Later

30

I was almost asleep when two cats started yowling their heads off and I jerked fully awake. We were on the fifth floor and I might not have heard it—and the clatter of a trashcan that followed—if my window hadn’t been cracked to let in some fresh air. I got up to shut it and froze with my hands on the sash. Therriault was standing across the street in the spreading glow of a streetlamp, and I knew right away that the cats hadn’t been yowling because they were fighting. They had been yowling because they were scared. The baby in the Papoose carrier had seen him; so had those cats. He scared them on purpose. He knew I would come to the window, just as he knew Liz called me Champ.

He grinned from his half-destroyed head.

He beckoned.

I closed the window and thought about going into my mother’s room to get in bed with her, only I was too big for that, and there would be questions. So I pulled the shade instead. I went back to my own bed and lay there, looking up into the dark. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. No dead person had ever followed me home like a fucking stray dog.

Never mind, I thought. In three or four days, he’ll be gone like all of them are gone. A week at most. And it’s not like he can hurt you.

But could I be sure of that? Lying there in the dark, I realized I didn’t. Seeing dead folks didn’t mean knowing dead folks.

At last I went back to the window and peeked around the shade, sure he’d still be there. Maybe he’d even beckon again. One finger pointing… and then curling. Come here. Come to me, Champ.

No one was under the streetlight. He was gone. I went back to bed, but it took me a long time to go to sleep.