Strangewood (24 page)

He'd eaten with his hands before.

Most of the turkey was gone, and a few of the potatoes, when
Nathan paused a moment in his eating. He glanced up at the turkey. At the huge
carving knife jutting from its breast.

One of the doors slammed open behind him with a crack that
made him jump from his chair, knocking over his plate and dumping potatoes onto
the floor. Nathan spun to see that, by the huge double wooden doors, Bob
Longtooth had entered and now stood by Cragskull. The sabertoothed-tiger man's
huge tusklike teeth jutted down from his upper jaw, even as Longtooth gnashed
his teeth, smacking his lips.

Nathan didn't know if he was reacting to his own presence,
or the presence of the food. But he didn't want to know. Quickly, he scrambled
under the table and came up on the other side. His eyes were wide as he stared
at Longtooth, and the slashes in his back began to burn like some phantom
reminder. But Nathan didn't need anything to remind him who had made those
slashes.

"Hello, boy," Bob Longtooth growled happily. "Looksss
like the General couldn't sssave you after all."

As hard as he could, Nathan tried to come up with a response
to that. Some defense of the General. But what could he say? Finally, he only
said, as defiantly as possible, "He'll come after me."

From the hallway beyond the wooden doors, two dark shapes
appeared. There came a loud snorting and Longtooth and Cragskull scrambled
quickly aside. Now Nathan saw that there were not two but three dark shapes,
and they ambled powerfully into the room, snorting and grunting, scraping the
wooden floor with their knuckles.

The Simian Sisters. Nathan blinked twice. Stared.

"They . . . they shouldn't be here," he said,
almost to himself, as he stared at the three identical mountain gorillas.

But even as he stared at them, he knew what was to come
next, and he backed up even further as he stared out into the hallway. He
stopped only when he backed into a tapestry-covered wall that allowed him to
move no further.

The Jackal Lantern entered the room.

Nathan knew what the Jackal Lantern looked like. His father
had read him the books and shown him the pictures. But really seeing him . . .
Nathan didn't feel angry anymore. He tried to get mad, but he just couldn't. His
breath came in short, ragged gasps, but he paid no attention. He was barely
thinking, completely consumed with fighting his fear and the hot, burning
sensation of impending tears that came to him now.

It moved like a huge dog, though its upper paws were more
like hands than anything a dog might have. But for a dog, it was awfully mangy
and lean, and he knew that it was really a jackal, which was like an African
coyote or something.

The Jackal Lantern moved into the room and stood on its hind
legs, arms crossed before it, to stare at Nathan as best it could stare. For
the Jackal Lantern had no real head to speak of. Once upon a time, according to
the stories, it had had a real head. But now it only had a pumpkin, face carved
to look vicious and savage. And inside that pumpkin, orange light burned so
brightly that it shone like a flashlight across the room.

It stared at Nathan, and the boy looked down to see that its
face — its eyes and nose and mouth — was projected onto his shirt
by that bright light. He was marked by it where he stood in the dimly lit room.

Then he couldn't look at it again. Nathan knew if he looked
up one more time, if he opened his eyes, he would start crying and he didn't
know if he'd be able to stop. So he didn't look. He just wrapped his arms
around his body and shuddered and tried to pretend he was anywhere but there.

"You're unkind, young Nathan," the Jackal Lantern
said. There was a weird kind of echo to his deep voice, as if it came not from
his mouth, but from the flame inside that pumpkin head.

"The Simian Sisters have done nothing to you, boy, yet
you insult them?" the Lantern persisted.

Nathan bit his lip. Then, at length, he repeated himself. "They
shouldn't be here," he said. Then added, "my daddy told me about
them, but he hasn't put them in any of the books yet."

At that, the Jackal Lantern laughed, and the motion of his
head cast a flickering image of his face across the walls of the room as he
moved with his mirth.

"If you weren't a child, and too young to account for
your foolishness, I'd eat your dripping heart for my supper," the Lantern
said cruelly, and then its voice became amused again. "But of course,
supper's already laid out, is it not?"

Nathan tensed, thinking the Lantern would approach. It did
not. Instead, it waved a hand at one of the Simians, and the gorilla fled the
room instantly.

"You wouldn't understand the rest of it, boy, but I'll
tell you this much, what your idiot father puts down in those books has nothing
to do with what really happens here."

The Simian who'd left the room returned, and Nathan was
astonished to see that she held a large stack of books in her hands. His
father's books; copies of all the
Strangewood
books. He almost asked how
they could be here, in Strangewood itself. But then he remembered that
he
was here. And Grumbler had stolen some of his clothes and brought
them
here.

At a nod from the Jackal Lantern, the Simian dropped the
books into a stack in front of the fire. Ol' Jack, as some of them called him,
dropped onto all fours and sauntered over to the pile of books. His pumpkin
head hung just as a dog's head would from his shoulders, but where there should
have been a hanging, lolling, panting tongue, there was only a burst of orange
light from the flame inside his head.

The Jackal Lantern was the most frightening thing Nathan had
ever seen. As the boy watched, it trotted to the books, lifted its leg, and let
loose with a stream of steaming, acrid-smelling, yellow piss, which was soaked
up instantly by the books. His father's books. All the love Nathan's father had
ever given Strangewood.

The Lantern stood again on two legs and glanced over at
Longtooth. "Bob," he said, "the boy seems to think the General
will come for him. I want Our Boy to come, but the General could be a problem. I
doubt he'll come, but to be safe, take that stupid pony and go down into the
wood after him. If he gets to this fortress before you, don't bother coming
back. And when you find the dwarf, tell him I want to see him as well."

With a nod and a short bow, Bob Longtooth withdrew. Then, at
the Jackal Lantern's instructions, Cragskull and the Simians sat down to feast
upon what was left on the table.

Backed against the wall, Nathan stared at the piss-soaked
pile of books. Tears streamed down his face. Nathan was furious.

The Jackal Lantern had made him cry.

* * * * *

It was nearly eleven o'clock at night when Francesca
Cavallaro's phone rang. She glanced up from reading through a client's
manuscript — a book that she'd hoped to be able to sell when he'd told
her about it but now that she was reading it had determined it was utter crap
— and noted that it was the business line she kept for days she didn't
want to go into the office.

"What the hell?" she muttered angrily.

Francesca had strict rules about business hours. She made it
clear to her clients. Before ten or after six, they were on their own, with few
exceptions, and then they were exceptions
she
made.

Still irked, she very purposefully ignored the ringing and
went back to the manuscript. Though she didn't know why she was still reading. Only
because she'd said she would, perhaps. Because she already knew there wasn't an
editor in town who was going to buy this shit without a massive rewrite.

After the fourth ring, the machine took over. That was its
job.

"You've reached the home office of Francesca Cavallaro.
Leave a message, or try me downtown," it announced, and then beeped in the
caller's ear.

"Francesca?" a female voice, choked with emotion,
began. She didn't recognize the voice, even when it went on to say, "oh .
. . oh God." But she looked up and stared at the machine again. There was
a long pause, and then: "It's Emily Randall. Thomas is . . . he's in the
hospital. In a coma and . . . I just needed to talk to someone close to
him."

She lunged for the phone, picked up, and said "Emily? Emily?
Hello?" But Emily had already hung up.

With a sick churning in her gut, Francesca hung up the
phone. She looked over at the clock, thought about calling back before she
realized that she had no idea where to call. Probably the hospital Nathan was
in, whatever that was called.

"Oh, shit, Thomas," she whispered and brought a
hand to her forehead.

Tomorrow was going to be a very long day.

* * * * *

It was dusk when Thomas returned to consciousness, but he
could barely see the sky through the tangle of branches above his head. He had
to crouch in order to move along the path before him. It was lined on either
side with pricker bushes, and several times he snagged his shirt. Thorns
scratched his face and scalp and he crouched down even further.

Then he knew.

Knew where he was.

Every other time he'd come here, he had been small enough to
walk that path without harm. The Scratchy Path. Even as a grown man, when he'd
come here, he would be a boy again. The Boy.

It felt so different. The air on his skin, the night around
him, all felt so unreal. Not like a dream, but like the few times he'd pulled
all-nighters in college, when he was up so much later than everyone else that
the world had stopped revolving except for him and whatever else was out there
prowling about. Even the air was different those long nights. It wasn't
surreal, but hyper-real.

He felt like he was nine years old again, and everything was
new and dangerous and incredible. It was an adventure.

But this adventure wasn't for him. The only thing that
mattered now was Nathan.

So when Thomas finally emerged from the Scratchy Path to
stand on the hard packed dirt of the Winding Way, with Strangewood stretching
out on all sides, he did not feel at all that he had come to a new and
frightening place. Rather, Thomas Randall felt as though he had come home, to
the places he had played as a boy, to find that the tree still had his initials
carved in it, and nobody had ever torn down the treefort he and Lainey Levenson
had built at the age of eleven.

He had returned to the imagination of his boyhood. It was
all familiar to him.

And it had stolen his son.

He turned to stride north on the Winding Way, not quite sure
where to begin, though possessed of a confidence he would never have imagined. But
then Thomas froze as he saw Grumbler's little stone and wood and thatched-roof
cottage, and the lake beyond it.

The cottage had been burned to the ground, and the blackened
timbers were still smoldering. The stones had tumbled and only the little
chimney still stood tall and proper.

Beyond it, the lake was black and stagnant, and silver
bellied fish lay dead on the flat, motionless water.

Beneath the orange stars of Strangewood, Thomas Randall felt
his imagination crumble, his nostalgia turn to nausea, and his sense of
strength and confidence melt into despair.

He looked north along the Winding Way. Then south. And then
he realized he had no idea how to begin, now that he was here, in a world that should
have been almost a part of him and was instead a foreign territory where
friends were enemies and innocence killed, where the imaginary friends of his
dreams wanted his blood and the blood of his son.

Frozen, directionless, Thomas Randall screamed his son's
name and received no answer.

With the back of his skull resting uncomfortably against the
headboard, Joe Hayes struggled to keep his eyes open. In the darkness of his
cluttered bedroom, he lay beneath a single pale blue sheet and peered at the
black-and-white images flickering on screen. He should have been asleep hours
ago — he had an 8:50 class to teach in the morning — but he'd
turned on AMC to find a marathon of Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, and
that had been that.

In the wan light of the set, the black and white film
draining all color from the room, as if Joe's own world had been sucked into
the world of 1930s Hollywood, he finally began to succumb to the incessant
demands of his body. His eyelids fluttered one final time, and then he was
drifting, head still resting at an angle that would give him a hell of a stiff
neck in the morning.

On television, Rathbone and Nigel Bruce droned on.
The
Hound of the Baskervilles
bayed. Somewhere, someone rapped at a wooden
door. Then pounded. Loudly.

Asleep, Joe flinched. Wherever his sleeping mind had gone, a
part of his subconscious was irked by this noise. He ought to have turned the
television off and nestled more comfortably in his bed. Some part of him was
aware of this, and he slid down further under the single sheet and turned onto
his side, holding his two pillows under his head in a passionate embrace.

Sleep.

Watson or Lestrade or someone pounded on a door again.

Holmes rang the doorbell.

Joe's eyes snapped open.

The doorbell rang again, and he glanced over at the alarm
clock, already afraid of what he would find when he opened the door. It was
after two o'clock in the morning. Someone knocks on your door in the middle of
the night, he reasoned, it's never good news. He slipped on a pair of dark
green gym shorts and moved quickly out into the hallway.

The apartment was above Trachtenberg's Antiques on the steep
hill of Main Street that led down toward the Hudson. It was a bitch to pedal
his bike up that hill, but Joe had fallen in love with the apartment right
away. The antique shop was on the first floor, and Joe had the upper two. The
second floor had a living room, dining room and kitchen, all good-sized rooms
with beautifully restored woodwork. The top floor had two bedrooms and a
bathroom, and plenty of closet space, which had been added when the recent
renovations had taken place.