“And the sun went up in the sky?” Bobby asked.
“Yes, where it remains to this day. Now we all have sunlight for daytime, moonlight for night, and the stars to wish on and guide us, thanks to Raven.”
Bobby smiled, then remembered something. “Are you the Bird-Man?” he asked.
“Who?” Jimmy asked, feeling a chill going through him.
“The Bird-Man. I had some dreams about him. The Bird-Man tried to hurt me.” He squirmed down from his mother’s lap and ran back to his room.
“Bobby,” Liz called to him, afraid of his being alone.
“I’m just getting something,” he called back.
In Bobby’s room, bright moonlight spilled through the window and it made him think of
the story Jimmy had told him. He smiled. As he went to his drawing table, a pair of dark black eyes watched him from the window. Bobby grabbed up the drawings and started back for the living room but looked back.
The window showed only the moon beyond, through the falling snow.
Down below, the black otter slipped out of sight. It had cleaned most of the gore from its paws and muzzle, but bright blood still dotted the tip of several whiskers, moonlit rubies on ebony strands. It moved off to watch over the house from the hill.
Inside, Bobby brought his drawings to Jimmy. They showed a man with birdlike wings and beak chasing a smaller figure. The figures were crude but evocative, as powerful as cave drawings. Jimmy then looked at the boy and saw that Bobby was now terrified that he might be this creature.
“I’m not the Bird-Man, Bobby,” he said, “I’m just an old man full of stories.”
“So who is the Bird-Man?” Bobby asked.
“Maybe he’s just everything you’re scared of,” Jimmy said. “With my people, if we are scared of something, we make a mask of it. Then we wear the mask to show our respect. Sometimes, someone else wearing a hero mask will playact that they kill the monster or evil thing. In this way, we defeat the monster and put our fear to rest.”
Bobby looked at his drawings. “Do you think the Bird-Man hurt Uncle Dan?” he asked.
Jimmy shook his head. “No, that was someone else. But that person can’t hurt us. I used powerful magic to keep him away.”
Bobby considered this. “Will you help me make a mask of the Bird-Man?” he asked, finally.
Jimmy nodded.
Liz looked at her watch. “You’ll have to do that tomorrow,” she said, “it’s bedtime, now.”
Bobby began to protest.
“It’s late, Bobby,” Steven said. “I think we’re all going to bed pretty soon.”
“Can I sleep in your room?” Bobby asked.
Steven looked at Liz, and she nodded. “Sure, maybe you’ll let one of our guests use your bed,” Steven said.
“I’ll use the sleeping bag out here,” Stan volunteered. He knew Liz would still feel uncomfortable with him in the house.
“I had my heart set on the couch,” George said.
Bobby looked at Jimmy. “Would you like to use my room, Jimmy?”
“I would be honored,” Jimmy said.
“You don’t wet the bed, do you?”
“Bobby,” Liz said, shocked and trying not to laugh.
“Not yet,” George muttered.
“Not since I was very small,” Jimmy said.
“Me too,” Bobby said. “Sweet dreams.”
“You, too.”
Liz picked the boy up. He smiled at Jimmy. “I’m glad you’re not the Bird-Man,” Bobby said.
“Me too,” Jimmy said. He hated to lie, especially to a child. Not much choice now. He had a feeling there would be a lot of blood and suffering, and probably very soon.
What difference did one small lie make, in the face of that?
By midnight, the entire house was asleep except for Jimmy. He knew all of them would begin having dreams, bright promises from The Faceless One if they would deliver the boy. This would continue indefinitely, some of the dreams spilling over into waking visions.
He stood near the front door, watching the snow pile ever higher, doing irreparable damage to plants more accustomed to California’s desert climate. Jimmy could hear Stan Roberts snoring lightly, and it was a peaceful sound in a way. Roberts had endured more than any of them. He had been touched directly by The Faceless One. Jimmy didn’t know how the man had kept a grip on his sanity. He obviously had a powerful mind.
Jimmy saw whom he was waiting for come down the hill, and he quietly opened the front door. An overhang from the roof kept snow from piling in front of the door, at least for the moment. He stepped out into the frigid air, once again feeling nostalgia for the place of his birth. He had been wrong to let Thomas sequester him in a place without a real winter.
Uncle Will sat on the hill, oblivious to the cold. No steam issued from his mouth or nostrils. He brought out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Jimmy. “Smoke?”
Jimmy took one, and his uncle lit it for him, using only the tips of his gnarled fingers. He replaced the pack in his coat and brought out his pipe, lighting it the same way. “One nice thing about the Afterlife—I always have plenty of tobacco.”
Jimmy smiled. “And salmon, I suppose.”
“Plenty of that though I’m still partial to halibut.”
Jimmy took a drag on the cigarette, which glowed like a cookfire ember in the night air.
Uncle Will looked about. “Wouldn’t be so bad if this was as far as it went,” he mused. “The summers here are too damn hot and the air is foul.”
“I wouldn’t think you’d do much breathing, being dead.”
“Don’t be impertinent.”
“Sorry, Uncle.”
They smoked in silence for a long while, Jimmy feeling the cold but enjoying it. It was as if he were a boy again, learning the ways of the world at his uncle’s side, discovering the mysteries and wonder that lay all around him.
“You know the boy is the key,” Uncle Will said at last.
Jimmy sighed. He really didn’t want to discuss this, but he knew there was no choice. He looked up, where the golden net over the property shimmered like the aurora borealis. He missed that waving curtain of light, its blues, reds, and greens undulating across the sky like a spectral serpent.
“I know we can’t outwait The Faceless One.”
Uncle Will nodded. “He knows he made a mistake with that one.” Uncle Will gestured with his pipe toward where the body of Jake Sparks lay. The body was now a barely noticeable mound in a snowbank that covered the yard. The snow was approaching two feet in some places. Small fruit trees that Steven Slater had planted in the side yard were bending over and one had already snapped from the weight of the snow. “So, if he has an opportunity, he won’t hesitate.”
Uncle Will continued to smoke in silence, the bowl of his pipe illuminating his face with strange lights and shadows, a miniature aurora playing across his features. Jimmy found the silence oppressive but forced himself to be patient.
“The child’s blood must be spilled,” Uncle Will said finally, and Jimmy felt a shiver course through him, down to the very core of his being.
“I don’t want to hurt him,” he said, almost pleading.
“There is no one but you.”
“I’m frightened,” he said very quietly, and his voice was that of a five-year-old child, staring at shapes moving in the dark.
Uncle Will looked at him and nodded. “I’m frightened too, Mouse.”
And as they sat under the soft falling snow that night in July, his uncle told him what he must do.
Stan stood just to the side of the front door, watching Jimmy through the small window. His view was partially obscured by the cars in the driveway but he could see the old man sitting on the hillside.
And he wasn’t alone.
There was another man beside him, smoking a pipe. Stan couldn’t see him very clearly; he looked like a reflection in a dark piece of glass, a glimpse caught in a shop window at night. He guessed it was a remnant of his time with the Big Boss that allowed him to see this. He had an idea the others might only see Jimmy, sitting in the snow and smoking a cigarette.
He hadn’t slept well despite being exhausted. He had been having dreams about being cleared of various charges and reinstated in his job. Though these were things he desperately wanted, something about the context was disturbing, ominous. There was a bargain to be made to gain these things, and he had a feeling the cost would be very dear. He had been advised in his dreams by a figure who stayed in the shadows. Just as the figure had been about to tell him what he must do, he had awakened to a sharp pain in his thigh. Something was digging into his leg, and he had pulled a small object out of his pocket.
Richie’s lucky bullet. He had run his fingers over the characters inscribed on it, and it seemed to ease his mind. The dream seemed distant now, a shadow play best forgotten.
Stan wondered if the other person out there was the Big Boss but that didn’t seem likely. Jimmy had registered true awe and fear in speaking of him but out on the small hill he seemed relaxed, at home. Could be a dead relative, Stan thought, and wondered at the events that caused him to regard such a thing so casually.
So Jimmy was having a chat with a ghost, what of it? He had said he would be seeking guidance, that he would be consulting spirits. But something gnawed at Stan, a feeling of something out of place. He smiled ruefully. Here he was in a house protected by little animal carvings buried under the driveway. A man was having a smoke with fucking Casper the Friendly Ghost in a goddamned snowstorm while the rest of L.A. baked in the July heat. And he was worried something didn’t fit. He was Alice, all the way down the fucking rabbit hole, thinking perhaps there were too many aces among the living cards. He shook his head and wished for the umpteenth time that he and Richie were freezing their asses off on a stakeout with
cold burgers and bitter coffee, back to a time when his only worries were bullets and knives.
He fingered the bullet in the pocket of his borrowed pants and wondered if he shouldn’t put it in his gun where it belonged. It had occurred to him suddenly that having a loaded gun might be a very good thing.
As he went to get the weapon, he wondered suddenly where that thought had come from. He frowned a moment, then loaded the gun.
What harm is there in being prepared?
* * *
In their room, Steven and Liz slept more soundly than they had in days. Peaceful dreams of tranquillity and contentment graced their sleep, and who could blame them for slipping ever more deeply into such dreams?
George was dreaming that he was dancing with Anne Marie Belva. The nurse had traded in her starched white outfit for a long red evening gown, and her hair was lustrous and black. She smelled of flowers and spices, and laughed with delight as George spun her around on the dance floor of the Cotton Club in Harlem, a place that had closed down before he was born. It was 1956, and Ella Fitzgerald was at the mike, singing “Wait ’Til You See Him.” George and Anne Marie danced closer, and he was twenty-two and getting a tremendous hard-on.
George awoke, the straining of his erection a sensation he hadn’t had for weeks. When he realized it was a dream, he sighed quietly, not wanting to wake Stan. But then he heard a small sound and quietly slipped his glasses on.
Stan was standing in the living room, not five feet from George. He was loading the revolver that George had given back to him.
He’s going to kill all of us, George thought, and felt himself go limp and cold with fear. He wanted to leap up, wrest the gun from the other man, then call to the others to wake up, but he did none of these things. He realized he was paralyzed with fear and the realization filled him with shame. For all his bragging and bravado, when the time came, he was just a coward. A foolish, impotent, old coward.
George lay there in the dark, praying for help and wondering what he could do. Stan turned suddenly and looked right at him, and George was sure he’d see a glint of moonlight on his glasses and know that he was awake. Any minute, the other man would kill him, then he’d move through the house, killing everyone in it. But Stan only glanced George’s way and turned around again.
Stan stuck the gun into the back of his pants, then lay back down on the sleeping bag. His
breathing was low and even, as if he were asleep. George felt a pressing need to urinate but was terrified of getting up. The other man was waiting to use that gun, and George had no idea what might set him off. Surely, this was the work of The Faceless One. George was wishing Jimmy were nearby, not back in the kid’s room, when he heard the front door open quietly. Now his old heart hammered in his chest, his mind painting vivid pictures of the monstrosity that must have just entered the house. Maybe it was that fellow Jake Sparks, now a zombie, his once-featureless face split open to reveal a wide mouth of jagged and glistening teeth. He was coming for George because George had been the one to shoot him. George wanted to moan but dared not, afraid he might alert Stan that he was awake. Tears filled his eyes, his terror demanding some way to express itself. He blinked, afraid he would be unable to see whatever might be coming for him, whether the man on the floor or the monster in the entryway.
A figure appeared in the door to the living room and George almost screamed. He heard Stan shift ever so slightly on his sleeping bag, and George had to bite down hard on his lip to keep his voice from tearing loose. The figure paused, and he was sure it was Jake Sparks, trying to find him with his eyeless face.
The figure stepped into the living room, and what little light there was allowed him to see that it was Jimmy. Jimmy had been outside, and he was back. He looked cold and miserable, and he stood there a moment, then drew closer to the gas heater on the wall. Jimmy sighed, and there was so much misery in that sound. So much pain that George felt a twinge in his heart. Something was making his friend suffer terribly. And here he lay. An old, lie-spewing coward.
Jimmy walked to the rear of the house, and George waited to see if Stan Roberts would get up. Goddamn it; if he did, he was going to tackle the other man and stop him. These were good people that lived here, and Jimmy was his best friend. He would be damned if he was going to let something happen to them.