On Route 392, Twenty-five Miles East of the House on the Island
John Marsh glanced in his rearview mirror. In the light from the dashboard he saw that he was smiling. It was no wonder why, he thought. He was a happy man—his search was nearly at an end, he was about to corner his prey, at last.
That, he supposed, was probably a fantasy. Seth Freeman was not about to be "cornered" by anyone, especially by an old man with an old score to settle. Seth Freeman was a magician, a superman, and bringing him down would require divine intervention. And John Marsh did not expect, or believe in, divine intervention.
But still he had no doubt that a confrontation would occur. And soon. He could feel it in his aged bones. He fancied that tracking the magician all these years had turned him into something of a magician himself. He liked the idea—Duel of the Magicians. Wouldn't that be something?
He had thought it before and now he thought it again: It was probable, even likely, that senility was catching up with him; undoubtedly he was quite fortunate to have staved it off so long. It had claimed both his mother and father at relatively early ages (sixty-five and sixty-eight respectively) and his grandparents, too; so if it was flirting with him now, at age seventy-three, he really couldn't complain. Just so he could make a bargain with it. He would let it catch up with him—Hell, he'd welcome it—if it would only let him finish what he'd set out to do fifteen years before.
"How's that sound?" he said to the German Shepherd sitting up in the pickup truck's passenger seat. He reached over and scratched the dog's ear. "You think I got another six months, Joe?" Joe inclined his massive gray head into the man's hand. "Oh," Marsh said, "you like that, huh?"
The two had been together for over a decade, and they were inseparable. Marsh very much liked the idea that they'd "grow old together." He had even fantasized that they'd be buried side by side in the same coffin (a fantasy he'd shared with his sister, Margaret; her reaction, he thought, had been typical: "That's obscene, John!").
"I think I got six months, Joe. I think it's all we need."
Joe made slight, rasping noises deep in his throat, as if clearing mucous out; it was his way of showing pleasure.
Marsh scratched the dog's ear harder; the dog grinned.
"Maybe we don't need even that, Joe. 'Cuz I think we got him this time. I do think we got him."
Marsh wasn't sure if he really believed that. It was something he had believed several times, and very strongly in the past fifteen years, and he'd been wrong more than once.
Like the time he'd "tracked" Seth Freeman to a one-room apartment in Albany, only to find the apartment empty. "Ain't no one lived here for a long time," the janitor had told him. "Shit, who'd want to?!" Marsh had been running on his feelings then, his instinct—an instinct nurtured by several years of tracking the man and getting to know his ways and just missing him each time. "He wouldn't mind," Marsh told the janitor. The janitor merely shrugged—This old man for sure had gone round the bend.
And then, several years later, from a dirt road overlooking a farmer's newly harvested cornfield, he had actually caught a glimpse of Seth Freeman. He was at a distance, it was true, but there was no mistaking him: No other man could move so gracefully, and so quickly, the wildness in him as clear and unmistakable as his nakedness. Marsh's glimpse of him that time had lasted a couple seconds, no more. Then Seth Freeman had merged with the yellowish stubs of cornstalks surrounding him, and had vanished. If, Marsh realized, he had brought a pair of good binoculars along with him and knew precisely where to look, he might have seen the barest hint of a shadow moving swiftly through the field—if he'd been very lucky. But though he'd kept watching for another half hour, Seth Freeman had not reappeared.
Marsh had caught glimpses of him five times since then.
And once during those years he had spoken with him—in a little farmhouse ten miles from where he was now. He still called that farmhouse his home.
It had been late evening. Winter. A heavy layer of snow had built up from a two-day storm, and Marsh had just finished shoving the last of his firewood into the Franklin stove that heated the house (his pickup truck was useless in the deep snow and he hoped that by daybreak someone would come by).
Very quickly and very quietly, Seth Freeman appeared from a darkened corner of the room. He stood ten feet away from Marsh, who was kneeling in front of the stove. He wore a long gray wool jacket (Marsh thought it looked like a woman's jacket and he imagined that Seth had stolen it), and heavy, Timberland boots that were obviously several sizes too large. He appeared to be shivering. He said, his tone merely one of curiosity, "Why do you follow me?"
Marsh answered immediately, his voice quivering, "I . . . have to."
"You don't have to." Seth's tone now was instructional, as if he were talking to a very young child. "You are in the last of your years. Enjoy them while you have them."
Marsh stood and took a step toward Seth. Seth's face went blank, he took one step backward, not in fear, but, ironically, in warning. "I know what is in your head, and in your heart, John Marsh. You want to destroy me." There was no anger or animosity in his voice—his tone was still one of instruction—but now it was mixed with rebuke. "And you cannot destroy me, unless I wish it.
And I do not wish it." He raised his arm slightly to indicate the Franklin stove. "I need that heat."
"So do I," Marsh said.
And Seth grinned very slightly, with only one side of his mouth. It seemed unnatural—and it was chilling. He said, "I believe there is enough for both of us." Then he backed up several steps, into the darkness at the edges of the room, and was gone.
"What do you think, Joe?" Marsh said now, and Ire reached over and scratched the dog's ear affectionately. "You think we got him?"
Joe moaned deep in his throat, in pleasure. Marsh took it as an affirmative, and it sent a shiver of happiness and expectation through him.