen a hundred pounds used to better effect. He seems to be not merely forty percent larger than Roosevelt, but twice as large, more than twice, and taller even though he isn’t, a true leviathan on land, a guy who might discuss the techniques of city destruction over lunch with Godzilla.

Doogie carries his massive weight with unearthly grace and does not appear to be fat. All right, Doogie does look big, tres mondo, mondo maximo, but he’s not soft. You get the impression that he’s made of animate concrete, impervious to arteriosclerosis, bullets, and time. There’s something about Doogie that’s every bit as mystical as the stone crow at the top of Crow Hill.

Maybe his hair and beard contribute to the impression that he’s an incarnation of Thor, the god of thunder and rain once worshipped in ancient Scandinavia, where they now worship cheesy pop stars like everyone else. His untamed blond hair, so thick that it offends the sensibilities of Hare Krishnas, hangs to the middle of his back, and his beard is so lush and wavy that he couldn’t possibly shave it off with anything less than a lawn mower. Great hair can radically enhance a man’s aura of power — as witness those who have been elected to the presidency of the United States with no other qualifications — and I’m sure Doogie’s hair and beard have more than a little to do with the supernatural impression that he makes, though the real mystery of him cannot be explained by hair, size, the elaborate tattoos that cover his body, or his gas-flame blue eyes.

This night he wore a zippered black jumpsuit tucked into black boots, which should have made him look like a Brob-dingnagian baby in Dr. Denton pajamas. Instead, he had the presence of a guy who might be called down to Hell by Satan to unclog a furnace chimney choked with the gnarled and half-burnt contentious souls of ten serial killers.

Bobby greeted him: “Hey, sass man.”

“Bobster,” Doogie replied.

“Cool wheels,” I said admiringly.

“It kicks ass,” he acknowledged.

Roosevelt said, “Thought you were all Harleys.”