Nathaniel (20 page)

“Prob’ly a lizard,” Ryan told him. “I caught three so far.”

“How do you catch ’em?”

Ryan grinned. “Easy. You just hold real still, and pretty soon they think you’re gone, so they come out to lie in the sun. Then you put your hand out real slowly, and sneak up behind them, and grab ’em. Wanta try it?”

“Sure.”

Cheerfully abandoning work, Ryan picked a likely-looking spot and lowered himself onto a log, Michael taking up a position beside him. For a few minutes, the two of them sat silently.

“Can we talk?” Michael finally asked.

Ryan gave him a sidelong glance. “What about?”

“I mean, will the noise scare the lizards away?”

“Nah. They’re deaf.” Then: “How long’d the foaling take last night?”

“A long time,” Michael bragged. “I didn’t go to bed ’til real late.” He hesitated, wanting to tell Ryan what had happened the night before, but Nathaniel’s strange words still lingered in his mind:
“Never tell them the truth. Tell them what they want to hear.”
But Nathaniel hadn’t been talking about Ryan, had he?

Michael decided he had not: in his eleven-year-old mind, “them” meant “adults.” It was grown-ups you had to keep secrets from, not other kids. “I—I think I saw Nathaniel last night.”

Ryan turned to stare at him. “Nathaniel? The ghost?” His tone clearly betrayed his disbelief.

“I think so.” Again Michael hesitated. Then: “If I tell you what happened, will you promise not to tell anyone? Anyone at all?”

Ryan regarded him with scorn. “What do you think I am? Besides, who’ll I tell?”

“You can’t tell anyone.”

Ryan shrugged. “Okay. But what’s the big deal? There’s no such things as ghosts, so you couldn’t have seen Nathaniel anyway.”

“I didn’t say I saw him,” Michael argued. “I said I
thought
I saw him.”

“Where?” Ryan demanded.

“In—he was in a building.”

“What building?”

“A—a barn,” Michael hedged.

Ryan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Whose barn?” he asked.

“None of your business,” Michael said, but when Ryan turned away with an elaborate show of disdain, Michael retreated. “I don’t know whose barn it was,” he compromised. “But that’s where I saw Nathaniel. At least I think I did.”

Ryan’s curiosity made him face Michael again. “Well, did you, or didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said, still not willing to commit himself to telling Ryan everything that had happened. “It was really weird. He—he wanted me to take him outside.”

Suddenly something moved in the woodpile, and Ryan tensed, his eyes locked on a dark gap between two logs. Michael fell silent, and a few seconds later, the movement was repeated. Then, slowly, the pointed scaly nose of a small lizard appeared, its tongue darting out every few seconds.

“Don’t move,” Ryan warned. “If you move, it’ll run away.” There was a long silence as both boys concentrated on the lizard, while the wary reptile, as if sensing the danger, stayed where it was. “What do you mean, he wanted you to take him outside?” Ryan finally asked. “If he wanted to go outside, why didn’t he just go?”

“How should I know? He said he couldn’t. But then he—well, he just disappeared. I was talking to him, or sort of talking to him—”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” Ryan asked, turning his attention away from the lizard and focusing it fully on his cousin. “Did you talk to him or not?”

Michael wondered how to explain it. “He … he sort of talked to me without saying anything. It was like he was inside my head or something.”

“That’s crazy,” Ryan declared. “People can’t talk that way.”

“I knew,” Michael agreed. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Last night I was sure I saw him and talked to him, but now I’m not so sure. Do you think—” He broke off, suddenly sure he knew what Ryan would say if he finished the question.

“Think what?” Ryan pressed.

“Do you think I could have seen a ghost?” he asked, his eyes carefully on the woodpile and away from Ryan.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Ryan repeated, but with a little less assurance than he’d had earlier.

“I know,” Michael agreed. “And last night, I was sure he was real. But this morning, I’m not sure. It’s weird.”

“You’re
weird,” Ryan replied. Suddenly he froze. “Wait a minute. Here comes one. Hold still.”

Out of one of the gaps in the woodpile, a lizard appeared, moving slowly, almost as if it were under water. As Michael watched in fascination, its legs began to move, one by one. The tongue, flashing out every few seconds, seemed to be sensing the environment. Once, the lizard froze for a moment, and Michael was sure it was about to scurry back into the dark shelter from which it had come. But instead it started moving in a series of short darts, coming finally to rest on the top of a log, basking in the full sun. Its head was pointed away from the two boys. Michael felt Ryan stir.

“I’m gonna try for him,” Ryan whispered. “Hold real still.”

Moving as slowly as the lizard had, Ryan began bringing his hand forward, keeping it low down, out of the creature’s line of sight. Each time the lizard tensed, Ryan froze, waiting until the lizard relaxed once more before resuming his furtive movements toward it. Finally, when he was only a few inches from the lizard, he made his move.

“Gotcha!” he crowed, cupping his hand over the wriggling animal. A second later, he grinned at Michael. “Wanta hold him?”

“Sure.” Michael held out his hand, and Ryan carefully transferred the lizard from his fist to Michael’s. For a few seconds it wriggled furiously against Michael’s confining fingers, then lay still. Michael looked up at Ryan. “It stopped wiggling. Is it dead?”

“Naw. Open your hand real carefully, and take it in your fingers. Grab it right behind the front legs. If you grab it by the tail, it’ll just take off, and grow another tail.”

While Ryan supervised, Michael slid a finger into his still-closed fist, feeling around until he was sure he had the lizard trapped between his palm and the finger. Then he opened his fist, and picked up the little creature with two fingers. Its scaly back was the color of wood bark, and there were tiny claws at the end of each of its toes. But when he turned it over, its belly flashed an iridescent blue in the sunlight.

“Wanta hypnotize it?” Ryan asked.

Michael looked dubiously at his cousin. “How?”

“Just hold it upside down and rub its belly a couple of times.”

Michael hesitated, then did as Ryan had told him. As he watched, the lizard’s torso seemed to arch, and its eyes closed.

“Now put him down.”

Carefully, Michael laid the lizard on a log, then stroked its belly a few more times. Finally he drew his finger away. The lizard stayed where he’d left it, its eyes closed, only a faint movement in its throat indicating that it was still alive.

“How long’ll it stay that way?”

Ryan shrugged. “A few minutes. You can keep it that way forever, if you rub its belly again every time it starts to wake up. Except if you leave it in the sun too long, it’ll get too hot and die.” The two boys watched the lizard for a few minutes. Then, without warning, its eyes blinked open. It flipped itself over and disappeared back into the safety of the woodpile.

“Ryan?” Michael asked a few minutes later as the two of them once more began stacking the wood neatly against the back wall of the garage. “Do you think I really could have seen a ghost last night?”

Ryan looked at him disgustedly. “No.”

“Then what did I see?”

“I don’t think you saw anything,” Ryan said. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“But I
did
see something!”

“Bull!” Ryan exploded. “You didn’t see anything, and you didn’t go into any old barn, and you’re just making all this up. All you did was fall off your bike, and now you’re trying to make it sound like it wasn’t your fault, ’cause you saw a ghost. Well, I don’t believe you, and none of the other guys will, either. So if you don’t shut up, I’m gonna tell my dad you went into old man Findley’s barn. Then you’ll really be in trouble.”

Michael’s eyes blazed with sudden anger. “You said you wouldn’t tell anyone! You promised. Besides, I never said it was old man Findley’s barn.”

“So what?” Ryan sneered. “How was I supposed to know you were going to start trying to con me with a bunch of bull? And I can say anything I want to anyone I want to, so you just better watch out.”

Michael fell silent. His head was throbbing with pain, and deep within his mind he thought he could hear a voice whispering to him, urging him to strike out at Ryan. Then, vaguely, he remembered the other day, when he’d suddenly told Ryan to drop dead, and for a moment—just for a second, really—he’d actually thought it was going to happen. He struggled to control himself, afraid of what might happen now if he gave in to that voice inside him, and at the same time knowing that if he kept talking about what he had seen the night before, Ryan would only accuse him of being crazy. But as he went on helping his cousin stack the wood, he kept thinking about the night before. And the more he thought about it, the more everything he’d seen and heard in the darkness began to seem like a dream.

And yet, he
had
seen lights in the field, and he
had
gone into Findley’s barn.

He had seen a car, and he had seen someone in the light of the lanterns.

But had he seen Nathaniel?

And how could he have seen what was happening in the field? It had been so dark, and he’d been looking through a crack in the wall of a barn.

And that voice, the voice he thought was Nathaniel’s.

It had been so strange, so flat. Had he really heard it at all?

He tried to picture it all in his mind: the blackness of the barn and the faint traces of silvery moonlight that had filtered through the wall.

How
could
he have seen anything? And he hadn’t, he realized, really heard anything. That voice had been in his head, like the voice he had heard just now. Besides, he’d had a headache that night, and he could never quite remember exactly what happened when he had one of those headaches.

Maybe Ryan was right. Maybe he was crazy.

He decided he wouldn’t talk anymore about what had happened last night, not to anybody. Still, he wished he could talk to his dad about it. His father had always been able to help him figure things out, but now he couldn’t do that. Nor could he talk to his grandfather. He shuddered as he remembered the beating a couple of days ago—never his grandfather. But maybe his grandmother. Maybe sometime when he was alone with his grandmother, he’d talk to her about it.

Maybe …

As soon as Janet and Michael had left the house that morning, Amos had begun calling around Prairie Bend, trying to find Shadow’s owner.

No one, however, was missing a dog, nor did anyone respond to Amos’s description of Shadow. He hung up the phone after the last call and turned to Anna. “Well, I guess it’s a stray. I’m gonna get my gun.”

Anna glared at her husband. “You mean you’re going to shoot that dog?”

“That’s what I mean to do,” Amos replied, his voice grim.

“No.”

Amos turned baleful eyes on his wife. “What did you say?”

“There’s no reason to shoot it. What’s it done to you?”

“I don’t like dogs.”

“Sometimes I don’t like you, either,” Anna retorted, her voice low but steady. “Does that mean I should shoot you?”

“Anna—”

“It’s not your dog, Amos. It’s Michael’s dog. It may have saved his life, and if you do anything to that animal, Michael will never forgive you. Your daughter hates you, and your son ran away from you. Do you want your grandson to hate you, too?”

“He’ll never know,” Amos told her. “By the time he gets home, the dog will be dead and buried. We’ll tell him it ran away. He’ll believe us.”

“He might,” Anna agreed. “He might believe us if we both told him that, but if you tell him the dog ran off, and I tell him you shot it, who’s he going to believe?”

Amos’s eyes hardened. “You wouldn’t do that, Anna. You’ve never gone against my wishes, and you won’t now.”

“I will,” Anna told him, folding her hands in her lap. “This time I will. You leave that dog alone.”

Amos left the house without another word, but he felt his wife’s eyes on him as he crossed the yard to the barn.

His wife’s eyes, and Shadow’s eyes.

The dog was curled up next to the back porch, his habitual post when Michael either was in the house or had left him behind. When the kitchen door suddenly swung open, and Amos’s heavy tread struck the porch, Shadow’s body tensed, and a vaguely menacing sound rumbled from his throat. His hackles raised slightly, but he made no move to get up. Amos regarded the dog with angry eyes.

“Get out of here,” he said. He drew his right foot back, then swung it forward. Before the kick could land, Shadow had leapt to his feet and moved a few yards from the house. Amos followed him.

A yard at a time, Shadow backed away toward the barn. Amos kept steady pace with him, softly cursing at the dog, constantly trying to land one of his boots on Shadow’s flank. But each time he lashed out with his foot, Shadow dodged away from him.

Suddenly the barn was between them and the house, and Shadow stopped backing away. He crouched low to the ground, and his ears lay back flat against his head. His snarl was loud now, and to Amos it appeared that a cunning had come into the animal’s eyes.

Amos tried one more kick.

This time, Shadow made no attempt to leap away from Amos’s foot. Instead, he seemed to wait until the last possible instant, then whipped his body to one side, at the same time twisting his neck so he could clamp his massive jaws down on Amos’s ankle. With a lunge, he threw Amos off balance, and the big man fell heavily to the ground, grunting in a combination of pain and anger. In another second Shadow had abandoned his grip on Amos’s ankle, and was at his throat, his fangs bared, saliva glistening on his tongue. For a long moment, Amos stared into the animal’s eyes, only inches from his own, sure that those sharp canine teeth were about to begin slashing at him.

But it didn’t happen. Instead of attacking Amos, Shadow suddenly moved forward, raising his leg.