Duma Key(165)

i

Wireman offered a Lunesta to help me sleep. I was sorely tempted, but declined. I took one of the silver harpoons, however, and Wireman did likewise. With his hairy belly sloping slightly over his blue boxers and one of John Eastlake's specialty items in his right hand, he looked like some amusing Real Guy version of Cupid. The wind had gotten up even higher; it roared along the sides of the house and whistled around the corners.

"Bedroom doors open, right?" he asked.

"Check."

"And if something happens in the night, holler like hell."

"Roger that, Houston. You do the same."

"Is Jack going to be all right, Edgar?"

"If he burns the sketch, he'll be fine."

"You doing okay with what happened to your friends?"

Kamen, who taught me to think sideways. Tom, who had told me not to give up the home field advantage. Was I doing okay with what happened to my friends.

Well, yes and no. I felt sad and stunned, but I'd be a liar if I didn't say I also felt a certain low and slinking relief; humans are, in some ways, such complete shits. Because Kamen and Tom, although close, stood just outside the charmed circle of those who really mattered to me. Those people Perse hadn't been able to touch. And if we moved fast, Kamen and Tom would be our only casualties.

" Muchacho?"

"Yeah," I said, feeling called back from a great distance. "Yeah, I'm okay. Call me if you need me, Wireman, and don't hesitate. I don't expect to get many winks."

ii

I lay looking up at the ceiling with the silver harpoon beside me on the bedtable. I listened to the steady rush of the wind and the steady tumble of the surf. I remember thinking, This is going to be a long night. Then sleep took me.

I dreamed of little Libbit's sisters. Not the Big Meanies; the twins.

The twins were running.

The big boy was chasing them.

It had TEEF.

iii

I woke with most of my body on the floor but one leg my left still propped on the bed and fast asleep. Outside, the wind and surf continued to roar. Inside, my heart was pounding almost as hard as the waves breaking on the beach. I could still see Tessie going down drowning while those soft and implacable hands clasped her calves. It was perfectly clear, a hellish painting inside my head.

But it wasn't the dream of the little girls fleeing the frog-thing that was making my heart pound, not the dream that caused me to wake up on the floor with my mouth tasting like copper and every nerve seeming to burn. It was, rather, the way you wake from a bad dream realizing that you forgot something important: to turn off the stove, for instance, and now the house is filled with the smell of gas.

I pulled my foot off the bed and it hit the floor in a burst of pins and needles. I rubbed it, grimacing. At first it was like rubbing a block of wood, but then that numb sensation started to leave. The sensation that I'd forgotten something vital did not.

But what? I had some hopes that our expedition to the south end of the Key might put an end to the whole nasty, festering business. The biggest hurdle, after all, was belief itself, and as long as we didn't backslide in the bright Florida sunshine tomorrow, we were over that one. It was possible we might see upside-down birds, or that a gigantic hop-frog monstrosity like the one in my dream might try to bar our way, but I had an idea those were essentially wraiths excellent for dealing with six-year-old girls, not so good against grown men, especially when armed with silver-tipped harpoons.

And, of course, I would have my pad and pencils.

I thought Perse was now afraid of me and my newfound talent. Alone, still not recovered from my near-death experience (still suicidal, in fact), I might have been an asset instead of a problem. Because in spite of all his big talk, that Edgar Freemantle really hadn't had another life; that Edgar had just switched the backdrop of his invalid's existence from pines to palms. But once I had friends again... saw what was all around me and reached out to it...

Then I'd become dangerous. I don't know exactly what she had in mind other than regaining her place in the world, that is but she must have thought that when it came to mischief-making, the potential for a talented one-armed artist was great. I could have sent poison paintings all over the globe, by God! But now I had turned in her hand, just as Libbit had. Now I was something first to be stopped, then discarded.

"You're a little late for that, bitch," I whispered.

So why did I still smell gas?

The paintings especially the most dangerous ones, the Girl and Ship series were safely under lock and key, and off-island, just as Elizabeth had wished. According to Pam, nobody in our circle of family and friends had taken sketches except for Bozie, Tom, and Xander Kamen. It was too late for Tom and Kamen, and I'd have given a great deal to change that, but Bozie had promised to burn his, so that was all right. Even Jack was covered, because he'd owned up to his little act of thievery. It had been smart of Wireman to ask him, I thought. I was only surprised he hadn't asked if I'd given Jack some artwork myse -

My breath turned to glass in my throat. Now I knew what I'd forgotten. Now, in this deep crease of the night with the wind roaring outside. I'd been so fixated on the goddam show that I'd never thought much about who I might have given work to before the show.

Can I have it?

My memory, still apt to be so balky, sometimes surprised me with bursts of Technicolor brilliance. It provided one now. I saw Ilse standing barefoot in Little Pink, dressed in shorts and a shell top. She was standing by my easel. I had to ask her to move so I could see the picture she was so taken with. The picture I didn't even remember doing.