He looked at her as if she had lost her mind, but she did not care. She gave him a look as furious as the hammering in her head.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “His drawings are coming to life.”
* * *
The boys ran along the far side of the house and at the rear corner took off for a patch of evergreens, carving a new path through the drifts. The skies had burst, and the snow fell in rippling sheets; and in every shadow, they imagined a new terror. They lost sight of the creature and took the chance to rest for a moment under the pines. With his hands on his knees, Nick leaned over catching his breath, and looking with wonder at his friend, outside again. Red shields appeared on Jack Peter’s cheeks, and a rime of frost glistened at the corners of his chapped lips. He rubbed the matt of snow from his hair. Chests heaving, they sucked in deep breaths.
“It’s cold out,” Jack Peter said. “I’m tired of it.”
Nick rubbed Jack Peter’s face with the palms of his gloves, trying to help him get warm. “Why did you do this?” he asked.
“They were going to send me away. Too much trouble.”
A loud bellow came from behind. The monster spotted them in their hiding place, and they pushed forward, snow flying in their wake, their flapping coats caught in the draft. They left the cover of the trees and climbed the dune. Stretching before them, the canvas flattened into shades of white and gray. Even the waves seemed frozen in place. The smell of salt and fish and seaweed had been drained by the antiseptic cold. Dead quiet, except for their frantic breathing and the whispering snow. The familiar paths to the sea through the maze of granite were obscured, but they had an advantage over the white man. They picked their way around the familiar rocks while it stumbled after them, gaining ground and then faltering, before slipping and landing on all fours, buried face-first in a snowbank. When he saw it fall, Nick ducked behind a large boulder and pulled Jack Peter next to him. They sat and leaned back against the stone.
“Who is that?” Nick asked.
Jack Peter stared at the sea, refusing to answer.
“Did you do this? Did you make the monster?”
“Yes,” he said. “I made it all.” With the edge of his mitten, he tapped his forehead.
“Well, we’re trapped. Between the ocean and that nightmare thing.”
Nick peeked around the edge of the rock to see what was keeping the monster. With a howl and a string of filthy curses, the creature rose from the ground. Scorched by the cold, its skin was mottled red and blue and snow sloughed off its limbs in thick clumps. Scouring the beach with its gaze, it found Nick before he could duck back behind cover. The fiend stepped forward, relentless.
There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape. Caught in the middle of a great nothing, they had no choice but to move toward the sea. The closer they came to the water, the less snow covered the ground, giving way entirely to sand where the waves lapped the shore, and though they could move faster on this bare surface, so, too, could the monster. They waded into the bubbling wash to the tops of their boots and then turned to face it. The monster lurched toward them and stopped just yards away, tottering on its bare feet and swaying in the storm.
* * *
Fire ran along the edges like quicksilver and ignited the drawings in a flash. Tim watched the papers burn and curl upon themselves and the black ash fly up the chimney like a murder of crows. At first he had not understood why Holly had asked him to destroy their son’s artwork, but he had obeyed without question or complaint. She rarely ordered him to do anything, and it was not until he actually looked at the images that he began to understand her logic. These were no ordinary childish portraits. Jip had drawn the wild man many times and in many variations, even though he had never seen him, and how could he, with the monster outside and the boy inside at all times? Only he and Nick had seen him, and never in such fine detail and execution, as if Jip had been face-to-face with it, as if Jip had been intimately wired into Nick’s mind.
Other disturbing visions populated the pages, none of which Jip could have witnessed. The big white dog appeared in several drawings, even though Tim and Nick were the only ones who had seen it firsthand in the back of the policeman’s car. Some drawings were mysteries—an army of monstrous babies, a woman who resembled Nell Weller but vaguely naked and predatory, a pair of bodies with hangers between their bare shoulder blades, bones of a skeleton littering the shore. Tim hobbled from room to room, finding papers scattered everywhere. He searched the entire upstairs floor and brought a bundle down to the fire, pitching them in batches without bothering to inspect the weird subjects, only to stop, stricken, at one drawing that grabbed his attention: the two boys tangled in a violent knot at the bottom of the sea. He guessed at once where Holly had gone, where the boys might be found, and he hurried to the picture window facing the ocean, praying that he was wrong. Coming to life.
* * *
On feet red and blistered with frostbite, the monster walked closer, and the boys could see the sorrows on his face. Deep-set in bruised circles, his eyes conveyed a world of woe and regret. His mouth twisted and gaped slightly, and he seemed on the verge of telling them something. A plum-colored welt ringed his neck. His tangled hair and beard were curled and twisted as strands of kelp, and he was painfully thin, his bones could be counted through his sallow skin, and he had a look of long hunger. He lifted his arms from his sides and stretched his bony hands toward the boys, in a gesture both beseeching and threatening.
“What do you want?” Nick cried.
As if to answer, the monster opened its mouth, but no words came out, only a sound that began with an infant’s urgency and slowly loudened to a long drawn-out wail that resounded and echoed off the rocks and the dream house and sang out to the wide expanse of the sea. A human cry, born out of ancient suffering, turned inside out and full of unspeakable grief and longing.
The boys backed away from the creature, and when the waves struck his legs Nick recoiled from the shock of the frigid water. He heard Jack Peter cry out like a bird. Torn between surrender to the monster to end that tormenting pain and the desire to escape, Nick went deeper. A wave broke over his legs and crashed against his back, soaking him through his heavy coat and pulling him away from shore. As he sank, Nick felt the hands wrap around his waist and force him under.
The water stung like the prick of a thousand needles. The monster cried out in pain, the skin on its shoulders blackening and its hair turning to ash. Flames burst on its limbs, yet it kept marching toward them. Without warning they were going under. Nick had no chance for even a mouthful of air, and he found himself plunged in darkness, trying not to swallow water. The weight of his clothes made him sink quickly, with Jack Peter at his side, dragging and pushing him to the bottom. He fought the pressure on his chest, grappled and pulled at Jack Peter’s hands, fighting to be free. The waves, too, gripped and buffeted them, churning the silt and shells, and in the muck he felt as though he was being erased from the page, torn from the outside world.
* * *
Holly nearly crumpled to the ground in pain from the cold pressure boring into her skull. The boys had made footprints in the snow, and she followed a pair to the top of the hill. Slipping through the heavy wet snow, she climbed to the crest, the whole ocean spread out before her. Below, one of the boys cried out loudly from the shore. She searched desperately for any sight of them among the rocks or along the sandy shore. Her shouts thinned to a whisper in the blinding whiteness. When she saw a flash of red boots in the water and the navy blue of a child’s coat, she ran toward it, the beating in her head finally stilled, her heart exploding with what was in front of her.
They might be dead, she thought, by the time she reached them, but Holly flew to the tideline. She plunged into the water, anesthetized by its iciness, thrashing to the spot where she had last seen her son and diving underwater again and again in desperation. Breathless, she rose from the waves and saw at once Jack in a dead man’s float. She cried out his name
and seized him by the coat, turned him over on his back, and towed him to the beach. On the edge of the sand, she rested, catching her breath. Black with soot, Tim had arrived and fished out Nick’s heavy wet body from the sea, but Holly was barely aware of anything else. They were alone in the quiet of the day, and she cradled her son in her arms, my boy, my boy, until the water streamed from his mouth, and his heart stirred.
vii.
The little girl with no hair smiled at him across the room, and Jack Peter returned her beatific grin with a smile of his own. When he noticed that his mother was watching, he bowed his head, blushing. Other people wandered in and out of the visitors’ lounge—a tired man rubbing the small of his back as he paced; two nurses on a coffee break; an older couple, the husband pushing his wife in her wheelchair and bending to offer some quiet comfort. The Keenans waited for some word, any word at all, now back at the hospital for another long day. Both boys had gone in to the emergency room after they had been pulled from the icy Atlantic. Jack Peter had been treated for mild hypothermia and shock, but Nicholas had not regained consciousness since the drowning. They had seen him once in the ICU, hooked up to a respirator and lying still on his back, a birdlike thing impossible to bear. Father Bolden and Miss Tiramaku had come for a visit and to say a few prayers, but his parents did not pray. They could only stare at the floor as the words were spoken.
Getting Nick’s parents off the cruise ship in the Caribbean had proved difficult, and then their flight from Miami to Portland had been postponed because of the blizzard. Texts and phone calls never suffice, and Holly and Tim agreed to keep vigil until the Wellers arrived. A small plastic Christmas tree sat on a table in the corner of the room, and on the walls were cutout decorations: Santa and his sleigh, sprigs of balsam, a blue and white menorah. Holly was grateful that the piped-in music had been changed from Christmas songs to some indecipherable pop mush playing softly in the background. Tim was giving the day’s newspaper a third read, and Jack passed the time, thankfully, without drawing. His fingers danced across the screen of her smart phone as he played another mindless game with fanatical desire.
The door swung open and Dr. Ogundipe entered, the same young Nigerian woman who had treated Jack earlier. When she found them, she tugged at the stethoscope around her neck as she approached. “Mr. and Mrs. Keenan…”
“You have some news?” Holly asked.
She sat next to Jack and flashed a smile at him. For the second time that day, he acknowledged a stranger’s greeting, a good sign. “Nothing about Nicholas, I’m afraid, no real changes, everything’s the same. He still hasn’t woken up. But his parents arrived at last and have had the chance to see him. They’re planning on coming to talk with you shortly.”
“How did they seem to you?” Tim asked.
“As you might expect,” she said. “Quite a shock, and they are tired from the journey. After you’ve had a chance to discuss matters with them, let me know what you think about my idea.”
Jack squirmed in his chair and put down the game. Earlier in the day the doctor had suggested that he come talk to Nick in the bed, that the sound of a friend’s voice might stimulate a response. When he had first heard her proposal, Jack had hidden behind his mother’s arm, but now that he had time to consider it, he was willing. He nodded his consent.
“Good boy.” The doctor patted him on the leg. “I’ll let you all know if we can arrange it.” In her crisp white jacket, she projected authority, but her charm had won over Jack. With a nod, she disappeared into the maze of the wards.
They went back to waiting.
“What are we going to tell them?” Tim asked at last. “That a monster showed up and chased them into the ocean? A monster our son made through his drawings. Good Lord, they’ll never believe it.”
“We’ll tell them the story we told them on the phone,” Holly said. “That the boys were out playing in the snow and went too close to the water.”
He folded the newspaper and tossed it on the coffee table. “They doubted it on the phone, I could tell. They know that Jip never leaves the house.”
“Stop calling him that,” she said. “‘Jip’ sounds insulting.”
Leaning across the chair, Tim tapped his son on the shoulder. “What do you think, J.P.? Do you feel insulted?”
“Just stop,” she said.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”
“Everything, don’t you see? There’s a little boy lying in a hospital bed. And your own son put him there. And you, you never believe me. Out chasing things.” Her face was red with anger.
Fred Weller had slipped into the room and stood directly behind her. With a polite clearing of his throat, he announced his presence. Holly turned to greet him, and saw how his sunburned face had collapsed with worry. Melting in her own grief, she reached for him, and he embraced her as she collapsed into sobs. “I’m sorry,” she said. “So, so sorry.”
From over his shoulder, she saw Nell enter, flat and emotionless. She did not smile or frown, barely functioning under sedation. Tim rose to meet her, but Nell bowed her head and curved away and would not let him touch her. He seemed so helpless to Holly, abandoned and bereft, that she almost felt sorry for him in that instant.
On the sofa, Jack busily scrolled through the smart phone apps searching for a new game.
“Nell, I am so sorry,” Holly said. “It was an accident.”
Miles away, Nell stood all alone in the middle of the room. When she began to speak, her voice was strange and low and without affect. “He looks like he is just fading away. Yellow bird, yellow bird.”
“I’m sure he’ll come out of it,” Fred said.
No one moved. Only the hum of the fluorescent lights and Jack’s tapping at the screen broke the silence. At last Nell summoned the courage to raise her chin and look at Tim. “I cannot bear to lose him. We thought he was gone three years ago. How could you let this happen?”
“I’m sorry, Nell,” he said. “I would do anything to save him. He’s like a son to me.”
Her face snapped to anger. “Not yours, never yours.” She pointed at Jack. “That there’s your boy. That’s your son.”
Tim put his hand to his mouth and slumped into a chair. Holly positioned herself between her husband and her son and rested a hand on Tim’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Holly,” Nell said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“They’re doing everything they can,” Holly said. “We all are.”
Each adult retreated to a private misery. Jack tapped out another code on the phone and handed it to his mother. A word game in which you used digital letters on faux wooden tiles to spell out words. He had written “wicked.”
She laughed bitterly to herself.
When summoned at last by a nurse, they all filed to the restricted area and followed her down the winding corridors. Most of the doors along the way had been left ajar, and they passed strange and sad tableaus of sleeping patients; tired old men staring at overhead TVs; families and friends clustered around a privacy screen, crammed into tiny spaces; and oddest of all, the empty rooms with unmade beds. Nurses came and went, crossing their path without a glance, and they arrived at last at the white room where Nick lay all alone. The curtains had been opened and the last sunset of the last day of the year poured weakly across the foot of his bed. A vase of white roses, sent from the Florida grandparents, perfumed the air. Pale and unconscious, Nick breathed quietly. Oxygen flowed through the thin tube at his nose, and in his arm, a plastic port had been installed, his hand colored with a plum bruise, an ID bracelet curled around his wrist. The thin blanket and sheet over his body were smooth and undisturbed.
Dr. Ogundipe arrived five minutes later, less animated in the presence of the child. After glancing at his chart, she went to Nick’s side and held his thin wrist in her hand, counting his pulse, and then she laid his arm against his side and studied the saline drip. “You can talk to him now, Jack.”
“I don’t know what t
o say.” Jack would not look at the boy in the bed.
“Tell him hello,” the doctor said. “Say whatever you are feeling.”
Like a wild bird he approached gingerly, two hops forward, one step back, ready to fly away at any threat. At last he found his way a few feet from his friend’s head on the pillow but no closer. He cocked his head and looked at Nick slantwise.
“Hello, Nick,” he said and waited a few beats for an answer. “Hello, Nick,” he repeated in a louder voice. The boy in the bed did not move at all, and Jack frowned at the doctor, confused and uncertain.
“Go head,” she said. “He can hear you.”
Jack’s right hand twitched and his fingers danced. “No more monsters,” he said. “All the monsters are gone away.”
“Whatever is he talking about?” Fred asked. “What monsters?”
“He won’t get up,” Jack said.
“Try some more,” Tim said. “Tell him you are sorry.”
“I don’t blame you anymore, Nick. I’m not mad at you. I am just tired of drawing all the time. No more monsters. You can get up now.” His shaking hand stilled, and he turned away from the unconscious boy and faced his mother with tears in his eyes and then rushed to her arms.
In the dying light of the day, the others took turns speaking to Nick until there was nothing left to say. The Wellers would be staying the night, but they told the Keenans to go, get some rest.
“Come back tomorrow if you wish,” Fred said. “We’ll be sure to call you if anything changes.”
* * *
Blue moonlight reflected off the snow, and the ride home was like driving through a dreamscape, the familiar streets and landmarks transformed by a smooth white cover. Jack studied the windows to catch his reflection when the light was right, so that he could see both himself and the outside world pass by at the same time. As they pulled up in the driveway, their old house same as ever, he imagined his friend Nick waiting there for them to start their next game. But Jack knew he wasn’t inside. When her cell phone buzzed, Holly fished it from her purse and lit the tiny screen to read the latest.
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