Echoes of Darkness (27 page)

It doesn’t look like there are any metal parts at all, and that moving rack is beautiful. That is some serious craftsmanship—seems a little silly to do all that work just to hold a set of Crayolas.

But as she got a closer look at the crayons Pearl was pulling from their holders, she saw she was mistaken. These weren’t Crayolas at all—not unless the company had drastically changed their labeling policies. For one thing, the wrappers for each crayon were blank, without the familiar logo; for another the wrappers themselves were unlike anything Julie had ever seen. She couldn’t tell what color they were, as each looked different depending on what angle she saw it at. A wrapper might appear blue, but then, as Pearl twisted and turned her new toys, that same wrapper would shift to green, or even red. A couple of them flashed white. Julie thought there must be some sort of metallic wrap, or maybe one of those holographic films, but when she bent to touch one she found it soft, almost like cotton cloth.

Jesus Christ,
she thought,
this paper feels handmade. And the colors! Between this and the box, these must be worth a fortune.

“Pearl, honey?” Julie looked up to find herself alone on the floor. She’d been so engrossed in the toy in her hand, she’d been blind to Pearl’s collecting the rest of her present and bringing it to the table, where she now sat, crayon poised over a piece of paper.

“Oh, honey, wait.” Julie scrambled to her feet, cradling the special crayon as if it were made of glass. Pearl’s wide smile faltered before she’d made it halfway up, and Julie realized she was making another thoughtless blunder. Smiling wide, she threw as much cheer into her voice as she could muster. “Sweetheart, these are from Uncle Connor, and you know what that means: he always brings you something special. Before you start wearing them down, why don’t we put them in your room with the rest of your special things? That way they’ll still be new and pretty when your uncle gets here to tell you where they’re from, all right? I bet he’d like that.”

Just the thought of her special uncle describing the exotic locale where he’d found her new present put a smile back on Pearl’s face. Julie puffed a mental sigh of relief, considering this a disaster narrowly averted. The two of them put all the crayons carefully back in their slots and closed the box, then Julie followed Pearl into the little girl’s room. Pearl placed the wooden box on the shelf with her other treasures, right in front where she could see it easily, then spun back to her mother with an excited grin.

“I’m going to draw Uncle Connor a doggy,” she said, clapping her hands lightly. “A special doggy, with my special crayons!”

“Okay.” Julie was just happy to have her smiling girl back again: keeping her from using the expensive crayons was a worry for when Connor came back.
If
he came back. “That’s great! What kind of doggy?”

Julie spent the rest of the day hearing about the masterpiece her daughter was planning for Connor. In Pearl’s telling, the dog became a princess, then a bird, a horse, her father, a unicorn, her father
riding
a unicorn, and finally a dog again, each with its own embellishments along the way. Julie smiled at each new twist in the plan, not so much listening to the words as enjoying her daughter’s happy smile, not caring that it had taken her absentee uncle to put it there. Pearl was happy, and, in the manner of all six-year-olds, her anger toward her mother appeared forgotten. As far as Julie was concerned, that was all that mattered.

The dog in the sketch was yellow, with a black nose and fluffy tail, and he stood in the middle of a green expanse—Pearl’s version of their kitchen floor. Scattered about the drawing were several crayons in special paper tubes that seemed to be all colors at once, and the open wooden box lay, half empty, in the center of the kitchen table. Small fingers were just reaching for another crayon as Julie came into the kitchen, slippered feet
whisking
over the floor, still sleep-groggy and in the throes of a serious case of pillow-hair.

“What are you doing?”

The words came out more harshly than Julie had intended, and the little fingers flinched, sending the crayon rolling across the table. The eyes her daughter turned her way were filled with guilt.

“I’m drawing a doggy for Uncle Connor,” she said. There was a touch of defiance in her voice, but most of what Julie heard was fear: Pearl had done something wrong, and knew it. But Julie remembered the smile that had broken out on her daughter’s face at the gift, as well as the day she had just spent wishing for that smile’s return, and made the very conscious decision that wherever this set of crayons had come from, whatever they had cost, it was worth it. She let out a breath that blew away her first reaction to her daughter’s willfulness, then took another.

“Well, they’re your crayons now, I guess you can use them if you want—especially to draw something so special for Uncle Connor.” She pointed to the yellow dog on the page. “That’s really good, honey. I’m sure Connor’s going to love it.” Pearl’s smile returned, though it was a tentative thing, as if unsure of its welcome.

Julie touched her daughter’s soft hair, then kissed the top of her head. “Can you put them away long enough to have breakfast, though?” She twitched the picture off the table by a pinched corner. “I’ll put this on the fridge for now, okay? Keep it safe until Uncle Connor can see it.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

Pearl began to gather the scattered crayons together as Julie tucked the picture under a pair of refrigerator magnets, Dora the Explorer and her friend Boots the monkey holding the paper securely by the corners.

After her shower, Julie returned to the kitchen for her second surprise of the morning.

“Where did
he
come from?”

Pearl looked up from where she knelt, hands buried in thick, golden fur. The dog, a retriever, Julie thought, merely wagged his tail, thoroughly enjoying the little fingers scratching beneath his jaw. “He was crying at the front door,” said Pearl. “Can we keep him? Can we, Mommy? Please?”

Unease began to seep through Julie’s surprise. “Oh, honey, I don’t know. He must belong to someone.”

“He doesn’t have a collar.” Pearl’s voice held a wheedling lilt. “If he doesn’t have a collar, he can’t belong to anybody, right?”

“Now, that’s not necessarily true . . .”

Julie’s gaze was drawn to the refrigerator door, and the crayon sketch hanging there. Her eyes flicked from the drawing to the scene in the kitchen, then back. Even with the addition of her daughter clinging to their visitor’s neck, the resemblance between the two was obvious, right down to the expanse of green floor.

Christ,
she thought,
that’s almost creepy.

“Are you
sure
you don’t know where this guy came from?” she said, thinking Pearl may have seen the dog in a neighbor’s yard, and incorporated it into the drawing for her uncle.

“The porch.”

“No, honey, I mean do you know who he belongs to?”

“He doesn’t have a collar, Mommy. He doesn’t belong to anybody.”

“No, honey, I mean . . . what’s this?”

Distracted by the dog, she hadn’t seen the crayon set, open and scattered about the table again, another drawing lying haphazardly beneath the mess.

“What did you do, pull that out again as soon as I went to take a shower?”

“Huh?”

Focused on the retriever, Pearl wasn’t really listening. Julie looked at the dog closely for the first time. He appeared well nourished, and clean, and was obviously used to children: definitely someone’s family pet. It occurred to her that, as well cared-for as he looked, no one had as yet vouched for his house training. She looked out the window to check that the back gate was closed and saw the yard was secure.

“Why don’t you take him out into the backyard while we figure out what to do with him.”

“Okay.”

Julie held the door while Pearl led her new charge out to the grass, then turned to packing away the crayons again. Rather than putting them back in Pearl’s room, where they would be a constant temptation, she slipped the wooden box up on the refrigerator, tucked out of sight, toward the back. She scooped the new drawing from the table and stuck it on the fridge door, next to the dog.

She looked closely at the pooch in the sketch.

Wow, that really
does
look like that dog in the yard,
she thought.
That is the
strangest
coincidence!

She glanced at the new picture, some kind of big green bird with a red forehead and a big, black, threatening-looking beak, and shook her head with a smile. Pearl was really going to some colorful lengths to impress her uncle. Wherever he was. She turned toward the window over the sink, the one overlooking the yard, intending to check on Pearl and Dog—and froze.

Perched on the windowsill, head twisted sideways to better stare in at her with one round, black eye, was a big, green bird. Almost a foot high, from its great black talons to the scarlet splotch on the crest of its head, the bird stood motionless, nothing but that dark eye twitching as it scanned the kitchen, the hooked, black beak—nearly as long as Julie’s finger—actually touching the glass.

Julie whirled to look at the drawing on the fridge: big green bird, red splotch, hooked black beak. She spun back to the window: big green bird, red splotch, hooked black beak.

That’s impossible!

Without thinking, Julie lunged toward the window, wanting a closer look at this strange, new visitor. But the bird at the window was not a drawing, and her sudden motion sparked an explosive flurry of feathers, and the window was empty when she arrived. She touched the glass, the pad of her middle finger coming to rest on the spot where the great beak had so recently rested.

“What the hell is goi—”

The door burst open beside her, nearly stopping her heart as a shrieking six-year-old thundered into the house. “My bird! Did you see my bird? Mommy, I saw my bird!”

“Honey,” Julie began, a little dazed from seeing the bird herself, but an abrupt commotion from the front hall startled her into silence. Sharp knocking rapidly progressed to frantic pounding, and Julie peered into the front hall to see the solid oak front door actually shuddering in its frame. She reached for the phone, thinking a 9-1-1 call might be in order, when a shout came from the front porch in a voice she recognized.

“Julie? Julie, are you in there? Pearl, honey? For Christ’s sake, is anybody home?”

Swinging away from the phone, Julie marched down the hall, flipped open the deadbolt, and flung the door open, revealing a tall man in travel-stained khakis, a worn leather jacket, and a slightly ridiculous wide-brimmed fedora, which she knew—
knew
—he thought made him look like Harrison Ford. She opened her mouth to speak, but from behind her came yet another shriek, adding to the confusion roiling in her head.

“Uncle Connor!”

Julie was nearly bowled over as Pearl pushed past her, cannoning into the tall man’s legs, wrapping herself about one of them in a hug worthy of the most amorous of canines. A hand reached to pat the child’s back, but the tall man’s focus was entirely on Julie, staring at her with intense, fear-stricken eyes.

“Has it arrived?” he said. “Did I beat it here?
Did the box get here yet
?”

Catching her balance, Julie ignored the tall man’s questions, instead finally finishing one of her own.