The Pet

TEN

Don set his desk chair so that he could look out the window, angled it so he could appear to be studying in case someone came in. Not that anyone would. Norman and Joyce were at the concert, and their return would be loud enough to forewarn him should he need it. Now all he had to do was sit and wait, and he got up only once, when the room’s lamp turned the pane black and all he could see was his ghost staring back. He hurried downstairs and switched on the light over the back door, hurried back up and dropped a towel over the lampshade. The backyard was white now, the grass seeming flat, the trees like ragged gaps torn out of the night; there was a wind blowing, a storm coming, and the houses on the next block were infrequently silhouetted by distant flashes of lightning.

He waited, and pondered the dreams, latching on to an image, turning it, poking at it, casting it away for another until, shortly before nine, he concluded there was nothing he could do about it — the horse was real. And not real. A creation out of something he didn’t understand, though he knew that because of what it had done to the Howler it was there to protect him.

Real. And not real.

He looked at his other friends, now tinted in orange from the towel over the bulb, and back to the window.

The horse was not going to let anyone hurt him.

The how and the why of it would come later; right now he had to learn more. Real or not, the horse was an animal, and he had to know more about what that animal was, and what control, if any, he had over it, how it would fit into the new Rules he was making.

His lips moved in something less than a smile, and the doorbell rang. He jumped, a hand flat on his chest. A swallow, an embarrassed glance around, and he rushed downstairs, waited for the bell to ring again before pulling open the door.

It was Sergeant Verona, hat in hand and an odd smile, asking to come in.

“Sure,” Don said, stepping back and pointing to the living room. “Have a seat.”

There were questions, and Don told him he was fine, still a little shaky but planning on going back to school tomorrow. The press hadn’t bothered him all night, though he admitted that while it was kind of unsettling seeing himself on television, it was also kind of nice.

“I don’t look like a freak,” he said, taking his father’s chair.

“You think that? That you look like a freak?” Verona was on the couch, the hat turning over slowly.

“No, not really. Maybe I look like a movie star.”

“Just don’t get used to it, son,” the man said kindly. “Tomorrow there’ll be another murder someplace, or a factory fire, and they’ll forget all about you.”

“Good,” he said. And: good, he thought, that’s real good.

“My mother and father are over at—”

“I know. It’s you I wanted to see anyway, if you don’t mind. You’re not studying or anything?”

“A little. It can wait.”

“The branch,” Verona said.

Don was puzzled. “The branch?”

‘The one you hit Falwick with.”

Verona stopped playing with the hat, looked down at one foot tapping on the rug, looked up at Don. His hand slipped a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped it over his face, but Don saw the eyes — they never left him, never blinked.

“This is hard,” the man confessed. “I don’t know how to say this right, so I’m just going to say it, okay?”

“Sure.” Don didn’t care; he didn’t know what the cop was talking about.

“I keep thinking maybe you didn’t do it,” the man said rapidly, each word a snap followed by a stare to measure his reaction. “I’ve had a chance to take a look at the reports, and there’s something wrong there, Don. Something wrong I have to get right in my own mind or it’s gonna drive me up the wall. You’ve had that, I’ll bet. Something bugs you, and you don’t understand it, so you work at it and worry at it until it makes some kind of sense. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Don did, and didn’t; he knew the sensation, was enmeshed in it now, but didn’t know the reference.

“Falwick,” Verona said. “I’m thinking you didn’t hit him with that stick.”

Don frowned. “But I did,” he said.

Verona nodded as if expecting the answer. “What I’m thinking, you see, is that you were there, all right. I mean, everything points to it, there’s no question about it. But I don’t think you were alone.”

Don gripped the armrests tightly. “I was,” he insisted politely. “There was no one else, just me.”

“No friends?”

“No friends.”

“I wonder, see, if a few of you got together after your friend was killed and decided to take matters into your own hands. It wouldn’t be the first time.” Verona smiled guilelessly. “It’s possible you were sent out there as bait, and when Falwick jumped you, the others came out of the trees.”

“No,” Don whispered.

“It’s possible that after it was done, after you had beaten that old man to death and saw what it looked like, they left you to take the rap, or the credit.”

“No.”

Verona mopped his face again and put the handkerchief away, picked up his hat, and flipped it several times as if flipping a coin.

“It’s good to protect your friends, Don. But,” he said louder, when Don leaned forward to protest, “it’s not good to do what you did. It’s murder, Don. Planning and executing a scheme like that is murder in the first degree no matter how old you are. That’s the law. You’re a good kid, a great kid, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it now but tell you that I’m thinking you’re a murderer, you and your friends.”

“I’ll tell my father,” was all he could think of to say.

“Do that,” Verona said, standing and waving Don back in his seat. “Maybe it’ll reopen the case and we’ll find out the truth.”

He left quickly, quietly, leaving Don in the chair staring at the fireplace, tapping a foot on the floor. He thought maybe he was in trouble, but he didn’t know what kind. There was no evidence to implicate anyone else, certainly not the stallion, and he would be laughed into the loony bin if he tried to explain what really had happened.

His eyes fluttered and closed.

There was a sour taste in his mouth.

Then his hands raised in fists high over his head and he slammed them down on his legs, on the armrests, against his forehead and staggered to the hearth where he kicked at the bricks.

They were doing it again.

Jesus Christ, now even the police were trying to take away something that belonged to him. He whirled, his hands grasping for something to throw, found nothing, and jammed into his pockets instead. Stiff-legged, he stalked across the room, heading for the stairs as he tried to decide if it was worth crying over or not. He certainly felt like it, and stabbed the back of his hand against his eyes while he cautioned that he was feeling sorry for himself again. Nobody was going to take anything away from anybody. Verona sure wasn’t, because he had nothing but a stupid suspicion that something smelled wrong about the death of a killer. And Don wasn’t stupid — he hadn’t been so blinded by the attention that he hadn’t noticed how relieved everyone was that Falwick was dead. They wouldn’t want to resurrect him, not even his memory, just because a detective didn’t like being upstaged.

The telephone rang as he hit the first step.

He stared at it, wondering if it was a reporter, or someone for his parents. It didn’t occur to him until it rang a fourth time that it might be for him.

It was.

It was Tracey.

“Are you okay?” was the first thing she said after he’d said hello.

“Sure.” He sat crosslegged on the floor, facing the kitchen door. “Why?”

“You sound terrible.”

‘Thanks, I needed that.” A voice in the background made him frown. “Is that Jeff?” he asked flatly. “Is Jeff at your house?”

“No,” she said. “I’m here. At his place, I mean.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” she echoed in quite a different tone. “Why … why, Donald Boyd, are you jealous?”

The frown became a squint. “Who, me?”

She laughed. “My god, I don’t believe it.”

He didn’t speak. He supposed she was right, and the way she laughed hinted that perhaps he had nothing to be jealous about; but that still didn’t explain why she was over there and not over here. When he asked her, there was a pause and he squinted again, at the door.

Then he blinked slowly. Through the dark in the kitchen he thought he saw faint pinpricks of green light.

Tracey said something. He blinked again and asked her to repeat it.

“Someone was after me,” she said at last.

“What?” He sat up, nearly pulling the cord straight.

“If you want to know the truth, Vet, I was on my way over to your house, when someone started to chase me. I don’t know who it was, but he scared the hell out of me, and Jeff’s was the first place I came to.”

Through the panes in the door — a faint glow of white.

“Who was it?” he demanded, hoping he sounded as concerned as he felt as he slowly moved to his knees and stared down the hall.

White light, shifting like fog.

“I told you, I don’t know. Jeff went out to look around, but he didn’t see anyone.” She paused. “I don’t know. Maybe it was my imagination.”

“Probably.” Oh, my god, he thought. “Who else is out there but Pratt, y’know?”

Her laugh this time was a bit forced. “I suppose. He’s really pissed at you, you know.”

“So I heard.”

A muffled thump on the door.

“Really?”

“Sure.” His voice sounded as if he were speaking from the moon; he was amazed she hadn’t noticed. “Chris told me when she came to the hospital.”

“Oh?”

Now it was his turn, and he wondered what he had done that rewarded him with two girls at the same time.

Then her voice softened, and he had to strain to hear her say, “I’m proud of you, Don. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t get the chance at the park.”

“Yeah, well …”

Another thump, and in the white glow two green slanted eyes.

“I’d still like to come over, if I can.”

“What?” He was on his feet, teeth worrying his lower lip. “I’m sorry, Trace, what did you say.”

“Don, I want to come over. I … I need you.”

White light green eyes

“I’d like that too,” he stammered. “But it’ll have to wait, okay? The dragons just came home. I’m supposed to be resting.”

“What? Are you all right?”

“I told you I was. I’m just …” He thought about it then, the chance to talk to someone about what he had seen, what he was believing, what he was hoping wasn’t the slipping of his mind.

The door trembled, and he closed his eyes and silently begged Tracey to forgive him.

“Look,” he said, “can I see you in school tomorrow?”

“Sure. Lunch?”

“Okay.”

“Jeff wants to know if you’re going to the game.”

Off, he thought then; get the hell off the phone!

“I don’t know. I guess so. It depends on my mother, I think. I have to—” He saw the light fading, the green disappear. “Shit, here they come. I gotta go.”

“Lunch,” she said, and he slammed down the receiver before she could say good-bye, and raced into the kitchen.

He wanted to throw open the door, to step out boldly, but he hesitated, hands rubbing his legs, his teeth still at his lip. To go out there, now, would mean he really was crazy; to look into an empty yard would mean …

His eyes shut. His hands clenched. His breath came in shallow gulps.

And he opened the door.

“Oh Jesus,” he whispered. “Oh … Jesus.”

It stood back under the maple tree, mottled by shadow, outlined now and again by the distant flare of lightning. But he couldn’t see the whole of it, couldn’t see it in detail — it was blacker than the night around it, and only portions of its skin gleamed and rippled when it moved.

He pressed a hand to his head as if checking for a fever, then stepped down off the stoop.

The horse bobbed its head, green eyes watching.

He could barely breathe; the air was too still, and his legs felt ready to collapse as he moved across the grass.

Green eyes. Watching.

He wanted to smile then, or to scream, but he only held out his hand, palm up, as he walked, hoping the stallion wouldn’t smell his fear, would know instead his wonder at the size of it, the breadth of it, the way it turned its head and looked at him with a single flaring eye.

It backed away, snorting, and sending plumes of grey about its head.

“It’s me,” he said softly. “It’s me, fella, it’s me.”

The horse shifted, and there was greenfire curling around the maple’s trunk, greenfire that crackled and scorched a black ribbon in the bark.

Don stopped, swallowed, reached his hand out again and took a single step forward. He was less than five feet from its nose, and he wanted desperately to feel the velvet, feel the flesh and the bone. But when he moved another foot, it tossed its head and in its throat started a low sustained rumbling.

“All right,” he said calmly. “All right, take it easy.”

Please, God, he thought; please, God, am I crazy?

The horse watched him carefully, greysmoke and greenfire for almost a full minute, then lowered its great head and pushed at Don’s arm, pushed him back and followed until Don could reach up and stroke the silk of its mane, the black satin of its neck. Real flesh warm and cold at the same time; muscles jumping, a foreleg shifting, and he wasn’t ashamed when he felt the tears building, felt them spilling, heard them splashing though he knew it couldn’t be.

He hadn’t killed the Howler; this creature had, this beast that was his friend.

“Why?” he whispered then. “Why are they like that?”

The horse retreated again, and left him standing alone.

He sniffed, and wiped his eyes with a sleeve that felt like coarse burlap on his skin.

“They won’t stop, y’know? They keep coming at me, they won’t leave me alone. I’m not Sam, I’m not special. I’m just me, and they won’t …” He stopped, bowed his head, wiped his eyes again. “I just wish I knew what I’m doing wrong, you know? If they’d only tell me what I’m doing wrong, maybe the Rules wouldn’t change so much, maybe I’d know then what was going on.”

He felt it then, out there in the cold — the stallion was listening — every word he said, every tear he shed was marked by the emerald eyes and the pricking of its ears.

He wanted to ask why they wouldn’t even let him be a hero, just this once; he wanted to ask why he couldn’t cry, why he couldn’t get mad, why the Rules said he had to be like stone or wood; and he wanted to ask why they couldn’t make up their minds to let him be a kid, or a man. But he didn’t, because he knew that the horse already understood, and that he was right — it was there, really there, and it was going to protect him.

He grinned through his tears.

The stallion snorted and buried them in grey smoke, snorted again, and blew the smoke away.

“It’s true,” he said in the midst of a loud sigh. “It’s true, you’re my friend.” He laughed once, softly. “Oh god, it’s really true!”

He stretched out a hand to stroke its muzzle, to seal the bargain, and froze when the animal began its throated rumbling. It backed away. He started to follow, and nearly bolted for the house when it reared under the tree, snapping branches, casting dead leaves, greenfire and greeneyes and slashing hooves at the air.

Headlights flared around the corner of the house.

Oh shit, he thought; damnit, they’re home.

The horse lowered its head, eyes dark now, its tail slapping its legs.

“All right,” he said nervously. “All right, I gotta go now.”

The horse didn’t move.

He backed toward the kitchen door, wanting to laugh, wanting to shout, wanting to race around to the driveway and drag his father back, to show him, to show him what his son could do.

With one hand on the doorknob he looked over his shoulder, couldn’t find his friend until he found the green eyes. “Please,” he said. “Please.” And ran inside, skidding to a halt in the foyer just as he heard a key rattle in the lock and could hear his parents on the porch, talking loudly, not quite arguing. He turned toward the stairs to make it seem as if he were just going up, when his mother stormed in, slamming the door back against the wall as she charged past him toward the kitchen. His father was right behind her, slower, his jacket over one shoulder and his face pale.

“What are you doing up?” he snapped, and didn’t wait for an answer. He jabbed a commanding finger toward the stairwell and followed his wife.

I’m fine, Don thought as he started up the stairs; thanks for asking, I’m fine.

“I will not have it!” Joyce said loudly, and he stopped on the landing.

“Keep your voice down! The boy’ll hear.”

A laugh, short and bitter. “Hear what? I’m not an animal and I’m not stuffed. What makes you think he’ll hear me?”

“Jesus, you’re crazy, you know that?”

She laughed again, and Don squatted, one hand on the banister in case he had to move fast.

Cupboard doors slammed, cups cracked into saucers, the faucet ran so long she could have filled the bathtub. When the water was shut off, his father was laughing.

“Honest to Christ, you’re something else, you know that? You really are something else.”

“Well, really,” Joyce said. “All they did was ask you to stand up and take a bow, and you were waving your arms like a goddamned politician! Christ, I thought you were going to kiss babies next.”

“Wouldn’t have been a bad idea.”

A chair scraped; another was slammed down on the floor.

“All right,” Norman said wearily. “All right, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry is too late. You and the boy have been upstaging and hassling me since this thing began, and I’ve had it! I worked my ass off so you’d look good, and this is the thanks I get.”

“Me?” A muffled sound — Norman either laughing into a hand or trying not to choke. “God, the next thing is you’ll be accusing me of sending Don out there myself to kill that crazy bastard.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

The silence was cold, and Don wrapped his free arm over his chest.

“That was a shitty thing to say, Joyce.”

The silence again.

“I know,” she said at last, but without apology in her voice. “I …” She began to cry and Norman cursed, and the water began running again.

Don didn’t wait to hear any more. He climbed slowly up the rest of the stairs, shuffled down the hall, and pushed open his bedroom door. He yanked the towel off the lampshade and dropped it on his desk. His shoes were kicked under the bed, his shirt dropped onto the floor. For a moment he stood at the window, looking down at the tree. There was nothing there, the horse was gone, but he no longer questioned the state of his mind.

When he finally dropped onto the mattress, he deliberately fell back so his head would hit the wall. Maybe they’ll hear it, he thought; maybe they’ll think I’ve had a relapse or something, and they’ll come running up and see what’s wrong.

Or, he thought, they’ll call the papers first, and then come up to see if I’m dead.

And maybe, he thought with a cold, mirthless grin, I’ll take them both outside and show them my new pet.

He lay there for nearly an hour before he blinked and saw his father standing in the doorway.

“You okay, son?”

“Sure. Just thinking.”

“You’d better turn out the light. School isn’t going to be exactly normal for you tomorrow.”

He nodded and swung his feet over the side. “Dad?”

Norman stiffened, and raised his eyebrows.

“Do you think—”

A sudden, faint shattering of glass stopped him, had him on his feet and beside his father in the hallway. Joyce came out of their bedroom, a robe wrapped loosely around her.

“What?” she said nervously.

Another shattering, and the sound of heavy blows on something metal.

“Damn, the car!” Norman said, and ran for the stairs, Don just behind though his mother called to him to stay where he was. The front door was locked, and Norman fumbled with the bolt before flinging it open and switching on the porch light. Don crowded out past him, not feeling the snap of cold air on his bare chest. The bulb was directly over his head, and he shaded his eyes, scanning the lawn before looking to the driveway.

“Oh, god,” he whispered.

Norman shoved him aside and leapt over the stairs, hit the walk at a run, and didn’t stop until he came up against the station wagon’s front fender. The windshield was smashed, there was a dent in the hood, and lying on the blacktop just under the bumper was Don’s bike — the handlebars twisted out of place, the front wheel broken, half of its spokes wavering like antennae where they’d been snapped from their places along the rim.

Norman whirled and raced around the side of the house, but Don only stumbled to the driveway and knelt beside the bike, one hand reaching out to touch it, withdraw, touch it again and follow the lines of its destruction. When he shifted and leaned over to stare at the back wheel the glint of metal made him pause, made him reach out and pull a red leather key case wedged beneath the battered frame.

“Don?” his mother called from the doorway. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” he said dully, slipped the case into his pocket, and heard her gasp when she saw the damage.

“Oh Jesus, my god, look at that,” she said just as Norman appeared around the far side of the house, panting heavily, one palm massaging hard at his side. She held out a trembling hand, and he took it, pulled her to him and glared at the empty street. “Who?” she asked.

“How the hell should I know?” he said. “Damn, that’s going to cost a fortune to fix.”

Joyce took a step to one side, the glass crunched under her slipper. “I’ll get a broom,” she said. “We can’t have that stuff lying around. It’s dangerous. Someone’ll get hurt.”

“Sure.”

“Look, you’d better call the police. Don? Get the broom from the garage, will you? Help me here.”

Don looked over his shoulder. Neither of them were looking at him — Norman was staring at the depression in the hood and absently rubbing his wife’s back; Joyce was trying to smooth the hair from her eyes. And when she finally saw him looking, she pointed to the garage, then turned Norman around and pushed him gently toward the house.

Don rose, dusted off his jeans, and reached down to grab the handlebars, to drag the bike away.

“Leave it,” Joyce said. “There might be fingerprints or something.”

He straightened and fetched the broom, handed it to her and returned inside, where he listened to his father explaining to the police what had happened. When he rang off, he told Don to put on a shirt before the cops arrived. You never know, he said. There might still be some reporters hanging around, and when they got wind of this, it would be circus time again.

“Damn,” he said as he headed out the door. “With my luck, it’ll probably rain tomorrow.”

The police came and went in less than an hour. They made a decent show of searching the yard, but they found nothing, not a clue, and explained to the Boyds that in cases like this there was nothing much they’d be able to do if no one saw anything or offered information. No one came out to watch because the patrol car had arrived without its lights spinning; no one overheard the conversations because Joyce kept them speaking low, or whispering. And they asked Don nothing at all when Norman told them the boy was with him, inside, when the incident occurred.

After they left, Don dragged the bicycle into a corner of the garage and stared out at the street, at his father using a small brush to get the glass from the front seat. Joyce was inside, making coffee.

A press of a button and the garage door lowered. Norman looked up and gave his son a rueful smile. “You win some, you lose some, right?” he said. “Sorry about the bike.”

“Yeah.”

Don shivered at a gust of wind and turned to go inside, and stopped when he saw something white fluttering in the shrubs that fronted the house and ended at the drive. He leaned close, closer, and picked a feather from a branch.

“Dad?”

Norman grunted.

He found another one at the bush’s side, two more on the ground. “Hey, Dad?”

“In a minute, okay? I don’t want to slice my thumb off on this stuff.”

He parted the branches, and his mouth opened in a silent gasp.

There, on the ground under the bush was the body of a bird, its neck twisted around, its eyes closed, its feathers covered with blood.

“Dad, look!”

Norman pushed him aside with a hip and knelt down, gagged when he saw the mutilation, and poked at it with his toe.

“Jesus,” he said. “It’s a goddamned duck.”