Enter, Night

observation even as it occurred to him-and he spoke to her in a soft, soft voice.

“Sadie, come out. Please, Sadie. Let’s go home now. Come on, baby.”

He bounced the ball twice, then three times against the ground. From inside the grotto he could have sworn he heard the sound of her tail swishing against stone.

He held out his hand with the ball in it, and she crept towards the opening of the rock shelter. Finn heard her panting before he saw that she was slick with sweat-sweat that hadn’t been there a few moments before-trembling violently. Sadie looked at him imploringly, as though desperately trying to push her thoughts into his mind.

He felt a wave of pure love coming from Sadie. Love, and something more.

Finn’s pupils dilated and he swayed on his feet, struggling for balance.

Amorphous, sibylline images tumbled through his brain-vivid impressions of Sadie as a puppy, but not images of his own recollect, not images of himself with Sadie, not the privileged god’s-eye view from which even the most benign and loving human beings experience their interaction with animals.

No, these were images of Sadie with him: the gift of a glimpse of the world as experienced from Sadie’s perspective-a mosaic of smells no human nose would ever experience; the literature of light on grass and snow; the secret language of birds and squirrels and cats; the true meaning of unconditional love, something no human being would ever truly understand; the perfect ecstasy of Finn’s fingers combing through her soft black fur, the utter completion of falling asleep at the foot of his bed. Pure and uncomplicated gratitude for every affection ever shown to her. Vigilance for Finn’s safety. Self-sacrifice.

The sound of the red rubber ball being dropped on the bedroom floor. Thump-thump-thump. Bounce, bounce. Good! Chase! Me chase! Throw!

As if in a trance, Finn threw the ball. Sadie scrambled out of the grotto and leaped into the sunlight.

Finn saw the flash of white light and felt the searing blast of unearthly heat before his brain could record what was happening. In one second, Sadie’s body had launched itself into the air in pursuit of the red rubber ball. In the next second, there was a ghastly smell like ozone and burned hair, and his dog burst into flames before his eyes, shrieking in agony and crashing to the forest earth in front of him, writhing in the flames of an incandescent calefaction; a fire that seemed to come from inside Sadie’s body, consuming it with merciless efficiency, melting fur and flesh and bone.

As Finn watched, her body rippled and crumbled to ash, leaving a charred skeleton that continued to burn even after the flesh was gone. Then, the fire abruptly went out, seemingly drawn inward by the skeleton itself, leaving only thick black smoke and the horrifying images seared into his brain.

It had taken seconds-seconds that, to Finn, felt like centuries repeating themselves in a cycle of agonizing revelation. The skeleton collapsed, became ash that blew away into the forest on the dawn breeze. In the east, the sun continued to climb in the sky, golden light touching the crest of the pine trees and the cliffs surrounding Parr’s Landing, promising the most beautiful of late autumn days.

Finn stared, his mouth hanging open, his mind refusing to reconcile with what his eyes had just recorded. He opened his arms in the supplicant posture of a cheated embrace. Then he screamed louder than he had ever screamed in his life, a harrowing shriek of impossible betrayal, one that ripped away his innocence, his childhood, and his faith forever.

“SADIE!”

Finn stumbled, half-blind, towards the pile of smoking ash that had been his dog and reached out blindly to touch it, to hold it. Still hot, it seared his hand. He screamed again as painful blisters rose on the skin, a last, final insulting damnation from whoever the author of this counter miracle had been.

He said Sadie’s name over and over again, part mantra, part keening, part pleading for this unimaginable horror to be revealed as some terrible cosmic mistake, or a scientific impossibility that would be unmasked as a sick joke at any moment.

But it wasn’t. Nothing came, neither relief nor absolution.

As Finn knelt alone in the forest, rocking and weeping, the smoke dwindled down to wisps, and then died out entirely. Sunlight dappled the forest around him, and in the trees above his head, Finn heard the gentle lamentation of birdsong.

Anne Miller stood at the kitchen window wearing the pink velour winter bathrobe she’d gotten last Christmas from Finn “and Sadie.” She was pouring her first cup of Maxwell House when she heard the front door click open. The house had been cold when she’d woken up half an hour before. Sadie wasn’t in the kitchen, and Finn wasn’t in his bed.

Damn it, she thought furiously. Couldn’t he have at least waited till we got home from the vet before he took her outside for a walk? Didn’t he see how sick she was last night? That boy doesn’t have the brains God gave a grasshopper sometimes, I swear.

Coffee cup in hand, Anne marched into the living room. “Finn? Is that you? I can’t believe you took Sadie out knowing that she-”

The coffee cup fell from her hand and smashed against the hardwood as her son slowly shuffled into the living room.

Finn’s face and neck was a Kabuki mask of grief; smudged white ash scored with the tracks of Finn’s tears. His right hand was badly burned, and he reeked of smoke and something infinitely worse.

She gasped. “Finnegan, what on earth…? Where’s Sadie?”

“Mom,” Finn said in a dazed, swollen voice. “Mom. Mommy…”

He reached out his arms to his mother, but stumbled and fell. Anne caught him before he hit the floor. She held his unconscious body against her own, finding it clammy and cold. His breathing was shallow, his lips and fingertips bluish. She shouted for Hank to hurry up and come out of the bathroom right away, and to call a doctor because something was terribly, terribly wrong with Finn.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Adeline Parr had not gone down to breakfast. She suspected that the rest of the family would enjoy her absence, but this one time she didn’t care. She looked at her Piaget. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Breakfast would be long finished. Morgan would be at school. Christina and Jeremy would be… who knew where they’d be? Likely out somewhere, making spectacles of themselves in town. Both had shown a marked preference for being absent from Parr House during the day. Since Adeline could barely stand the sight of either of them for reasons unique to her view of each of them, their absence suited her perfectly.

She’d had Beatrice bring her coffee in her bedroom. Adeline sat in a yellow brocade chair by the window smoking a steady line of du Maurier cigarettes from a sterling silver monogrammed cigarette case that had been a gift from her late husband. Blue smoke shimmered like a low hanging cloud over the room, caressing the glass of the closed window like the fingers of ghosts.

Her eyes were red and sore, partly because of the smoke, but also because, even though she prided herself on not being the sort of woman who cried as a reaction to shock or even immediate grief, her own body didn’t always remember to obey her. When she stubbornly refused to cry, her body reacted on her behalf, without her permission. Adeline’s tears were like the tears of some men, the ones who’d grown up and forgotten the mechanics, the technique, of weeping. Adeline’s tears seemed to bleed from pinpricks in her eyes instead of flowing naturally, let alone with healing.

She had locked herself in her study after dinner the previous evening. She’d heard Morgan leave the house and she’d heard Christina and Jeremy laughing in the dining room, probably laughing at her. After a time, she’d heard them leave the dining room and go upstairs. The sound of the television came from one of the upper bedrooms. Adeline assumed they were watching it together.

Shortly after nine, she’d heard the front door open again, stealthier than it had the last time. Morgan had obviously returned from wherever she’d been gadding. Adeline made a mental note to deal with Morgan later. One slut in the family was more than enough. She wasn’t having a repeat performance of Christina’s harlotry in the current generation, not in a year of Sundays. When the house was entirely quiet, when they were all in their beds, only then did she unlock the door to her study and glide noiselessly up the stairs to her bedroom, locking that door in its turn, and remaining in the room all night and into the morning.