FOURTEEN

From the Journals of Sheriff Friendly

[Summer, 2004]

In the evening. Near-dark. I couldn’t say why but I was afraid to go from the station house. Crickets whispered and whirred down the hillside with that terrible ratcheting noise that wouldn’t stop. These were big crickets. I knew it. I knew it because I saw a few of them outside, in the parking lot. Like thick tubes of living goo with legs and bulging bug-eyes, and they were jumping, and kind-of flying, and rubbing their weird legs together, and for all these few I saw I knew there were hundreds, thousands, millions more, hidden in the scrub.

These are the lives of insects: they jump, they make that noise, rub-rub. This is This is not why I was afraid. What frightened me was the invisi

I’d been watching the cage. I’d been staring too long into the jail. The cell was empty, yes, but it wasn’t empty. No. There was something still inside it, something I could almost see –

And. And.

The Law is left a living thing inside of me. And when that shadow reappears, it will know that I am here.