Shadowland

managed to get out.

    Del spun away from him. 'You sound like a girl.' When he reached the door, Del turned to glare at him again. 'And you act like you own this place. I should be showing you things, not the other way around.'

    'Del,' Tom pleaded, and the smaller boy grimaced as if he had struck him.

    'You want to know something, pal? Something I never told you? I guess you remember those times my uncle showed up in Arizona — at the football game and at Ventnor. Well, you wanted to know why I never talked about it with you.'

    'Because he confused you,' Tom said, happy to be back on ground more or less solid. 'Because I didn't ask about him enough. And he was here, not there, and — '

    'Shut up. Just shut up. I saw you with him, dummy. You were right next to him — you were walking along with him, like something that was going to happen. I saw you, damn you. Now I know why. You always wanted him for your own. And he was trying to show me what you're really like.' Del shook his balled fists at him, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, and disappeared inside his door. A second later Tom heard the slam of the sliding doors.

    Glumly Tom went into his own room.

8

His dreams were instant, vivid, and worse than any that had appeared on the Carson School notice board. He was operating on a dead man in an impromptu theater, knowing that the man was dead but unable to admit it to the others around the table; he was supposed to be a surgeon, but he had no idea of what had killed the man or how to proceed. The instruments in his hands were impassively foreign. Way way way way down in his guts, whispered a nurse with blond hair and passive eyes. . . . Collected. Wasn't he? Wasn't he? Something stirred be­neath his bloody hands, and the head of a vulture popped up like a toy, clean and bald, from within the open chest cavity. Great wings stirred in the mire. 'I want to see,' Tom wailed to the nurse, knowing that above all, he did not want to see. . . .

    Coleman Collins, wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, bent toward him. 'Come with me, my little boy, come along, come along . . . ' and Skeleton Ridpath, no age at all, leaned forward in a chair and watched with a vacant avid face. He held a glass owl in his hands and bled from the eyes . . .

    and a black man with a square, serious, elegant magician's face was standing in a corridor of light, holding out a real owl with both hands. The owl's eyes beamed brilliantly toward him. Let him in, said the magician; let me in, commanded the owl. . . .

    He stirred, finally aware that a voice at his door was saying, 'Let me in. Let me in.' He remembered, in an unhappy flash of memory, that the man holding the owl had been Bud Copeland.

    'Please,' said the voice at the door.

    'All right, all right,' Tom said. 'Who is it?'

    'Please.'

Tom switched on his bedside light, stepped into his jeans, and pulled a shirt over his arms. He padded to the door and opened it.

    Rose Armstrong was standing in the dark hall. 'I wanted to see you,' she said. 'This place is no good for you.'

    'You're telling me,' Tom said, aware of his rumpled hair and bared chest. His face felt numb with sleep. Rose stepped around him and went into his room.

    'Poor grumpy Tom,' she said. 'I want to get out of here, and I want you and Del to help me.'

9

Now Tom was fully awake: his nightmares blew away like fluff, and he was aware only of this pretty girl with her half-adult face standing before him in a yellow blouse and green skirt. The Carson colors, he dimly noted. 'I don't mean right away, because we couldn't,' she explained. 'But soon. As soon as we could. Would you help?'

    'Would Del?' he asked. He knew the strongest reason for Del's refusal. 'I don't know much about Coleman Collins, but I bet if Del sneaked out of here, he'd never be able to come back:'

    'Maybe he shouldn't ever want to come back. May I sit down?'

    'Uh, yeah, sorry.' He watched her go to the chair and neatly sit, looking at him all the while: she was relieved, he saw — or was that just her face again, meaninglessly recording the expectation of rejection? Having this girl in his room made him nervous; she seemed far more poised than he. And she had spoken the idea which should have been his, which he had been too anchored in Shadowland to have — the simple idea of escape.

    'I thought you said you owed Collins everything,' he said. He sat on the floor because there was nowhere else to sit but the bed.

    'That's true, but he's changing too much. Everything's different this year. Because you're here, I think.'

    'How is it different?'

    She looked at her small hands. 'It used to be fun before. He wasn't drunk so often. He wasn't so angry and so . . . worked up. Now it's sort of like he lost control. He scares me. This summer, everything is so wild. It feels like a machine that's spinning around faster and faster, shoot­ing off sparks, smoking away — ready to blow up. At least that's how I feel.'

    'What could I have to do with that?' He looked up at her as if she were an oracle: her shining knees, her glowing hair falling back from her high forehead. Even the way she spoke was full of little shocks for him, the clipped, slightly twangy Vermont accent. Suddenly his own voice seemed odd in his mouth, too slow and somehow dusty.

    'I think he's jealous of you. He sees something in, you — something he says you're too young to see yourself. You could be better than he is. He wants to own you. He wants you to stay here forever. From the time Del first mentioned you, he started talking about you. I heard him talking about you lots of times last winter and spring. He was going on about you and Del all the time.'

    She gave him a flat, unmeasured look that slid deeply within him, and he saw himself lifting a log with his mind alone, making it spin crazily, sickly, in midair. 'Really, I think you should get out of here. I'm not saying that just because I want you to help me.'

    'Why do you need help?'

    'Oh, because . . . ' She looked into his heart again, then tucked her hair back behind her ears. 'Do you think you could get off that ridiculous floor and sit here?' She looked toward the bed; back at him.

    He moved as if ordered.

    When he sat on the edge of the bed, her startling face was only a foot from him. Her eyes, permanently wide and flecked with pale blue and gold and green, drew him in. 'I need help because I'm scared. It's those men — you mentioned them that first time, in Del's room.'

    'Are they bothering you?'

    'They might. They could. They wouldn't mind a bit. You know what they're like. They're animals. Mr. Collins used to watch them, but this summer they sort of run free. They have work to do — for him, you know — but I'm afraid that when they have a couple of days free . . . ' She nervously tucked back her hair again. 'They know where I'm staying. They drink a lot, too, and Mr. Collins didn't used to let them do that. I never liked them. But before, I was little. I was a little girl.' She let the implication state itself.

    'Why don't you just go?'

    'I think someone always knows where I am. I can just sneak out sometimes and swim across the lake. They don't mind if I swim. Today I had to buy some things in town, so they let me go. They know I talk to Del sometimes. They don't mind that either. They laugh about it.' Her face went smooth and hard and inward for a moment. 'I hate them. I really do hate them. If Mr. Collins was the way he usually is, it would be okay, but . . . ' The sentence died. 'And I wanted to tell you what I was thinking. Do you want to leave here?'

    'I'd have to trust you,' Tom said.

    'Why? Oh. You mean, maybe it's a trick?'

    Tom nodded. 'Everything's a trick, here.'

    'Well, do you trust me? What can I say to make you feel that . . . ?' She blushed. 'Tom, I'm all alone. I like you. I want to know you better. I'm happy you came this summer. I just think that we can help each other.'

    'I guess I can trust you,' Tom said. In truth, it was not possible for him not to trust her.