Duma Key

If I'd touched the first one, really searched the first one - Carson Jones dressed in his Twins shirt, Carson alone - things might have been different. I might have sensed his essential harmlessness. Almost certainly would have. But I ignored that one. And I never asked myself why, if he was a danger to her, I had then drawn her alone, looking out at all those floating tennis balls.

Because the little girl in the tennis dress was her, of course. Almost all the girls I drew and painted during my time on Duma Key were, even the ones that masqueraded as Reba, or Libbit, or - in one case - as Adriana.

There was only one female exception: the red-robe.

Her.

When I touched the photograph of Ilse and her boyfriend, I had sensed death - I didn't admit it to myself at the time, but it was true. My missing hand sensed death, impending like rain in clouds.

I assumed Carson Jones meant my daughter harm, and that was why I wanted her to stay away from him. But he was never the problem. Perse wanted to make me stop - was, I think, desperate to make me stop once I found Libbit's old drawings and pencils - but Carson Jones was never Perse's weapon. Even poor Tom Riley was only a stopgap, a make-do.

The picture was there, but I made a wrong assumption, and missed the truth: the death I felt wasn't coming from him. It was hanging over her.

And part of me must have known I missed it.

Why else had I drawn those damned tennis balls?

16 - The End of the Game

i

Wireman offered a Lunesta to help me sleep. I was sorely tempted, but declined. I took one of the silver harpoons, however, and Wireman did likewise. With his hairy belly sloping slightly over his blue boxers and one of John Eastlake's specialty items in his right hand, he looked like some amusing Real Guy version of Cupid. The wind had gotten up even higher; it roared along the sides of the house and whistled around the corners.

"Bedroom doors open, right?" he asked.

"Check."

"And if something happens in the night, holler like hell."

"Roger that, Houston. You do the same."

"Is Jack going to be all right, Edgar?"

"If he burns the sketch, he'll be fine."

"You doing okay with what happened to your friends?"

Kamen, who taught me to think sideways. Tom, who had told me not to give up the home field advantage. Was I doing okay with what happened to my friends.

Well, yes and no. I felt sad and stunned, but I'd be a liar if I didn't say I also felt a certain low and slinking relief; humans are, in some ways, such complete shits. Because Kamen and Tom, although close, stood just outside the charmed circle of those who really mattered to me. Those people Perse hadn't been able to touch. And if we moved fast, Kamen and Tom would be our only casualties.

" Muchacho?"

"Yeah," I said, feeling called back from a great distance. "Yeah, I'm okay. Call me if you need me, Wireman, and don't hesitate. I don't expect to get many winks."

ii

I lay looking up at the ceiling with the silver harpoon beside me on the bedtable. I listened to the steady rush of the wind and the steady tumble of the surf. I remember thinking, This is going to be a long night. Then sleep took me.

I dreamed of little Libbit's sisters. Not the Big Meanies; the twins.

The twins were running.

The big boy was chasing them.

It had TEEF.

iii

I woke with most of my body on the floor but one leg - my left - still propped on the bed and fast asleep. Outside, the wind and surf continued to roar. Inside, my heart was pounding almost as hard as the waves breaking on the beach. I could still see Tessie going down - drowning while those soft and implacable hands clasped her calves. It was perfectly clear, a hellish painting inside my head.

But it wasn't the dream of the little girls fleeing the frog-thing that was making my heart pound, not the dream that caused me to wake up on the floor with my mouth tasting like copper and every nerve seeming to burn. It was, rather, the way you wake from a bad dream realizing that you forgot something important: to turn off the stove, for instance, and now the house is filled with the smell of gas.

I pulled my foot off the bed and it hit the floor in a burst of pins and needles. I rubbed it, grimacing. At first it was like rubbing a block of wood, but then that numb sensation started to leave. The sensation that I'd forgotten something vital did not.

But what? I had some hopes that our expedition to the south end of the Key might put an end to the whole nasty, festering business. The biggest hurdle, after all, was belief itself, and as long as we didn't backslide in the bright Florida sunshine tomorrow, we were over that one. It was possible we might see upside-down birds, or that a gigantic hop-frog monstrosity like the one in my dream might try to bar our way, but I had an idea those were essentially wraiths - excellent for dealing with six-year-old girls, not so good against grown men, especially when armed with silver-tipped harpoons.

And, of course, I would have my pad and pencils.