by Sam Starbuck
When I reached the kitchen door I knocked a couple of times, waited, knocked again, shouted up to Lucas and then tried the door – unlocked, so I hurried inside. I half-expected to find him dead on the kitchen floor, but he must have cleaned it. There wasn't even any mud on the floor. The sink where he'd thrown up the hemlock was wiped clean too, though I noticed a spot of blood – my blood, I thought distantly – on the edge.
I looked into the living room and did see a body on the couch there, but my first rush of panic subsided quickly when I saw his chest moving – slowly and evenly, deep inhales and exhales. I touched his wrist where it rested on the back of the couch. His skin was warm, pulse slow and even. He was sleeping. I expected him to wake up when I touched him, but he didn't even shift.
The boxes he'd packed hadn't been touched, and the room seemed very bare without his supplies and masks strewn everywhere. I came around to the other side of the couch and sat down on the heavy coffee table, watching him.
"Lucas," I said softly. His hand twitched. "Wake up a little, huh?"
He didn't move. I reached out and ran the tips of my fingers along his cheekbone, down to his jaw, but he just exhaled slightly and slept on.
"All right," I said, almost relieved. "Sleep if you have to. I brought you something..." I set the mask on the table next to me, straightening it so that it rested on its edges, facing him. "Come see me when you want. You know where I am."
No reaction, just the soft sound of breathing.
If he found the mask, well, that was fine. If he didn't, then it was all in my head anyway. But I hoped he would.
I got up, hesitated, then bent and kissed him on the forehead before leaving. I flicked the lights off on my way out, shut the kitchen door firmly behind me, and turned my face to the chilly wind outside the cottage.
That was the last time I saw Lucas for almost two months.
***
Sandra brought the news to me the next day, when I was still trying to set my internal clock back to waking before noon. I'd already eaten lunch by the time I opened the shop, and a delivery of new comic books had taken up an hour or two after that. I was busy cutting myself a new, more precise bandage with some wadding and a scalpel when she came in.
"Afternoon," I called from the workbench. "With you in just...one...second. Trust me, you don't want to see the Grim Hand of Christopher Dusk."
She laughed and rested her elbows on my counter as I got up, wrapping the wadding around my hand and securing it with the elastic bandage. "Better make sure it wasn't a werewolf," she said.
"I think I'm safe in Low Ferry," I answered, hiding a pang of – conscience, or regret, or something. I don't know. "What can I get for you today? New magazines came in a few days ago."
"Thought they might have by now," she said, as I collected her usual assortment and set them on the counter. She flipped through them while I rang up the total. "Took the afternoon off. Just me and my magazines and some of Carmen's coffee."
"Nice for some. Nolan and Michael handling things?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said, and laughed again. I caught her eye, saw the mischief in it, and stared at her.
"You know about them," I blurted, stopping in the middle of totaling her cost.
"You do?" she asked, equally surprised.
"I imagine we're the only two who do," I replied, hastily printing her receipt. "Six twenty-two."
"I bet we are," she said, handing me the exact change. "How'd you find out?"
"I have eyes everywhere," I whispered. She grinned. "But if you knew – that whole thing with you and them last autumn..."
"Well, I do like Michael an awful lot," she said, a hint of regret passing over her face. "Nolan too, but I really liked Michael. If things were different...but they aren't. And the boys are happy, so why not give them a hand? You know they're leavin' town in a month or two. You won't make trouble for them, will you?" she asked earnestly.
"I haven't yet. What about you, though? You might hit some when they go."
"Why?" she asked, frowning.
"Well, people might think you were covering for them," I said.
"So what? Let 'em," she replied. I began to sense that I had grossly underestimated Sandra. "Besides, if I have to I can act all heartbroken for a little while and I'll make Alex Culligan comfort me."
I lifted an eyebrow. "Alex Culligan, huh?"
"Yep," she said, beaming. "Oh, which reminds me – you know Lucas? That weird guy out at The Pines, the one who's always lurking in here?"
"He's not weird," I said, annoyed.
"Whatever – he disappeared!"
I felt a pit open up in my stomach. "He – what?"
"He's gone," she said, with the kind of relish that often accompanies such gossip. "I had lunch with Alex. He says his dad went up from their farm because their well was out, to see if The Pines had any water, and the place was cleared out. He looked around inside and everything."
"Cleared out – how do you mean?" I demanded. She shrugged.
"All his stuff was gone, is what Alex said. Just a couple of empty boxes and the furniture that rents with the place."
I stared down at the glossy magazines on the counter, trying to keep my breath slow and even.
"You were friends, weren't you?" she asked.
"As much as one can be, with Lucas," I said, hoping my voice was steady.
"That's the truth. Anyway, Alex figures maybe he skipped on his rent or something. He says they saw one of those Friendly trucks passing through, maybe he went with them."
"I – maybe," I said numbly. "He liked them."
"Anyway, thanks for the magazines," she said. "I'll tell the boys you said hello."
"Yeah...do that," I told her, and when she was gone I leaned heavily on the counter.
The first thing I did, and perhaps I'm not entirely proud of this, was take my pulse, just in case. The beat was even, though, and my heart felt fine. Then I straightened and walked through the shop, grabbing my coat from the peg near the door. I flipped the sign to closed, and for the third time in four days I took off for The Pines.
It wouldn't have taken very long to load what little he'd brought with him into one of the Friendly's pickups. Their Christopher would have been pleased to have him traveling with them, and one more mouth isn't so much to feed when you already have twenty or thirty.
I wasn't quite outside of town yet when there was a tug on my arm. I stopped walking and looked down. The boy stood there, one hand in his pocket and the other on my sleeve, looking up at me expectantly.
"You're going out to The Pines," he said. I felt my left hand clench, as if I expected there to be something in my grip.
"Yeah, I am," I replied. I tugged my sleeve out of his grip and kept walking.
"You won't find him there," the boy said, running to catch up to me. "Alex Culligan says he's gone."
"I know that!" I shouted, turning around to face him. "What do you know about it?"
He tilted his head, dark eyes studying me.
"You're still going?" he asked.
"I need to see for myself," I said sullenly.
"I know," he sighed. "All right. Go and see, then. Can I come?" he added, with such typical boyish enthusiasm that I wondered for a moment just whether I'd imagined all of it – Nameless, the mask I'd made, the way the boy had looked at me sometimes.
"I can't stop you," I said, and kept walking.
He walked next to me, hurrying a little to keep up with my strides, down the street to the end of the asphalt and then onto the fields. It was a pretty day out, but I wasn't paying much attention. I walked up to the kitchen door of The Pines, pulled it open without knocking, and went inside.
The kitchen had always been sterile, but there was an added emptiness now. I pulled the cupboards open one by one – there was a water stain where one of the leaks had been before he fixed the roof, but the dishes were neatly stacked. There was no food in the pantry. The refrigerator was empty too.
I walke
d through the open living room door and found it was similar: the furniture was in place, the floor swept clean, most of the boxes gone and the remaining ones empty. Not a trace, not a sign of the workshop Lucas had kept there.
I looked up. The burn-mark on the ceiling was still there, but it was the only sign anyone had done anything in the cottage. I didn't even bother looking in the bedroom, just sat down on the couch and bowed my head. After a second, I saw the boy's shoes next to mine, facing the couch as he sat on the coffee table opposite me. There was a rustle from nearby, and a book was thrust into my line of vision.
"This was on the table," the boy said, offering it to me. I took it from him with my good hand, thumb rubbing the edge of the cover. A small blue book, hardbound, imprint 1944, still smelling slightly of cigarettes. Ancient Games.
I opened it, holding the pages down with my left hand, and checked the flyleaf. There was a price scrawled in the upper right-hand corner, leftover from its time in the second-hand store in Chicago, and a single word in Lucas's tidy handwriting. Christopher.
I closed the book and held it, pressed against my chest. After a while, I looked up at the boy.
"I don't even know what this means," I said, only half-conscious I was talking. "I – does he – is he coming back?"
"Probably not today," he said pointedly. I looked around at the clean, empty living room and nodded. I didn't want to stay there. It wasn't Lucas's home anymore.
The boy led the way through to the kitchen and out the door, but I stopped on the threshold and looked back. My hand tightened around the book until the edges of the cover bit into my palm. Quiet Lucas, with his hidden world and his missing piece, had filled the rooms with color and light. Without him it was pretty empty.
When I turned back, the boy was gone. There was a soft flutter of wings, though, and the little Waxwing who had spent the winter in the holly bushes by the door was perched there now. He regarded me with small sharp eyes, his yellow, black-banded head tilted slightly. He warbled at me.
"How is this supposed to help?" I asked him, but he hopped along the branch, spread his wings, bobbed once or twice and then took off, straight up into the air. I followed his flight until he disappeared in the distance.
Easing my way down the hill to the field, I could see the fresh tire tracks, and a few muddy footprints – yes, the Friendly had been here, a truck with a camper. Perhaps the boy had fetched them, too. They'd come and taken Lucas away. If I was lucky, I'd see him again the next winter.
Perhaps he'd be married to a Friendly woman by then. Who knew?
I put the book in my jacket pocket and walked back to the village, tripping a little on the ridge of asphalt when the road became Low Ferry's again. I took a side-alley to the back of my shop, let myself in, left my shoes by the back door and went upstairs.
From the window I could see people coming and going, see Ron emerge from the cafe to have a smoke on the front bench. Beyond them, Leon was poking around in the scrap-metal bins in front of the hardware store. A couple of schoolchildren ran past, down to my front door, and stopped at the bottom of the steps when they saw the sign. Their faces all turned upwards to my window, and they waved.
I set the book down carefully and opened the window.
"Hey Mr. Dusk," one of them yelled. "You got new comic books in?"
"Yeah," I said, surprised at how steady I sounded. "Go on in, I'll be down in a second. Bags by the counter!" I added, as they flocked onto the porch and momentarily out of sight.
Downstairs they were already engaged in a debate over who would buy what, but they fell respectfully silent when I appeared. Their eyes, as one, tracked down to my left hand.
"Is it true you got attacked by a dog?" one of them asked.
"Just a bite," I said.
"My mom said you went to Chicago to get it fixed."
"That's right," I answered, willing them to find their comics and go.
"What's Chicago like?" a girl asked. I looked down at my hand.
"Big," I said. "Old. And very far away."
***
I called Marjorie that night, after I'd closed the shop and gone back upstairs to the troubling sight of the book on my bedside table. She was still at her store, and she answered on the first ring.
"Eighth Rare Books, Marjorie speaking," she said.
"Marj, it's Christopher," I said.
"Christopher, how are you?" she asked warmly. "How's the hand?"
I held up my left hand, studying it. "It's fine. Healing, I guess. Hurts a little."
"I'm glad you're on the mend. And your history scholar?" she asked. I glanced at the book on the table. "Christopher? Still there?"
"I..." I wasn't even sure what to say.
"Oh, god, did he try to – "
"No!" I interrupted, understanding what she must have assumed. "No, he – I don't know how he is. He disappeared yesterday."
"Disappeared?" she demanded. "How do you mean?"
"His place is empty. He cleaned out and left. Probably with the Friendly. They're – nomads, they pass through every once in a while."
"Nomads? This isn't the desert, Christopher."
"They're just Travelers, they wander. They...must have taken him with them," I said lamely. "He didn't say goodbye. They never do."
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"No, Marj, I don't think I am," I said softly.
"Sweetheart, I know your heart is broken in a couple of ways, but this kind does heal," she said. "And maybe he'll be back. He's young, he might just need to find himself a little. He didn't seem very happy in his own skin."
I laughed, though I think it probably sounded more like I was crying. "Yeah. You have no idea."
"You could file missing-persons," she said. "Do you think he'd try to hurt himself again?"
"No, he sort of promised he wouldn't. And if he went, it was because he wanted to," I replied. "I just...don't know what to do."
"Nothing you can do, love, unless you want to look for him. I don't think you do, do you?"
"No," I said. "I meant I don't even know what to think."
"Why should you think anything?" she said. "Have yourself a cry or a drink or a religious conversion – "
This time my laugh was more sincere. "Hardly that," I said drily.
"Fine. Then you keep on selling your books, and live your quiet country-mouse life, and if that gets a little unbearable come see me," she said. "You know you're always welcome here, Chris."
"I know."
"Are you going to be okay? Should I call some farmer or something to come sit up with you?"
"I'll be fine. Confused, but fine," I promised her. "Thank you, Marjorie."
"Call anytime, sweetheart."
"I will. Bye."
