THE MOON is at the bottom of the lake, and seeing it there, trapped in water grass and weeds, Jamie and Angel are enchanted, watching a cloud like an eyelid close over it, then open again, returning their world of the night to all its brilliance. When Jamie paws the water, the image shatters into looped and spinning ripples before it settles back to reflect their fractured, grinning faces, becoming finally lightly silvered, mirror-still.
Not far away, Julia is grubbing and sniffing around the earth and leaves at the bottom of a tree, the sound of it attracting Kathy and Maria to her side, seeking the source of an odor so exquisite it intoxicates. Together, they unearth the remains of a bird, an owl perhaps, half skeletonized, feathers and flesh a rotting pulp.
The sweetness of the scent dizzies their senses, and in the next moment they are down on the carrion, rolling over and into it, especially the back of the neck and shoulders, grunting their pleasure.
A Nembutal, a Seconal, a capsule of Darvon compound, two cans of beer, and a shot of vodka: none of it helped, leaving him at four in the morning with nothing but his grief and aching eyes and pounding head.
Harry Meyerson threw back the sheet, waking Yippity at the foot of the bed who, even after only a few weeks’ exposure, knew what the final stages of Harry’s newly acquired sleeplessness meant, and ran for her leash in the hall.
Harry lived in a ground-floor-front apartment, and it was his habit to leave his keys with the doorman who kept an eye on Rosalie while he walked. This done, he crossed the street.
He never went very far into the park at night, knowing of its publicized dangers, but tonight he seemed drawn to do so. The moon was full, the night air cool, and the beauty of the trees and winding paths inviting. It was perhaps only an hour before dawn, and surely the city’s legions of murderers and muggers were sound aleeep. So he told himself. But the sad truth was this: he didn’t care. Maybe there was something after all to all that shit about life-after-death, and if there was, he wanted to be immediately knifed twenty times in the chest by a seven-foot Haitian New Yorker, voodooed and berserk in the park, with chicken blood all over him. That was one way he might be able to see Sarah again. Perhaps the only way.
So, unleasing Yippity, who bounded off in delight, he dared wander where the ache of his battered heart and his morbid fancy led him.
Perhaps it never would have happened if Yippity hadn’t wandered off.
Harry called and whistled softly, then stopped, slightly dazed, to wonder where he was, because he had been walking for the longest while unconsciously. The area seemed exceptionally dense with trees that shuttered out the moonlight, but to the left, down an incline, he could see the pale shimmer of the lake, so he had a rough idea where he was.
He whistled again. It was unusual for Yippity to leave him for so long, unless she’d found another dog, or a wounded bird—something to keep her occupied. And as he stood there, silent, holding his breath in order to listen carefully, the short hairs at the back of his neck began to bristle. He was afraid!—actually afraid!—but the fear, whatever its cause, figment or reality, was good to feel. Any emotion other than the unrelieved, intolerable burden of his grief was welcome.
So—! Let him seek out and find his seven-foot Haitian!—he’d already signed the contract with God: anything in exchange for Sarah, and he stumbled, half fell, down the incline toward the lake which, simply because it was there and white with moonlight, seemed the logical place to go.
When he rose from his knees, he heard a soft nuzzling growl from the leafy darkness at the left. So Yippity had found something, and whistling, Harry pushed through an opening in the underbrush toward the sound.
It was Yippity all right. But she hadn’t found anything at all; something had found Yippity.
Crouched on its haunches, in a blaze of hard moonlight, a dirty, blood-smeared, wild-haired, naked child was tearing at the dead dog with its teeth, Yippity’s head virtually torn from her body, the underbelly ripped open, oozing thick blood and uncoiling the white snake of her intestines.
In the most tragic and grisly moments of our lives, humor has a perverse habit of surviving, and in the next few incredible moments as Harry’s now perfectly round dark eyes met the slitted, glinting gold of those of the surely supernatural beast-child, he tried to worm out of his contract. I didn’t mean it!—this to God; that is, about the seven- foot Haitian and the knife twenty times in my chest. It was a lousy joke. I really don’t want to die. Look: I’ve got a daughter; I’ve got Rosalie to take care of. . . .
Never promise anything to God; His contracts, like those of the Prince of Darkness, are flawless and irreparably binding.
Angel rises, dripping blood, his eyes freezing his new and thoroughly fascinating prey. And the moment he rises he shares his knowledge with the others who, distant or near, know exactly where to go and what to do.
His mind useless, Harry’s body behaves on its own. At his feet lies a heavy broken branch, as neat as a weighted club. Like a slow-motion sequence in a film, he bends to pick it up. Angel can make no meaningful connection between the wood and the man; he perceives only an inexplicable motion and growls his displeasure several times as he watches.
Behind Harry: a rustle; his head jerks in time to see the flash of Julia’s body, then, some distance away, her face through the leaves, barely a foot from the ground.
Another rustle. Another. And a third, and he knows there are five, now in a circle closing in. He watches Angel’s incredible face as the child crouches for a spring, and not a moment too soon, lets the club fly, leaping in the same instant clear over the boy’s head in a panicked, tumbling scramble down the stony slope toward the lake.
In a lunge of concerted movement the pack is after him, overtaking him in seconds, Angel leaping on his back, Maria and Jamie tearing at his legs. He goes down with a startled cry, striking out in every direction, rolling, twisting, beating the children off.
Now on his feet, he kicks out viciously at Jamie who is snarling and snapping at his thigh; then, he literally catches Kathy in midair who, having backed off, had found enough room to fling herself at him. Seizing her by the throat he squeezes until Maria’s long teeth sink into his wrist.
With cracked cries of loathing and despair, he picks up and flings one child against the massed others, gaining a few moments’ time in which, after a leap, he slides spinning down the remainder of the slope to the water’s edge.
There, his clothes half gone, bleeding from wrist, legs, back, throat, he pauses, panicked to know what to do; then, wading knee-deep in the lake, he seizes a rowboat tied with a long rope to a tree. There is no time to free it; he scrambles in, picks up an oar, facing the five children now lined up on shore.
The water deters them; they are used to it about their ankles, but to wade in to the knee, and then waist-deep, is too much of a shock. They attempt it, retreat; attempt it again, come back, jaws jabbering, whimpering their rage and frustration.
Then—an astonishing thing. In a moment lucid with regained humanity, Angel stands up, seizes the rope, and pulls the boat to shore.
They swarm into it in a howling rush as Harry, reeling with terror, swings the oar, knocking one, then another of them over the side. But Angel is truly inspired. He rocks the boat until Harry loses balance and falls—with a scream so thin and wild with terror that God must have covered His ears.
He is inundated instantly, Jamie getting to his throat first. There is a frenzied flailing of arms and legs, a thrashing of torso, fluid, strangled cries, until water and blood and moonlight mix; then all is still.
The bruised children retreat to the bank, there to shake themselves free of dripping water, their breath short and panting. Some, still excited, occasionally growl; all begin to lick at their wounds and scratches.
In the water Harry lies, hair liquid and fanned, entirely nude now except for his belt; his eyes shiny glass, blood clouding the water from his open mouth, the wound in his throat massive.
And behind his head, just the edge of it touching: the moon: a perfect halo.