The boy crouched there shaking, eyes big as night. Blood smeared his face. Dripping feathers were clutched in his hand.
“Simon,” she whispered.
Sorrow twisted his face.
She turned and ran.
8
Simon
Simon hacked viciously at a broom handle with a large knife. He had stolen the knife that evening from the surplus store, shortly after he had made his decision. He muttered to himself fiercely as he worked, cross-legged, on the dusty classroom floor.
“She’ll never let me in now. She’ll never talk to me again.” I need someone, a voice inside him howled. “Damn girl,” he spat as the knife bit deep, then curled another slice of wood away from the pole.
What was she doing there anyway? What had possessed her to walk down that alley at that time? Stupid girl. Didn’t she know better than to walk down dark alleys at night? Was she asking for trouble? “And I did want someone to talk to,” he whispered, his eyes growing misty for a moment. B
ut the moment passed quickly, and his eyes glittered again like hard, dark stones, as he carefully trimmed the last shreds of wood to leave a wicked point.
I have had enough, he thought, slapping the shank of the stick into his palm. I have waited too long. He stood and swatted at the dirt begriming his clothes. The dust of the grave seemed to follow him wherever he went.
“But never death,” he muttered, “not for me, and never, ever love.”
Like a shadow he could only live on the edge of people’s lives, never touched or touching except to bring a cold shiver like a cloud over the sun, like a shroud over the corpse. The only time he touched, it was in death, yet that was the only thing that proved he existed at all.
“I know who’s trapped me in this hell, and I know whose blood will wash the anger from my heart and help me sleep tomorrow.”
Simon reached the shadow of the bushes in the Chestnut Street backyard, in time to see the boy climb out of his bedroom window onto the windowsill. The boy was dressed for climbing in a pair of overalls on top of a sweater. There were sneakers on his feet. So, Christopher roams tonight. A thin, glittering smile slid across Simon’s face, and he stroked the sharp stick he held.
The boy edged along the windowsill and climbed down a drainpipe with the grace of a circus performer. There was a bundle across his back. When he reached the ground he untied something, sniffed the air as if testing it, and shifted the bundle to under his arm. Simon shrank farther into the shadows. As the boy crept past the shrubbery, Simon disincorporated slightly to blend in with the night. He would follow the boy to a more deserted spot, where a single cry would not set windows blazing with light.
Christopher walked with a purpose, once he reached the street. He kept to the inner edge of the sidewalk, away from the lights, but did not make as much effort to avoid attention as one would expect of a boy that size out late at night. The streets were mostly deserted, but outside one mock-Tudor cottage an elderly man stopped while unlatching the gate and stared at Christopher, ready to make comment. Simon, from across the street, could not see what kind of look Christopher gave the man, but it killed his question in his throat. He continued through his gate with a shrug of the shoulders.
Sometimes they slipped through dark backyards, both mere shimmers against the night. Too near houses, Simon thought, but I must reach him soon. The boy would sometimes stop and look around him puzzledly, as if seeking something. Shift, shift, Simon would urge his molecules, and drift into the night. But not too much, he warned himself, or I shall lose my thoughts as well.
He had lost himself like that once, for the devil knows how long. He had totally lost touch and drifted off until a rapidly changing air current had thrown him together again, and landed him naked in a roaring campfire. He had fled into the woods with the cries of alarmed hunters behind him, one screaming his Hail Marys at the top of his lungs. Simon shuddered now at the memory of the awful burn on his leg that slowed his hunting for weeks. It would be worse, he thought as he crept from tree to tree, to be a semisapient cloud, never quite able to get back together again into corporeal form.
Christopher climbed a stone wall. Simon followed at a careful distance, scrambling up, hindered somewhat by the broom handle he held in one hand. Crouching at the top of the wall, he saw the boy turn from the street beyond and go left down Old Market Street toward the train station. With Christopher out of sight he did not slither down, but leapt in a joyful bound to the sidewalk and bounced his landing with animal grace, waving the sharpened broom handle above his head. The train station was lovely and quiet at this time of night. He hurried after so he would not lose his quarry.
Christopher stood at the entrance to the underpass, the dimly lit, tiled tunnel that led under the tracks to the ticket station in the middle, and across to the parking lot on the other side. The stairways that led to the tunnel were crooked and angular, and the light bulbs were often broken, leaving many dark corners. The entrance was well lit, however, and Christopher’s bundle now assumed the shape of a teddy bear dangling from one of his small hands.
Simon settled into the rough stone of the embankment where the streetlights did not reach. Too light up here, he thought. Maybe he’ll go down those steps. He licked his lips in anticipation.
But there was a click of heels in the distance. It came closer. A lone woman walked down the sidewalk, a smart red wool coat swaying with her determined step, a clutch purse tight in her hand. Maybe she was coming home after a date. Perhaps she had had an argument with her escort. Whatever, she was alone, and approaching the underpass. Simon stifled a groan. Not now.
She stopped when she saw Christopher. Simon heard the questioning tone of her voice, brisk yet kindly. Christopher chirped back at her, and she shook her finger at him, trying to be stern. He held a hand up to her, and she took it, unable to hide a smile. They turned and descended the underpass steps.
An oath burst from Simon. He struck out at the air with his pole and ran lightly for the tunnel mouth. He heard voices ahead, around the turn of the steps, and followed, shutting his senses against the damp, and the reek of old urine.
The woman’s shoes clattered an echo in the chill air. Their voices ricocheted. The last train had come through an hour ago, so there was no thunder of wheels to challenge or drown them. Simon slunk silently behind. The station was closed for the night. The only ones possibly here would be the teenagers armed with spray paint, who declared their undying love all over the seeping walls, but no one ever saw them.
Simon turned to the left for the second flight down. The landing was dark; the light bulb smashed. Ahead he could see the woman and the child, down the tunnel, in a pool of light that seemed as if it could not quite break through the dirt. They were near the dark maw of the steps that led off to the right, to the platform. The mottled tunnel continued past it to the other side of the tracks, and another twisted stairway, that looked like a dead end. It felt as if it were raining above, when it hadn’t rained for days. The floor was slimy in places. There were parts of the wall that looked cheesy, provoking the disquieting thought that if a person touched one of those places, his arm might sink in to the elbow.
All of a sudden the boy tripped and fell. He cried out in fear. The woman gasped, looked quickly around her in repulsion, but knelt on the filthy floor at his side anyway, laying down her purse beside his tumbled teddy bear? Simon stood in the shadows and watched the scene with a sneer on his face, his hands clutched tightly around the pole.
The boy was crying. He reached out to the woman, and she took him in her arms to comfort him. He burrowed himself into her coat, as if searching for warmth, while she patted him on the back. His head nestled in the hollow of her throat. His arms went around her neck—tightly.
Then she tried to pull back. Her eyes grew wide. She pulled at his arms, but they wouldn’t release. She tugged at them harder. They were like a vise. She pushed at his head, but it wouldn’t move. It was fast to the side of her neck. She started to scream. “You disgusting beast! You foul little animal!”