Enter, Night

again-soon.

Then he turned and jogged back to school, all thoughts of both lunch and his comic book momentarily forgotten, as old loves so often are when a rival first appears.

At two in the afternoon, Elliot McKitrick realized that he needed desperately to be alone to think, so he told Thomson that he was going to take the cruiser and do a loop of the town and the area around Bradley Lake. He told the sergeant that he’d be on radio if he needed him and that he wouldn’t go far, but he wanted to patrol the town line in light of what had happened in Gyles Point the previous night.

“Good idea,” Thomson said without looking up. “I think the tank is a bit low, so fill her up on the way back, would you, McKitrick? I’m going to stay here and make some calls. I want to check out a couple of points of Dr. Lightning’s story.”

“Sounded fishy to you, too, Sarge?”

“Not necessarily,” Thomson said, not looking at the younger man. “Just… well, there are some things I want to check out.”

Elliot stood in the doorway for another moment, waiting for more. When it was not forthcoming, he opened the door and went to where the cruiser was parked. He turned the key in the ignition and headed towards the road that led out of town.

He smoked as he drove. He wasn’t supposed to, but he realized he had been in a state of suppressed anxiety ever since he’d seen Jeremy Parr on the road earlier that morning. His heart was beating like a triphammer and his mind was cloudy with memories he’d been suppressing for a decade-memories that were sharper than he’d ever dreamed possible, given the time that had elapsed since that last terrible night before Jeremy had been sent away and Elliot’s father had beaten him till he bled.

Through the windshield, the town looked as it always did, except for the fact that someone had ripped a hole in the airtight zone of security and comfort he had come to rely on over the last ten years. Suddenly his world, usually as well ordered as a soldier’s sock drawer, seemed dangerously askew.

What Elliot wanted to know was how askew, and why. He had learned as a very young boy that self-examination was called “navel gazing” and that real men didn’t do it. And Elliot was a real man. His entire life- with one notable deviation from the straight and narrow-had been dedicated to being a real man. He had spilled a great deal of sweat and blood to assure that end.

But until Elliot was sure in his own mind that the only thing that was fucking him up about Jeremy Parr’s return to Parr’s Landing was the possibility of bad gossip being stirred up again, he wasn’t going to be at peace in his own mind.

Suddenly Elliot felt as though he were suffocating, as though he were buried alive. The car felt like a coffin with metal sides and no air. He pulled over to the side of the road and half-stepped, half-fell out the door into the cold fall air. He drew in great gasping breaths, filling his lungs with oxygen as though he had just broken the surface of a pit full of quicksand, his lungs full of mud and silt and filthy water.

For a moment, he felt as though he might vomit, but he closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing until the nausea passed and his mind cleared.

Goddamn you, Jeremy, why the fuck did you have to come back here? Why didn’t you stay away?

Of course there was no answer except for the sound of the wind and the distant squawk of crows circling somewhere high above Spirit Rock. Elliot shaded his eyes and followed the sound of the crows, but he couldn’t see them. He scanned the cliff, looking for the birds, but to no avail. A cloud passed over the sun, shattering the rock face into a diorama of light and shadow. And then something did move up there on the ledge. Even before his eyes caught the blur of motion, his brain registered motion. Something upright, pacing carefully. And then it was gone.

Elliot stared at the spot where he’d seen the shape, then shouted out, “Hello? Is someone up there?” His voice sounded abnormally loud to him in the late-afternoon sunlight. The echo mocked him and, of course, there was no answer. But he had seen it. Something that ought not to have been up there, something entirely out of place, something out of the natural order.

He thought of Thomson’s description of the murder scene at Gyles Point. There’s blood all over the upstairs bedroom, but no body anywhere. He thought of the Indian, Billy Lightning, who had just arrived in town the morning after the murder with (in Elliot’s opinion) a preposterous story and no good reason for being in Parr’s Landing at all. By his own account, madness and death seemed to follow the Indian around.

Elliot privately flattered himself that he had natural-born police instincts, even when he knew he was only burnishing his self-image for the sake of his own ego, but he still felt the hair rise on the back of his neck, and he instinctively reached for the holster of his gun and withdrew it.

And yet there was nothing to see now. No movement, not even a shadow, which is probably what it was to begin with. He shook his head to clear it and rubbed his eyes, then looked again. There was nothing but the cliff’s edge and the daubed smudges of the Indian paintings of the mythical Wendigo of St. Barthelemy. What the fuck had that been up there? And why did he reach for his gun? Elliot McKitrick had rarely been spooked by anything in his life, and never by Bradley Lake or Spirit Rock. Everyone in Parr’s Landing had heard the stories. Those stories were for scaring children and for getting chicks to cuddle up closer. He thought of the years he’d spent out here, swimming, whiling away his summer nights on blankets, in front of bonfires. He’d lost his virginity here when he was fourteen, and yes-he’d even brought Jeremy Parr here that first night when they’d gotten drunk and had… well, what had happened, happened.

He pushed that memory down brutally. His head throbbed with the beginnings of a headache that he knew was going to be one for the record books.

Elliot sighed. He re-holstered his gun and walked slowly back to the car. He needed a drink in the worst way. He’d always felt that Parr’s Landing was the beginning and the end of his world, that everything he ever needed was here and his for the asking, but as he turned the ignition, he wondered for the very first time whether Jeremy had been the smart one, the one to leave Parr’s Landing and make a life for himself somewhere where no one knew him, and no one cared who-or what- he was.

He turned the cruiser around and headed for the road back to town, kicking up gravel in the car’s wake that smacked against the metal like the sound of caps exploding. Elliot automatically checked his rearview mirror as he tapped the accelerator. In the mirror, he saw the lake, occluded by dust devils and exhaust from the car.

What he could not see was the shadow moving again, high up on the ridge where he had stared, so long and so hard, trying to identify the source of his sudden and unaccountable sense of dislocation and- though Elliot would never have admitted it, even to himself-fear.

From his perch high up on the ledge, Richard Weal watched the police cruiser drive away towards town. He’d briefly considered killing this one if he’d come too close, but he’d decided to allow him to live-for now. Instead, Weal had remained completely motionless, willing himself into invisibility, not moving a muscle until the policeman had left of his own accord. Lucky for him, Weal thought. Cops are so stupid.

Still, he reasoned, the policeman’s blood might have been useful, and it would certainly have spared Weal the pain he knew was coming. But another killing, now, when he was so close to his destination, would only serve as a dangerous distraction. After leaving a string of bodies between Toronto and Parr’s Landing, it would be a cruel and pathetic ending for him to be caught killing some small-town yokel of a cop at this point.

He’d consulted the sheaf of papers in his hockey bag a thousand time or more. He could practically recite the text by heart. This was the place. This place-here, now. His friend’s voice had never been this clear, this compelling and demanding. And when he closed his eyes, he saw visions of blood and bones and smoke. He saw the path through the caves of rock and stone as though it were lit by torchlight.

Weal’s heart soared with love and pride and yearning. He laid his face reverently against the wall of rock and said, “I’m coming, Father. I’m coming for you now. Tonight, we’ll be together. I swear.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

When the final bell rang, Finn bolted from his seat and ran for the door of the classroom as