The Stolen Child(108)

to let the world just drift right by. I went out to see him once or twice at the institution, poor dear. You

could tell he was thinking something, but Lord only knows. As if he went off to live in his own little

world. He died when I was still a young newlywed. That was about 1934, I think, but he looked older

than Moses."

She bent over the photo album and flipped through to the front of the book. She pointed to a

middle-aged man in a gray fedora. "There's my husband, Harry—that's crazy Joe's son. He was so old

when we married and I was just a girl." Then she pointed to a wizened figure who looked as if he was

the oldest man in the world. "Gustav." For a brief moment, I thought that would be me, but then I

realized the old man in the photograph was no relation at all. Beneath him there was a scratched image of

an elderly woman in a high collar. " La belle dame sans merci. Gone well before my time, but were it

not for his mother holding things together, that would have been the end of the Ungerlands. And then we

wouldn't be sitting here today, would we?"

"But," I stammered, "but how did they manage to go on after so much misfortune?"

"The same way that all of us do. The same way that I went on after los-ing two husbands and Lord

knows all that's happened. At some point, you have to let go of the past, son. Be open to life to come.

Back in the sixties, when everybody was lost, Brian used to talk about going off to find himself. He used

to say, 'Will I ever know the real me? Will I ever know who I am supposed to be?' Such foolish

questions beg straight answers, don't you think, Henry Day?"

I felt faint, paralyzed, destroyed. I crawled off the sofa, out the front door, all the way home and

into bed. If we made our good-byes, they evaporated quickly in the residual shock of her story.

To rouse me from deep slumber the next morning, Tess fixed a pot of hot coffee and a late

breakfast of eggs and biscuits, which I devoured like a famished child. I was sapped of all strength and

will, confounded by the news of Gustav as an idiot savant. Too many ghosts in the attic. We sat on the

ve-randa in the cool morning, swapping sections of the Sunday newspaper. I pretended to read, but my

mind was elsewhere, desperately trying to sort through the possibilities, when a ruckus arose in the

neighborhood. Dogs started howling one by one as something passed in front of their homes, a chain

reaction of maddening intensity.

Tess stood and peered down the street both ways but saw nothing. "I can't stand it," she said. "I'm

going inside until they knock it off. Can I freshen your coffee?"

"Always." I smiled and handed her my cup. The second she vanished, I saw what had driven the

animals mad. There on the street, in the broad light of Sunday morning, two of the devils zigzagged

across the neighborhood lawns. One of them limped along as she ran, and the other, a mouselike

mon-ster, beckoned her to hurry. The pair stopped when they saw me on the porch, two houses away,

and stared directly at me for an instant. Wretched creatures with hideous holes for eyes, bulbous heads

on their ruined bodies. Caked with dirt and sweat. From downwind, I could smell the feral odor of

decay and musk. The one with the limp pointed a bony finger right at me, and the other quickly led her

away through the gap between houses. Tess returned with the coffee too late to see them go, and once

the creatures disappeared, the dogs quieted, settled back in their kennels, and relaxed their chains.

"Did you figure out what all the commotion was about?"

"Two things running through the neighborhood,"

"Things?"

"I don't know." I took a sip. "Little monsters."

"Monsters?"

"Can't you smell their awful odor? Like someone just ran over a skunk."

"Henry, what are you talking about? I don't smell a thing."

"I don't know what set those dogs off. Mass hysteria, a figment of their doggy brains? A mouse and

a bat? A couple of kids."

She put her cool hand on my forehead. "Are you feeling okay, Henry? You don't seem yourself

today."

"I'm not," I said. "Maybe I should go back to bed."

As I drifted off to sleep, the changelings haunted my dreams. A dozen crept out of the woods,

stepping out from behind each tree. They kept on coming, a band of hollow children, surrounding my

home, advancing toward the doors and windows. Trapped inside, I raced from floor to floor and looked

out through peepholes and from behind curtains as they silently marched and assembled in a ring. I ran

down the hall to Eddie's room, and he was a baby again, curled up in a ball in his crib. I shook him to

wake him up and run with me, but when the child rolled over, he had the face of a grown man. I