Cradle Lake (7 page)

“Son of a bitch, you buggers are stubborn.”

He leaned against the wall and peered behind the refrigerator. Sure enough, the vine ran down the wall and vanished into a crack in the molding at the bottom. A second vine, much thinner, had branched off the first and had wrapped itself around the grate at the back of the refrigerator. The vines reminded Alan of a video he'd seen about Humboldt squid in the Sea of Cortez and how their tentacles would splay out and make grabs at the cameramen.

The microwave beeped, making him flinch. He laughed nervously and retrieved the steaming mug, smelling the rich aroma. The doctor had cautioned him about drinking too much coffee, as it promised to aggravate the ulcer, but for Christ's sake, he couldn't give up all his worldly pleasures, could he?

Through one of the kitchen windows, Alan caught sight of something dark moving in the forked trunk of a tree in the side yard. He approached the window for a better look and felt his bowels clench. His blood suddenly turned to ice.

It was enormous—perhaps the size of a car's spare tire—and the enormity of it made the thing look almost ridiculous hunkered down in the crook of the spindly little tree. Since that night in the clearing off the path, Alan had managed to convince himself that in his sleep-deprived state he had either exaggerated the size of the birds or possibly even imagined them altogether; but here in the daylight, staring straight at one of the beasts, the truth of it all came crashing back down on him. The thing was
huge.

Alan drummed his fingers on the windowpane.

The giant bird cocked its fleshy head but did not take
its eyes from him. Alan tapped the glass harder. The damn thing refused to fly away.

In the foyer, he strapped on his sneakers, then went into the front yard just as thunder rumbled overhead. Across the street, a number of neighborhood kids were getting in their baseball game before the storm hit.

Mr. Pasternak from farther up the block jogged by on what Alan had come to learn was his usual midafternoon run. Mr. Pasternak raised a hand, his sweat-soaked tank top and nylon running shorts hanging from his narrow skin-and-bones frame. Mr. Pasternak was eighty-seven though he looked twenty years younger. Alan had met him earlier in the week while the old man jogged by, and they'd shared a short but pleasant conversation by the mailbox.

“My young friend,” Mr. Pasternak cawed as he strode by.

“Hey,” Alan returned, not pausing to talk this time. He crossed to the side of the house only to find the little dogwood tree empty. The big, ugly bird had disappeared. Fishing his cigarettes from his jeans and lighting one, he approached the tree with an overly sensitized sense of apprehension, as if the bird was going to spring out at him at any moment. Peck his eyeballs out or some such nonsense. Goddamn thing was large enough to swoop down and snatch up a small child …

He leaned closer to examine the trunk of the tree. It had left behind claw marks in the shape of lightning bolts in the bark.

“Hey,” Hank said from behind him, causing Alan to jump and turn around. Hank was leaning against a tree, two cans of Coors in his hands. He offered Alan his trademark
grin, then handed him one of the beers. “Doing some yard work?”

“Something like that.”

“You look like you're looking for somebody.”

“Big fucking bird,” he said, popping the top on the Coors.

“Oh yeah. You'll get those, sure. There's like fifteen hundred acres of forest behind your house in case you hadn't noticed. Remember what I said about the bears, too?” He winked. “Wild animals, dude.”

For the first time, Alan thought he might actually come to like Hank. There was a goofy, brotherly quality about him that was warm and inviting.

“By the way,” Alan said, knocking his beer can against Hank's, “thanks for the barbecue. We enjoyed meeting the rest of the neighborhood.”

“No sweat. Glad to do it. Seems like Lydia and Heather have hit it off, too, huh?”

He couldn't tell if Hank was feeling him out, curious about Heather's rather obvious state of detachment, and Alan wondered if he should try to mitigate Hank's curiosity right off the bat. Not that he had any intention of filling him in on what he and Heather had been through and what she had done to herself …

There came the sound of screeching car tires followed by a vague
whump
from across the street. The shouts of the children playing baseball, which had been a constant cacophony since Alan had stepped from the house, now rose to a frenzied urgency that caused his stomach to clench like a fist. Both he and Hank dropped their beers and raced across the yard.

“Oh, Christ,” Alan uttered, skidding to a stop.

There was a child on the ground, unmoving. A few yards away, a red Audi with a dented front fender had come to rest crookedly in the center of the street. The driver's door opened but no one came out. Through the glare across the Audi's windshield, Alan could make out only subtle, indistinct movements behind the steering wheel.

Hank rushed past him and over to the fallen child.

It took a few heartbeats for Alan to snap back to reality. He forced his legs to move toward the injured child. With each stride bringing him closer and closer, the horror of the scene grew more pronounced. Finally, when he reached the child, he had to quickly avert his eyes. The boy's legs were at funny angles, and there was a trickle of blood along one pant leg. Worse still was the way the boy's head was turned on his neck …

Hank crouched down and pressed his ear to the boy's face.

“Jesus, Hank. Is he … ?”

“He's alive,” Hank said. Then he shouted it, as if to attract the attention of anyone holding a phone. “He's alive!”

The crowd of neighborhood kids closed in, their faces slack, their eyes wide in a combination of fear and disbelief. Among them Alan recognized the boy
he'd
nearly hit with his car on that first day in town. For an instant, the boy's big, dark eyes met his. The boy's stare was accusatory, as if this had all somehow been Alan's fault.

“Get back, guys,” he told the kids. His voice shook. “Give them room.”

While Hank touched the side of the boy's throat, perhaps checking for the strength of his pulse, Alan took a step
back. His foot came down on something. He looked down and found himself standing on a baseball glove. He suddenly thought he was going to be sick.

Neighbors stood on their porches. Some of the men gathered around the fallen boy. The boy wasn't moving. Aside from the splash of blood on his pants, there was some blood on his T-shirt as well, but Alan held out hope that the minimal amount of it was a good sign. One of the kid's sneakers was missing, leaving behind a foot within a floppy white sock pointing at the sky. Absently, Alan wondered where the sneaker had gone.

And his neck, oh God, the poor kid's neck …

He hurried around the emergent crowd of men and peered into the Audi's open door. A woman, no more than thirty years of age, sat behind the wheel. She would have been attractive had her face retained any color, had it not been stricken by the sudden horror of what she had done. White-knuckled, she squeezed the steering wheel in both hands. She was mumbling something under her breath as he approached.

He bent down and said “Ma'am” a number of times through the open door, but she didn't respond.

“Move!” one of the men shouted from the huddle.

Alan looked up and watched the huddle begin to separate, amazed at just how
far
the boy had been thrown.

“He's breathing! The kid's breathing!”

“… nowhere,” said the woman.

Alan looked at her. “What?”

“Came out of nowhere.” Her voice was barely audible.

“It'll be okay.” It was a stupid thing to say—the sort of
stupid thing people say in movies that cause the audience to groan—but it was the only thing that came to his mind. So he repeated the stupid thing: “It'll be okay.”

“Ask the woman her name.” It was Don Probst, coming up behind him. Don looked about as gray as the sky. “We should get her name.”

Alan reached into the car and turned off the engine, sliding the gear to Park. The last thing he wanted was for the woman to freak out and accidentally gun the accelerator, plowing through the crowd of men trying to help the injured boy. He withdrew the keys from the ignition. The woman didn't even look at him.

“Someone should call an ambulance,” he said, backing away from the Audi. He slammed into Don, who hardly uttered a sound. Turning to face the neighbors who were still standing on their porches, Alan shouted, “Someone call an ambulance!”

He turned and, to his horror, saw Hank and two other men
lifting
the injured boy off the ground. The boy's head pivoted awkwardly. His limbs hung limply, and that white sneakerless sock was like a finger pointing straight at the heavens. A large smear of blood was soaking into the concrete.

“Don't
lift
him!” Alan shouted, already backing away in the direction of his house. “Are you crazy? Wait for a fucking ambulance!”

Of all the absurd things and despite the gruesomeness of the scene, the group of kids recoiled at his language. One of them even pointed at him in astonishment, then covered his ears. It would have been comical under different circumstances.

Alan rushed across his lawn and into the house, wondering where the hell he'd put his goddamn cell phone when, blowing past the kitchen, he realized there was a phone on the wall.

Ramming one shoulder against the side of the refrigerator, he yanked the receiver off the cradle and punched 911. The operator came on and he stammered, “Ambulance! Ambulance!” Once he was connected, he prattled off what had happened, answering the questions he could while stumbling over the ones he didn't know, such as the name of the boy who'd been hit and the woman's name—

(ask the woman her name we should get her name)

—who'd hit him.

Like earlier, something out the window caught his attention. He slammed the phone down on the handset and practically pressed himself up against the kitchen window.

Two boys from the baseball game stood in his yard, their hands weighted down with oversized gloves, their baseball hats too big for their heads. They were staring in the direction of the backyard. Don appeared from around the rear of the house and bent to speak to one of the children. He held the boy's shoulder and talked very close to his face, the brim of the boy's baseball cap nearly touching Don's forehead. The boy nodded and took off toward the street, leaving his friend behind. Don ran his hands through his thick black hair, then dipped back behind the house.

Alan bounded down the hallway and cut through the living room, heading for the sliding patio doors at the rear of the house. The commotion roused Jerry Lee from semiconsciousness; the dog began barking as if at an intruder.
Alan ignored him. Pulling the blinds back from the doors revealed a file of neighborhood men disappearing into the trees at the edge of the backyard. Don brought up the rear, hurrying now in a panicked jog.

Alan yanked on the door handle but it wouldn't budge. Futilely, he repeated this action two more times before he realized that the goddamn door was
locked.
He flipped the lock and the door whooshed open. Apparently, he'd been sweating for the past couple of minutes because the stormy breeze descending from the mountains froze the perspiration to his skin, causing a series of shivers to race down to the small of his back. He shouted Don's name, but the man had already disappeared through the trees and down the rutted dirt path.

Rushing outside, he nearly slammed into the boy who'd remained standing, wide-eyed and motionless, in the yard. The boy looked about eight years old. He stared up at him, disbelief still tattooed on his face. His ears bent under the weight of his oversized baseball hat.

“What's going on?” Alan shouted, his voice loud enough to cause the boy to flinch. It was a ridiculous question to shout at an eight-year-old, anyway.

The boy pointed at the dark gap between the trees where Don and the rest of the men had vanished just moments ago. A strong wind shook the trees, swinging the branches in front of the hollow. As if trying to close it up, hide it from sight.

“They took Cory,” said the boy.

Without another word, Alan took off toward the opening in the trees. Shoving branches out of his way, he stepped onto the path and passed into the depths of the woods.

Hardly any sunlight permeated the trees. Ahead, he could see Don bringing up the rear as the line of men hurried along the wooded path. Alan thought he spotted Hank among them, but it was too hard to tell because the man he believed to be Hank was surrounded by two other men—the two men who'd helped him lift the boy off the pavement—and all three were moving in synchronized strides.

“Don!”

Don froze and whirled around, his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. “Jesus, Alan …”

“What the fuck's going on?”

“Look,” he said, placing a hand on Alan's chest, “go back to the house, round up a bunch of towels. I'll come back and get you when—”

“What are you talking about? Where are they taking him?”

“We're not—”

“What the hell do you guys think you're
doing?”
Alan's voice shook the trees. He brushed past Don and tore off down the path in pursuit of the congregation. For a moment, he thought he could see that floppy white sock protruding out from the procession like a banner in a parade.

He broke into a full-fledged run, but the men were still a good distance ahead of him. And whereas they seemed to be continuing down the path in an unencumbered straight line, it appeared that he was left to contend with sharp turns and switchbacks, fallen limbs obstructing his passage, and low-hanging, clawlike branches reaching down to snag his clothes or draw blood from his skin. At one point, a formidably contentious tree limb snatched hold of his T-shirt and yanked him off his feet. He crashed to the ground in
conjunction with an unsettling ripping sound. He hoped it was only his T-shirt and not a ligament tearing in his ankle, which he twisted in the fall. Glancing up, he spotted a strip of black T-shirt fabric flapping from the angry branch, and he felt his breath shudder from his abraded throat.