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By Root 2190 0

an abrupt end. Yet, like Father, who spent most of his waking hours on the third floor of the house, Mother was reluctant to venture outside; she shaded her eyes to squint toward the outbuildings, the old carriage house and the stable and barns with their rain-rotted, collapsing roofs, and in the direction of murky Crescent Pond, which was at the bottom of the hill, beyond Acacia Drive; but some timidity, or outright fear, prevented her from seeking Graeme in such likely places. After ten days at Cross Hill during which time she’d seen no one outside the family except hired help from Contracoeur, Mother was still wearing expensive, stylish city clothes; dresses, skirts and sweaters, not jeans (perhaps she owned none?) but silk slacks with matching shirts, impractical sling-back Italian sandals with prominent heels. Each morning, on even the most oppressive of mornings, she’d bravely made up her heart-shaped face into that tight, beautiful mask; though the skin of her throat was pallid, beginning to show signs of age. She wore her wedding rings, her square-cut emerald ring on her right hand, her jeweled wristwatch that sparkled on her small-boned wrist. In a breathy, almost coquettish voice Mother complained, “That boy! Graeme! He does these things to spite me.”

We searched for Graeme all morning. By noon a fierce pale sun dominated the sky. How vast Cross Hill was, this “historic” estate that had gone to ruin; how many hiding places there were out-of-doors in the handsome old barns, in the rotting grape and wisteria arbors, in the evergreens bordering the house, and in the wild grasses, some of them as tall as five feet, in the park surrounding the house; in the derelict greenhouses through whose smashed windows black-feathered birds (starlings, grackles, crows?) rose hastily at our approach, like departing spirits of the dead. “Where is Graeme?” Rosalind shouted after them. “Where is he hiding?”

By chance it was Rosalind who finally found Graeme squatting amid marsh grass and desiccated bamboo shoots on the far side of the Crescent Pond, staring like one hypnotized at the spider-stippled surface of the pond. “Graeme, we’ve been looking for you everywhere! Didn’t you hear us calling?” Rosalind cried in exasperation. She waved to Stephen, to call him over, wading through the thigh-high, sword-like grass. A look in Graeme’s pinched, pale face frightened Rosalind and so she continued to chide him. “Making us all look for you. Making us all worry. I hope you’re satisfied.”

Stephen trotted over, panting. He wore a frayed T-shirt, jeans splashed with mud the color of fresh manure. Rosalind noticed a thinly bleeding scratch above his left eyebrow that must have been made by a sharp branch. “Hey, kid? You okay?” Stephen asked.

Seeing that his hiding place had been found out, Graeme mumbled something evasive. He stood, but not very steadily; he must have been squatting there for a long time. His khaki shorts and T-shirt were covered in burrs. His soft brown, wavy hair, grown unevenly past his ears, looked tangled. He said, swallowing, “I—saw something. Last night.”

Yes? What? They waited.

“I don’t know. I saw it but I—can’t be sure. I mean, if I saw—what it was. Or …” Graeme’s voice trailed off miserably. It was clear that something had frightened him badly and that he didn’t know how to speak of it. He didn’t want to risk being laughed at and yet—

Yes? What? Graeme, come on.

“It was a—man, I think. Walking along the drive over there. About two o’clock. I couldn’t sleep and I came downstairs and I—saw something out the window.” Graeme spoke slowly, painfully. He drew his forearm carelessly across his mouth, wiping it. “I came outside onto the terrace. I saw him—it—in the moonlight.”

Stephen said, “Someone trespassing on our property?”

Rosalind said, making a joke of it, “You’re sure it wasn’t one of us?” That look in Graeme’s eyes spooked her.

Graeme said, choosing his words carefully, “It was a, a thing like a man—a man with no face.” He grinned suddenly. “A thing-with-no-face.”

Quickly Stephen said, as if he hadn’t