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By Root 2115 0

tearing at her hair, crying, “But—what has happened? Who has done this? Who could be so cruel?” We children too were shocked and dismayed; ten-year-old Neale and Ellen huddled together in terror, convinced that the thing that dwelled in the house with us, invisible, that shifted out of sight when you whirled to see it, had committed this malicious damage. Rosalind was hurt and angry, for she’d worked damned hard; she’d been proud of her effort, helping Mother in good cause. Stephen was silent, thoughtful, gnawing at his lower lip as if he was making a decision. Graeme, his pinched, peevish face smirking in a pretense of satisfaction, said, “Mother, it’s the fate of the material universe—to run down, out. Did you think we were special?”

Mother turned upon him and screamed, “I hate you! All of you!” But it was only Graeme she struck, cutting his cheek below his left eye with the sharp edge of her emerald ring.

Mother then staggered and fell. Her eyes swooned back into her head. Her body struck the grimy floor softly, like a cloth bundle that has been tossed negligently down. We children seemed to know, staring at the stricken woman in horror, that Mother would never again be the person she’d been.

7. Victims

Locally, opinion was divided: the marauding killer was a black bear, crazed by having tasted human blood; or, the killer was a human being, himself crazed, simulating the behavior of an aberrant bear.

There was another victim, in late July: an eleven-year-old girl discovered strangled and battered in a desolate wooded area near the village of Lake Noir. And, in early August, a seventeen-year-old boy killed by severe blows to the head, face torn partly away, found at the edge of a cemetery in Contracoeur. Shivering, Mother merely glanced at the newspaper with its lurid headlines—“It’s just the same thing over and over. Like the weather.” Nor did she show much surprise or interest when, one morning, the local sheriff and two deputies arrived to question us, informally; as, they explained, they were questioning everyone in the area. These men spent most of their time with Father, who impressed them with his intelligence and soft-spoken civility. They must have known something of Roderick Matheson’s professional difficulties, yet still they called him “Judge,” “Your Honor,” and “sir” respectfully; for the state capital was nearly three hundred miles away, and scandals and power struggles there were of little interest in Contracoeur.

On his side, Father was gracious to the police. They had no search warrant, but he gave them permission to search the property outside the house. All of us, even Mother and the twins, who’d been anxiously fretting since the arrival of the police cars, watched from upstairs windows. With the air of one asking an unanswerable question, Mother said, “What do they expect to find? Those poor fools,” and Father said, with a trace of a smile, “Well, let them look. It’s in my interest to be a good citizen. And then they needn’t return, and trouble us ever again.”

8. Second Sighting: The Thing-Without-a-Face

What have I lost: my usemame, my password, my soul.

Where must I flee: not IRL. There is none

This would be Graeme’s farewell note, first typed out on his faulty computer, where the words jammed into solid blocks of gibberish, letters, numerals and computer hieroglyphics; then written out, in inch-high headline-letters, with such anger that the point of Graeme’s marker pen tore the surface of the paper.

He’d ceased thinking of himself as Graeme Matheson. Both his names had become repugnant to him. “Graeme"-the name given, as a gift he’d had no choice but to receive. “Matheson"—the name inherited, as a fate he’d had no choice but to receive.

The family believed he’d changed, become brooding, ever more silent and withdrawn, since Mother had slapped him in so public and humiliating a way; since his face, young, stricken, astonished, had bled; since the thin, jagged wound had coagulated into a zipper-like scratch that seemed, so strangely, so perversely, always fresh. (Did Graeme pick