Running With The Demon

CHAPTER 7

Nest went for a run before dinner, disdaining to wait for the heat to lessen, needing to escape. She asked Gran if it would be all right, and Gran, with those unerring instincts for evaluating the depth of her granddaughter's needs, told her to go ahead. It was after six, the sun still visible in the western sky, the glare of midday softened to a hazy gold. Colors deepened as the light paled, the green of the leaves and grasses turning damp emerald, the tree trunks taking on an inky cast, and the sky overhead becoming such a clear, depthless blue that it seemed that if gravity's hold could be broken you might swim it like an ocean. As Nest turned out of her drive and ran down Sinnissippi Road, she could feel the branches of the big hardwoods sigh with the faint passing of a momentary breeze, and the sigh seemed collective and all–encompassing. Friday was ending, the work week had come to a close, and now the long Fourth of July weekend could begin in earnest. She ran to the end of Sinnissippi, barely a block from her drive, and turned east onto Woodlawn. Ahead, the road stretched away, a wide, straight racetrack that narrowed between the houses with their lawns, hedgerows, and trees and faded into the horizon. She ran smoothly on its shoulder, feeling her blood hum, her heart pound, her breathing steady, and her thoughts scatter. The movement of her legs and the pounding of her feet absorbed her, enfolded her, and then swallowed her up. She was conscious of the world slipping past like a watercolor running on a canvas backdrop, and she felt herself melt into it. Neighbors worked in their gardens or sat on then- porches sipping tea and lemonade and occasionally something stronger. Dogs and cats lay sleeping. Children played in their yards, and as she passed a few dashed toward her momentarily before stopping, as if \ they, too, were seeking an escape. Now and again someone waved or called out, making her feel welcome, a part of the world once more.

She ran the length of Woodlawn, then turned left to Moonlight Bay. She passed boats and trailers on their way to the launch and campers on their way to White Pines State Park sixty miles north. She ran the circle drive of the bay past the shorefront residences, then swung west again and ran back to her home. Slowly, surely, her trauma eased, left behind with her footprints in the dust. By the time she turned down her drive once more, she was feeling better about herself. Her shirt clung damply to her body and her skin was covered with a sheen of sweat. She felt drained and loose and renewed. As she i came up to the back door, she permitted herself a quick glimpse into the park, looking backward in tune to the events of the afternoon, better able now to face what she had done to' Danny Abbott–or perhaps, more accurately, what she had done to herself. The ache that the memory generated in her heart was sharp, but momentary. She sighed wearily, telling j herself what she sometimes did when things were bad–that she was just a kid–and knew as always that it wasn't so.

She showered quickly, dressed in fresh shorts and T-shirt (this one said Latte Lady), and came down for dinner. She sat at the kitchen table with her grandparents and ate tuna and noodle casserole with green beans and peaches off the everyday china. Gran nursed her bourbon and water and picked at j her food, a voiceless presence. Old Bob asked Nest about her i day, listened attentively as she told him about fishing with her friends, and didn't say a word about last night in the park. Through the open screen door came the sounds of the evening, distant and soft–the shouts of players and spectators as the '. night's softball games got under way in the park, the hiss of j tires on hot asphalt from cars passing down Sinnissippi Road, i the muted roar of a lawn mower cutting grass several houses i down, and the faint, silvery laughter of children at play. There ' was no air–conditioning in the Freemark house, so the sounds were clearly audible. Nest's grandparents couldn't stomach the idea of shutting out the world. You can deal better with the heat if you live with it, they liked to say.

"Any news on the strike?" Nest asked her grandfather after they had finished talking about fishing, mostly in an effort to hold up her end of the conversation.

He shook his white head, swallowed the last bite of his dinner, and pushed his plate back. His big shoulders shrugged. "Naw, they can't even agree on what day of the week it is, Nest." He reached for his newspaper and scanned the headlines. "Won't be a resolution any time soon, I don't expect."

Nest glanced at Gran, but her grandmother was staring out the window with a blank expression, a lighted cigarette burning to ash between her fingers.

"Not my problem anymore," Old Bob declared firmly. "At least I got that to be thankful for. Someone else's problem now."

Nest finished her dinner and began thinking about Pick and the park. She glanced outside at the failing light.

"Look at this," Old Bob muttered, shaking out the paper as if it contained fleas. "Just look at this. Two boys dropped a five–year–old out a window hi a Chicago apartment. Fifteen stories up, and they just dropped him out. No reason for it, they just decided to do it. The boys were ten and eleven. Ten and eleven! What in the hell is the world coming to?"

"Robert." Gran looked at him reprovingly over the rim of her glass.

"Well, you have to wonder." Old Bob lowered the paper and glanced at Nest. "Excuse my language." He was silent for a moment, reading. Then he opened the inside page. "Oh, my." He sighed and shook his head, eyes bright with anger. "Here's another, this one quite a bit closer to home. One of those Anderson girls used to live out on Route Thirty shot and killed her father last night. She claims he's been molesting all of the girls since they were little. Says she forgot about it until it came to her in a dream." He read on a bit, fuming. "Also says she has a history of mental problems and that the family hasn't had anything to do with her for some time."

He read for a little while longer, then tossed the paper aside. "The news isn't worth the paper it's printed on anymore." He studied the table a moment, then glanced at Gran, waiting for a response. Gran was silent, looking out the window once more. Her hand lowered in a mechanical motion to the ashtray to stub out the cigarette.

Old Bob's eyes turned sad and distant. He looked at Nest. "You going out to play again?" he asked quietly.

Nest nodded, already beginning to push back from the table.

"That's all right," her grandfather said. "But you be back by dark. No excuses."

The way he said it made it plain that, even though he hadn't brought the subject up at dinner, he hadn't forgotten about last night. Nest nodded again, letting him know she understood

Her grandfather rose and left the table, taking the newspaper with him, retiring to the seclusion of his den. Nest sat for a moment staring after him, then started to get up as well.

"Nest," her grandmother said softly, looking directly at her now. She waited until she had the girl's attention. "What happened this afternoon?"

Nest hesitated, trying to decide what to say. She shrugged. "Nothing, Gran."

Her grandmother gave her a long, hard look. "Carry your dishes to the sink before you go," she said finally. "And remember what your grandfather told you."

Two minutes later, Nest was out the back door and down the porch steps. Mr. Scratch had disappeared and Miss Minx had taken his place. As designated mouser she had assumed a more alert position, crouched down by the toolshed, sniffing at the air and looking about warily. Nest walked over and scratched her white neck, then headed for the hedgerow and the park. Mosquitoes buzzed past her ears, and she swatted at them irritably. Magic didn't seem to do any good when it came to mosquitoes. Pick claimed once that he had a potion that would keep them at bay, but it turned out to be so evil–smelling that it kept everything else at bay as well. Nest grimaced at the memory. Even a hundred–and–fifty–year–old sylvan didn't know everything.

She was nearing the hedgerow, listening to the sounds of the softball games in progress on the other side, when she glanced left into the Peterson backyard and saw the feeders. There were two of them, hiding in the lilac bushes close by the compost heap that Annie Peterson used on her vegetable garden. They were watching Nest, staring out at her with their flat, expressionless eyes, all but invisible in the approaching twilight. Their boldness frightened her. It was as if they were lying in wait for her, hoping to catch her off–guard. They were implacable and relentless, and the certainty of what they would do to her if they had the chance was unnerving. Nest veered toward them, irritated anew by the feelings they aroused in her. It was getting so she couldn't go anywhere without seeing them.

The feeders blinked once as she neared, then simply faded away into the shadows.

Nest stared into the empty gloom and shivered. The feeders were like vultures, waiting to dispose of whatever leavings they could scavenge. Except that feeders were only interested in the living.

She thought back to what Pick had told her years ago when she had asked about the feeders. Her grandmother had avoided the subject for as long as Nest could remember, but Pick was more than willing to address it.

"Your grandmother won't talk about them? Won't say a single word about them? Not a single word? Well, now. Well, indeed!" He'd scrunched up his moss–bearded face and scratched at the side of his head as if to help free up thoughts trapped in his cranium. "All right, then, listen up. First off, you need to understand that feeders are an anomaly. You know what that word means, don't you?"

Since she'd been only eight at the time, she hadn't the slightest idea. "Not really," she'd said.

"Criminy, your education is a mess! Don't you ever read?"

"You don't read," she'd pointed out.

"That's different. I don't have to read. I don't need it in my line of work. But you, why, you should be reading volumes of…"

"What does anoma–whatever mean?" she'd pressed, unwilling to wait through the entirety of Pick's by–now–familiar lecture on the plight of today's undereducated youth.

He had stopped in midsentence, harrumphed disapprovingly at her impatience, and cleared his throat. "Anomaly. It means 'peculiar.' It means 'different.' It means feeders are hard to classify. You know that guessing game you used to play? The one where you start by asking, 'Animal, mineral, or vegetable?' Well, that's the kind of game you have to play when you try to figure out what feeders are. Except feeders aren't any of these things, and at the same time they're all of them, because what they are is determined to a large extent by what you are." She'd stared at him blankly.

He'd frowned then, apparently deciding that his explanation was lacking. "Let's start at the beginning," he'd declared, scooting closer to her atop the picnic table in her backyard.

She'd leaned forward so that her chin was resting on her hands and her eyes were level with his. It was late on a spring' afternoon, and the leaves of the trees were rustling with the wind's passing, and clouds were drifting across the sun like cottony caterpillars, casting dappled shadows that wriggled and squirmed.

"Feeders," he'd said, deepening his voice meaningfully, "don't come in different sizes and shapes and colors. They don't hardly have any faces at all. They're not like other creatures. They don't eat and sleep. They don't have parents or children or go to school or elect governments or read books or talk about the weather. The Word made feeders when he made everything else, and he made them as a part of the balance of things. You remember what I told you about everything being in balance, sort of like a teeter–totter, with some things on one end and some on the other, and both ends weighing the same. Feeders, they're part of that. Frankly, I don't know why. But, then, it's not my place to know. The Word made the decision to create feeders, and that's the end of it. But having said that, having said that it's not my place to know why these feeders were made, it is my place to know what they do. And that, young lady, is what's interesting. Feeders have only one purpose in this world, only one, single, solitary thing that they do."

He'd moved closer then, and his wizened face had furrowed with delight and his voice had lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "Feeders, my young friend, devour people!"

Nest's eyes had gone wide, and Pick the sylvan had laughed like a cartoon maniac.

She still remembered him saying it. Feeders devour people. There was more to the explanation, of course, for the complexity of feeders could never be defined so simply. There was no mention of the feeders as a force of nature, as sudden, violent, and inexorable as a Midwest twister, or of their strange, symbiotic relationship with the humans they destroyed. Yet it was hard to get much closer to the heart of the matter. Pick's description, provocative and crude, was still the most accurate Nest had ever heard. Even now, six years later, his words resonated with truth.

The pungent smell of spruce filled her nostrils, borne on a momentary breeze, and the memories faded. She turned and jogged quickly to the end of her yard, slipping smoothly into the gap in the hedgerow. She was almost through when Pick appeared on her shoulder as if by magic, springing out of hiding from the leafy branches. At six inches of height and nine ounces of weight, he was as small and light as a bird. He was a wizened bit of wood with vaguely human features stamped above a mossy beard. Leaves grew out of his head in place of hair. His arms and legs were flexible twigs that narrowed to tiny fingers and stubby toes. He looked like a Disney animation that had been roughed up a bit. His fierce eyes were as hard and flat as ink dots on stone.

He settled himself firmly in place, taking hold of her collar. "What have I told you about provoking the feeders?" he snapped.

"Not to," she answered dutifully, swinging west down the service road toward the park entrance.

"Why don't you listen to me, then?"

"I do. But it makes me angry to see them nosing about when it's still light out." She darted a quick look at the ballplayers to make certain that Danny Abbott wasn't among them. "They didn't used to be like that. They never showed themselves when the sun was shining, not even where the shadows were deepest. Now I see them everywhere."

"Times change." Pick sounded disconsolate. "Something's happening, that much is sure, but I don't know what it is yet. Whatever it is, it's caused the balance of things to tip even further. There's been a lot of bad things happening around here lately. That's not good." He paused. "How's the little Scott girl?"

"Fine. But George Paulsen stole her cat, Spook." Nest slowed to a walk again. "I promised Bennett I'd try to find it. Can you help me?"

Even without being able to see him, she knew he was tugging on his mossy beard and shaking his leafy head. "Sure, sure, what else have I got to do but look for someone's lost cat? Criminy!" He was silent a moment as they passed behind the backstop. The spectators grouped at the edge of the ball field were drinking beer and pop and cheering on their favorite players. "Batter, batter, batter–swing!" someone chanted. No one paid any attention to Nest.

"I'll send Daniel out, see if he can find anything," Pick offered grudgingly.

Nest smiled. "Thanks."

"You can thank me by staying away from the feeders!" Pick was not about to be mollified. "You think your magic and that big dog are enough to protect you, but you don't know feeders the way I do. They aren't subject to the same laws as humans. They get to you when you're not expecting it!" She could feel him twisting about angrily on her shoulder. "Creepers! I don't know why I'm telling you this! You already know it, and I shouldn't have to say another word!"

Then please don't, she thought, hiding a grin. Wisely, she swallowed her words without speaking them. "I'll be careful, I promise," she assured him, turning up the blacktop road toward the cliffs.

"See that you do. Now, cut across the grass to the burial mounds. There's an Indian sitting up there at one of the picnic tables, and I want to know what he's up to."

She glanced sideways at him. "An Indian?"

"That's what I said, didn't I?"

"A real Indian?"

Pick sighed in exasperation. "If you do like I told you, you can decide for yourself!"

Curious now, wondering if there really was an Indian or if the sylvan was just making it up, she stepped off the roadway into the grass and began to jog steadily toward the cliffs.