Shadowland (57 page)

 
   'Yeah,' Tom said. 'Mine did too.'

 
   After a time Tom said, 'I think I'll go lie down or something. Or take a walk by myself.' 'I'm really tired too. And I want to take a bath.' 'Good idea,' Tom said, and both boys left the table.

 
Del went upstairs, and Tom went back into the living room. He sat on the couch; then he lay down and deliberately put his feet on it. A water pipe rattled in the wall. The big house, so flawlessly cleaned and polished, seemed vacated; waiting. If he dropped a match and burned the carpet, would the carpet instantly restore itself? It felt like that — alive. His feet would never dirty the fabric of the couch. And Del wanted to live here; in his imagination, he already ruled Shadowland.

 
   Tom jumped off the couch and ran up the stairs. The bed had been folded down for a nap. He threw his clothes on it and went into the bathroom to shower.

 
   The cold sparkling tub said:
You can't.

 
   The fresh towel said:
We will beat you.

 
   A new tube of toothpaste on the sink said:
You will be ours:

 
   After he dressed in fresh clothes, Tom dropped his stiff underpants into the wastebasket and covered them with balled-up sheets of paper from the desk. This minimal act of defiance cheered him. At least a few inches of the house were less immaculate. He left the room. Through the big windows in the hall he looked down at the boat house: Rose in her green dress and high heels. If he looked different, it was because of the astonishing thing that had happened there, not because of the magical hoops he had been put through on his way back to the clearing.

 
   He could feel the house around him like a skin. Without hearing a single noise, he knew that Del was already in his bed, nearly asleep, a dot of warmth in the cold polished perfection. If Rose Armstrong were in the house, he would feel her like a fire.

 
   Tom left the window and went downstairs. It seemed to him that he could visualize every inch of the house, every curve of the stair posts, every watermark in the kitchen sink.

 
   He would not stay in this house a day longer than he had to.

 
   He could see it bare of furniture, stripped to walls and floors, gleaming with new paint: awaiting its new owner. And he thought that Shadowland, an ugly name for a house, was anywhere secretive and mean, anywhere that deserved shadows because the people there hated light. Shadowland implied dispossession. And Coleman CoUins seemed a man lost within his own powers, a shadow in a shadow world, insubstantial. An old king who knew he would have to suffer at the hands of his successor.

 
2

 
At least that is what the thirty-six-year-old Tom Flanagan told me — he would not have used those phrases at fifteen, and I am more or less improvising on his words as it is, but the fifteen-year-old boy who stood at the bottom of the staircase and felt the house claiming him experienced the despair and pity that the adult man described to me. For he knew that he had been elected, though he had refused it; he knew that he was to be the new King of the Cats, though he would refuse that too, if he were able. And the adult Tom told me that at fifteen he had known that the Florida parking lot in which he had seen a battered car containing a dead man was the truest image of Shadowland. He could not get that picture out of his head.

 
3

 
So he left the bottom of the stairs and aimlessly went down the hall toward the front door. It was not locked. In a dazzle of sunlight, Tom let himself out onto the top step. The bricks shone like freshly polished cordovans. Squinting, Tom went down to the asphalt. Water lay in slanting streaks on the drive.

 
   What would happen if he were to walk up the drive and take a look at the gate? A grown man couldn't getthrough the bars, but he and Del and Rose could do it easily. From there they could walk to Hilly Vale in less than an hour, through the woods and fields if they had to. Maybe the physical act of leaving Shadowland would be the simplest aspect of their escape; persuading Del would be the hardest. But Rose could do that, he realized. Hot sun warmed his shoulders, the top of his head. Del would listen to Rose.

 
   The drive curved up around the bank of the hill. Halfway up, he could see the tops of the gateposts.

 
   
Why do you light up the forest like that?

 
   So I can see what's coming and what's going. And what big eyes you have, Grandmother.

 
   Through trees he could see the brick wall fanning out from the gateposts. They might even be able to get over that, if he hoisted Del on his shoulders. He walked closer, and saw that the bars in the gate were about nine inches apart. It would be easy to squeeze through an opening like that. And if men were chasing them, they would have to stop to punch the code to open the gates.

 
   He went up to the gates. The spikes on top of each bar looked more than ornamental. And the brick wall, he could now see, was topped with thick jagged pieces of glass embedded in concrete. Barbed wire snaked over the glass. So it had to be the gate. He looked through it at the narrow brown dirt road which would lead them down to Hilly Vale.

 
   
Whenever you're ready, Rose,
he thought, and put his arm experimentally through the bars.

 
   'What do you think you're doing?' a thick voice shouted behind him.

 
   Tom jumped — he thought he must have gone a foot into the air — and turned around, unsuccessfully trying not to look scared. Thorn and Snail came lounging out of the trees. They looked more than ever like dwarfs. Thorn wore a dark blue hooded sweatshirt covered with stains. He drained the last of a beer bottle and tossed it into the woods behind. Snail wore an ordinary gray sweatshirt. The sleeves had been cut off, and his tattoos showed on the thick pasty arms like brilliant medals.

 
   'I asked, what the hell are you doing?' Thorn said. 'You don't go out there. Nobody goes out there.' Hisjack-o'-lantern face, Tom saw, was the result of surgery. Welts of scar surrounded the eyes and mouth.

 
   'I wasn't going out. I wasn't doing anything,' Tom said. The two men came up to the edge of the drive and stopped. Snail put his hands on his hips. The gray sweatshirt bulged across his chest and belly.

 
   'La-di-da,' Thorn said. Snail tittered. 'You're the one saw us before,' Thorn said. The ugly sewn — together face bit down on itself. Tom felt aimless, stupid violence boiling off both men — mad dogs who had found themselves in temporary possession of the kennel.

 
   'Maybe he's looking for his girlfriend,' Snail said, grinning.

 
   'You looking for your pretty little girl, sonny boy? Think she came up for air?'

 
   Snail tittered again.

 
   ''I wasn't looking for anybody,' Tom said. 'I was just walking around.'

 
   They looked at each other with a quick, practiced surreptitious movement of the eyes,
Prison,
Tom thought,
they've been in —

 
   They were coming toward him. 'You can't get out of here,' Thorn was saying. Snail was grinning, holding one fist with the other and pumping up his arm muscles.

 
   'Maybe he's looking for that badger yet.'

 
   'Maybe he's the badger,' Snail said.

 
   Tom backed up into the bars of the gate, too scared to think.

 
   'Ain't he somethin'?' Thorn said. 'Gonna shit your pants before we get there, or after?'

 
   
Do not begin things when you will get too flustered to remember how to finish them.
Tom smelled coarse, dirty, smelly skin, stale beer. He closed his eyes and thought of his shoulders opening and opening. His mind flared yellow, and he saw Laker Broome shouting orders from the smoky stage: just before they got to him, he saw a ceiling where a huge bird screamed down at him.
Yes.
He floated three feet off the ground, straight up. The bars scraped against his shirt.
God, yes.
He went up another three feet and opened his eyes. He laughed crazily.

 
   Thorn and Snail were gawping up at him, already backing away.

 
   
'Uhh,'
Tom grunted, unable to speak, and pointed toward a twenty-foot birch growing near the wall where they had come from. The veins in his head felt ready to burst.
Now, damn you.
A crack flew across the ground: snapping sounds like gunfire came from the trees. The birch heeled over to the left, and a root broke off with a thunderous crack.

 
   'Freak!' Snail screamed.

 
   Tom moaned. The birch swung up out of its hole, trailing a four-foot-long ball of crowded roots and packed earth. It hung in the air, parallel to him, and Tom almost heard the birch howling in pain and shock. He dropped it as he would a dying mouse or rabbit, some small life he had injured; self-loathing filled him. Not knowing why, he mentally saw an uprooted dandelion, and imagined blood pouring across his hands.

 
   Thorn and Snail were disappearing back into the woods when he fell to the asphalt.
That's what Skeleton wanted,
he thought. He wobbled, his spine taking the shock, and then rolled over onto elbows and knees. Wet asphalt dug into his cheek.
That sickness.
If the dwarfs had come back, they could have kicked him senseless.

 
4

 
Eventually Tom picked himself up and tottered back down the sloping grass. Shadowland gleamed at him, burnished by the strong light. The house looked utterly new. The brick steps beckoned, the doorknob pleaded to be touched. Tom's head pounded.

 
   An unmistakable rush of welcome warm air and fragrance washed over him.

 
   Tom went down the hall, took the short side corridor, and threw open the door to the forbidden room. No wise, spectacled face looked up at him; the room was neither a crowded study nor an underground staff room. It was bare. Silvery-gray walls; glossy white trim around the windows, a dark gray carpet. Empty of life, the room called him in.

 
   
Everything you will see here comes from the interaction of your mind with mine.

 
   An invisible scene hovered between those walls, waiting for him to enter so that it could spring into life.