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He creeps along the side of the house into the backyard. The grass runs down to the water where a pier is rotting into the lake. A monster oak stands in the center of the lawn, an elaborate tree house built twenty feet up upon its staunchest limbs. A rope swing hangs from a branch overhead and on this calm October night is absolutely still, like the minute hand of a watch that no longer keeps time.

Luther kneels down in the grass below the boy’s window, thankful that the old oak shades him from the brilliant harvest moon. He unzips his backpack and removes the latex gloves. After pulling his hair into a ponytail he slips on a hairnet and rises.

The window comes to his waist.

He peers inside.

The boy lies asleep in bed. A nightlight spreads soft orange illumination upon the wall beside the open doorway.

Caricatures of stars shine weakly from the ceiling.

Luther aims the laser pointer and a red dot appears on the boy’s pillow. The laser moves onto his face and holds against the eyelid. The boy jerks his head, rubs his eyes, and is still again. The pinpoint of bloodlight finds the eyelid once more. The boy sits up suddenly in bed.

With his middle knuckle Luther raps twice against the glass.

Seven-year-old Ben Worthington regards the dark shape of the man at the window.

The laser shines on Ben’s pajamatop.

In the blue darkness the boy looks down at the glowing dot on his chest, then back at Luther, smiling now, remembering.

Luther smiles too.

Ben waves to Luther and climbs down out of bed. He walks in pajamafeet through scattered Legos to the window. Sleeplines texture the left side of his face.

"Hey!" he says at full volume.

Luther touches his index finger to his lips, dangling the laser pointer between his thumb and forefinger.

And boy and man whisper plans to make their rendezvous at the back door.

11

FOUR hours later Horace returned the manuscript to the drawer. He sat for a moment in Andrew’s chair in sheer shock. If he were to believe the preface, that this manuscript was true, then Andrew Thomas was one damned unlucky human being.

He climbed down from the loft, laced his boots, buttoned his jacket, and stepped out into the premature darkness of the afternoon.

On the way back to his Land Cruiser, he couldn’t stop thinking about Orson Thomas and Luther Kite, how they’d destroyed Andrew Thomas’s life.

A splinter of pity worked its way in.

Having grown up with all those terrible stories about Andrew Thomas, that manuscript was hard to believe. Maybe it was full of lies. But why would a man living in the middle of nowhere in assumed anonymity have any reason to lie? What if the monsters were really Orson and Luther?

He was running through the woods now, eyes watering from the cold.

When the idea hit him, Horace laughed.

But by the time he’d reached the Land Cruiser, he knew what he would have to do for his book.

Next time he came out here, he would drive right up to Andrew Thomas’s cabin, knock on the door, and politely ask the alleged serial killer for an interview.

12

BEN Worthington turns the deadbolt as Luther grins at him through a pane of glass. When the boy has opened the backdoor, Luther extends an arm from behind his back and unfurls his long slender fingers to reveal the coveted laser pointer.

"All yours," Luther whispers.

The boy steps through the doorway onto the deck, bigeyed as his little fingers grasp what has been foremost on his mind since midafternoon.

Luther gently places his right hand against the back of the boy’s skull and his left palm flat against his forehead.

"You’re a bad boy, Ben," Luther says, and twists his little head around one hundred eighty degrees.

The warmth of the house envelops him as he closes and relocks the backdoor. He stands in the kitchen holding the dead boy in his arms, the linoleum Kool-Aid-sticky beneath his feet.

The sink blooms with dishes.

The odor of burnt popcorn permeates the air.

Two greasy Tupperware bowls