The Night Visitors

Chapter Seven Alice

OREN SEES THE policeman before I do. We’re climbing back up the hill, both of us soaked from our many falls in the snow (and the snowballs Oren has slipped down my collar). But I don’t feel cold. I would go up and down this hill with Oren forever to keep that open look on his face, one I haven’t seen in months.

But then he freezes. The blood drains from his face and his features go sharp the way they do when he’s scared, like he’s drawn into himself to make a smaller target. I follow his gaze up the hill and see a dark figure silhouetted against the sky. For a moment I think it’s Davis, come back from the dead to punish us for thinking we could get away from him. I’d follow you to the ends of the earth, he told me once. I’d thought it was romantic, until I recognized it for the threat it was.

But then the figure turns and I see the uniform and that the man is bulkier and fairer than Davis. He’s turning because someone has called his name. Frank. A figure in a purple poncho is wading across the snow, arms flapping like a big-ass bird trying to take off. It’s Mattie, hailing the policeman like he’s her best friend. She must have called him to turn us in.

Oren tugs at my sleeve. “Come on,” he says. “Mattie’s trying to distract him so we can get away.”

As if. It’s more likely she’s trying to save her own skin. But I don’t need to tell Oren that. We do need to get away.

Oren pulls me toward the hedge that borders the sledding hill. I’d barely noticed it before, but Oren leads us straight to an opening in the dense, prickly wall and through it into a path bordered by more tall hedges. “It’s a maze!” Oren shouts, the color back in his face. He loves mazes. After we read the story about Theseus and the Minotaur he begged for a puzzle book with mazes he could solve. This is like his daydream come to life. “This is the perfect place to hide! C’mon.” He drops the sled and my hand and takes the right-hand turn.

I follow, hissing at him, “Slow down!” I don’t want to shout in case the policeman and Mattie hear us. I especially don’t want to call Oren’s name.

Oren looks over his shoulder and laughs before rounding another corner. Shit. I run to catch up, stumbling through the shin-deep snow. He’s turning our flight into a game. And whose fault is that? For months I’ve done the same thing. Let’s pretend we’re planning a trip! I’d said when I got the bus schedules. Let’s make it a secret. And then the one I feel worst about now: Let’s be extra nice to your dad.

I’d seen the look of hurt on Oren’s face after that one, as if I were telling him it was his fault when Davis hit him. After all, that was what Davis told him. Why do you have to go and make me so mad? Are you trying to work on my last nerve? Didn’t I tell you last time that this is what would happen? Aren’t you listening to me? Are you deaf or just stupid? Do you want me to hit you?

When I turn the next corner Oren is gone. My mouth floods with acid. He’s run away from me. All these weeks of telling him to be nice to Daddy, to tiptoe around Davis’s moods, so we could stay safe long enough to get away, what Oren has heard is that I blame him for the things Davis does. I have again and again failed to keep him safe. And now he’s taken his revenge by stranding me in this stupid maze like I’m the father in that horrible movie that Davis let him watch one night that gave him nightmares for a month.

A spark of anger flares in my chest. After all I’ve done for him, to be lumped together with Davis . . . but then I see the footprints in the snow. Little-boy feet splayed out like a duck’s. Duckfoot, Davis called him. He’s just playing a game with me. I still feel that ember of anger at my core, but I tamp it down. Better he still wants to play games.

As I follow the tracks of his booted feet I remember another game we used to play. Oren called it Tin Can. It began on a snow day when we were stuck inside. I made us grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell’s tomato soup for lunch, Oren helping me pour the condensed soup from the can and then washing it out for recycling. He said his teacher had shown him how you could make a telephone out of two cans tied together with string. Sound traveled along the string because of vibrations. When I looked skeptical he insisted we try it.

I found another can amid Davis’s empties, used a screwdriver to punch holes in their bottoms, and tied them together with a length of heavy twine from Davis’s toolbox. You have to make the string taut, Oren told me. I stood in the kitchen and Oren took the can all the way down to the last bedroom. The house was what was called a shotgun shack, so he could go a long way without turning any corners. Look away so you can’t cheat and read my lips, he’d shouted. Which made me smile, because if I could hear him without the phone, what was the point of the phone anyway? But I turned to the wall, pressed the can to my ear, and waited.

Can I tell you a secret? Oren’s voice was a whisper in my ear, but it was as if he were standing right beside me. Over and out. That means you can talk now. You have to answer my question.

I moved the can from my ear to my lips and whispered, Yes, you can tell me anything. I moved the can back to my ear before remembering I had to say “over and out,” but Oren was already talking, a slow, steady murmur that traveled the length of the house and then traveled down my spine to settle into the pit of my stomach. They’re still there now, all those whispered words, all the awful things that Davis had done to him—the taunts, the threats, the slaps. They’re what led to my being here now in a ridiculous maze (why would nuns have a maze anyway?) following tracks in the snow—

Only the tracks have abruptly stopped. I am standing looking at an untouched square of white snow surrounding a statue of a woman holding up snow-covered arms as if remarking on the emptiness of the space around her. I check to see if Oren is hiding behind the statue but he is not. I look back at the tracks I was following but my tracks have covered Oren’s. As if I’ve wiped them out.

I choke back a sob. I’m being ridiculous. There has to be an explanation—

And I know what it is. In that horrible movie the little boy leads his crazy father into the maze and then walks backward in his own footprints to trick him. That’s what Oren has done to me. He’s tricked me and abandoned me.

I sink down into the snow, my back against the statue’s stone base, and try to get my breathing under control. That boy poured his secrets into my ear and I did nothing. He could be making it up, I thought. No one will believe you, I told myself. Especially the last thing Oren had said. He couldn’t have known that. But the truth was I was afraid of what Davis would do if I told anyone. I put my own safety before Oren’s.

I cry until the tears freeze on my face, until I am so cold I might as well become another statue at the feet of the stone saint.

And what good will that do?

The voice—a boy’s voice—is so close that I snap open my eyes, sure it is Oren come back for me. But I’m alone. I notice, though, something I hadn’t noticed before. Across from the opening in the hedge I came through there’s another opening. And there are footprints there. I get up to look. They’re the same boot prints. The same duckfooted gait. Oren. Somehow he crossed the expanse of the square and went out the other opening without making a footprint in the square. Did he jump onto the base of the statue? Or sweep the prints away? Maybe the wind blew them away.

I wipe the tears from my face and follow the footprints back through the maze. When I finally exit I find Oren standing to the side of the opening, the sled by his side, looking up at the top of the hill. Mattie is still talking to the policeman, flapping her arms around like an agitated goose. The policeman’s watching her, arms crossed over his broad chest. At last he turns away from her and heads to his cruiser.

“It’s okay,” Oren says, looking back at me. “Mattie told him a story to get rid of him.”

I don’t ask how he knows that. I kneel down and turn him around to look at me, my hands digging into his narrow, frail shoulders. “Don’t ever run away from me like that again,” I cry, my voice coming out angrier than I meant it to. “You scared me half to death.”

His eyes get wide the way they would when Davis yelled at him. “I just wanted to show you I could take care of myself,” he says in a small scared whisper. “Didn’t you see how I doubled back like that boy in the movie?”

“Don’t make things up,” I say, shaking him just a little. I’m not the same as Davis, it’s just that when he makes things up it scares me. Like the thing he’d said that day into the can. “I saw your tracks leading out the other way.”

“What other way?” Oren asks, the tears spilling now, his mouth an O of hurt. “I came back the same way.”

But that can’t be. No more than Oren could have known what he told me through the tin can. I’d believed all the things he said that Davis had done to him. But after he’d listed them all he said, It won’t stop there. If we don’t leave he’ll kill both of us.