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By Root 2029 0

the public rooms, as they were called, only partly furnished and these random items of furniture shrouded in ghostly white sheets; a room with dust-saturated Oriental carpets; and everywhere the sour odors of mildew, rot, the dead, desiccated bodies of mice in the walls. The room’s ceiling was so unnaturally high it seemed to be obscured in shadow, from which shrouded chandeliers hung as if floating in the gloom; a room so large as to appear without walls; as if melting out into the shadows of the overgrown grounds. Graeme believed that this room was much smaller by day. Unless he’d wandered into an unfamiliar part of the house? For we were still virtual strangers to Cross Hill, living in only a few rooms of the great old house.

It was then that Graeme saw a movement outside on the lawn.

Certain at first that it was an animal. For Contracoeur was a wild region; everywhere there were deer, raccoons, foxes, even lynxes and black bears—that spring, we’d been told, black bears were sighted in the very city of Contracoeur. By its pronounced upright posture the figure outside on the lawn, moving slowly past the terrace windows, must have been a bear, Graeme thought; his heartbeat quickened. We’d been warned of bears at Cross Hill but had sighted none yet. So Graeme stood at one of the terrace windows watching with excitement the mysterious figure pass at a distance of approximately thirty feet. Beyond the terrace, of broken, crumbled flagstone, was a ragged grove of Chinese elms, storm-damaged from the previous winter, beyond the elms was a lane called Acacia Drive, which split in two to circle a fountain. The upright figure moved along this lane in the moonlight, in the direction of the lake, away from the house; its posture as ramrod-straight, stiff, too straight, Graeme decided, to be a bear. And its gait rhythmic and unhurried, not the shambling, loping gait of a bear.

Graeme then did something not in his character: he quietly unlocked a terrace door and nudged it open and stepped outside breathless into the chill, fresh air; squatted behind the terrace railing to watch the departing figure. A trespasser at Cross Hill? So far from the city and from the nearest neighbor? A hunter? (But the figure carried no weapon that Graeme could discern.) This figure could not be the white-haired part-time groundskeeper who lived in town. Nor our father—hardly. Nor sixteen-year-old Stephen. The figure was taller and more solidly built than any of these; taller, Graeme had begun to think, with a sensation of dread, than any man he’d ever seen before.

As Graeme stared from his inadequate hiding place behind the railing, the figure halted abruptly as if sensing his presence; seemed to be glancing in Graeme’s direction, head tilted, as if it were sniffing the air, in a vivid patch of moonlight revealing itself as—a being without a face.

Not a man, a thing. A thing-without-a-face.

Graeme jammed his knuckles against his mouth to keep from crying out in horror. His knees had gone weak; he had to resist the instinct to turn and run blindly away, which would have called the thing’s attention to him.

The figure’s head was seemingly human in shape, though larger and more oblong, with a more pronounced jaw, than the average human head. Its hair appeared dark, coarse, unkempt. Its rigid, stiff-backed posture suggested that of a man with an exaggerated military manner. Yet, where a face should have been there was—nothing.

A raw blank expanse of skin like flesh brutally fashioned with a trowel. A suggestion of shallow indentations where eyes should have been, and nostrils, and a mouth; possibly there were tiny orifices in these areas too small for Graeme to see. He dared not look; he’d sunk to the terrace to hide behind the wall like a terrified child.

He was breathing quickly, shallowly. Thinking No! No! I didn’t see anything! I’m just a boy, don’t hurt me.

Waking then sometime later, dazed, still anxious; a sick, sour taste of bile at the back of his mouth. He must have lost consciousness—must have fainted. So frightened he couldn’t breathe!