Darkness (12 page)

P
hil Stubbs gazed up at the new sign that hung over the entrance to his tour headquarters. It had only been there a week, but despite his complaints at how much it had cost, the expenditure had already proved itself worthwhile. The lettering, done in the ornate style of circus posters, was in red edged with gold, and stood out brightly against a white background.

When Michael had first suggested the sign, Stubbs laughed at the idea. “Seems to me like you’re tryin’ to turn this place into a tourist trap.”

“But isn’t that what it is?” Michael had asked, blurting the words out before he realized quite how they sounded. He’d reddened, but floundered on. “I mean, what about all the people who are afraid to go out in the
swamp but still want to see the animals? How are they going to know what we have?”

Stubbs had thought about it, finally deciding the boy might be right. Since Michael’s signs had turned the animal cages into real displays, business had already picked up. But he’d balked again when Michael had shown him a sketch of the sign he had in mind. “Now come on,” he’d protested. “We don’t let anyone touch anything but the nutrias, and old Martha wouldn’t bite a thing.”

“But the sign only says you can ‘almost’ touch them,” Michael pointed out.

So Stubbs had given in. The day after the sign went up, business had immediately improved. People were coming in with their kids, and spending a couple of hours wandering around the cages, watching the animals. A lot of them, after getting a preview of what was in the swamp, signed up for the tour as well. Business was booming, and for the last couple of days Stubbs had even been considering adding an admission fee for the people who just wanted to see the animals.

All in all, he decided as he unlocked the office and started getting ready for the first batch of tourists who were already on their way down from Orlando, hiring Michael hadn’t been a bad move at all. The boy worked harder than anyone he’d ever seen, and always seemed to be coming up with new ideas.

And yet, despite how hard the boy worked, there was something about Michael Sheffield that made Stubbs a little bit nervous. Not that he didn’t like the kid—he did. It was just that over the last month, as he’d gotten to know Michael, he’d gotten the feeling that there was something about Michael that he didn’t understand, something that Michael kept carefully hidden.

He’d finally talked to Craig about it last week, but Michael’s father had assured him there was nothing to worry about. “Michael’s always been like that. Sort of a loner, if you know what I mean. I think he’d rather go off
into the swamp by himself than do practically anything else.”

Stubbs hadn’t pushed the matter, but he’d found himself watching Michael a little more carefully. And finally he’d figured out what it was. Sometimes, around dusk, as the light began to fade and the long shadows of evening darkened the wilderness, Michael seemed to have periods when he lost track of what he was doing.

A few days ago, for instance, Phil had been toting up the accounts in the office, and looked up to see Michael washing one of the tour boats. For a few minutes there had been nothing extraordinary about the scene at all. Using a bucket and a mop, Michael had been swabbing down the long benches that ran, back to back, down the center of the boat. But suddenly something invisible to Stubbs seemed to catch the boy’s attention, and he simply stopped what he was doing, the mop clenched tight in his hands, his eyes staring into the tangle of growth across the bayou. Stubbs had followed Michael’s gaze but still seen nothing. As the seconds turned into minutes, he’d begun to wonder if Michael was all right. Leaving the office, he’d walked down to the dock. Just as he arrived, Michael had suddenly come to life again, his grip on the mop relaxing. “Michael? You okay?” Stubbs had asked.

Turning, Michael looked puzzled. “What?”

Stubbs had repeated the question. “I saw you staring off into the mangroves over there,” he went on, nodding in the direction of the island across from the dock. “Thought you must have seen something.”

That was when Michael’s eyes had changed, a veil dropping over them as if he was afraid Stubbs might see something he wanted to conceal. “I—I don’t know,” he’d said. “I guess I was just daydreaming.”

Stubbs had let the matter go, but nonetheless had kept his eyes open. He’d seen the same thing happen three or four times more. Michael would be in the midst of doing something—always as night was gathering—and suddenly he would simply freeze, his hands clenching,
as if he was looking at something, or hearing something. A few minutes later it would be over, and Michael would go on with his work as if nothing had happened.

Phil Stubbs was beginning to worry about Michael. What was he doing, those nights when he worked late, hanging around the little complex where the tours were headquartered long after everyone else had left? Of course Stubbs knew how most of Michael’s time had been occupied—the evidence of his work was usually obvious the next morning. But was there something else? Something Michael might not even be aware of, that held him there each evening?

Stubbs finished counting the morning till, observed with satisfaction that all the tour boats for the day were fully reserved, and made a note to himself to keep track of the turn-aways. Perhaps it was time to buy yet another boat. His thoughts were disturbed by the sound of a little boy’s voice, shouting excitedly.

“It’s not either asleep, Mommy! It’s dead!”

Stubbs looked out the window to see a clump of tourists clustered around the nutria cages. They were buzzing amongst themselves, and several of them seemed to be pointing at one particular cage. Stubbs hurried out to see what was going on, elbowing his way through the crowd until he was in front of the cage where Martha lived with her litter of pups. The pups, as usual, were tumbling around, scrambling over each other as they struggled to get to the food dish.

Martha lay unmoving on the floor of the cage, just inside the door.

“Well, if you ask me,” he heard a heavyset woman whisper loudly to her companion, “it’s cruel to keep the animals caged up this way. Of course they die—they probably die every day.”

Ignoring the woman, Stubbs unlocked the cage, opened the door, and lifted the lifeless nutria out of the pen.

“Did something kill it?” the little boy who had yelled
a few moments earlier demanded, his eyes staring accusingly up at Phil Stubbs.

“Nope,” Stubbs replied, returning the little boy’s gaze. “Martha here just got old, that’s all.”

“I’ll bet she starved to death,” the heavyset woman observed.

Well, that’s not something you’ll ever have to worry about, Stubbs said silently to himself as he took the nutria away. Returning to the office, he examined the animal.

What
had
happened to it?

He picked it up again, fingering it carefully, searching for a wound. When he set it down once more, the head flopped over at an unnatural angle. Frowning, he explored the creature’s neck with his fingers. Even to his unpracticed touch, he could tell the nutria’s neck had been broken.

An unbidden memory came to his mind of Michael, standing perfectly still, the mop clenched tightly in his fists.

If it hadn’t been a mop in his hands a few days ago, but instead one of the nutrias …

There was a rumbling noise outside, and a moment later Michael himself appeared, pulling his motorcycle to a stop outside the gates. Stepping outside, Stubbs beckoned him over to the office.

“Got something I want you to look at,” he said as Michael approached. He led Michael back into the office, then stepped aside so that the boy could see the dead nutria on the desk. “You know what might have happened to her?” he asked.

Michael stared at Martha’s limp body. He couldn’t explain what had happened, since he still wasn’t sure. And if he told the truth, he knew he would be fired. But he couldn’t lie, either. “I—I don’t know,” he stammered. “Last night, she didn’t look too good—”

Stubbs’s eyes fixed on him. “Her neck’s broken, Michael.”

Michael swallowed. “Oh, God. I thought she was
going—I thought—” He fell silent, staring helplessly at Stubbs.

Stubbs’s anger eased in the face of Michael’s obvious torment. “Now just take it easy, boy. Tell me what happened.”

“But—But I don’t know what happened,” Michael stammered. “I was petting her, like I always do, and I heard a siren. And it scared me.” His eyes flicked around the room, as if he were searching for a way out. At last his gaze came back to Phil Stubbs. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he said. “At least I didn’t mean to. But after the police car went by, and I looked down at her again, she’d stopped moving.” He fell silent for a few seconds, his eyes fixing on the nutria. He took a deep breath. “I—I guess I must have killed her.”

Stubbs said nothing, frowning deeply as he tried to figure out what to do. His first impulse was to fire the boy. Yet Michael was so obviously miserable about what had happened that Stubbs was certain he hadn’t intended to hurt the little animal. Indeed, Michael always became angry with anyone who even teased the creatures in their cages. “Well, I don’t know,” Stubbs said at last. “But if you can’t even remember what happened, I guess I can’t say you did it on purpose.”

Michael stared abjectly at the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Are—Are you going to fire me?”

Stubbs considered it. Once again he remembered those strange lapses when Michael seemed to lose himself. But he also remembered how much his business had improved since he’d hired the boy. “No,” he said, making up his mind. “But I think maybe you’d better take the rest of the day off—without pay—and think about keeping your mind on your work from here on out.” When Michael looked puzzled, Stubbs went on, “I’ve seen you daydreaming before, Michael. It’s like you’ve just gone somewhere else, like you’re in some kind of trance or something. So starting tomorrow, I don’t want you working after hours anymore. Can you understand that?”

Michael nodded, finally looking up. “Are you going to tell my dad?” he asked.

Stubbs hesitated. What if Craig Sheffield demanded proof of what Michael had done? Guys could be funny about their sons—never wanting to admit their own flesh and blood could be less than perfect. And Sheffield was a lawyer, and despite the fact that he was Stubbs’s own lawyer, that could lead to trouble. Besides, when you got right down to it, Michael was old enough to be responsible for himself. “Seems to me this is just between us,” he said. “So let’s just keep it that way, okay? Now get out of here, and make sure you’re on time tomorrow.”

Michael left the office, his head still down. Stubbs heard the motorcycle roar to life, and watched from the doorway until the bike disappeared around a bend in the road. Returning to his desk, he picked up the dead nutria. He stared at it for a moment, then shook his head and tossed it out the window into an open Dumpster a few yards away.

“Get Craig Sheffield upset over a lousy nutria?” he muttered to himself. “I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”

Michael gunned the engine of the motorcycle, feeling an exhilarating burst of speed as the machine responded to his command. Leaning forward into the wind, he tried to put the scene with Phil Stubbs out his mind. But an image of the dead nutria lying on his boss’s desk stayed with him. This morning, on his way to work, he’d let himself hope that Martha would still be in her cage, munching on her food and looking after her pups. Maybe nothing had happened last night at all—maybe his memory of the limp animal he’d returned to the cage had been no more real than the strange image he’d seen in the mirror.

But as soon as Stubbs had called him to the office, he’d known the truth.

Somehow, last night, he’d killed the little creature.

But why couldn’t he remember doing it?

He slowed the motorcycle, banking it into a curve.

Well, at least he hadn’t been fired, and Stubbs wasn’t even going to tell his folks what had happened. He could imagine what his father would say if he’d lost the job—the motorcycle would be gone, and he’d probably be grounded for the rest of the summer as well.